The Search for Zei

CHAPTER X

The tall Sir Gavao er-Gargan was pushing his way in. He spotted the Earthmen and approached with a cry of: "What-ho, O Nyamen! As a reward for the due deference you've shown my rank, I permit you to eat with me," And he flung himself down. "Waiter!" he boomed. "A cup of burhen, and sprackly! Where's our Mejrou man? The parcel-carrier?"

"Haven't seen him," said Barnevelt, and to the waiter: "The same for us."

"Ah well, small loss. An ignorant wight, crediting the myths of magic powers of the accursed Earthmen. I, now, am emancipate from superstitious follies, in which I do include all talk of gods, ghosts, witches, and powers thaumaturgic. All's governed by unbending laws of nature, even the damned Terrestrials."

He stuck a finger in his drink, flicked a drop to the floor, muttered a minor incantation, and drank.

Barnevelt said in English: "Watch this guy. He's up to no good."

"What say you?" barked Gavao.

Barnevelt answered: "I spoke my native language, warning Tagde against such incautious over-indulgence as cost us dear in Hershid."

'Tis the first I ever heard of hardened mercenaries counting costs with such unwarlike clerkly caution, but 'tis your affair. At whom do you stare so fixedly, fat one?"

Tangaloa looked around with a grin. "The little dancer over there. Either my old eyes deceive me, or she's giving me the high-sign."

Barnevelt looked in the direction indicated. Sure enough, there sat the dancer, still wrapped in her meters of gauze.

"This bears looking into," said Tangaloa. "You order dessert for me, D—Snyol."

"Hey…" said Barnevelt weakly. While he did not like to see Tangaloa headed for some escapade, he knew George would be hard to stop. Therefore he sat still and unhappily watched Tangaloa's broad back recede into the shadows in pursuit of the dancer, in temper amourous as the first of May.

"Ao, here comes the singer!" said Gavao, pointing.

" 'Tis Pari bab-Horaj, well-known along the Sadabao Coast for her imitations. I mind me of the time I was in an Inn in Hershid with a singer, a dancer, and a female acrobat, and in order to decide…" and Gavao was off on another of his Paphian anecdotes.

A young female Krishnan with the bluish hair of the western races had dragged in a stool of intricate workmanship and now seated herself upon it. Her costume consisted of a square of thin purple stuff, a little over a meter on a side, wrapped under one armpit and fastened with a jewelled clasp over the opposite shoulder. She carried an instrument something like an Earthly child's toy xylophone and a little hammer to strike it with.

She seated herself on the stool with the instrument in her lap and cracked a couple of jokes which caused many to make the gobbling sounds that passed here for laughter, though between the dialect and the speed of her speech Barnevelt could not understand them. (He lived in dread of running into a real Nyame who would insist on conversing with him in the difficult Nyami language.)

Barnevelt caught a flash of motion out of the corner of his eye. As he looked around, his companion's arm resumed its former position. But Barnevelt could have sworn Gavao had made a quick pass over his, Barnevelt's, mug. A knockout drop?

Barnevelt had a supply of capsules and pills of various kinds in a pouch next to his skin, but he could not get through the tight Krishnan jacket without attracting attention.

The girl now beat upon her instrument, which gave forth clear bell-like tones, and sang in a voice dripping with melancholy and nostalgia:

"Les talda kventen bif orgat 'Anevorb rottum aind…"

Though to Barnevelt the tune sounded vaguely familiar, he could make no sense of the words. Kventen would be the present passive infinitive of kventer, "to drink"…

Then he snorted as it hit him. By Zeus, he thought, I come eleven light-years to hear a dame sing "Auld Lang Syne" in a dive! Wasn't there any place in the universe where you could get away from Earthly influence? The next planet he visited would be one where the folk had tentacles and lived in a sea of sulphuric acid.

There still remained, however, the problem of his possibly doped drink. If he simply sat without drinking he'd arouse suspicion…

Then it occurred to him that two could play at that game. He caught Gavao's arm and pointed: "Who's the fellow with the mask? The Lone Space-Ranger?"

As Gavoa looked, Barnevelt switched mugs with him.

"Those?" said Gavao. "I know not. 'Tis the custom of the local gentry to mask themselves when mingling with the general. As I was saying, when we awoke…"

Barnevelt took a gulp of Gavao's liquor, which tasted something like a whiskey sour made with tomato juice. Gavao drank likewise. The singer started off again:

"lnda blu rij maonten zovor jinva 'Ondat relo va lounsom pain…"

Whoever wrote that old clinker about the Lonesome Pine would never know it, thought Barnevelt, watching Gavao for signs of the effect of his drink. The singer worked her way through "Die Lorelei."

