The Loafers of Refuge (17 page)

It was afternoon, and there was no one waiting in the transmitting line when they drove up. Carey and Timmy hurriedly pulled Phazz from under the cover and carried him inside, Doreen behind them. The day’s run was almost over, the three technicians moving the final articles off the transmitter platform and into the stores area. Old Hamrick sat in his control booth, recording the events of the day’s work.

He looked up from his ledger, saw the three young people approaching, and sighed in vexation. That Doreen was about the stubbornest female he had ever known, even worse than her mother. Maud Sheldon remained the only woman on Refuge who had heard Claude Hamrick propose marriage, and when she had gently but firmly refused him, preferring to live with the memories of her husband, he had retreated into permanent bachelorhood. The law requiring compulsory marriage was not rigidly enforced. But he had not lost his admiration for her, and reserved a soft spot in his heart for Doreen, who was so much like her mother.

Varinov English was nowhere about, and Carey sighed with relief. He and the Security Section chief were good friends, and he had no wish to tangle with him until after the transmission.

The three technicians—all former farmers who had failed
to make a go of it and been forced to take Government jobs—were snickering openly as they wheeled the last load out of the room. As the door closed behind them Hamrick got to his feet, sighing tiredly, and opened the door to the control booth. He stepped out to face Carey and there was something in the younger man’s face that gave him pause.

“Ham, I want you to send Doreen and the tree to Earth, as she has requested. I ask that you do this voluntarily. If you will not, I shall compel you to do so.”

Hamrick drew up his spare old shoulders in righteous indignation, then let them slump again. Carey Sheldon couldn’t compel him to do anything, but the youngster was so obviously sincere he would give him the benefit of having good intentions. A lot of lives had been lost by people who were certain they had found the answer, and he would reason with Carey rather than throw him out.

He slowly shook his head, and opened his mouth to explain why it was impossible, not only from the legal point of view but from the humane. He started to speak, and was frozen to the floor, gripped by a force he neither felt nor understood, while foreign fingers went riffling through his brain and an icy numbness sneaked down his spine. He battled frenziedly with the outside control that was seeking to take over his motor nerve impulses, lost, felt himself being turned around, and forced to walk with slow, faltering steps towards the control cubicle.

He learned fast, and by the time he reached the door he had begun to fight effectively. With a great effort, one he knew he could not sustain, he regained enough control to turn and his mouth worked soundlessly as he tried to speak. And then the fingers were gone and he was standing alone, trembling, an old man who had encountered something above and beyond his experience.

Carey’s expression was stern, unrelenting, his eyes fixed immovably on Hamrick’s wrinkled face. The old man passed a shaking hand across his brow, and got out the words, “Don’t make me do it, Carey. Don’t make me. I love her like my own daughter.
I couldn’t bear to kill her!
”

“She thinks she can do it, and neither you nor I know
enough about it to doubt her. And you love her no more than I do, old friend.”

“No!” he said in a defiant whisper, and then the fingers came back, more numerous this time, and he felt the presence of Doreen, and realized it had been Carey and Timmy before. His body moved woodenly through the door, sat down at the control console, and then he grew afraid of the fumbling, loose way his hands behaved, and knew he would botch the transmission. They felt his acquiescence, and the cold fingers withdrew.

Carey and Timmy swiftly set the tub containing Phazz on the transmission platform, and with hands that still trembled Hamrick activated the power supply. As the great machine warmed up he pressed the button that indicated to Earth he was preparing to transmit, and after a somewhat longer than usual pause the “ready” light flashed on his board. The Earth operator was jarred by the departure from the usual routine. He would be more than jarred when a dead young girl came into view on the platform. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it, and then opened them to see Doreen lying on the platform by the tree, her eyes closed, apparently asleep. Her breathing was shallow and slow, her face empty of expression. Carey motioned for him to send, and he cursed himself for the most unlucky man who ever lived and flipped the switch.

Doreen and the tree blurred and were gone, and he lowered his head into his hands and sobbed with the bitter frustration of the old.

