The Great Fetish

3

Ten days after leaving Skudra, on the first of Napoin or Napoleon, Marko Prokopiu jogged into Thine. He had undergone experiences along the way, such as being pursued in the Zetskan Hills by a transor, the largest of the planet’s dinosaurian predators. Several nights he had to sleep out, but he was used to roughing it. His father, a mighty hunter, had taken Marko on many camping trips.

Near Skiatho, a trio of rash robbers waylaid him and sent an arrow through his raincoat. He turned the judge’s horse while tugging out his ax, and presently the archer was lying among the fungi with a cleft skull, while his fellows fled. Marko appropriated a good steel bow, a lizard-skin bow case, and a quiverful of arrows.

All this, however exciting, had no real bearing on the object of his search. When he arrived in Thine, a spacious city built entirely of marble (a material as common on Kforri as good wood was scarce), he found himself quarters. Then he spent a day searching the city for Mongamri and Petronela.

He inquired at all the inns and promenaded the parks and shops without success. He loitered in the central square, where the caravans made up to cross the Saar to Niok and the cities of Arabistan. He asked the caravan dispatcher whether any persons like Petronela and Mongamri had gone out on the last caravan.

The man assured him that he had seen nobody like that. Moreover, the last caravan, which had left two days before, had been en route to Asham in Arabistan, far from Niok. No caravan had left for Niok in ten days, although one was due to leave in four.

Marko was sure that his quarry must still be in Thin6. They would be bound for Anglonia. Believing him still to be in jail in Skudra, they would be in no great hurry. If he did not come upon them in the next three days, he could surely intercept them when the caravan for Niok mustered in the square. He preferred to catch them sooner if possible, before the news of his escape from the jail at Skudra should reach Thine and a warrant be issued for his arrest.

He was also anxious not to let them escape from Vizantia, for he had heard that in some other countries homicide was a criminal as well as a civil offense. And while Marko had, right after his escape from jail, been in a mood to defy all rules because of the injustice he felt, his basically law-abiding nature had now had time to reassert itself.

On his third day hi Thine, after a perfunctory stroll about the central part of the town to look for his wife and her paramour, he rode out to the university grounds. There he hunted up the professor who had been his faculty adviser when he had studied here.

In his office, Gathokli Noli was entertaining a stranger, a small, gray-haired man with a bulging dome of a cranium, a sharp nose, and a receding chin. The man wore Anglonian clothes: knitted trunk-hose and shoes with flaring tops and pointed toes, instead of the baggy checkered pants tucked into the tops of heavy boots, usual in Vizantia. The stranger wore eyeglasses, a Mingkwoan invention still rare in Vizantia. He spoke with an Anglonian accent, reducing the rolled Vizantian r to a soft, vowel-like sound. Instead of his wearing the Vizantian scalp lock, his hair was cut to a uniform length of a “half inch, so that it stood up in a stiff gray brush.

“By the Great Fetish of Mnaenn, it’s Marko!” said Gathokli Noli. “Come in, old man. Marko, this is Dr. Boert Halran of Lann, the eminent philosopher.”

Marko acknowledged the introduction with the natural dignity of the Vizantian hillman. “What brings you to Thine, Dr. Halran?”

“I have come to purchase stupa gum, sir.”

“Isn’t it for sale in Anglonia?” asked Marko.

“Yes, but only in minute quantities. I require a considerable amount, so it is cheaper for me to come all this distance to obtain it at a wholesale price.”

“Are you using it for some experiment?”

“Yes, sir; the most portentous experiment of the era, if I may so assert.” Halran shimmered with self-satisfaction.

“Indeed, sir? May I ask what it is?”

“Have you ever heard of a balloon?” asked Halran.

“No. The word is unfamiliar to me.”

“Well, are you familiar with the hypothesis that, if one could inclose hot air in a bag, the bag would rise like a bubble in water?”

“There was some talk about it at the university when I was here. As I was immersed in courses in pedagogy, I didn’t go very far into science.”

“Well, I have actually accomplished it.”

“Made a bag rise?”

“Yes, bags of various magnitudes.” The little man glowed with enthusiasm. “One of the largest raised me to an altitude of a hundred feet and stayed up for two hours. It frightened the peasants to death when it came down in their fields, so my next model I tethered by its drag rope to keep it from being wafted anywhither.

“My next step will be to construct a balloon large enough to raise the weight of several individuals. The bag has already been sewn together; there remains but the matter of the stupa gum to render it airtight.”

“How do you heat this air?” asked Marko.

