Keeper Read online

told Vahr, who was getting to hisfeet. "We're guests of Raud the Keeper, and we'll not have himinsulted in his own house by a cur like you!"

  The man with red hair turned. "I am ashamed. We should not havebrought this into your house; we should have left it outside." Hespoke the Northland language well, "It will honor us to share yourfood, Keeper."

  "Yes, and see here," the younger man said, "we didn't know you'd bealone. Let us help you. Dranigo's a fine cook, and I'm not bad,myself."

  He started to protest, then let them have their way. After all, aguest's women helped the woman of the house, and as there was no womanin Keeper's House, it was not unfitting for them to help him.

  "Your friend's name is Dranigo?" he asked. "I'm sorry, but I didn'tcatch yours."

  "I don't wonder; fool mouthed it so badly I couldn't understand itmyself. It's Salvadro."

  They fell to work with him, laying out eating-tools--there were justenough to go around--and hunting for dishes, of which there were not.Salvadro saved that situation by going out and bringing some in fromthe airboat. He must have realized that the lumicon over the table wasthe only light beside the fire in the house, for he was carrying aglobe of the luminous plastic with him when he came in, grumblingabout how dark it had gotten outside. It was new and brilliant, andthe light hurt Raud's eyes, at first.

  "Are you truly from the Stars?" he asked, after the food was on thetable and they had begun to eat. "Neither I nor any in the villagehave seen anybody from the Stars before."

  The big man with the red hair nodded. "Yes. We are from Dremna."

  Why, Dremna was the Great World, at the middle of everything! Dremnawas the Empire. People from Dremna came to the cities of Awster andfabulous Antark as Southron traders from the Warm Seas came to thevillages of the Northfolk. He stammered something about that.

  "Yes. You see, we...." Dranigo began. "I don't know the word for it,in your language, but we're people whose work it is to learn things.Not from other people or from books, but new things, that nobody elseknows. We came here to learn about the long-ago times on this world,like the great city that was here and is now mounds of stone andearth. Then, when we go back to Dremna, we will tell other peoplewhat we have found out."

  Vahr Farg's son, having eaten his fill, was fidgeting on his stool,looking contemptuously at the strangers and their host. He thoughtthey were fools to waste time learning about people who had died longago. So he thought the Keeper was a fool, to guard a worthless oldpiece of junk.

  Raud hesitated for a moment, then said: "I have a very ancient thing,here in this house. It was worn, long ago, by great kings. Theirnames, and the name of their people, are lost, but the Crown remains.It was left to me as a trust by my father, who was Keeper before meand to whom it was left by his father, who was Keeper in his time.Have you heard of it?"

  Dranigo nodded. "We heard of it, first of all, on Dremna," he said."The Empire has a Space Navy base, and observatories and relaystations, on this planet. Space Navy officers who had been herebrought the story back; they heard it from traders from the Warm Seas,who must have gotten it from people like Yorn Nazvik. Would you showit to us, Keeper? It was to see the Crown that we came here."

  Raud got to his feet, and saw, as he unhooked the lumicon, that he wastrembling. "Yes, of course. It is an honor. It is an ancient andwonderful thing, but I never thought that it was known on Dremna." Hehastened across to the crypt.

  The dogs looked up as he approached. They knew that he wanted to liftthe cover, but they were comfortable and had to be coaxed to leave it.He laid aside the deerskins. The stone slab was heavy, and he had tostrain to tilt it up. He leaned it against the wall, then picked upthe lumicon and went down the steps into the little room below,opening the wooden chest and getting out the bundle wrapped inbearskin. He brought it up again and carried it to the table, fromwhich Dranigo and Salvadro were clearing the dishes.

  "Here it is," he said, untying the thongs. "I do not know how old itis. It was old even before the Ice-Father was born."

  That was too much for Vahr. "See, I told you he's crazy!" he cried."The Ice-Father has been here forever. Gorth Sledmaker says so," headded, as though that settled it.

