oncontragravity, and tall buildings rose, singly or in clumps, among thelanding-staged residences and the green transplanted trees. There was atriple wire fence around it, the inner one masked by vines and themiddle one electrified, with warning lights on. Even a governmentdedicated to the betterment of the natives and unwilling to ordermilitary action against them was, it appeared, unwilling to take toomany chances.
Major General Denis Maith, the Federation Army commander on Kwannon, wasconsiderably more than willing to find a temporary home for his witchdoctors, now numbering close to two hundred. He did insist that they bekept under military guard, and on assigning his aide, Captain Travis, toco-operate on the project. Beyond that, he gave Miles a free hand.
Miles and Travis got very little rest in the next ten hours. Ahalf-company of engineer troops was also kept busy, as were a number ofKwannon Planetwide News technicians and some Terran and native mechanicsborrowed from different private business concerns in the city. Even themost guarded hints of what he had in mind were enough to get this lastco-operation; he had been running a news-service in Bluelake long enoughto have the confidence of the business people.
He tried, as far as possible, to keep any intimation of what was goingon from Government House. That, unfortunately, hadn't been far enough.He found that out when General Maith was on his screen, in the middle ofthe work on the fourth and fifth floors of the Suzikami Building.
"The governor general just screened me," Maith said. "He's in a tizzyabout our shoonoon. Claims that keeping them in the Suzikami Buildingwill endanger the whole Terran city."
"Is that the best he can do? Well, that's rubbish, and he knows it.There are less than two hundred of them, I have them on the fifth floor,twenty stories above the ground, and the floor's completely sealed offfrom the floor below. They can't get out, and I have tanks of sleep-gasall over the place which can be opened either individually or alltogether from a switch on the fourth floor, where your sepoys arequartered."
"I know, Mr. Gilbert; I screen-viewed the whole installation. I've seenregular maximum-security prisons that would be easier to get out of."
"Governor general Kovac is not objecting personally. He has beenpressured into it by this Native Welfare government-within-the-Government.They don't know what I'm doing with those shoonoon, but whatever it is,they're afraid of it."
"Well, for the present," Maith said, "I think I'm holding them off. TheCivil Government doesn't want the responsibility of keeping them incustody, I refused to assume responsibility for them if they were keptanywhere else, and Kovac simply won't consider releasing them, so thatleaves things as they are. I did have to make one compromise, though."That didn't sound good. It sounded less so when Maith continued: "Theyinsisted on having one of their people at the Suzikami Building as anobserver. I had to grant that."
"That's going to mean trouble."
"Oh, I shouldn't think so. This observer will observe, and nothing else.She will take no part in anything you're doing, will voice noobjections, and will not interrupt anything you are saying to theshoonoon. I was quite firm on that, and the governor general agreedcompletely."
"She?"
"Yes. A Miss Edith Shaw; do you know anything about her?"
"I've met her a few times; cocktail parties and so on." She was youngenough, and new enough to Kwannon, not to have a completely induratedmind. On the other hand, she was EETA which was bad, and had a master'sin sociography from Adelaide, which was worse. "When can I look forher?"
"Well, the governor general's going to screen me and find out whenyou'll have the shoonoon on hand."
Doesn't want to talk to me at all, Miles thought. Afraid he might saysomething and get quoted.
"For your information, they'll be here inside an hour. They will have toeat, and they're all tired and sleepy. I should say 'boutoh-eight-hundred. Oh, and will you tell the governor general to tellMiss Shaw to bring an overnight kit with her. She's going to need it."
He was up at 0400, just a little after Beta-rise. He might be acivilian big-wheel in an Army psychological warfare project, but hestill had four newscasts a day to produce. He spent a couple of hourschecking the 0600 'cast and briefing Harry Walsh for the indeterminateperiod in which he would be acting chief editor and producer. At 0700,Foxx Travis put in an appearance. They went down to the fourth floor, tothe little room they had fitted out as command-post, control room andoffice for Operation Shoonoo.