“By means of a large peat stove.”

“I see. But after the machine has risen, won’t the ah” inside cool off and let you down again?”

“Eventually, yes. But this balloon is equipped with a smaller stove suspended above the car, so that, by feeding more hot air into the bag, I can maintain altitude much longer.”’

“I should love to see it,” said Marko.

“If you are in Lann about the third of Perikles, come around. On that day, I intend to inflate my balloon for a flight to the Philosophical Convention at Vien.”

Marko said: “I have heard of these philosophical conventions and should love to attend one. How do you do it? I mean, what does one have to be or to do to get in?”

“Merely pay a small registration fee.”

“Is that all? No special degree is required?”

“No; we philosophers are only too glad to have the public take an interest hi our accomplishments. These conventions have been in operation only about ten years, but they grow bigger every year. This year there are rumors that a pair of philosophical brothers from Mingkwo will bring some sensational inventions they have developed. If, that is, the Prem of Eropia does not choose that time to start a war or massacre his enemies.”

“Is he a dangerous man?” said Marko, who had heard only vaguely of the vagaries of Alzander Mirabo.

Halran whistled, rolled up his eyes, and held his palms together as in prayer. “Extremely dangerous. Shrewd, ruthless, unpredictable, and insatiably ambitious. If he thinks you stand in his way, he may entertain you one day and charm you with his affability, and the next have your head hacked off in the main square of Vien.

“The Chamber elected him Prem because he promised to break the power of the magnates, which he did. Then he got all their lands and manufactories into his own hands. Since then, he has ruled the country with an even more iron hand than the magnates did.”

“Why don’t the Eropians revolt?” asked Marko.

“Them? Oh, most of them like him. He poses as the champion of the masses against their exploiters and so has achieved a meretricious popularity—”

“He has effected some real reforms, too,” interjected Noli.

Halran shrugged. “If you consider those worth his turning the judicial system into an instrument for punishing his personal opponents. But his ambitions do not stop there. He has been strengthening his army lately, and rumors hint at an invasion of Iveriana. Of course, when my balloon is perfected, it will make war impossible. But there are still many details to be worked out.”

“How will it make war impossible, sir?” said Marko.

“By making it too risky and too horrible for men to endure. How could any government defend its land against a horde of enemies rising in balloons on the windward side of the border and descending anywhere in the realm? This invention will compel the nations to unite to abolish war.”

Marko inquired: “Have you got your stupa gum yet, sir?”

“No it will take some days. The Krai’s government requires much signing of papers before it will let me export the material, which is curious when you consider that stupa-tree products are the main export of Vizantia.”

“Not so odd,” said Gathokli Noli. “These forms are to make sure nobody fells a stupa tree on his own, contrary to law.” He turned to Marko. “And now let me ask: What brings you down from your misty mountains? How is your handsome wife?”

From a stranger, Marko would have resented a question about his wife. Vizantians considered it indelicate to talk about marital relationships. After all, everybody knew what married people did. But Noli was an old friend, and the people of the university were a bit looser in such matters than.Marko’s fellow Skudrans.

As for Halran, it was notorious that Anglonians had no such inhibitions. Marko gulped and replied:

“As a matter of fact, it is she that brings me here. She decided she liked one of her fellow countrymen better than me, and I’m following them to send them to Earth.” He touched his ax.

Halran started visibly. Noli merely raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I shouldn’t have mentioned the matter, had I guessed this complication. I’m sorry for your trouble and wish you success.”

“Have you seen either of them?” Marko, twirling an imaginary mustache, described his faithless friend Mongamri.

“No-o,” said Gathokli Noli. “But I’ll keep a watch for him.”

Halran said: “By Kliopat, you two talk calmly enough about slaying a man. Do you really mean that, or is this a jest?”

“No joke at all, sir,” said Marko. “What I plan to do is not only legal; it’s practically compulsory. If I didn’t make every effort to kill the guilty pair, I should be held in aversion and contempt.”

Halran shuddered. “In Anglonia we consider such a thing barbarous.”

“No doubt, sir. Of course, an ignorant hillbilly like myself has no right to speak. But, while in Anglonia you place an absurdly high value on human life, you don’t take honor and purity so seriously as we do.”

“But my dear fellow, there is no comparison between killing a fellow being and giving one of the other sex a few minutes’ harmless pleasure.”

“Harmless pleasure! That only proves how depraved and immoral …” began Marko with heat, but Gathokli Noli interrupted:

“Other lands, other customs. I’ll tell you: Why don’t you, Marko, promise to spare the man who cuckolded you while Boert swears eternal chastity?”