Something he could not identify slipped gently and softly into his mind, a sense of healing and redemption. He felt in it the touch of Carey. It soothed him, and he grew calm despite himself, found the strength to sit erect and wipe his eyes, and started studying the board. It stared back at him with a blank face, only the ready lights and the standard indicators showing its life. He reached up to adjust a rheostat, brought the supply voltage back to the fine point where reception was best, and after a moment, slowly, he flipped the switches that transformed the machine from a transmitter to a receiver.

He sat there with a numb ache where his heart should have been, knowing that she was dead.

Carey and Timmy walked into the control booth and stood just behind him. He glanced at their young faces, saw Carey’s calm and unmoved, saw Timmy’s its usual pensive self behind its protection of hair, and had the awesome and unexplainable feeling that he was sitting in the presence of two young gods.

The yellow warning light flickered. Earth wanted to transmit.

With hands that were shaking again he made a few minor adjustments, and in a moment there was the familiar blurring in the air above the platform and Doreen and the tree appeared. The girl lay motionless, but before he could more than wonder why the other operator had sent back a dead body the red eyelashes moved upwards, the young bosom rose in a shallow breath, and then she scrambled erect, smiling, and came walking across the platform towards him, and about her there was something of the carriage of a goddess.

Then she was in the booth, was hugging him excitedly and apologising for what they had forced him to do, and she was only little Doreen Sheldon again, and his old mind was playing tricks on him. It was time he went home and to bed.

On the trip home Doreen recounted how easy the trip had been, how simple it was to lock away the force of life deep inside one’s self, beyond injury, and how shocked and horrified the operator at the other end had been when she appeared on the platform. When he fully understood what she had done he had not wanted to send her back, but she and Phazz had compelled him to operate the machine.

“Are you certain now that even non-Controllers can learn to transmit?” Carey asked when her jubilation had quieted a little.

“Easily. There’s nothing to it, once you understand how to push yourself down inside. All it takes is a little concentration. They’ll never be able to send animals, I’m afraid, but any being with sufficient intelligence to concentrate can transmit.”

“I’ll notify C.G. in the morning,” said Carey, taking a deep
breath. “The news should stop the riots on Earth the moment it’s announced. And now we’ve got another problem. How do the hundred thousand people on Refuge handle the million people from Earth who’ll be joining us within the next year?”

Doreen only smiled, and stared at giant Antares, setting purple in the distance. C.G. was going to be seriously overloaded, as would all the other world governments, but they would find a way.

T
IMMY SLOWED HIS
steps as he reached the outer edges of the village, struck by an argument in a nearby house. The air was so charged with tension, that his long eyebrows stirred and quivered from involuntary reception of emotion. A Loafer elder was attempting to force his declining authority on an erring grandson and was having a hard time.

It was growing dark and Doreen was waiting, but Timmy stopped and stood in the growing shadow of a huge fruit, his sensitive face troubled. The old man was Himkera, a wise and respected leader, a member of the tribal council; the disobedient grandson was young Similik, a boy who had shown great promise in his pre-initiate Controller training. Similik’s father had died when the boy was very young and his mother, Himkera’s daughter, had not remarried. The old man had been the only father the boy had known, and it was very rare among the obedient Loafer children for a youngster to argue with his father.

“But I do not wish to go to the pre-initiate’s school tonight!” Similik was insisting. “I go to the Hairless Ones’ school during the day. Is that not enough? And my friends are waiting at the Crossroads. I would not have them wait in vain.”

“Yes, your friends the Earthchildren wait,” said Himkera angrily, his old voice thin now but still strong. “But what of your friends here in Loafertown? They too are waiting, expecting you to appear in your group and study the mysteries of Life with them. And where will you be? Out riding one of the animals Earthpeople control through fear and violence, chasing each other over our beautiful countryside for no purpose other than seeing which is the faster horse! You learn
nothing, and in addition expose yourself needlessly to danger. Is Life no longer sacred to you? Do you wish the knowledge your ancestors have painstakingly accumulated over untold generations to die unused? Is—”

