A Handful of Darkness (13 page)

But the thought of insects reminded him of the shiny-winged blue-rumped fly, creeping over a rotting lizard carcass, and Sung-wu’s stomach did a flip-flip; he forced it back in place and strode on, towards the line of villages emerging ahead.

Farmers were working the barren fields on all sides. A thin layer of soil over slag; a few limp wheat stalks waved, thin and emaciated. The ground was terrible, the worst he had seen. He could feel the metal under his feet; it was almost to the surface. Bent men and women watered their sickly crops with tin cans, old metal containers picked from the ruins. An ox was pulling a crude cart.

In another field, women were weeding by hand; all moved slowly, stupidly, victims of hookworm, from the soil. They were all barefoot. The children hadn’t picked it up yet, but they soon would.

Sung-wu gazed up at the sky and gave thanks to Elron; here, suffering was unusually severe; trials of exceptional vividness lay on every hand. These men and women were being tempered in a hot crucible; their souls were probably purified to an astonishing degree. A baby lay in the shade, beside a half-dozing mother. Flies crawled over its eyes; its mother breathed heavily, hoarsely, her mouth open. An unhealthy flush discoloured her brown cheeks.

“Come here,” Sung-wu called sharply to the gang of black-faced children who followed along after him. “I’m going to talk to you.”

The children approached, eyes on the ground, and assembled in a silent circle around him. Sung-wu sat down, placed his brief-case beside him, and folded his legs expertly under him in the traditional posture outlined by Elron in his seventh hook of teachings.

“I will ask and you will answer,” Sung-wu stated. “You know the basic catechisms?” He peered sharply around. “Who knows the basic catechisms?”

One or two hands went up. Most of the children looked away unhappily.

“First!” snapped Sung-wu, “
Who are you?
You are a minute fragment of the cosmic plan.

“Second!
What are you?
A mere speck in a system so vast as to be beyond comprehension.

“Third!
What is the way of life?
To fulfil what is required by the cosmic forces.

“Fourth!
Where are you?
On one step of the cosmic ladder.

“Fifth!
Where have you been?
Through endless steps; each turn of the wheel advances or depresses you.

“Sixth!
What determines your direction at the next turn?
Your conduct in this manifestation.

“Seventh!
What is right conduct?
Submitting yourself to the eternal forces, the cosmic elements that make up the divine plan.

“Eighth!
What is the significance of suffering?
To purify the soul.

“Ninth!
What is the significance of death?
To release the person from this manifestation, so he may rise to a new rung of the ladder.

“Tenth—”

But at that moment Sung-wu broke off. Two quasi-human shapes were approaching him. Immense white-skinned figures striding across the baked fields, between the sickly rows of wheat.

Technos—coming to meet him; his flesh crawled. Caucs. Their. skins glittered pale and unhealthy, like nocturnal insects, dug from under rocks.

He rose to his feet, conquered his disgust, and prepared to greet them.

Sung-wu said, “Clearness!” He could smell them, a musky sheep smell, as they came to a halt in front of him. Two bucks, two immense sweating males, skin damp and sticky, with beards, and long disorderly hair. They wore sailcloth trousers and boots. With horror Sung-wu perceived a thick body-hair, on their chests, like woven mats—tufts in their armpits, on their arms, wrists, even the backs of their hands. Maybe Broken Feather was right; perhaps, in these great lumbering blond-haired beasts, the archaic, Neanderthal stock—the false men—still survived. He could almost see the ape, peering from behind their blue eyes.

“Hi,” the first Cauc said. After a moment he added reflectively, “My name’s Jamison.”

“Pete Ferris,” the other grunted. Neither of them observed the customary deferences; Sung-wu winced but managed not to show it. Was it deliberate, a veiled insult, or perhaps mere ignorance? This was hard to tell; in lower classes there was, as Chai said, an ugly undercurrent of resentment and envy, and hostility.

“I’m making a routine survey,” Sung-wu explained, “on birth and death rates in rural areas. I’ll be here a few days. Is there some place I can stay? Some public inn or hostel?”

The two Cauc bucks were silent. “Why?” one of them demanded bluntly.

Sung-wu blinked. “Why? Why what?”

“Why are you making a survey? If you want any information we’ll supply it.”

