The Stargazer and the Toolmaker

CHAPTER 1

The sound of uncertain steps approaching along the uneven track that led to his humble dwelling roused Rodne from his ruminations, and he was not at all pleased to be so roused. 

“Oh for pity sake,” he yelled, before he could even see the approaching unfortunate.  “I don’t know how much clearer I can make it.  If there is *no* goatskin draped over the tree branch at the bottom of the trail then there are *no* consultations today.  Surely that's simple enough for even you people!"

"Ah… forgive me…" replied an unfamiliar voice, "but I am not from these parts and am, unfortunately, not acquainted with local customs.  Also… I fear I am lost.  Am looking for village of Lakeside?"

Thrusting his head impatiently past the hide curtain at the opening of his cave, Rodne glared out at the stranger on his doorstep.  He was a small man, slightly built with shaggy unkempt brown hair, and he carried a slender walking stick and a bulging pack.  Though his shoulder length hair was unbound and blew every which way in the light mountain breeze, his beard was neatly braided.  Likewise, though his only visible garment was a single tattered and badly stained hide with a hole in the center through which his head poked, his pack was carefully and neatly bound.  Scratching his own shaggy and ill ordered beard, Rodne tried to judge the character of the man.  His look seemed fairly guileless, and his eyes, when the Rodne finally got a good look at them, seemed a pale clear blue, but it was difficult to tell as the man kept blinking and squinting.

"Yes, you are lost," Rodne confirmed, having decided that it was safe to insult the man, "and also exceptionally feeble minded to have taken the turn-off that led here rather than staying on the main track that *would* have taken you to Lakeside.  Now, go back the way you came, turn *left* at the tree that *doesn't* have a goatskin hanging on it, and be on your way."

Instead of doing as he was told, however, the small man on Rodne's doorstep fidgeted with his walking stick for a moment and then cleared his throat to speak again.

"I…I am very sorry to be intruding but I… I do not see so well… and my guide ran off two days ago.  Is why I made wrong turn, no doubt, but… I fear sun is setting shortly and I… I have many fine things to trade, if you would be so kind as to allow me to stay here for night?"

Rodne had taken some pains to see to it that his ill temper and poor hospitality were well known in the area, which suggested that this fellow was indeed from far away.  He had an odd way of speaking as well, and did something curious with all his 'r's.  As little as Rodne desired company, however, it was not in him to put a blind man out on a bad path just before dark.  Perhaps if the man really did have anything worth trading, Rodne thought, he could insist on such unfair compensation that he might add to his own unsavory reputation.  It would be worth a look, anyhow.

"All right," he said, with as much ill grace as he could muster.  "Let's see what you've got."  Rather than inviting the man in, Rodne came out, laying down the ox hide he generally used for consultations.  The stranger unshouldered his pack and sat with evident relief, then opened the pack to extract a small, carefully wrapped bundle.  This he unrolled on the hide between where they sat and Rodne regarded what was revealed, schooling his featured to indifference.

This was not so easy as it might have been, for what he beheld was really very fine –possibly the most skillfully knapped flint tools Rodne had ever seen.

"Naturally, I have no need for weapons," he began, dismissing a number of wonderfully lethal looking spear points.

"Of course," said the man agreeably, "but perhaps you have use for a hide scraper, or this cooking knife?  It is one of my best."

It certainly was a beautiful piece, with an elegantly curved blade and a smooth solid hand grip.  It would be excessive to ask for such a thing in exchange for a place on his hearth for a single night so, of course, Rodne chose it.

"I suppose I could use this," he said, feeling a twinge of guilt in spite of his determination to demand outrageous compensation.  "But that's just for one night, and I'm not feeding you."

"Thank you," said the man with what seemed sincere gratitude.  "It is all I ask and I will be on my way in the morning, you can rest assured."

"You'd better be," Rodne muttered as he stood , holding open the door flap for the man to gather his belongings.  Scooping up the ox hide as his guest entered,  Rodne followed him in and then made his way to the fire pit set along one wall of his cave, under an opening that served as a smoke hole.  He prodded the fire to life and added more fuel, unable to prevent himself from displaying at least that much hospitality.  His guest settled gratefully by the fireside, extracting a bit of sheepskin from his pack, to sit on.

"I am R'dek," he said, gazing across at Rodne in the firelight.  "May I know your name?"