"La Cucaracha," and "Drink to me Only," and was starting on:

"Jingabelz, jingabelz, jingel ollave …*

when the Krishnan wiped his mouth with his sleeve and muttered:

"That potation must have turned my second stomach. I feel unwell. When I recover I'll seek out the unha responsible and skewer him in despite for such unmannerly dealing with a collared knight…"

By the time Tangaloa appeared with the expression of a canariophagous cat, Gavao's insensible head was pillowed on his hands on the table. Tangaloa said:

"What's wrong with the skite, stonkered already? I'm thirsty…"

Barnevelt shot out a hand and covered Tangaloa's mug, saying quietly: "Don't—it's doped. We have a visit from one Michael Finn, and I switched 'em. Let's go."

"Are you mad? We are in the midst of the most fascinating investigation of an alien culture, and you want to go! Here comes the band again. Let's see what they have to offer."

"Excuse me while I shudder."

"Don't you dance? If I had my third wife here I would show you…"

The four Krishnans with the instruments filed in and began emitting an eerie exotic tune which, after a while, Dirk Barnevelt recognized as that scourge of the radio waves, "I Don't Need No Blanket (When I Got my Baby)" which had been popular on Earth three years before he left it.

He turned a grimace to Tangaloa. "Every time I begin to imagine I'm in the Mermaid Tavern in Shakespeare's time they spring something like that!"

"A hopelessly parochial point of view," said Tangaloa. "You should take things as they come, as I do."

"You certainly do!" said Barnevelt in a marked manner.

The masked couple got up and danced a slow Krishnan dance that consisted mainly of bowing to each other. Barnevelt got his first good look at them: the man lithe and well-muscled despite his small size and androgynous garment, a tunic of pale pink gauze that left one shoulder bare. The woman was similarly clad, with one difference: She wore a shortish broad-sword slung at her side.

Barnevelt said: "You can't say the women wear the pants in Qirib, but they do wear the swords. There's something familiar about that bleep. Wish I could place him."

Other couples got up to dance too. Then the Osirian stood up, belched, and teetered on his bird-like feet over to the harpist.

"Come," he burbled, "since you play an Earthly tune, let me show you Earthly dancing…"

Presently the reptile and the entertainer appeared upon the floor, the latter bearing the expression of one who is only doing this to avert worse trouble. The Osirian started to spin round and round in the steps of the popular Earthly zhepak, and his tail whacked the masked man in the fundament just as the latter was bowing again to his lady.

"Hishkako baghan!" roared the masked man, recovering his balance.

"I apologize . . ." began the Osirian, but the masked man snatched his partner's sword from its sheath, grating:

"I'll apologize you, you scaly horror! 'Twill pleasure me to see your hideous head, shorn from its vile trunk, leaping like a football down the planching of the floor!"

He stepped forward, swinging the heavy blade around for a slash.

Barnevelt picked up his empty mug. It was a solid piece of ceramics, the outside banded with reliefs of men chasing women or vice versa. Dirk drew back his arm and let fly.

The mug shattered against the back of the masked man's head, and the latter's leading leg buckled under him, so that he fell forward to hands and knees. The Osirian darted out the door.

The room was full of babel. Angur hauled the masked man to his feet and tried to pacify him, while Barnevelt, having resumed his seat, looked innocent but kept his sword-hilt within reach. The masked man glared around the room, saying:

"Fainting fit, my eggless aunt! Some villain did most discourteously yerk me upon the pate from behind, and when I catch the varlet I'll clapper—claw him fittingly… Saw you the miscreant, madam?" he asked his companion,

"Nay, for my eyes were upon you, my lord."

The eyes behind the mask came to rest on Barnevelt. "What…" the masked man began, and looked around for the sword he had just been using.

Angur and the waiter, one on each side of him, uncovered short bludgeons. The former said: "Nay, brawl not on my premises, my lord, or I'll have the watch in despite your status. Do you be good, now."

"Chat Let's forth, madam, to seek entertainment meeter for our rank. After all, I am who I am!"

"That was our friend Vizqash bad-Murani!" said Barnevelt. "Remember the last time he used that expression?"

Since Tangaloa at last agreed to depart, they paid and went to their room, leaving the somnolent Gavao still sprawled upon the table. As they opened their door, Sishen the Osirian was bending over the macaw's cage, and as they stepped into the room he twitched aside the cloth that covered it. Philo opened his eyes, flapped his wings, and uttered an earsplit-ting "Yirrrrk!"

