First Cycle Part 2

Talito watched and listened curiously as this dialogue went on. It was rewarding to listen to such craftsmen as they went about solving problems. It was a pleasure to hear competent people display their competence. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. "Thebalance would be a serious problem. But now you've thought of it and solved it all in the s.p.a.ce of time it takes a sorth to run ten lance-lengths. That is exactly what I'd like: a long iron knife counterweighted with a copper weight at the handle-end."

"We shall go to work on it right after the storm," the elder said. "We'll do a model in wood first, and weight it with lead to get the right balance. That way we can see how the shape should be for the best handling. And we'll find you a nice smooth white skin to make the world-picture on."

Talito dug into his pack and pulled out a big jar. "Here's something else I have," he said, taking the leather cover off. "Look at this."

He took out a pinch of white powder and mixed it carefully with about an equal amount of charcoal-dust. Then he sc.r.a.ped a flint along the roughened flat of his dagger to strike a spark. The mixture caught the spark about the third or fourth time he did it, and it sputtered, and then burned with a sputtery, smoky flame for four or five seconds.

"What do you think of that?" he asked.

"Will the flame catch dried gra.s.s?" a townsman asked.

"It will."

"Amazing! Tinder that blows itself on. Talito, where did you find such stuff?"

Talito pointed with his dagger to the map. "Down here on the Big Arrowwood River.

It's found on the walls of caves. Do you want some?"

Chwalvo picked up a hammer from beside a small anvil. "Here, Talito, give us the weight of this, and we'll give you ten weights in worked steel: arrowheads, spear-heads, knife-blades, whatever you think you can use," he said. "This will be something to show people!"

"Well, don't eat any of it," Talito advised. "The Gobbilene Gang, who sc.r.a.pe this stuff off the cave walls and trade it, claim that if you eat it the girls will be disappointed in you for a while."

The girl beside Talito snuggled closer. "You haven't been eating any of it, have you, Wanderer?" she asked.

So the sword and the alphabet came to Hetaira, too. Talito's reminding-marks became ideographs; from them developed phonetic symbols. Talito's rolled skins were sc.r.a.ped down to parchments and vellums. Vegetable pulp was mashed up and spread on frames of finely-woven cloth for paper, and a variety of pens and inks were devised. And Talito's sword changed as it journeyed across Hetaira; the simple cross hilt became an elaborate basket-guard to protect the hand; and the blade a.s.sumed many different forms in different places, as the use of it and the method of handling it evolved. And then somebody added powdered sulfur to Talito's saltpeter and charcoal, and the sword became obsolete.

Chapter Six

The Bronze Age came more slowly to the Uplands of Thala.s.sa, and to the veldt beyond the High Ridge. Forests gave way to fields; flocks and herds increased. Houses of adobe and kiln-hardened brick replaced log huts, behind walls of mud and stone. The nomads came in through the gaps of the High Ridge, driving herds of cattle and riding stock and pack animals to trade for tools and weapons of bronze, or slipped in small bands into the Navvadrov country to raid. They found deposits of copper and tin in the mountains of the second range, beyond the plains, and raiders brought back kidnapped Navvadrov miners and smiths, and in the process discovered and inst.i.tutionalized slavery.

The Upland villages became towns and small cities, and the Upland tribes grew, slowly and without planning, into nations. As the nomad raids increased, permanent war- chiefs were appointed in each area, and patrols of warriors drawn from levies among the tribes. After a while the warriors were permanent also, supported by taxes paid to the war-chiefs. And so the war-chiefs became kings, and the warriors became a feudal n.o.bility, each given a small area to live in and off of. These new kings quarreled bitterly with each other. Mud-walled towns were besieged, defended, taken, and retaken. The farmers sank into peasantry and, in some areas, to serfdom. The nomad raiders, growing more numerous, and thus stronger and more impudent, raided deeper and longer into the Upland while the kings and n.o.bles fought among themselves.

