The Man Without a Planet

THREE

“KAZAR, but the sword is not for sale,” the proprietor said in smooth Rilké, spreading fat jeweled hands helplessly.

“I would buy it. There is naught that hath not price, sayeth the Singer,” Raul replied. His command of richly colloquial Rilké lifted the painted eyebrows of the sword-seller, admiringly.

“Ah, the kazar speaks the Tongue with agility. It does honor to my People. But, I deprecate, I deplore—the golden sword is for display only. It hath no price, but, for gentility, the kazar may try its heft and balance, if he wills.”

Raul took it up gently. The hilt gripped his hand, fitting it as it had been tailored to the breadth of his fingers, finely carved to the width of his individual palm.

He held his breath, blood singing.

He was wrong: the blade was faintly curved, so slightly it took a seasoned eye to note it. A fine, slim, tapering curve, like a lily’s stem or a girl’s long throat. And the razored edge, with the shallow curve, made it technically a saber, he supposed. And yet the point was deadly. Fierce as a rapier, nor was the curve deep enough to keep its master from em­ploying it for thrust and counter as an épée.

The weight was perfect.

The balance was unearthly, magical, sheer perfection be­yond a swordsman’s dream of perfection.

He extended it in full, measuring along the glittering edge with a gloating, loving eye, feeling shoulder-muscles pull taut to hold the balance, feeling the fierce needle-point float feather-light, swift and agile to strike at a nerve’s flick, like a cobra.

He felt love heady in his veins, like wine.

The floating, singing balance was poetry and music and fire and the ache of purest beauty deep in the throat, touch­ing on the verge of tears. Yet she had weight and drive enough to shear off an arm, cutting through meat and bone effortlessly.

Were the sword his, he would name her Asloth, “Golden- Girl.”

He returned her to the counter. But it hurt to give her back.

Against the background of his thoughts, he became aware that someone was speaking.

“It is a sharbaré, yes? A blade of beauty. The kazar knows good steel, I can tell from the way he handled her.”

“Yes … a fine weapon. A blade of beauty, as you say. Kashambar, himself, never knew a better,” he replied vaguely.

“Ah! Kashambar of the sagas! The kazar knows the epics of my people. He does honor to know them thus.” It was not the fat proprietor who spoke, but a taller, leaner figure, hard to make out in the deep shadows of the arcade. Clever how the fur pillow bearing the golden sword had been set out just far enough from the overhanging arch to catch the sun.

To catch the eye ….

“Aye, I know your tales, and love them well. But I would buy the sword. Name the price. I haggle not over that which is living perfection breathed by Mnardus the Gods’ Smith into steel of beauty.”

“Kazar, it is all the same, eh? With men—true men—and swords—true, blooded swords, sharbare. We are all one, with fine clean steel in our hands, the sun ablaze above us, wo­men to watch—to applaud us—to be borne off by the victor, eh? Then we are men, steel against steel, sinew to sinew, and blood to blood. We have lived, striven to the utmost of flesh, the clean wind about us, the strong earth under our feet to bear us up, then we truly live … truly men sprung from the God-Race, eh? Of whatever world or hue of skin.”

“Aye,” Raul said, “the blood roaring through the heart and salt tears burning at the eye, and bright gaudy banners straining stiff against the wind. Wind of your Omphale—or my Bamassa—wind is wind. Steel is steel. Men are men, wherever met.”

“Ah, the kazar is Bamassa-born, then. Almost a brother, for gentility. My mother was Rilké of Bamassa.”

Linton blinked against the fierce sun. Gods, it was hot! “Of what Clan, to do honor?”

“Arglinassam, the Red Hawk Banner; her sire, the Chief­tain Erngal Thrice-Wise.”

“I have shared wine and water with Emgal Thrice-Wise, and, when a boy, wrestled with his nine sons, and rode with them to hunt and Clan-feast. Aye, and fought with them, steel to steel, in war-season. They are pure-sprung from the Gods’-Race, fine men and fine women.”

The flash of white teeth against purple shadows.

