The herds came. Like an endless river they flowed past the palisade. The colonists worked themselves into exhaustion with the slaughter, killing, killing, killing; butchering until their skins ran red with blood, until their hair was matted with clotted, black, insect ridden blood. Haunch after haunch of trihom, herby, humpox, and leer tumbled into the pit north of town to be covered with clean sand and still more haunches. Bones and entrails inundated the land.

On the third day of the hunt, the skimmer was destroyed by a moving mass of flesh. Tennyson Risley had been piloting it between the hunters and the pit. Broken castings and twisted sheet metal were scattered over a square kilometer and Tenn’s body was lost to the scavengers along with the load of meat he had been carrying.

On the eighth day of the hunt, young Jean Dumezil, the patriarch’s third son, was carried in dead, his throat ripped out by a longneck. He was wrapped in the skin of the animal which had killed him and buried beside Tom Dennison and Jason D’Angelo. Marcel Dumezil read the service dry-eyed.

Walking away from the grave, Lucien Dubois and Alexandre Chambard could not meet one another’s eyes. They remembered the day they had found young Jean standing over the body of Jason D’Angelo, a bloody club in his hand. They remembered all too well how Jean had felt no contrition for the murder, reminding them how D’Angelo had mocked their God.

They remembered dragging the body to a place where it would be struck by a falling tree. They remembered the look on Jan Andrax’s face when he found tiny bits of moss embedded in the wound.

And Lucien Dubois remembered Jason’s near-death protecting him from a charging leer.

When the herds had left, the land was tortured, gouged, and mangled. It was a morass of drying dung, blood, entrails, and bones.

The herbivores had swept the ground like locusts, leaving nothing behind. All plant life was gone and within a week the moisture was gone as well; the land stretched away as pure desert, save for the trees on the mountains behind the camp and the tough new growth that sprang up near the shrunken river.

A week after the herds’ disappearance, Helene Dumezil and Valikili were married. The ceremony took place in the courtyard, attended by the entire colony. Angi squeezed Jan’s arm in delight at its conclusion, a delight that died when she saw the look in his eyes. It was the look of a caged animal.

*****

As with yesterday’s post, the narrator (c’est moi) spills the beans and another mystery is subverted rather than revealed.

My thinking on this was logically valid, but not necessarily valid from the viewpoint of drama. Who threw the grenade, was D’Angelo murdered and, if so, by whom, and who attacked Valikili (something you will never be told) were issues of minor importance in the face of the colony’s fight for survival. That was my thinking. In the closing pages of the novel, the notion of retribution returns, but by then human society is settled into its new pattern, and its survival is well established.

Whether undercutting the mysteries was the best decision is for readers and future writers to decide. more tomorrow

Marcel Dumezil, patriarch of the Benedictine Monists on the planet called Harmony, moved with assurance in everything he did. It was not egotism, exactly, that made him feel his every act was correct, but faith in God, faith in his special place in God’s plan, and faith in his understanding of that plan. Had he been accused of egotism, he would have denied the charges hotly – but humbly. He had long since transcended identifying his personal wishes with God’s. Now he was tangled in the less common, but more dangerous fallacy of identifying God’s personal wishes as his own.

Marcel Dumezil was a man without doubts. He was also a man of great practical wisdom and vast experience in colonizing and in the leading of colonists. He held himself to be indispensable and was more than half right.

He slept only four hours each night, devoting to prayer the other four hours he allowed himself away from his duties. Hypocrisy was not one of his characteristics; he believed utterly in his God and his mission. And this made him dangerous. Lacking internal weakness, he tolerated no weakness in his followers. Believing first in God and only secondarily in man, he was utterly ruthless.

He had thrown the grenade.

*****

The description of Marcel Dumezil’s mindset at the end of the second paragraph is confusing, and I’m okay with that. If the reader passes over it, fine; if he is puzzled, perhaps his irritation will help clarify his thinking. Not everything needs to be spelled out.

To keep names straight as you read on, colony leader Marcel Dumezil is a fire eater who is totally consumed by his religion. Today, he would be a jihadi. His son, named Anton, is a competent leader whose religious fire also burns, but with less heat. He becomes the colony’s leader after his father’s death. Anton’s son, also named Anton, is a twit. All the strength in that line dies out in three generations, but Anton the younger will still set things in motion in the second half of the book.

The last line in this section irritated Thomas Anderson at Schlock Value, when he reviewed Jandrax recently. He said:

Oh wait, about twenty pages in we just…learn who did it (threw the grenade). It’s not even a mystery solved. The narrator tells us. Out of the blue. It was very disappointing.

In fact, Dumezil threw the grenade to remove his people from the temptations of the world. It set up the story and gave a clear picture of his character. There was no intention of creating a mystery. The stranding was of supreme importance; who did it, wasn’t particularly important. Once the results of the explosion had been firmly nailed down, I let the reader know who did it at the first convenient moment. No mystery intended; just a timing issue.

