| Chapter 10 |
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Yes, it is rather sad, I agree...
Margaret was very impressed with my glasses. She had felt for some time that she probably needed some herself for reading, and the fact that there was an orc in MEKTO who could produce ones that would fit a human face was encouraging. I told her that she'd be better off buying them mail order, unless she wanted a nice suntan on her retina and half her eyebrow ripped off a few days later, but, as I've mentioned before, she's one of life's great optimists; I guess she just needs something new to be optimistic about once in a while.
Mike was interested to hear how I'd got on with my quest to find out more about the HA, and was genuinely excited by my results. The fact that the HA had been enslaved largely due to the scheming ways of their fellow orcs was unknown to him; as a military man, he was especially impressed by the manner in which the HA had performed a cover-up of the facts so successfully upon their return to Wilsonia.
"It's probably not as difficult as you might think," I told him. "After all, with no written records to destroy they only had to ensure that everyone held the line verbally. Once one generation had been told a false past, that was that."
"I suppose you could be right; in fact, you probably are right. My first tour of duty was out in the wilds of New Anglia, and we had a tribe of orcs out there who entrusted all their history to a family of storytellers. If those guys had all been caught in a rock fall, that would have knocked a huge hole in their records."
"That's what I meant," I confirmed. "Many peoples on Earth have traditions of oral history, too. Where's New Anglia, by the way?"
"Roughly speaking, it's where England would be on Earth if New Dulwich were where Earth's Virginia is."
"Er, right. These orcs certainly get around..."
"As you noticed. Just as a matter of interest, how did you think that orcs had come to be so widespread before I put to you that slavery hypothesis?"
"I hadn't really thought about it," I confessed.
"But surely you had something in the back of your mind; otherwise you wouldn't have brought the subject up when you were playing with my globe."
"Well, I did formulate one or two ideas when I first arrived on Virginia, but I dismissed them when I met the orcs themselves. For example, they could have been expert seafarers like Earth's Polynesians, but their obvious dislike of water rather spoiled that idea, even though it's a comparatively recent phenomenon. Another possibility was that they were Neanderthals, but they were physiologically wrong for that."
"Of course they were..." He nodded, then paused, politely. "So, are you going to tell me what a Neanderthal is or what?"
Oops! "Ah, well they were an early form of humanoid we had on Earth, but they inexplicably died out something like 10,000 or 20,000 years ago - estimates vary."
"I see, and you thought that maybe some of them had come over to Virginia in sufficient numbers to colonise a few areas?"
"It's possible, yes, but to get that kind of wide dispersal there would have to have been a lot of transit bubbles around, and they'd have had to have gone through in large numbers, too. It's still possible that Neanderthals could have done it, of course, and that they survive under some other name on Virginia. They're not orcs, though."
At this point, Margaret entered the room, bearing an enormous feather duster.
"You do know there are surviving colonies of earlier humans, don't you?" she asked.
I don't know why this surprised me, but it did.
Mike noticed my eyes widen, and smiled, knowingly. "We use it for cleaning places that are too high to reach."
"Uh? Oh, the duster, yes. No, I was just a little surprised by what Margaret just said." I turned to face her. "Do you mean there are groups of humans on this planet who aren't descended from the colonists of 1623?"
"Obviously: you're one yourself." She smiled.
I fell into that one...
Mike picked up the more serious thread. "There are one or two small pockets, yes. As with the non-humans, these days we leave them alone if they don't want to be bothered, so long as they don't cause anyone any problems."
"There used to be a really big colony in a place called Atlantis," added Margaret. "It was hit by a tidal wave perhaps 3,000 years ago, from what I remember in school, and nobody survived."
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, dear," said Mike. "There were some humans who escaped, and they were welcomed as gods by the merpeople. There's no physical trace of them any more, but plenty of archaeological evidence."
"Oh yes, you're right, I remember now. They found some ancient writings on stone."
"Anything interesting?" I asked, finally able to talk after being somewhat staggered by this sudden, casual revelation of the historical truth behind an Earth myth.
"Not really, no; just enough to confirm that the place was called Atlantis, I think. It was the missing piece in a long-standing puzzle which had been taxing scientists for years, which is why the story made the headlines."
"What puzzle was that, then?"
Mike grinned. "Why the merpeople speak Greek, of course."
Mermaids speak Greek. How remiss of me not to have enquired about it before...
