“I wish I knew,” Farrari said. “Who are you?”
The other chuckled. “You wouldn’t know if I told you. They crossed me off the books years ago. They think I’m dead. Maybe I am.” He chuckled again. “You figured it out, didn’t you? I’ve been hoping someone would be sharp enough to figure it out and have the sense not to blab about it, because I need help. I can’t do it alone. I’m too old.”
“Do what?”
The agent got to his feet and slyly prodded Farrari in the ribs. “Oh, you’re the sharp one. IPR people are too stupid. I was too stupid. I wouldn’t have figured it out if I hadn’t been killed, and by then I was too old. You’re CS, you weren’t brought up with your nose in a manual. You see things. I heard the blah about you when the kru died. I wondered then if you’d figure it out, and when I heard you’d disappeared I knew. We’ve got to work fast. I’m an old man and I haven’t much time left. Look. You’re going at it the wrong way. I’m old, I can’t do it myself, but I know how. Come to my place?”
“Who are you?” Farrari asked again.
“You’re right. I should have a name. Call me—call me Bran. This is Branoff IV. Bran’s a good name, isn’t it?” “Let me get this straight, Bran. Base doesn’t know you’re alive?” Bran chuckled. “If you stay out of sight long enough, base will think you’re dead, too. Things happen to agents, especially to of agents. We can’t wait much longer, though. I’m old, and I haven’t got the time. How’d you figure it out?”
“Figure what out?”
“Come to my place,” Bran pleaded. “Plenty of time to talk there. I can show you things.”
“All right,” Farrari said resignedly. “I’ll come to your place. I’ll never know if I was accomplishing anything here, and I’d like to be shown things.”
“Come on, then. We have a long way to go. I had trouble finding you.”
They moved off into the darkness. Farrari had become accustomed to traveling rapidly at night, but Bran tottered with small, uncertain steps and had to stop frequently to rest, and they made tedious progress. At dawn they were still far from their destination. Farrari wanted to retire to the pro tection of a zrilm hedge, but Bran dismissed the suggestion scornfully. “Skudkru,” he said. “That’s the magic word. Anybody tries to stop you, or interfere, or just get snoopy, tell him skudkru. Means `kru’s messenger’. Even a soldier wanting spear practice wouldn’t dare interfere with the kru’s messenger.”
“It’s a rase word,” Farrari objected. “Couldn’t an ol get in trouble using a rasc word?”
“No, because olz can’t say rasc words. And we won’t get into trouble because when a rasc meets anyone claiming to be a skudkru he doesn’t stop to analyze his linguistic capabilities. Interfering with a real skudkru is so unthinkable that he likewise couldn’t imagine the existence of a phony skudkru. It’s always worked for me. Of course it wouldn’t work except on the road, but there it’s perfectly safe.” He sighed. “I’m too old for this sort of thing. I miss my breakfast.”
He missed his lunch more. They stopped at an ol village for water, but Bran disdained the cold dregs of the previous day’s thin soup. When finally they reached the destination he sought a young quarm thicket—they seated themselves in the shade and Bran grumbled until he fell asleep, while Farrari anxiously rehearsed an unfamiliar word: skudkru.
As he did so, he studied Bran. Small even for an ol, of slight build, with a wizened little face that might have had a sly, rodentlike quality had it not been for the mass of thick, crisscrossing scar lines, he would have been an untypical o/ even without his flabby body. But the olz accepted him, and obviously he was able to communicate with them far better than Farrari could. He’d picked up ol gossip, and Farrari hadn’t known that there was any.
Bran awoke at dusk, and as soon as darkness fell Farrari helped him to drag a small platform from the thicket. Bran broke out a crude-looking, handmade electronic device and monitored base’s signals for a time to make certain that none of base’s platforms would be in their area that night, and then he donned a pair of infra-goggles and they flew off at treetop height.
“How did you steal this without base missing it?” Farrari demanded.
“Built it myself,” Bran said proudly. “Took the parts a few at a time. The stuff that’s left at the supply caches, all of it’s expendable and nobody keeps any record. An agent needs something, he takes it, and every now and then they check the inventory and replace what’s missing. So when I need something I take it. If I need a lot I visit all the caches and take a little from each.”
The possibility of this kind of revolt in the ranks of IPR had not occurred to Farrari, and he shook his head in amazement. “You mean you can fly this thing around without base detecting it?”
Bran chuckled and performed an invisible shrug. “Base doesn’t operate any detectors. Why should it? As far as it knows, the only things flying on Branoff IV are its own platforms, and it doesn’t need to detect them. It knows where they are. I fly low anyway, just in case.”
They flew on, with the cool night air whistling past them. Occasionally the platform raked a treetop. Twice Farrari saw the glow of an ol nightfire in the distance, but obviously Bran was avoiding the villages. They were flying up the hilngol; the ground began to rise steeply and the wind became colder.
Abruptly they began a steep ascent only to drop with disconcerting suddenness and land with a staggering thump. Farrari helped Bran push the platform through a dark opening, and then Bran led him along a stone floor and up a ramp, and there was a sound like a door sliding or scraping.
“Home,” Bran said, with a sigh of satisfaction. The door closed, and he touched on a light. “Now we can eat,” he said. “And sleep. And then we’ll talk.”
Farrari awoke with a jagged pattern of sunlight lying across his face. He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked about him. He was in a cave, and a crack admitted air and light and, at this particular moment, sunlight. His bed was a pile of straw covered with handwoven robes that would have been a prize exhibit’ in any Cultural Survey collection. Bran, in a cocoon-like bundle of similar robes, lay nearby, snoring gently.
Farrari got to his feet and padded to the opening. It looked onto a sheltered valley, small but peaceful and lovely. There were several tilled fields and a gently meandering stream. Beyond the fields was lush grass flecked with flowers; high on the surrounding slopes stood a magnificent growth of quarm trees. In the distance snowcapped mountains gleamed in the morning sun. In a loop of the stream stood the huts of a small o/ village; but there were no olz in the fields, and the village looked abandoned.
When finally he turned away he found Bran watching him curiously. “How do you like it?” Bran asked.
“It’s lovely,” Farrari said. “It’s too lovely. It doesn’t belong on this world. Nature made a mistake.” Bran smiled, his hideous face suffused with delight. “It’s mine. I found it when I was looking for a place to heal after they killed me. The only way to get here on the ground is through caves. From the air it looks as though there’s a canyon connecting with the outside, where the stream flows, but there isn’t. It goes underground.”