“You do honor, kazar, much honor to my mother’s Clan, to my People, and, for honor, I would thou share my wine and water—for gentility.”

Raul Linton smiled warmly, and touched the back of his right hand to his brow in the Salute.

“Thou wouldst share wine and water with me; I wouldst that thou should share my meat and bread,” he said, in the High Rilké with the formula of Prince-to-Prince (a rare and noble mode of speech; a very high honor).

The tall man bowed, returning the Salute, and pulled aside the flap masking the entrance to the rear tent of the stall, a frame supporting finely-woven carpets. Raul entered.

Across the bazaar, his “rings” carrying to him every word picked up by the minute transceiver he had affixed to the lining of Linton’s cloak, Colonel Nijel Pertinax smiled a thin­lipped and gloating smile, and pressed the “record” stud on a special brooch. All was going splendidly, splendidly. Surely Commander Linton knew he was speaking with Sharl the Yellow-Eyed, notorious spy and revolutionary agent of the Kahani of Valadon, exiled and outlawed queen of a key Border planet—all this ceremonial kak was obviously a recognition-code.

He bent to listen.

The transition from dazzling sun to deep shadowy twilight was blinding. Raul blinked and knuckled his eyes, peering about him. The rear of the stall, gorgeously carpeted floor, ceiling and walls, was strewn with nests of cushions, multi­colored, pumpkin, cream, wine-green, checkered black-and-scarlet, soft gold, harsh crimson, palest blue. A wrought-silver sargala stood three-legged in the far comer, leaking per­fumed threads of blue smoke through a hundred piercings. A small, fat bird with green-and-snowy plumage regarded him with a basilisk-eye of furious orange, from a swinging perch of amber beads. Against the farthest comer, on a hooded stand of milk-wood, seven figures stood, finely wrought with very ancient workmanship from jade, lava-stone, brass, white granite, red gold, kohn-wood, and iron. Raul Linton made the exactly-proper eight-motion Obeisance, indicating honor and gentility, respect and awe, as expressed by an off-world non-believer sympathetic to Custom and Belief, but not sharing.

Sharl watched him, a spark of admiration flashing in his canary eyes.

“Be welcome to what is mine; use all as all were thine.” He invited Raul in the time-honored phrase, legs scissoring and he seated himself Rilké-fashion on cushions of white, blue and black. Raul made the proper, polite response and seated himself adroitly—it is hard for a terrestrial to adopt the curious kneeling position of the Rilké, but Linton did it with familiar grace and ease, and again Sharl watched, and saw, and noted.

Now the fat sword-seller appeared, hands together in ser­vility, painted eyebrows lifted in silent but eloquent inquiry.

Sharl clicked his fingers together.

“Chark. Stone-Bottle.”

“Of gentility,” Linton requested with one hand lifted, “I have a friend, a very large and big man with snow-blond hair and beard and deep-tanned face. He will be wearing Circassian violet, with flare-boots, and broiling about the bazaar, I doubt not, near the livestock-pens. Summon him thither, of gentility, to me.”

“The kazar wishes, and it is done.”

He vanished through the hanging rugs.

“With permission,” Raul murmured, drawing a packet of cigarels from his tunic and proffering the packet to his host, who nodded, withdrew one, and sat back.

They smoked in silence until the wine came, as was Cus­tom. Then, over the smoking cups of green wine, poured from a rare, almost legendary vintage (for honor)—Raul knew very well the value, and implied compliment, of Stone-Bottle chark—he said: “Let us now talk swords.”

And talk swords they did, with much confusion to poor Colonel Pertinax sweating and smoldering in the fiery afternoon sun-blaze. Between alternate cups of chark and of water, which is how you drink chark, the Rilké suddenly said:

“Kazar, with permission, sword-talk is a wide gate through­out which much else may enter. Why are you being ‘lis­tened’ to?”

“Am I being listened to by aught else than you? If so, I did not know it.”

“Kazar, with permission—” The crested Chieftain bent and, with one strong brown hand, laid open slowly a fold of Linton’s cloak, exposing a grain of darker substance.

