Part 2

"The Zuni are a large village of American Indians who live in New Mexico. Right next to what used to be a big Indian reservation for the Navahos. A typical inward-looking culture. Now the Navahos, although they still keep their own language and religion, are an outward-looking culture, interested in the rest of the world. The Zuni are not. For them the boundaries of the world are the walls of Zuni village. They wouldn't bother to listen to a message from outer space, much less reply."

"Can't be very bright," said Joe.

"On the contrary. Some of them have made the highest scores on the Tromovich intelligence test that have ever been recorded. It's not a matter of intelligence, but the attitude of the culture."

"Well," said Joe, "let's hope most of the worlds of space have outward-looking cultures." He turned back to his transmitter.

* * * * *

Pehn found himself lying on a couch. He tried to get up, and felt his father's hands at his shoulders restraining him.

"Don't move, Pehn," said his mother. "You fainted, and they brought you home." She lifted his head, and let him sip a cup of the hot _akhlai_.

After a time his father addressed him with unusual kindness.

"We cannot delay any longer, Pehn. Your mother and sister and I are all agreed. You must undergo Ceremony. What is proper thing to do for you, I don't know, but Bidagha believes he can help you. This crisis in our world is making us all ill, and it is no wonder that you, being young, should suffer more acutely than rest of us."

Pehn tried to laugh. "Would you trust me to Bidagha?"

"Yes, I would. Although his views on world affairs are perverse and dangerous he is good Healer, and he has your best interests at heart."

"Your son is very ill, Lord Karn. If I am able to help him, would you be willing to consider possibility, at least, that wisdom of Healer is not confined to human body alone?"

Premier Karn brushed his hand across his eyes. In the last few days he had suddenly become an old man, and his mouth was drawn and tense. "I cannot tell, Bidagha. I am tired, and confused. I no longer seem to be sure what is true, and what is right."

Pehn opened his eyes to speak to Bidagha. "Do you think you can cure me, by Ceremony alone?"

"I have cured people who were much more ill than you are, but your case is serious because you have delayed so long. It may be that we should not rely on ritual alone, and that it would be wiser to use knife."

Lord Karn gasped with horror. "Never! Have you lost faith in your own art?"

"Of course none of us like to use knife, since very few minds are skilled enough to control infection likely to follow. No, first we shall hold Ceremony just as our traditions counsel us. Tonight."

The muted chime of the visiphone interrupted them. The Premier touched his wrist and the gaunt face of Nautunal appeared in the dial.

"Signals have entered new stage, sir. Message coming at present states that Topaz planet wishes to visit any planet inhabited by intelligent race. They say they have phase space drive for spaceships, but in all their searching have not found even one inhabited world. They say they want to know that they are not alone in universe."

The Premier's face worked. "I cannot say what is right. Later. I will decide after Ceremony. Are you ready, Pehn?"

Pehn covered his face with his folded arms.

"All right," he whispered. "Sooner, better."

* * * * *

Deep in the valley north of the city, Cave yawned. For thousands of years its narrow mouth had been open to the Healers and the participants in the ceremonial ritual. The age of Cave was unknown, some said as old as the planet itself. Great rocks formed the inner walls, which ascended to a low domed ceiling, and occasionally a handful of gravel trickled down the walls to the bottom where a small stream still worked at hollowing out the stone.

At the back of Cave was the hearth, and across the floor were ancient stone benches waiting for the friends and family of the patient, for by tradition, only patient and Healer approached the hearth itself. The others, whose wills and hearts were to unite, for one brief night, to heal the sickness, sat apart in a broad circle, where they could see the ceremony, and the chant of their voices could float back to the ears of the sufferer.

As the sun set, Pehn was carried into Cave on a litter.

His father and mother, his sister, his father's collaborators in the government, and representatives of the whole community filed down the valley to the entrance where Bidagha stood, and each person, clad for this occasion only in a robe of animal fur, as he approached the opening extended his hands to show that he had removed his wrist band, and lifted his arms to show that no material product of modern technology was being taken inside to profane Cave. They all respected the ancient proverb, "What Immortals want new, they make new." Each one lit his candle at Bidagha's flame, and silently took his place in the circle.

Pehn had not been inside Cave since his early childhood, but it seemed a familiar place, since its description formed a part of many of Zenob's myths, and was part of all her history.

