“I’m coming.” Naill gently adjusted the blanket, got to his feet. He had to go fast, not looking back, never looking back now. But he halted to rap on Mara’s door.
“I’m going,” he told her. “You will watch?”
“I’ll watch. And I’ll do all the rest—just like you’d want it. Good luck, boy!” But it was plain that she thought that last a wasted wish.
Naill walked for the last time down the hall, trying to make his mind a blank, or at least hold to the thought that Malani was out of the Dipple in another way, a far better way. The guard gathered up two more charges and delivered them all at the processing section of the port. Naill submitted without question to the procedure that would turn him from a living, breathing man into a helpless piece of cargo, valuable enough once it was delivered intact and revived. But what he carried with him into the sleep of the frozen was the memory of that shadowy smile he had seen on his mother’s face.
How long that voyage lasted, what path it took among the stars, and for what purpose, Naill was never to know, or really care. Janus must be a frontier world, or else human labor would not be necessary there. But that was the sum total of his knowledge concerning it. And he was not awake to see the huge dark green ball grow on the pilot’s vision plate, develop wide continents and narrow seas—the land choked with the dense green of forests, vast virgin forests that more civilized planets had long since forgotten existed.
The spaceport on which the cargo vessel landed was a stretch of bare rockland, scarred and darkened by the years of fiery lashing from arriving and departing ships. And extending irregularly from that center were the clearings made by the settlers.
Garths had been hacked out of the forest, bare spots in the dark green. The green carried a hint of gray, as if some of the wide leaves of those giant trees had been powdered with a film of silver. Men cleared fields, setting disciplined rows of their own plants criss-crossing those holdings, with the logs of the forest hollowed, split, and otherwise forced into serving as shelters for the men who had downed them.
This was a war between man and tree, with here a runner of vine, there a thrust of bush, or a sprout of sapling tonguing out to threaten a painfully cleared space. Always the forest waited . . . and so did that which was within the forest . . .
The men who fought that battle were grim, silent, as iron-tough as the trees, and stubborn as space-scoured metal. Their war had begun a hundred years earlier, when the first Survey Scout had marked Janus for human settlement. An earlier attempt to conquer the world for man had failed. Then these off-worlders had come and stayed. But still the forest had been cleared only a little—a very little.
Settlers were moving portward from the scattered garths, gathering at the town they hated but which they had to endure as their link off-world. These were hard men, bound together by a stern, joyless, religious belief and unshakable self-confidence. These were men who labored steadily through the daylight hours, who mistrusted beauty and ease as part of deadly sin, who forced themselves and their children, their labor slaves, into a dull pattern of work and worship. Such came now to buy fresh labor in order to fight the forest and all it held.
TWO
FRINGE OF FOREST
“This is the lot, garthmaster. Why should I hold back my wares?” The cargomaster of the space freighter balanced lightly, his fists resting on his hips, a contemptuous light in his eyes. Beside the would-be customer he was wire-slim and boyish in appearance.
“For forest biting, for fieldwork, you bring such as these?” His contempt was as great, but divided between the spaceman and his wares.
“Men who still have something to bargain with do not sign on as labor, as you well know, garthmaster. That we bring here any at all is something to marvel at.”
The settler himself was quite different from the miserable company he now fronted. In an age when most males of Terran descent, no matter how remote from the home planet that strain might be, eradicated facial and body hair at its first appearance, this hulking giant was a reversion to primitive times. A fan of dense black beard sprayed across his barrel chest masking his face well up on the cheekbones. More hair matted the backs of his wide hands. As for the rest of him, he was gray—his coarse fabric clothing, his hide boots, the cap pulled down over more bushy hair.
His basic speech was guttural, with new intonations, and he walked heavily, as if to crush down some invisible resistance. Tall, massive, he resembled one of the trees against which he and all his kind had turned their sullen hatred, while the men before him seemed pygmies of a weaker species.
There were ten of those, still shaken by the process of revival, and none of them had ever been the garthmaster’s match physically. Men without hope, as the cargomaster had pointed out, were labor-signers. And by the time they had reached that bottom in any port, they were almost finished already, both physically and mentally.
The settler glowered at each, his eyes seeming to strip the unfortunate they rested upon in turn, measuring every defect of each underfed body.
“I am Callu Kosburg—from the Fringe. I have forty vistas to clear before the first snow. And these—these are what you offer me! To get an hour’s full labor out of any would be a gift from the Sky!” He made a sign in the air. “To ask a load of bark for such . . . it is a sin!”
The cargomaster’s expression was serious. “A sin, garthmaster? Do you wish to accuse me of such before a Speaker? Here—now? If so, I shall bring forward my proof—so many credits paid for sign-on fees, cost of transportation, freeze fees. I think you will find the price well within allowed bounds. Do you still say ‘sin,’ Garthmaster Kosburg?”
Kosburg shrugged. “A manner of speaking only. No, I make no charge. I do not doubt that you could bring your proof if I did. But a man must have hands to help him clear—even if they are these puny crawlers. I will take this one—and this—and this.” His finger indicated three in the labor line. “Also—you.” For the first time he spoke directly to one of the laborers on view. “Yes, you—third man from the end. What age have you?”
Naill Renfro realized that demand was barked in his direction. His head was still light, his stomach upset by the concoction they had poured into him. He struggled to make a sensible answer.
“I don’t know—”
“You don’t know?” Kosburg echoed. “What sort of an empty head is this one, that he does not even know how many years he has? I have heard much foolishness spoken here by off-worlders, but this is above all.”
“He speaks the truth. According to the records, garthmaster, he was space-born—planet years do not govern such.”
Kosburg’s beard rippled as if he chewed his words before spitting them out. “Space-born—so . . . Well, he looks young enough to learn how to work with his hands. Him I will take, also. These are all full-time men?”
The cargomaster grinned. “For such a run—to Janus—would we waste space on less? You have the bark ready for loading, garthmaster?”
“I have the bark. We shall put it in the loading area. To be on the road quickly, that is necessary when one travels to the Fringe. You—before me—march! There is unloading to be done—though by the looks of you, not much will pass by your muscles this day.”
The spaceport of Janus was a cluster of prefabs about the scorched apron of the landing field, having the strangely temporary look of a rootless place, ugly with the sterile starkness of the Dipple. Urged by a continuous rumble of orders, the laborers hurried to a line of carts. Their cargoes, unwieldy bundles of silvery bark, were being transferred by hand to growing stacks carefully inspected by a ship’s tally-man.
“This—goes there.” Kosburg’s simple instructions were made with waves of his hand indicating certain carts and the bark piles. Naill looked up at the man standing in the nearest wagon, balancing a roll of bark to hand down.
He was a younger edition of Kosburg. There was no mistaking they were father and son. The beard sprouting on his square thrust of chin was still silky, and the lips visible above it pouted. Like his father, he was dressed in heavy, ill-fitting gray clothing. In fact all the men working along that line of rapidly emptying wagons presented a uniformity of drabness that was like some army or service garb.