Beyond the High Ridge, the nomad bands and tribes were combining, forming alliances and confederations. It remained for Krushpan the Shebb to unite them all under his leadership. He skillfully played tribe loyalty against tribe loyalty, and promises of loot from the Uplands, and position in his new federation of tribes, to get all the tribal sheiks to agree to come together under his supreme leadership. When he had a.s.sembled an army of twenty thousand, he led them through the pa.s.ses of the High Ridge.

The moment was propitious. The army of Liapur had just taken, and was sacking, the town of Prehipur. Falling upon Liapur in the absence of its prince and its army, Krushpan's nomads looted it and enslaved its people. Then, rushing ahead of the news, his hard-riding warriors fell upon the victorious army of Liapur while it was still within the walls of Prehipur and still occupied with executing the last of Prehipur's defenders.

Krushpan captured both the city of Prehipur and the army of Liapur without a struggle, his surprise was so complete, and annihilated both.

In the three years that followed, the nomads made themselves masters of the Uplands on both sides of the Gvaru. Amarush, the now long-neglected outpost of the Sea Empire, fell with the rest.

The extinction of this foothold in the Uplands pa.s.sed almost unnoticed by the people of the coast, whose eyes had long ago turned from the hinterland of Gvarda to the new lands across the sea. For the past century their colonies had been springing up everywhere-on Zabash, and Dudak, and Nimsh, and Vashtur. There was gold and silver on Zabash, and grain and wine-fruits. There was tin on Vashtur, and an animal with great teeth of ivory. There were oil-nuts on Nimsh, and copper, and in the mountains a reddish rock from which a new metal, gray and hard, was being smelted. And on Dudak werenatives who made good slaves and were sold in herds in the markets of every city of the Empire.

The parent cities on Gvarda prospered. Their streets were paved with stone, and through them pa.s.sed carts of merchandise, and gold-flashing chariots, and inlaid litters borne by slaves. The goods of every land piled the docks and crammed the warehouses.

Merchants and n.o.bles took their ease in the tapestried rooms of marble palaces, sipping the wines of Zabash and the fiery drink that the Dudak colony had learned to pot-still from the native beer. Music tinkled as harem beauties danced. Scholars in white robes sat surrounded by their disciples; statesmen met in council, and lords feasted. It was a good time; the sun of the Empire stood high.

The bright day ended with a thunderclap when twelve ships of Novzol came foaming into Trashol harbor, oars stroking to the double-beat of hortators' drums, and brought the news that Novzol had fallen to an invasion of the barbarians of the Uplands. Panic raced through the streets of Trashol. Whips cracked as slaves toiled to raise earthworks.

Merchants and scribes and artisans who had never shouldered a spear or c.o.c.ked a crossbow in their lives jostled into ill-formed ranks under cursing decarians of the small professional army. Altars smoked with sacrifices in the temples of Dindash.

It was Gvazol itself, however, which fell next, before a boat-borne army from Amarush. There were soldiers in Gvazol who could fight skillfully, and citizens who fought bravely. The Emperor, Ghrazhad IX, died at the head of his troops; the High Priest of Dindash was cut down before his altar. At the last, there was a frenzied stampede to board the ships in the harbor. Some of them got away, but many were capsized in the panic of the crazed fugitives. Between one hot season and the next, all the coastal cities of Gvarda were in barbarian hands. The Uplanders looted and burned them, hauled off their riches, drove the people before them in slave-yokes, and returned to the Uplands.

Ships, escaping from each coastal city as it fell, brought a continuing rain of bad news to the orphaned colonies. Although the Empire, by any practical standard, was still great, this blow produced a wound that would be centuries healing and would never be forgotten. For the first time in Thala.s.sa's history, a fixed system of time-reckon ing was established by mutual consent, and a standard chronology emerged from the jumble of dates marking the reigns of kings. This was henceforth known as the Year One of the Downfall.

