L. Sprague De Camp - The Great Fetish

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The Great Fetish
L. Sprague de Camp
1
The clerk of the court called: "Hear, hear! On this the fifteenth day of Franklin, in the Year of
Descent 1008, the District Court of the District of Skudra, in the Kralate of Vizantia, is now in
session. All persons having business with this honorable court draw nigh."
As Judge Kopitar entered, the clerk added: "All rise and uncover."
Off came the sheepskin kalpaks, which most of the audience had kept on against the early-morning
chill. The small peat fire in the bronze stove did little to lift this chill. Muphrid (Eta Bootis)
had not yet risen. Skudra, although but a few degrees from the equator of Kforri, was cool because
of its altitude. The doffing of hats revealed rows of broad skulls shaven, except for the single
braided tuft, against the invasion of scalp mites. Jaws moved rhythmically, chewing quids of
tobacco.
The judge said: "Clerk, lead the court in prayer."
The clerk rose and intoned: "Hail to the gods! May they preserve and watch over us; may they
forgive our shortcomings. Hail to the holy trinity of Yez, Moham, and Bud! May Yustinn, god of
law, guide us to just decisions. May Napoin, god of war, give us courage to face our duty. May
Kliopat, goddess of love, inspire us with due sympathy towards our erring fellows. May Niuto, god
of wisdom, increase our understanding. And may Froit, maker of souls, strengthen our characters to
choose the right. O gods, inform us with the wisdom of the Ancient Ones, whom at the time of the
Descent you did send from your paradise of Earth to teach us the arts of civilization. And look
with favor upon the proceedings of this court. Amen."
The clerk looked up and said: "You may sit. . . . You there! Put out that pipe! And no spitting on
the floor, either! The dignity of the court must be preserved."
The judge said: "Good morning, fellow subjects. Clerk, call the first case."
The clerk said: "The first case is that of the Kralate against Marko Prokopiu of Skudra, twenty-
one years old. It is charged that the said Marko Prokopiu did willfully and wrongfully, while
employed as a teacher of boys in the public school of Skudra, teach the false and heretical
doctrine called Descensionism or Anti-Evolution, namely: that the Earth, instead of being a plane
of spiritual existence, from which our souls come and to which they return, is a material place or
world like Kforri, and that all men, instead of having evolved under the guidance of the gods from
the lower animals of Kforri, came from Earth at the time of the Descent in a flying machine. It
is, moreover, charged that the said Marko Prokopiu did not only advance this false doctrine, but
did also deny, condemn, and ridicule the true belief, certified by the Holy Syncretic Church of
Vizantia and adopted as official by
the Krai's ministers, to wit: the doctrine of Evolution. How do you plead, Marko Prokopiu?"
Marko Prokopiu, the foster son of the late Milan Prokopiu the smith, stood up. Since the year on
Kforri is half again as long as that on Earth, by Terran time .Marko would have been thirty-two.
He was a little taller than the average but seemed short because of his abnormal breadth and
girth. These were conspicuous even among Kforrians, with whom a stocky build with thick legs was
general. The gravity of the planet, a third more than that of Mother Earth, had in the fifty-odd
generations since the Descent eliminated spindle legs and weak hearts.
So Marko looked more like a blacksmith, which his foster father had been, than a small-town school-
teacher, despite the fact that he was no passionate exerciser. His features were rather thick,
coarse, and brutal-looking. The blondness of his scalp lock distinguished him from the dark native-
born Vizantians.
Although the elder Prokopius never said where they had obtained Marko, it was supposed in Skudra
that he was of Anglonian or Eropian origin. These exotic antecedents had caused the intensely
parochial Skudrans to look upon Marko with scorn and suspicion, even after he had grown too big
and burly to be openly bullied. This treatment had caused his naturally introverted personality to
become even more withdrawn.
Marko looked out over the courtroom. At the back stood the bailiff, Ivan Haliu, leaning on his
billhook and wearing the same old helmet, blackened with oxidation, that Milan Prokopiu had
hammered out for him years before. Ivan Haliu was looking intently towards the place where Bori
Bender sat near Pavlo Arkas. The Benders and the Arkases had a feud on, anaJone "of 't/ie "two
~men"migfiV 'tfy~"td sfao'~ trie otrier.' Marko Prokopiu picked out Ms friends and his foes with
his glance. In the front row were his friends: his mother, small and sharp-nosed; his wife,
Petronela, big and handsome; and his boarder, Chet Mongamri, the very tall man with the pointed
graying Anglonian mustache. It was Mongamri who had persuaded Marko of the truth of Descensionism.
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Nearly all the rest were neutral or hostile. There was Vasilio Yovanovi, the father of the pupil
whom Marko had thrashed for chasing a fellow pupil with a knife. Although this beating was
perfectly legal, as homicide was forbidden to minors, Vasilio Yovanovi had brought the action
against Marko. The boy sat beside his father and visibly gloated. No doubt Miltiadu would call him
as a witness.
And there in the bush beard and tiara of black wool was Theofrasto Vlora, Metropolitan of the Holy
Syncretic Church, who had come up from Stambu to oversee the trial and harken on the prosecution.
Even if the five jurors had not included Sokrati Yovanovi, a cousin of Vasilio Yovanovi, there was
little chance that they would acquit him under the stern eye of the Metropolitan.
