“If they did, we wouldn’t need to be there,” Gar returned. He gazed at the countryside about him. “It looks peaceful enough, and the people certainly have their physical needs fulfilled.”
“Yeah, but once they’re well-fed and well-housed, they have time to pay attention to other needs,” Dirk sighed. “We’re a very ungrateful species as a whole, Gar.”
“Yes, we keep wanting unreasonable things like happiness and love and self-fulfillment,” Gar said with a wry smile.
“No government can guarantee those.”
“No, but the wrong kind of government can certainly block them.” Gar took a firmer grip on the pike he carried as a staff. “Let’s see which kind we’re dealing with here, shall we?” He stepped down off the ramp. Dirk followed suit, and the metal walkway slid quietly back into the huge gleaming hull.
Gar pulled a locket from inside his jacket and said into it, “Lift off, Herkimer. Wait for us in orbit.”
“Yes, Gar,” the locket replied, and the huge golden disk rose slowly, then shot up into the night until it was lost among the stars—but the locket said,-“I will keep you under surveillance whenever I can.”
“Yes. Please do,” Gar said. “After all, you never can tell when I might lose my communicator.”
“Surely, Magnus. Good luck.”
“Thank you, Herkimer. Enjoy the rest.” Gar tucked the locket away, ignoring the difference between his birth-name and his professional name, and turned toward the forest.
“Lose your communicator?” Dirk scoffed. “What difference would that make? You were born with one!”
“Yes, but it’s so demanding, sending thoughts on UHF frequencies,” Gar said mildly. “Do you think we can find a road, Dirk?”
“There’s a pathway over there that might lead to one.” Dirk pointed. “You don’t suppose we could land during the day sometime, do you?”
“Of course, if you enjoy attracting a great deal of attention.”
“Uh … no, I think not.” Dirk gave a somewhat theatrical sigh and asked, “Why do we do this, Gar? Why do we hunt down planets where the people are oppressed, just so we can go in and free them? What business is it of ours, anyway?”
“I have the perfect reason,” Gar said, somewhat smugly. “After all, I’m an aristocrat, and our occupational disease is ennui. I’m fighting off boredom. What’s your excuse?”
“Me?” Dirk looked up. “I’m an exile. You know that—you landed on my planet and linked up with me so you could start the revolution there!”
“Yes, but you’re a self-exile,” Gar corrected.
“Speak for yourself,” Dirk countered, “and I think you do. Me, I was born a serf, you know that, and when the other escaped serfs helped me get away, they recruited me into their high-tech, space-cargo company, to spend my life the way they did—working from off-planet to free my fellow serfs. But once I gained some education and became part of the modern world, I lost touch with the people I’d been born among—and lost my home.” He looked up with haunted eyes. “I have to find a new home now—and find a woman who’s enough like me to fall in love with me, which isn’t going to be easy—a lowborn lady of culture and education.”
Gar nodded, eyes gentle with sympathy. “Which is more important, Dirk? The woman, or the home?”
“I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end. How about you?”
“I?” Gar shrugged and turned away, seeming suddenly very restless, though he took only a few steps. “I have a home, at least, but I have no purpose there—no woman for me, I found that out the hard way. Besides, I’d always live in my father’s shadow.”
“But you don’t really think you’ll find another home,” Dirk said softly.
“I don’t.” Gar turned back, meeting Dirk’s gaze. “I don’t think I’ll find another home, and I don’t think I’ll find a woman who can be gentle enough to trust but strong enough not to be afraid of me. But a man has to have some purpose in life, Dirk, and if I can’t find love and can’t rear children of my own, I can at least spend my days trying to free slaves and make it possible for them to find their true mates and be happy.”
“As good a reason for staying alive as any,” Dirk said, “and better than a lot I’ve heard.” He grinned. “So we’re just like boys hanging out on a street corner in a modern city, aren’t we? Trying to find some way to pass the time while we wait for the girls to come by.”
“I suppose.” Gar smiled in spite of himself, Dirk’s optimism was catching. “And as long as we’re helping other people, we aren’t wasting our time.”
“They aren’t going to thank us, you know.”
“Yes, we found that out the hard way, didn’t we? But gratitude doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Why, no,” Dirk said. “I suppose all we really want is to feel we’ve put the time to good use.”
Miles came panting up from the stream’s ford, careful to walk on the gravel of the road that led down to it. Dogs might pick up his trail, but no one would see footprints—and the hounds would have a long time casting about for his scent, since he had waded and swum for almost a mile.
Now, though, every muscle screamed with fatigue, and his feet felt like lumps of lead, so hard did he have to strain to lift them. His head ached, and spells of dizziness took him now and again. He had jogged all night and traveled all day, alternating between wading, swimming, and walking the gravel of the riverbank. But there was no sound of pursuit—either no one in his village had noticed his absence, everyone thinking he was at some other chore, or the foresters were being uncommonly merciful, pretending to take even longer about finding his trail than was necessary. He had heard rumors that they would do that, if they thought the fugitive’s cause right and just—and Salina’s cousin was a forester. Still, it was only a matter of time before the thrill of the chase caught them up and, sympathetic or not, they would be hunting him in earnest. They probably were already.
But he was so bone-tired and weary that he felt as though he couldn’t take another step. The thought penetrated the murk in his brain enough to make him realize that he would have to sleep soon, or he wouldn’t be able to run anymore—he would fall down where he stood, and lie unconscious till the dogs found him.
So, when he saw the haystack standing high in the field, he felt a surge of relief that washed him up onto its prickly sides and left him beached, to burrow his way in. With the last strands of consciousness leaving him, he pulled a few wisps of hay down to cover the hole he had made, then collapsed into sweet and total oblivion.
Gar and Dirk strolled down a broad road, lined with thick old trees that shaded the sides well. The traffic was light, but they were scarcely alone—there were two others going their way: a hundred feet behind, a woman driving a cart with a man walking beside it, and a hundred feet ahead, a lone man with a pack on his back and a staff in his hand. Both men wore trousers, scuffed boots, and smocks belted at the waist. The woman wore a long, dark blue skirt and a light blue blouse under a black shawl.
“Working men—farmers, at a guess,” Dirk said. The others were so far apart that there was no chance of being overheard. “I’d place the one ahead as being a tradesman of some sort,” Gar mused. “No clay on his boots.”
“Sharp eyes,” Dirk said. Then, a little more loudly as another traveler passed them, “No, the storm clouds are too far ahead—it won’t rain before sunset.”
“Oh, I think it might,” Gar said, equally loudly. “Stiff breeze in our faces. It’ll bring the thunderheads sooner.”
The carter looked up, startled, and frowned at them as he went by before he had to turn back to tend to his team of oxen. “Not too hard saying what he is,” Gar muttered. “Fullscale wagon crowded with barrels—he’s a delivery boy for a vineyard.”