The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Hardy’s gaze was fastened on her pubic hair, which was extraor­dinarily long, thick, and ginger colored. Well, he’d get over that, and he was as close to it as he was ever going to get.

Firebrass went around the side of the grailstone and returned with a spear. Just below the steel head, attached to the shaft, was a large vertebral bone from a hornfish. He drove the spear straight into the ground beside her canoe.

“The bone means it’s my spear, the captain’s,” he said. “I stuck it in the ground by the canoe to tell everybody that it’s not to be borrowed without permission. There are a lot of things like that for you to learn. Meanwhile, Schwartz can show you your quarters and then give you a guided tour. Report to me at high noon under that irontree there.”

He indicated a tree about 90 meters to the west. Towering over 300 meters, if had a thick, gnarly grey bark, scores of great branches extending 90 meters outward, huge elephant’s-ear leaves with green and red stripes. Its roots surely drove down at least 120 meters, and its unburnable wood was so hard it would resist a steel saw.

“We call it The Chief. Meet me there.”

The bugles rang out again. The crowds organized themselves into a military formation under the directions of officers. Firebrass pulled himself onto the top of the grailstone. He stood there, watching while the roll call was made. The corporals reported to the sergeants and the sergeants to the lieutenants, and they to the adjutant. Then Hardy to Firebrass. A moment later, the mob was dismissed. However, they did not leave. Firebrass got off the mushroom-shaped stone, and the corporals took his place. These put the grails in the depressions on the surface of the stone.

Schwartz was beside her. He cleared his throat. “Gulbirra? I’ll take care of your grail.”

She took it from the canoe and handed it to him. This was a grey metal cylinder, 45.72 centimeters across, 76.20 centimeters high, weighing empty about 0.55 kilogram. It had a lid which, once shut, could be lifted only by the owner. There was a curved handle on the lid. Tied to it by a bamboo fiber rope was her I.D., a tiny baked-clay dirigible. It bore her initials on both sides.

Schwartz ordered a man to place her grail on the stone. The man did so quickly, glancing often at the eastern peaks. But he was safe by two minutes. At the end of that time, the sun ballooned over the top. A few seconds later, the mushroom-shape spouted blue flames over 9 meters high. The roar of its discharged electricity mingled with the thunder of every stone on both sides of The River for as far as could be seen. All these years had not inured Jill to the sight nor sound. Though expecting it, she jumped a little. The report rolled back from the reflector of the mountains, echoed again, and died out with a mutter.

Everybody had breakfast.

9

They were on a foothill. the tall esparto-like grass had been recently mown to about a centimeter and a half-length. “We have some machines that do that, though much cutting is done with sickles,” David Schwartz said. “The grass is made into ropes.”

“We didn’t have any machines where I come from,” Jill said. “We used flint sickles. But we made rope from it, of course.”

It was shady and cool here. The branches of an iron tree spread out to cover a small village, a scattering of square or round huts of bamboo. Many of them were thatched with the scarlet and green leaves of the iron tree. A rope ladder dangled from the lowest branch of the colossus, 33 meters up. Near it, a hut sat on a platform supported on two branches. There were other rope ladders, other platforms and huts here and there.

“Perhaps you will be assigned one of them after your proba­tion,” Schwartz said. “Meanwhile, here’s your home.”

Jill entered the indicated doorway. At least, she did not have to stoop in this. So many people were short and had therefore built low entrances.