There was a rectangular black traveling-case, initialed E. S., besidethe open office door. Travis nodded at it, and they grinned at oneanother; she'd come early, possibly hoping to catch them hidingsomething they didn't want her to see. Entering the office quietly, theyfound her seated facing the big viewscreen, smoking and watching acouple of enlisted men of the First Kwannon Native Infantry at work inanother room where the pickup was. There were close to a dozenlipstick-tinted cigarette butts in the ashtray beside her. Her privateface wasn't particularly happy. Maybe she was being earnest andconcerned about the betterment of the underpriviledged, or the satanicmaneuvers of the selfish planters.
Then she realized that somebody had entered; with a slight start, sheturned, then rose. She was about the height of Foxx Travis, a few inchesshorter than Miles, and slender. Light blond; green suit costume. Sheditched her private face and got on her public one, a pleasant anddeferential smile, with a trace of uncertainty behind it. Milesintroduced Travis, and they sat down again facing the screen.
It gave a view, from one of the long sides and near the ceiling, of abig room. In the center, a number of seats--the drum-shaped cushions thenatives had adopted in place of the seats carved from sections of treetrunk that they had been using when the Terrans had come toKwannon--were arranged in a semicircle, one in the middle slightly inadvance of the others. Facing them were three armchairs, aremote-control box beside one and another Kwann cushion behind andbetween the other two. There was a large globe of Kwannon, and on thewall behind the chairs an array of viewscreens.
"There'll be an interpreter, a native Army sergeant, between you andCaptain Travis," he said. "I don't know how good you are with nativelanguages, Miss Shaw; the captain is not very fluent."
"Cushions for them, I see, and chairs for the lordly Terrans," shecommented. "Never miss a chance to rub our superiority in, do you?"
"I never deliberately force them to adopt our ways," he replied. "Ourchairs are as uncomfortable for them as their low seats are for us.Difference, you know, doesn't mean inferiority or superiority. It justmeans difference."
"Well, what are you trying to do, here?"
"I'm trying to find out a little more about the psychology back ofthese frenzies and swarmings."
"It hasn't occurred to you to look for them in the economic wrongs thesepeople are suffering at the hands of the planters and traders, Isuppose."
"So they're committing suicide, and that's all you can call theseswarmings, and the fire-frenzies in the south, from economic motives,"Travis said. "How does one better oneself economically by dying?"
She ignored the question, which was easier than trying to answer it.
"And why are you bothering to talk to these witch doctors? They aren'trepresentative of the native people. They're a lot of cynicalcharlatans, with a vested interest in ignorance and superstition--"
"Miss Shaw, for the past eight centuries, earnest souls have beenbewailing the fact that progress in the social sciences has alwayslagged behind progress in the physical sciences. I would suggest thatthe explanation might be in difference of approach. The physicalscientist works _with_ physical forces, even when he is trying, as inthe case of contragravity, to nullify them. The social scientist works_against_ social forces."
"And the result's usually a miserable failure, even on thephysical-accomplishment level," Foxx Travis added. "This storm shelterproject that was set up ten years ago and got nowhere, for instance.Ramon Gonzales set up a shelter project of his own seventy-five hoursago, and he's half through with it now."
"Yes, by forced labor!"
r /> "Field surgery's brutal, too, especially when the anaesthetics run out.It's better than letting your wounded die, though."
"Well, we were talking about these shoonoon. They are a force among thenatives; that can't be denied. So, since we want to influence thenatives, why not use them?"
"Mr. Gilbert, these shoonoon are blocking everything we are trying to dofor the natives. If you use them for propaganda work in the villages,you will only increase their prestige and make it that much harder forus to better the natives' condition, both economically andculturally--"
"That's it, Miles," Travis said. "She isn't interested in facts aboutspecific humanoid people on Kwannon. She has a lot of high-orderabstractions she got in a classroom at Adelaide on Terra."
