Actually, he was fairly tall, by the standards of his home planet—but his companion was seven feet from toe to crown, and wide-shouldered in proportion.
The picture changed, and Gar said, “This one does look fairly standard, Dirk—like a picture from old Earth. They’ve built up plant life and oxygen, enriched the soil with fertilizers and carbon, and seeded it with Terran lifeforms.”
Dirk nodded. “It’s been settled for a few hundred years, then.” “I’d guess a thousand, if Herkimer is right about there being walled cities in the middle of the forest. People don’t build that way.
“I know—they chop down the trees and plant crops. Besides, he said his sonar probe showed that the biggest of them was built over the buried hull of the colony ship, and they wouldn’t have tried to land it on top of all those trees. So you’re pretty sure those cities are abandoned?”
“Herkimer is,” Gar answered, “and a ship’s computer that size is almost never wrong. He’ll plead ignorance sometimes, but when he doesn’t, he has so much evidence that it’s no use to dispute.”
“Of course, there could be a fact he doesn’t know about,” Dirk said sourly.
“Yes, and he doesn’t know anything about the current government on this planet.” Gar frowned as the picture changed to an overhead view of a town. “There isn’t that much we can tell, sitting up here inside a spaceship.”
“What do you know about the people, Herkimer?” Dirk asked.
The computer’s mellow voice answered from all about them. “Nothing, Dirk, except that their parents were Earthmen who left to escape crowding, and to gain fresh air and sunshine.”
“That’s very strange.” Gar frowned. “There’s usually something in the database.”
“Well, he’s got the best one around, when it comes to lost colony planets,” Dirk agreed. “Absolutely nothing about what happened after Earth withdrew all support from the colonies, huh?”
“You know we don’t even have an idea whether or not the people survived,” Gar reminded him.
“Well, we just found out.” Dirk gestured at the screen, where they seemed to be descending as the camera expanded the picture. They found themselves looking down on people walking fairly quickly along the streets, wearing dark clothing. The women wore bodices and skirts and bonnets; the men wore knee pants, tunics, or short robes, and some wore conical hats with flat tops and wide brims. “These pictures are live, right?”
“Yes, Dirk,” the computer answered. “Of course, I am recording them, and will store them for you.”
Dirk frowned. “Odd to see the physical layout so similar on every continent, especially when none of them are very big.”
“True,” Gar agreed, frowning thoughtfully. “Every single one shows a lot of small towns in expanding rings around a few big cities with a network of roads and canals tying them together. No huge forests with occasional villages in clearings, no vast grasslands with tiny tribes following great herds, no wide-open spaces broken into patchwork fields around Neolithic villages…”
“And no medieval castles on hilltops overlooking collections of villages ringed by more patchwork fields,” Dirk finished for him. “Not what you’d expect of a colony that crashed when it couldn’t get spare parts, or trade with Terra for new machines.”
“Still, it’s scarcely modern,” Gar pointed out. “There’s no sign of automobiles or electricity, not even steam engines and railroads.”
“So it crashed, but not very hard,” Dirk inferred. “At a guess, the political system kept some kind of infrastructure going:”
“If that’s so, then there may not be any need for us.” Gar sounded almost gloomy. “Not if their government fits their needs.”
“Don’t rush to judgment, there.” Dirk held up a cautioning palm. “Just because it kept them alive, doesn’t mean it made them happy. Besides, after the crisis was over, whatever command structure saved them, might no longer be needed.”
“True,” Gar agreed, his eyes coming alive again, “and the look of the land does seem to indicate a strong-arm government of some sort. The layout being so much the same everywhere indicates a common social and political structure.”
“Probably,” Dirk cautioned his friend.
“But what kind?” Gar asked. “I’ve never seen a lost colony that looked so organized from space!”
“At least those people on the screen look well-fed and healthy,” Dirk said.
“Not very many of them look happy, though,” Gar said, “and that is enough to arouse my suspicions.”
“Mine, too. Definitely we want a closer look.”
“I’m also suspicious because there’s no sign of king or noblemen, even though the culture seems to have regressed to late medieval.”
“Or early modern—take your pick.” Dirk shrugged. “But what strikes me as strange is that there’s no sign of clergy or churches.”
“Most unusual, for a culture in this stage. Yes, I’d say we have reason to investigate.” Gar rose from his chair and strode off toward the sally bay. “Down we go, Herkimer! Down to the nightside!”
Orgoru trudged homeward, his hoe over his shoulder, his face wooden as they came into the village and Clyde whooped to everyone who could hear, “Three! Orgoru only cut down three stalks of maize in his hoeing today!”
“Only three?” Althea looked up from snapping beans by her mother’s door. “Better and better, Orgoru! Maybe we’ll actually have corn to grind this fall!”
Orgoru took the gibe with a straight face, but he could feel his treacherous skin growing hot.
“Hear how they mock you, boy!” his father growled beside him. “Must you shame me every day of your life?”
The angry retort leaped hot to Orgoru’s lips, but he held it within; he knew from bitter experience that talking back would only win him blows and kicks—and, full-grown or not, with the vigor of youth on his side or not, he knew that his father was stronger than he was, quicker than he was, in all ways a better fighter than he was.
“Can’t even manage a hoe!” his father grumbled. “Thank heaven we never trusted you with a plow or a scythe!”
He’d certainly never taken the trouble to teach the use of them to his son—but Orgoru shrugged off the older man’s complaints, telling himself once again that it was no wonder he was so useless with peasant’s tools.
He had known he was clumsy since he was five, struggling so hard to please his mother in drawing water for her, sweeping, gathering kindling—but always she scolded him for spilling some of the water, for gathering too many rotten sticks, for missing a spot in his sweeping. His earliest memories, and his latest ones, were all of such scoldings, such blaming:
Little Orgoru tripped, stumbled into the table, and his mother’s only vase crashed to the floor. “What was that?” she cried, and came running. Orgoru flinched away from her, trying to make himself as small as possible; but it did no good; she screamed, “My vase! You clumsy, stupid child!” and began beating him, beating and beating and beating…
Papa’s fist caught him on the side of the head, making him sit down hard. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the man shout, “You’ve left half the weeds in that row still standing!”
Orgoru whined, trembling. “I didn’t know they were weeds, Papa.”
“Stupid boy! Anything that’s not corn is a weed!” Papa’s big hand came around to slap his head again. “Do them again now, and chop down the weeds, but leave the corn!”
Orgoru had tried, had really tried his best, and he had chopped down all the weeds—but a quarter of the corn, too.