Monument. Lloyd Biggle jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ much spoken language as Obrien wanted them to know.

      Obrien taught science, and any spacer who didn’t have a pragmatic grasp of basic principles rarely lived long enough to be able to inflict his ignorance on others. But Obrien also had to teach subjects that had been no more than faint academic rumors to him, subjects such as economics and sociology and government. He taught political science, and he stirred and sifted the dregs of his memory for facts that might have stuck there concerning constitutions and compacts and articles of confederation; and socialism and communism and fascism; and theocracies and oligarchies and meritocracies and as many of the variegated modifications and adaptations as he could remember.

      He taught military discipline and guerrilla warfare and colonial procedure, and he brought his class together under the stars and taught the history of the people of the galaxy. He expected these young natives to stare openmouthed while he described flaming space wars, and fantastic creatures, and worlds beyond worlds, and suns more numerous than the leaves of the forest; but their attention spans seemed even shorter at night than during the day.

      “There!” he said, using a hunting spear to point with. “See those two bright stars and that dim one? Aim a spear between those stars, and if it had its own power, like the skyships I was telling you about, eventually it’d reach the sun Sol, which you can’t see without a large telescope. According to history or legend or maybe someone’s fancy rumor, that’s the system all of our ancestors came from.

      “The bright stars are Tartta and Rologne, and long ago their planets had a war. The skyships fought it—so many ships on each side that you wouldn’t be able to understand the number.”

      He paused to scowl his whispering students into momentary silence. “Thousands and thousands of ships, but so far apart that you have no number for the distance because space is so vast. And the ships shot bolts of fire at each other, and metal harder than your spear points became blobs of boiling liquid, and the crews were like charred sticks, and in every battle a few ships broke through on each side to shoot their bolts of fire at the mother worlds, and villages larger than this entire forest, with houses taller than the tallest trees, were boiled into liquid along with all of their people. Now no one lives on those worlds. Over there—”

      He turned and pointed his spear in another direction. “Over there is a world called Watorno, and there’s a creature that lives in its seas that would make your koluf seem like a child’s toy. It’s a hundred times as big, and it could swallow one of your hunting boats with one gulp.”

      As he paused, he heard a whispered voice from the shadowy fringe of the class. “Someone should tell the Elder. The Langri has a serious head sickness.”

      Probably it was inevitable; his class began to drift away. Each morning he would search the faces anxiously to see how many more were missing, and then he would determinedly struggle on.

      * * * *

      He taught as much as he could and improvised when he had to, which was often. While he talked to the class, Larno stood at one side of the clearing and worked mathematical problems on his own private writing board. Obrien, with the uncertain support of his Simplified Astrogation for the Layman, would sketch out a problem, following which Larno would gleefully fill all the available space with mathematical symbols, to the bafflement of those in the class who bothered to watch. Finally Larno would interrupt Obrien. “I’ve finished this problem. May I have another?”

      Obrien would reach for his Simplified Astrogation. “All right. Your ship’s velocity is fifty thousand units and the position is the same as before. Calculate the amount of fuel needed to reach Planet X and go into orbit.”

      “Yes, yes! And—this problem? Is my solution correct?”

      “How the devil would I know?” Obrien would mutter as he returned to his lecture.

      Whenever he caught Banu asleep, which was often, he would snarl at him, “Banu! What are those attorneys’ names?”

      Banu would blink himself awake and recite flawlessly: “Klarouse, Hraanl, Picrawley, McLindorffer and Webluston, city of Schwalofro, world of Schwala, Sector 9138.”

      Obrien fervently offered thanks for small favors. He had a mathematical genius who solved problems he didn’t understand, and a mnemonic genius who remembered things spoken while he was asleep—which was fortunate, because sleeping was what he did the most of. Banu seemed never to forget anything, though he understood so little of what he remembered that mining his memory could be an involved and frustrating process.

      The rest of his students were uncomplicated morons.

      “Attorneys—” Obrien began.

      He doubled up suddenly, clutching his abdomen. Fornri and Dalla hurried to him, but he shook them off, straightened up, wiped the perspiration from his face, and continued.

      “One day you’re going to need attorneys more than you need air to breathe, and that law firm wasn’t afraid to take on a world government for me. It won’t be afraid to take on a Federation of Worlds for you, but you may have trouble finding it—it’s been a long time, and the names may have changed.

      “Attorneys cost money, which you don’t understand, but you may understand this. Look!”

      He unwrapped a piece of cloth and displayed a handful of magnificent crystals. “Take a good look,” he told the gaping class.

      “They’re retron crystals. They make interstellar travel possible, and they’re rare enough and valuable enough so they can be changed for monetary credits at any financial center in the galaxy.”

      An altercation broke out at the rear of the class, and he paused until it was resolved, to the accompaniment of much whispering and some squealing. Some boys persisted in teasing the girls, most of whom enjoyed it, and some couples overtly carried on their courtships during class. Obrien had not quite forgotten that he once was young himself.

      “Monetary credits are money,” he went on, “and attorneys require a lot of it. There are enough crystals packed away in my wreck of a spaceship to buy you a lot of legal service. They’ll have to be buried in a safe place—deep in the cave under the double hill would be best. A wrecked ship will be the first thing that’ll get looked at when the skymen come, and if the crystals aren’t buried deeply there are instruments that will detect them.

      “I was talking about governments. The other worlds won’t understand a system like yours, where leaders just happen instead of being elected or appointed, so this world will have to—”

      The stabbing pain returned, and this time he dismissed the class and weakly allowed Fornri and Dalla to help him into his hammock. He lay with eyes closed, face perspiring, hands clutching his abdomen, and he said softly, “So much to do and so little time. Law and government and economics and colonial administration and all the rest, and I’m only a dumb mechanic and I’m dying.” Suddenly his eyes opened and he jerked erect. “Five more were gone today. Where are they?”

      Fornri and Dalla exchanged uneasy glances. “Perhaps their villages needed them,” Fornri said apologetically. “The hunting—”

      “The hunting! What’s an empty belly compared with slavery or death? Can’t they understand that there won’t be any hunting if they don’t have a Plan?”

      “They don’t understand what you want them to do,” Fornri said. “Perhaps if you told them the Plan—”

      “They СКАЧАТЬ