The Houses of Iszm

I

It was assumed as a matter of course that visitors came to Iszm with a single purpose: to steal a female house. Cosmographers, students, babes-in-arms, notorious scoundrels: the Iszic cynically applied the same formula to all—microscopic inspection of mind and body and detailed surveillance.

Only the fact that they turned up so many house-thieves justified the procedure.

From a distance, it seemed simple enough to steal a house. A seed no larger than a grain of barley could be sewn into a strap; a seedling could be woven into the pattern of a shawl; a young shoot could be taped to a rocket-missile and launched into space. There were a thousand fool-proof ways to steal an Iszic house; all had been tried, and the unsuccessful thieves had been conducted to the Mad House, their Iszic escorts courteous to the last. As realists, the Iszic knew that some day—a year, a hundred years, a thousand years—the monopoly would be broken. As fanatically secretive controllers of the monopoly they intended to postpone this day as long as possible.

Aile Fair was a tall, gaunt man in his thirties, with a droll, corded face, big hands and feet. His skin, eyes and hair were a dust-colored monochrome. More important to the Iszic, he was a botanist, hence an automatic object of the utmost suspicion.

Arriving at Jhespiano atoll aboard the Red Ball Packet Eubert Honore, he encountered suspicion remarkable even in Iszm. Two of the Szecr, the elite police, met him at the exit hatch, escorted him down the gangway like a prisoner, and ushered him into a peculiar one-way passage. Flexible spines grew from the walls in the direction of passage. A man could enter the hall, but could not change his mind and return. The end of the passage was closed by a sheet of clear glass and at this point Farr could move neither forward nor back.

An Iszic wearing bands of wine-red and gray stepped forward and examined him through the glass. Farr felt like a specimen in a case. The Iszic grudgingly slid the panel back and led Farr into a small private room. With the Szecr standing at his back, Farr turned over his debarkation slip, his health certificate, his bond of good character, his formal entry application. The clerk dropped the debarkation slip into a macerator, inspected and returned the certificate and bond, and then settled himself to a study of the application.

The Iszic eye, split into major and minor segments, is capable of double focus. The clerk read with the lower fraction of his eyes, appraising Farr with the top section.

“ ‘Occupation…’ ” he turned both segments of his eyes on Farr, then flicking the bottom one back, read on in a cool monotone. “ ‘…research associate. Place of business—University of Los Angeles, Department of Botany.’ ” He lay the application form to one side. “May I inquire your motives for visiting Iszm?”

Fair’s patience was wearing thin. He pointed to the application. “I’ve written it all down.”

The clerk read without taking his eyes from Farr, who watched in fascination, marveling at the feat.

“ ‘I am on sabbatical leave,’ ” read the clerk. “ ‘I am visiting a number of worlds where plants contribute effectively to the welfare of man.’ ” The clerk focused both eye fractions on Farr. “Why do you trouble yourself to this extent? Surely the information is conveniently available on Earth?”

“I am interested in first-hand observations.”

“To what purpose?”

Farr shrugged. “Professional curiosity.”

“I expect that you are acquainted with our laws.”

“How could I avoid it?” said Farr in irritation. “I’ve been briefed ever since the ship left Starholme.”

“You understand that you will be allowed no special privileges—no exhaustive or analytical study… You understand?”

“Of course.”

“Our regulations are stringent—I must emphasize this. Many visitors forget, and involve themselves with severe penalties.”

“By now,” said Farr, “I know your laws better than I know my own.”

“It is illegal to lift, detach, cut, accept, secrete or remove any vegetable matter, vegetable fragment, seed, seedling, sapling or tree, no matter where you find it.”

“I intend nothing illegal.”

“Most of our visitors say the same,” responded the clerk. “Kindly step into the next chamber, remove all your clothes and personal effects. These will be returned to you at your departure.”

Fair looked at him blankly. “My money—my camera —my—”

“You will be issued Iszic equivalents.”

Farr wordlessly entered a white enameled chamber where he undressed. An attendant packed his clothes in a glass box, then pointed out that Farr had neglected to remove his ring.

“I suppose if I had false teeth you’d want them too,” growled Farr.

The Iszic quickly scanned the form. “You assert quite definitely that your teeth are integral to your body, natural and without modification.” The upper segments regarded Farr accusingly. “Is this an inaccuracy?”

“Of course not,” protested Farr. “They are natural. I merely put forward as a hypothesis… a joke.”

The Iszic muttered into a mesh and Farr was taken into a side room where his teeth were given an exacting inspection. “I’ll learn not to make jokes,” Farr told himself. “These people have no sense of humor.”

Eventually the medics, shaking their heads glumly, returned Farr to the outer chamber, where he was met by an Iszic in a tight white and gray uniform, carrying a hypodermic.

Farr drew back. “What’s this!”

“A harmless radiant.”

“I don’t need any.”

“It is necessary,” said the medic, “for your own protection. Most visitors hire boats and sail out upon the Pheadh. Occasionally there are storms, the boats are blown off course. This radiant will define your position on the master panel.”

“I don’t want to be protected,” said Farr. “I don’t want to be a light on a panel.”

“Then you must leave Iszm.”

Farr submitted, cursing the medic for the length of the needle and the quantity of radiant.

“Now—into the next room for your tri-type, if you please.”

Farr shrugged and walked into the next room.

“On the gray disk, Farr Sainh—palms forward, eyes wide.”

He stood rigid as feeler-planes brushed down his body. In a glass dome a three-dimensional simulacrum of himself six inches high took form. Farr inspected it sourly.

“Thank you,” said the operative. “Clothes and whatever personal effects you may need will be issued in the next room.”

