Planet of Adventure

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE NIGHT PASSED; morning came: first a wash of sepia light, then a wan yellow glare, then the appearance of Carina 4269. From the kitchens rose the smoke of fires, the rattle of pans. Reith descended to the common-room, where he found Anacho the Dirdirman before him, sitting over a bowl of tea. Reith joined him and was likewise brought tea by a kitchen-wench. He asked, "What do you know of Dadiche?"

Anacho warmed his long pale fingers around the bowl. "The city is relatively old: twenty thousand years or so. It is the main Chasch spaceport, though they have little communication with their homeworld Godag. South of Dadiche are factories and technical plants, and there is even some small trade between Dirdir and Chasch, though both parties pretend to the contrary. What do you seek at Dadiche?" And he fixed Reith with his owlish water-gray eyes.

Reith reflected. He gained nothing by confiding in Anacho, whom he still regarded as something of an unknown quantity. Finally he said, "The Chasch took something of value from me. I want to get it back, if possible."

"Interesting," said Anacho with a sardonic overtone to his voice. "I am piqued.

What could the Chasch take from a sub-man that he would travel a thousand leagues to recover? And how could he expect to recover it, or even find it?"

"I can find it. What happens next is the problem."

"You intrigue me," said the Dirdirman. "What do you propose to do first?"

"I need information. I want to learn if persons such as you and I can enter Dadiche and depart without hindrance."

"Not I," said Anacho. "They would smell me for a Dirdirman. They have noses of astonishing particularity. The food you eat delivers essences to your skin; the Chasch can identify these, and separate Dirdir from Wankh, marsh-dwellers from steppe-men, rich from the poor; not to mention the variations caused by disease, uncleanliness, unguents, waters, a dozen other conditions. They can smell salt air in a man's lungs if he has been near the ocean; they can detect ozone on a man coming down from the heights. They sense if you are hungry, or angry, or afraid; they can define your age, your sex, the color of your skin. Their noses provide them an entire dimension of perception."

Reith sat reflecting.

Anacho arose, went to a nearby table where sat three men in rough garments: men with waxy white-gray skins, light-brown hair, mild large eyes. To Anacho's questions they gave deferent responses; Anacho ambled back to Reith.

"Those three are drovers; they visit Dadiche regularly. The country is safe to the west of Pera; the Green Chasch avoid the city guns. No one will molest us along the road-"

"'Us'? You are coming?"

"Why not? I have never seen Dadiche or its outlying gardens. We can hire a pair of leap-horses and approach Dadiche within a mile or so. The Chasch seldom leave the city, so the drovers tell me."

"Good," said Reith. "I'll have a word with Traz; he can keep the girl company."

At a corral to the rear of the inn Reith and the Dirdirman hired leap-horses of a tall rubber-legged breed strange to Reith. The ostler threw on the saddles, shoved guide-bars through holes in the creatures' brains, at which they screamed and whipped the air with their palps. The reins were attached, Reith and Anacho vaulted up into the saddles; the beasts made angry sidling leaps, then sprang off down the road.

They passed through the center of Pera, where, over a considerable area, folk had built all manner of dwellings from the rubble and slabs of concrete. There was a greater population than Reith had expected, numbering perhaps four or five thousand. And up on top of the old citadel, brooding over all, was the crude mansion in which lived Naga Goho and his retinue of Ghashters.

Coming into the central plaza Reith and Anacho stopped short before a display of horrid objects. Beside a massive gibbet were flaying-stocks stained with blood.

Poles held aloft a pair of impaled men. From a derrick swung a small cage; inside crouched a naked sun-blackened creature, barely recognizable as a man. A

Gnashter lounged nearby, a heavy-jowled young man wearing a maroon vest and a knee-length black kilt: the Gnashter uniform. Reith reined up the leap-horse and, indicating the cage, addressed the Gnashter. "What was his crime?"

"Recalcitrance, when Naga Goho called his daughter to service."

"What then? How long does he swing thus?"

The Gnashter glanced up indifferently. "Another three days he'll last. The rain freshened him up; he's full of water."

"What of those?" Reith pointed to the impaled corpses.

"Defaulters. Certain graceless folk begrudge a tithe of their wealth to Naga Goho."