Vashtur had been colonized and was ruled by the hierarchy of Dindash; before the end of the Year One, the theocracy was split by sectarian schisms. On Dudak, the coast tribes who had been raiding the interior for captives to sell to the slavers, turned on their former customers. There were slave insurrections in the iron mines of Nimsh; escaped slaves, taking to the hills, taught the art of iron working to the local savages, and after a while these hill tribes, armed with weapons every bit as good as the colonists', became a serious threat to the peace. And everywhere spread, as though from some malevolent cloud, misfortune, poverty, and lethargic despair.

After the conquest by Krushpan I, who had been born Krushpan the Shebb, and died Krushpan the Despoiler, the new masters of the Uplands had gradually forsaken their nomadic life, taking the towns and farmlands for their own. To the serfs and peasants, the conquest was merely an exchange of one tyrant for another. Krushpan's son, Tarask I, was a nomad sheik in a stone tent that could not be moved. His son, Krushpan II, was a king, with a brawling, disorderly n.o.bility and a slave-holding aristocracy imposed on astill-alien population. There were intrigues and feuds. When Krushpan IV embarked upon the conquest of the coastal cities, it was less for the spoils than to divert his n.o.bles from cutting each others throats and plot ting to cut his. The new prosperity which came from this grandiose brigand-raid kept the Uplands quiet through the rest of his reign and through the reign of his son, Krushpan V. Then the fratricidal bickering began again.

Within a century the Upland Empire split along the line of the Gvaru River. Rapidly, even before war could break out between the two halves, both were convulsed by internal strife, and cracked into fractional kingdoms. Rowdy bands of n.o.bles and their mercenaries burned, looted, and harried each others' lands and towns. The nomads from beyond the High Ridge-descendants of the stay-at-home cousins of Krushpan the Shebb-began raiding again. The mercenary companies, unpaid, deserted and pillaged the estates of their former employers until there was nothing left to take. Gradually peace-the peace of universal poverty and ignorance and apathy-came to the Uplands.

Slowly, the overseas colonies of the vanished Sea Empire dragged themselves up out of their dejection and began to re-build and look outward. The slave-trade from Dudak was revitalized, and ships began plying among all the new states that had risen out of the debris of the Empire. With the renewal of commerce, piracy spread, and cities that had begun to trade with one another built war-fleets to protect their commerce.

In the year 783 of the Downfall, a ship from Tullon, on Nimsh, nosed into the silted harbor of Gvazol and found a berth beside an ancient wharf. She was one of a new cla.s.s of men-of-war; probably the finest ships on the Central Sea. She had two banks of oars, and three masts with square-rigged sails, and could be sailed with reasonable confidence through the roughest weather. She had two decks, and a cargo hold below the oar- benches, and enclosed fore- and stern-castles. She had a sharp bronze ramming-prow, which was more for show than utility, and carried two big mangonels and a dozen deck- mounted catapults, constructed like giant crossbows.

Her captain went ash.o.r.e, with his first officer and a scribe and a priest, followed by fifty sailors in steel caps and quilted jackets sewn with steel plates, who carried spears, crossbows, and short swords. They clanked through empty streets, between the ruined piles of great palaces; they came across broad squares filled with brush and tumbled statues; they stood among the vast ruins of the Temple of Dindash and looked up at the mutilated idol.

"What G.o.d did these people worship, Norgon?" the captain asked the priest.

"Probably the same one we do, under some other name, Zethron," the priest replied.

"But whatever name it was is long forgotten. The G.o.ds have had so many names since the Empire fell. But under whatever name, the G.o.ds are still the G.o.ds."

So they made a fire on the tumbled altar and burned incense, and spilled wine, as one gives disguised alms to some impoverished n.o.bleman, and went out.

