Now he leaned against the bole of a fallen tree and smirked behind Lasja’s broad back, winking at Naill as the latter began to shape up one of the waiting logs.
“Seen any of them monsters?” he asked as Naill paused and came over for a drink. “Reckon their hides might bring a good price down to the port, was anyone smart enough to take him out a pair of hounds and do a little huntin’.”
His half suggestion only pointed up the thought that was at the back of all newcomers’ minds—the driving hope of somehow managing to get some trade goods independently, to build up credits at the port and some day—no matter how far away—to earn one’s freedom.
Lasja scowled. “You stow that! Ain’t never goin’ to get any trade goods—you know that, scuttle-bug. Anything you get—or find—belongs to the garthmaster—and don’t you go to forget that! Want to be judged a first-degree sinner and have the Speaker reckon with you?”
Naill glanced over the rim of the wooden dipper. “What could a man get—or find—around here, Lasja, that’s worth bringing in a Speaker?”
Lasja’s scowl blackened. “Sinful things,” he muttered.
Naill allowed the dipper to splash back into the bucket. He was aware of Sim Tylos’s sudden start, stilling instantly into watchful waiting. When the big man did not continue, it was Tylos who asked the question in both their minds.
“Sinful things, eh? And what’re them, Lasja? We don’t want to get no Speaker on our backs—better tell us what we ain’t to pick up, if we are findin’ of ’em. Or else, do we get into trouble, we can say as how we was never told no different. This Kosburg, he’s a terror on two legs, all right, only he might listen to us sayin’ somethin’ like that.”
Tylos was right. Stern and narrow as was the garthdwellers’ creed, their sense of justice still worked—justice, not mercy, of course. Lasja paused, his ax still upraised. His lower lip pushed out so that he had the side profile of some awkward, off-world bird thing—round head, outthrust bill.
“All right—all right!” He brought down the ax mightily and then let the haft slip through his hand until the head rested on the chip-littered ground. “Sometimes, men workin’ out to clear the forest—they find things . . .”
“What kind of things?” Naill took up the questioning.
But Lasja’s discomfort was growing. “Things—well, you might say as how they was like treasures.”
“Treasures!” Tylos broke out and then clamped his pale lips tightly together, though his avid interest blazed in his narrowed eyes.
“What kind of treasures?” Naill asked.
“I don’t know—just things—rich-lookin’.”
“What happens to ’em?” Tylos’s tongue stopped its passage across his lips long enough for him to ask.
“The Speaker comes and they break ’em all to bits—burn ’em.”
“Why?” Naill demanded.
“‘Cause they’re cursed, that’s why! Anybody as touches ’em is cursed too.”
Tylos laughed. “That’s rich, that is. ‘Course they’re cursed, do we find ’em. We might just take ’em down to the port and buy ourselves free. But why smash ’em up? They could use some treasure here—import some machines so we don’t have to go on breakin’ our backs cuttin’ down trees and grubbin’ out stuff.”
Lasja shot him a hard glance. “You ain’t breakin’ your back none, Tylos. And the Sky Lovers don’t use no machines. Anyway—does a man try to hold out on treasure and they learn it, he gets put out there”—he jerked a thumb at the forest—”alone—no grub, no tools, nothin’ but his bare hands. And you ain’t sellin’ nothin’ at the port. You don’t get to the port less’n they make sure they’s nothin’ a man’s got on him but his clothes over his bare skin. No—they’s right—that treasure’s not for the takin’. When it’s found, the finder sings out, and loud, too.”
“Where does it come from? I thought this was an empty world, no native race,” Naill said.
“Sure—never found no people here. Funny thing—I’ve heard a lotta talk. This here planet’s been known for about a hundred years, planet time. The Karbon Combine bid it in at the first Survey auction—just on spec. That was before the war—long before. But they didn’t do much more than just hold it on their books—sent in a couple of explorin’ parties who didn’t see more’n trees, messes of trees all over the place. There’s a couple of narrow little seas—all the rest forest. No minerals has registered high enough to pay for exportin’—nothin’ but a lotta wood.
