THE SWEEPER OF LORAY
By FINN O'DONNEVAN
Illustrated by GOODMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine April 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You wish a universal panacea? A simple
boon to grant—first decide what part of
you it is that you wish to have survive!
"Absolutely impossible," declared Professor Carver.
"But I saw it," said Fred, his companion and bodyguard. "Late lastnight, I saw it! They carried in this hunter—he had his head halfripped off—and they—"
"Wait," Professor Carver said, leaning forward expectantly.
They had left their spaceship before dawn, in order to witness thesunrise ceremonies in the village of Loray, upon the planet of the samename. Sunrise ceremonies, viewed from a proper distance, are oftencolorful and can provide a whole chapter for an anthropologist's book;but Loray, as usual, proved a disappointment.
Without fanfare, the sun rose, in answers to prayers made to it thepreceding night. Slowly it hoisted its dull red expanse above thehorizon, warming the topmost branches of the great rain-forest thatsurrounded the village. And the natives slept on....
Not all the natives. Already the Sweeper was out, cleaning thedebris between huts with his twig broom. He slowly shuffled along,human-shaped but unutterably alien. The Sweeper's face was a stylizedblank, as though nature had drawn there a preliminary sketch ofintelligent life. His head was strangely knobbed and his skin waspigmented a dirty gray.
The Sweeper sang to himself as he swept, in a thick, guttural voice. Inonly one way was the Sweeper distinguishable from his fellow Lorayans:painted across his face was a broad black band. This was his mark ofstation, the lowest possible station in that primitive society.
"Now then," Professor Carver said, after the sun had arisen withoutincident, "a phenomenon such as you describe could not exist. And itmost especially could not exist upon a debased, scrubby little planetlike this."
"I saw what I saw," Fred maintained. "I don't know from impossible,Professor. I saw it. You want to pass it up, that's up to you."
He leaned against the gnarly bole of a stabicus tree, folded his armsacross his meager chest and glowered at the thatch-roofed village. Theyhad been on Loray for nearly two months and Fred detested the villagemore each day.
He was an underweight, unlovely young man and he wore his hair in abristling crewcut which accentuated the narrowness of his brow. Hehad accompanied the professor for close to ten years, had journeyedwith him to dozens of planets, and had seen many strange and wonderfulthings. Everything he saw, however, only increased his contempt forthe Galaxy at large. He desired only to return, wealthy and famous, orwealthy and unknown, to his home in Bayonne, New Jersey.
"This thing could make us rich," Fred accused. "And you want to passit up."
Professor Carver pursed his lips thoughtfully. Wealth was a pleasantthought, of course. But the professor didn't want to interrupt hisimportant scientific work to engage in a wild goose chase. He wasnow completing his great book, the book that would fully amplify anddocument the thesis that he had put forth in his first paper, ColorBlindness Among the Thang Peoples. He had expanded the thesis in hisbook, Lack of Coordination in the Drang Race. He had generalized iti