"Are there any other well-known crossings over from Earth that you know about?" I asked, coolly. "Abominable snowmen? Loch Ness Monsters? Shangri-La?"
"Well," said Margaret, looking at Mike. "There is something we call here the `Holy Grail'. Do you know that story on Earth?"
I trundled home on my motorbike.
Everything that Mike and Margaret had told me that day was thoroughly logical and could certainly have happened, but I think it was all getting too much for me to take in. Joseph of Aramathea really did bring the Holy Grail to Glastonbury, yes, OK, he was a tin merchant, fair enough, he could have done that. There was a reasonably frequent bubble in existence between Glastonbury and New Anglia in the Dark Ages, and many crossings occurred, well, that does explain the place's mystical reputation, so the suggestion is eminently plausible. Elven queens can look an awful lot like angels if the light is right, and monks would be all too keen to insist that their relic be taken back to "Heaven" by their bemused visitor when she wanted to leave. It all made perfect sense.
Mathematical differential equations in n-dimensional column vectors make perfect sense, too, but that doesn't mean I understand the wretched things.
While I was trying valiantly to get all this information to sink in, a completely unrelated thought popped into my head. The HA had deliberately obscured their past, but the Virginian humans had had theirs taken forcibly from them. Perhaps, by studying the orcs, I might gain some insight into the plight of the humans?
At that very moment, such insight came, and it wrenched at my very heart: how terrible a thing it is to be culturally orphaned.
SKUP was very pleased with the law books I'd bought him, but no-one else had apparently even noticed I'd gone.
It's great to be popular.
Much as I wanted to tell SKUP everything I'd found out about his heritage, I didn't feel it was a very wise course to pursue. It wasn't that I expected the HA to restart their blood feud any more than I expected the GAZH even to remember it; rather, it was that their new culture was now fully rounded, and complete in its own right, and I didn't want to undermine it. The HA deserved better than that.
I had little time left to me before I was due to return to Earth, so I decided to spend my remaining few weeks tidying up my notes, checking my data, filling in any gaps, and obtaining the set-piece physical evidence (photographs and sound recordings) that would make for nice plates in my book1. The pièce de résistance would be if I could get a nice shot of the HAIKAG in full shining pate, but if I couldn't, well, SKUP would probably let me shave his hair off for a couple of sovereigns...
Why was the HAIKAG bald, anyway?
About ten days later, SKUP barged into my hut with such vigour that I could only surmise he had tripped up outside and had to stumble in to save his balance.
"RICHard," he said, excitedly. "Word comes from the HAIKAG: he will see you!"
"When?" I replied, without looking up from my notes.
"When we arrive at his cave," answered SKUP, indignantly.
I sighed. "Does he want us to go there today, tomorrow, next week or next month, or when?"
"We can go whenever we like."
"Except?"
"What?" SKUP looked puzzled.
"There's always an except with you, SKUP. We can go whenever we like, except..?"
"Except he has to leave to bless a new field three days from today."
"And how long will it take us to reach his cave?"
"Two days."
"Two days?" Oh no! "Two orc days is the same as three human days! We'll never make it!"
"No, we will; he has to bless the field in three orc days, not three human days."
"Oh, right. Well, we'd still better set off straight away, though, just to be safe; let me get my stuff."
"You'd better not take that," SKUP warned as I reached for my camera. "He won't like it."
"It's only a camera. What's he think it'll do? Stop time?"
"No, but he's as bald as a rock. If you had no hair, would you want people taking your picture?"
Darn. That probably meant SKUP wouldn't let me shave his head bare, either.
"You could draw him, though," SKUP suggested. "He wouldn't necessarily mind that."
I once bought an excellent second-hand book on how to execute simple sketches2. Although it was published in 1933, it was really very good, and after about a week of drafting hundreds of eyes, noses, lips and chins, I could put them together to make a very convincing face that was way beyond my previous artistic abilities. Unfortunately, the book was rather rooted in its own era, and everybody I drew looked like they were extras in a Jeeves and Wooster movie.
"Maybe I'll just not bother," I said, after a little consideration.
"Do you know why the HAIKAG is bald?" I asked SKUP as we clambered breathlessly up yet another steep rock face. I had worn my leathers as a defence against the cold, but all this exercise was making me regret the decision.
"It's something to do with his not having any hair," replied SKUP, between gasps.
"Well he obviously doesn't care for the condition3, or he wouldn't mind people taking his picture."