The Osirian jumped back, turned, and leaped upon Tangaloa, seizing him around the waist with his long hindlegs and around the neck with his arms. From his reptilian throat came a whistling approximation of Gozashtandou for "Save me!"

"Get down, damn it!" cried Tangaloa, struggling under his burden, in a voice muffled by the creature's terrified embrace.

Sishen got, drooling the Osirian equivalent of tears.

"Sorry am I," he hissed, "but the events of this eve—the flash of light, the brabble with the masked gentleman, and now the uncanny outcry of this kindless monster—have unstrung me quite. Were not you those who succored me when that fellow sought to slay me for a trivial gaffe?"

"Yes," said Barnevelt. "Why didn't you fix him with your glittering eye?" .

Sishen spread his claws helplessly. "For the following reasons: Item, ere we Sha'akhfi be allowed on Earth or the Earthly space line, we must pledge ourselves the use of this small talent to forswear. And since our own space line runs not hitherward nigher than Epsilon Eridani, to visit the Cetic planets must we of the Procyonic group to this pledge subject ourselves. Item: I'm far from the most effective of my species in the employ of this mental suasion, though given time I can cast the mental net or lift it as well as others. And item: Krishnans are less liable to our guidance than men of Earth, wherefore I'd not have had time this bellowing bully to subdue before my own life were sped. Hence came your intervention in time's nick. Now, if you would aught in recompense of Sishen, speak, and to the length of my poor ability shall it be given."

"Thanks—I'll bear that in mind. But what brings you to Jazmurian? Not a lady Osirian, surely."

"I? I am a simple tourist visiting places far and strange for the satisfaction of my longing after new experience. Here am I stuck, for three days ago was my guide, poor lad, fished from the harbor with a knife-wound in his back, and the travel agency yet essays to find me another. So meager is my command of these tongues that I dare not journey unaccompanied. This loss made good, I will onward press to Majbur, where it's said there stands a temple of rare workmanship." The Osirian yawned, a gruesome sight. "Forgive me, gentles, but I am fordone: Let us forthwith to our rest."

And Sishen unrolled the rug he used in lieu of a bed and flattened himself down upon it, like a lizard basking in the sun.

Next morning Barnevelt found it necessary to rouse Tanga-loa, the world's soundest sleeper, by bellowing in his ear:

They left while Sishen was still touching up his body paint, a task that apparently consumed much of his waking time. When they came downstairs, they found Angur arguing with three rough-looking youths with cudgels.

"My masters!" cried Angur. "Explain to these jolt-heads that the pictures the old photographer left this morn are yours, not mine, and deal with the matter howso you will."

"What's this?" said Barnevelt.

The biggest of the three said: "Know, O men of Nya-madze, that we're a committee from the Artists' Guild, which has resolved to root out this fiendish new invention that otherwise will rape us of our livelihood. For how can we compete with one who, possessing neither skill nor talent, does but point a silly box and click! his picture's done? Never did the gods intend that men should limn likenesses by such base mechanical means."

"Good Lord," muttered Barnevelt, "they actually worry about technological unemployment here!"

The Krishnan went on: "If you do but yield the pictures the old coystril made, all shall be well. Should you wish portraits of yourselves, our Guild will rejoice to draft or daub 'em for a nominal fee. But these delusive shadows—chal Will you give them up like wights of sense? Or must we to robustious measures come?"

Barnevelt and Tangaloa exchanged a long look. The latter said in English: "It does not really matter to us…"

"Oh, no!" said Barnevelt. "We can't let em think they can push us around. Ready?"

Tangaloa sighed. "You have been eating meat again. And you were such a peaceful chap on Earth, too! Coo-eel"

Barnevelt hauled on his hilt. The wire parted and the sword swept out. With a mighty blow he brought the blade down flatwise on the head of the spokesman for the Artists' Guild. The Krishnan fell back on the cobbles, dropping his club. Tangaloa at the same time tugged out his mace and advanced upon the other two, who ran like rabbits. The fallen man scrambled up and fled after them. The Earthmen chased them a few steps, then returned to the inn.

"One damn thing after another," said Barnevelt, after looking around to make sure no Qiribo police-woman had observed the fracas. "Let's see those pictures—jeepers cripus, if I'd known they were as bad as that I'd have given them to those guys. I look like a mildewed mummy!"

"Is that bloated gargoyle I?" said Tangaloa plaintively.

Reluctantly they gave Angur the money for the photographer, wired up their weapons again, gathered their gear, and set out across the main boulevard of Jazmurian for the railroad station.