Timmy turned and walked away without waiting to hear the end of the argument. It was similar to many which were raging in normally peaceful Loafertown these days, and almost invariably it was the old set against the young. A group of near-adults among the Earthpeople were holding horse races almost every night, and these were very popular with both Loafers and Earthmen. The younger Loafers were greatly prized as riders, their affinity with animals, gained through their pre-initiate training, enabling them to get the last ounce of speed out of horses not bred to be runners. Lately, Timmy had heard, the farmers who could afford it had started betting credit notes on the races, and were paying the best of the young Loafers to ride their horses. Carey Sheldon had told him there were C.G. employees in town who had established lucrative moonlighter jobs for themselves by going into professional bookmaking. It had taken time and many words before Carey had managed to explain bookmaking to an unsophisticated mind like Timmy’s, but when he finally understood he felt sickened. What had started as a harmless sport for bored young boys had grown into an adults’ playground, from which the play was being swiftly withdrawn.

Timmy walked the two miles to the Sheldon farm in frowning thought, his usually fast stride slowed to a measured pace. None among the Loafers could have known, when the Earth-men landed less than two generations ago, that the number of Hairless Ones was countless, or that so many would emigrate to Refuge after Doreen Sheldon solved the problem of live transmission two years ago. Earth scientists, by a combination of drugs and hypnosis, had managed to duplicate the life-force withdrawal technique perfected by Doreen. Now Earthpeople poured into Refuge in huge swarms, averaging over twenty-five hundred a day for the past two years, and the formerly spacious planet was feeling the effect. True, there were still vast forests where no Earthpeople and only
scattered Loafer tribes lived, but the great coastal plains, where large tracts of grassy land and abundant rainfall made farming easy, were already crowded.

It was quite dark when he mounted the wooden steps to the big, comfortable frame house and tapped on the door. It was opened after a moment by Maud Sheldon, and her gaunt face broke into a smile of welcome when she saw Timmy. It was sometimes apparent she was still not reconciled to the idea of having Doreen marry a Loafer, but she had long since ceased actively fighting it.

Doreen met him halfway across the big living-room and kissed him warmly in welcome, her slim, freckled hands ruffling the thicker hair on the back of his neck and head. Out of deference for Maud’s feelings he had donned a wirtl-leaf cloak, though he did not need it in this mild spring weather. The habit of donning a cloak any time you expected to associate with Earthpeople was now almost universally accepted, one of the many changes these people from another planet had caused in the Loafer communities.

Doreen pulled back in his light embrace and looked up into his face. Her own thin features grew serious and she asked, “What’s troubling you, dear?”

He turned towards the door, guiding her gently with an arm around her waist. “Let’s sit on the porch, and I’ll tell you.”

Marge came in from the kitchen and smiled a friendly greeting to their frequent visitor. She and Carey had been married almost a year, and their first child was due early in the fall. She had dieted off twenty pounds before marriage, but the new slim figure had lasted only a few months before she became pregnant.

Carey’s broad shoulders filled the door behind her. “Don’t you two go wandering off alone again,” he called when he saw them. Doreen made a face at him and walked through the door.

When she and Timmy were seated in the worn, comfortable swing, rocking gently on the chains that suspended it from the porch ceiling, Doreen took his hand and held it tightly between her own. They rocked in silence for a moment,
Doreen waiting patiently while Timmy composed his thoughts.

Oddly, Timmy realized, he had not actually made up his mind until he held Doreen in his arms, but then it had become inevitable. He had to go.

“Doreen, do you know the meaning of havasid?” he asked abruptly.

She leaned forward until she could look into his face, turned partially away from her. “Yes, it means ‘long journey’, or ‘year’s walking’. Oh wait, it’s also the word used for those trips young Controllers take sometimes, to visit other tribes and see what’s new in Controlling.”

Timmy smiled in the shadows. “That’s correct, but not quite all the story. These havasids are what have held the Loafer people together for more years than we now can number, and explain how a race of a few million people, scattered over an entire planet, still have a common tongue and roughly comparable social orders. They are usually undertaken by young men not ready to choose a mate and start a family, and they are very important in our culture.” He paused a moment, then said clearly and slowly, “Doreen, I am going on a havasid, a great journey, and I will not be back until the plants start to bloom again next year. I am going to visit every Loafer tribe on our world which lives in nearness to Earthpeople, and I hope, when I return, that my mind will be at peace. But go I must.”