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The man crawled across a dunetop. He was a mote caught in the glare of the high noon sun. He was dressed only in the torn remnants of a dzabba cloak, his skin bare to the heat through the rips and tears. The hood had been ripped from the cloak, but the man had fashioned a turban from a torn strip of cloth. Wisps of sandy hair protruded from it, matched by a sparse beard and thick brows. Beneath the blue-within-blue eyes, remains of a dark stain spread down to his cheeks. A matted depression across mustache and beard showed where a stillsuit tube had marked out its path from nose to catchpockets.
He stopped halfway across the dunencrest, arms stretched down the slipface. Blood had clotted on his back and on his arms and legs. Patches of yellow-gray sand clung to the wounds. Slowly, he brought his hands under him, pushed himself to his feet, stood there swaying. And even in this almost-random action there remained a trace of once-precise movement.
"I am Re-Phes Holstein," he said, addressing himself to the empty horizon, and his voice was a hoarse caricature of the strength it had once known. "I am His Imperial Highness's Planetologist," he whispered, "planetary ecologist for Dyuna. I am the steward of this land."
He stumbled, fell sideways along the crusty surface of the windward face. His hands dug feebly into the sand.
I am the steward of this sand, he thought.
He realized that he was semi-delirious, that he should dig himself into the sand, find the relatively cool underlayer and cover himself with it. But he could still smell the rank, semisweet esthers of a pre-spice pocket somewhere underneath all this sand. He knew the peril within this fact more certainly than any other Szgany. If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant that the gasses deep beneath the sand were nearing explosive pressure. He had to get away from here fast!
His hands made weak scrabbling motions in the dune face.
A thought spread across his mind---clear and distinct: The true wealth of a planet is in its landscape, how we take part in that basic source of civilization----agriculture.
He thought how strange it was that the brain, long fixated on a single track, couldn't jump that track. The Seppanen soldiers had left him here without water or stillsuit, thinking a wurm would get him if the desert didn't. They had thought it funny to leave him alive to die by inches at the impersonal hands of a planet.
The Seppanens always did find it hard to kill Szganys, he thought. We don't die easily. I should be dead now......I will be dead soon.... but I can't stop being an ecologist.
"The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences."
The voice shocked him because he recognized it and knew the owner of it was dead. It was the voice of his father who'd been planetologist here before him----his father long dead, killed in the cave in at Shtukaturka Basin.
"Got yourself into quite a fix here, son," his father said. "You should've known the consequences of trying to help find the child of that Duke."
I'm delirious, Holstein thought.
The voice seemed to be coming from his right. Holstein scraped his face through some sand, trying to look in that direction, but there was nothing except a curving stretch of dune dancing with heat devils in the full glare of the sun.
"The more life there is within a star system, the more riches there are for life," his father said. The voice came now from his left, from behind him.
Why does he keep moving around? Holstein asked himself. I knew that before I was ten.
Desert hawks, carrion-eaters in this land as were most wild animals, started circling over him. Holstein saw a shadow pass near his hand, forced his head farther around to look upward. The birds were a blurred patch on silver-blue sky---distant flecks of soot floating above him.
"We're generalists," his father said. "You can't draw neat lines around planetwide problems. Planetology is an exact science."
What's he trying to tell me? Holstein wondered. Did I fail to see some consequence?
His cheek slumped back against the hot sand, and he smelled the burned rock odor beneath the pre-spice gasses. From some corner of logic in his mind, a thought formed. Those are carrion-eater birds over me. Maybe some of my Szganys will see them and come to investigate.
"To the working planetologist, human beings are his paramount instruments," his father said. "You must cultivate literacy among the people. That's why I've created this revolutionary new form of notation."
He's repeating things he said to me when I was a child, Holstein thought.
He started to feel cool, but that corner of logic in his mind told him: The sun is overhead. You have no stillsuit and you're hot; the sun is burning the moisture out of your body.
His fingers clawed feebly at the sand.
They could at least have left me a stillsuit!
"The presence of moisture in the air helps prevent too-rapid evaporation from living bodies," his father said.
Why does he keep repeating the obvious? Holstein wondered.
He tried to think of moisture in the air---grass covering this dune----open water somewhere beneath him, a long qanat flowing with water open to the sky except in text illustrations. Open water---irrigation water----it took 5,000 cubic meters of water to irrigate one hectare of land per growing season, he remembered.
"Our first goal on Dyuna," his father said, "is grassland provinces. We'll start with these mutated poverty grasses. When we've got moisture locked up in grasslands, we'll move on to start upland forests, then a few open bodies of water---small at first---and sinuated along lines of prevailing winds with windtrap moisture precipitators spaced in the lines to recapture what the wind steals. We must create a true sirocco---a moist wind---but we'll never get away from the need for windtraps."
He's always lecturing me, Holstein thought. Why can't he just shut up? Why can't he just let me die in peace?
"You'll die too," his father said, "if you don't get off the bubble that's forming right now deep beneath you. It's there and you know it. You can smell the pre-spice gasses. You know the little makers are beginning to lose some of their water into the mass."
The thought of that water beneath him was maddening. He imagined it now---sealed off in strata of porous rock by the leathery half-plant, half-animal little markers----and the thin rupture that was pouring a cool stream of clearest, pure, liquid, soothing water into....
A pre-spice mass!
He inhaled, smelling the rank sweetness. The odor was much richer around him than it had been.
Holstein pushed himself to his knees, heard a bird screech, the hurried flapping of wings.
This is a spice desert, he thought. There must be Szganys about even the day sun. Surely they can see the birds and will investigate.