"Not guilty!" said Marko loudly, and sat down.
The judge said: "The prisoner has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutor, state your case."
Jorgi Miltiadu stood up and began: "Your honor, we expect to prove that the prisoner, contrary to
the laws of the Kralate and the regulations of the school board, did willfully and wrongfully . .
." Here followed a restatement of the charge, going in more detail into Marko's iniquities. When
Miltiadu had finished, the judge said to Marko's lawyer:
"Counselor, state your case."
Rigas Lazarevi rose and began: "Your honor, the defense will stipulate that my client did, in
fact, teach the doctrines which he is accused—"
"Are you changing your plea to guilty?" cried Jorgi Miltiadu, leaping up like a startled tersor.
"Order," said Judge Kopitar. "Resume your seat, Master Prosecutor; you shall have your chance."
"No," said Rigas Lazarevi. "We adhere to our plea of innocence. It is on another ground altogether
that we shall make our defense, namely, that the doctrines in question are true, and that not even
the government has the right to compel my client to teach an untruth. For there is a higher law
than princes, as our distinguished visitor the Metropolitan"—he nodded towards Theofrasto Vlora,
who stared back coldly over his bristling black beard—"would be the first to assert. We shall
produce—"
"I object!" cried Jorgi Miltiadu. "My honored colleague's proceeding is irregular, his arguments
are irrelevant, and his implications are subversive. This is neither a churchly synod nor a
meeting of the faculty of the University of Thine to decide what is true. For our purposes, truth
has been clearly set forth in section forty-two of Decree Number 230, Year of Descent 978,
relating to the establishment and maintenance of a public-school system . . ."
On they went all through the long morning, back and forth, objecting, arguing, and splitting
hairs. As the temperature rose, the audience squirmed on their benches and unbuttoned their shaggy
sheepskin jackets. One even started to pull off his boots until Ivan Haliu stopped him by tapping
his shaven skull with the butt of his billhook.
Although the audience was supposed to stay quiet, it was constantly disturbed by individual
spectators pushing out of the pews for a trip to the nearest spittoon or to step outside for a nip
of slivic. Others whispered and muttered until Judge Kopitar threatened to clear the courtroom.
The prosecution witnesses assembled by Jorgi Miltiadu, such as the Yovanovi boy, were not called,
since the defense admitted the acts to which they were to testify. On the other hand, Miltiadu
caused the question of the truth of the Descensionist doctrine to be ruled out as irrelevant, so
Rigas Lazarevi never had a chance to show the books he had assembled as exhibits. Privately, Marko
was just as glad. Many of these books were of foreign origin, and Marko well knew the Sku-drans'
suspicion of intellectual argument and hatred of anything foreign.
By dinnertime, when Muphrid stood almost overhead, all that remained were the summing-up speeches.
The court recessed. Marko ate his dinner with the other prisoners: mostly cottage cheese and
native Kfor-rian fungi, with a little mutton. Prisoner, judge, jury, witnesses, attendants, and
spectators scattered to eat their dinners likewise and to stretch out for their three-hour
siestas.
After siesta, Marko and the rest returned for the final arguments. Jorgi Miltiadu tore into
Marko's for-eignness: ". . . so this—this unspeakable alien not only tried to poison the minds of
our youth by false and unholy beliefs. He even went to another outsider, this foreigner"—he
pointed at Mongamri, who glared back—"from whom he got the damnable doctrine that all men are, in
effect, aliens in their own world. Have you ever heard of anything so un-Vizantian?
"Do not be deceived by the specious arguments of my colleague, that it is the teacher's duty to
follow the truth wherever it leads. Is Marko Prokopiu a god, that he can tell truth when he sees
it, when wiser heads than his have been in disagreement? Obviously not. Shall we allow men tainted
by alien blood to teach our children that black is white, or that Kforri is flat, or that Muphrid
is cold, merely because some quirk of their natures or some insidious foreign influence has led
them astray? As well hire the Einstein-worshiping witches of Mnaenn to teach their deadly arts and
spells in our schools! Or the black hermits of Afka to teach that they are the chosen people of
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their god!
"Who shall, then, decide the truth? Why, the government of his serene majesty, Krai Maccimo, which
can call upon the keenest minds in the Kralate and upon the divine wisdom of the Holy Three as
incarnated in the Syncretic Church ..."
On he went, Marko's heart sank. Rigas Lazarevi, when his turn came, stoutly accused Jorgi Miltiadu
of prejudicing the jurors by dragging in the irrelevency of Marko's birth. But, argue as be might,
he could not get around the fact that Marko had broken the law.
When the jury was sent out, the clerk announced: "The next case is that of the Kralate against
Mihai Skriabi of Skudra, thirty-four years old. It is charged that the said Mihai Skriabi did, on
the eleventh of Ashoka of the present year, ride his paxor down Cankar Street in Skudra while
drunk; that he did moreover cause the said paxor to knock down two porch pillars from the house of
Konstan Cenopulu the jeweler, causing grievous harm to the house of the said Konstan Cenopulu . .
."
By the time this case was over, the jurors considering Marko's case came back with their verdict:
"Guilty."
