 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Mark Nelson. Oomphal in the Sky by H. Beam Piper. Part One Miles Gilbert watched the landscape slide away below him. Its quilt of rounded treetops mottled red and orange in the double sunlight and in shaded places with the natural yellow of the vegetation of Kuanan. The air-car began a slow swing to the left and Gettler Alpha came into view, a monstrous smear of red incandescence with an optical diameter of two feet at arm's length, slightly flattened on the bottom by the western horizon. In another couple of hours it would be completely set, but by that time Beta, the planet's G-class primary, would be at its mid-afternoon hottest. He glanced at his watch. It was 10.05, but that was galactic standard time and had no relevance to anything that was happening in the local sky. It did mean, though, that it was five minutes short of two hours to cast time. He snapped on the communication screen in front of him, and Harry Walsh, the news editor, looked out of it at him from the office in Blue Lake, halfway across the continent. He wanted to know how things were going. Just about finished. I'm going to look in at a couple more native villages, and then I'm going to Sanders Plantation to see Gonzalez. I hope I'd have a personal statement from him and the final situation progress map in time for the cast. Can I take it Mace still agreeable to releasing the story at 1200? Sure. He was always agreeable. The army wants publicity. It was Government House that wanted to sit on it, and they've given that up now. The story's all over the place here, native city and all. What's the situation in town now? Oh, it's still going on. Some disorders, mostly just unrest. A lot of street meetings that could have turned into frenzies and police hadn't broken them up in time. A couple of shootings, some sleep-gassing and a lot of arrests. Nothing to worry about, at least not immediately. That was about what he thought. Maybe it's not too bad to have a little trouble in Blue Lake, he considered. What happens out here in the plantation country the Government House crowd can't see, and it doesn't worry them. Well, I'll call you from Sanders. In the seat in front, the native pilot said, Shum contra gravity up ahead, Bosch? It sounded like two voices speaking in unison, which was just what it was. I'll have a look. The pilot's hand, long and thin, like a squirrel's, reached up and pulled down the fifty power binoculars on their swinging arm. Miles looked at the screen-map and saw a native village just ahead of the dot of light that marked the position of the air-car. He spoke the native name of the village aloud and added. Let down here, Hesto. I'll see what's going on. The native, still looking through the glasses, said, Right Bosch? Then he turned. His skin was blue-gray and looked like sponge rubber. He was humanoid, to the extent of being an upright biped, with two arms, a head on top of shoulders, a torso that housed, among other oddities, four lungs. His face wasn't even vaguely human. He had two eyes in front, close enough for stereoscopic vision, but that was a common characteristic of sapient life-forms everywhere. His mouth was strictly for eating. He breathed through separate intakes and outlets, one of each on either side of his neck. He talked through the outlets and had his scent and hearing organs in the intakes. The car was air-conditioned, which was a mercy, and overheated Kwan exhaled through his skin and surrounded himself with stenches like an organic chemistry lab. But then Kwan's didn't come any closer to him than they could help when he was hot and sweated, which lately had been most of the time. I'll be a half of air cavalry, shirking around," Heshto said, making sure nobody got away, and a combat car at a couple hundred feet and another one just at treetop level. He rose and went to the seat next to the pilot, pulling down the binoculars that were focused for his own eyes. With them he could see the air cavalry, egg-shaped things just big enough for a seated man with jets and contra-gravity field generators below and a bristle of machine-gun muzzles in front. A couple of them jetted up for a look at him and then went slanting down again, having recognized the Kwanan Planet-wide News Service car. The village was typical enough to have been an illustration in a sociography textbook. Fields in a belt for a couple of hundred yards around it, dome-thatched mud-and-waddle huts inside a pole-stock aid with log storehouses built against it, their flat roofs high enough to provide platforms for defending archers, the open oval-gathering place in the middle. There was a big hut at one end of this, the Kamdu, the sanctum of the adult males, off-limits for women and children. A small crowd was gathered in front of it, fifteen or twenty Terran air cavalrymen, a couple of enlisted men from the second Kwanan native infantry, a Terran second lieutenant, and half a dozen natives. The rest of the village population, about two hundred, of both sexes and all ages, were lined up on the shadier side of the gathering place, most of them looking up apprehensively at the two combat cars which were covering them with their guns. Miles got to his feet as the car lurched off contra-gravity and the springs of the landing feet took up the weight. A blast of furnace-like air struck him when he opened the door. He got out quickly and closed it behind him. The second lieutenant had come over to meet him, he extended his hand. Good day, Mr. Gilbert! We all owe you our thanks for the warning. This would have been a real baddie if we hadn't caught it when we did. He didn't even try to make any modest disclaimer. That was nothing more than the exact truth. Well, lieutenant, I see you have things in hand here. He glanced at the line-up along the side of the oval plaza and then at the selected group in front of the comm-due. The patriarchal village chieftain in a loose-slashed shirt, the chounou wearing a multiplicity of amulets and nothing else, four or five of the village elders. I take it the word of the swarming didn't get this far? No, this crowd still didn't know what the flap's about and I couldn't think of anything to tell them there wouldn't be worse than no explanation at all. He had noticed hose and spades flying in the fields and the cylindrical plastic containers the natives bought from traders, dropped when the troops had surprised the women at work. And the chounou didn't have a fire-dance cloak or any other special regalia on. If he'd heard about the swarming he'd have been dressed to make magic for it. What time did you get here, Lieutenant? 09.40. I just called in and reported the village occupied and they told me I was the last one in so the operation's finished. That had been smart work. He got the lieutenant's name and unit and mentioned it into his memophone. That had been a little under five hours since he had convinced General Maith in Blue Lake that the mass labor desertion from the sander's plantation had been the beginning of a swarming. Some division commanders wouldn't have been able to get a brigade off the ground in that time, let alone landed on objective. He said as much to the young officer. The way the army responded today can make the people of the colony feel a lot more comfortable for the future. Why, thank you, Mr. Gilbert. The army, on Kuanon, was rather more used to obliquy than praise. How did you spot what was going on so quickly? This was the hundredth time, at least that he had been asked that today. Well, Paul Sander's labor all comes from the neighboring villages. If they just wanted to go home and spend the end of the world with their families, they'd have been dribbling away in small batches for the last couple of hundred hours. Instead, they all bugged out in a bunch. They took all the food they could carry and nothing else, and they didn't make any trouble before they left. Then, Sander said they'd been building fires out in the fallow ground and moaning and chanting around for a couple of days and idling on the job, saving their strength for the trek. And he said they had a shu new among them. He's probably the lad who started it. Had a dream from the gone ones, I suppose. You mean like this fellow here, the lieutenant asked? What are they, Mr. Gilbert, priests? He looked quickly at the lieutenant's collar-badges, yellow tree-foil for the Third Fleet Army Force, Roman IV for Fourth Army, 907 for his regiment, with C under it for cavalry. That outfit had only been on Quannon for the last two thousand hours, but somebody should have breathed him better than that. He shook his head. No, they're magicians. Everything these quans do involves magic, and the shu nun are the professionals. When a native runs into something serious that his own do-it-yourself magic can't cope with, he goes to the shu nun, and of course the shu nun works all the magic for the community as a whole. Rain magic, protective magic for the village and the fields, that sort of thing. The lieutenant mopped his face on a bedraggled handkerchief. They'll have to struggle along somehow for a while. We have orders to round up all the shu nun and send them in to Blue Lake. Yes. That hadn't been General Maith's idea. The governor had insisted on that. I hope it doesn't make more trouble than it prevents. The lieutenant was still mopping his face and looking across the gathering place toward Alpha, glaring above the huts. How much worse do you think this is going to get? he asked. The heat or the native troubles? I was thinking about the heat, but both. Well, it'll get hotter. Not much hotter, but some. We can expect some storms, too, within twelve to fifteen hundred hours. Nobody has any idea how bad they'll be. The last periastron was ninety years ago, and we've only been here for sixty odd. All we have is verbal accounts from memory from the natives, probably garbled and exaggerated. We had pretty bad storms right after transit a year ago. They'll be much worse this time. Thermal convictions. Air starts to cool when it gets dark, and then heats up again in the double sun daylight. It was beginning, even now. Starting to blow a little after Alpha rise. How about the natives, the lieutenant asked? If they can get any crazier than they are now. They can, and probably will. They think this is the end of the world, the last hot time. He used the native expression and then translated into linguatera. The sky-fire, that's Alpha, will burn up the whole world. But this happens every ninety years. Meaning they always acted this way at periastron? He shook his head. Race would have exterminated itself long ago if they had. No, this is something special. The coming of the Terrans was a sign. The Terrans came and brought Umphil to the world. This a sign that the last hot time is at hand. What the devil is Umphil? The lieutenant was mopping the back of his neck with one hand now and trying to pull his sticky tunic loose from his body with the other. I hear that word all the time. Well, most Terrans, including the old quen on hands, use it to mean trade goods. To the natives it means any product of Terran technology from paperclips to spaceships. They think it's, well, not exactly supernatural. Extra-natural would be closer to expressing their idea. Terrans are natural. They're just a different kind of people. But Umphil isn't. It isn't subject to any of the laws of nature at all. They're all positive that we don't make it. Some of them even think it makes us. When he got back in the car, the native pilot, Heshto, was lolling in his seat and staring at the crowd of natives along the side of the gathering place with undisguised disdain. Heshto had been educated at one of the native