The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online Page B

events. The fact is that the status of World 41 as an Earth Colony is now subject to revision, and the massacre at your camp may precipitate the Administration’s decisions on it. Certainly the decisions
we
can make must be made quickly, for I can’t keep my ship here long. Now first, we wish to make sure that the relevant facts are all in the possession of those present. Captain Davidson’s report on the events at Smith Camp was taped and heard by all of us on ship; by all of you here also? Good. Now if there are questions any of you wish to ask Captain Davidson, go ahead. I have one myself. You returned to the site of the camp the following day, Captain Davidson, in a large hopper with eight soldiers; had you the permission of a senior officer here at Central for that flight?”
    Davidson stood up. “I did, sir.”
    “Were you authorized to land and to set fires in the forest near the campsite?”
    “No, sir.”
    “You did, however, set fires?”
    “I did, sir. I was trying to smoke out the creechies that killed my men.”
    “Very well. Mr. Lepennon?”
    The tall Hainishman cleared his throat. “Captain Davidson,” he said, “do you think that the people under your command at Smith Camp were mostly content?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    Davidson’s manner was firm and forthright; he seemed indifferent to the fact that he was in trouble. Of course these Navy officers and foreigners had no authority over him; it was to his own Colonel that he must answer for losing two hundred men and making unauthorized reprisals. But his Colonel was right there, listening.
    “They were well fed, well housed, not overworked, then, as well as can be managed in a frontier camp?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was the discipline maintained very harsh?”
    “No, it was not.”
    “What, then, do you think motivated the revolt?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “If none of them were discontented, why did some of them massacre the rest and destroy the camp?”
    There was a worried silence.
    “May I put in a word,” Lyubov said. “It was the native hilfs, the Athsheans employed in the camp, who joined with an attack by the forest people against the Terran humans. In his report Captain Davidson referred to the Athsheans as ‘creechies.’”
    Lepennon looked embarrassed and anxious. “Thank you, Dr. Lyubov. I misunderstood entirely. Actually I took the word ‘creechie’ to stand for a Terran caste that did rather menial work in the logging camps. Believing, as we all did, that the Athsheans were intraspecies non-aggressive, I never thought they might be the group meant. In fact I didn’t realize that they cooperated with you in your camps.—However, I am more at a loss than ever to understand what provoked the attack and mutiny.”
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    “When he said the people under his command were content, did the Captain include native people?” said the Cetian, Or, in a dry mumble. The Hainishman picked it up at once, and asked Davidson, in his concerned, courteous voice, “Were the Athsheans living at the camp content, do you think?”
    “So far as I know.”
    “There was nothing unusual in their position there, or the work they had to do?”
    Lyubov felt the heightening of tension, one turn of the screw, in Colonel Dongh and his staff, and also in the starship commander. Davidson remained calm and easy. “Nothing unusual.”
    Lyubov knew now that only his scientific studies had been sent up to the
Shackleton;
his protests, even his annual assessments of “Native Adjustment to ColonialPresence” required by the Administration, had been kept in some desk drawer deep in HQ. These two N.-T.H.’s knew nothing about the exploitation of the Athsheans. Commander Yung did, of course; he had been down before today and had probably seen the creechiepens. In any case a Navy commander on Colony runs wouldn’t have much to learn about Terranhilf relations. Whether or not he approved of how the Colonial Administration ran its business,