The spectators applauded. Marko cringed inwardly. What in the name of Yustinn had he ever done to
them? When he got out, he would go far from this bigoted backwoods hamlet with its insensate feuds
and its bitter xenophobia. He had been a fool to stay with
them as long as he had, under the delusion that it was his duty to enlighten their savage brats.
The judge said: "Marko Prokopiu, I sentence you to imprisonment in the district jail for three
years, beginning today, and to pay a fine of one thousand dlars, in default of which you shall
spend an extra year in prison."
At this there was another spattering of applause. There were also a few murmurs of surprise at the
severity of the sentence. Marko hoped that some of the spectators at least thought he was being
unfairly used.
Marko caught a glimpse of Jorgi Miltiadu shaking hands with the Metropolitan, and then his own
friends came up. His wife and his mother wrung his hands. Chet Mongamri said in his Anglonian
accent:
"It's a damnable shame, Marko, but it will be the making of my book. Wait till you read the
chapter about your trial!"
Marko gave Mongamri a sharp look. This seemed like an odd attitude, especially as Mongamri had, in
a way, put Marko up to teaching Anti-Evolution.
Back in the month of Aristotle (or Ristoli as the Vizantians called it) Mongamri had arrived in
Skudra with a mass of notes. He explained that he was an Anglonian who made his living by
traveling about the continent and then writing and lecturing on his experiences. He was looking
for a place to do a few months' quiet writing before returning to his home in Lann. As no other
family in Skudra would admit a foreigner unless paid a fantastically high rent, Mongamri had
naturally ended up in the house of the more tolerant and cosmopolitan Marko Prokopiu.
Many a night, Marko had sat up late with his boarder, discussing the world beyond the Skudran
Hills and the ideas that stirred men's minds in other lands. Marko had come to consider Chet
Mongamri his closest friend. This was not saying much, as he had few friends of any kind and no
real intimates. Now, evidently, Marko saw that to Mongamri he was at best a chapter in a book.
"Come along, Marko," said Ivan Haliu, grasping Marko's elbow.
Marko let himself be led away.
2
Marko Prokopiu sat on a stool in one corner of his cell. He rested his elbows on his knees and his
chin on his fists, staring down at the floor in front of him. Outside, the rain slanted grayly
past the barred window.
Although to some, solitude is a punishment, Marko was glad that he had no roommate. He wanted
nothing but to sit on his stool and wallow in solitary despondency.
Behind his somberly immobile face, his mind was a stew of emotions. One of his minds was proud of
him for being a martyr to truth. Another was ashamed of himself for exposing himself to punishment
for the sake of a mere theory, which might not even be true. A third told him that all was over,
that he might as well kill himself, while a fourth tried to console him with the thought that at
least his mother and his wife, Petronela, and his friend Mongamri would remain true to him....
The lock went clank and the door groaned open. Ristoli Vasu, the jailer, said: "Your mother is
here to see you, Marko. Come."
Marko silently followed the jailer into the anteroom. There stood little Olga Prokopiu, in her old
raincoat of wool impregnated with stupa gum.
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"Mother!" he said. He checked an impulse to hug Olga Prokopiu when he saw that she held a cake in
her hands.
"Here, Marko," she said. "Don't try to eat it all in one bite." She gave it to him with a sharp
look. "Now sit down. I don't want you to fall down when you hear the news."
"What news?" said Marko, alarm stkring in his mind.
"Petronela has run off with that man Mongamri."
Marko's jaw dropped. "What. .. when . .."
"Just an hour or two ago. That's why I came over. I told you no good would come of taking that
alien into our house. Either of them. Those Anglonians have no more morals than rabbits."
Marko sat back, waiting for his stunned wits to revive. His mother said sharply:
"Now, don't sniffle. You're a grown man, and it's unseemly to show such emotions. You know what
you must do."
Marko glanced around the walls of thick stupa-wood planks. "How?"
"Something will turn up." She glanced at the cake, which Marko's huge hands had badly squashed out
of shape.
"Oh," said Marko. He wiped away a fugitive tear and pulled himself together. When not crushed by
adversity, he could think as well as the next man. "Tell me what happened."
"After dinner I took my siesta. When I awoke, I called to Petronela to help me with the dishes,
and there was no answer, nor yet when I knocked on her door. When I went into your room, there
were signs of her having suddenly packed, and on the bureau I found this."
She handed her son a piece of paper, on which Petronela had written, in bad Vizantian:
My dear Marko:
Forgive my leaving you, but I cannot abide such a long wait. I am not well suited to life in
Skudra anyway, and you will be happier in the long run with a woman of your own kind.
Farewell, Petronela
Marko read the note through twice, crumpled it, and threw it into a corner of the anteroom with
such violence that it bounced halfway back. He said:
"Chet had left too?"
"Yes. I remembered that Komnenu's stage-wagons leave around siesta time. I hurried down Zlatkovi
Street to Komnenu's stable and found him just hitching up the paxor to leave for Chef.
"There was no sign of Petronela and Mongamri, so I asked Komnenu if he had seen them. He said yes,
they had just gone out on the wagon for Thine, an hour earlier. They seemed very cheerful,
laughing and holding hands. Komnenu said he supposed they were going down to Thine to hire some
lawyer more skillful than Rigas Lazarevi."
Marko picked up the crumpled sheet of note paper, smoothed it out, and read it again, as if by
reading it often enough he could persuade it to change its wording. The note remained the same,
and so did the searing spiritual pain that flooded his mind. Finally he said:
"What should I do, Mother?"