welfare commission schools and post-graded with quen on planet-wide news. He could speak, read, and write lingua tera. He was a mathematician as far as long division and decimal fractions. He knew that quen on was the second planet of the Gettler-Beta system, 23,000 miles in circumference, rotating on its axis once in 22.8 galactic standard hours and making an orbital circuit around Gettler-Beta once in 372.06 axial days, and that alpha was an M-class pulsating variable with an average period of 400 days, and that beta orbited around it in a long ellipse every 90 years. He didn't believe there was going to be a last hot time. He was an intellectual, he was. He started the contra-gravity field generator as soon as Miles was in his seat. Where now, Bosch? he asked. Kualpha's village. We won't let down, just circle low over it. I want some views of the ruins. Then to Sanders' plantation. OK, Bosch, hold tight. He had the car up to 10,000 feet. Aiming it at the map direction of Kualpha's village, he let go with everything he had. Hot jets, rocket booster and all. The forest landscape came hurtling out of the horizon toward them. Kualpha's was where the trouble had first broken out after the bug out from Sanders. The troops had been able to get in there in time and it had been burned. Another village, about the same distance south of the plantation, had also gone up in flames. And at a dozen more they had found the natives working themselves into frenzies and had had to sleep-gas them or stun them with concussion bombs. Those had been the villages to which the deserters from Sanders had themselves gone. From every one, runners had gone out to neighboring villages. The gone ones are returning. All the people go to greet them at Deshafou. Burn your villages, send on the word. Hason, the gone ones return. Saving some of the villages had been touch-and-go, too. The runners, with hours lead time, had gotten there ahead of the troops and there had been shooting at a couple of them. Then the army contra-gravity began landing at villages that couldn't have been reached in hours by foot-messengers. It had been stopped, at least for the time and in this area, when and where another would break out was anybody's guess. The car was slowing and losing altitude and ahead he could see thin smoke rising above the trees. He moved forward beside the pilot and pulled down his glasses. With them he could distinguish the ruins of the village. He called Blue Lake and then put his face to the viewfinder and began transmitting in the view. There wasn't a soul, human or para-human in sight. The only living thing was a small black-and-gray quadruped investigating some bundles that had been dropped in the fields in hope of finding something tasty. He got a view of that. Everybody liked animal pictures on a newscast and then he was swinging the pickup over the still-burning ruins. In the ashes of every hut would be the remains of something like a view-screen or a nuclear-electric stove or a refrigerator or sewing-machine. He knew how dearly the quans cherished such possessions. That they had destroyed them grieved him. But the last hot time was at hand. The whole world would be destroyed by fire and then the gone ones would return. So there were uprisings on the plantations. The planters had been lucky. His quans had just picked up and left. But he had always gotten along well with the natives and his plantation house was literally a castle and he had plenty of armament. There had been other planters who had made the double mistake of incurring the enmity of their native labor and of living in unfortified houses. A lot of them weren't around any more and their plantations were gutted ruins. Again there were plantations on which the natives had destroyed the cluba plants and smashed the crystals which lived symbiotically upon them. They thought the Terrans were using the living crystals to make magic. Not too far off at that. The properties of the Quanaan biocrystals had opened a major breakthrough in sub-nucleonic physics and initiated half a dozen technologies. New kinds of umphel. And down in the south where the spongy and resinous trees were drying in the heat they were starting forest fires and perishing in them in hecatombs. And to the north they were swarming into the mountains building great fires there too and attacking the Terran radar and radio beacons. Fire was a factor common to all these frenzies. Nothing could happen without magical assistance. The way to bring on the last hot time was people. Maybe the ones who died in the frenzies and the swarming's were the lucky ones at that. They wouldn't live to be crushed by disappointment when the sky fire receded as beta went into the long swing toward a pastron. The surviving Shunun wouldn't be the lucky ones that was for sure. The magician in public practice needs only to make one really bad mistake before he is done to some unpleasantly ingenious death by his clientry. And this was going to turn out to be the biggest magical prophetic blooper in all the long unrecorded history of Kuanan. A few minutes after the car turned south from the ruined village he could see contra-gravity vehicles in the air ahead and then the fields and buildings of the sander's plantation. A lot more contra-gravity was grounded in the fallow fields and there were rows of pneumatic balloon tents and field kitchens and a whole park of engineering equipment. Work was going on in the Kluba fields too. About three hundred natives were cutting open the six-foot leafy balls and getting out the bio-crystals. Three of the plantation air-jeeps, each with a pair of machine guns, were guarding them but they didn't seem to be having any trouble. He saw sanders in another jeep and had Heshto pull the car alongside. How's it going, Paul? he asked over his radio. I see you have some help now. Everybody's from Kuafas and from Darshats, sanders replied. The army had no place to put them after they burned themselves out. He laughed happily. Miles, I'm going to save my whole crop. I thought I was wiped out this morning. He would have been if Gonzales hadn't brought those quans in. The Kluba was beginning to wither. If left unharvested, the bio-crystals would die along with their hosts and crack into worthlessness. Like all the other planters, sanders had started no new crystal since the hot weather and would start none until the worst of the heat was over. He needed every crystal he could sell to tide him over. The welfareers will make a big forced labor scandal out of this, he predicted. Why such an idea! Sanders was scandalized. I'm not forcing them to eat. The welfareers don't think anybody ought to have to work to eat. They think everybody ought to be fed whether they do anything to earn it or not. And if you try to make people earn their food, you're guilty of economic coercion. And if you're in business for yourself and want them to work for you, you're an exploiter and you ought to be eliminated as a class. Haven't you been trying to run a plantation on this planet under this colonial government long enough to have found that out, Paul? Brigadier General Ramon Gonzales had taken over the first, counting down from the landing stage, floor of the plantation house for his headquarters. The headquarters company had pulled out removable partitions and four rooms into one, and moved in enough screens and teleprinters and photo-print machines and computers to have outfitted the main newsroom of the planet-wide news. The place had the feel of a newsroom, a newsroom after a big story is broken and the cast has gone on the air and everybody, in this case about twenty Terran officers and non-coms, half-women, standing about watching screens and smoking and thinking about getting a follow-up ready. Gonzales himself was relaxing in Sander's business room, with his belt off and his tunic open. He had black eyes and black hair and mustache and a slightly equine face that went well with his old Terran Spanish name. There was another officer with him, considerably younger, Captain Fox Travis, Major General Maith's aide. Well, is there anything we can do for you miles? Gonzales asked, after they had exchanged greetings and sat down. Why, could I have your final situation progress map? And would you be willing to make a statement on audio-visual? He looked at his watch. We have about twenty minutes before the cast. You have a map, Gonzales said, as though he were walking tiptoe from one word to another. It accurately represents the situation as of the moment, but I'm afraid some minor unavoidable inaccuracies may have crept in while marking the positions and times for the earlier phases of the operation. I teleprinted a copy to Planetwide, along with the one I sent to Division headquarters. He understood about that and nodded. Gonzales was zipping up his tunic and putting on his belt and sidearm. That told him, before the Brigadier General spoke again, that he was agreeable to the audio-visual appearance and statement. He called the recording studio at Planetwide while Gonzales was inspecting himself in the mirror and told them to get set for a recording. It only ran a few minutes. Gonzales, speaking without notes, gave a brief description of the operation. At present, he concluded, we have every native village and every plantation and trading post within two hundred miles of the Sanders Plantation occupied. We feel that this swarming has been definitely stopped, but we will continue the occupation for at least the next hundred or two hundred hours. In the meantime, the natives in the occupied villages are being put to work building shelters for themselves against the anticipated storms. I hadn't heard about that, Miles said, as the General returned to his chair and picked up his drink again. Yes, they'll need something better than these thatched huts when the storms start, and working on them will keep them out of mischief. Standard megaton-kilometer field shelters, earth and log construction. I think they'll be adequate for anything that happens at Periastron. Anything designed to resist the heat, blast and radiation effects of a megaton thermonuclear bomb at a kilometer ought to stand up to what was coming. At least the Periastron effects. There was another angle to it. The Native Welfare Commission isn't going to take kindly to that. That's supposed to be their job. Then why the devil haven't they done it? Gonzales demanded angrily. I viewed every native village in this area by screen, and I haven't seen one that's equipped with anything better than those log storage bins against the stockades. There was a project to provide shelters for the Periastron storm set up ten years ago. They spent one year arguing about how the native survived storms prior to the Terrans' arrival here. According to the older natives, they got into those log storage houses you were mentioning. Only about one out of three in any village survived. I could have told them that. Did tell them, repeatedly, on the air. Then, after they decided that shelters were needed, they spent another year hassling over who would be responsible for designing them. Your predecessor here, General Nokami, offered the services of his engineer officers. He was frostedly informed that this was a humanitarian and not a military project. Ramon Gonzales began swearing, then apologized for the interruption. Then what, he asked. Apology unnecessary. Then they did get a shelter designed, and started teaching some of the students in native schools how to build them. And then the meteorologists told them it was no good. It was a dugout shelter. The weathermen said there'd be rainfall measuring in meters instead of inches, and anybody who got caught in one of those dugouts