"No. Her idea of bettering the natives' condition is to rope in a lot ofyoung Kwanns, put them in Government schools, overload them withinformation they aren't prepared to digest, teach them to despise theirown people, and then send them out to the villages, where they behavewith such insufferable arrogance that the wonder is that so few of themstop an arrow or a charge of buckshot, instead of so many. And when thathappens, as it does occasionally, Welfare says they're murdered at theinstigation of the shoonoon."
"You know, Miss Shaw, this isn't just the roughneck's scorn for theegghead," Travis said. "Miles went to school on Terra, and majored inextraterrestrial sociography, and got a master's, just like you did. AtMontevideo," he added. "And he spent two more years traveling on a Paulavon Schlicten Fellowship."
Edith Shaw didn't say anything. She even tried desperately not to lookimpressed. It occurred to him that he'd never mentioned that fellowshipto Travis. Army Intelligence must have a pretty good _dossier_ on him.Before anybody could say anything further, a Terran captain and a nativesergeant of the First K.N.I. came in. In the screen, the four sepoys whohad been fussing around straightening things picked up auto-carbines andposted themselves two on either side of a door across from the pickup,taking positions that would permit them to fire into whatever camethrough without hitting each other.
What came through was one hundred and eighty-four shoonoon. Some worerobes of loose gauze strips, and some wore fire-dance cloaks of red andyellow and orange ribbons. Many were almost completely naked, but theywere all amulet-ed to the teeth. There must have been a couple of milesof brass and bright-alloy wire among them, and half a ton of brightscrap-metal, and the skulls, bones, claws, teeth, tails and othercomponents of most of the native fauna. They debouched into the bigroom, stopped, and stood looking around them. A native sergeant and acouple more sepoys followed. They got the shoonoon over to thesemicircle of cushions, having to chase a couple of them away from thesingle seat at front and center, and induced them to sit down.
The native sergeant in the little room said something under his breath;the captain laughed. Edith Shaw gaped for an instant and said,"_Muggawsh_!" Travis simply remarked that he'd be damned.
"They do look kind of unusual, don't they?" Miles said. "I wouldn'tdoubt that this is the biggest assemblage of shoonoon in history. Theyaren't exactly a gregarious lot."
"Maybe this is the beginning of a new era. First meeting of the KwannonThaumaturgical Society."
A couple more K.N.I. privates came in with serving-tables oncontragravity floats and began passing bowls of a frozen native-fooddelicacy of which all Kwanns had become passionately fond since itsintroduction by the Terrans. He let them finish, and then, after theyhad been relieved of the empty bowls, he nodded to the K.N.I. sergeant,who opened a door on the left. They all went through into the room theyhad been seeing in the screen. There was a stir when the shoonoon sawhim, and he heard his name, in its usual native mispronunciation,repeated back and forth.
"You all know me," he said, after they were seated. "Have I ever been anenemy to you or to the People?"
"No," one of them said. "He speaks for us to the other Terrans. When weare wronged, he tries to get the wrongs righted. In times of famine hehas spoken of our troubles, and gifts of food have come while theGovernment argued about what to do."
He wished he could see Edith Shaw's face.
"There was a sickness in our village, and my magic could not cure it,"another said. "Mailsh Heelbare gave me oomphel to cure it, and told mehow to use it. He did this privately, so that I would not be made tolook small to the people of the village."
And that had infuriated EETA; it was a question whether unofficial helpto the natives or support of the prestige of a shoonoo had angered themmore.
"His father was a trader; he gave good oomphel, and did not cheat.Mailsh Heelbare grew up among us; he took the Manhood Test with the boysof the village," another oldster said. "He listened with respect to thegrandfather-stories. No, Mailsh Heelbare is not our enemy. He is ourfriend."
"And so I will prove myself now," he told them. "The Government is angrywith the People, but I will try to take their anger away, and in themeantime I am permitted to come here and talk with you. Here is a chiefof soldiers, and one of the Government people, and your words will beheard by the oomphel machine that remembers and repeats, for theGovernor and the Great Soldier Chief."