"All HAIKAGs are bald, and none of them like their pictures being taken."
"So their baldness is a symbol of office? To set them apart from other orcs?"
"That's the way of it, yes."
Well SKUP might believe that shaving the head as some mark of spirituality was reason enough to do it, but to my anthropologist's mind there was more to it than that. There are any number of ways that a person could be made to stand out in a crowd, from wearing colourful clothes to doing something filthy like washing. Why was that particular method chosen? And would finding out be worth all this yomping up and down mountains?
On the morning of the third day, I awoke bright and early, as one tends to do when a bear is urinating on one. My shriek of fear was enough to send the beast scurrying away, and to rouse SKUP from his slumber.
"What was that all about?" he asked, sleepily.
"A bear just pissed all over me!" I couldn't believe it. A bear had just pissed all over me.
"That's good news," he said, and turned over to go back to sleep.
"Good news in the sense that he didn't eat me, yes, but these are my leathers! I need these to ride my motorbike."
"No, good news in that we'll be getting a mild Winter. Bears should be hibernating now, but if they're not then it means we won't get much nasty weather. It's a pity he ran off before we had a chance to examine his stools."
Stools? Hmm, maybe I was lucky to get away with just a pissing on, then.
"Well, never mind," I said, less miserably, "I can wipe this off on the grass. What's for breakfast?"
"How far can you throw a rock the size of your head?"
"Well, not very far at all I guess. Why?"
"It's not bear steaks, then."
Breakfast was dried REKchit. People who say they are so hungry that they could eat anything have obviously never had dried REKchit. Dried REKchit is like shoe. It has a vile taste. It blunts teeth. The only reason I was eating it at all was because I had paid for it. Stay away from dried REKchit. Trust me on this one.
After breaking camp, SKUP and I began the final trek to the HAIKAG's mountain. We were at quite a high altitude already, and I wasn't finding breathing too easy, but SKUP was whistling away quite happily, buoyed by the steel constitution his kind have evolved after hundreds of years of drinking HA whisky.
Presently, we came to a small stream, and SKUP stopped.
"I can't go beyond here," he announced.
"It's only a stream, SKUP. You're going to walk across it, not wash in it."
"No, I really can't go any further. The HAIKAG's land begins on the other side, and it's dangerous to go there."
"I thought you said he lived on a mountain?"
"He does."
"Well where's the mountain, then? The nearest bit of higher ground is two or three hours away."
SKUP frowned deeply and rubbed his chin in thought. "Well, maybe it's the next stream," he said.
Three streams later, we finally reached a stream at the bottom of a peak. This, SKUP decided, really was the HAIKAG's border stream, and therefore was too risky for him to cross. I, of course, was welcome to do so, "if you feel up to it." Having come all this way, whether I felt up to it or not was beside the point, so I made SKUP promise he'd wait for me then I set off for the HAIKAG's cave.
Well, I set off for the HAIKAG's peak. I had no idea where his cave was, and neither did SKUP, as neither of us had been there before. Still, the mountain was only a square mile or so in area - nothing a couple of weeks of systematic searching wouldn't sort out...
There was a line of cliffs about a third of the way to the top which looked sort of promising, so I made for those first. There were caves galore, but I didn't find any signs of habitation (not that I looked too hard, recalling that there were bears in the vicinity and that they had to live somewhere). I was just about to give up, when I heard a voice behind me.
"Ah, RICHard, I understand you have some questions for me." Yes, it was the HAIKAG.
"That's true, I do - I have many questions." I didn't, but it's as well to make people feel important when conducting interviews. "If it's alright with you that I ask them, of course."
"Of course it's alright, don't worry. Anyone who walks for two days to talk to me deserves to ask me at least some of their questions, and if they've crossed the stream then I may even give some answers." He smiled. "Do you want something to eat? I'm ravenous."
"Yes, please, I would. Oh, but I'd better warn SKUP that I'll be up here awhile." I turned and looked for my assistant, but the place I'd left him was some way away.
"I told SKUP he could go home."
I stared at the HAIKAG in disbelief.
"Don't let it perturb you, he was quite happy to leave. It meant he could eat all that extra dried REKchit of yours."
"But he was my guide!" I spluttered. "How am I going to find my way back to OLtic now?"
"I'll show you the way myself, I'm leaving later today to bless a new field there."
