The olz existed; why they existed seemed no concern of theirs.
Farrari had expected to find a grim, barren land. Instead they moved through pleasantly shaded, fragrant lanes, for even the deadly zrilm shrubs put forth large blossoms that hid their vicious needles under exquisite splashes of color.
There were thick zrilm hedges, taller than a durrl mounted on a gril, that completely enclosed the fields and could be passed only with portable stiles. These ramshackle constructions of pegged boards had a platform at the top from which a durrl, or his assistant, could view the work in several adjoining fields. Every harvested tuber, or basket of grain, had to be laboriously carried over one or several zrilm hedges to the waiting wagons, and at night the durrl carried away the stiles. A system of gates would have greatly lessened the ors toils, but gates would have been much more difficult to guard. The zrilm, the symbol of the ors bondage, was also the symbol of his hunger. No starving ol had ever been known to force his way through a zrilm hedge; starvation was the easier death.
Farrari saw durrlz rarely and then only at a distance, for they almost never visited an ol village. The olz, even the youngest children, went to the fields at dawn and returned at dusk. Farrari had a leisurely, tedious day, followed by a few hours of excruciating alertness at the nightfire when he prepared Liano’s food, ran errands at her bidding, restrained a feverish child while she performed a rite of health over it, looked after the narmpf, and finally, when the olz retired to their huts, he would send his daily report to field team headquarters.
After two or three nights in a village they moved on, departing in the morning without a leave-taking because the olz were already at work, and, before they left, returning to the village stores the pathetic offering of tubers and grain that had been ceremoniously presented to Liano the night of their arrival. They would reach their next stopping place by late afternoon, Farrari would clean out the hut reserved for any visiting yilesc and prepare a sleeping place for himself in the open, and they would await the return of the olz.
The nights lengthened and became colder. The last of the harvest was gathered, and the day came when most of the olz remained in the village. Jorrul thought that Farrari was not sufficiently experienced to undergo the strain of maintaining his ol identity continuously, so he ordered them out. They left the next morning and that night base sent a platform to pick them up.
“You’ve done well,” Jorrul told Farrari. “You’ve learned to act like an ol. Now we’ll have to teach you to think like one.” He added softly, “Liano seems to have done well, too. Did you find out anything?”
Farrari shook his head. They had asked him to be alert for any clue concerning the mystery of the yilescz, and since they could give him no notion of what to look for, he doubted that they seriously expected him to find it.
“Would it be all right to ask Liano to marry me?” he asked.
Jorrul frowned. “She wouldn’t. Not after what happened. Her husband was literally torn to pieces before her eyes. I’m certain she’d never take to the field again with a fellow agent who was anything more than that. It would impair your relationship if she even suspected that you wanted to marry her, so don’t mention it. You can help her most by keeping your work on a strictly impersonal basis.”
“Then tell me one thing,” Farrari said angrily. “If she has no personal interest in me, why did she choose me?”
“We’ve wondered about that,” Jorrul said. “We’re still wondering, but with things going well we’re not about to upset them by asking questions.” He changed the subject with a shrug. “I take it that you didn’t encounter any difficulties.”
“Once my muscles got resigned to my moving like an ol, I spent most of the time feeling bored.”
“That’s because you weren’t thinking like an ol.”
“How can you tell how an ol thinks?” Farrari demanded.
“We can’t,” Jorrul admitted. “The most we can do is reason from our observations. We know how an ol ought to be thinking. He has so little leisure time during the agricultural season that if he thinks at all he must envy you yours. Maybe that’s why a yilesc is never without a kewl. If she loses one she can replace him at any village, probably with the first ol she asks.”
“After what I’d been led to expect, it was almost a letdown,” Farrari said. “I saw no beatings, no starvation, and very little illness. I rarely saw a durrl, and if there was any danger I certainly didn’t notice it.”
“On your first field assignment we wouldn’t put you where there was much danger. In the outlying districts the durrlz are more humane, probably because they aren’t likely to be ambitious or they wouldn’t be there. Also, fall is the healthiest time of the year. The weather is mild, and the olz always eat well during the fall harvest. The sickly are already dead and the well will probably remain well until winter sets in. When you go back you won’t have it so easy. This is the year of the half crop, and that means… you’ll find out what it means.”
XI
It meant the spring of starvation.
In the year of the half crop, half of the arable land lay fallow. A full harvest followed, and then came another half crop while the remainder of the land was rested. It was a crude and fiendishly cruel method of preserving the land’s productiveness. Regardless of the size of the harvest, the master race took what it wanted, kept its emergency store houses filled, and enjoyed full rations. And in the year of the half crop the starving olz died by the thousand.
Farrari and Liano were scheduled to spend the winter in advanced training and return to the field at the beginning of spring; but the cold weather lingered, the rains were heavy and unrelenting, and Dr. Garnt glumly posted reports of death and sickness from IPR’s scattered ol agents and pronounced the weather the worst of any spring on record.
The coordinator sent for Farrari. He and Peter Jorrul had been reviewing the doctor’s reports, and they looked as though they were about to invite Farrari to his own funeral.
“All of this information,” Jorrul said gravely, “comes from places where our agents have been secretly fortifying the ol diet all winter. And if those natives are dying at this rate, we hate to think what’s happening elsewhere.”
“We hate to think,” Coordinator Paul added, “but we’d like to know. We’ve got to know, and we’ve got to do everything we can to help them. I’d planned to keep you here until the weather breaks, but—”
“I understand, sir,” Farrari said. “If it’s all right with Liano, I am ready to leave whenever you can arrange it.”
“Batting about in an ol loin cloth in this weather won’t be pleasant,” the coordinator said. “What are you grinning about?”
“When I started this,” Farrari said, “I had that silly notion about bringing culture to the olz.”
They had the crushing sensation of walking in the footsteps of Death. Outwardly life seemed to continue as usual. The olz who were able gathered around the nightfire, but these were transformed olz, with blanched flesh stretched tautly over sharp bones and so weak were they that four of them struggled to lift a log onto the fire. They huddled in the shallow circle of warmth for hours without uttering a sound. Now even the women were silent.