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Chapter Two

 

The particular Master who oversaw this village was Chugren. He was only a medium-tall person, too heavy for his bones, with a pasty face and red-laced eyes. Dahano had never seen him without a sodden breath or a thickness in his tongue. Any person who wasn't a Master ought to have collapsed long ago under the poisons he seemed to swill as thirstily as a villager gulping water from the bucket in the fields. His visits to the village were only as frequent as they had to be. If he thought very often at all about the village, he was too lazy and too uncaring to come and see to it properly. He contented himself with watching it from his palace among the golden spires of the Masters' city on the plains. Watching it with his drunken, stupored mind.

But this morning he was here. The villagers were just leaving their huts to go to the fields when Dahano saw the Master step out into the middle of the square and stand looking around him.

So, Dahano thought. Last night there were lights in the sky, and today Chugren comes for the first time in months.

The villagers had stopped, clustered in their doorways, and everyone looked impassively at Chugren. Then the Master's gaze reached Dahano, and he beckoned as he always had. "Come over here, Dahano."

Dahano bowed his head. "I hear, Chugren." He shuffled forward slowly, stooping, taking on a slowness and age that were feebler than his own. A slave has weapons against his master, and this was one of them. It seemed like such a trifle, making Chugren wait an extra moment before he reached him. Enough of a trifle so the Master would feel foolish in making an issue of it. But, nevertheless, it was a way of gnawing at the foundation of his power. It meant Dahano was not wholly crushed—not wholly a slave, and never would be.

Finally, Dahano reached Chugren and bowed again. "It is almost time for us to go work in the fields," he muttered.

"It'll wait," Chugren said.

"As the Master wishes." Dahano bowed and hid a thin smile. Chugren was discomfited. Somehow, the slave had scored against the Master once more, simply by reminding him that he was an attentive slave.

"There's time enough for that." Chugren was using a sharp tone of voice, and yet he was speaking slowly. "This village is a disgrace! Look at it—huts falling apart and not a move made to repair them; a puddle of sewage around that broken drain there . . . don't you people do anything for yourselves?"

Why should we? Dahano thought.

"All right," Chugren went on. "If you people can't clean up after yourselves, I suppose I'll have to do it for you. But if it happens again, you'll see how much nonsense I'll tolerate!" He jerked his arm in quick slashes of motion at the huts. He repaired the drain. In a moment, the village looked new again. "There. Now keep it that way!"

Dahano bowed. His twisted, hidden smile was broader. Another victory. It had been a long time since the last time Chugren gave in on the matter of the huts and drains. But he had given in at last, as Dahano had known he must. It was his village, built by him. His slaves had no wish to keep it in repair for him. This was an old, old struggle between them—but the slaves had won again.

He looked up at Chugren's face. "I hear, Chugren." Then he looked more closely.

He couldn't have said what signs he saw in the Master's face, but he had known Chugren for many years. And he saw now that Chugren's hesitant wordings didn't come from a dulled brain. The Master was sober for the first time in Dahano's experience. He sounded, instead, like a child who's not yet sure of all his words.

 

Dahano's eyes widened. Chugren glanced at him sharply as the Master saw what he knew. Nevertheless, Dahano put it in words:

"You aren't Chugren," he whispered.

The Master's expression was mixed. "You're right," he admitted in a low voice. He looked around with a rueful lift to the corners of his mouth. "I see no one else has realized that. I'd appreciate it if you continued to keep your voice down." The look in his eyes was now both discomfited and unmistakably friendly.

Dahano nodded automatically. He and Chugren stood silently looking at each other while his brain caught up with its knowledge.

Dahano was not a person to go rushing forward into things he understood imperfectly. "Would the Master condescend to explain?" he asked finally, carefully.

Chugren nodded. "I think I'd better. I think it might be a good idea, now I've met you. And we might as well start off right—I'm not your master, and don't want to be."

"Will you come to my house with me?" Chugren nodded. Dahano turned and motioned the other villagers out into the fields. As the crowd broke up and drifted out of the square, glancing curiously at the Master and the Headman, Chugren followed Dahano toward his hut. Gulegath brushed by them with a pale look at the Master, and then they were in the hut, and Dahano took a breath. "You don't want to be our Master?" His hands were trembling a little bit.

