"Simply that it succeeded better than we expected. Actually, we'd pictured you as the hero. We figured you'd get killed, of course, but not before you'd done your work. As it is, you'll live to a ripe old age, pulling the strings behind the scenes. And it won't be necessary for us to train your successor."
"I feel as though you're pulling my strings," Norvis said.
"In a way, perhaps—but no more than we were manipulating the rest of Nidor. You happened to be an important man, that's all.
"In your grandfather Kiv's time, he was important. He was studying the hugl, so we bred a new kind of hugl and started the Great Plague— which he stopped, and, in doing so, made the first big crack in your static culture. Your mother was a Brajjyd, and she married a Brajjyd —-another crack in a culture that had forbidden in-clan marriage.
"And you? You found the growth hormone—all by yourself. We knew what would happen, so we pulled you out of a nasty jam and at the same time gave you a good motive for hating us."
"And driving you off the planet," Norvis said.
"Which you did admirably. We haven't done a thing since you appeared—except toss our best students out on their ears and make them hate the School, just as we did you. You've got a lot of smart lads there, Norvis. Make use of them."
Norvis nodded, grinning. "I think I'll build another school—with lots of nice, romantic parks."
Smith laughed. "Good! But remember—we haven't controlled you for years—not since we tossed you out. We actually have never really controlled you. Even when you were in School, I let you go ahead on your own. Your discovery of the hormone was, as I said, completely your own.
"No—of all people on Nidor, you alone have been completely free to do and think and act as you liked— to do the things that you thought were right for Nidor. We watched, yes—but we have neither helped nor hindered. We simply kept silent and made our preparations to leave Nidor.
"Nidor today is your product, and its future is up to you. For we are leaving—completely."
Norvis chuckled softly. "Funny. I've dedicated fifteen years of my life to driving you Earthmen away, and now that I've done it, I don't want you to go." He looked up into the Earthman's eyes. "I see what you mean. A race needs friends. I like you, Smith. And my children's children will like yours."
"I hope so," Smith said. "Now. we must go—and you and I will never see each other again. It's all yours, the whole mess. You've got a broken culture to put together again. You've got at least two heretical religions springing up—the New Lawyer in Lebron, and the group in Sugon. You'll have political factions; you'll have a complete breakup of the Clan system soon. You'll have more riots, more battles, more bloodshed. But keep moving forward. In the end, you'll have something better than the dead Way of your Ancestors."
"Aren't you ever coming back?"
"Not in your lifetime—or mine. Oh, we'll peek in once in a while to check your progress, but we won't touch. This new civilization has to be a Nidorian one—not just a copy of our own. Eventually, you'll build ships like this, and we can meet on even terms—as friends."
"But Nidorians will hate Earthmen for a long time."
"Don't worry about that. We don't really call ourselves by the Nidorian word 'Earthmen'—our own term means the same, but it sounds completely different. And these beards were grown for a purpose. Nidorians will remember the beards long after they've forgotten everything else. And we don't normally wear beards. No, your people won't know us when they first meet us, and when we finally tell them we'll both have a big laugh on the joke we pulled on their ancestors. We—"
Harrison stood up and glanced at a little machine on his wrist. "Five minutes to rendezvous with the mother ship, Smith. You about through?"
"I think so. Any more questions, Norvis?"
"I don't think so," he said firmly. "I think I understand. I'm ready to go back."
"Good. The rest is up to you. I'm going to send you back down alone —think you can take it?"
Norvis nodded. "I've seen so much now that a little drop of a few miles won't hurt me."
"Fine," Smith said. A humorous twinkle came into his eyes. "By the way, don't think you're going to get away with the force-field generator. When you get down, take it off and throw it away. We're going to destroy it, and you don't want to be anywhere near it when we do."
Norvis grinned. "I won't be."
He wasn't. When his feet touched the ground only a few feet from where he had tethered his deest, he felt the force-field die. Quickly, he unstrapped the generator from his waist and hurled it away into the rocks.
Then he mounted the animal and rode westward, not even looking backward when a silent burst of light illuminated the landscape around him. The Earthmen were gone.
He rode slowly, his mind still dazed. He had gone to the Mountains of the Morning to find out the secret of the Earthmen—and he had found. The magnitude of the Earthmen's plan dazzled him. He rode on, revolving the concept in his mind.
Nidor was a mess, as Smith had said. But it could soon be straightened out; it—
And then, quite suddenly, as though the Great Light Himself had given full illumination to his mind, Norvis peRahn Brajjyd realized the enormity of the terrible thing he had done.
He had done.
He.
The Earthmen hadn't ruined Nidor—no, not at all. Everything they had done had healed itself. The hugl plague had done nothing really drastic to Nidor; in a hundred or two hundred years, it would have been forgotten. The discovery of the growth hormone had done nothing in the long run; it, too, would have vanished away in the mists of the monotonous history of Nidor.
Who had started the Merchants' Party, and thus conceived for the people of Nidor the idea that there could be more than one group contending for supremacy? Who?
Norvis peRahn Brajjyd.
Who had begun, secretly, the little splinter groups of religion that now threatened the whole Nidorian culture?
Who?
Norvis peRahn Brajjyd.
Who had engineered the rebellion against the Earthmen? Who had actually caused the burning of the School? Who had started the agitation of the crazed masses who had burned and destroyed the Great Temple? Who had instituted the idea that Nidorians should be led by a single popular strong man instead of a senile Council of Elders?
Who had ruined, beyond any hope of redemption, the culture, the mores, the ideals of Nidor?
Who?
Norvis peRahn Brajjyd!
There was bitterness in his mouth and in his mind as he realized the full truth of what the Earthman had told him.
The process was irreversible; Nidor could never go back to the Way of the Ancestors. That Way implied a certain innocence—an ignorance of other ways. But Norvis had introduced too many new ideas. A culture which had once been static had become dynamic simply because it had been overburdened with new ideas and concepts.
It wasn't catastrophes that had ruined Nidor—not even the Great Cataclysm had done that. It had been ideas—devastatingly new ideas—that had done the terrible, irreparable damage to a culture which had sustained itself intact for thousands and thousands of years.
For a decade and a half, Norvis had hated the Earthmen for what they had done. Then, when Smith had explained, he had thought that they were doing it—had done it— for the good of Nidor, and he had felt relief.
But now he knew that the Earthmen had done nothing directly. They had simply bred—yes, bred!—a Nidorian who would do thru work for them. And he had. As they had known he would.