Farr dressed in visitor’s uniform: white soft trousers, a gray and green striped smock, a loose dark-green velvet beret that fell low over his ear. “Now may I go?”

The attendant looked into a slot beside him. Farr could see a flicker of bright characters. “You are Farr Sainh the research botanist.” It was as if he had said, “You are Farr, the admitted criminal.”

“I’m Farr.”

“There are several formalities awaiting you.”

The formalities required three hours. Farr was once more given to the Szecr, who examined him carefully.

He was finally allowed his freedom. A young man in the yellow and green stripes of the Szecr escorted him to a gondola floating in the lagoon, a long slender craft grown from a single pod. Farr gingerly took a seat and was sculled across to the city of Jhespiano.

It was his first experience in an Iszic city, and it was far richer than his mental picture. The houses grew at irregular intervals along the avenues and canals—heavy gnarled trunks, supporting first the lower pods, then masses of broad leaves, half-submerging the upper pod-banks. Something stirred in Farr’s memory—an association… Yeasts or mycetozoa under the microscope. Lamproderma violaceum? Dictydium cancellatum? There was the same proliferation of branches. The pods might have been magnified sporangia. There was the same arched well-engineered symmetry, the peculiar complex colors: dark blue overlaid with glistening gray down, burnt orange with a scarlet luster, scarlet with a purple over-glow, sooty green, white highlighted with pink, subtle browns and near-blacks. The avenues below drifted with the Iszic population, a quiet pale people, secure in the stratifications of their guilds and castes.

The gondola glided to the landing. A Szecr in a yellow beret with green tassels was waiting—apparently a man of importance. There was no formal introduction; the Szecr discussed Farr quietly between themselves.

Farr saw no reason to wait, and started up the avenue toward one of the new cosmopolitan hotels. The Szecr made no attempt to stop him; Farr was now on his own, subject only to surveillance.

He relaxed and loafed around the city for almost a week. There were few other off-world visitors; the Iszic authorities discouraged tourism to the maximum degree allowed them by the Treaty of Access. Farr tried to arrange an interview with the Chairman of the Export Council, but an under-clerk turned him away politely but brusquely, upon learning that Farr wished to discuss the export of low-quality houses. Farr had expected no better. He explored the canals and the lagoon in gondolas, and he strolled the avenues. At least three of the Szecr gave him their time, quietly following along the avenues and lounging in nearby pods on the public terraces.

On one occasion he walked around the lagoon to the far side of the island, a rocky sandy area exposed to the wind and the full force of the sun. Here the humbler castes lived in modest three-pod houses, growing in rows with strips of hot sand between the dwellings. These houses were neutral in color, a brownish gray-green with a central tuft of large leaves casting black shade over the pods. Such houses were not available for export and Farr, a man with a highly developed social conscience, became indignant. A shame these houses could not be made available to the under-housed billions of Earth! A whole district of such habitations could be provided for next to nothing: the mere cost of seed! Farr walked up to one of the houses, peered into a low-hanging pod. Instantly a branch dropped down, and had Farr not jumped back he might have been injured. As it was, the heavy terminal frond slapped across his scalp. One of the Szecr, standing twenty yards distant, sauntered forward. “You are not advised to molest the trees.”

“I wasn’t molesting anything or anyone.”

The Szecr shrugged. “The tree thought otherwise. It is trained to be suspicious of strangers. Among the lower castes…” the Szecr spat contemptuously, “feuds and quarrels go on, and the trees become uneasy at the presence of a stranger.”

Farr turned to examine the tree with new interest. “Do you mean that the trees have a conscious mind?”

The Szecr’s answer was no more than an indifferent shrug.

Farr asked, “Why aren’t these trees exported? There would be an enormous market; many people need houses who can afford nothing better than these.”

“You have answered yourself,” responded the Szecr. “Who is the dealer on Earth?”

“K. Penche.”

“He is a wealthy man?”

“Exceedingly wealthy.”

“Would he be equally wealthy selling hovels such as these?”

“Conceivably.”

The Szecr turned away. “In any case, we would not profit. These houses are no less difficult to root, nurture, pack and ship than the Class AA houses we choose to deal in… I advise you not to investigate another strange house so closely. You might well suffer serious injury. The houses are not so tolerant of intruders as their inhabitants.”

Farr continued around the island, past orchards bearing fruit and low coarse shrubs like Earth century plants, from the center of which sprouted a cluster of ebony rods as much as an inch in diameter and ten feet tall: smooth, glossy, geometrically straight. When Farr went to investigate the Szecr interfered.

“These are not house trees,” Farr protested. “In any event, I plan no damage. I am a botanist and interested in strange plants.”

“No matter,” said the Szecr lieutenant. “Neither the plants nor the craft which has developed them are your property, and hence should be of complete disinterest to you.”

“The Iszics seem to have small understanding of intellectual curiosity,” observed Farr.

“To compensate, we have a large understanding of rapacity, larceny, brain-picking and exploitation.”

Farr had no answer and, grinning wryly, continued around the beach and so back to the rich-colored fronds, pods and trunks of the town.

One phase of the surveillance puzzled Farr. He approached the lieutenant and indicated an operative a few yards away. “Why does he mimic me? I sit down, he sits down. I drink, he drinks. I scratch my nose, he scratches his nose.”

“A special technique,” explained the Szecr. “We divine the pattern of your thinking.”

“It won’t work,” said Farr.

The lieutenant bowed. “Farr Sainh may be quite correct.”

Farr smiled indulgently. “Do you seriously think you can predict my plans?”

“We can only do our best.”

“This afternoon I plan to rent a sea-going boat. Were you aware of that?”

The lieutenant produced a paper. “I have the charter ready for you. It is the Lhaiz, and I have arranged a crew.”