Into the tar-black, melted-earth surface of the road, deep ruts had been gouged. "The garrison people drove heavy machinery along these roads deliberately to break them down," Amanda said. "It's part of their organized plan of destruction. Bleys isn't waiting for the normal effects of time, and the war with Earth, to manage his 'withering away' process for Kultis and Mara. The Exotics produce nothing he needs, and the Occupation troops he sent have all but explicit orders to keep trying to squeeze the local people until the last one's dead." "Squeeze them?" "Well, you see the road," said Amanda. "In addition to that kind of destruction, they've burned down all the country homes they didn't have a use for themselves, and made the people who had lived in them move into the nearest town or city. There, they've made them live in row house apartments they forced them to build for themselves, quickly and out of flimsy materials. Also, the town or city populace is under all sorts of rationing and restrictions. Every day the people there have to stand in line for hours for their chance to buy the barest necessities. I mean they're deliberately forced to stand in line for not enough of anything to go around, available from stores that can only be open too few hours a day to supply everyone who needs things. Then, there's a curfew at night and strict laws even about how and where you can move about in the towns during the day - that's why we're timing this little walk to get to the gates of Porphyry just a little before they close for the day, at sixteen hundred hours - not much more than midafternoon, here." "We're catching up with someone," Hal said, pointing ahead. "That's right," said Amanda. "You'll see more and more traffic as we get close to town. All the former off-planet workers here - they were mainly from St. Marie - Ste. Marie was a somewhat smaller agricultural world a little farther out from Procyon than the two planets of the Exotics. "- were shipped home, and most of the large farming areas they operated on both Mara and Kultis are deserted now, with no Exotics allowed to try and run them. The locals here can only get permits to go out of their town for about three hours a day on certain days to farm family plots of land that're too small, or too useless otherwise, to do them much good anyway. That's why we ran into that bunch last night, who were undoubtedly staying out overnight, breaking curfew so they could get some real work done on an illegal extra field, by moonlight. They just hope a surprise housecheck doesn't turn them up missing, meantime. It's part of the game to quarter the soldiers on the civilian populace, to the advantage of the soldiers and a better surveillance of the populace."
They had almost caught up now with the traveler ahead of them, who was a thin, balding man in middle age, pushing a handcart. He nodded in answer to their greeting as they passed but said nothing, evidently saving his breath for the job of maneuvering the wheels of the handcart amongst the ruts on the road - the cart being too wide for the more shady edge on which Hal and Amanda were traveling. There was nothing more than a scattering of sweet potatoes in the bottom of the cart, but the cart itself was obviously homemade, and clumsy as well as heavy. The man was streaming with sweat from pushing it in the sun. "He's taking the potatoes home to eat, or to sell?" Hal asked, once they were far enough past to be out of hearing. "Either that, or to barter with a neighbor," said Amanda. "He'd do better to put a bunch that smalI into a sack." "Against the law," said Amanda. "All produce, to be legal inside the city, must be brought in by cart, theoretically to let the gate guards inspect it for amount, which is limited, per trip, and possible plant diseases, of which there aren't any. "
They went on their way, and traffic, as Amanda had predicted, increased. All were people headed into the city, rather than away from it. A fair share of those were men or women with handcarts, like the man they had seen. Others simply carried sacks which, Hal assumed, contained something of value that was not produce. More than a few had the word DESTRUCT! marked in large letters with black paint on the front or back of their robes. "A lot of town-to-town travelers," said Hal. "No, they're local, too. Anything personal has to be brought in by the sack that's forbidden for produce - another law. The ones carrying those are townspeople who're taking advantage of the regulation that lets them use their free hours outside the city to scavenge the ruins of their old country property for anything useful inside town - not that anything really valuable will get by the gate guards. If there was, it'd be taken 'for inspection' to ensure there's nothing contraband hidden inside it. Scavengers are what we're supposed to be, you and I. I've got a fake address to give the gate guards. Theoretically, you and I have been out hunting through what's left of our old homestead." "I see," said Hal. They went on.
A sadness that seemed always to lurk inside him lately was beginning to grow once more to uncomfortable strength, as it had when he had stood in his quarters at the Encyclopedia, surrounded by the image of the estate as it had been at that moment down on Old Earth.
Now, sister birch, white-armed...
Essentially, the ruined buildings, the destroyed and harassed people she pointed out to him, were his doing. Doubly his doing, for it was his going back in spirit to animate the body of Paul Formain in the twentieth century that had helped lead to this. If he had not done that, there would not have been the splitting apart of the investigative animal instinct in every human, one part to adventure and grow, one to hold back, to stay safe and unchanged. He had set humanity free, for this.
He had done it only so that the inner conflict could become an outer one. So that the two conflicting urges could choose up adherents of individual humans and resolve the eons-old argument in an open conflict - from which would come what he had then been sure would be an inevitable victory for the part of humanity that wanted to grow.
But he had underestimated, even then, the complexity and strength in the balance of historic forces, the interweaving of every interaction between every human. That interweaving sought stability, and to get that stability, it had responded to his efforts by giving birth to those maverick, talented individuals who called themselves the Others, and whom none of the three great Splinter Cultures could conquer or control. Not the Exotics who had grown from the original Chantry Guild of Formain's time, nor the Friendlies, who had grown from the pure insectarian fanaticisms of Old Earth into the populations of two worlds which had produced true faith-holders like Rukh, nor yet the Dorsai, who had evolved from brutal soldiers-for-hire to a people who placed independence, honor and duty above all other things.
The Others had come, and utterly conquered, in effect, all the Younger Worlds except those of the Dorsai, Friendlies and Exotics. So these last, they had done their best to ruin. And he, Hal Mayne, who had been born the Dorsai Donal Graeme, had compounded the damage he had done as Paul Formain, by leaving the remaining populations of those Splinter Cultures helpless before the Others, while he withdrew the best that each of the three Cultures had to the defense of Old Earth. An Old Earth that was only now just beginning to appreciate what had been done for it.
And to what end? All this sacrifice had been made so that he, himself, should be free to find what no one else had ever been able to find before - a magic, hidden universe that would at once confound the Others and open a new stage of evolution for the human race. It had been a vain sacrifice. In the end, he had failed everyone else, after they had given the best of what they had, only to provide him with the chance. Worst of all...
The pain mounted in him. It was the deep hurt now inside him that was the personal retribution the historic forces had brought upon him for the damage he had done, and he had not even let himself recognize it untiI last night, when he had taken a blow on the head no adult combat-trained Dorsai would have taken, through his own ineptitude....