At dawn he crept to his hiding place for a badly needed rest, and then he descended to the village. A few olz were grouped about the fires, others were asleep, and if any thought it worth remarking on that the Dead had at last broken their long silence, they spoke out of Farrari’s hearing. For three more nights he played the role of the Dead; for another three days he prowled the village straining to overhear some reference to it. He heard nothing.
“Very well,” he told himself grimly. “When they arrive at the cave tomorrow night they’ll find a rasc corpse ready for burial and the Dead howling for it, and let’s see if they can ignore that.”
At dusk he set out for the durrl’s headquarters. He’d had a distant view of it from the mountain side—a large dwelling, several smaller ones for assistants and servants, and a ring of stone outbuildings of various sizes encircling them. In the darkness he glided wraithlike among the buildings and came, finally, to one of the smaller dwellings. Looking through a window slit, he saw a touching domestic scene: father and mother at play with two charming children. Shaken, Farrari crept away slowly and fumbled his way back to the zrilm-lined lane.
“Killing a soldier who—given half a chance—will kill me first is one thing,” he muttered. “But killing in the dark just to provide a corpse is murder. And even if I did provide the corpse, what would the olz do with it?”
They would worship it, no matter how loudly the Dead howled. He had been that route before, with Bran. Perhaps the olz wanted to die, perhaps their religion was centered on the worship of death, but the place to study its effects was not among the caretakers, the most extraordinary of all olz. He should do his experimenting at the normal villages. He also should get out of the hilngol and see how the olz lived and behaved elsewhere.
And he could start at once. He had no reason for returning to the caretakers’ village.
A gril brayed. Farrari straightened up thoughtfully. “Riding,” he told himself, “has several obvious advantages over walking, especially when one wants to cover ground quickly. The question is whether a gril sees well enough at night to avoid zrilm hedges, because the results of a highspeed, encounter could range from unpleasant to fatal. There is also the question of what might happen to an ol caught riding a gril in the daytime, and that’s likely to be much more fatal.”
He balanced his urge to be underway against the much better time he could make riding and decided to investigate the problems encountered in gril thievery. He sought the shelter of a zrilm hedge and went to sleep, and shortly before dawn he took up a position behind a gap in the foliage to see what he could learn.
Two of the durrl’s assistants appeared, dim figures in the wasting pre-dawn darkness, and a short time later they were off with narmpfz and a wagon load of the rickety wood stiles. At full dawn the durrl and another assistant rode away on grilz. The first assistants returned, unharnessed the narmpfz, and led them through a narrow gate in the zrilm at the opposite side of the clearing. They reappeared mounted on grilz The chimneys of the various dwellings began to send forth thick outpourings of oily quarm smoke. At midmorning the durrl and all of the assistants returned for a leisurely first meal, their stiles in place, their olz docilely at work, their narmpf rashers crisply toasted, and all right with the world.
Farrari’s thoughts were with the olz left in the fields: the rising sun in a clear sky that foretold a day of relentless heat; the crude, short-handled, stone-tipped tools; the length of a row of tubers as measured with bent knees and back.
He studied the complex of buildings with interest. The largest outbuilding would be a barn for grilz and narmpfz, though the animals obviously remained in their zrilm-enclosed pasture in summer. The other outbuildings would be used for various kinds of storage. He thought it odd that he had never seen a teloid of such a scene. Undoubtedly base had some—IPR was much too thorough to overlook anything this prominent—but none of the specialists had been interested enough to point them out to Farrari. That was another oddity, because the durrl and his establishment were unique. He and his assistants were the only bilingual class in Scorvif.
A sudden awareness of hunger and thirst reminded Farrari that he had not regained the fine edge of his ol conditioning. The durrl’s well was enticingly in sight and hopelessly out of reach. He shrugged off his discomfort and continued to watch.
After the men left again, the women began to spread laundry on drying racks, and Farrari reflected that at some stage in its development every civilization discovered cleanliness. Whether its obeisance was strict or casual, frequent or infrequent, the rites had to be performed by someone. In a majority of civilizations, the principal task of the female was keeping the male clean.
Through much of the morning the children played a quiet game, gravely sitting together in twos and interchanging partners in some complicated pattern, but the changes were performed at a sedate walk, and the talk was too subdued to reach him. He heard no laughter. Finally they took that game or another out of sight behind the buildings.
This was indeed the high holy day of the immaculate god, and as soon as the clothing dried it was taken down and replaced. The uninterrupted outpouring of smoke proclaimed the continuous heating of water. Another column of smoke occupied his attention for a short time, but he soon identified the small building as a smokehouse.
He grew bored, his discomfort increased, and long before dusk he was cursing himself for his stupidity. So distressed was he that when the women racked their final offering of wet clothing in the fading light he at first paid no attention. Then he perceived, dimly, a long row of the cloaks worn by the durrl’s assistants.
“It wouldn’t be healthy for an ol to be caught riding a gril,” he mused, “but why do I have to be an ol?” The hood that protected the wearer from the sun might—almost—hide his low ol forehead.
The day’s work ended, and the two assistants with the creaking wagon load of stiles were the last to appear. As the sound of their talk faded toward the dwellings Farrari crept out and followed them. He drank deeply at the well, sniffed his way into the smokehouse and ate with relish several long shreds of smoked meat, returned to the well, and then cautiously approached the laundry racks.
He found a cloak without difficulty, but he had to search for some time to locate a lower garment, and he quickly abandoned the notion of identifying undergarments in the dark. He folded up one of the lengths of cloth that constituted a woman’s robe. Back at the smokehouse he ripped a piece from it and was using it to make up a package of meat when he thought about boots. Whoever heard of a barefoot durrl’s assistant on a grit? Or anywhere else?
Common sense told him to forget it. He was rested, he had meat to eat, and he knew how to travel safely as an ol. He knew nothing at all about traveling as a durrl’s assistant, he had no plans, he still was uncertain as to where he was going—but he could not resist the alluring opportunity to get there quickly. He dressed himself in the stolen clothing and cautiously circled one of the smaller dwellings.