Puzzled, Raul said: “And what is that? Looks like a splatter of road-muck.”

Sharl laughed. “Road-muck—with ears, kazar!” He pulled at it, and Raul’s eyes widened, then narrowed, as he saw how the ceramic bead adhered electrostatically to the fab­ric.

“By the Nine Hells, a pinhead mike!”

“Precisely, kazar.”

An eagle-glance shot suddenly into clear canary imper­turbable eyes.

“How did you know it was there?”

“Kazar—of gentility—I saw it placed.”

“Placed? By what man?”

Imperturbably. “A thin, sallow stick of a man in bottle-green, with a sour mouth and tnany rings, a black cap shad­owing his eyes. He followed the kazar and brushed a hand against the cloak—thus—and it adhered.”

“Do you know this man?”

“Of honor, kazar, I do.”

Raul took a cup of chark, then a cup of clear water. “Name him—of gentility!”

“Name: Pertinax. A spy of the government—of P-5. A man who prowls amid reputations, sour-mouthed, smiling only when he feels pleasure, and feeling pleasure only when his hints and lies and whispers hurt a better man than him­self, of which he has hurt many, bragging he hath spoiled ‘more little games than any man in Hercules.’ A filth of a man. A ‘Col-o-nel.’ ”

“Pertinax . . .”

Slowly, savoringly (feeling his blood begin to boil with rage and frustration), Linton rolled the name on his tongue, tasting it, a sour, dour quince of a name, bitter as lemon, stinging like salt.

He started to rise, fists balling—but Sharl halted him with a lifted palm.

“Not to be necessary, kazar, with honor—he will be here, presently.”

“How do you know this?”

A smile, warmly generous behind fine bristling whiskers. A brown hand produced a small crystal rod, beaded with­in by glinting points of sparkling filament.

“A dampener!”

“Aye. I have scrambled his circuits. He will be aching to know what ‘treasonous’ talk we are having here behind thin carpet-walls. Soon he will come snuffling and rooting around beside the tent, to try his naked ears, seeing if they do better than his tiny bead-microphone transceivers.”

Raul looked straight and level into the clear, candid can­ary-yellow eyes.

“Who are you—and what do you want?”

“Kazar, of honor, a man who is offering you—a job.”

The yellow eyes did not waver or flinch from his cold, hard stare.

“What kind of ‘job’?”

“Honorable employment. Not like the work of Pertinax.”

Raul snorted with disgust. “He is a sneaking swine!”

“Aye, kazar. And any minute now he will come rooting and snuffling about the tent, like a lank-thin red-eyed swine nosing about for some fine dirty mud to wallow in—ah!”

Beyond the tent-wall of carpeting they heard a thump—a grunt—a squeal of rage and terror.

Sharl’s lifted hand held the Herculian motionless, listen­ing.

“Hah! A knife, is it? Well, you sniveling sneak-thief, try this on!” A hoarse, deep-chested voice came to them.

“My friend and servant, Gundorm Varl,” Raul explained in a low voice, answering an inquiring lift of Sharl’s brows.

A muffled thumping, thrashing sound followed, sharply punctuated with shrill squeaks and squeals, piercingly sharp, filled with outrage and pain.

Raul smiled faintly.

“Gunder always carries a riding-whip,” he said. Sharl grinned, a flash of strong white teeth.

For a while they listened comfortably to thumping, thrashing sounds. The squeals died to muffled sobbings.

“There! That sh’d teach you not to sneak and sniff outside closed doors—as it were.” (A thump, as of a boot-toe firmly planted to a gluteus maximus.) “Now be off with y and mind your manners hence, y sneakin’ little snake!”

The two men exchanged a cool, amused, gratified glance.

“Commander—are y there?” A bush-bearded blond head pushed in between the carpet flaps.

“Now, if I’m interruptin’ anything—”

“Not at all—I think. Come in.”

The burly, bearded, blond Bamassian clumped in, leathery tanned face gleaming with highlights of sweat. He cocked a thumb rearwards.