“Then, when it looked like the Combines were stretchin’ too far, mosta them started unloadin’ worlds what didn’t pay—gettin’ rid of ’em to settlers. These Sky Lovers—they were over on some hard-soiled scrap of an overbaked world which gave ’em a hardscrabble livin’. Somehow they got the down payment for Karbon and jumped the gulf to here. Then—when the war broke—well, then they had it made. Karbon holdin’s were all enemy then—they cracked wide open and nobody came around here askin’ for what was still owin’. Far’s I know, the Sky Lovers have Janus free and clear all to their selves. They get out lattamus and bark enough to keep the port open and themselves on the trade map.
“That’s all the history we know. And there’s never been no sign of natives, just these treasures turnin’ up every once in a while. No pattern to that neither, no ruins—nothin’ to say as how there was ever anythin’ here but trees. And those’ve been growin’—some of ’em—nigh onto two thousand planet years! Might just be that this was some sort of a hideout for raiders or such once. But they ain’t never found no marks of a ship landin’ neither. The Sky Lovers, they have it that the treasures are planted by the Dark One just to make a man sin, and so far they ain’t found nothin’ to prove that wrong.”
Tylos laughed scornfully. “Silly way of thinkin’!”
“Maybe—but it’s theirs and they’ve got the say here,” Lasja warned.
“Did you ever really see any such treasure?” Naill went back to his stripping job.
“Once—over on Morheim’s Garth. He’s to the south, next holding. That was last fall, just when we was doin’ the season burnin’. Was his son as found it. They had the Speaker in right away—rounded us all up for the prayin’ and the breakin’. Didn’t do ’em much good, though—only kinda proved their point about it bein’ sinful.”
“How?”
“‘Cause just about a week of days later, that same son as found it—he came down with the Green Sick. They carted him off to the forest then. I was one of the guards they set for the watchin’.”
“The watching?”
“Yeah. With the Green Sick they go plumb outta their heads—sometimes they run wild. Can’t let ’em get back where there’s people. They touch you and you get it too. So if they try to break back, you rope ’em—pull ’em in and tie ’em to some tree.”
“Leave sick people that way to die!” Naill stared at Lasja.
“There ain’t nothin’ as can be done for ’em—no cure at all. And the port medico says as how they could infect the whole lot of us. Sometimes their folks give ’em a sleep drink so they just die that way. But that ain’t right, accordin’ to the Speakers. They ought to be made known as how they’s sinned. And, lissen here, boy, the Green Sick ain’t nothin’ to want—nor to look at neither. You ain’t human no more, once it begins on you.” Lasja chopped at the tree. “They say as how it never touches no one ‘less he’s broken some sorta rule of theirs—been different somehow. That Morheim boy—he was lessoned once or twice by his father, right out before the whole garth—for doin’ wrong. So when he took sick, it was a judgment, like.”
“You believe that?” Naill asked.
Lasja shrugged. “Seen it work that way—or heard as how it does. Them what takes the Green Sick, they’s all had some trouble with the Rule. Once it was a girl as was kinda queer in the head—used to want to go into the forest, said as how she liked the trees. She got lessoned good for wanderin’ off. Just a little thing she was, not full growed yet. They found her burnin’ up in her bed place one night—took her right off to the woods. It weren’t pretty—she cried a lot. And her mother—she was Kosburg’s second woman—she took on somethin’ awful. Old man had her locked up for a couple weeks—till he was sure it was all over.”
Naill chopped savagely. “Why didn’t they just kill her? Would have been kinder!”
Lasja grunted. “They don’t figure so. Bein’ kind to her body wouldn’t save her spirit. She had to die hard in order to get rid of her sin. They think as if a man don’t die in the Clear—as they calls it—he’ll be in the Shadow always. If you sin big, you have to pay for it. Makes for a lot of hard dealin’ one way or another sometimes. You can’t change their way of thinkin’ and it’s best not to meddle. They hold that lessonin’s good for everyone, not just those that believe. Now—we’ve had enough jawin’! You, Tylos, make tracks with that bucket to the splittin’ ground. Tell the garthmaster as how we have a load ’bout ready. And don’t you linger none on the way, neither.”