"Rodne," said Rodne, casting his eyes over to the piece of slate upon which he had been figuring when R'dek had first appeared.  He'd intended to rudely return to this task as soon as his guest had settled, but found his curiosity getting the better of him.  "What brings you to Lakeside anyway?"

"I am told that there is a place near there where I can dig for flints," he said, drawing a small pouch out of his pack from which he took a handful of what appeared to be a mixture of nuts, seeds, and dried berries.  "Do you know if this is so?"  He offered the pouch to Rodne as he asked.

Rodne took a small handful and munched cautiously, but found the stuff quite tasty.  "Yeah," he answered R'dek's question around the mouthful of food.  "East of town a little way.  You show 'em what you make and they'll send someone's kid to take you there."

"Good," said Radek, taking another handful from the pouch as Rodne handed it back to him.  "I'm glad to hear you say so.  More than once I have traveled great distance in search of such a resource only to find that I had been told a tale, or that it no longer exists."

R'dek set the pouch of seeds and fruit down between them and returned to his pack to extract a bundle in which was wrapped some of strips of dried meat.  As before, he offered one to Rodne, who took it without hesitation.

Once again, Rodney found himself contending with unaccustomed feelings of guilt.  By rights he ought to have been satisfied to accept these food offerings in exchange for a night's lodging, though R'dek seemed to think nothing of the prize he had given away.  It was this that moved Rodne, in the end, to offer a favor without being asked, as out of character as that was for him.

"Listen," he said, chewing away at the meat R'dek had given him, "I need to head down to the village for a few supplies anyhow, and I might as well go tomorrow.  That way you won't have to worry about getting lost again."

The look of relief and gratitude on the man's face was almost painful to behold.  "Thank you my friend," he said, "with all my heart.  I fear I was very lucky to have found you at all, the path is so little traveled, and I was dreading having to find my way back down it."

"I'll bet," said Rodne, nodding.  "Where are you from anyhow?  I've never heard anyone who spoke the way you do before."

"I am not surprised," said R'dek. "I have been working my way westwards for many years now.  To the south a little too, to seek warmer climate, yes?  But mostly I travel west."

"Any particular reason?"  Rodne asked around another mouthful of dried fruit and seeds.

"When I am young, raiders come to our village, and others nearby, from the east, always," R'dek answered.  "Every year they take more, destroy more, kill more. As soon as I am old enough to leave, I do, along with many others.  Most people find a place to settle at last, but not I."

"How come?" Rodne asked, succumbing completely to his curiosity.

"Farmers settle, fishermen settle, but I am toolmaker," explained R'dek.  "I must travel to trade, to find needed materials, and I lean new ways to make tools as well.  Also, I learn of new kinds of tools.  The more I travel, the more I learn, and now I have gotten in the habit."

"Even though you don't see so well?"  Rodne asked.

R'dek shrugged.  "Usually is not hard to find a guide in exchange for trade goods, and usually guide does not run off before he is paid."

"So what happened this time?"

Again R'dek shrugged.  "He was young –too young it would seem.  Also, he listens to too many ghost stories.  Somewhere he hears that the pass is haunted by witches.  He hears a wildcat singing late one night and the next morning he is gone," he said.

Rodne snorted with disdain.  "Gods, people are ignorant," he said.

"How can they not be?" R'dek asked philosophically.  "For farmers, fishermen and the like, life is only toil and sleep.  When is there time to question, to explore, to learn better?"

"Well, *I* managed, and so apparently have you," Rodne pointed out.

"Yes, but I am not farmer or fisher, and neither it would seem, are you," R'dek replied.  "Though I am curious as to what you do here?"

"Nothing as useful as you," said Rodne, looking guiltily over at his fine, new cooking knife.

"But what are these 'consultations' you spoke of earlier?" R'dek asked.

Rodne ran his fingers though his roughly cropped hair in embarrassment.  "It's how I put food in my belly and clothes on my back, but it's really just a… side line to what I'm here for.  I've been studying the stars for years –decades really."  Rodne waited then for either the ridicule or dismissal that generally followed this confession, but R'dek did neither of these things.  Instead he blinked thoughtfully and shook his head.

"I, of course, have not seen the stars since I was quite young,"  he said eventually, "but I am curious to know what there is to study about them?"