  "Gorth Sledmaker's a fool. He thinks the world began in the time ofhis grandfather." He had the thongs untied, and spread the bearskin,revealing the blackened leather box, flat on the bottom and domed atthe top. "How long ago do you think it was that the Ice-Father wasborn?" he asked Salvadro and Dranigo.

  "Not more than two thousand years," Dranigo said. "The glaciationhadn't started in the time of the Third Empire. There is no record ofthis planet during the Fourth, but by the beginning of the FifthEmpire, less than a thousand years ago, things here were very much asthey are now."

  "There are other worlds which have Ice-Fathers," Salvadro explained."They are all worlds having one pole or the other in open water,surrounded by land. When the polar sea is warmed by water from thetropics, snow falls on the lands around, and more falls in winter thanmelts in summer, and so is an Ice-Father formed. Then, when the polarsea is all frozen, no more snow falls, and the Ice-Father melts fasterthan it grows, and finally vanishes. And then, when warm water comesinto the polar sea again, more snow falls, and it starts over again.On a world like this, it takes fifteen or twenty thousand years fromone Ice-Father to the next."

  "I never heard that there had been another Ice-Father, before thisone. But then, I only know the stories told by the old men, when I wasa boy. I suppose that was before the first people came in starships tothis world."

  The two men of Dremna looked at one another oddly, and he wondered, ashe unfastened the brass catches on the box, if he had said somethingfoolish, and then he had the box open, and lifted out the Crown. Hewas glad, now, that Salvadro had brought in the new lumicon, as he putthe box aside and set the Crown on the black bearskin. The goldencirclet and the four arches of gold above it were clean and bright,and the jewels were splendid in the light. Salvadro and Dranigo werelooking at it wide-eyed. Vahr Farg's son was open-mouthed.

  "Great Universe! Will you look at that diamond on the top!" Salvadrowas saying.

  "That's not the work of any Galactic art-period," Dranigo declared."That thing goes back to the Pre-Interstellar Era." And for a while hetalked excitedly to Salvadro.

  "Tell me, Keeper," Salvadro said at length, "how much do you knowabout the Crown? Where did it come from; who made it; who were thefirst Keepers?"

  He shook his head. "I only know what my father told me, when I was aboy. Now I am an old man, and some things I have forgotten. But myfather was Runch, Raud's son, who was the son of Yorn, the son ofRaud, the son of Runch." He went back six more generations, thenfaltered and stopped. "Beyond that, the names have been lost. But I doknow that for a long time the Crown was in a city to the north ofhere, and before that it was brought across the sea from anothercountry, and the name of that country was Brinn."

  Dranigo frowned, as though he had never heard the name before."Brinn." Salvadro's eyes widened. "Brinn, Dranigo! Do you think thatmight be Britain?"

  Dranigo straightened, staring, "It might be! Britain was a greatnation, once; the last nation to join the Terran Federation, in theThird Century Pre-Interstellar. And they had a king, and a crown witha great diamond...."

  "The story of where it was made," Rand offered, "or who made it, hasbeen lost. I suppose the first people brought it to this world whenthey came in starships."

  "It's more wonderful than that, Keeper," Salvadro said. "It was madeon this world, before the first starship was built. This world isTerra, the Mother-World; didn't you know that, Keeper? This is theworld where Man was born."

  He hadn't known that. Of course, there had to be a world like that,but a great world in the middle of everything, like Dremna. Not thisold, forgotten world.

  "It's true, Keeper," Dranigo told him. He hesitated slightly, thencleared his throat. "Keeper, you're young no longer, and some day youmust die, as your father and his father did. Who will care for theCrown then?"
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br />   Who, indeed? His woman had died long ago, and she had given him nosons, and the daughters she had given him had gone their own ways withmen of their own choosing and he didn't know what had become of any ofthem. And the village people--they would start picking the Crown apartto sell the jewels, one by one, before the ashes of his pyre stoppedsmoking.

  "Let us have it, Keeper," Salvadro said. "We will take it to Dremna,where armed men will guard it day and night, and it will be a trustupon the Government of the Empire forever."

  He recoiled