Sung-wu was incredulous. “Do you know to whom you’re talking? I’m a Bard! Why, you’re ten classes down; how dare you—” He choked with rage. In these rural areas the Technos had utterly forgotten their place. What was ailing the local Bards? Were they letting the system break apart?

He shuddered violently at the thought of what it would mean if Technos and Farmers and Businessmen were allowed to intermingle—even intermarry, and eat, and drink, in the same places.

The whole structure of society would collapse. If all were to ride the same carts, use the same outhouse; it passed belief. A sudden nightmare picture loomed up before Sung-wu of Technos living and mating with women of the Bard and Poet classes. He visioned a horizontally oriented society, all persons on the same level, with horror. It went against the very grain of the cosmos, against the divine plan; it was the Time of Madness all over again. He shuddered.

“Where is the Manager of this area?” he demanded. “Take me to him; I’ll deal directly with him.”

The two Caucs turned and headed back the way they had come, without a word. After a moment of fury, Sung-wu followed behind them.

They led him through withered fields and over barren, eroded hills on which nothing grew; the ruins increased. At the edge of the city, a line of meagre villages had been set up; he saw leaning, rickety wood huts, and mud streets. From the villages a thick stench rose, the smell of offal and death.

Dogs lay sleeping under the huts; children poked and played in the filth and rotting debris. A few old people sat on porches, vacant faced, eyes glazed and dull. Chickens pecked around, and he saw pigs and skinny cats—and the eternal rusting piles of metal, sometimes thirty feet high. Great towers of red slag were heaped up everywhere.

Beyond the villages were the ruins proper—endless miles of abandoned wreckage; skeletons of buildings; concrete walls; bathtubs and pipe; overturned wrecks that had been cars. All these were from the Time of Madness, the decade that had finally rung the curtain down on the sorriest interval in man’s history. The five centuries of madness and jangledness were now known as the Age of Heresy, when man had gone against the divine plan and taken his destiny in his own hands.

They came to a larger hut, a two-storey wood structure. The Caucs climbed a decaying flight of steps; boards creaked and gave ominously under their heavy boots. Sung-wu followed them nervously; they came out on a porch, a kind of open balcony.

On the balcony sat a man, an obese copper-skinned official in unbuttoned breeches, his shiny black hair pulled back and tied with a bone against his bulging red neck. His nose was large and prominent, his face flat and wide, with many chins. He was drinking lime juice from a tin cup and gazing down at the mud street below. As the two Caucs appeared he rose slightly, a prodigious effort.

“This man,” the Cauc named Jamison said, indicating Sung-wu, “wants to see you.”

Sung-wu pushed angrily forward. “I am a Bard, from the Central Chamber; do you people recognize this?” He tore open his robe and flashed the symbol of the Holy Arm, gold worked to form a swath of flaming red. “I insist you accord me proper treatment! I’m not here to be pushed around by any—”

He had said too much; Sung-wu forced his anger down and gripped his brief-case. The fat Indian was studying him calmly; the two Caucs had wandered to the far end of the balcony and were squatting down in the shade. They lit crude cigarettes and turned their backs.

“Do you permit this?” Sung-wu demanded, incredulous. “This—mingling?”

The Indian shrugged and sagged down even more on his chair. “Clearness be with you,” he murmured; “will you join me?” His calm expression remained unchanged; he seemed not to have noticed. “Some lime juice? Or perhaps coffee? Lime juice is good for these.” He tapped his mouth; his soft gums were lined with caked sores.

“Nothing for me,” Sung-wu muttered grumpily, as he took a seat opposite the Indian; “I’m here on an official survey.”

The Indian nodded faintly. “Oh?”

“Birth and death rates.” Sung-wu hesitated, then leaned towards the Indian. “I insist you send those two Caucs away; what I have to say to you is private.”

The Indian showed no change of expression; his broad face was utterly impassive. After a time he turned slightly. “Please go down to the street level,” he ordered. “As you will.”

The two Caucs got to their feet, grumbling, and pushed past the table, scowling and darting resentful glances at Sung-wu. One of them hawked and elaborately spat over the railing, an obvious insult.

“Insolence!” Sung-wu choked. “How can you allow it? Did you see them? By Elron, it’s beyond belief!”

The Indian shrugged indifferently—and belched. “All men are brothers on the wheel. Didn’t Elron Himself teach that, when He was on earth?” .

