“I know,” Davison said. “But I’d still like to have the morning free. I need to think some things out.”
“Got troubles, eh?” Rinehart said sympathetically. He shrugged. “Okay, Ry. I’m no slave-driver. Take the morning off, if you want. You can make up the time on Sunday.”
“Fair enough,” Davison said.
The heat was just beginning as he trudged away from the Rinehart farm and down to the muddy swimming-hole at the far end of their land. He skirted it and headed on into the thick forest that separated their land from that of wealthy Lord Gabrielson.
He struck out into the forest, which was delightfully cool. Thick-boled, redleaved trees stood arrayed in a closely-packed stand of what looked like virgin timber; the soil was dark and fertile looking, and a profusion of wild vegetation spread heavily over the ground. Above, there was the chittering of colorful birds, and occasionally a curious bat-winged creature fluttered from branch to branch of the giant trees.
He knew why he was on Mondarran IV: to learn moderation. To learn to handle his power. That much was clear. But how was he going to survive?
The religious setup here was one of jealous orthodoxy, it seemed, and the moral code made no allowance for any deviatory abilities. Psi meant witchcraft—a common equation, apparently, on these backwater psiless worlds. The farmers here had little contact with the more sophisticated planets from which they had sprung, ten or twenty centuries before, and somehow they had reached a point of cultural equilibrium that left no room for psi.
That meant Davison would have to suppress his power. Only—he couldn’t suppress it. Five days of watchful self-control and he was half out of his mind from the strain. And what if he ran into a position where he had to use his psi or be killed? Suppose that tree over there were to fall directly on him; he could push it away, but what would that avail if someone were watching—someone who would cry “Witch!”
Yet men had come to Mondarran IV and returned, and survived. That meant they had found the way. Davison threaded further on into the forest, trying to arrange his thoughts coherently.
The forest, he thought, was a pleasant place, not at all like the fly-bitten farmland beyond. The curtain of trees effectively screened out the searching beams of the sun, and down at shrub-level it was a cool, sweet-smelling, silent world.
He glanced up ahead. A winding river trickled softly through the trees. And, it seemed to him, up ahead a blue curl of smoke rose up over the bushes. Was someone using a fire there?
Cautiously, he tiptoed forward, cursing every time his foot cracked a twig. After a few tense moments, he rounded a bend in the path and discovered where the fire was coming from.
Squatting at the edge of the river, holding a pan in one hand, was Dumb Joe—the beggar he had encountered on the road from the spaceport. The beggar was still clad in his tattered leather outfit, and he seemed to be roasting a couple of fish over a small fire.
Grinning in relief, Davison came closer. And then the grin vanished, and he stood in open-jawed astonishment.
Dumb Joe was roasting fish, all right. But there wasn’t any fire—except for the radiation that seemed to be streaming from his fingertips.
Dumb Joe was a pyrotic.
Davison hung in midstride, frozen in amazement. Dumb Joe, a filthy, ignorant half-imbecile of a beggar, was casually squatting in the seclusion of the forest, psionically cooking a couple of fish for breakfast. A little further up the bank, Davison saw a rudely-constructed shack which was evidently Dumb Joe’s home.
The answer to the whole thing flooded through his mind instantly. It made perfect sense.
It was impossible to live in Mondarran society with a psi power and survive the full five years. It was too hard to keep from unintentional uses of power, and the strains attendant on the whole enterprise were too great for most men to stand.
But one could live alongside society—as a wandering hobo, perhaps, frying fish in the forest—and no one would notice, no one would be on hand to see your occasional practice of psi. No one would suspect a flea-ridden tramp of being a witch. Of course not!
Davison took another step forward, and started to say something to Dumb Joe. But Dumb Joe looked up at the sound of the footstep. He spotted Davison standing some twenty feet away, glared angrily at him, and let the pan of fish drop to the ground. Reaching down to his hip, he whipped out a mirror-surfaced hunting knife, and without the slightest hesitation sent it whistling straight at Davison.
In the brief flashing instant after the knife left Dumb Joe’s hand, a thought tore through Davison’s mind. Dumb Joe would have to be an Earthman like himself, serving his five-year stay out on Mondarran. And therefore it wasn’t necessary to hide his own psi power from him, wasn’t necessary to let the blade strike—
Davison whisked the knife aside and let it plant itself to the hilt in the soft earth near his foot. He stooped, picked it up, and glanced at Dumb Joe.
“You—teeked it away,” the beggar said, almost incredulously. “You’re not a spy!”
Davison smiled. “No. I’m a tk. And you’re a pyrotic!”
A slow grin crept over Dumb Joe’s stubblebearded face. He crossed the ground to where Davison was standing, and seized his hand. “You’re an Earthman. A real Earthman,” he said exultantly, in a half whisper.
Davison nodded. “You too?”
“Yes,” Dumb Joe said. “I’ve been here three years, and you’re the first I’ve dared speak to. All the others I’ve seen have been burned.”
“All of them?” Davison asked.
“I didn’t mean that,” Dumb Joe said. “Actually hardly any get burned. The Guild doesn’t lose as many men as you might think. But the ones I’ve known about got roasted. I didn’t dare approach those I wasn’t sure about. You’re the first—and you saw me first. I shouldn’t have been so careless, but no one ever comes out this way but me.
“Or another crazy Earthman,” Davison said.
He didn’t dare to spend much time with Dumb Joe—whose real name, he discovered, was Joseph Flanagan, formerly of Earth.
In their hurried conversation in the forest, Flanagan explained the whole thing to him. It was a perfectly logical development. Apparently a great many of the Earthmen sent to such planets adopted the guise of a tramp, and moved with shambling gait and rolling eyes from one village to another, never staying anywhere too long, never tipping their hands as to the power they possessed.
They could always slip off to the forest and use their power privately, to relieve the strain of abstinence. It didn’t matter. No one was watching them; no one expected them to be witches. It was perfect camouflage.
“We’d better go,” Flanagan said. “It isn’t safe, even this way. And I want to last out my remaining two years. Lord, it’ll be good to take baths again regularly!”
Davison grinned. “You’ve really got it figured,” he said.
“It’s the simplest way,” said Flanagan. “You can’t bat your head against the wall forever. I tried living in the village, the way you’re doing. I almost cracked inside a month, maybe less. You can’t come down to their level and hope to survive; you’ve got to get below their level, where they don’t expect to find witches. Then they’ll leave you alone.”
Davison nodded in agreement. “That makes sense.”
“I’ll have to go now,” said Flanagan. He allowed his muscles to relax, adopted the crooked gait and the character of Dumb Joe again, and without saying goodbye began to straggle off further into the forest. Davison stood there for a while, watching him go, and then turned and started back the way he came.
He had an answer now, he thought.