“A fat little Rilké met me yonder, saying y’ were here, and what do I find skulkin’ about the tent-flaps but a thin long fella in green suit listening at the rear wall. Naturally, I taught him better manners. I figured anything y’ were saying, Commander, to y’ friend here was in the nature of private, personal-type business, so I just up and showed him what courtesy was. I—uh—hope I did right by y’, sir?” Gundorm Varl said, a sudden expression of anxiety crossing his face.

“Was he ‘a thin, sallow stick of a man in bottle-green, with a sour mouth and many rings, a black cap shadowing his eyes’?” Raul asked, repeating word-for-word the descrip­tion Sharl Yellow-Eyes had given him a moment or two earlier.

“He was, sir.”

“Then you did right, Gundorm, very right indeed.” Raul broke off, and changing from Neoanglic to High Rilké, ad­dressed his host:

“Of honor, pray pardon my friend, who knoweth not the Custom nor the Tongue (over-well), but who is a good man and true, and does not mean dishonor. I go surety for him, of gentility.”

Sharl bowed and silently gestured Gundorm Varl to a nest of cushions, into which the great man sank with a weary sigh and a muttered, mispronounced phrase of thanks.

“Well, sir, and how did the interview go?”

Raul smiled lazily.

“Well enough, I suppose. I lost my head, and, instead of just keeping quiet and letting the Border Administrator do all the talking, I blew my mouth and said many things. Bad things. What with my loose mouth and your whip-hand there, I doubt not there’s a Monitor Squad looking for me within the hour, with a warrant for my deporta­tion back to Bamassa—or even further.”

Gundorm Varl blew out his cheeks in a long, slow whistle.

“Is it true now, sir? And you a Linton of Bamassa, and of a line of government people, and with a chest-full of bright ribands in their stinkin’ wars, and all! But what does my ‘whip-hand’ have to do with it all, sir?”

Raul quirked a humorous eyebrow.

“The man you thrashed was a P-5 spy, set on my tail by Mather, the Administrator, who all but accused me to my face of being a traitor to the Empire, a seditious revolution­ary, and an advocate of assassinating Arban IV Imperator himself.”

“Aw, for the love of Space! And I had to lash the beg­gar’s buttocks to jelly with my great whip! Forgive me, com­mander, I’d no notion in my head he was aught more than a low, sneaking, skulking snake of a thief!”

“You did all right, Gunder, for that’s just what he is.”

A woman’s face appeared at the flap, not young but fine­ly boned, wearing an ashkar of seed-pearls. She whispered something to Sharl, whose eyes flashed dangerously. And then she vanished.

“What is it?” Raul asked as he of the Yellow Eyes rose lithely to his feet.

“Of gentility, kazar, I know not where the fault doth lie—either here”—indicating his crystal “dampener”—“or there”— indicating Gundorm Varl’s riding-whip—“but my servant sayeth a squadron of Monitors have entered the Bazaar of Queen Dagundha, led by that very Pertinax the Snake so well and neatly chastised by thy servant there. I doubt not they come for thee!”

Raul was on his feet in a bound.

“Right. Well, let’s be off, Gunder. You, sir, are not in guilt of this thing. It is me they seek, and my friend, here, so tell them—”

“With permission, kazar, but, of honor, I cannot. No. I am, truly, of guilt in this, for knowingly I permitted the Snake to come near and sat by while your great blond bear of a servant whipped him without lifting a hand. Nay —you must let me aid you in this thing.”

He bent and plucked away carpeting from the floor. Then, from a waist-pouch, withdrew a slender steel rod which he inserted into a tiny hole, scarce-visible it was so small. Raul knew at a glance what it was—an electronic key, the lock attuned precisely to the molecular alignment of the steel needle.

A click—and a black hole widened before their feet.

“Go quickly with me now—there is a ladder, and a tunnel which we can follow to safety. I will give you hiding from these searchers the Snake has so swiftly brought upon us—”

Raul faced him squarely.