would be drowned like a rat. Ha! I thought of that one, Gonzales said. My shelters are going to be mounted up eight feet above the ground. What did they do then, Fox Travis wanted to know. There the matter rested. As far as I know, nothing has been done on it since. And do you think, with a disgraceful record of non-accomplishment like that, that they'll protest General Gonzales' action on purely jurisdictional grounds, Travis demanded? Not jurisdictional grounds, Fox. The general's going at this the wrong way. He actually knows what has to be done and how to do it, and he's going right ahead and doing it, without holding a dozen conferences and round-table discussions and giving everybody a fair and equal chance to foul things up for him. You know as well as I do that that's undemocratic. And what's worse, he's making the natives build them themselves, whether they want to or not, and that's forced labor. That reminds me, has anybody started raising the devil about those quans from qualpas and darshats you brought here and Paul put to work? Gonzales looked at Travis and then said, Not with me, not yet, anyhow. They've been at General Maith, Travis said shortly. After a moment he added, General Maith supports General Gonzales completely. That's for publication. I'm authorized to say so. What else was there to do? They'd burn their villages and all their food stores. They had to be placed somewhere. And why in the name of reason should they sit around in the shade eating government native type rations while Paul Sanders has 50 to 100,000 sols worth of crystals dying on him? Yes, that's another thing they'll scream about. Paul's making a profit out of it. Of course he's making a profit, Gonzales said. Why else is he running a plantation? If planters didn't make profits who'd grow biocrystals? The colonial government. The same way they built those storm shelters. But that would be in the public interest. And if the quans weren't public-spirited enough to do the work, they'd be made to at about half what planters like Sanders are paying them now. But don't you realize that profit is sordid and dishonest and selfish? Not at all like drawing a salary come expense account from the government. You're right, it isn't, Gonzales agreed. People like Paul Sanders have ability. If they don't, they don't stay in business. You have ability in people who don't never forgive you for it. Your very existence is a constant reproach to them. That's right, and they can't admit your ability without admitting their own inferiority. So it isn't ability at all. It's just dirty, underheaded, trickery and selfish ruthlessness. You thought for a moment. How did Government House find out about these quans here? The Welfare Commission had people out while I was setting up headquarters, Gonzales said. That was about 0700. This isn't for publication, Travis asked. Well, they know, but they can't prove, that our given reason for moving in here in force is false. Of course, we can't change our story now. That's why the situation progress map prepared for publication is incorrect as to the earlier phases. They do not know that it was you who gave us our first warning. They ascribe that to Sanders. And they are claiming that there never was any swarming. According to them, Sanders natives are striking for better pay and conditions. And Sanders got General Mith to use troops to break the strike. I wish we could give you credit for putting us on to this, but it's too late now. He nodded. The story was that a battalion of infantry had been sent in to rescue a small detail under attack by natives, and that more troops had been sent in to reinforce them until the whole of Gonzales' brigade had been committed. That wasted an hour at the start, Gonzales said. We lost two native villages burned, and about two dozen casualties because we couldn't get our full strength in soon enough. You'd have lost a lot more than that if Mith had told the Governor General the truth and requested orders to act. There'd be a hundred villages and a dozen plantations and trading posts burning now, and Lord knows how many dead, and the Governor General would still be arguing about whether he was justified in ordering troop action. He mentioned several other occasions when something like that had happened. You can't tell that kind of people the truth. They won't believe it. It doesn't agree with their preconceptions. Fox Travis nodded. I take it we're still talking for non-publication. When Miles nodded he continued. This whole situation is baffling, Miles. It seems that the government here knew all about the weather conditions they could expect at Peri-Astron and had made plans for them. Some of them excellent plans, too, but all based on the presumption that the natives would cooperate, or at least not obstruct. You see what the situation actually is. It should be obvious to everybody that the behavior of these natives is nullifying everything the civil government is trying to do to ensure the survival of the Terran colonists. The production of Terran-type food without which we would all starve, the biocrystal plantations without which the colony would perish, and even the natives themselves. Yet the civil government will not act to stop these native frenzies and swarming which endanger everything and everybody here. And when the army attempts to act we must use every sort of shabby subterfuge and deceit or the civil government will prevent us. What ails these people? You have the whole history of the colony against you, Fox, he said. You know, there never was any chartered company set up to exploit the resources of this planet. At first nobody realized that there were any resources worth exploiting. This plan was just a scientific curiosity. It was and is still the only planet of a binary system with a native population of sapient beings. The first people who came here were scientists, mostly sociographers and para-anthropologists. And most of them came from the University of Adelaide. Travis nodded. Adelaide had a federation-wide reputation for left-wing neo-Marxist liberalism. Well, that established the political and social orientation of the colonial government right at the start when study of the natives was the only business of the colony. You know how these ideological cliques form in a government or any other organization. Subordinates are always chosen for their agreement with the views of their superiors. And the extremists always get to the top and shove the moderates under or out. Well, the Native Affairs Administration became the tale that wagged the government dog. And the Native Welfare Commission is the big muscle in the tale. End of Part 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Mark Nelson. Oomphel in the Sky by H. Beam Piper. Part 2. His parents hadn't been of the left-wing Adelaide clique. His mother had been a biochemist. His father a roving news correspondent who had drifted into trading with the natives and made a fortune in Kefagum before the chemists on Tara had found out how to synthesize Hopkins'ine. When the biocrystals were discovered and the plantation started, the government attitude was set. Biocrystal culture is just sordid money-grubbing. The real business of the colony is to promote the betterment of the natives, as defined in University of Adelaide terms. That's to say, convert them into Airzatz Terrans. You know why General the Shenoon rounded up? Travis made a face. Governor General Kovac insisted on it. General May thought that a few minor concessions would help him on his main objective, which was keeping a swarming from starting out here. Yes, the Commissioner of Native Welfare wanted that done, mainly at the urging of the Director of Economic, Educational and Technical Assistance. The EETA crowd don't like Shenoon. They had been trying, ever since their agency was set up, to undermine and destroy their influence with the natives. This looked like a good chance to get rid of some of them. Travis nodded. Yes, and as soon as the disturbances in Blue Lake started, the constabulary started rounding them up there, too, and at the Evacuee Cantonments. They got about fifty of them, mostly from the Cantonments east of the city. The natives brought in from the flooded Tidewater area. They just dumped a lot of them on to us. We have them pinned up in a lorry hangar on the military reservation now. He turned to Gonzalez. How many do you think you'll gather up out here, General? He asked. I'd say about a hundred and fifty when we have them all. Travis groaned. We can't keep all of them in that hangar and we don't have them anywhere else. Sometimes a new idea sneaked up on Miles, rubbing against him and purring like a cat. Sometimes one hit him like a sledgehammer. This one just seemed to grow inside him. Fox, you know I have the top three floors of the Suzakami building. About five hundred hours ago I leased the fourth and fifth floors directly below. I haven't done that yet. They're just as they were when transport imports moved out. There are ample water, light, power, air conditioning and toilet facilities and they can be sealed off completely from the rest of the building. If General Mates agreeable I'll take you shunoon off his hands. What in blazes will you do with them? Try a little experiment in psychological warfare. At minimum we get a little better insight into why these natives think the last hot time is coming. At best we may be able to stop the whole thing and get them quieted down again. Even the minimum is worth trying for, Travis said. What do you have in mind, Miles? I mean, what procedure? Well, I'm not quite sure yet. That was a lie. He was very sure. He didn't think it was quite time to be specific, though. I'll have to size up my material a little before I decide on what to do with it. Whatever happens it won't hurt the shunoon and it won't make any more trouble than a rescue them has made already. I'm sure we can learn something from them, at least. Travis nodded. General Mates is very much impressed with your grasp of native psychology, he said. What happened out here this morning was exactly as you predicted. Whatever my recommendation's worth, you have it. Can you trust your native driver to take your car back to Blue Lake alone? Yes, of course. Then suppose you ride in with me in my car. We'll talk about it on the way in and go see General Mates at once. Blue Lake was peaceful as they flew in over it. But it was an uneasy peace. They began running into very contra-gravity 20 miles beyond the open farmlands. They were the chlorophyll green of Terran vegetation and the natives at work in the fields were being watched by more military and police vehicles. The carniculture plants, where Terran-type animal tissue was grown in nutrient vats, were even more heavily guarded and the native city was being patrolled from above and the streets were empty, and the land was empty. The Terran city had no streets. Its dwellers moved about on contra-gravity and tall buildings rose singly or in clumps among the landing-stage residences and the green transplanted trees. There was a triple-wire fence around it, the inner one massed by vines and the middle one electrified with warning lights on. Even a government dedicated to the betterment of the natives and their military action against them was, it appeared, unwilling to take too many chances. Major General Dennis Mait, the Federation Army Commander on Quannon, was considerably more willing to find a temporary home for his witch-doctors, now numbering close to 200. He did insist that they be kept under military guard and on assigning his aide, Captain Travis, to cooperate on the project. And he gave Miles a free hand. Miles and Travis got very little rest