The age-old figures scratched on the walk and filled in with colored earths, had been made by his remote ancestors at a time when their only weapons were the bows and arrows pictured there, and the stone-tipped spears with which they hunted their game. In the flickering light of the fire he could recognize the lithe _toda_, and the great-tusked _khalmat_, animals which had been extinct for many ages. How vividly Old Ones had portrayed these animals, and the ritual of their hunts! The wood fire, which Bidagha had kindled with a primitive wooden drill, burned on the hearth, and above his head through a rift in the ceiling, Pehn could see a narrow band of sky and a sprinkling of stars.

"Keep your head pointed towards fire," said Bidagha, "and lie quiet. Ritual has no value unless we observe it strictly." He gave Pehn a warm potion from an earthenware cup, which made him feel sleepy.

Bidagha began to chant, his bass voice reverberating from wall to wall, each syllable a sonorous musical note which was answered at intervals by the watching group of well-wishers.

A wooden bowl filled with coarsely ground grain was passed from one person to another, and each one placed a few grains on his tongue, some on his forehead, and threw a token pinch of the flour over his left shoulder.

An hour passed, two; the stars above shifted their position, and still Bidagha chanted, never hesitating, never stumbling over the archaic words. Midnight passed and the stars grew pale.

Through the roaring in his ears, Pehn heard the Healer kneel on the rock floor beside him; then he felt Bidagha's strong fingers on his shoulder.

"How is it with you, my son?"

Pehn groaned, unable to speak. The pain was not alleviated--it was greater then ever.

The soles of Bidagha's sandals scraped as he stood up again.

"Bring knife!" he called.

In his roaring darkness, Pehn stirred. Vaguely he sensed the murmuring of the watchers. Then someone else came near, and Bidagha's voice rose again. "Immortals, bless knife!"

Fingers pried open his jaw, probed at the misshapen gum, sending fiery flashes of agony into his brain. Then a hard edge of pain struck, cutting, releasing a flood of warm wetness in his mouth. Yet it all seemed to be happening far away.

He sensed Bidagha bending near once more. "Boy is going fast. Infection is deep."

Another voice: "Move him to experimental hospital?"

"He would not live to get there." A pause. "Go, bring forceps and bone knives. Hurry."

A long roaring darkness. Then new movement around where he lay: and a sudden voice that he dimly recognized as his father's.

"Stop! What is that tool in your hand?"

"A new device for extracting teeth," came Bidagha's calm, resonant voice: "with which we may save your son's life."

Shocked murmurs all over the hall, topped by his father's shout of outrage, "In Cave--in hands of Healer?"

Bidagha relied, "What Immortals want new, they make new! Here and now, in my hands, they end our years of darkness! Let Immortals confound me if I lie!"

* * * * *

The multitude in Cave roared their approval, and Premier Karn hesitated. He appeared to be struggling within himself. As the echoes died away, a pebble rolled from a ledge, dislodged by the sound, and fell at Bidagha's feet. A second pebble fell, and a boulder which had rested above the hearth for untold centuries shifted its position.

With a shout, Bidagha flung himself over Pehn's body as the boulder trembled and fell, crushing the life from the bodies of both men.

Dust rose, and a rumble began near the ceiling.

"Run!" cried Premier Karn. "Run for your lives!"

As the others ran from Cave, Lord Karn rushed to the huge rock lying upon his son, but he had no hope. Neither Pehn nor Bidagha would ever move again.

A trickle of sand pattered to the floor, and with a last backward glance Lord Karn ran from Cave. Boulders rained from the ceiling. The Premier had just reached the outside when a huge slab of rock crashed to the floor against the entrance. On the slope nearby, Pehn's mother and sister wept silently.

Lord Karn stood motionless a long while. At last he spoke.

"Cave is sealed," he said. "Let it never be opened again. Immortals have willed that my son should rest here forever, with impious Bidagha." Turning his face to the sky, he shook his fist at the bright spark of Topaz in the paling north. "So much for new things and foreign stars!" he said between his teeth. "This day's evil is enough."

They extinguished their candles and went slowly up the valley path towards the city.

* * * * *

Twenty-eight years later, on Earth, an astronomer comparing recent plates taken of the constellation Lyra noticed that Vega, its brightest star, had increased in brightness by a slight amount. The event was not especially remarkable--there are on the average, twenty-five novas reported every year in our galaxy--but Vega was one of the stars to be visited during the next decade by one of the Survey ships now in mid-voyage.

"There's one place they won't have to stop, now," he said to a colleague, showing him the plates.

"I don't suppose it matters. What's one star, more or less, when they all turn out to be the same--no planets, or barren ones--no stopping place for man."

"I suppose you're right," said the astronomer, staring glumly at the waste immensity of the photograph in front of him.