Of course, there is a lesson here for the would-be writer. What we intend is a great deal less important than what the reader sees. more tomorrow

Chambard wandered off, but Adrian Dumezil remained to pass the time. He was chewing a siskal twig, which the colonists had discovered to be bitter and mildly narcotic. Those who had smoked tobacco before had, to a man, taken up chewing siskal. He was one of the many to have adopted the surname of Mentor Louis Dumezil and was unrelated to Angi. 

Adrian watched the archers at their practice as Angi fed the fire. When she stood up and stretched, he grinned down at her and asked, “Has Andrax proposed yet?”

Angi flushed, then laughed, taking no offense. “No, not yet.”

“I wonder if he will?” He did not seem to notice Angi’s blush, nor recognize the inappropriateness of his comment; rather, he seemed absorbed in some problem beyond her knowledge.

“Why do you say that, Adrian?”

“That isn’t my name.”

Now she was completely bewildered.

“My name is Sabine Conners. I knew Andrax as a boy, though he has not recognized me yet. I wore a different face then, as well as a different name. Plastic surgery. I was a wanted man.”

“Why tell me that?”

He chuckled, “Why not? I’m not wanted any more, now that we’re stranded here.

“But your question was the right one. Why not isn’t an answer to why. I tell you this because I’ve known you since you were a child and I don’t want to see you hurt. Have you ever wondered why Jan keeps himself so aloof?”

“He’s awfully busy, and he has a lot of responsibilities.”

Sabine shook his head. “Jan doesn’t trust us because we are Monists.”

“I know, but I don’t know why.”

Sabine sucked on the twig for a moment longer before throwing it away. “Jan Andrax was born on Hallam. His father was the leader of the Danneline Monists in their guerrilla war against the Pertoskans. He was orphaned there.”

Angi was shocked. The Hallam war had been one of the bitterest in recent history. Then she made another connection. “You said you knew him as a boy. That was after Hallam?”

Sabine chuckled again. “Delicately put. No, I fought right beside him and his father. That is what I was wanted for.”

“Then Jan was wanted, too?”

“No, and that’s something I don’t understand. He still carries the face and name he was born with and he is a Scout. How did he ever get into the Scouts with his record?”

Angi looked puzzled, so he expanded. “Jan’s father and I lost track of him during a skirmish. We both thought he was dead – never saw him again until I got off the landing boat here and saw him giving orders. You can bet that was a shock.”

“You don’t know what happened from then till now?”

Sabine shook his head. “No, and I don’t intend to ask him and blow my cover. I’ll expect you to keep my secret; anyone who fought on either side at Hallam is still a pariah.”

“Of course.”

“In a war, people think and act differently than they do otherwise. There isn’t much time for affection. I liked Jan well enough as a boy, but I never felt toward him like I do toward you. We just didn’t have time for the softer emotions. –

“Still, I liked him. He was a brave, decent boy and he has grown into a brave, decent man. But there is some demon riding him. You’d best find out what that demon is before you marry him.”

He hesitated so long that Angi thought he had finished. Both of them were staring across the courtyard to where Jan was dressing down a careless archer. “Another thing for you to think about. Daniel Andrax, Jan’s father, was a driving, self–assured man – a born leader. He had a faith in himself and his religion that would stop at nothing.

“He was a lot like your father – and you can bet that Jan has seen the resemblance, too.”

*****

If I were writing this today, it would no longer seem realistic to export tobacco-smoking to the stars. Weed yes; tobacco no. Also, here is another reference to everyone taking the name of the originator of Monism. A good idea, yes; confusing to have everyone named Dumezil, oh, yes. more tomorrow

Chapter 4

Two (see below, 1) local months after the Lydia was stranded, the snows began to melt. At first only the surface melted during the day, refreezing at night. For a time, footing was treacherous. Then there came a time when the water did not completely refreeze, merely skimmed over. Finally the palisade was surrounded by a vast ocean of snowmelt, extending to the horizon and breaking like an inland sea against the foothills. The river swelled until it filled its kilometer-wide bed with a violent rush of ice-clogged, mud-brown water.

Even while the land was still covered, the first vegetation appeared; leaves and flowers sprang up on every withered bush and fresh shoots thrust out, growing at an unbelievable rate. When the water receded to mud, the gluegrass burst the bounds of earth, soft, stubby spikes of mucilaginous growth that clung to and fouled the legs of those who ventured out.

Then came the leers and the first wave of krats. Angi Dumezil watched the huge flightless birds from the palisade as they slogged about, buoyed up by their webbed feet. The hunters were only a hundred kilometers north of the settlement now, which eased the strain on the failing skimmer. In the palisade, preparations were being made to greet the main herd when it came. The mammalian herbivores would not arrive until the mud had dried enough to support their hooves.