in the next ten hours. A half-company of engineer troops was also kept busy, as were a number of Quannon planet-wide news technicians and some Terran and native mechanics borrowed from different private business concerns in the city. Even the most guarded hints of what he had in mind were enough to get this last cooperation. He had been running a news service in Blue Lake long enough to have the confidence of the business people. He tried, as far as possible, to keep any intimation of what was going on from the Government House. That, unfortunately, hadn't been far enough. He found out that when General Mait was on his screen in the middle of the work on the fourth and fifth floors of the Suzakami building, the Governor General just screamed to me, Mait said. He's in a tizzy about our shunoon, claims that keeping them in the Suzakami building will 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 is completely sealed off from the floor below. They can't get out, and I have tanks of sleep gas all over the place, which can be opened either individually or together from a switch on the fourth floor, where your sepoys are quartered. I know, Mr. Gilbert, I screen-viewed the whole installation. I've seen regular maximum security prisons that would be easier to get out of. Governor General Kovac is not objecting personally. He has been pressured into it by his native welfare, Government within the Government. They don't know what I'm doing with those shunoon, but whatever it is, I'm doing it. Well, for the present, they said, I think I'm holding them off. The Civil Government doesn't want the responsibility of keeping them in custody. I refuse to assume responsibility for them if they were kept anywhere else, and Kovac simply won't consider releasing them, so that leaves things as they are. I did have to make one compromise, though. That didn't sound good. It sounded less so when Maith continued. They insisted on having one of their people at the Suzakami Building as an observer. I had to grant that. That's going to mean trouble. Oh, I shouldn't think so. The observer will observe, and nothing else. She will take no part in anything you're doing and will voice no objections and will not interrupt anything you are saying to the shunoon. I was quite firm on that, and the Governor General agreed completely. 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 young enough and new enough to quen on not to have a completely injurated mind. On the other hand she was EETA, which was bad, and had a Masters in Sociography from Adelaide, which was worse. When can I look for her? Well, the Governor General is going to screen me and find out when you'll have the shunoon on hand. Doesn't want to talk to me at all, Miles thought. Afraid he might say something and get quoted. For your information, they'll be here inside an hour. They will have to eat, and they're all tired and sleepy. I should say about 0800. Oh, and will you tell the Governor General to tell Miss Shaw to bring an overnight kit with her? He was up at 0400, just a little after Beta Rise. He might be a civilian big-wheel in an Army Psychological Warfare project, but he still had four newscasts a day to produce. He spent a couple of hours checking the 0600 cast and briefing Harry Walce for the indeterminate period in which he would be acting Chief Editor and Producer. At 0700, Fox Travis put in an appearance. They went down to the fourth floor to the little room they had fitted out as command post, control room and office for Operation Shunoo. There was a rectangular black traveling case initialed ES beside the open office door. Travis nodded at it and they grinned at one another. She'd come early, possibly hoping to catch them hiding something they didn't want her to see. Entering the office quietly, they found her seated facing the big view screen, smoking and watching a couple of enlisted men of the first Kwanon native infantry at work in another room where the pickup was. There were close to a dozen lipstick-tainted cigarette butts in the ashtray beside her. Her private face wasn't particularly happy. Maybe she was being earnest and concerned about the betterment of the underprivileged or the satanic maneuvers of the selfish planters. Then she realized that somebody had entered. With a slight start she turned, then rose. She was about the height of Fox Travis, a few inches shorter than Miles and Slender. Light blonde, green suit costume. She ditched her private face and got on her public one, a pleasant and deferential smile with a trace of uncertainty behind it. Miles introduced Travis and they sat down again facing the screen. It gave a view from one of the long sides and near the ceiling of a big room. In the center a number of seats. The drum-shaped cushions the natives had adopted in place of the seats carved from sections of tree trunk that they had been using when the Terrans had come to Kwanon were arranged in a semi-circle, one in the middle, slightly in advance of the others. Facing them were three arm-chairs, a remote control box beside one, and another Kwan cushion behind and between the other two. There was a large globe of Kwanon and on the wall behind the chairs an array of view screens. There will be an interpreter, a native Army sergeant between you and Captain Travis, he said. I don't know how good you are with native languages, Miss Shaw. The captain is not very fluent. Cushions for them, I see, and chairs for the Lordly Terrans, she commented. Never miss a chance to rub our superiority in, do you? I never deliberately forced them to adopt our ways, he replied. Our chairs are as uncomfortable for them as their low seats are for us. Difference, you know, doesn't mean inferiority or superiority. It just means difference. Well, what are you trying to do here? I'm trying to find out a little more about the psychology back of these frenzies and swarming. It hasn't occurred to you to look for them in the economic wrongs these people are suffering at the hands of the planters and traders, I suppose. So they're committing suicide, and that's all you can call these swarming 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't representative of the native people. There are a lot of cynical charlatans with a vested interest in ignorance and superstition. Miss Shaw, for the past eight centuries, earnest souls have been bewailing the fact that science has always lagged behind progress in the physical sciences. I would suggest that the explanation might be indifference of approach. The physical scientist works with physical forces, even when he's trying, as in the case of contragravity, to nullify them. The social scientist works against social forces. And the result's usually a miserable failure even on the physical accomplishment level, this storm-shelter project was set up ten years ago and got nowhere, for instance. Ramon Gonzales set up a shelter project of his own seventy-five hours ago, and he's half through with it now. Yes, by forced labour. Field surgery's brutal, too, especially when the anesthetics run out. It's better than letting your wounded die, though. Well, we were talking about the shunoon. They are a force among the natives. That can't be denied. So, since we want to influence the natives, why not use them? Mr. Gilbert, these shunoon are blocking everything we are trying to do for the natives. If you use them for propaganda work in the villages, you will only increase their prestige and make it that much harder for us to better the native's condition, both economically and culturally. Travis said. She isn't interested in facts about specific humanoid people on Kwanan. She has a lot of high-order abstractions she got in a classroom at Adelaide on Terra. No, her idea of bettering the native's condition is to rope in a lot of young Kwanans, put them in government schools, overload them with information they aren't prepared to digest, teach them to despise their own people, and then send them out to the villages where they behave with such insufferable arrogance that the wonder is that so few of them stop an arrow or a charge of buckshot instead of so many. And when that happens, as it does occasionally, welfare says they're murdered at the instigation of the shunoon. You know, Miss Shaw, this isn't just the rough-necked scorn for the egghead, Travis said. Miles went to school on Terra and majored in extra-terrestrial sociography. And got a master's, just like you did. At Montevideo, he added. And he spent two more years traveling on a Paul-Avon-Schlichten fellowship. Edith Shaw didn't say anything. She even tried desperately not to look impressed. It occurred to him that he'd never mentioned that fellowship to Travis. Army intelligence must have a pretty good dossier on him. Before anybody could say anything further, a Terran captain and a native sergeant of the first K&I came in. In the screen, the four seapoys who had been fussing around straightening things, picked up auto-carbines and posted themselves to on either side of a door, across from the pickup, taking positions that would permit them to fire into whatever came through without hitting each other. What came through was 184 shunoon. Some wore robes of loose-caused strips and some wore fire-danced cloaks of red and yellow and orange ribbons. Many were almost completely naked, but they were all amulated to the teeth. There must have been a couple of miles of brass and bright alloy wire among them and half a ton of bright scrap metal and the skulls, bones, claws, teeth, tails and other components of most of the native fauna. They debouched into the big room, stopped and stood looking around them. A native sergeant and a couple more seapoys followed. They got the shunoon over to the semi-circle of cushions, having to chase a couple of them away from the single seat at front and center and induce 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, My gosh! Travis simply remarked that he'd be damned. They do look kind of unusual, don't they? Miles said. I wouldn't doubt that this is the biggest assembly of shunoon in history. They aren't exactly a gregarious lot. Maybe this is the beginning of a new era. First meeting of the Quannon Thaumaturgical Society. A couple more can I privates came in with serving tables on contragravity floats and began passing bowls of a frozen native food delicacy of which all Quons had become passionately fond since its introduction by the Terrans. He let them finish, and then, after they had been relieved of the empty bowls, he nodded to the K&I sergeant who opened a door on the left. They all went through into the room they had been seeing on the screen. There was a stir when the shunoon saw him, and he heard his name as usual native mispronunciation repeated back and forth. You all know me, he said, after they were seated. Have I ever been an enemy to you or to the people? No, one of them said. He speaks for us as the other Terrans. When we are wronged, he tries to get the wrongs righted. In times of famine he has spoken of our troubles, and gifts of food have come and 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. Mayor's Header Bear gave me oomphel to cure it, and told me how to use it. He did this privately so that I would not be made to look small to the people of the village. And that had infuriated E.E.T.A. whether unofficial help to the natives or support of the prestige of a shunu had angered them more. His father was a traitor. He gave good oomphel and did not cheat. Mayor's Header Bear grew up among us. He took the manhood test with the boys in the village, another Ulster said. He listened with respect to the grandfather's stories. No, Mayor's Header Bear is not our enemy. And so I will prove myself now, he