I was glad I hadn't dropped my stare of disbelief, because I needed it again. "Hold on, you're saying that I walked for two days across every form of terrain known to science just to get here, but if I'd stayed at home instead you'd have turned up later in the week anyway?"
"That's one interpretation, yes. This way, though, you get to see my cave."
A damp, dank, doorless fissure in the side of a cliff? Oh how my heart leapt...
"Come, let's eat. It's not far to my home from here, and I have a delicacy you might want to try."
One of the major pieces of advice impressed on all young fieldworkers is that upon hearing that you are about to be offered a "delicacy", you must evade eating it at all costs. Young fieldworkers never listen, reasoning that if The Queen can eat roast rat and pickled centipede every time she goes on a trip abroad, the odd monkey's eyeball isn't going to hurt them. The fieldworkers inevitably regret their mistake. The Queen has a digestive system inherited from generations of monarchs who have had to stuff their faces with cat brains and what have you so as not to disappoint their hosts; young fieldworkers have merely eaten in University refectories, which is but a poor substitute.
"Sit down over there," said the HAIKAG, pointing to a chair in the mouth of his cave, "and I'll get you some goat penis."
My heart sank. I had somehow managed thus far in my life to avoid ever having anything that could be described as a penis inside my mouth. I listened a moment: no bleating, so at least that meant the goat was dead.
"Goat's penis," I said, loudly, so the HAIKAG would be able to hear from inside the cave. "Hmm, I can't say I've ever had a slice of that before. Is it a delicacy because it tastes good, or for some other reason?" I asked the question in the hope that I might find some religious or cultural explanation behind eating it which I could use to excuse myself from partaking of any. No such luck.
"It's because you can only find them on half the goat population, and those that do have them only have one. It's not like shins or ears or anything; they're rare."
"Oh, yes, I see. How do you prepare them?" Orc food is either uncooked or cooked so much that it's indistinguishable from anthracite.
"I usually put them in soup, but that's because people give me them all the time as I'm HAIKAG. You can have yours on a stick if you prefer."
"No, no, I think soup will be fine."
"Good, in that case I don't have to wet my fingers taking it out. Well, here we are then!"
The HAIKAG brought out a wooden bowl, steaming in the cold air, and handed it to me.
Floating in a vaguely brown liquid was the goat's penis. Its appearance was exactly as you would imagine it to be.
"Is there a problem?" asked the HAIKAG, politely.
"I'm not all that used to eating food that's looking at me, that's all," I replied.
The HAIKAG laughed. "I'm sorry it's not a very big one, but there were no nanny goats around when it was killed. Its owner hit it with a log after it butted over his whisky still."
"It's quite enough for me..." Lacking a fork, I removed the object with my fingers and bit off the blunt end, repeating to myself mentally the mantra it's only a hot dog, it's only a hot dog.
It wasn't a hot dog, because hot dogs aren't so leathery that you have to slice through the skin with your incisors for 20 seconds before you can separate a bit off.
"What do you think?" asked the HAIKAG, eagerly.
"It's been pickled in alcohol, hasn't it?" I replied, as perkily as I could while trying to serrate some kind of long, gristly, tubey bit into a swallowable size.
"I believe so, yes. Oh, sorry, I should have offered you a drink!"
"No, that's quite alright; if anyone asks, I'll tell them you gave me a cocktail."
I said the word cocktail in English, since in HAish the pun wouldn't have worked...4
"You know," I added, "I think maybe human teeth aren't as strong as orc teeth, I'm having a job eating this. Perhaps I should just put the rest of it in my pocket and nibble at it during the day."
"The soup's fine, though, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, yes, the soup is perfect. It's just the, er, goat I'm having problems with."
"You really should eat the other end, it's the best part."
"Like asparagus, I thought as much..." Oh well.
I closed my eyes and bit...
I swear, that's the last time I ever eat a bowl of soup with a knob of butter in it.
After lunch, the HAIKAG insisted on showing me round his cave. He'd done it up rather well, all things considered. It was very nicely ornamented, had a fireplace and chimney stack made from sun-dried brick, and utilised several smaller caves off the main one which served as extra rooms. By HA standards, it was a mansion, and in some regard that made sense: without probing, I learned that all HAIKAGs lived in that same cave, so it was a bit like an arch-bishop's palace in status, and would therefore merit the lavish attention.
"So how long have you been HAIKAG?" I asked.