“Of course. But—”

“Are not even these men our brothers?”

“Naturally,” Sung-wu answered haughtily, “but they must know their place; they’re an insignificant class. In the rare event some object wants fixing, they are called; but in the last year I do not recall a single incident when it was deemed advisable to repair anything. The need of such a class diminishes yearly; eventually such a class and the elements composing it—”

“You perhaps advocate sterilization?” the Indian inquired, heavy lidded and sly.

“I advocate
something
. The lower classes reproduce like rabbits; spawning all the time—much faster than we Bards. I always see some swollen-up Cauc woman, but hardly a single Bard is born, these days.”

“That’s about all that’s left them,” the Indian murmured mildly. He sipped a little lime juice. “You should try to be more tolerant.”

“Tolerant? I have nothing against them, as long as they—”

“It is said,” the Indian continued softly, “that Elron Hu, Himself, was a Cauc.”

Sung-wu spluttered indignantly and started to rejoin, but the hot words stuck fast in his mouth; down the mud street something was coming.

Sung-wu demanded, “What is it?” He leaped up excitedly and hurried to the railing.

A slow procession was advancing with solemn step. As if at a signal, men and women poured from their rickety huts and excitedly lined the street to watch. Sung-wu was transfixed, as the procession neared; his senses reeled. More and more men and women were collecting each moment; there seemed to be hundreds of them. They were a dense, murmuring mob, packed tight, swaying back and forth, faces avid. An hysterical moan passed through them, a great wind that stirred them like leaves of a tree. They were a single collective whole, a vast primitive organism, held ecstatic and hypnotized by the approaching column.

The marchers wore a strange costume: white shirts, with the sleeves rolled up; dark grey trousers of an incredibly archaic design, and black shoes. All were dressed exactly alike. They formed a dazzling double line of white shirts, grey trousers, marching calmly and solemnly, faces up, nostrils flared, jaws stern. A glazed fanaticism stamped each man and woman, such a ruthless expression that Sung-wu shrank back in terror. On and on they came, figures of grim stone in their primordial white shirts and grey trousers, a frightening breath from the past. Their heels struck the ground in a dull, harsh beat that reverberated among the rickety huts. The dogs woke; the children began to wail. The chickens flew squawking.

“Elron!” Sung-wu cried. “What’s happening?”

The marchers carried strange symbolic implements, ritualistic images with esoteric meaning that of necessity escaped Sung-wu.

There were tubes and poles, and shiny webs of what looked like metal.
Metal!
But it was not rusty; it was shiny and bright. He was stunned; they looked—new.

The procession passed directly below. After the marchers came a huge rumbling cart. On it was mounted an obvious fertility symbol, a corkscrew-bore as long as a tree; it jutted from a square cube of gleaming steel; as the cart moved forward the bore lifted and fell.

After the cart came more marchers, also grim faced, eyes glassy, loaded down with pipes and tubes and armfuls of glittering equipment. They passed on, and then the street was filled by surging throngs of awed men and women, who followed after them, utterly dazed. And then came children and barking dogs.

The last marcher carried a pennant that fluttered above her as she strode along, a tall pole, hugged tight to her chest. At the top, the bright pennant fluttered boldly. Sung-wu made its marking out, and for a moment consciousness left him. There it was, directly below; it had passed under his very nose, out in the open for all to see—unconcealed. The pennant had a great T emblazoned on it.

“They—” he began, but the obese Indian cut him off.

“The Tinkerists,” he rumbled, and sipped his lime juice.

Sung-wu grabbed up his brief-case and scrambled towards the stairs. At the bottom, the two hulking Caucs were already moving into motion. The Indian signalled quickly to them. “Here!” They started grimly up, little blue eyes mean, red-rimmed and cold as stone; under their pelts their bulging muscles rippled.

Sung-wu fumbled in his cloak. His shiver-gun came out; he squeezed the release and directed it towards the two Caucs. But nothing happened; the gun had stopped functioning. He shook it wildly, flakes of rust and dried insulation fluttered from it. It was useless, worn out; he tossed it away and then, with the resolve of desperation, jumped through the railing.

He, and a torrent of rotten wood, cascaded to the street. He hit, rolled, struck his head against the corner of a hut, and shakily pulled himself to his feet.