“But I am a married man!” protested Halran.

Marko said: “That would not be fair. At Dr. Halran’s age—”

“I like that!” cried Halran. “What do you know about my private life, Master Prokopiu?”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Noli. “Let’s change the subject, which is becoming just too indelicate. Are you attending commencement tomorrow, Marko?”

“I hadn’t known you were having it,” said Marko, “but I shall be glad to come.” Privately he thought this a good chance to run into Mongamri and Petronela.

“As a diploma holder,” said Noli, “you will be deemed a member of the university, ranking with the two-year sub-bachelors. You shall therefore sit with the graduates and wear an academic robe.”

“Oh,” said Marko. “Had I known, I should have brought mine from Skudra, but as it is …”

“That’s all right; I’ll get you one,” said Noli. “Meet me here at the third hour tomorrow.”

Marko spent the rest of the day in a further futile search for his victims. The next morning, he appeared at Gathokli Noli’s office at the appointed time.

Gathokli Noli hung upon him the short black cape of the holder of a mere diploma in education, and himself donned the sweeping scarlet cassock of a full professor. Boert Halran appeared too, in the purple surplice of an Anglonian Doctor of Philosophy.

They solemnly tipped their academic hats to each other and marched out and across the campus to the commencement grounds. Over these had been erected a great canvas canopy; for, although Muphrid showed his face at that time, it was too much to expect the heavens of Thine to refrain from raining for half an hour at a stretch.

Gathokli Noli explained as they walked: “Sokrati Popu will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate. That should cause some uproar.”

“Why?” asked Boert Halran. “Is this Popu unpopular?”

Gathokli Noli rolled his eyes. “He’s the leader of the Distributionist movement.”

“What is that?” inquired Halran. “I have sufficient difficulty keeping up with the politics of my own land, let alone that of others.”

Gathokli Noli explained: “As you know, the main wealth of the Krai ate lies in the great stupa forests of the Borsja Peninsula.”

“Yes.”

“Besides the stupa gum you are after, one of those trees contains enough wood to build a small city. Nowhere else in the world, as far as it has been explored, do real trees grow to a fraction of such size.”

“I see,” said Halran.

“Well,” continued Noli, “a generation ago, private lumbermen were making serious inroads into the forests. The then Krai, Jorgi the Second, was a far-sighted man. He saw that the trees were being cut faster than they grew and that the whole process was wastefully managed. So he nationalized the forests and set up a program of controlled cutting and planting.

“That worked until the present Krai came to the desk. Krai Maccimo —Noli, glanced about—, is a man of, say, a character different from that of his father. There have been complaints that the forest service is loaded with political hangers-on who do nothing but shuffle papers. Therefore a group of magnates started a movement to have the government sell the forests to them cheaply.

“To promote their idea, they take advantage of the Kralate’s financial troubles, the complaints of people who wish unlimited stupa wood for building, the pressure of the lumberjacks’ guild, and anything else that will serve their turn. But the students are mostly Re-tentionists—that is, Anti-Distributionists—so there may be a disturbance.”

They came to the commencement grounds, where the public seats were fast filling. Gathokli Noli showed Marko and Halran their proper places. Marko found himself in a whole section of diploma capes. As he sat down, the handle of his ax, hitherto hidden by his cape, touched the leg of the man beside him. This man stared and whispered:

“You should not have brought that thing in here!”

Marko smiled and shrugged vaguely. He began peering at the other sections from under the brim of his academic hat.

The professors were assembling on the platform. Undergraduates were pushing into the large front-center section reserved for them. They indulged in much shoving and horseplay, which the admonitions of the beadles did little to check.

Then Marko saw Chet Mongamri and Petronela come in through one of the main entrances and take places with the rest of the public. They were a long way from Marko and to his left rear, so that he had to crane his neck to see them. His breath quickened, and he turned his head to the front again lest they recognize him. A cold rage filled him, so that he hardly heard what went on around him. He clenched his fists and bit his lips. The men next to him edged away from his apocalyptic aspect.

At last everybody was in place. The beadles stood at attention at the ends of the aisles, holding heir staves as if they had been pikes. The president of the university, Mathai Vlora, opened the proceedings.

The university’s band played “Vizantia Victorious.” The president introduced the Bishop of Thine. The bishop invoked the blessings of the gods upon the university and its students—especially the blessings of Dui, the god of education.