told them. The government is angry with the people, but I will try to take their anger away and in the meantime I am permitted to come here and talk with you. Here is a chief of soldiers and one of the government people and your words will be heard by the oomphel machine that remembers and repeats for the governor and the great soldier chief. They all brightened. To make a voice recording was a wonderful honor. Then one of them said, What good will that do now? The last hot time is here. Let us be permitted 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 your words and know what is in your minds. Who is the eldest among you? Let him 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 and carrying a highly obscene and ineffably sacred wooden image was brought forward and installed on the front and center cushion. He had come from some village to the west that hadn't got word of the swarming. As well as men had snagged him while he was making crop fertility magic. Miles showed him the respect due his advanced age and obviously great magical powers, displaying, as he did, an understanding of the regalia. I have indeed lived long, the old Shunu replied. I saw the hot time before. I was a child of Shohai. He measured about two and a half feet off the floor. That would make him ninety-five or thereabouts. I remember it. Speak to us, then. Tell us of the gone ones and of the sky fire and of the last hot time. Speak as though you alone knew these things and as though you were teaching me. Delighted, the oldster whooshed a couple of times to clear his outlets and began. In the long ago time there was only the great spirit the great spirit made the world and he made the people. In that time there were no more people in the world than would be in one village now. The gone ones dwelt among them and spoke to them as I speak to you. Then, as more people were born and died and went to join the gone ones the gone ones became many and they went away and built a place for themselves and built the world a place for themselves and built the sky fire around it and in the place of the gone ones at the middle 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 the always same does but is farther away than the always shame sometimes the always shame passes in front of it but the sky fire never passes in front of the always shame none of the grandfather's stories not even the oldest tell of a time when this happened sometimes the sky fire is big and bright that is when the gone ones feast and dance sometimes it is smaller and dimmer than the great ones rest 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 and closer and it will pass the always shame and then it will burn up the world then will be a new world and the gone ones will return and the people will be given new bodies when this happens the sky fire will go out and the gone ones will live in the world again with the people the gone ones will make great magic and teach wisdom as I teach to you and will no longer have to shed dreams in that time the crops will grow without planting or tending or the work of women in that time the game will come to the villages and the gathering places there will be no more of hunger and no more hard work and no more the people will die or be slain and that time is now here he finished all the people know this tell me grandfather how is this known there have been many hot times before why should this one be the last hot time the terrenes have come and brought umphol into the world the old shunu said it is a shine it was not prophesied before time none of the people had prophecies of the coming of the terrenes I ask you who were the father of children and the grandfather of children's children when the terrenes came was there any such prophecy the old shunu the old shunu went silent turning his pornographic icon in his hands and looked at it no he admitted at length before the terrenes came there were no prophecies among the people of their coming afterward of course there were many such prophecies but there were none before that is strange when a happening is a sign of something to come it is prophesied before time he left that seed of doubt alone to grow and continued now grandfather speak to us about what the people believe concerning the terrenes the terrenes came to the world when my eldest daughter bore her first child the old shunu said they came in great ships such as come often now but which had never before been sheen they said they came from another world like the world of people but so far away that even the sky fire could not be sheen from it they still say this and many of the people believe it but it is not real at first it was thought that the terrenes were great shunun who made power for magic but this is not real either the terrenes have no magic and no wisdom of their own all they have is the umfo and the umfo works magic for them and teaches them their wisdom even in the schools which the terrenes have made for the people it is the umfo which teaches he went on to describe not too incorrectly the reading screens and view screens and audio visual equipment nor do the terrenes make the umfo as they say the umfo makes more umfo for them then where do the terrenes get the first umfo they stole it from the gonwunge the old shunu replied the gonwunge make it in their place in the middle of the sky fire for them shelves and to give to the people when they return the terrenes stole it from them for this reason there is much hatred of the terrenes among the people the terrenes live in the dark place under the world where the sky fire and the always shame go when they are not in the sky it is there that the terrenes get the umfo from the gonwunge and now they have come to the world and they are using umfo to hold back the sky fire and keep it beyond the always shame so that the last hot time will not come and the gonwunge will not return for this reason too there is much hatred of the terrenes among the people grandfather if this were real there would be good reason for such hatred and I would be ashamed for what my people had done and were doing but it is not real he had to rise and hold up his hands to quell the indignant outcry have any of you known me to tell not real things and try to make the people act as though they were real then trust me in this I will show you real things which you will all see and I will give you great secrets which it is now time for you to have and use for the good of the people even the greatest secret he added there was a pause of a few seconds then they burst out in 184 no 368 voices the umfo secret mayers he'll bear he nodded slowly yes the umfo secret will be given he leaned back and relaxed again while they were getting over the excitement Fox Travis looked at him apprehensively rushing things aren't you what are you going to tell them oh a big pack of lies I suppose Edith Shaw said scornfully behind her and Travis the native non-com interpreter was muttering something in his own language that translated roughly as this better be good the shunoon had quieted now and were waiting breathlessly but if the umfo secret is given what will become of the shunoon he asked you yourself say that we Terrans have no need for magic because the umfo works magic for us this is real if the people get the umfo secret how much need will they have for you shunoon evidently that hadn't occurred to them before there was a brief flurry of whispered whooshed rather conversation and then they were silent again the eldest shunoo said we trust you mayers he'll bear you will do what is best for the people and you will not let us be thrown out like broken pots either no, I will not he promised the umfo secret will be given to you shunoon he thought for a moment a fox-travis joking remark about the quinon-thometurgical society you have been jealous of one another each keeping his own secrets he said this must be put away you will all receive the umfo secret equally for the good of all the people you must all swear brotherhood one with another that later if any other shunoo comes to you for the secret you must swear brotherhood with him and teach it to him do you all agree to this the eldest shunoo rose to his feet, begged leave and then led the others to the rear of the room where they went into a huddle they didn't stay huddled long inside of ten minutes they came back and took their seats we all agreed Mayor Sheilbert the spokesman said Edith Shaw was impressed more than by anything else she had seen well, that was a quick decision she whispered you have done well, grandfathers you will not be thrown out by the people like broken pots you will be greater among them than ever I will show you how this will be but first I must speak around the umful secret he groped briefly for a comprehensible analogy and thought of a native vegetable layered like an onion with a hard kernel in the middle the umful secret is like a fushkut there are many lesser secrets around it each of which must be peeled off like the skins of a fushkut and eaten then you will find the nut in the middle but the nut of a fushkut is bitter, somebody said he nodded slowly and solemnly the nut of the fushkut is bitter he agreed they looked at one another disquieted by his words before anybody could comment he was continuing before this secret is given there are things to be learned you would not understand it if I gave it to you now you believe many not real things which must be chased out of your mind otherwise they will spoil your understanding that was verbatim what they told adolescents before giving them the manhood secret some of them huffed a little most of them laughed then one called out speak on grandfather of grandfathers and they all laughed that was fine it had been about time for teacher to crack his little joke now he became serious again the first of these not real things you must chase from your mind is this which you believe about the home of the Terrans it is not real that they come from the dark place under the world there is no dark place under the world bedlam for a few seconds that was a pretty stiff jolt no dark place whoever heard of such a thing the eldest shoe knew rose cradling his grave and image in his arms and the noise quieted mayers he'll bear if there is no dark place where do the sky fire and always shame go when they are not in the sky they never leave the sky the world is round and there is sky everywhere around it they knew that or had at least heard it since the Terrans had come they just couldn't believe it it was against common sense the oldest shoe knew said as much and more these young ones who have gone to the Terrans school have come to the village with such tales but who listens to them they show disrespect for the chiefs and the elders and even for the shoe noon they mock at the grandfather stories they say men should do women's work and women do no work at all they break taboos and cause trouble they are fuj am I a fool grandfather do I mock at the old stories or show disrespect to elders and shoe noon yet I mayers he'll bear tell you this the world is indeed round and I will show you the shoe knew looked contemptuously at the globe I have seen those things he said that is not the world that is only a make like he held up his phallic wood carving I crochet that this is a make like of the world but that would not make it show I will show you for real we will all go in a ship he looked at his watch the skyfire is about to set we will follow it all around the world to the west and come back here from the east and the skyfire will still be setting when we return if I show you that will you believe me if you show us for real and it is no trick we will have to believe you end of part 2 