"Movement across the landscape is vital to animal life," his father said. "Nomadic peoples follow the same necessity. Lines of movement adjust to physical needs for water, food, minerals. We must control this movement now, align it for our purposes."
"Shut up, old man," Holstein muttered.
"We must do a thing on Dyuna not before attempted for an entire planet," his father said. "We must use man as a constructive ecological force----inserting adapted terraform life: a plant here, an animal there, a man in that place or this----to transform the water cycle in order to build a new kind of landscape."
"Shut up!" Holstein croaked.
"It was lines of movement that gave us the first clue to the relationship between wurms and spice," said his father.
A wurm, Holstein thought with a surge of hope. A maker's sure to come when this bubble pops. But I have no hooks. How can I mount a big maker with no hooks?
He could feel frustration sapping what little strength remained to him. Water so near----just 100 meters or so beneath him; a wurm sure to come, but no way to trap it on the surface and use it.
Holstein pitched forward onto the sand, returning to the sallow depression his movements had defined. He felt hot sand against his left cheek, but the sensation was remote.
"The Dyuni environment built itself into the evolutionary pattern of native life forms," his father said. "How odd that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to catch a glimpse of the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of vegetation. The energy sphere of the planet is there to see and understand----a relentless process, but a process all the same. What if there's a gap in it? Then something fills that gap. Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they're explained. I knew the little maker was there, deep in the sand, long before I ever saw it."
"Please stop lecturing me, Father," Holstein pleaded.
A hawk landed on the sand near the outstretched hand. Holstein saw it fold its wings, tip its head to stare at him. He summoned the energy to croak at it. The bird hopped away two steps, but went on staring at him.
"Men and their works have been a disease on the surface of their planets before now," his father said. "Nature tends to compensate for diseases, to remove or encapsulate them, to incorporate them into the system in her own way."
The hawk lowered its head, stretched its wings, refolded them. It transferred its attention to his outstretched hand.
Holstein found that he was no longer strong enough to croak at it.
"The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion halts here on Dyuna," his father said. "You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record. We've got the record before us, and our course is clear."
He could never stop lecturing me, Holstein thought. Lecturing, lecturing, lecturing---always lecturing!
The hawk hopped one step closer to Holstein's outstretched hand, turned its head first one way and then the to look the exposed flesh over.
"Dyuna is a one-crop planet," his father said. "One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings. It's the masses and the leavings the occupy our attention. These are far more valuable than has ever been suspected."
"I'm ignoring you, Father," Holstein whispered. "Leave me now and trouble me no more!"
He thought: Surely there must be some of my Szganys nearby. They cannot help but see the birds over me. They'll investigate if only to see if there's moisture available.
"The masses of Dyuna will know that we work to make the land flow with water," his father said. "Most of them, of course, will have only a semimystical understanding of how we plan to do this. Many, not understanding the prohibitive mass-ratio issue, may even think we'll bring water from some other planet rich in it. Let them think whatever they will; all we ask is that they have faith in us."
In a minute, I'll stand up and tell him what I think of him, Holstein thought. Standing there lecturing me when he should be helping me.
The bird took another hop closer to Holstein's outstretched hand. Two more hawks drifted down to the sand behind it.
"Religion and law among our masses must be one and the same," said his father. "An act of disobedience must be a sin and require religious penalties. This will have the dual benefit of bringing both greater portions of obedience and bravery. You see, we must depend not so much on the bravery of individuals as upon the bravery of a whole population."
Where is my population now, when I need them most urgently? Holstein thought. He summoned all his might, moved his hand a finger's width towards the nearest hawk. It hopped backwards among its companions, and all stood poised for flight.
"Our timetable will achieve the stature of natural phenomenon," his father said. "A planet's life is a complex interwoven fabric. Vegetation and wildlife changes will be determined at first by the raw physical forces at our command. As they establish themselves though, our changes will become controlling influences in their own right---and we'll have to deal with them, too. Keep in mind, though, that we need control only 3% of the energy surface----only 3%---to tip the whole structure over into our self-sustaining system."
Why aren't you helping me? Holstein wondered. Always the same; when I need you most, you fail me. He wanted to turn his head, to stare in the direction of his father's voice, stare down the old man. His muscles, unfortunately, would not respond to his demand.
Holstein saw the hawk move. It approached his hand, a cautious step at a time while its companions waited in mock indifference. The hawk stopped just a hop away from his hand.
A profound clarity filled Holstein's mind. He saw quite suddenly a potential for Dyuna that his father had failed to see. The possibilities along that different path flooded through him.
"No more horrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a hero," his father said.
Oh, reading my mind, are you? Holstein thought. Very well then....have at it! The messages have already been sent to my s'yetche villages. Nothing, not even you, can stop them. If the Duke's son is alive, they'll find him and protect him as I have commanded. They may throw away the woman, his mother, but they'll save the boy.
The hawk took one hope that it brought it within slashing distance of his hand. It tipped its head to examine the supine flesh. Abruptly, it straightened, stretched its head upward and with a single screen, leaped into the air and banked away overhead with its companions trailing behind it.
They've come! Holstein thought. My Szganys have found me!
Every Szgany knew the sound, could distinguish it right away from the noises of wurms or other desert life. Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of carbon dioxide was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous "blow" with a dust whirlpool at its middle. It would exchange what had been formed deep in the sand for whatever lay on the surface.
The hawks circled overhead screeching their frustration. They knew what was going on. Any desert creature would know.
And I am a desert creature, Holstein thought. Do you see me, Father? I am a desert creature.
He felt the bubble lift him, felt it break and the dust whirlpool engulf him, dragging him down into cool darkness. For a moment the sensation of coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Holstein that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.
A fact even the hawks could appreciate.
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