Off to the north a small, deep lake in the shape of a perfect square marked the permafrost cellar dug earlier by the men. Now water filled, it would be filled with meat in the coming weeks and sealed with a covering of soil.

In the courtyard below, Jan was conducting classes in archery. The bows were of fiberglass formed from native sand by the lifeboat’s power pile. The arrows were tipped with the first native iron to have been smelted. Angi watched the men fire a volley, pride of community mingled with pride in her man. Jan had not asked her to marry him, but she expected the invitation any day – perhaps after the herds had passed and a measure of leisure had returned.

She returned to the task at hand, pouring boiling water through layers of ash to obtain the materials from which to make lye soap.(see below, 2) She was a pioneer and the daughter of pioneers; hard work was nothing new to her. Still, she had never been in a situation before where such a sense of urgency infused every act. It had welded them, crew and colonists alike, into a tightly knit community with the common purpose of survival. There was little bickering and an almost unnatural peace, due in part to the heritage of Benedictine Monism shared by all but the crew.

People no longer spoke of the fact that they were marooned. Angi, innocent of the complexities of spaceflight, found it strange that the uninjured ship orbiting Harmony – as they were corning to call the planet – was useless without the flight computer. And no one talked about the fact that they had been stranded by a deliberate act. Everyone knew that one of their number was responsible for their exile, but no one had the courage to speculate as to whom.

She looked up as Adrian Dumezil and Alexandre Chambard arrived from the outside with a fresh barrel of water. They had it slung from two poles. Working together they transferred its contents to the stationary barrel above her kettle. 

*****

1.   This seems a short time for all that has happened. I didn’t make a physical calendar while writing Jandrax, so I can’t refer back to see why I said two months. Certainly it is too soon for iron smelting, as mentioned a few paragraphs later. 
2. If I were writing this today, I would set her a different task. Lye soap fits the circumstances she is in, but it is unlikely to have been in her skill-set on the planet from which she originated.

After three months, Marcel Dumezil reinstituted the Sabbath. From a practical standpoint it was a good system. Planning and good judgment depend on frequent periods of rest; otherwise the immediate but trivial has a tendency to swamp more important long range considerations.

With that in mind, Jan walked with Angi to the field beyond the palisade after the service. Everyone in the colony seemed to have the same idea and soon the snowy earth was dotted with furry shapes, each sitting a little apart from his neighbor, relishing privacy after the cramped squalor of life within the palisade.

“Jan,” she said, placing her hand on his arm, “you look worried. Today is a day of rest, so please relax. I spend half my time worrying that either you or Papa will crack under the strain you are carrying.”

Jan looked up at the broad, barren expanse of snow, at the mountains beyond, where the scars of their cutting lay, and behind at the palisade. They had done well; yet it was not any natural disaster that worried him, He feared the seeds of dissension carried within the group.

“Nur and Tenn did not attend the service,” Jan pointed out. “How will your people feel about that?”

She shrugged. “It is their right. We are not barbarians, you know.”

Jan said nothing. Angi scooped up snow, balled it angrily and tossed it down. “You think we are, don’t you?”

“Huh? Are what?”

“Barbarians. You think Nur and Tenny are in danger from us because they are of a different religion. Where did you ever get such an idea? What have we done to make you think that of us. Or are you just prejudiced?”

“I never said any such thing,” Jan replied, but he was thinking of Jason. And he was remembering Hallam.

***

There was a holiday air about the camp. Raoul LaBarge was a trained geologist; he had explored the hills back of the settlement – keeping mainly to the creeks for reasons of future transportation – and he found an outcropping of iron ore, something infinitely more precious than gold.

Jan gave himself the afternoon off for good behavior and took Angi out. They went on skis, for the snow was half a meter deep. She looked beautiful to him, though, in truth, imagination played a good part in that. She was dressed as everyone else, Jan included, in a trihorn parka cut from the hairy shoulder section of the hide, wide herbyskin trousers, and boots made from the hairless rump section of trihorn hide. Only her face and a few wisps of hair showed from beneath her krathide cap. Angi’s beauty was a thing remembered from warmer days, not something available for immediate experience.

They talked of things which had become commonplace and of the future of the colony. They spoke a little of a more personal future and she remained very close to him while he cursed the cold that imprisoned them in their furry armor.

Jan was not a man given to noticing natural beauty. It was not a thing to brag about, but his profession had made him very businesslike in his relationship to the environment. Were that not so, he would long since have been dead. Yet he had come to love their cold, barren world – but never so much as on that afternoon when imprisoned passion was transmuted into softer feelings as they skiied hand in hand across the clean, white plains, moving in a common rhythm.

*****

Jan’s indifference to natural beauty was suggested a decade before I became a writer when Peter Matthiessen, in The Cloud Forest, considered an orange that he was eating after a long period of near starvation. He was a world traveller who often found himself short on meals. He confessed to having no interest in food as anything but fuel, until that orange after that privation became the finest taste he had ever encountered. more tomorrow