He sat on his gril looking after them long after their torches had disappeared. He had spoken a single word, “Come!” And the olz followed him without question. The entire vi1lage followed him.
Such was the stuff that revolutions were made on.
XVII
The valley widened; the mountains diminished to an irregular, blue smudge on the east and west horizons. On the day that they completely disappeared the road divide one branch curving away to the west and above the intersection loomed ponderous stone building.
Farrari had his gril moving at loping run, so he flitted past, slowly brought the gril to a walk, and nudged its neck to turn it toward lane. A short time later he was studying the building from the shelter of zrilm hedge.
He could not make out what it was—only that it was huge and very ancient, and that the long ramps leading to its various levels stretched out like arms poised to entrap the unwary. He wondered if it were another ol monument.
There seemed to be no one about, but a trickle of smoke came from the large dwelling that stood amid the usual complex of smaller buildings a short distance away. Cautiously Farrari moved along the hedge, and when he passed the corner of the building he came upon an outside storage area filled with empty grain crocks.
It was a food-storage depot, and Farrari had never seen one. When Strunk selected teloid cubes for the Cultural Survey trainee he obviously did not consider food storage depots to be art, and this one wasn’t. It moved Farrari to think about engineering and military science, rather than architecture. This massive pile of stone could easily have served as a fort, and perhaps it once did.
He continued to puzzle at the lack of activity until he remembered that a granary was not run like a mill, that had to be operated. This time of year no one would be bringing grain for storage, and with the first tuber crop already harvested there would be little need for withdrawals—except for the one Farrari proposed to make as soon as darkness came.
Until sunset he explored the surrounding country, and then he returned to the granary, rolled a sealed crock down the ramp and across rough ground to the concealment of a zrilm hedge. As long as he remained in the neighborhood, he would be relieved of the necessity of pilfering grain from the durrlz.
Instead he stole grilz. He found a triangle of rocky land almost enclosed by the zrilm hedges of surrounding fields, and he cut zrilm branches to plug the opening, changing them frequently so they would look like a continuation of the hedge. There he kept his grilz—the one he had been riding and three others he stole from widely-separated durrlz. He took them out each night to feed and water them, rode them in turn, and continued to explore, and with a bit of charcoal he began to sketch a map on the roll of cloth he had brought with him.
The lanes produced a fantastic complex of crisscrossing lines, and ol villages blossomed on them with a regularity that left him breathless. He began to speculate as to the total ol population of Scorvif, and then, incredulously, he attempted comparisons with the rase population, whose numbers he did not know either. Was it remotely possible that the olz outnumbered their conquerors several hundred to one?
He made plans. The rascz were brilliant military tacticians, everyone said so, and Cultural Survey AT/1 Cedd Farrari knew next to nothing about military tactics. He did not need to be told that the task of outwitting them was a perilous one.
He followed the highway south for two days and nights; followed its branch west for two days and nights. He found a small rasc town where the road passed near the western mountains, but no military garrisons. Barring the chance presence of passing troops, a revolt in the lower hiingol would be free from military interference for at least four days. “The best way to defeat a foe with superior military skill,” Farrari told himself, “is to attack when he’s not around.”
He widened his range of exploration and once again began to steal from the durrlz—not grain, but the tubular grain bags. He laid out a route on his map and reconnoitered it carefully, calculating distances in the slouching ol pace. Suddenly he was ready, no reason to delay longer, nothing ventured nothing gained, nothing at all would come to an IPR agent who waited except old age, and old age on Branoff IV wasn’t worth waiting for. He rode out of the night to loom over the nightfire of ol village One. “Come!”
Bearing torches, they followed him. Villages Two, Three, Four—the ranks of Farrari’s army swelled and his confidence soared with each new addition. The route to village Five followed a long stretch of straight lane, and when Farrari looked back it seemed to him that there were very few torches behind him. He turned to investigate and came much too quickly to the end of the column. Only the olz of village Four were following. The others had gone back. He hurriedly retraced his steps. At village Three he found those olz resuming their meal around a replenished nightfire. Village Two, village One—his schedule was ruined, but stubbornly he started over again. “Come!”
When he reached the same stretch of straight lane, only the olz of village Four were following him. He grunted the word that sent them back to their village and retired to a hiding place to think.
He had been certain that the olz traveled long distances carrying their dead, but perhaps they merely passed them from village to village. His own memories of the feverish nights when he was one with the ol dead were too vague to be helpful.
“It’s possible,” he told himself, “that the olz never have gone—and therefore won’t go—farther from home than the next village. It’s also possible that they’ve never been involved in a project that required more workers than the population of their own village. They’d think they were no longer needed the moment I asked another village to join me.”
Either way, the movements of the mighty army he had envisioned were likely to be somewhat limited: his soldiers refused to leave home.
He could not sleep. His gril crushing grain kernels with its horn lips, adding a crunching sound to the rattling of the zrilm leaves, and Fararri’s mind kept contending with till silly notion of overwhelming militarily talented people with sheer numbers of clods who had never handled a weapon.
He needed help. A handful of IPR agents, or even one, could have kept the olz marching, but if he were so rash as to apply for assistance Jorrul would orate three pages of regulations to demonstrate that what he wanted to do was either impossible or forbidden.
He sat up suddenly. Distance, or the number of olz involved, had nothing to do with it. He had asked the olz to do something totally outside their experience: travel, with no accompanying work. If they carried their dead long distances, it was because there was labor to perform: transporting the bodies.
All he needed was a job of work for them to do on the march. “Something to carry,” he mused. “Weapons would be ideal—it’d give them labor to perform and at the same time make it look as though they were revolting. But where would I find enough weapons for an army of olz?” He didn’t even have non-weapons for them to carry.