So unaccustomed was he to anyone actually taking an interest in his lifelong passion that Rodne found himself tongue-tied for a moment.  "Well for starters," he said at last, "they all move -all but one.  You knew that, right?"

Radek nodded.  "I have heard this, and have many times wished that I could see that unmoving star," he said.  "I would have less need of guides then, perhaps?"

"Mmm, probably," said Rodne, "but what I've discovered is that, among the stars that move, not all of them move the same.  There's seven of them that are different.  They shine more steadily, some of them have a little color, and they move differently across the sky than the others.  There's a pattern to how they move, too, and that's what I've been studying."

"That is most intriguing," commented R'dek, much to Rodne's delight.  "I wish I could see them even more now."

"It's not so much that there's anything special to see,"  Rodne consoled, "they're still just little specks of light in the sky like you probably remember, but what I look for is how those seven special stars move in relation to the others, and to each other.  See, the regular stars are always in the same spot in relation to the others, and they can be seen in the same… formations every night.  To help keep them straight I've… kind of made up names for the shapes they seem to form –like different kinds of animals… Sorry, I'm not boring you am I?"

It wasn't that R'dek looked bored, but Rodne had never gotten this far describing his passion without eliciting yawns from his audience before, and he wanted to be sure that R'dek wasn't merely being polite.

"Definitely not," said R'dek sincerely.  "Once, some years ago, I chanced to meet a traveler from far to the south who spoke of such things, and I went two days out of my way to spend more time with him.  He also spoke of something he called 'number marks' that he was using to keep track of these movements."

"Really?" cried Rodne.  "That's amazing, because I heard about the same thing myself, years ago, and I've been using them too.  Here…"  Rodne reached back to fetch out the marked up slate he'd been figuring on, to show R'dek.

"See, that's how many days it takes for the green star to cross the group of regular stars I call 'the bear', and here's how many it took the red star… and here's for the one I call 'the fast one', because it is…"  Rodne hesitated then.  "Sorry, can you see any of this?"

"I can, thank you," R'dek smiled.  "Things close up, like my tools, I can see quite well."  He perused Rodne's figures with real interest.  "But what does this mean here?" he asked.

"Ah," said Rodne with excitement, "sometimes these special stars don't more forward at all.  Sometimes they seem to stop for a while, and sometimes they actually move backwards.  I've watched long enough that I can actually predict when that's going to happen, but what I haven't figured out yet is why."

"You can predict this?"  R'dek was astonished, as anyone ought to have been, but no one actually had been before.

"Sure," said Rodne with pride.  "Like I said, there's patterns to all this, and by watching the sky for years I've figured out a lot of them."

"This is no small accomplishment," said R'dek.  "Not even my traveler from the south made such claims."

Rodne shrugged.  "Well, it's been a life's work, but to be honest, you're the first person I've ever met who saw the worth of it.  Everyone else just wants to know what else I can predict about the future."

"Ah," said R'dek sympathetically, "this would be subject of your 'consultations,' I take it?"

Rodne sighed.  "I've told them again and again that I don't know a damned thing about the future, but still they come and ask, 'where will the stars be when the planting starts, or when my baby is born?' and sure, I can tell them, but then they want to know what it *means*."

"Means?" asked R'dek.

"Everything is some sort of omen for these people," Rodne explained.  "They think the green star brings peace and that the red one brings war and the fast one… I forget now.  For years I tried to tell them that it didn't mean anything –that it just meant that that's where the stars will be when your kid is born or whatever… But then… well, they bring more food and stuff when I tell them some nonsense about how their baby will be a great hunter or that this will be a good year for beans… I got hungry, you know?"

"There is no shame in doing what you must to stay alive, Rodne," R'dek consoled.  "Particularly if you do work such as this while you live.  You should not give it up."

The two men continued to talk well into the night and the next morning they left for the village together and they talked all the way.  Sometimes it was Rodne expounding further on his theories on stellar motion, and sometimes it was R'dek, recounting the different tool making techniques he had learned and the different sorts of technologies he had seen employed in his travels.  It was a two day journey from Rodne's cave to the village of Lakeside and they spent the night at the camp site Rodne customarily used on his trips to town.  The late autumn weather was remarkably fair and pleasant and again the two of them talked and talked until their camp fire had burned down to a few coals.

Never had the trip passed so quickly for Rodne, and he was almost sorry when the lake and the cluster of huts on its shore came into view.