"Wait till tonight." She lowered her voice, glancing towards the open door into the jailer's
office. "Then eat that cake, and do what seems best to you."
"Thanks. Come again soon."
"I shall see you again sooner than you think. Goodbye, and keep your character up. Your father was
a man of much less intelligence than you, but he had character."
Olga Prokopiu gathered her raincoat about her and clumped out, looking too small for the
voluminous garment and the heavy peasant boots, but spry for her years.
Marko returned to his cell with the note and the mangled cake. He set the cake down in a corner
and himself in the opposite corner. He stared at the cake, biting his lips. He beat his fist
against his palm, jumped up to pace the cell, then sat down again. He dug his knuckles into his
scalp and pounded his knees with his fists. His lips writhed; his huge hairy hands clenched and
unclenched.
At last, unable to control himself any longer, he jumped up with a hoarse animal yell, between a
scream and a bellow. He glared at the cake, half tempted to kick or trample it—anything to work
off the volcanic energies rising within him. But he retained sense enough to know he might want it
later, and anyway it was his mother's gift. Instead, he caught up the stool and slammed it against
the cage bars with such force that he broke off the leg by which he held it.
"Here! Here!" cried Ristoli Vasu, coming at a run. "What are you doing, Marko? Stop at once!"
Marko picked up the remains of the stool ,and continued to batter at the bars until the article
was reduced to splinters. Then he leaped up and down on the splinters, stamping them with his
boots.
"You shall have no supper!" yelled the jailer.
Marko only screamed at Vasu, rattled the cage door, kicked the walls, and pounded his own head and
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body with his fists.
"This is undignified!" cried Ristoli Vasu. "Marko, you're acting like a child in a tantrum!"
As these words penetrated Marko's red-hazed mind, the fit left him and he threw himself down on
his pallet weeping. That, too, was un-Vizantian, but he did not care. «•
This, too, passed. Marko sat on the floor, having no more stool. He stared blankly, his mind
filled with fantasies of horrible things he would do to Chet Mon-gamri and to Petronela too; only
the things he would do to Petronela were not quite so horrible. He still loved her in a way.
He could not understand how such a thing had happened. Being Marko, he had simply not seen the
signs of Petronela's increasing dissatisfaction with her life in Skudra, or the mutual interest
that flared up between her and Mongamri as soon as the traveler moved in. It would have been hard
enough for an alien girl like Petronela to get herself accepted by the Skudrans if she had married
the most popular man in town. Having married one of the least popular, she found it quite
impossible. To her, social acceptance and activity were of great importance.
Deprived of his supper as punishment for destroying the stool, Marko ate the cake. Nobody, he
thought, could make cheese cakes as his mother could. About the third bite, as he half expected,
he encountered a file. He looked at the file and then at the window bars, beyond which the rain
still fell. A slow smile formed on his broad face.
After midnight, Marko Prokopiu knocked on the window of his mother's bedroom. The old lady got up
at once and let him in.
"Good," she said. "I knew my son wouldn't falter when his honor had to be avenged. How will you
get to Thine?"
Marko grinned. "I stole Judge Kopitar's horse and then broke into the schoolhouse and stole the
school funds. I had a key to the strongbox hidden away."
"Why, Marko! What a desperate character my mild-as-milktoast son has become!'^
"Huh! What have laws and "morals done for me? Here, take these. You will need something to live
on. But don't spend it lavishly, or people will suspect it's not yours."
He pressed some of the stolen money upon her and stepped into the living room, plainly but
decently furnished in the rustic style of the Skudran Hills. Olga Prokopiu's little tame tersor
sat asleep on its perch, wrapped in its membranous wings. Marko stepped over to the big ornate
chest, which Milan Prokopiu had brought all the way from Chef, to take out his father's war ax. He
slid the ax head out of its leather case to see that all was well, then put it back in.
Milan Prokopiu had made this piece at the height of his powers. It had a two-foot steel shaft
protruding from the wooden handle. From the other or butt end hung a leather thong to be looped
over the wrist, so that if the handle slipped out of the user's grip, the weapon should not be
lost.
Marko loosened the belt of his sheepskin jacket, thrust the pointed end through the loop on the
back side of the case, and buckled the belt back on. The case was large enough to keep the steel
spike on the end of the shaft, or the other, curved spike opposite the blade, from poking the
wearer. All the steel of the ax was blued and heavily greased. So was all ironware on Kforri,
where the damp, oxygen-rich atmosphere would otherwise soon rust it away to nothing.
He also took down from the wall a round steel buckler with a single handle behind its boss, a hook
on the boss to hang a lantern from, and a strap to hand the shield over his back. Although no
swashbuckler, he knew that the world was a rough place.
"How about some food?" he said.
"I'll get it for you," said his mother. Actually, one could make the journey from Skudra to Thine
without taking any food along, because the ubiquitous fungi provided nourishment. But it was known
that a diet of fungi, unmixed with cultivated food, would in the long run cause bodily weakness
and disease.
While Olga Prokopiu bustled about, Marko asked: "Was there anything to show where they were going
after Thine?"
"No. I suppose they mean to return to Anglonia."