Anacho touched Reith's arm. "Come."

Reith slowly turned away; impossible to right all the wrongs of this dreadful planet. But looking back toward the wretch in the cage, he felt a flush of shame. Still-what options were open to him? To embroil himself with Naga Goho could easily mean the loss of his life, with no benefit to anyone. If he were able to regain his space-boat and return to Earth, the lot of all men on Tschai must be improved. So Reith told himself, and tried to put the dismal scene out of his mind.

Beyond Pera were large numbers of irregular plots, where women and girls cultivated all manner of crops. Drays loaded with food and farm produce moved westward along the road toward Dadiche: a commerce surprising to Reith, who had expected no such formalized trade.

The two rode ten miles, toward a low range of gray hills. Where the road rose into a steep-walled ravine a gate barred the way and they were forced to wait while a pair of Gnashters inspected a dray piled with crates of cabbage-like pulps, then levied a toll upon the drayman. Reith and Anacho, passing the gate, paid a sequin each.

"Naga Goho misses few chances to profit," Reith grumbled. "What does he do with his wealth?"

The Dirdirman shrugged. "What does anyone do with wealth?"

The road wound up, passed through a notch. Beyond lay the land of the Blue Chasch: a wooded countryside meshed by dozens of little rivers, easing in and out of innumerable ponds. There were a hundred sorts of trees: red feather-palm, green conifer-like growths, black trunks and branches hung with white globes; and many groves of adarak. The entire landscape was a single garden, tended with meticulous care.

Below was Dadiche: low flat domes and curving white surfaces, half-submerged in foliage. The size and population of the city was impossible to estimate; there was no differentiation between city and park. Reith was forced to admit that the Blue Chasch lived in pleasant circumstances.

The Dirdirman, conditioned to other aesthetic precepts, spoke with condescension. "Typical of the Chasch mentality: formless, chaotic, devious. You have seen a Dirdir city? Truly noble! a sight to stop the heart! This half-bucolic botchery"--Anacho made a scornful gesture "reflects the caprice of the Blue Chasch. Not as flaccid and decadent as the Old Chasch of course-remember Golsse? but then the Old Church have been moribund for twenty thousand years ... What do you do? What is that instrument?"

For Reith, unable to contrive a method to read his transcom dials discreetly, had brought it forth. "This," said Reith, "is a device which indicates the direction and distance of three and a half miles." He sighted along the needle.

"The line passes through that large structure with the high dome." He pointed.

"The distance is about right."

Anacho was looking at the transcom with gloomy fascination. "Where did you get this instrument? It is of a workmanship I have never seen before. And those markings: neither Dirdir nor Chasch nor Wankh! Is there some far corner of Tschai where submen make goods of this quality? I am astounded! I have believed the sub-men incapable of any activity more complicated than agriculture!"

"Anacho, my friend," said Reith, "you have a great deal to learn. The process will come as an appalling shock to you."

Anacho massaged his undershot jaw, pulled the soft black cap down over his forehead. "You are as mysterious as a Pnume."

Reith brought the scanscope from his pouch, inspected the landscape. He traced the course of the road, down the hill, through a grove of flame-shaped trees with enormous green and purple leaves, thence to a wall which he had not previously noticed and which evidently guarded Dadiche from the Green Chasch.

The road passed through a portal in this wall and into the city. At intervals along the road were drays entering Dadiche loaded with comestibles, leaving with crates of manufactured goods.

Anacho, inspecting the scanscope, made a clicking sound of irritated puzzlement, but restrained his comments.

Reith said, "No point in going further down the road; however, if we rode along the ridge a mile or two, I could take another sight on that big building."

Anacho made no objection; they rode south almost two miles, then Reith took a new reading of the transcom. The line of sight passed through the same large domed structure. Reith gave a nod of certainty. "In that building are articles which at one time were mine, and which I want to recover."

The Dirdirman's lips twitched in a grin. "All very well-but how? You can't ride into Dadiche, pound on the door and cry 'Bring out my object!' You will be disappointed. I doubt if you are a thief sufficiently deft to fool the Chasch.

What will you do?"

Reith looked longingly down at the great white dome. "First, closer reconnaissance. I need to look inside that building. Because what I want most might not be there at all."