Around Gvazol they found a wretched peasantry, huddled in mud huts or camped in ruined castles, scratching the ground with stone hoes. They had been citizens of the Empire once, and then slaves of the Uplanders, and now they owned themselves and their families, and some almost-useless stone tools, and nothing else. Going up river, the Tullonians found, at the mouth of a large tributary, a great mound of earth, with bits of rubble breaking through here and there, and more starving peasants. They did not know that they were looking at their world's first city, the capital in which had ruled their world's first king.Returning to Tullon, Captain Zethron reported that he had found Gvarda worthless for conquest, colonization, or trade. The Council of Twelve accepted the report, but ignored the conclusion. There was much arable land, much grazing land, and a weak and docile population. Three years later, a fleet of twenty ships was fitted out, and the conquest of Gvarda was begun.

The Year 953 of the Downfall became the Year One of the Tullonian Empire. In that year, a fleet of six hundred ships, built in Tullonian and Tullonian-satellite yards, and carrying fifty thousand Tullonian and Gvardan soldiers, officered by Tullonian n.o.bles, descended upon the coast of Zabash. Unlike the hordes of Krushpan I and Krushpan IV, they did not loot and burn and ma.s.sacre indiscriminately. They seized the temples and treasure-houses; they put to death the Zabashan princes and installed puppets under Tullonian Viceroys; they levied taxes and imposed tributes, and conscripted soldiers.

The city-states of Vashtur and Dudak were frightened; amba.s.sadors were exchanged and an alliance was formed. War flamed around the Central Sea; fleets of sailing-galleys smashed into one another, hurling missiles and fireb.a.l.l.s. Vashtur and Dudak made peace with the Empire, broke it, and went to war again. Vashtur was conquered; an army from Dudak invaded Gvarda.

By the fifth century of the Empire, the breakup had begun. In spite of the furious wars of the first and second centuries, the population had more than doubled. The Empire had engulfed three island-continents beside Nimsh, two of them rather large, and yet the sailing-galley and the wagon-train were still the best and most reliable means of transportation. The Empire, unable to police or protect or supply the area over which it had spread, simply began to come apart.

There was another Dudakan invasion of Gvarda; the provinces north of the Gvaru revolted and welcomed the invaders. At Tullon, an adventurer named Sarthon organized a conspiracy which resulted in the ma.s.sacre of the Council of Twelve and his own seizure of power as dictator. Immediately Zabash rebelled and set up a Council of Twelve of its own as the true authority of the Empire. All Gvarda revolted a year later, and Gvarda and Dudak began a furious undeclared war against Zabash.

By the year of the Tullonian Empire 684, the second empire was as moribund as the first.

The Year 684 in the reckoning of the Tullonian Empire would henceforth, over a large part of the inhabited globe, be counted as the Year One of The Books of Tisse".

Tiss6 was a shoemaker at Urava, on the continent of Dudak. He was frequently in trouble with the police, and his shop was a known gathering place of the politically and socially disaffected. In addition, he was a violent dissenter from the locally established religion, and railed against the G.o.ds of Dudak and their priests, and against all polytheism and idolatry. There was but one G.o.d, Vran. Vran, and only Vran, had real existence, and all else existed only in the mind of Vran; in the memory of Vran the dead lived perpetually. One of Tisse's cronies was an unfrocked priest of Dudak. It is supposed that he contributed a great deal to this new religion. This ex-priest, Puzza, did the actual writing of The Books, taking them down as Tisse dictated, sitting on one end of the cobbler's bench while Tisse worked at the other, with a pot of beer between them.

Subsequent scholars claimed to be able to judge how nearly empty the pot was at the writing of any pa.s.sage.Although Puzza later re-wrote The Books almost completely, they remained an ill- organized ma.s.s of moral preachments and mystical balderdash, written on so high an order of abstraction as to say all things to anyone who sought within their pages for Higher Enlightenment, and very little to anyone seeking logic, order, or common sense.

Heretofore, religious bigotry had been one evil from which Thala.s.sa had been spared.