Marko mused: "If they had gone to Chef, they would have taken ship across the Medranian Sea. As
they have set out for Thine, they would cross the Saar by caravan."
"You should know, son; you have traveled."
"I shall catch them," he said.
"See that you do." She gazed fondly at her son. "Put them to a terrible death; something I can be
proud of."
Marko gathered up such spare clothing and other gear as he thought he would need, gave his mother
a hug, and went out into the rain. Judge Kopitar's horse was tethered behind the Prokopiu house.
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Like all horses on Kforri, it was an animal of medium height and stocky, massive build.
Marko strapped his traveling bag behind the saddle, unhitched, and mounted. The horse shifted its
feet and shook its head uneasily. It sensed that Marko was not its owner, but his weight
discouraged it from trying to buck him off. Marko pulled the hood of his raincoat down low over
his kalpak, so that it nearly hid his face, and turned the horse's head towards the road to Thine.
Marko knew all the local roads well and had once been to Thine, during his sabbatical two years
before. He had, hi fact, traveled all over Vizantia. He had been to the seaports of Chef and
Stambu and Moska and Bukres, to the great stupa forests of the Borsja Peninsula, and finally to
Thine, where he had studied at the university.
At Chef, he had become acquainted with Woshon Seum, the representative of the Anglonian trading
firm of Choerch and Jaex. Knowing Woshon Seum, he was bound to meet Scum's daughter Petronela.
They fell in love and got married, and Marko brought her back to Skudra, to the ill-concealed
consternation of his mother and his associates. He had never been popular, and marrying an alien
seemed to many townsfolk like the last straw.
As he trotted through the outskirts of Skudra, Marko looked back towards the center of the town.
All was dark and quiet under the pattering rain. He turned and faced the road north. Little
maintenance was done on this road, so that the only check on the swift growth of the fungi was the
hoofs and wheels of traffic. These merely mashed the undiscourageable vegetation into slimy pulp.
Despite the calks on its shoes, the judge's horse slipped and skidded on slight slopes. On steeper
ones, Marko had to get off and lead it, wishing he had been able to steal a paxer instead. This
was an elephantine plant-eating reptile, which the people of Kforri domesticated and used as a
heavy draft animal. The rain let up. Marko plodded on. Wet fronds or stalks of the plants that
overhung the road, like grasses and mosses enlarged to tree size, brushed against him. An active
volcano glowed dull red against the underside of the rain clouds and its own smoke plume. Rifts
appeared in the clouds, through which Marko glimpsed Gallio, the nearest and brightest of the
three little moons, sweeping through the stars.
3
Ten days after leaving Skudra, on the first of Napoin or Napoleon, Marko Prokopiu jogged into
Thine. He had undergone experiences along the way, such as being pursued in the Zetskan Hills by a
transor, the largest of the planet's dinosaurian predators. Several nights he had to sleep out,
but he was used to roughing it. His father, a mighty hunter, had taken Marko on many camping
trips.
Near Skiatho, a trio of rash robbers waylaid him and sent an arrow through his raincoat. He turned
the judge's horse while tugging out his ax, and presently the archer was lying among the fungi
with a cleft skull, while his fellows fled. Marko appropriated a good steel bow, a lizard-skin bow
case, and a quiverful of arrows.
All this, however exciting, had no real bearing on the object of his search. When he arrived in
Thine, a spacious city built entirely of marble (a material as common on Kforri as good wood was
scarce), he found himself quarters. Then he spent a day searching the city for Mongamri and
Petronela.
He inquired at all the inns and promenaded the parks and shops without success. He loitered in the
central square, where the caravans made up to cross the Saar to Niok and the cities of Arabistan.
He asked the caravan dispatcher whether any persons like Pe-tronela and Mongamri had gone out on
the last caravan.
The man assured him that he had seen nobody like that. Moreover, the last caravan, which had left
two days before, had been en route to Asham in Arabistan, far from Niok. No caravan had left for
Niok in ten days, although one was due to leave in four.
Marko was sure that his quarry must still be in Thin6. They would be bound for Anglonia. Believing
him still to be in jail in Skudra, they would be in no great hurry. If he did not come upon them
in the next three days, he could surely intercept them when the caravan for Niok mustered in the
square. He preferred to catch them sooner if possible, before the news of his escape from the jail
at Skudra should reach Thine and a warrant be issued for his arrest.
He was also anxious not to let them escape from Vizantia, for he had heard that in some other
countries homicide was a criminal as well as a civil offense. And while Marko had, right after his
escape from jail, been in a mood to defy all rules because of the injustice he felt, his basically
law-abiding nature had now had time to reassert itself.
On his third day hi Thine, after a perfunctory stroll about the central part of the town to look
for his wife and her paramour, he rode out to the university grounds. There he hunted up the
professor who had been his faculty adviser when he had studied here.
In his office, Gathokli Noli was entertaining a stranger, a small, gray-haired man with a bulging
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dome of a cranium, a sharp nose, and a receding chin. The man wore Anglonian clothes: knitted
trunk-hose and shoes with flaring tops and pointed toes, instead of the baggy checkered pants
tucked into the tops of heavy boots, usual in Vizantia. The stranger wore eyeglasses, a Mingkwoan
invention still rare in Vizantia. He spoke with an Anglonian accent, reducing the rolled Vizantian
r to a soft, vowel-like sound. Instead of his wearing the Vizantian scalp lock, his hair was cut
to a uniform length of a "half inch, so that it stood up in a stiff gray brush.