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org reading by Mark Nelson oomphal in the sky by H. Beam Piper part 3 when they emerged from the escalators alpha was just touching the western horizon and beta was a little past zenith the ship was moored on contragravity beside the landing stage her gangplank run out the Shunun, who had gone up ahead had all stopped short and were staring at her then they began gabbling among themselves overcome by the wonder of being about to board such a monster and ride on her she was the biggest ship any of them had ever seen maybe a few of them had been on small freighters many of them had never been off the ground they didn't look or act like cynical charlatans or implacable enemies of progress and enlightenment they were more like a lot of schoolboys whose teacher is taking them on a surprise outing bet this will be the biggest day in their lives Travis said oh sure this will be a grandfather story ten generations from now I can't get over the way they made up their minds down there Edith Shaw was saying why they just went and talked for a few minutes and came back with a decision they hadn't any organization or any place to maintain on an organizational pecking order nobody was obliged to attack anybody else's proposition in order to keep up his own status the thought of the colonial government taking ten years not to build those storm shelters Fox Travis was commenting on the ship now I never saw that ship before didn't know there was anything like it on the planet why you could lift a whole regiment with supplies and equipment she's been laid up for the last five years since the heat and the native trouble stopped the tourist business here she's the old Hesperus excursion craft this sun-chasing trip we're about to make used to be a must for tourists here I thought she was something like that with all the glassed observation deck forward who's the owner Kuanan Air Transport Limited I told them what I needed her for and they made her available and furnished officers and crew and provisions for the trip they were working to put her in commission while we were fitting up the fourth and fifth floors downstairs you just asked for that ship and they just let you have it Edith Shaw was incredulous and shocked they wouldn't have done that for the government they want to see these native troubles stop too bad for business you know selfish profit move that's another social force it's a good idea to work with instead of against the Shunun were getting aboard now shepherded by the KNI officer and a couple of his men and some of the ship's crew a couple of seapoys were lugging the big globe that had been brought up from below after them everybody assembled on the forward top observation deck and Miles called for attention and finally got it he pointed out the three view screens mounted below the bridge, amid ships one on the left was turned to a pickup on top of the air terminal tower where the Terran City, the military reservation and the spaceport met it showed the view to the west with Alpha on the horizon on the right from the same point gave a view in the opposite direction to the east a middle screen presented a magnified view of the navigational globe on the bridge view screens were known novelty to the Shunun they were a very familiar type of umful he didn't even need to do more than tell them that the little spot of light on the globe would show the ship when he was sure that they understood that they could see what was happening in Blue Lake while they were away he called the bridge and ordered up ship telling the officer on duty to hold her at 5,000 feet the ship rose slowly turning toward the setting M giant somebody called attention that the views in the screens weren't changing somebody else said of course not the world changes because the ship is moving what we see in the screens is what the umful on the big building sees and it does not move that is for real as the umful sees it nice going Edith said your class has just discovered relativity Travis was looking at the eastward view screen he stepped over beside Miles and lowered his voice trouble over there to the east big swarm of combat contragravity working on something on the ground and something on fire too I see it that's where those evacuees are camped why in blazes they had to bring them here to Blue Lake that had been EETA too when the solar tides had gotten high enough to flood the coastal area the natives who had been evacuated from the district had been brought here because the native education people wanted them exposed to urban influences about half of the shunoon who had been rounded up locally had come in from the tide inundated area part right in the middle of the Terran type food production area Travis was continuing that was worrying him maybe he wasn't used to planets where the biochemistry wasn't teratype and a Terran would be poisoned or at best starved to death on the local food maybe as a soldier he knew how fragile even the best logistics system can be it was something to worry about Travis excused himself and went off in the direction of the bridge going to call HQ and find out what was happening excitement among the shunoon they had spotted the ship on which they were riding in the westward screen they watched it until it had vanished from sight of the seeing umphel and by then were over the upland forests from whence they had been brought to Blue Lake now and then one of them would identify his own village and that would start more excitement three infantry troop carriers and a squadron of air cavalry were rushing past the eastward pickup in the right hand screen another fire had started in the trouble area the crowd that had gathered from the globe that had been brought aboard began calling for Mayor's Heal Bear to show them how they would go around the world and what countries they would pass over Edith accompanied him and listened while he talked to them she was bubbling with happy excitement now it had just dawned on her that shunoon were fun none of them had ever seen the mountains along the western side of the continent except from a great distance now they were passing over them the ship had to gain altitude and even then make a detour around one snow-capped peak the whole hundred and eighty-four rushed to the starboard side to watch it as they passed the ocean half an hour later started to rush forward the score or so of them from the tide water knew what an ocean was but none of them had known that there was another one to the west Miles' view of the education program of the EETA never bright at best became even dimmer the young men who had gone to the Terran schools who listens to them they are fools there were a few islands off the coast the shunoon identified them on the screen globe and on the one on the deck some of them wanted to know why there wasn't a spot of light on this globe too it didn't have the oomphal inside to do that that was a satisfactory explanation EETA started to explain about the orbital beacon stations on planet and the radio beams and then stopped I'm sorry I'm not supposed to say anything to them she apologized oh that's all right I wouldn't go into all that though we don't want to overload them she asked permission a little later to explain why the triangle tip which had begun to edge into sight on the screen globe couldn't be seen from the ship when he told her to go ahead she got a platinum half-sol piece from her purse held it on the globe from the classroom and explained about the curvature and told them they could see nothing farther away than the circle the coin covered it was beginning to look as though the psychological warfare experiment might show another unexpected success there was nothing after the islands passed but a lot of empty water the shunoon were getting hungry but they refused to go below to eat they were afraid they might miss something so their dinner was brought up on deck for them Miles and Travis and Edith went to the officer's dining room back of the bridge Edith by now was even more excited than the shunoon they're so anxious to learn she was having trouble adjusting to that that was dead against E. E. T. A. Doctrine but why wouldn't they listen to the teachers we sent to the villages you heard old shot Tresh the fellow with the pornographic sculpture on the yellow robe these young torps act like fools and sensible people don't pay any attention to fools what's more they've been sent out indoctrinated with the idea that shunoon are a lot of lying old fakes and the shunoon resent that you know they're not lying old fakes within their limitations they're honest and ethical professional people oh come now I know I think they're sort of wonderful but let's don't give them too much credit I'm not you're doing that huh she looked at him in amazement me it's you you know better than to believe in magic so you expect them to know better too well they don't you know that under the macroscopic world of the senses there exists a complex of biological chemical and physical phenomena down to the sub-nucleonic level they realize that there must be something beyond what they can see and handle but they think it's magic well as a race so did we until only a few centuries pre-atomic these people are still lower neolithic hunting people of just learned agriculture where we were 20,000 years ago you think any glib talking quan can hang a lot of rags bones and old iron on to himself go through some impromptu mummery and set up as a shunoo well he can't the shunoon are a hereditary cast a shunoo father will begin teaching his son as soon as he can walk and talk and keep on teaching him till he's the age equivalent of a graduate md or a science phd well what all is there to learn the theoretical basis and practical applications of sympathetic magic action at a distance by one object on another homeopathic magic the principle that things which resemble one another will interact for instance there's an animal the natives a shimp it has an excrements of horn on its brow like an arrow head and it arches its back like a bow when it jumps therefore a shimp is equal to a bow and arrow and for that reason the quans made their bow strings out of shimp cut now they use tensilon because it won't break as easily or get wet and stretch so they have to turn the tensilon into shimp cut they used to do that by drawing a picture on the spool and then the traders began labelling the spools with pictures of shimp I think my father was one of the first to do that then there's contagious magic anything that's been part of anything else or come in contact with it will interact permanently with it I wish I had a saw for every time I've seen a quan pull the wad out of a shot shell pick up a pinch of dirt from the footprint of the animal he's tracking put it in among the buckshot and then crimp the wad in again everything a quan does has the same sort of magical implications it's the shunu's business to know all this to be able to tell just what magical influences have to be produced and what influences must be avoided and there are circumstances in which magic simply will not work even in theory the reason there's some powerful counter-influence at work he has to know when he can't use magic and he has to be able to explain why and when he's theoretically able to do something by magic he has to have a plausible explanation why it won't produce results just as any highly civilized and ethical Terran MD has to be able to explain his failures to the satisfaction of his late patients' relatives only a shunu doesn't get sued for malpractice he gets a spear stuck in him under those circumstances a cast of hereditary magicians is literally bred for