Tisseism, with its doctrine of the one and only G.o.d, the true G.o.d, ended the old religious indifferentism and comparative tolerance. Any G.o.d but Vran was but a false idol; and therefore, any other worship was sinful, and imperiled the soul, not only of the idolater but of all those around him. Thus, persecution of the infidel became a religious duty.

In the beginning, the religion of Tisse marked a definite break with the old traditions; men's minds were wrenched from accustomed ruts and forced into new channels. There was, during the first four centuries of the Tissean Era, a burst of invention and progress.

Water and wind power were harnessed; a water-turbine was invented, and mountain streams were dammed to furnish the pressure to operate it. On Zabash, a crude steam turbine was invented.

Savagely persecuted at first, the followers of Tisse and his successor, Puzza, involved themselves in politics out of self-defense. They entered into conspiracies to overthrow local governments. Where they failed, they were put to death in savagely spectacular fashion; where they succeeded, they were a powerful faction in the new government, if they did not control it outright. In some countries the worship of Vran was declared the only acceptable religion by the state.

These centuries were crowded with violence and tumult. Civil wars blazed; mobs howled in the streets and crossbow-bolts sleeted down on them; daggers were reddened in palace coups; partisan feuds smoldered and flamed. Kings were overthrown by dictators, dictators were toppled by popular revolt; democracies hardened into dictatorships or disintegrated into anarchy. And in every pot of violence that bubbled around the Central Sea, the religion of Tisse" was always an ingredient.

Four centuries later, the social system solidified again. With the exception of heretical splinter sects, the Creed of Puzza was the universal form of Tisseism. Its priests turned ever sterner faces upon innovation; they themselves had become the conservators of tradition. The bourgeoisie who had come into secular power during the previous four hundred years had become no less reactionary. Powerful guilds had sprung up in all the mercantile cities around the Central Sea; having gained wealth by the skills and inventiveness of their fathers, they were loath to encourage any sort of innovation which might threaten their own status. Technical improvements were suppressed or shrouded in guild secrecy. The great slave-holding n.o.bles saw the new machinery as replacing the slave-labor in which their wealth was invested. For another seven centuries the city-states and kingdoms, which were the remnants of the old Tullonian Empire, lived in the glotfm of stultifying rigidity in social conditions, actions, and thought. New ideas were ruthlessly suppressed, and the only change was in the names of the overlords.

Then, in the year 1275 of The Books of Tisse, another book was published on Dudak-and it was called The Confessions of Zaithu.

Chapter Seven

The little villages of the craftsmen-gangs around Hetaira's Central Peaks were visited regularly by the wagons and pack trains of traders, and by the occasional lone wanderer.

The traders adopted the custom of establishing permanent base-camps at which they could store goods, and these in time grew into market towns. The wanderers had their rendezvous places too, where they met and exchanged news, and left messages for one another. At first such places were caves or other natural shelters, or merely stone cairns in which messages could be left. Occasionally a wanderer, crippled or immobilized by age, would make his home by one of these rendezvous-points in order to keep in touch with his life-long friends, and perhaps perform a useful service for them. The wanderers, glad of a warm place to stay, and a secure depository for their messages, and perhaps even some of their goods, happily supported these way-stations.

It became customary in many gangs for a few of their youngsters to wander for a time, meeting new people and learning new things. It was soon discovered that more could be learned by the young people going to the nearest of the wanderers' rendezvous, to stay with the resident and meet the lifelong wanderers pa.s.sing through. The youths would pay for their keep by hunting, and farming, and doing housekeeping ch.o.r.es. Soon every young Hetairan of the Central Mountain country was spending at least the time between two hot-seasons at some rendezvous. The rendezvous grew, some of them arranging with wanderers to visit at periodic intervals especially to teach. These places became libraries, museums, inst.i.tutes of technology, and eventually universities. It was at one of them that a steam-engine for propelling barges on the lakes was invented; at another, firearms were developed.