The president gave an opening address, which seemed to Marko to say nothing very eloquently, and began introducing the recipients of honorary degrees. There was Maccimo Vuk, the distinguished assassin, who had given the university ten thousand dlars. There was Ivan Laskari, who claimed to have proved that atoms existed. And, after several others had been honored, there was Sokrati Popu. His only qualification seemed to be that, as head of the Distributionists, he stood to become the richest man in the nation if his scheme went through.

Sokrati Popu was a short man with a large head, bald and jowly. He let the president drape the yellow stole of the honorary doctorate around his neck. They tipped their academic hats. Sokrati Popu stepped to the lectern at the front of the platform, laid a sheaf of manuscript down in front of him, raised a lorgnette to his eyes, and began to read the commencement address.

“Young men and fellow subjects,” he began in a rasping monotone, “it gives me great pleasure …”

After several paragraphs of the usual cliches of commencement oratory, he got down to business: “… Vizantia stands at the fork of the road. Which horn of the dilemma shall we take? One hurls us into the swamp of state monopoly, which has crushed the proud nation of Eropia, once a leader of civilization, to a nightmare of bureaucratic stagnation. The other leads the ship of state back along the highroads of private enterprise, which stand guard at the shrine of economic sanity—”

At that instant, a student stood up in the undergraduate section and threw a tersor’s egg at Sokrati Popu. The missile missed its target and spattered against the wall of the Liberal Arts Building, which formed a background for the ceremony.

Instantly the two beadles nearest to the undergraduate section plunged into the black-cloaked mass and pounced upon the student. They dragged him out, despite the efforts of the other undergraduates to trip and impede them, and hustled him up an aisle to the exit.

“There’s one who gets no degree today,” said the . man beside Marko who had objected to his ax.

Sokrati Popu resumed his discourse, but now the undergraduates began to mutter in cadence: “I— want—money; I—want—money; I—want—money…”

The beadles, hovering on the fringes of the undergraduate section, reached in and whacked a couple of the noisier of the mutterers with their staves. The chant subsided; Sokrati Popu doggedly resumed:

“What do these benighted bureaucrats really want? To save the stupa forests for posterity as they say? Nonsense! We can never exhaust the stupa forests, and anyway what has posterity ever done for us? The bureaucrats want power! Make no mistake, my ardent young friends—”

Another student threw another tersor’s egg. More beadles tried to reach him, but now the undergraduates clutched them and pulled them down. Marko glimpsed a beadle’s arm flailing about with its staff and then disappearing under the black, billowing mass. The students chanted:

“Wood—for—Popu; wood—for—Popu; wood —for—Popu …”

Others stood up and hurled not only eggs but also bits of edible fungi in various states of decay. The president popped up and shouted threats at the undergraduates, who made rude noises and threw more missiles. These spattered not only Popu but also the president, the faculty, and the other guests. The president roared orders to the beadles, who waded into the throng, swinging their staves at every undergraduate head they saw.

The fight boiled out into the aisles. Through it all, Sokrati Popu stood behind his lectern, raw tersor egg running down his face, and doggedly continued his address. Marko could see his mouth move, even though he could not hear any words.

Marko tore his attention away from the fracas in front to look back into the audience. They were all standing up to see better. Among the heads he glimpsed the sweeping Anglonian mustache of Chet Mongamri.

Knowing his duty, Marko rose with pounding heart, unsnapped the flap of his ax sheath, and pushed his way out into the aisle. He dodged a couple of fights, ran up the aisle all the way to the rear, crossed over to the left side of the audience, and started down the left interior aisle. As he ran, he drew the ax from its case.

Marko dodged around beadles dragging undergraduates out and bore down upon Chet Mongamri, who had taken an aisle seat. He was sighting on the back of Mongamri’s head for a place to sink his ax blade when a beadle, taking cognizance of Marko’s homicidal intentions, released his undergraduate and grabbed Marko’s sleeve, shouting:

“Ho, there, you!”

Marko jerked his arm free and pushed the man in the chest, bowling him over, then turned back to resume his charge. But the beadle shouted, and others joined in. The noise down front had momentarily subsided, so that this sudden outburst caused many of those farther forwards to turn their heads rearwards. One of these who looked around was Chet Mongamri.

Marko saw Mongamri’s jaw sag and his eyes bug as he recognized Marko. Marko swung the ax high and bounded forward. Beside Mongamri, Petronela shrieked.

Mongamri stepped out into the aisle and ran towards the stage ahead of Marko. A lean man, taller than Marko, he could show a remarkable turn of speed. Marko pounded after, and the beadles ran after Marko.