quick thinking these old gaffers we have aboard are the intellectual top crust among the natives any of them can think rings around your government school products as for preying on the ignorance and credulity of the other natives they're only infinitesimally less ignorant and incredulous themselves but they want to learn from anybody who can gain their respect by respecting them Edith Shaw didn't say anything in reply she was thoughtful during the rest of the meal and when they were back on the observation deck he noticed that she seemed to be looking at the shunun with new eyes in the screen views of Blue Lake Beta had already set and the sky was fading stars had begun to twinkle there were more fires one close to the city in the east of regular conflagration and fighting had broken out in the native city itself he was wishing now that he hadn't thought it necessary to use those screens the shunun were noticing what was going on in them and talking among themselves Travis, after one look at the situation hurried back to the bridge to make a screen call after a while he returned almost crackling with suppressed excitement well, it's finally happened Mace forced Kovac to declare martial rule he said in an exultant undertone forced him Edith was puzzled the army can't force the civil government he threatened to do it himself intervene and suspend civil rule but I thought only the navy could do that any planetary commander of armed forces can in a state of extreme emergency I think you'll agree that this emergency is about as extreme as they come Kovac knew that Mace was unwilling to do it he'd have to stand court-martial to justify his action but he also knew that a governor general who has his colony taken away from him by the armed forces never gets it back he's finished it was just a case of the weaker man and the weaker position yielding where does that put us? we are a civilian scientific project you are under orders of general Mace I am under your orders I don't know about Edith can I draft her? or do I have to get you to get general Mace to do it? listen, don't do that Edith protested I still have to work for government house and this marshal rule won't last forever they'll all be prejudiced against me you can shove your government job in the airlock Miles told her you'll have a better one with the planet-wide news at half again as much pay and after the shake-up at government house about a year from now you may be going back as director of EETA when they find out on Tara just how badly this government has been mismanaging things there'll be a lot of vacancies end of part 3 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org reading by Mark Nelson Oomphel in the Sky by H. Beam Piper part 4 the shunoon had been watching the fighting in the view screens then somebody noticed that the spot of light on the navigational globe was approaching a coastline and they all rushed forward for a look Travis and Edith slept for a while when they returned to relieve him Alpha was rising to the east of Blue Lake and the fighting in the city was still going on the shunoon were still wakeful and interested quans could go without sleep for much longer periods than Terrans the lack of any fixed cycle of daylight and darkness on their planet had left them unconditioned to any regular sleeping and waking rhythm I just called in, Travis said things aren't good at all most of the natives in the evacuee cantonments have gotten into the native city now and they've gotten hold of a lot of firearms somehow and they're getting nasty in the west beyond where Gonzales is occupying and in the northeast and we only have about half enough troops to cope with everything the general wants to know how you're making out with the shunoon I'll call him back before I get in the sack he went up on the bridge and made the call general maith looked as sleepy as he felt they both yawned as they greeted each other there wasn't much he could tell the general and it sounded like the glib reassurances one gets from a hospital about a friend's condition we'll check in with you as soon as we get back and get our shunoon put away we understand what's motivating these frenzies now and about 25 to 30 hours we'll be able to start doing something about it the general in the screen grimaced that's a long time Mr. Gilbert longer than we can afford to take I'm afraid you're not cruising at full speed now are you oh no general we're just trying to keep alpha level on the horizon he thought for a moment he needed to keep down to that it may make an even bigger impression if we speed up he went back to the observation deck picked up a PA phone and called for attention you have seen now that we can travel around the world so fast that we keep up with the sky fire and it is not seen to set now we will travel even faster I will show you a new wonder I will show you the sky fire rising in the west and the always saying will seem to go backward in the sky this will not be for real it will only be seen so because we will be traveling faster watch now and see he called the bridge for full speed and then told them to look at the sky fire and then see in the screens where it stood over blue lake that was even better now they were racing the sky fire and catching up to it after half an hour he left them still excited and whooping gleefully over the steady gain five hours later when he came back after a nap and a hasty breakfast they were still whooping Edith Shaw was excited too the Shunun were trying to estimate how soon they would be back to blue lake by comparing the position of the sky fire with its position in the screen General Maith received them in his private office at army HQ Fox Travis mixed drinks for the four of them while the general checked the microphones to make sure they had privacy I blame myself for not having forced marshal rule on them hundreds of hours ago he said I have three brigades the one general Gonzales had here originally and the two I brought with me when I took over here we have to keep at least half a brigade in the south to keep the tribes there from starting any more forest fires I can't hold blue lake with anything less than half a brigade Gonzales has his hands full in his area he had a nasty business while you were off on that world cruise natives in one village caught the men stationed there off guard and wiped them out and then started another frenzy it spread to two other villages before it got stopped and we need the third brigade in the northeast there are three quarters of a million natives up there inhabiting close to a million square miles and if anything really breaks loose here and what's been going on in the last few days is nothing even approaching what a real outbreak could be like we'd have to pull in troops from everywhere we must save the Terran type crops and the Carniculture plants if we don't we all starve Miles nodded and he could think of saying to that how soon can you begin to show results with those shunoon Mr. Gilbert the general asked you said from twenty five to thirty hours can you cut that any in twenty five hours all hell could be loose all over the continent Miles shook his head so far I haven't accomplished anything positive he said all I did with this trip around the world was convince them that I was telling the truth I told them there was no dark race under the world where Alpha and Beta go at night he hastened as the general began swearing to add I know that doesn't sound like much but it was necessary I have to convince them that there will be no last hot time and then the shunoon on their drum shaped cushions stared at him in silence aghast all the happiness over the wonderful trip in the ship the sky fire around the world and caught it over Blue Lake and even their pleasure in the frozen delicacies they had just eaten was gone no last hot time mayors he'll bear this is not real it cannot be the gone ones the always cool time when there will be no more hunger or hard work or death it cannot be real that this will never come he rose holding up his hands his action stopped the clamor why should the gone ones want to return to this poor world that they have gladly left he asked have they not a better place in the middle of the sky fire where it is always cool and why should you want them to come back to this world will not each one of you pass sooner or later to the middle of the sky fire will you not there be given new bodies and join the gone ones there is the always cool there the crops grow without planting and without the work of women there the game come into the villages to be killed in the gathering places without hunting there you will talk with the other gone ones your fathers and your fathers fathers as I talk to you why do you think this must come to the world of people do you hate to join the gone ones in the sky fire then he sat down and folded his arms they were looking at him in amazement evidently they all saw the logic but none of them had ever thought of it before now they would have to run it over in their minds and accustom themselves to the new viewpoint they began whooshing among themselves at length old Shatresh who had seen the hot time before he spoke mayers here bear we trust you he said you have told us of wonders and you have shown us that they are real but do you know this for real do you tell me that you do not he demanded in surprise you have had fathers and fathers fathers they have gone to join the gone ones why should you not also and why should the gone ones come back and destroy the world of people then your children will have no more children and your children's children will never be it is in the world of people that the people are born it is in the world that they grow and gain wisdom to fit themselves to live in the place of the gone ones when they are all through with the bodies they use in the world you should be happy that there will be no last hot time your beginnings will go on and not be cut short there were murmurs of agreement with this most of them were beginning to be relieved that there wouldn't be a last hot time after all then one of the class asked do the tarange also go to the place of the gone ones or have they a place of their own he was silent for a long time looking down at the floor then he raised his head he hoped that I would not have to speak of this he said but since you have asked it is right that I should tell you he hesitated again until the quannons in front of him have begun to fidget then he asked old Chartres speak of the beliefs of the people about how the world was made the great spirit made the world he held up his caravan obscenity he made the world out of himself this is a make like to show it the great spirit made many worlds the stars which you see in the dark time are all worlds each with many smaller worlds around it the great spirit made them all at one time and made people on many of them the great spirit made the world of people and made the always same and the sky fire and inside the sky fire he made the place of the gaon ones and when he made the place of the gaon ones he put an oomphal mother inside it to bring forth oomphal this created a brief sensation an oomphal mother was something they had never thought of before but now they were wondering why they hadn't of course there'd be an oomphal mother how else would there be oomphal the world of Terrans is far away from the world of people as we have always told you when the great spirit made it he gave it only and always same and no sky fire since there was no sky fire there was no place to put a place of the gaon ones so the great spirit made the Terrans so that they would not die but live forever in their own bodies the oomphal mother for