Civilization spread more slowly on the plains between the mountains and the Horizon Zone. The nomadic herders became settled ranchers, trading livestock and hides for manufactured goods through the wagon-traders. Unsuccessful ranching gangs became bandits and cattle-rustlers; the plains country was full of violent crime, and violent justice.

The Horizon Zone developed a culture similar in pattern to that of the Central Mountains, although always a few score years behind. Communities were isolated, dispersed in a narrow ribbon forty thousand kilometers around the planet. There were wanderers and wanderers' rendezvous there, too; but news travelled more slowly and less certainly.

In the Outer Hemisphere there were more nomads; the mountains and uplands were thinly peopled by gangs of hunters and farmers, and a few gangs roved around the sh.o.r.es of the Central Sea.

When the Central Mountain people of the Inner Hemisphere were working steel, the Horizon Zone had barely progressed to the use of metals, and the whole Outer Hemisphere was still Paleolithic. When the Central Mountain country had the musket in common use, and was investigating the advantages of rifling the barrels, the bow was still widely used in the Horizon Zone. As for the people of the Outer Hemisphere, it was not until the railroads were extended into their country that they emerged from the Bronze and Early Iron Age.The first railroad was the Red Lake To Sulfur River; it was seven hundred and twenty kilometers in length, single-track. Its rolling stock consisted of two wood-burning locomotives and about forty cars. There was a daily train in each direction; cannon were fired as they pa.s.sed signal-points, to warn the oncoming train to back to the nearest switch-out.

There had been no system of historical reckoning on Hetaira until then, and no need for any; but the gang that built the Red Lake To Sulfur River realized that now some method of accounting for the pa.s.sage of time, both sleeping-period to sleeping-period and season to season, would be needed. And so, with proper pomp and ceremony, when the first train left the steamboat landing at Nardavo's Town for the headwaters of the river, they proclaimed the Year One of the Railroad. [As nearly as can be determined, this corresponded with the year 2264 of the vanished Tullonian Empire, or the year 1522 of The Books of Tisse.]

Standing at the foot of the gangplank with the other pa.s.sengers who had disembarked at Nardavo's Town, Dwallo Dammando looked around the wharf curiously, examining the piles of cargo waiting to be loaded for the return trip across Red Lake. Bagged grain, and kegs of spirits; bales of furs from the mountains; barrels of refined sulfur; bales of cloth; bar iron and steel; crates of straw-packed gla.s.sware. No wonder the wagon-train gangs were cursing the Bollardo Gang and their railroad.

The luggage-wagon, drawn by a pair of toulths, came down the ramp; along with the fifty-odd other pa.s.sengers, he fell in behind it. The driver was one of the Brancanno Gang, who ran the steamboat, but he couldn't be expected to know the ownership or look after the safety of every box and bag and bed-roll on the wagon. It was a good idea to keep a close watch on your own belongings.

"I'm going to the market first," the driver told them. "Wagons there for Sweet.w.a.ter, across the isthmus, and up Crooked River. If you're taking the railroad, leave your things on the wagon; I'll take them to the platform next. Train leaves in about an hour."

The market was an open square, surrounded by buildings of stone and brick and plank.

A few were old, most of them were new, and several were still being built. There were warehouses, and a tavern, and trading markets with open fronts and plank marquees which could be lowered on chains during the rains. Fifteen or twenty big transport wagons, with double-rows of pa.s.senger-seats atop their cargo bays, stood in the middle; some seemed to have arrived only recently, for their freight was piled beside them, and the traders were d.i.c.kering over it. One wagon had attracted a number of d.i.c.kerers; its load consisted of square wooden boxes, all painted with the glyph of the Sambro Gang, and lettered, in phonetic alphabet, Rifle Number 2, Rifle Number 3, Revolving- chambered Handgun Number 3.