Mongamri leaped to the left end of the platform and started to run across it. Marko jumped up after him. In the middle of the stage, President Vlora was still shouting directions to his beadles and threats to his students, while Sokrati Popu continued to deliver his inaudible speech. On the upstage part of the platform, the faculty and the distinguished guests were crouched on their knees, holding the light chairs in front of them as shields against the rain of missiles.

Mongamri pushed between the president and Popu and ran on to the right end of the platform. The president and Popu looked around at this interruption. Both saw Marko approaching with his ax. With a scream of terror, Sokrati Popu turned and dove in amongst the cowering faculty, while Mathai Vlora leaped off the platform into the boiling, black-cloaked mass of undergraduates.

Marko ran on. He reached the right end of the platform to see Chet Mongamri streaking back up the right interior aisle. The fellow was actually gaining on him. Marko sprang down from the edge of the platform and gathered his great muscles for a desperate sprint, when his head exploded and he knew no more.

When Marko Prokopiu regained consciousness, he was first aware of lying on a bed and then of a splitting headache. He raised a hand to his head and discovered that on the crown, just in front of the scalp lock, it bore a lump the size of a terser egg.

“Waking up, eh?” said a voice with an accent. After a few seconds, Marko identified the voice as that of Boert Halran, the little Anglonian philosopher.

Marko groaned and sat up. “Where is this?” he asked.

“This is my room,” said Halran.

“How did I get here? The last thing I remember was chasing that lecher Mongamri—”

“A beadle fractured his staff on your head as you ran past him. He would have arrested you, because it transpires that in Thine there is some quaint law that renders it a misdemeanor to kill people during commencement exercises, church services, and other public occasions. But the riot became general, and the beadle had his hands full with whacking undergraduates. I thought only Anglonian students did that sort of thing.”

“I don’t know Anglonia, but the Thinean undergraduates are the rowdiest lot of savages in the Kralate. I had to knock several of them cold when I was here before. Go on, please.”

“Well, Noli and I fought our way through the mob and carried you to his office; or rather, we got an undergraduate, to help us, because you are the heaviest man I ever tried to lift. Then we could not bring you back to consciousness. You must have had a slight concussion.”

“Where’s my ax?” said Marko.

“Here is that murderous monstrosity. While you were in the office, some of your local police agents came by looking for you. Noli hid you in his closet. They explained they had a warrant for your arrest, which had been sent down from Skudra for breaking jail there. I did not realize you were such a calloused character.”

“I didn’t use to be,” groaned Marko. “I was only trying to do my duty.”

“Well, they informed us about your having been sentenced for teaching Descensionism, too, and Noli told them he had no conception of where you were. As he explained to me subsequently, he is an Evolutionist himself; but, believing in freedom of speech, he thought himself obliged to protect you. Finally, they departed to scour the town for you. Then Noli asked me to conceal you. I do not like to become involved in the domestic quarrels of another country, but I owe Noli many favors and so let myself be persuaded.”

Marko’s mind had begun to work, despite the fact that an invisible smith seemed to be using his head for an anvil. “What day is this?”

“The fifth of Napoleon. You have been unconscious for almost exactly twenty-four hours.”

Marko groaned. “They’ll have left on the caravan! I must get my horse!”

“You will not find your horse, I fear.”

“What? Why not?”

“The officers informed us they had recovered a horse you had stolen from some magistrate in Skudra. Is that the one you refer to?”

“Yes.” Marko held his head for a few seconds. “Do you know when the next caravan leaves for Niok?”

“On the eleventh. That is the one I shall take.”

“Then I shall go too.”

“Oh?” said Boert Halran with a note of alarm in his voice.

“Why not? I can pay my way, and it looks as though the Kralate would be too warm for me for a while.” Marko stood up and cautiously moved his head. “A little dizzy, but it will pass. I’ll go to my own quarters so as not to encumber you any more, sir.”

“Are you feeling all right?” said Halran. “It would be most inexpedient for you to lose consciousness in the street.”

“It will take a thicker club than that to crack my skull. Thank you for your valued hospitality.”

“You are welcome, my friend. Oh, before you go, Noli asked me to collect from you the price of that academic hat he obtained for you. The blow ruined it, and if you do not pay for it he will be compelled to do so.”

Marko paid and departed. He got back to his own room without encounters and spent most of the next five days there. He would have liked to search the town some more, to make sure that Mongamri and Petronela had in fact departed on the caravan of the fifth. But he feared being recognized.