"That's right," It was odd to see Chugren's features smile at him. "Your old Masters are gone for good. My men and I took their places last night. As soon as possible, we're going to set you people completely free."

Dahano squatted down on the floor. It was Chugren's voice and face, though nothing like Chugren's manner. He studied the person again. He saw Chugren, dressed in Chugren's usual loose, bright robe, with his dough coloring and pouched eyes. And under them was a sureness and firm self-possession quite different from the old Master's drunken, arbitrary peevishness. Dahano was not sure how all this could be—whether this was somehow a trick, or somehow an illusion, or where this false Chugren had come from. But he knew he would find out if he had patience.

"I saw lights in the sky last night. Was that you?"

Chugren looked at him with respect. "You've got sharp eyes, Headman. We had to take the screen down for an instant so we could get through—but, still, I didn't think anyone would spot us."

"Screen?"

"I'd better start at the beginning." Chugren made chairs for them, and when they were both sitting, the Master leaned forward. "I wish I knew how much of this will come through. I've been trying to build up a vocabulary, but there are so many things we have and do that your people don't have words for."

Dahano was curious. How could that be? There was a word for everything he knew. It was possible there were words he hadn't learned—but, no words at all? He mulled the idea over and then put it away. There were more important things to busy himself with.

 

Chugren was still preoccupied with that problem. "I wish I could explain all this directly. That'd be even better. But that's out, too."

Dahano nodded. This part was understandable to him. "The Masters told us. Their minds are made differently from ours. They could not even see into ours clearly unless we were angry or excited."

"You're not organized to send messages direct. I know. We used to think it was our instruments, but we ran into it no matter how we redesigned."

"Instruments?"

Chugren pulled up the sleeve of his robe. Strapped to his upper arm were two rows of small black metal boxes. "We weren't born Masters. We use machines— like a person uses a mill instead of a pestle to grind his grain—to do the things a Master does with his mind. Only we can do them better that way. That's how we were able to surprise your Masters last night and capture them."

Dahano grunted in surprise.

"You see," Chugren said, "there aren't any Masters and slaves where I and my men come from. Any man can be a Master, so no one can enslave anyone else. And of what conceivable use is a slave when you can have anything you want just by making it?"

Dahano shook his head. "We have thought on that."

Chugren's nod was grim. "We thought about it, too. We've been watching this world from our . . . our boat . . . for weeks. We couldn't understand what your Masters wanted. They didn't eat your grain or cattle, they didn't take you for personal servants—they never took you to their city at all. Not even your women. Why, then?"

"For pleasure. We thought on it for a long time, and there is no other answer." Dahano's eyes were sunk back in their sockets, remembering Borthen's body hanging on its frame in the village square. "For pleasure."

Chugren grimaced. "That's the conclusion we reached. They won't come back here . . . re-education or no re-education . . . sick or well, Dahano—ever."

Dahano nodded to himself, staring off at nothing. "Then it is true—you're here to free us."

"Yes." Chugren looked at him with pity in his eyes. "You've gotten out of the habit of believing what a Master tells you, haven't you?"

"If what he says is not another of his commands, yes. But I don't think you are like our Masters."

"We're not. We come from a world called Terra, where we have had masters of our own, from time to time. But not for a long time, now. We're all free, and one of the things a free man does is to pass his freedom on to anyone who needs it."

"Another world?"

Chugren spread his hands. "See? There are some things I can't explain. But— You see the stars in the sky. And you see the sun. Well, this world is part of your sun's family. All those stars you see are suns, too—so far away that they look little. But they're as big as yours, and each of them has worlds in its family, some of them pretty much like yours. Some of them have people living on them. We have a boat that lets us travel from one to another,"

 

Dahano thought about that. When he decided he had it clear in his mind, he asked: "Other people. Tell me—what do you look like when you don't resemble Chugren? Do you look like us? Does everyone?"

Chugren smiled. "Not too different. I can show you." He stood up and touched his arm to his body. His robe flowed into different colors and two parts, one of which loosely covered his legs and hips while the other hugged his upper body, leaving his arms bare. He changed his face, and the color of his hair and eyes.

He was shorter than the usual person, and the shape of his ears and eyes was odd. His hands were too broad.

He looked a good deal like a usual person or Master, except that he was possibly physically stronger, for he looked powerful. Not too different.