the world of the Terrans the great spirit hid in a cave under a great mountain the Terrans whom the great spirit made lived for a long time and then one day a man and a woman found a crack in a rock and went inside and they found the cave of the oomphal mother and the oomphal mother in it so they called all the other Terrans and they brought the oomphal mother out and the oomphal mother began to bring forth oomphal the oomphal mother brought forth metal and cloth and glass and plastic, knives and axes and guns and clothing he went on cataloging the products of human technology the shunoon staring more and more wide-eyed at him and oomphal to make oomphal and oomphal to teach wisdom he finished they became very wise and very rich then the great spirit saw what the Terrans had done and became angry for it was not meant for the Terrans to do this and the great spirit cursed the Terrans with a curse of death it was not death as you know it because the Terrans had sinned by laying hands on the oomphal mother not only their bodies must die but their spirits also a Terran has a short life in the body after that, no life this then is the oomphal secret the last skin of the fushkut has been peeled away behold the bitter nut upon which we Terrans have chewed for more time than anybody can count happy people when you die or are slain you go to the place of the gone ones to join your fathers and your father's fathers and to await your children and your children's children when we die or are slain that is the end of us but you have brought your oomphal into this world have you not brought the curse with it somebody asked frightened no the people did not sin against the great spirit they have not laid hands on an oomphal mother as we did the oomphal we bring you will do no harm do you think we would be so wicked as to bring the curse upon you it will be good for you to learn about oomphal here in your place of the gone ones there is much oomphal why do your people come to this world mayers he'll bear old chatrash asked was it to try to hide from the curse there is no hiding from the curse of the great spirit but we Terrans are not a people who submit without strife to any fate from the time of the curse of death we have been trying to make spirits for ourselves but how can you do that we do not know the oomphal will not teach us that though it teaches everything else we have only learned many ways in which it cannot be done it cannot be done with oomphal or with anything that is in our own world but the oomphal mother made a ship to go to other worlds and we have gone to many of them this one among them seeking things from which we might try to make spirits we are trying to make spirits for ourselves from the crystals that grow in the kluba plants we may fail with them too but I say this I may die and all the other Terrans now living may die and be as though they had never been some day our children or our children's children will make spirits for themselves and live forever as you do why were we not told ish before Meir Shilbert we were ashamed to have you know it we are ashamed to be people without spirits can we help you and your people maybe our magic might help it well might it might be worth trying but first you must help yourselves you and your people are sinning against the great spirit as grievously as did the Terrans of old be warned in time lest you answer it as grievously what do you mean Meir Shilbert old Châtres was frightened you are making magic to bring the sky fire to the world do you know what will happen the world of people will pass whole into the place of the gone ones and both will be destroyed the world of people is a world of death everything that lives on it must die the place of the gone worlds is a world of life everything in it lives forever the two will strive against each other and will destroy one another there will be nothing in the sky fire or the world but fire this is wisdom which our oomphel teaches us we know this secret and with it we make weapons of great destruction he looked over the seated shunoon picking out those who wore the flame colored cloaks of the fire dance you and you and you you have been making this dreadful magic and leading your people in it and which among the rest of you have not been guilty we did not know one of them said mayers he'll bear have we yet time to keep this from happening yes there is only a little time but there is time you have until the always same passes across the face of the sky fire that would be 750 hours if this happens all is safe if the sky fire blots out the always same we are all lost together you must go among your people and tell them what madness they are doing and command them to stop you must command them to lay down their arms and cease fighting and you must tell them of the awful curse that was put upon the Terrans in the long ago time for a lesser sin than they are now committing if we say that mayers he'll bear told us this the people may not believe us he is not known to all and some would take no Terrans word not even his would anybody tell a secret of this short about his own people if it were not real we had better say nothing about mayers he'll bear we will say that the gone ones told us in dreams let us say that the great spirit sent a dream of warning to each of us another shunu said there has been too much talk about dreams from the gone ones already but the great spirit has never sent a dream nothing like this has ever happened before either he rose and they were silent go to your living place now he told them talk of how best you may warn your people he pointed to the clock you have an umphal like that in your living place when the shorter spear has moved three places I will speak with you again and then you will be sent in air-cars to your people to speak to them he went up the escalator and down the hall to Miles's office on the third floor without talking Fox's Travis was singing softly almost inaudibly you will eat in the sweet sky and by you will get umphal in the sky when you die inside Edith Shaw slumped desperately in a chair Fox Travis went to the coffee maker and started it Miles snapped on the communication screen and punched the combination of General Math's headquarters as soon as the uniform girl who appeared in it saw him her hands moved quickly the screen flickered and the general appeared in it we have it made General they're sold we're ready to start them out in three hours Mace thin weary face suddenly lighted you mean they're going to cooperate? he shook his head they think they're saving the world they think we're cooperating with them the general laughed that's even better how do you want them sent out the ones in the Blue Lake area first better have some picked K&I in native costume with pistols to go with them they'll need protection till they're able to get a hearing for themselves after they're all out the ones from Gonzales area can be started he thought for a moment I want four or five of them left here to help me when you start bringing more shunoon in from other areas how soon do you think you'll have another class for me two or three days if everything goes all right we have the villages and plantations in the south under pretty tight control now we can start gathering them up right away as soon as things get stabilized here we can send reinforcements to the north we'll have transport for you in three hours the general blanked out he turned from the screen Travis was laughing happily Miles can anybody ever tell you you were a genius he asked that last jolt you gave them was perfect why didn't you tell us about it in advance I didn't know about it in advance I didn't think of it till I started talking to them no cream or sugar for me cream Edith said lifelessly why did you do it why didn't you just tell them the truth Travis asked her to define the term she started to say something bitter about jesting Pilate Miles interrupted in spite of Lord Beacon Pilate wasn't jesting he said and he didn't stay for an answer because he knew he'd die of old age waiting for one what kind of truth should I have told them why what you started to tell them that beta moves in a fixed orbit and can't get any closer to alpha there's been some work done on the question since Pilate's time Travis said my sabantics prophet command college had the start of an answer he defined truth as a statement a statement exists only in the mind of the person making it and the mind of the person to whom it is made if the person to whom it is made can't understand or accept it it isn't the truth they understood when you showed them that the planet was round and they understood that tridimensional model of the system why didn't you let it go at that they accepted it intellectually but when I told them that there wasn't any chance of Quannon getting any closer to alpha they rebelled emotionally it doesn't matter how conclusively you prove anything if the person to whom you prove it can't accept your proof emotionally it's still false not real they had all their emotional capital invested in this always cool time Travis told her they couldn't let Miles wipe that out for them so he shifted it from this world to the next and convinced them they were getting a better deal that way you saw how quickly they picked it up and he didn't have the sin of telling children there is no Easter Bunny on his conscience either but why did you tell them that story painful mother she insisted now they'll go out and tell all the other natives and they'll believe it would they have believed it if I told them about Terence scientific technology your people have been doing that for close to half a century you see what impression it's made but you told them you told them that Terence have no souls can you prove that was a lie Travis asked let's see yours draw soul inspection soul naturally fox Travis would expect a soul to be carried in a holster but they'll look down on us now they'll say we're just like animals Edith almost wailed now it comes out Travis said we won't be the lordly Terence anymore helping out the poor benighted quans out of the goodness of our hearts scattering large s bearing the Terence burden new model a giveaway instead of a gun now they'll pity us they'll think we're inferior beings I don't think the natives are inferior beings she was almost in tears if you don't why did you come all the way to Quennon to try to make them more like Terence knock it off Fox stop heckling her Travis looked faintly surprised maybe he hadn't realized before that a boss newsman learns to talk like a commanding officer you remember what Ramon Gonzales was saying out at Sanders about the inferiors hatred for the superior as superior it's no wonder these quans resent us they have a right to we've done them all an unforgivable injury we've let them see us doing things they can't do of course they resent us but now I've given them something to feel superior about when they die they'll go to the place of the gone ones and have umphel in the sky and they will live forever in new bodies but when we die we just die period so they'll pity us and politely try to hide their condescension toward us and because they feel superior to us they'll want to help us they'll work hard on the plantations so that we can have plenty of biocrystals and their shunun will work magic for us to help us poor benighted terrens to grow souls for ourselves so that we can be almost like them of course they'll have a chance to exploit us and get umphel from us too but the important thing will be to help the poor terrens maybe they'll even organize a spiritual and magical assistance agency end of umphel in the sky by H. Beam Piper this recording is in the public domain