Anacho shook his head in mild reproach. "You talk in riddles. First you declare that your articles are there, then that they may not be there after all."

Reith merely laughed, far more confidently than he felt. Now that he was close to Dadiche, and presumably to the space-boat, the task of regaining possession seemed overwhelming. "Enough for today, at any rate. Let's be back to Pera."

They rode, swaying and lurching on the leap-horses, and returned to the road, where they halted for a space watching the drays rumble past. Some were propelled by engines, others by slow-going pull-beasts. Those to Dadiche carried foodstuffs: melons, stacks of dead reed-walkers, bales of dingy white floss spun by swamp insects, nets bulging with purple bladders. "These drays go into Dadiche," said Reith. "I'll go with them. Why should there be difficulty?"

The Dirdirman gave his head a lugubrious shake. "The Blue Chasch are unpredictable. You might find yourself performing tricks for their amusement.

Such as walking rods over pits full of filth or white-eyed scorpions. As you gain equilibrium, the Chasch heat the rods, or send electricity through, so that you bound back and forth and perform desperate antics. Or perhaps you will find yourself in a glass maze with a tormented Phung. Or you might be blindfolded and set in an amphitheater with a cyclodon, also blindfolded. Or-were you Dirdir or Dirdirman, you might be set to solving logical problems to avoid unpleasant penalties. Their ingenuity is endless."

Reith scowled down at the city. "The draymen risk all this?"

"They are licensed and go and come unmolested, unless they violate an ordinance."

"Then I will go as a drayman."

Anacho nodded. "The obvious stratagem. I suggest that tonight you strip off your clothes, rub yourself with damp soil, stand in the smoke of burning bones, walk in pull-beast dung, eat panibals, ramp and smudgers, all of which permeate the body with odor, and wipe the grease into your skin. Then dress from skin outward in drayman's garments. As a last precaution, never pass upwind of a Blue Chasch and never exhale where one might detect the odor of your teeth or your breath."

Reith managed a wry grin. "The scheme sounds less feasible every minute. But I don't care to die. I have too many responsibilities. Such as returning the girl to Cath."

"Bah!" snorted Anacho. "You are a victim of sentimentality. She is a troublemaker, vain and self-willed. Leave her to her destiny„

"If she were not vain I'd suspect her of stupidity," declared Reith with feeling.

Anacho kissed his fingertips: a gesture of Mediterranean fervor. "When you say

'beauty,' you must mean the women of my race! Ah! Elegant creatures, pale as snow, with pates naked and glossy as mirrors! So near to Dirdir that the Dirdir themselves are beguiled ... Each to his own taste. The Cath girl can never be other than a source of tribulation. Such women trail disaster as a cloud trails rain; think of the times she has led you into contention!"

Reith shrugged, and kicked the leap-horse into motion; they bounded east along the road, back down upon the steppe, off toward the mound of gray-white rubble which was Pera.

Late in the afternoon they entered the ruined city. They returned the leap-horses to the stables, crossed the plaza to the long half-subterranean inn, with the low sun shining on their backs.

The common-room was half-full of folk consuming an early supper. Neither Traz nor the Flower of Cath was here, nor were they in the sleeping cubicles on the second floor. Reith returned downstairs and found the innkeeper. "Where are my friends: the boy and the Cath girl? They are nowhere on the premises."

The innkeeper drew a sour face, looked everywhere but into Reith's eyes. "You must know where she is; how could she be elsewhere? As for the lad, he went into an unreasonable fury when they came to take her. The Gnashters broke his head and dragged him off to be hanged."

In a voice precise and controlled Reith asked, "How long ago did this occur?"

"Not long. He'll still be kicking. The lad was a fool. A girl like that is flagrant enticement; he had no right to defend her."

"They took the girl to the tower?"

"So I suppose. What's it to me? Naga Goho does as he pleases; he wields power in Pera."

Reith turned to Anacho, handed over his pouch, retaining only his weapons. "Take care of my belongings. If I don't return, keep them."

"You plan to risk yourself again?" asked Anacho in wonder and disapproval. "What about your 'object'?"

"It can wait." Reith ran off toward the citadel.