"Hmm, let me see...782 days, including today."
"So that's a little over two years?"
"Yes, what if it is?"
"Nothing special, no reason. Do you have the job forever, or do you retire?"
"I will always be called HAIKAG, but in 679 days my successor will take over the main duties and I will assist him."
"So there are other HAIKAGs around from before your time?"
"No, they're all dead. It is a very spiritually draining business, being HAIKAG, but it has its rewards."
"What rewards are they?"
"Well," he smiled, "maybe I'll show you, maybe I won't."
It was when the HAIKAG was starting to prepare for his journey to OLtic that I seized the opportunity to ask my main question. I was acutely aware that he didn't enjoy having no hair, and therefore might get a bit surly if I asked him why he shaved it off. As it was, he picked up a hat, and that gave me my cue.
"You wear a hat?" I mused. "That's unusual among the HA."
"Well so is having no hair, or had you not noticed?"
"I had noticed, yes. So being bald is a HAIKAG thing?"
The HAIKAG snarled under his breath. "Yes, it is. The first HAIKAG lost all his hair as a sign of his spiritual purity, and ever since then the rest of us have had to shave ours off in his honour, damn and blast him!"
"But surely your hair would fall out too if you waited, since you're spiritually pure, too?"
"We'll never know, will we?" He looked at me, surprised. "That's precisely the point. No-one else has ever suggested that to me before; they've always assumed that I was angry simply because I didn't like being bald."
"But you can see their point of view, since you really do dislike being bald..."
"Well yes I do, but it comes with the job. The thing is, since all HAIKAGs shave off their hair we entirely lose the means of finding out who is and who isn't virtuous. There have been some real fish HAIKAGs in the past, too, I'm telling you."
"Of course, you may yourself not have lost your hair..." A bit of a risky gambit, but he didn't seem the kind of man who would be vainglorious.
"I very much doubt I would have, but then the people would have seen me for what I am, an ordinary, honest orc. As it is, they credit me with a holiness I do not deserve." He laughed. "I'm glad I invited you here, now; I'd heard good things about you, and it seems they're true. You know less of me than anyone for miles, and yet you understand my situation to a much greater degree."
"It's my job," I replied. "Besides, because I come from outside your society, I have to think about the way things work, rather than just taking it all on board as I grew up. What is it you say? From darkness comes light?"
The HAIKAG clapped his hands together once and grinned widely. "That's it, I've got to show you! Come this way..."
He led me to a tall cupboard at the back of one of the smaller caves off the main one. The door was locked; when he unlocked and opened it, I saw that the cupboard had no back. Instead, there was a narrow crack in the wall, just wide enough for an orc (or, thankfully, a human) to squeeze through.
"What I'm about to show you, you must tell no-one about," said the HAIKAG, his voice deadly serious. "Only very few non-HAIKAGs get to see what you are about to see, and you are the first non-HA to do so."
I knew I was in receipt of a great privilege, but at the time I felt more pleased that the HAIKAG regarded me merely as non-HA, rather than non-orc.
"Won't we need a light?" I asked, as the HAIKAG disappeared inside.
"This gets better all the time..!" came back a laughing voice.
Inside the small fissure, it was dark. I was actually grateful for the fact that the walls were so close together, because it meant I couldn't get lost. Ahead, the HAIKAG was humming happily to himself, but as I couldn't hear his footsteps I figured that he'd stopped walking and I wouldn't have to squeeze through the rockface for much longer.
The humming ceased when I reached a slightly wider part of the passage.
"We'll wait here until your eyes get used to the dark," said the HAIKAG.
"It'll take a while; humans can't see without light, you know." Not that my experience with the optician in MEKto had coloured my view on the subject, of course...
"Now there's a door here somewhere, I wonder - "
I heard a dull thud, followed by a short moan.
"You found the door?"
"Yes, with my nose; orcs can't see in the dark either... Now where did I put that key? Ah, here it is. Are you ready?"
"It's hard to tell, since I still cant see anyth - "
I stopped because I was literally speechless. The HAIKAG had opened the door to reveal the most amazing natural wonder I have ever seen. It was a cavern, perhaps just large enough to accommodate a modest house, but the walls were aglow in pale, green light. The HAIKAG, too, was full of awe, even though he'd clearly been there many times before.