"By the Great Fetish of Mnaenn, it's Marko!" said Gathokli Noli. "Come in, old man. Marko, this is
Dr. Boert Halran of Lann, the eminent philosopher."
Marko acknowledged the introduction with the natural dignity of the Vizantian hillman. "What
brings you to Thine, Dr. Halran?"
"I have come to purchase stupa gum, sir."
"Isn't it for sale in Anglonia?" asked Marko.
"Yes, but only in minute quantities. I require a considerable amount, so it is cheaper for me to
come all this distance to obtain it at a wholesale price."
"Are you using it for some experiment?"
"Yes, sir; the most portentous experiment of the era, if I may so assert." Halran shimmered with
self-satisfaction.
"Indeed, sir? May I ask what it is?"
"Have you ever heard of a balloon?" asked Halran.
"No. The word is unfamiliar to me."
"Well, are you familiar with the hypothesis that, if one could inclose hot ak in a bag, the bag
would rise like a bubble in water?"
"There was some talk about it at the university when I was here. As I was immersed in courses in
pedagogy, I didn't go very far into science."
"Well, I have actually accomplished it."
"Made a bag rise?"
"Yes, bags of various magnitudes." The little man glowed with enthusiasm. "One of the largest
raised me to an altitude of a hundred feet and stayed up for two hours. It frightened the peasants
to death when it came down in their fields, so my next model I tethered by its drag rope to keep
it from being wafted anywhither.
"My next step will be to construct a balloon large enough to raise the weight ef several
individuals. The bag has already been sewn together; there remains but the matter of the stupa gum
to render it airtight."
"How do you heat this air?" asked Marko.
"By means of a large peat stove."
"I see. But after the machine has risen, won't the ah" inside cool off and let you down again?"
"Eventually, yes. But this balldon is equipped with a smaller stove suspended above the car, so
that, by feeding more hot air into the bagr I can maintain altitude much longer."'
"I should love to see it," said Marko.
"If you are in Lann about the third of Perikles, come around. On that day, I intend to inflate my
balloon for a flight to the Philosophical Convention at Vien."
Marko said: "I have heard of these philosophical conventions and should love to attend one. How do
you do it? I mean, what does one have to be or to do to get in?"
"Merely pay a small registration fee."
"Is that all? No special degree is required?"
"No; we philosophers are only too glad to have the public take an interest hi our accomplishments.
These conventions have been in operation only about ten years, but they grow bigger every year.
This year there are rumors that a pair of philosophical brothers from Mingkwo will bring some
sensational inventions they have developed. If, that is, the Prem of Eropia does not choose that
time to start a war or massacre his enemies."
"Is he a dangerous man?" said Marko, who had heard only vaguely of the vagaries of Alzander
Mirabo.
Halran whistled, rolled up his eyes, and held his palms together as in prayer. "Extremely
dangerous. Shrewd, ruthless, unpredictable, and insatiably ambitious. If he thinks you stand in
his way, he may entertain you one day and charm you with his affability, and the next have your
head hacked off in the mam square of Vien.
"The Chamber elected him Prem because he promised to break the power of the magnates, which he
did. Then he got all their lands and manufactories into his own hands. Since then, he has ruled
the country with an even more iron hand than the magnates did."
"Why don't the Eropians revolt?" asked Marko.
"Them? Oh, most of them like him. He poses as the champion of the masses against their exploiters
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and so has achieved a meretricious popularity—"
"He has effected some real reforms, too," interjected Noli.
Halran shrugged. "If you consider those worth his turning the judicial system into an instrument
for punishing his personal opponents. But his ambitions do not stop there. He has been
strengthening his army lately, and rumors hint at an invasion of Iveriana. Of course, when my
balloon is perfected, it will make war impossible. But there are still many details to be worked
out."
"How will it make war impossible, sir?" said Marko.
"By making it too risky and too horrible for men to endure. How could any government defend its
land against a horde of enemies rising in balloons on the windward side of the border and
descending anywhere in the realm? This invention will compel the nations to unite to abolish war."
Marko inquired: "Have you got your stupa gum yet, sir?"
"No it will take some days. The Krai's government requires much signing of papers before it will
let me export the material, which is curious when you consider that stupa-tree products are the
main export of Vizantia."
"Not so odd," said Gathokli Noli. "These forms are to make sure nobody fells a stupa tree on his
own, contrary to law." He turned to Marko. "And now let me ask: What brings you down from your
misty mountains? How is your handsome wife?"
From a stranger, Marko would have resented a question about his wife. Vizantians considered it
indelicate to talk about marital relationships. After all, everybody knew what married people did.
But Noli was an old friend, and the people of the university were a bit looser in such matters
than.Marko's fellow Skudrans.
As for Halran, it was notorious that Anglonians had no such inhibitions. Marko gulped and replied:
"As a matter of fact, it is she that brings me here. She decided she liked one of her fellow
countrymen better than me, and I'm following them to send them to Earth." He touched his ax.
Halran started visibly. Noli merely raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I shouldn't have mentioned the matter,
had I guessed this complication. I'm sorry for your trouble and wish you success."