"No, we won't take grain," one of the wagon gang was saying, as Dwallo came within hearing. "By the time we got to Sweet.w.a.ter, the toulths would have the whole load eaten.

Besides, one case of cartridges is worth a whole bin-load of grain."

"Well, will you take an order on the Yavanno Gang for twenty loads of grain for twenty cases of cartridges?" one of the local merchants asked. "You can trade that for anything you want, either here at Nardavo's, or at Sweet.w.a.ter."

"Three barrels of brandy for two cases of Rifle Number Three!" another merchant shouted.The baggage-wagon rolled past and stopped. Men and women from different transport gangs detached themselves from their wagons and ran over, shouting: "Raldarro Gang for Sweet.w.a.ter!"

"Luilloro Gang, up Crooked River; what'll you trade for a ride?"

"For Sweet.w.a.ter, Kalvanno Gang. Padded seats and good springs on the wagon!

Leaving in an hour!"

The steamboat pa.s.sengers who were taking wagons began to pull their bags and bedrolls out of the pile on the wagon. Dwallo, watching the rectangular leather-covered case and the bed-roll with his name painted on them, did not notice the shabby little fellow in the sorth-skin trunks and tattered canvas vest dart away. Suddenly, from the other side of the wagon, a voice shouted: "Drop that bag, you thieving rogue! I'll drop you with it!"

As the fellow broke into a run, Dwallo noticed him, and saw that his third piece of luggage, the shoulder-bag that contained his trading items, was in the thief's hand. He grabbed for the heavy revolver at his hip, but before he could draw it, a rifle cracked, and the thief leaped into the air and fell dead. As he went around the tail of the wagon, another man appeared from the far side, a heavy rifle smoking in his hands. They both reached the body at the same time.

"A good shot, my friend," Dwallo said. "My thanks." He stooped and retrieved the bag. "I should have kept hold of this in the first place."

The stranger, a man in white hoomi-leather trousers and vest, worked the lever on his rifle, picked up the empty cartridge and pocketed it, and smiled. "For nothing, your thanks. You would have shot anyone you saw stealing my belongings. Anybody would.

See a thief and fail to shoot him, and you only encourage the breed."

"Nevertheless, my thanks for it," Dwallo said. "And my hand. Dwallo Dammando," he introduced himself.

"Koshtro Evarro," the other said. "You're going on the railroad? So am I."

They fell into step, following the wagon to the railroad platform. An old man who walked with a limp, and a slender, rather tall girl came over while the luggage was being unloaded. Both wore canvas coveralls to keep their fur clean, and carried revolvers on their hips.

"It's all right to leave your stuff here," the limping man said. "The Bollardo Gang's responsible for it until you leave the train."

The girl took their destinations and chalked them on the luggage, then she led the pa.s.sengers over to a table and sat down.

"Four prime toulth-hides for the trip to Nandrovvo's for the two of us?" a man asked.

When the girl agreed, he showed her a warehouse receipt, and wrote out an order on a local brokerage and storage gang. Another pa.s.senger produced a jug of brandy; the girl uncorked it, smelled it, and accepted it for pa.s.sage. Dwallo pulled a book out of his shoulder-bag and handed it to her.

"How about this, for a trip to Vallado's Village?" he asked.

"Oh, that's too much," she protested, "we're not robbers!" Then she looked at the t.i.tle- page. "I thought I recognized your name when I saw it on your things. You can ride with us for nothing; we're all proud of the book your gang printed about our railroad."

"No, take the book," Dwallo insisted. "I don't think you have it; we just printed it."She looked at it again. "The New Steam Engine Which Re-condenses Water More Efficiently, Designed by Johas Mandorgo at Needle Rock Rendezvous, as Described by the Designer," she read. "No, I've never heard of it. Thank you, Dwallo."

"And here; here's a list of the new books our gang has printed this past season,"

Dwallo added. "Take it and show it to your gang. Maybe you'll want to order some of them."