I walked inside and looked around. Everywhere, the rough, unhewn walls were giving off the same, faint illumination, as if the cave's entire surface were dusted in powdered limelight. Small rocks and fragments had fallen to the floor, and were each glowing independently in the same, mystical, magical manner. It was a truly marvellous sight, stupendous in its delicate beauty, and completely out of this, or any other, world.
I looked across to the HAIKAG and smiled, nodding. "From darkness comes light..." When the HA first came to these lands, fresh from winning their war of freedom, and their explorers found this place, how it must have justified their hiding of the past - and how it must have given them hope for their future. From darkness comes light: this radiant grotto was the physical embodiment of the core belief that lay at the very heart of the HA way of life.
I walked up to a wall and touched it. Tiny, glowing crystals came off on my fingers, like phosphorescent talcum powder. Only these weren't phosphorescent, they were luminescent; no light had entered the cavern to charge them up, they simply shone of their own accord.
Oh shit.
I was standing in a room, the walls of which were radioactive. I remember a friend at school once brought in an old glow-in-the-dark watch for a physics lesson, and it sent the Geiger counter nuts. It had that same, pale green light that was bathing me right now, although it needed daylight to set it going. Here, though, there was no daylight; here, the radioactive matter was unstable enough to emit photons and heaven knows what else of its own volition.
I had to get out. The HAIKAG was still staring blissfully at the spectacle, but that warm, inner glow he was experiencing was not entirely down to the emotions he was feeling. I ran for the door, struggled through the passageway, and staggered through the cupboard into the HAIKAG's living area. I felt marginally safer, but then noticed to my horror that my fingers were still coated in dust! I dashed outside, scrambled my way down the cliffs, and threw myself into the stream.
It wasn't until I had removed every last speck of radioactive source that I realised the water was icy cold, and that I was thoroughly drenched in it. Shivering, I made my way back to the cave.
The HAIKAG met me on my way back, somewhat perplexed at my behaviour. I told him that the beauty of the cave had proven too much for me, and I had been overwhelmed; I could hardly tell him he lived next door to an atomic pile. Jeez, move too many those floor rocks about and it might have gone critical!
"Come back to the cave with me, and we'll warm you up," said the HAIKAG, sympathetically.
Too damned right we'd warm me up; a few minutes in his back room and I'd be done to a crisp.
"Do you go into the glowing room very often?" I asked, trembling with cold.
"That was my seventh time since becoming HAIKAG," he replied, "not including my induction ceremony. Why did you jump in the stream?"
"I tripped and fell," I lied.
"Rather you than me. Water - ugh!"
I dried out in front of a fire while the HAIKAG finished preparing to leave. Considering that he quite often had to traipse across the HA mountains visiting various villages, and must therefore be well experienced in putting together the few odds and ends he needed, he took his time. I also noticed that despite the fact it was after lunch he wasn't getting absolutely smashed on whisky; perhaps, as HAIKAG, he didn't need to expand his mind (and his liver) when he was by definition spiritually attuned to the HA philosophy anyway.
I was in an intolerable position. The manifestation of the entire belief system of the HA was a cave so dangerous that even now, sitting some fifty metres of solid rock away from it, I was probably shortening my life-span. To tell the HAIKAG that his sacred room only glowed because it was emitting death rays would completely undermine the HA world view, yet if I didn't tell him then this sweet, caring orc would be rotted through with cancers if he wasn't already, like every HAIKAG that had gone before him and every HAIKAG that would follow.
And yet how long could the HA retain their innocence? Virginian scientists knew all about fusion power, so their nuclear expertise either already encompassed models of radioactive decay or it would do soon. In, what, 20 or 30 years, the HA might find out the truth behind their hallowed rocks anyway, and then the effect would be the same. In the meantime, another five or ten HAIKAGs would have been zapped. Which was worse? My causing the breakdown of a stable society that I was supposed to be studying, or my sacrificing the lives of innocent men in order that things might continue as they were for another half a century at most?
Why is the HAIKAG bald?
The answer filled me with despair.
I didn't speak much to the HAIKAG on the way to OLtic, although thankfully he seemed to sense that I was deep in thought and, after a few lightly-worded questions to make sure that I didn't want to open up about whatever was bothering me, he let me be.
