He forced the tension to ease off. “So you just dropped in, managed to shake the search party, and went looking for a guide. Sounds a little thin, friend.”
Gar scowled. “No doubt. But it’s not quite that simple—I’ve been here for a month already.”
“Oh? Like what you saw?”
Gar’s mouth twisted; he turned his head and spat. “It makes me sick to see a bunch of rulers, ostensibly educated and cultured men, so decayed as to treat their people like toys, whose sole purpose for existence is to satisfy their lords’ drives and whims.” He turned back to Dirk, glaring. “Why do you take it? Isn’t there any manhood left in you? Why don’t you just rise up and throw them out?”
Dirk pursed his lips thoughtfully, surprised to realize he was suddenly thinking of Gar as a kid. But that’s what he was—a spoiled brat with a conscience, a rich man’s son with nothing to do and a need for a purpose, a reason for living. He couldn’t find one in his own life, so he was looking at someone else’s—probably rodding from planet to planet, hoping to find a cause he could believe in.
And, at a guess, he’d just found it. Which in turn meant …
“You could’ve ambushed a traveler weeks ago, if you wanted to con yourself a guide,” Dirk pointed out. “But you didn’t; you tried to put the touch on me—tonight—when there aren’t many travelers abroad. None, in fact—or at least, no one legal. Why me?”
Gar turned away, disgusted. “All right, all right! I needed someone from off-planet, and when I saw the search party riding out at night, I knew they weren’t just out after an escaped serf! Whole thing looked very familiar, in fact—almost exactly like the party that came hunting me when I touched down! Therefore: wherever they were going, there’d be someone coming from, and that someone’d be from off-planet. So I figured out which way you’d come walking, and I laid an ambush! Good enough?”
Dirk nodded slowly. It was fine—except that Gar left out the part about rebels. On an interdicted planet, an illegal visitor was either a spy or a rebel, possibly both. So Gar was trying to latch onto a contact with the rebel forces.
Which meant he might not be from off-planet at all—just a spy for the Lords.
Dirk shook his head. He wasn’t a spy—you could see it in his face. This was one planet where you could tell which side a man was on just by looking at him. Inbreeding will do that.
So Gar was trying to contact the rebels, with an eye toward joining up; but of course he didn’t want them to know that he knew.
Yes. A kid.
“Well, how about it?” Gar demanded. “Can you hack a tag-along? Or do I keep wandering on my own?”
Dirk was very tempted to refuse; if there was one thing he didn’t need at this point, it was an enthusiastic amateur. So he would’ve told Gar to go on his own, or go to hell, whichever he chose, if it weren’t for one nagging possibility:
The revolution might fail.
And if it did, the churls were going to need high-powered help from off-planet: influence—to push an investigation of the local government. And where there is money, there is influence.
The kid had enough money for a private spaceyacht…
Dirk shrugged, turning away. “It’s okay by me, as long as you try to stay out of the way. But I warn you; it won’t be a pleasant tour.”
He turned his back and swung off toward the ridge.
After a moment, he heard footsteps behind him.
CHAPTER 2
They came to the village just before sunrise. Dirk stopped, the life draining out of his face, looking about him with bleak, starved eyes.
Gar frowned down at him. “What’s the matter?”
“It always hits me like this,” Dirk muttered, “coming into one of these villages after I’ve been away a year. It’s almost déjá vu, it’s so much like the place I grew up. As though I’ve been here before and it’s home—but it’s not, it can’t ever be. I don’t belong here anymore…”
He caught himself, realized he’d been spilling his guts to a total stranger, and one he didn’t particularly trust. “Come on, let’s get moving,” he snarled. “We’ve got to get undercover fast.”
Gar frowned after him, then shrugged and strode fast to catch up. After putting on his clothes, he was dressed in the same fashion as Dirk. It was gentleman’s clothing—their only possible cover—for only gentlemen could travel from village to village at will. Only gentlemen, or Lords—but they all knew each other and would be quick to spot a ringer.
They ambled down the village street, Gar trying to keep from staring at the villagers—the broad, squat men with broad, round faces, brown eyes, snub noses, and ball chins; and the women, almost as broad, with ample bosoms and hips, their faces similar to the men’s but a little finer-boned. They were all dressed alike; the men in red or green jerkins and ocher hose, the women in blue or yellow homespun with red aprons. Occasionally a taller man walked by, with huge, muscular shoulders and arms, long-fingered hands, and a square face with a broad forehead and high cheekbones; but they were few.
The houses were like their owners—low, broad, and round, with thatched roofs and mud-and-wattle walls, painted in pinks, pale blues, mint-greens.
“They still look so much alike,” Gar muttered.
“Huh?” Dirk came out of a brown study, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘still’?”
“Well, I’ve been here a month. By now I should be seeing individual differences.”
Dirk smiled bleakly. “Not really.”
Gar turned to him, frowning. “Why? How long will it take?”
“Your whole life,” Dirt said sourly, “and even then you’d make mistakes. It’s not just a matter of their all looking alike to you simply because you’re from off-planet.”
Gar scowled. “What else could it be?”
“That they do all look alike,” Dirk said sweetly. “I told you about the inbreeding, didn’t I?”
Gar stopped and stood, glowering down. “No, as a matter of fact. You didn’t. Don’t you have any taboos against incest?”
“Yes, a very elaborate set. But they don’t help much if you’ve all got the same genes to begin with.”
“That’s impossible,” Gar said flatly.
Dirk shook his head. “Not if you have a small enough gene-pool.”
“That small a gene-pool couldn’t survive. Not just genetically—the original colony on this planet wouldn’t’ve had enough people to build a self-sustaining society.”
“Nevertheless, it happened.” Dirk turned to look around the village. “Look it up in the official records—that’s what we had to do, those of us who escaped off-planet. You see, we didn’t know our own history—the Lords were very careful about that.”
Gar cocked his head to the side. “All right, I’ll give you the straight line—what did the records say?”
“The original ship …”
“Ship?” Gar was restrained—only a little skepticism. “One ship, for a whole colony?”
“Only one,” Dirk confirmed. “You see, our lords and masters, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to take along any spare baggage, such as people who might not agree with them; so that one ship was limited to a very exclusive set of people who were sick and tired of not being able to have things their own way. About two thousand of them—at least, the record said six hundred families. Plus, of course; enough sperm and ova on ice to guard against too much inbreeding.”
“Of course,” Gar murmured. “And the churls? Two thousand is a full shipload—or was, a few centuries ago. Figure a hundred farmers to support each Lord—”
“Two hundred,” Dirk interrupted sweetly. “You forget such essentials as butlers, cooks, maids, hostlers, and barbers.”