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days.
"You're really lost," the surveyor told them. He was Brother Lek, a
vigorous brown muscular man, a lay expositor and a deacon in the tithing.
"According to the legends, Creation Mesa is a long way west, out in the preman
reservation. I've never heard of any shrine there "
"We need water," the boy begged. "Please!" "You'll have to wait a bit,"
Lek said. "We have work to finish " "The work can wait." Sister Yeva was his
apprentice, a sturdy, well-tanned redhead. Lek had been her instructor in love
as well as surveying, and in her awakened glow of total satisfaction she
wanted no pain for anybody. "I'll bring up the skimmer."
He questioned them, somewhat critically, while she was gone. Looking
legal enough, their passports carried visas from the Terran Thearchy granting
them the status of student guests with permission for an indeterminate visit.
"Can you help us find a place to stay?" the girl asked. "Kroong IV is a
poor planet. Our money is gone, and we must find work."
Brother Lek had become suspicious of students asking for work at the
tithing. Too many, in the past, had been worthless idlers; a few had even been
exposed as secret scoffers at the eternal love of Bel and the infinite wisdom
of Thar. These two, however, looked too young and too hungry to be
professional vagrants; and the yellow-eyed girl was already budding into a
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very alluring maturity.
"We're willing," the boy was urging. "We don't know your ways, but you'll
find us anxious to learn."
"You can ask to visit the tithing, or even for a probationary
mem-bership." Lek frowned at him sharply. "But we don't admit many. Our quotas
are almost full."
Sister Yeva was landing the skimmer in the sharp-scented juniper near
them. She came out with bottles of water and a basket they had brought for an
after-work picnic. The two drank avidly, though the girl paused to apologize
for their greed.
Leaving them with the basket in the shade of the skimmer, Lek and Yeva
tramped back to their surveying. The two were asleep when they returned, but
the boy sprang up as if in fright when he heard them snapping through the
brush.
In the skimmer on their way back to the center Lek began asking about
their lives on Kroong IV. Though the boy seemed uneasy and evasive, the girl
answered with a wide-eyed candor.
"Kroong IV is a small planet. Too far from Kroong itself. Too cold and
too dry and too poor in everything even atmosphere. 1 wish Crethor could have
found a better world. We want to forget every-thing that happened to us there,
and I hope we never have to go back."
She smiled shyly at Lek.
"Won't you Won't you let us stay here?"
"That's for the deacons to decide."
"But he's a deacon." Yeva giggled and nudged him intimately. "He'll help
you."
The center capped a gentle hill in the older section of the tithing,
among fruit-bearing trees and ripe grain fields laced with full canals. They
landed on the paved square between the chapels of Bel and Thar, and Yeva
waited with them in the skimmer while Lek went to speak to the rector.
The boy still seemed apprehensive, but the girl was asking eager
questions about the buildings under the mirror domes around them, the dining
halls and dormitories, the toolhouses and barns, the packing plants where
the food products of the wide commons were processed for shipment, the hall
of culture, and the sports complex.
"A good place." She nodded eagerly. "A kind and friendly place. I hope
they let us stay."
"Were happy here." Yeva smiled complacently. "The land is bountiful when
we bring water to it. I can't quite imagine why the old premen let it go to
rock and dust and brush. Of course Belthar is good to us. A more generous god,
I'm sure, than your Crethor was."
When Lek came back, he had permission for them to stay, at least until
the deacons met. He gave them cards for work and food and shelter, and Yeva
helped them find their quarters. On Tharday after-noon, with Yeva as a
sponsor, they appeared before the deacons, and came away with the rector's
blessing as probationary members of the tithing.
"You couldn't find a better place," Lek boasted that night in the dining
hall. "I've seen the cities and studied in the great seminaries and worshipped
in the holiest temples. I've even seen the living Belthar. There's no place
like our tithing. We live on the good Earth and make it better. We fed
ourselves with our own hands, with plenty for others. We have good air, wide
space, and peace. We share one another, to Bel's delight. If we sometimes wish
to touch a wider world, we have the learning center and the hall of culture.
You'll love Utopia Holy."
"We're lucky " The girl's voice was broken with emotion. "Very lucky to
be here."
Lek nodded, as if in unspoken approval of her young loveliness.
"Sometimes," he went on casually, "I think of the premen who used to claim
this land. You've seen the north mesa, the way they left it. Washed to dry
ravines full of thorns and snakes and scorpions. Sometimes I try to imagine
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what sort of creatures they really were, how they lived, why they died."
The boy's sunburned face set grimly, as if that picture pained him.
Perhaps, Yeva thought, it reminded him too bitterly of his hardships on Kroong
IV.
"Imagine the premen!" Lek's lean brown face grimaced with dis-gust.
"Killer apes, pretending to be men. Actually killing one another often enough,
if their own legends are true, in organized wars and private fights. Robbing
one another, misruling one another, while they all rotted alive with a
thousand vile diseases. Decaying of age from the moment of maturity. Wallowing
in filth and ignorance and their own stupidity, worshipping whole galleries of
fantastic gods they generally had to imagine."
He stared at the uneasy boy, almost as if accusing him. "Think of all
that and thank our Creators for the difference!" "We're thankful." The girl
spoke quickly, dark eyes fixed on the boy. "To the Creators." She turned her
luminous smile on Lek and Yeva. "And to you for finding room for us."
For a time they seemed entirely delighted with life in the tithing.
Cheerfully, they tried to master their unfamiliar tasks. Silent about
themselves, they seemed alert to learn new ways and new customs. With the
boy's quick readiness and the girl's warm charm, they began to win friends.
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