The Dark Design

Schwartz ordered a man to place her grail on the stone. The man did so quickly, glancing often at the eastern peaks. But he was safe by two minutes. At the end of that time, the sun ballooned over the top. A few seconds later, the mushroom-shape spouted blue flames over 9 meters high. The roar of its discharged electricity mingled with the thunder of every stone on both sides of The River for as far as could be seen. All these years had not inured Jill to the sight nor sound. Though expecting it, she jumped a little. The report rolled back from the reflector of the mountains, echoed again, and died out with a mutter.

Everybody had breakfast.

9

They were on a foothill. the tall esparto-like grass had been recently mown to about a centimeter and a half-length. "We have some machines that do that, though much cutting is done with sickles," David Schwartz said. "The grass is made into ropes."

"We didn't have any machines where I come from," Jill said. "We used flint sickles. But we made rope from it, of course."

It was shady and cool here. The branches of an iron tree spread out to cover a small village, a scattering of square or round huts of bamboo. Many of them were thatched with the scarlet and green leaves of the iron tree. A rope ladder dangled from the lowest branch of the colossus, 33 meters up. Near it, a hut sat on a platform supported on two branches. There were other rope ladders, other platforms and huts here and there.

"Perhaps you will be assigned one of them after your proba­tion," Schwartz said. "Meanwhile, here's your home."

Jill entered the indicated doorway. At least, she did not have to stoop in this. So many people were short and had therefore built low entrances.

She set her grail and bundles down on the floor. Schwartz followed her in. "This belonged to a couple killed by a dragonfish. It came up out of the water as if it had been fired from a ca

"It was also unfortunate that this happened after the resurrections ceased. So, they won't be appearing elsewhere, I suppose. You haven't heard anything about new lazari, have you? Recently?"

"No, I haven't," she said. "Nothing reliable, anyway."

"Why do you suppose it stopped? After all these years?"

"I don't know," she said sharply. Talking about this made her uneasy. Why had the gift of immortality been so suddenly with­drawn?

"Bloody hell with it," she said loudly. She looked around. The floor was hidden under grass that reached almost to her crotch. The blades rasped against her legs. She would have to cut the grass close to the ground and then bring in earth to cover it. Even then the blades might not die. The roots went so deep and were so interco

A steel sickle hung from a peg on the wall. Steel was so common here that this tool, priceless elsewhere, had not been stolen.

She moved around, slowly, so that the sharp edges of the grass would not cut her legs. She found two clay pots-thundermugs-in the tall green. A jar for drinking water was on a bamboo table which had not as yet been overturned by the pressure of the growing grass. A necklace of fishbones hung on another peg. Two bamboo cots and pillows and mattresses, made from magnetically locked cloths stuffed with leaves, were partially hidden by the grass. Near them lay a harp made from turtlefish shell and fish intestines.

"Well, it's not much," she said. "But then it never is, is it?" "It's big enough, though," Schwartz said. "Plenty of room for you and your mate-when you find one."

Jill took the sickle from the peg and swiped at the grass. The blades fell like so many heads. "Hah!"

Schwartz looked at her as if he wondered if she would go from the grass to him.

"Why do you assume that I want a lover?" "Why, why, why, everybody, that is, everybody does." "Everybody doesn't," she said. She hung the sickle back onto the peg. "What's next on this Cook's tour?"

She had expected that, when they were alone in the hut, he would ask her to go to bed with him. So many men did. It was evident now that he would like to ask her, but he didn't have the guts. She felt relief mixed with contempt. Then she told herself that it was a strange feeling, self-contradictory. Why should she look down on him because he behaved as she wanted him to behave?

Perhaps some disappointment was also present. When a man got too aggressive, despite her warnings, then she chopped his neck with the edge of her hand, squeezed his testicles, kicked him in the stomach while he writhed on the ground. No matter how big and strong a man, he was taken by surprise. They were all helpless, at least while the agony in the testicles lasted. Afterward... well, most of them left her alone. Some had tried to kill her, but she was ready for that. They didn't know how handy she was with a knife- or with any weapon.

David Schwartz was unaware of how narrowly he had escaped crippling and a permanent dent in his ego.

"It's quite safe to leave your belongings here. We've never had a case of theft yet."

"I'll take the grail. I'd feel nervous if I couldn't keep my eye on it."

He shrugged and took a cigar from the leather bag hanging from his shoulder. One of this morning's offerings from his grail.

"Not in here," she said quietly. "This is my home, and I don't want it stunk up."

He looked surprised, but he shrugged again. As soon as they had stepped out, however, he lit it. And he moved from her left side to upwind, puffing vigorously, blowing in her direction.

Jill repressed the remark she wanted so much to make. It would be indiscreet to offend him too much, to give him a chance to blackmark her. After all, she was on probation; she was a woman; she wouldn't needlessly antagonize a man with such a high position, a good friend of Firebrass'. But she would bend her principles, her neck, only so far.

Or would she? She had taken a lot of crap on Earth because she had wanted to be an airship officer. And smiled and gone home and smashed dishes and pottery and written dirty words on the wall. Childish, but satisfactory. And here she was, in a similar situation, undreamed of until several years ago. She couldn't go someplace else, because there wasn't any other place. Here was where the only airship in the world would be built. And that was to be a one-shot, a single-voyage phenomenon.

Schwartz stopped on top of the hill. He pointed at an avenue formed by ridgepole pines. At its end, halfway down the hill opposite, was a long shed.

"The latrine for your neighborhood," he said. "You'll dump your nightpots in it first thing every morning. The urine in one hole and the excrement in the one next to it."

He paused, smiled, and said, "Probationers are usually given the task of removing the stuff every other day. They take it up the mountain to the gunpowder factory. The excrement is fed to the powder worms. The end product of their digestion is potassium nitrate, and ..."

"I know, "she said, speaking between clamped teeth. "I'm not a dummy. Anyway, that process is used wherever sulfur is avail­able."

Schwartz teetered on his heels, happily puffing his cigar, tilted upward. If he had had suspenders, he would have snapped them.

"Most probationers put in at least a month working in the factory. It's unpleasant, but it's good discipline. It also weeds out those who aren't dedicated."

"Non carborundum illegitimatus," she said.

"What?" he said out of the side of his mouth.