I'd thought of another problem. Properly, what I had learned should appear in my report. If it didn't, then any ethnologist reading it would rightly sense that there was something wrong, in the same way that I had done myself; if it did, however, then I was opening up the HA lands to more than just well-meaning social scientists. I had no idea exactly what the mineral was in the cave that was pumping the air full of high-energy particles, but I had a shrewd idea it was some kind of uranium salt. On Earth, only one uranium atom in 137 is isotope U235, the majority being U238, but who knows what the proportion might be in that cave? And since U235 has a half-life of 700 million years, there must be one hell of a lot of the stuff for it to seem to be glowing all the time5. Would a bored member of the US security services, upon reading my ethnology, set the wheels in motion to acquire the mining rights to such a rich vein of nuclear materials? You bet they would - if only to stop some less responsible nation from getting hold of it.
Well, I could cover up the fact that I knew about the cave simply by saying that I had been obliged to return to Earth before discovering why the HAIKAG was bald. Someone else could then conceivably be sent out, but the problem was no longer mine. Indeed, I was basically wrestling with my own conscience on the matter in any case, since no-one else knew the cave's secret, and only the HAIKAG was aware I'd even seen behind the false wall in his cupboard. I could avoid an awful lot of hassle if I merely pretended that I had never seen the glowing walls, and wrote everything up as if I was in the same state of ignorance as I had been the day before.
Of course, I might feel a twinge of regret if someone else from Earth visited the area, discovered the uranium deposit, and told a crazed dictator of its existence in some misguided attempt to ensure world peace. Hmm, maybe I should tell the Virginian authorities, then, to safeguard the information? They could send a geologist to discover if there were any other uranium-bearing rocks in the area, and discreetly dynamite them or whatever they do to seal them up.
I stopped in my tracks.
The HAIKAG looked back over his shoulder, then stopped, too.
"Are you alright, RICHard?" he asked. "Only you've been acting very strangely ever since you saw the cave."
"It's just that it's given me a lot to think about," I answered, truthfully. "I'm sorry if I'm not being very good company, but I have to work a few things out. You know I have to write a report?"
"I know that you will have to tell others what you have learned of the HA. Will you say good things or bad things?"
"Not everyone is perfect, so there will be some bad things, but they will be small in number compared to the good things."
"And you're wondering whether you should tell people about the cave?"
"No, I'm not. I have decided that I will tell no-one about the cave."
The HAIKAG smiled. "I knew you wouldn't, or I would have kept it secret."
Once, at a dinner party at one of my colleagues' houses, the discussion got on to how things had changed socially in the 20th Century. "Can you believe it," said the wife of a psychology lecturer, "but my grandparents actually had servants! Who has servants nowadays?"
"My grandparents were servants," I retorted. This caused hurried apologies from the woman who had made the remark, but it also told me in no uncertain terms that the number of dinner parties I would be invited to would diminish thereafter.
One of the things my ex-servant grandmother told me concerned a fairly common practice observed by certain wealthy individuals upon hiring new, referenceless staff: they would leave small things of value lying around where they could easily be taken without anyone's noticing, and ensured that the new employees were left alone at some point to find them. Of course, since the employers knew exactly what had been left where, they also knew the instant it went missing. If the silver ring, or the shilling, or the ivory thimble had disappeared, then it was bye bye job for the newcomer. It was a test for honesty.
The person who had taught SKUP English, Professor Charles Bosun, was a geologist. A geologist spending several months in the area would probably have become aware of the fact that there were sites rich in uranium hereabouts. A geologist spending several months among the HA would probably have heard the "from darkness comes light" mantra, and, if shrewd enough, could have postulated the existence of the cave or something like it without ever having seen it in person.
Did the Virginian authorities actually know already all that I had taken nearly six months to find out? Instead of my being sent to study the people of Virginia, was I instead being studied by them? Was all this an elaborate set-up to judge the worth of Earth's morality by seeing how 27 anthropologists reacted to a set of ethical dilemmas? After all, if you can't trust people who are trying their utmost not to be ethno-centric, how can you let loose ordinary, everyday folk to wreak havoc on your planet?
The uranium deposits were the ring, or the shilling, or the thimble.
However, the decision of whether to condemn a culture or condemn its most decent men was something else entirely.
Inside, I raged.
1 You did know that academics cheat in this manner, didn't you?
2 Simple Sketching in Line, by L. A. Doust.
3 He probably found it dis-tressing.
4 I didn't even attempt a cock au vin joke.
5 OK, I admit it: I looked the exact figures up when I got back home.
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21st January 1999: ltlwo10.htm