The few hugl that had made their appearance didn't even constitute a swarm, much less a menace.
"It's all over," he said, throwing open the door of Jones' office with an assurance he had never known before. The Earthman was waiting inside, with Narla.
"What happened?" Narla asked anxiously.
"As expected. Perfectly as expected. Hardly a hugl to be found."
Narla sighed in relief; Jones' face creased in a broad smile.
"Congratulations," the Earthman said. "I guess that makes you a celebrity. The Man Who Saved the World."
"It was your doing, Jones. You showed me how."
Jones shook his head. "Ah, no! It was your doing. I'm merely here as a guide. My aim is eventually to bring you and your people to the Great Light, Kiv. But actually I will only help you to bring yourselves. When you guide a deest, it is still the deest, not you, who is doing the real work."
Kiv frowned. "I don't care much for your analogy.''
"Don't let him upset you," Narla said. "He's only teasing again." She drew close to him. "I'm tremendously proud of you."
Jones rubbed his beard with a forefinger. "In a way, Kiv, I am too. I can't help but think of how much you've learned since you came to Bel-rogas. You've really made progress."
"Do you think he should become a priest? And maybe someday become an Elder?" Narla asked.
"Why, I think they ought to put him on the Council right away," Jones said, smiling. "After all, if he's capable of walking right in there and telling the Council how to run Nidor—"
Jones paused and stared meaningfully at Kiv. Kiv met his glance with difficulty. There was something strange in the Earthman's blue eyes.
"Let's go outside," Kiv said. "The air in here's none too fresh."
At the suggestion, Narla and Jones arose. The three of them filed out of Jones' office.
Kiv considered what Jones had just said during the passage down the stairs. After all, if he's capable of walking right in and telling the Council how to run Nidor-
But they were Elders, and he was only Kiv peGanz Brajjyd, an insignificant student. And he had told them what to do. And they had accepted it.
The thought cut suddenly deep into him. Since the beginning of time, young men had sat quietly and listened to the counsels of the Elders. Now, barely more than two cycles after the Earthmen had descended from the sky, the age-old pattern had begun to break.
Was this the way the Earthmen were leading them toward the Light?
The enormity of what Kiv had done struck him, and then the even greater enormity that no one had questioned his action. No one. The Earthmen's stay was having its effect on Nidor, all right.
They reached the foot of the stairs. Absently, Kiv turned to enter the little room where his laboratory was. He opened the door and saw the rows and rows of cabinets, each with their specimens of hugl, and right in the center of the room was the larva tank.
"Where are you going, Kiv?" Jones called. "I thought you wanted some fresh air."
Jones began to walk through the front door, followed by Narla. Kiv hastened to catch up with them.
Turning as Kiv reached the door, Jones asked, "What's on your mind, Kiv peGanz?"
"Nothing, Jones. Nothing." But he was certain the Earthman knew exactly what was on his mind.
He stepped out of the building onto the front lawn of the Bel-rogas campus. He looked up, and the Great Light illumined the cloud-laden sky. Suddenly Kiv thought again of the quotation from the Fourteenth Section—and for some reason, his head began to hurt.
243rd CYCLE
I
Time passed; the Year of Danoy of the 243rd Cycle swung round, and the hugl died away. And the name of Kiv peGanz Brajjyd became an important one at the Bel-rogas School of Divine Law.
Tradition-minded, Kiv was plagued by the implications of the method he had used to bring about the end of the hugl plague. But Jones speedily convinced him that the means were justified by the ends; the peych crop had been saved, and the Scripture upheld.
Throughout Nidor, the Bel-rogas School was hailed for having produced such a one as Kiv. "An obvious choice for the Council of Elders some day," people said. It put a sort of aura over Kiv: his accomplishment had marked him out as a future Elder, when his time came.
Only the manufacturers of the Edris powder suffered, and that did not make itself felt until the following year. The hugl were all but exterminated—and those whose family livelihoods had depended, for thousands of years, on manufacturing Edris powder to stem the plagues of the little beasts, now had no niche to fill in the well-balanced Nidorian economy.
Kiv brooded over that, knowing that it was his fault this had come about, as the poverty-stricken Edris manufacturers flooded into Gelusar to lay their grievances before the Council of Elders.
"I did that," he said in bitter self-accusation to Narla. "I broke the pattern, and now look!"
Narla iKiv let her hands rest lightly on her husband's shoulders. "There had to be suffering, one way or another. Either the Edris manufacturers lost out, or all Nidor would have been stripped by the hugl. Which would you prefer, Kiv?"
He thought that over for a while. "I did right, then,'' he said at length. "But still—nothing like this had ever happened, before. The necessity for such a choice was—"
Shaking his head, he let the conversation die. Already he was learning to hide his deepest woe within himself—and, as time went on, he became more and more convinced that he had done the only thing that had been possible for him to do. It was small comfort, but it sufficed.
He pursued his studies through the following year, dwelling mainly on aspects of theological law. Marked as he was for future acclaim, he knew he had to prepare himself diligently and well for the responsibilities that lay ahead.
He and Narla graduated from Bel-rogas a year later, the Year Lokness of the 243rd Cycle: Kiv with honors, Narla merely with an honorary commendation. But that suited Narla. She had never been an outstanding student, and in any event no possible future lay ahead for her except that which she had already chosen for herself.
On the eleventh day after graduation, she presented Kiv with a daughter.
They named her Sindi geKiv Brajjyd.
To no one's surprise, Kiv was tapped for the priesthood and selected for service at the Great Temple. He and Narla settled of necessity in Gelusar, taking a small apartment almost in the shadow of the Temple.
He had grown up in the sprawling farmlands of Thyvash, far to the southeast, and he would have preferred that his daughter have the same sort of childhood. But Temple service demanded his constant presence in the Holy City, and so city life was imposed on him.
The years passed.
The newly-designated Grandfather Kiv took a post on the staff of Drel peNibro Brajjyd, one of the ranking priests—and, when the incumbent Elder Brajjyd, old B*or peDrogh, died, it was Grandfather Drel peNibro who succeeded to the Council post.
Kiv served as the new Elder Grandfather's second-in-command, and—the memory of his great achievement still bright—was generally regarded as the heir apparent to the Council seat, some day when he had achieved the requisite standing of age in his Clan.
So the years slipped by: Sindi grew out of childhood, becoming first a gawky young girl, then, much to Kiv's amused surprise, almost a woman. He was unhappy, though; city life had made something of Sindi that hurt and displeased him.
Seeds of rebellion seemed to sprout in her. She said and did things that in the old days would have resulted in her instant punishment—but no longer.