Still, Dahano said, "Thank you," rather quickly. It was unsettling to look at him, for anyone could see at a glance that he was not born of any female person on this world.

The Terran nodded in understanding, and was Chugren again. "You see why I didn't come here as myself?"

Dahano could picture it. The villagers would have been frightened and upset. More than that, they would never have dared listen to him.

But there was something else Dahano wanted to clear up. He returned to his point: "Other worlds and other people. Tell me, have you ever been to the world where our Heaven People live?"

"Heaven People?" Chugren frowned, and Dahano knew he was trying to grasp the meaning from his mind.

"The souls of our dead persons," Dahano explained. "I had thought at first that you might be one of them, but I can see you aren't. I thought perhaps, in your boat, you might have visited them." He stopped himself there. A person does not inflict his grief on those who have no share in it.

But his mind had welled up, and Chugren saw his thought. He shook his head slowly. "No, I'm sorry, Dahano. I didn't meet your son."

Dahano looked down. "At least there will be no more." He thought of all the persons who had burned because of the Masters, and all the souls that had gone into the sky. Somewhere, on one of those worlds Chugren spoke of, there were many persons who had waited for this day to come. It was good to know that they had a home much like this world, which only the Masters had spoiled. It was good to know that some day his own soul would be there with them, and that he would be with his son again.

He remembered the long hours with Borthen, passing on to him the old ways he had learned from his father—the ways of having land of a person's own, and a house, and cattle; the remembered things, saved and kept whole from the days before the Masters were here, coming suddenly from their one village in the faraway mountains.

Many things had been lost, but they were only unimportant things that would be of no use; persons' names, and the memory of persons' lives. A person lived, died, and his sons remembered him for their lives, but then he began to fade, and his grandsons might never remember him.

The important things had lived on. Dahano knew that had been a great effort. There were always persons who were willing to let themselves forget, and simply live out what lives they had. But always there were persons who would not forget; who waited for the day when the villagers could claim the world for their own again, and need to know how to live without anyone's commanding them.

So, in all the villages, fathers taught their sons, and the sons remembered.

 

Dahano's face wrinkled in grief as he thought of his dead son. Borthen had remembered—perhaps too well. He had still been a young man, with a young man's fire in his blood. So he tested Chugren's power, and Chugren—the old Chugren—had commanded him to die for not tending the cattle properly.

Two more days—two more days of patience, Borthen, and I would have my son. I would not be alone. Some day you would have been Headman.

Dahano raised his eyes slowly. There were things to be done, and he was Headman in this village.

"What are you going to do?" he asked Chugren. "Are you going to make us all Masters?"

Chugren shook his head. "No. Not for a long time. And then it's going to be your own people who make themselves Masters. That's why, at first, we weren't going to let you know that anything had happened to Chugren and his fellows. What do you think would happen if we simply went to all the villages and told the people they were free?"

"If you went as you really are?"

"Yes."

"The people would be frightened. Many of them wouldn't know what to do. And afterwards I don't think they'd be happy."

"They'd know somebody came down from the sky and simply gave them their freedom."

Dahano nodded. "It would never be their freedom. It would be a gift from someone else who might come to take it back some day."

"That's why we've got to go slowly. Today Chugren came to this village and cleaned it up. In a few days, he'll come back and do something else to make things better. One by one, the old Masters' rules will be eliminated, and in a few months, everyone will be free. Some people will wonder what made the Masters change. But it won't have been sudden, and in a few generations, I think your people will have invented a hero who made the Masters change." Chugren smiled. "You, perhaps, Dahano. And then one day the Masters will go away, and their city'll burn to the ground, and that'll be the end of it."

"We'll be free."

"You'll be free, and you'll have your pride. You'll grow, you'll learn—a little faster than you might have, perhaps, and you'll spend less time on blind alleys, I can promise you—and when you have grown enough, you'll be Masters. Without more than a friendly hand to help. I don't think you'd really like it if we gave you everything, and so left you with nothing."

"A friendly hand—yes, Chugren." Dahano stood up. "That's all my people want." He felt his back straighten, and his head was up. "No more commands. No more Masters coming to give orders. No more working in fields which do not belong to anyone, doing what you do not wish to."

"I promise you that, Dahano."

"I believe you."

Chugren smiled. "On my world, friends clasp hands."

"They do the same here."

They stepped toward each other, their arms outstretched, and shook hands.

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