“Nay. Of honor, I cannot permit that you do this thing. For I have not accepted your ‘job’ and am not willing, save that I hear more—much more—to enter your employ.”

Sharl’s yellow gaze flashed dangerously and his hand closed on the handle of a knife thrust through his girdle. His lips tightened to a thin white line, and Raul knew he was very close to death in that moment.

The moment passed.

The strong brown hand fell away from the knife-hilt, and white, tight lips relaxed. But the face was still stem.

“It is, with permission, not a time nor place to speak of ‘employ.’ It is of kazara, of honor. You have shared my water and wine. I am thy host, and you have made the Salute and the Obeisance. Now come—come quickly, with thy servant. Oh, do not be a great vokarthu fool!” he said, impatiently, meaning by vokarthu “foreigner,” that is an all-inclusive term for anyone not Rilké, variously renderable as Imper­ial, terrestrial, or “distant-born unclanly.” “Think you not they will seize me too, kazar? Guest-honor of the People precludes that we should have introduced ourselves before the sharing of water and wine. But I am the kazar Sharl ka-Nabon Tahukam, Chieftain and Heir of the Horvatham, the Fire Bird Clan, and agent-in-principle to her kazara, Innald, ex­iled Kahani of Valadon. I am a well-known spy and seditious trouble-causer, and yonder sour-mouthed Snake with aching buttocks will be hunting me, too, unless we be gone—of gentility, kazar!”

A Border-worlder knows when to shut up.

“Lead on, then,” Raul said tersely.

“A moment—”

While the two stood on the edge of the trapdoor, Sharl plunged with unchieftainly haste back through the flap into the front of the shop.

He reappeared just as swiftly, two seconds later, with the fat sword-seller in tow and a long bundle wrapped in carpeting thrust under his arm. He gestured wildly.

“Of swiftness, now! They are nearly across the bazaar—into the black hole, and trust me!” He blew a kiss from clean brown fingertips to the small, pert green-and-white bird who cocked an anxious eye at him from its bead-am­ber perch.

“Farewell, ylama—farewell, my sweet! Fear not, I shall send for thee, when all is well! Now—down—” He thrust them into the blackness. Raul’s booted feet poked down into emptiness—swung—found a ladder-rung, and he went down into pitch-blackness surefooted as a mountain charb.

Gundorm Varl followed, and behind him came the wheez­ing, fat sword-seller and, lastly, Sharl Yellow-Eyes.

The trap slid sleekly shut behind them, and, although they could not see or know, so cleverly was it draped, the thrust-up floor-carpeting folded down to hide their exit-place com­pletely, perfectly—just as the heavy boots of a squad of beefy Monitors came tramping and clumping into the tent they had just vacated.

Utter blackness about them, above, below, to all sides. Then a flare—a soft welling-forth of pale, cold blue-white light, from something in the sword-seller’s hand.

They reached the bottom of the ladder. By the soft, clear light, Raul could see they stood in a chamber hewn from solid gray stone. But from one side of the chamber a black well showed—a tunnel branching out into the un­known. Raul felt the blood tingling through his veins from head to foot. The breath sang in and out of his lungs, heady as clear, cold mountain air. This was living! He did not know where he was going, nor why, nor what it was all really about, but surely, somewhere in it all, there were a few heads to break, and good comrades about him, and— somewhere, somewhere, a good fight—the Good Fight to join, a Cause to battle for, and thus to make an end to all this stifling inaction, this batting-at-shadows, this wasting and rusting of oneself!

Sharl caught his arm, pushing the carpet-wrapped long bundle into his hands.

“Here—she is thine—whether or not, kazar, you ‘enter my employ’—she belongs to thee!”

Heart thumping, joy like honey on the back of his tongue, Raul tore away the carpeting, unsheathed her and lifted her straight up into the light—

“Asloth!”

“Go forward, of honor!”

They thrust ahead of him into the black mouth of the tunnel, and, the golden sword clasped naked in his hands and joy singing in his heart, he went forward with them— into the black unknown.