It was not that Brown Limper had not been trying. Some time since when old Jimson had complained of rheumatism, Brown Limper had kindly shown him how beneficial locoweed was to aches and pains– Parson Staffor had left a supply. Brown Limper had performed this act of humanity right after he had been startled to find old Jimson inclining toward Tyler's criminal proposals to destroy the village and move the people to some desolate mountainside and abandon them there to starve and freeze. Jimson obviously could not be trusted to govern, due of course to his aches and pains. Mercifully now he had retired to his bed and awoke when his family brought him some food. It was so gratifying to see that the old man was out of his pain and not worried and harassed by village affairs. It was, of course, a bit of a burden to take all the work on himself, but Brown Limper was patient and enduring, if a bit pious, about it.
When the Coordinators had come from the World Federation for the Unification of the Human Race, Brown Limper had thought of them as interfering busybodies at first. Then they had shown him some books.
Old Parson Staffor, before he began to chew on locoweed day and night, had taken his responsibilities seriously, both to his village and to his family. He had sought to initiate Brown Limper into the church and had brought out from hiding a secret book no one else in the village knew about called “The Bible,” and in strict privacy he had taught Brown Limper how to read. But Brown Limper had not much cared for a career as a parson, and he had thought it was better to aspire to be a mayor. A parson could only persuade, but a mayor...well now!
It was quite simple logic. There was Tyler, prancing around on his horses, ogling the girls, the young men following his lead and getting into trouble, the Council soft-headedly overlooking his criminal pursuits. And there was Brown Limper-wise, tolerant, understanding, and brilliant– overlooked and even scorned and cast aside. And hadn't Tyler's own father– if he really was Jonnie Goodboy Tyler's father-protested when Brown Limper was born clubfooted and mutated and was allowed to live. Well, maybe not just older Tyler but Brown Limper's mother used to tell him that some had protested but that she had prevailed and saved his life. She used to tell him that several times a week and Brown Limper had gotten the message: the Tylers had attempted to murder him!
So it was only sensible he should be upset and take measures to protect not only himself but the whole village as well. It would be utterly irresponsible not to do so.
These Coordinators had been delighted to find he could read and had given him some texts on “government” and one on “parliamentary procedure” called “Robert's Rules of Order.” They had astonished him by informing him that as the active and only mayor, he was the chief of the American tribe. Apparently nearly all the people in America (they had to show him where it was on the globe) had been slaughtered or died off; his was the principal tribe and, being near the minesite, the most influential group politically.
Getting right down to it, what was this Council? Well, it was the heads of tribes all over the world, and they met or sent their deputies to meet in a sort of parliament right here in his front yard, so to speak.
They mentioned that he of course should be very interested due to the fact that the Jonnie came from there. Brown Limper did not just become interested, he became obsessed!
Were there any other peoples in America? Well, there were a couple found in British Columbia and four found in the Sierra Nevadas-a mountain range to the west– and some Indians-not really from India but called that– in some mountains way to the south. There were Eskimo and Alaskan tribes but they didn't count geographically in America.
Brown Limper had been making progress. Since each Council member had one vote, he engineered the rescue of the couple in British Columbia and the four in the Sierra Nevadas (this was all humanitarian, of course) and settled them in his village as tribes and now claimed three Council votes. He was just now working on the Indian question to get a member of that tribe up here and so have four Council votes.
He hoped he was also making progress in other ways. At the Council he would casually and very truthfully drop remarks about Tyler. How the village had always considered him wild, rash, and irresponsible even though he personally had tried to correct such impressions. He mentioned how as a child Tyler was always running about playing and refused even to draw water for his family, an obligation all well-behaved, thoughtful children had. He made light of any rumor that Tyler had known about the tomb all the time and had hidden the information so that he, Tyler, could go there and rob the honorable dead: Tyler only went now and then, he said, and the parson of the village had once tried his best to correct him and had even taken some of the things the boy had stolen away from him as punishment. Tyler had eventually run away entirely and left his family and the whole village to starve for two winters. As to Tyler and Chrissie not being married, well, actually that was a village secret– the parson had found out certain things when they were children and had forbidden marriage. Not that Tyler cared much for authority– youth being what it
Was...
A lot of the older chiefs from far-off places did not know much of what was going on, and wasn't Chief Staffor the only one around who had been Tyler's own dear companion?
Just a couple of days before, Brown Limper had been argued with by some ignorant lout, a chief from the Siberian tribe, and Brown Limper had a feeling they didn't all quite believe him. So he had been morose. Didn't he know Tyler, the real Tyler? And now this disgusting spectacle of self-aggrandizement today. What a conceited oaf. Ugh! Spit! And now he had the nerve to go around pretending he couldn't walk. Just more mockery of Brown Limper.
Brown Limper had noticed that the Psychlo in the cage seemed to be on very good speaking terms with Tyler. While he did not know what they were saying, it was obvious that they were actually well known to each other. But he had detected some bit of frostiness there.
Grabbing at a straw, Brown Limper decided to look into this a bit further and returned that evening to the compound. The sentries, of course, would not dream of saying anything to a senior Council member wearing a bit of colored ribbon that denoted his tribe, and Brown Limper hung about, watching the huge Psychlo from a distance. And he saw something very curious. A young Swedish pilot trainee stood for a while outside the bars talking to him.
The sentry said yes, the cadet came quite routinely after the classes of the day; he was polishing up his Psychlo: all pilots had to be very expert on Psychlo, and the monster in that cage was a real Psychlo and there weren't many others around to talk to. No, he didn't know what they talked about for the sentry couldn't speak Psychlo, being part of the Argyll raiders on duty here, but the cadet's name, it says here in the log, is Lars Thorenson, and thank you very much chief, sir, for mentioning that sentries should have cloaks and promising to take it up with the Council.
So, using his influence, Brown Limper found in Academy records that Lars Thorenson had been a member of a Swedish tribe that emigrated, way back, to Scotland; that he had originally been chosen as a Coordinator trainee because he spoke Swedish and English and had a gift for tongues; that his father was a fascist minister and had urged the boy to use the Federation to spread the call of fascism in view of the fact that it had been the state religion of Sweden and had had some important military figure named Hitler as its head and was needed by the world; that the boy had been dropped therefore by the Federation but had reapplied due to the scarcity of manpower and been accepted as a flying cadet; that he was doing horribly in stunt flying and was right now healing up from a bad landing and was temporarily suspended and probably would be sent back to the farm in Scotland on the basis that while he might have a gift for languages he didn't seem all right in the head.