They all brightened. To make a voice recording was a wonderful honor.Then one of them said:
"But what good will that do now? The Last Hot Time is here. Let us bepermitted to return to our villages, where our people need us."
"It is of that that I wish to speak. But first of all, I must hear yourwords, and know what is in your minds. Who is the eldest among you? Lethim come forth and sit in the front, where I may speak with him."
Then he relaxed while they argued in respectfully subdued voices.Finally one decrepit oldster, wearing a cloak of yellow ribbons andcarrying a highly obscene and ineffably sacred wooden image, was broughtforward and installed on the front-and-center cushion. He'd come fromsome village to the west that hadn't gotten the word of the swarming;Gonzales' men had snagged him while he was making crop-fertility magic.
Miles showed him the respect due his advanced age and obviously greatmagical powers, displaying, as he did, an understanding of the regalia.
"I have indeed lived long," the old shoonoo replied. "I saw the Hot Timebefore; I was a child of so high." He measured about two and a half feetoff the floor; that would make him ninety-five or thereabouts. "Iremember it."
"Speak to us, then. Tell us of the Gone Ones, and of the Sky Fire, andof the Last Hot Time. Speak as though you alone knew these things, andas though you were teaching me."
Delighted, the oldster whooshed a couple of times to clear his outletsand began:
"In the long-ago time, there was only the Great Spirit. The Great Spiritmade the World, and he made the People. In that time, there were no morePeople in the World than would be in one village, now. The Gone Onesdwelt among them, and spoke to them as I speak to you. Then, as morePeople were born, and died and went to join the Gone Ones, the Gone Onesbecame many, and they went away and build a place for themselves, andbuilt the Sky Fire around it, and in the Place of the Gone Ones, at themiddle of the Sky Fire, it is cool. From their place in the Sky Fire,the Gone Ones send wisdom to the people in dreams.
"The Sky Fire passes across the sky, from east to west, as theAlways-Same does, but it is farther away than the Always-Same, becausesometimes the Always Same passes in front of it, but the Sky Fire neverpasses in front of the Always-Same. None of the grandfather-stories, noteven the oldest, tell of a time when this happened.
"Sometimes the Sky Fire is big and bright; that is when the Gone Onesfeast and dance. Sometimes it is smaller and dimmer; then the Gone Onesrest and sleep. Sometimes it is close, and there is a Hot Time;sometimes it goes far away, and then there is a Cool Time.
"Now, the Last Hot Time has come. The Sky Fire will come closer andcloser, and it will pass the Always-Same, and then it will burn up theWorld. Then will be a new World, and the Gone Ones will return, and thePeople will be given new bodies. When this happens, the Sky Fire will goout, and the Gone Ones will live in the World again with the Pe
ople; theGone Ones will make great magic and teach wisdom as I teach to you, andwill no longer have to send dreams. In that time the crops will growwithout planting or tending or the work of women; in that time, the gamewill come into the villages to be killed in the gathering-places. Therewill be no more hunger and no more hard work, and no more of the Peoplewill die or be slain. And that time is now here," he finished. "All thePeople know this."
"Tell me, Grandfather; how is this known? There have been many Hot Timesbefore. Why should this one be the Last Hot Time?"
"The Terrans have come, and brought oomphel into the World," the oldshoonoo said. "It is a sign."
"It was not prophesied beforetime. None of the People had prophesies ofthe coming of the Terrans. I ask you, who were the father of childrenand the grandfather of children's children when the Terrans came; wasthere any such prophesy?"
The old shoonoo was silent, turning his pornographic ikon in his handsand looked at it.
"No," he admitted, at length. "Before the Terrans came, there were noprophesies among the People of their coming. Afterward, of course, therewere many such prophesies, but there were none before."
"That is strange. When a happening is a sign of something