Free Volk by Piers Anthony

mitigate the situation of the world.
    She purchased a newspaper, knowing this to be merely another excuse for delay. There she saw a picture of a bombed out city, with children crying in the street. It reminded her of Guernica, in Spain, where her correspondent had died.
    Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She
could
make a difference! She made her way to the nearest Friend’s Meetinghouse and found the caretaker. “I must go to Spain,” she said. “To help the children.”
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    It was arranged. She took passage on a steamer to England, where she joined the Friends’ Service Council. They tried, gently, to dissuade her from her intent, because the situation in Spain was what they termed “uncertain,” but she was firm, and they did need volunteers, and she spoke both French and Spanish. She was qualified.
    First they taught her to drive, because she would have to do it where she went. It was a crash course, almost literally, before she got the hang of it. They had her do it in a car, a small truck, and a large truck, because she had to be able to drive whatever was available.
    The British vehicles had the driver on the right side, and drove on the left side of the road. “But on the Continent it will reverse,” they warned her. “Don’t get confused.”
    â€œI’m already confused,” she replied. But in due course she got the gearshift and clutch coordinated, and learned the international hand signals and general road signs, and was appropriately nervous about the level of petrol in the gas tank.
    She wrote to Lane, c/o his Canadian unit: “I have learned how to drive! I love thee.”
    She learned that mail could take from two weeks to two months to reach England from Spain. Both the Republicans and the Nationalists practiced censorship of letters. Workers sometimes had to go to France to send important confidential documents. Diplomatic pouches of the American and both Spanish governments were used to expedite some mail. Important letters were sent to several offices, with requests to forward it, in order to ensure delivery of at least one.
    Quality had to undergo an embarrassingly thorough medical examination. She was inoculated against typhoid and vaccinated for smallpox. She was ready.
    It was not feasible to proceed directly from England to Spain, which was in the throes of its civil war. Indeed, had she tried to go there from America, she would have been refused, for international travelers were being required to sign a statement that they would not go to Spain. She had not been aware of that at the time, but in any event had started her trip from Canada, where the restriction did not exist. So now she traveled to France, where French Friends welcomed her. Already there were refugee camps just north of the Pyrenees where the Basques were fleeing the savagery of the Nationalist thrust against their homeland.
    Quality visited one of the camps, helping to deliver food and supplies. She was appalled to discover that she could not understand the people at all; they spoke neither French nor Spanish. Somehow she had not realized that Basque was a different language. In fact, the Basques were a different people, looking much the same as others but separated by their culture. It seemed that their stock had been early inhabitants of the region, once far more widely spread, largely displaced by migrations and conquest. Now they were being displaced again, this time by bombs and bullets.
    Spain had been a republic for several years, but there had been strife between divergent factions and general poverty, leading to unrest of increasing scale and intensity. It was exactly the type of social neglect that led to unfortunate consequences, as she saw it. In 1936 the military establishment had rebelled, supported by the Catholic Church and about a third of the people. Called the Nationalists, they had commenced a war of conquest against