"Have you seen either of them?" Marko, twirling an imaginary mustache, described his faithless
friend Mongamri.
"No-o," said Gathokli Noli. "But I'll keep a watch for him."
Halran said: "By Kliopat, you two talk calmly enough about slaying a man. Do you really mean that,
or is this a jest?"
"No joke at all, sir," said Marko. "What I plan to do is not only legal; it's practically
compulsory. If I didn't make every effort to kill the guilty pair, I should be held in aversion
and contempt."
Halran shuddered. "In Anglonia we consider such a thing barbarous."
"No doubt, sir. Of course, an ignorant hillbilly like myself has no right to speak. But, while in
Anglonia you place an absurdly high value on human life, you don't take honor and purity so
seriously as we do."
"But my dear fellow, there is no comparison between killing a fellow being and giving one of the
other sex a few minutes' harmless pleasure."
"Harmless pleasure! That only proves how depraved and immoral . . ." began Marko with heat, but
Gathokli Noli interrupted:
"Other lands, other customs. I'll tell you: Why don't you, Marko, promise to spare the man who
cuckolded you while Boert swears eternal chastity?"
"But I am a married man!" protested Halran.
Marko said: "That would not be fair. At Dr. Hal-ran's age—"
"I like that!" cried Halran. "What do you know about my private life, Master Prokopiu?"
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said Noli. "Let's change the subject, which is becoming just too
indelicate. Are you attending commencement tomorrow, Marko?"
"I hadn't known you were having it," said Marko, "but I shall be glad to come." Privately he
thought this a good chance to run into Mongamri and Petronela.
"As a diploma holder," said Noli, "you will be deemed a member of the university, ranking with the
two-year sub-bachelors. You shall therefore sit with the graduates and wear an academic robe."
"Oh," said Marko. "Had I known, I should have brought mine from Skudra, but as it is . . ."
"That's all right; I'll get you one," said Noli. "Meet me here at the third hour tomorrow."
Marko spent the rest of the day in a further futile search for his victims. The next morning, he
appeared at Gathokli Noli's office at the appointed time.
Gathokli Noli hung upon him the short black cape of the holder of a mere diploma in education, and
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himself donned the sweeping scarlet cassock of a full professor. Boert Halran appeared too, in the
purple surplice of an Anglonian Doctor of Philosophy.
They solemnly tipped their academic hats to each other and marched out and across the campus to
the commencement grounds. Over these had been erected a great canvas canopy; for, although Muphrid
showed his face at that time, it was too much to expect the heavens of Thine to refrain from
raining for half an hour at a stretch.
Gathokli Noli explained as they walked: "Sokrati Popu will deliver the commencement address and
receive an honorary doctorate. That should cause some uproar."
"Why?" asked Boert Halran. "Is this Popu unpopular?"
Gathokli Noli rolled his eyes. "He's the leader of the Distributionist movement."
"What is that?" inquired Halran. "I have sufficient difficulty keeping up with the politics of my
own land, let alone that of others."
Gathokli Noli explained: "As you know, the main wealth of the Krai ate lies in the great stupa
forests of the Borsja Peninsula."
"Yes."
"Besides the stupa gum you are after, one of those trees contains enough wood to build a small
city. Nowhere else in the world, as far as it has been explored, do real trees grow to a fraction
of such size."
"I see," said Halran.
"Well," continued Noli, "a generation ago, private lumbermen were making serious inroads into the
forests. The then Krai, Jorgi the Second, was a far-sighted man. He saw that the trees were being
cut faster than they grew and that the whole process was wastefully managed. So he nationalized
the forests and set up a program of controlled cutting and planting.
"That worked until the present Krai came to the desk. Krai Maccimo"—Noli glanced about—"is a man
of, say, a character different from that of his father. There have been complaints that the forest
service is loaded with political hangers-on who do nothing but shuffle papers. Therefore a group
of magnates started a movement to have the government sell the forests to them cheaply.
"To promote their idea, they take advantage of the Kralate's financial troubles, the complaints of
people who wish unlimited stupa wood for building, the pressure of the lumberjacks' guild, and
anything else that will serve their turn. But the students are mostly Re-tentionists—that is, Anti-
Distributionists—so there may be a disturbance."
They came to the commencement grounds, where the public seats were fast filling. Gathokli Noli
showed Marko and Halran their proper places. Marko found himself in a whole section of diploma
capes. As he sat down, the handle of his ax, hitherto hidden by his cape, touched the leg of the
man beside him. This man stared and whispered:
"You should not have brought that thing in here!"
Marko smiled and shrugged vaguely. He began peering at the other sections from under the brim of
his academic hat.
The professors were assembling on the platform. Undergraduates were pushing into the large front-
center section reserved for them. They indulged in much shoving and horseplay, which the
admonitions of the beadles did little to check.
Then Marko saw Chet Mongamri and Petronela come in through one of the main entrances and take
places with the rest of the public. They were a long way from Marko and to his left rear, so that
he had to crane his neck to see them. His breath quickened, and he turned his head to the front
again lest they recognize him. A cold rage filled him, so that he hardly heard what went on around
him. He clenched his fists and bit his lips. The men next to him edged away from his apocalyptic
aspect.
At last everybody was in place. The beadles stood at attention at the ends of the aisles, holding
heir staves as if they had been pikes. The president of the university, Mathai Vlora, opened the
proceedings.
The university's band played "Vizantia Victorious." The president introduced the Bishop of Thine.
The bishop invoked the blessings of the gods upon the university and its students—especially the
blessings of Dui, the god of education.
The president gave an opening address, which seemed to Marko to say nothing very eloquently, and
began introducing the recipients of honorary degrees. There was Maccimo Vuk, the distinguished
assassin, who had given the university ten thousand dlars. There was Ivan Laskari, who claimed to
have proved that atoms existed. And, after several others had been honored, there was Sokrati
Popu. His only qualification seemed to be that, as head of the Distri-butionists, he stood to
become the richest man in the nation if his scheme went through.
Sokrati Popu was a short man with a large head, bald and jowly. He let the president drape the
yellow stole of the honorary doctorate around his neck. They tipped their academic hats. Sokrati
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Popu stepped to the lectern at the front of the platform, laid a sheaf of manuscript down in front
of him, raised a lorgnette to his eyes, and began to read the commencement address.
"Young men and fellow subjects," he began in a rasping monotone, "it gives me great pleasure ..."
After several paragraphs of the usual cliches of commencement oratory, he got down to business:
"... Vizantia stands at the fork of the road. Which horn of the dilemma shall we take? One hurls
us into the swamp of state monopoly, which has crushed the proud nation of Eropia, once a leader
of civilization, to a nightmare of bureaucratic stagnation. The other leads the ship of state back
along the highroads of private enterprise, which stand guard at the shrine of economic sanity—"
At that instant, a student stood up in the undergraduate section and threw a tersor's egg at
Sokrati Popu. The missile missed its target and spattered against the wall of the Liberal Arts
Building, which formed a background for the ceremony.
Instantly the two beadles nearest to the undergraduate section plunged into the black-cloaked mass
and pounced upon the student. They dragged him out, despite the efforts of the other
undergraduates to trip and impede them, and hustled him up an aisle to the exit.
"There's one who gets no degree today," said the . man beside Marko who had objected to his ax.
Sokrati Popu resumed his discourse, but now the undergraduates began to mutter in cadence: "I—
want—money; I—want—money; I—want—money..."
The beadles, hovering on the fringes of the undergraduate section, reached in and whacked a couple
of the noisier of the mutterers with their staves. The chant subsided; Sokrati Popu doggedly
resumed:
"What do these benighted bureaucrats really want? To save the stupa forests for posterity as they
say? Nonsense! We can never exhaust the stupa forests, and anyway what has posterity ever done for
us? The bureaucrats want power! Make no mistake, my ardent young friends—"
Another student threw another tersor's egg. More beadles tried to reach him, but now the
undergraduates clutched them and pulled them down. Marko glimpsed a beadle's arm flailing about
with its staff and then disappearing under the black, billowing mass. The students chanted:
"Wood—for—Popu; wood—for—Popu; wood —for—Popu . . ."
Others stood up and hurled not only eggs but also bits of edible fungi in various states of decay.
The president popped up and shouted threats at the undergraduates, who made rude noises and threw
more missiles. These spattered not only Popu but also the president, the faculty, and the other
guests. The president roared orders to the beadles, who waded into the throng, swinging their
staves at every undergraduate head they saw.
The fight boiled out into the aisles. Through it all, Sokrati Popu stood behind his lectern, raw
tersor egg running down his face, and doggedly continued his address. Marko could see his mouth
move, even though he could not hear any words.
Marko tore his attention away from the fracas in front to look back into the audience. They were
all standing up to see better. Among the heads he glimpsed the sweeping Anglonian mustache of Chet
Mongamri.
Knowing his duty, Marko rose with pounding heart, unsnapped the flap of his ax sheath, and pushed
his way out into the aisle. He dodged a couple of fights, ran up the aisle all the way to the
rear, crossed over to the left side of the audience, and started down the left interior aisle. As
he ran, he drew the ax from its case.
Marko dodged around beadles dragging undergraduates out and bore down upon Chet Mongamri, who had
taken an aisle seat. He was sighting on the back of Mongamri's head for a place to sink his ax
blade when a beadle, taking cognizance of Marko's homicidal intentions, released his undergraduate
and grabbed Marko's sleeve, shouting:
"Ho, there, you!"
Marko jerked his arm free and pushed the man in the chest, bowling him over, then turned back to
resume his charge. But the beadle shouted, and others joined in. The noise down front had
momentarily subsided, so that this sudden outburst caused many of those farther forwards to turn
their heads rearwards. One of these who looked around was Chet Mongamri.
Marko saw Mongamri's jaw sag and his eyes bug as he recognized Marko. Marko swung the ax high and
bounded forward. Beside Mongamri, Petronela shrieked.
Mongamri stepped out into the aisle and ran towards the stage ahead of Marko. A lean man, taller
than Marko, he could show a remarkable turn of speed. Marko pounded after, and the beadles ran
after Marko.
Mongamri leaped to the left end of the platform and started to run across it. Marko jumped up
after him. In the middle of the stage, President Vlora was still shouting directions to his
beadles and threats to his students, while Sokrati Popu continued to deliver his inaudible speech.
On the upstage part of the platform, the faculty and the distinguished guests were crouched on
their knees, holding the light chairs in front of them as shields against the rain of missiles.
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