Lurulu (23 page)

Rouft sighed. “I often wish that I could drink in two taverns at the same instant; it would save much wasted energy wandering to and fro.”

Myron muttered, half to himself: “If anyone were capable of such a feat, it would be our engineer, Fay Schwatzendale.”

2

Shortly after sunset, Captain Maloof and his crew sauntered forth from the spaceport; Moncrief and the Mouse-riders elected to remain aboard the
Glicca
. The men proceeded up the boulevard, turned at the intersection and came upon the arched portico, surmounted by the effigy of Atlas with the globe of Old Earth on his shoulders, marking the site of The Court of King Gambrinus.

Entering the tavern, the four men found themselves in a long, narrow, dimly lit chamber with a vaulted ceiling and walls panelled with polished planks of wood the color of dark honey. Tables were scattered along the length of the chamber, with a bar flanking the wall to the right. Business was slack; at a table far to the rear a pair of old men sat hunched over a chess-board, with tankards at their elbows. On the wall behind them an artist of long ago had painted King Gambrinus sitting in state on a majestic golden throne. In one hand he held a scepter, in the other a tankard of foaming brew, his expression, as he surveyed the chamber, at once stern yet benign. Behind the bar stood a fat bartender, wearing a white smock and small white cap. He took note of the newcomers, displaying minimal interest, and spoke in a ripe rolling baritone. “Good evening, gentlemen; you come at a late hour; still, we will take pains to accommodate your thirst.” He flourished his hand toward the tables. “You may sit where you notice your correct hermetic sign, or if you prefer, I can advise you.”

“That might be wise,” said Maloof. “The signs are somewhat arcane.”

“True,” said the bartender. He reflected a moment, then pointed. “Yonder is a congenial table. It is dependable and it has supported thousands of tankards with only rare spillage, and it seems to induce kindness and liberality even among strangers. There has never been a glottal congestion at this table, nor has anyone ever failed to pay his score.”

The four seated themselves at the recommended table. The bartender asked: “What can I serve you?”

“Describe our choices,” said Maloof.

“Very well; our beers and ales are excellent. We serve Darkling Stout, Dankwel’s Special, Wyvern, Old Spiteful, Pale Gothic, and Bitter Brown Ale.”

Maloof opted for the Bitter Brown Ale, as did his companions. The ale was served in tankards turned from billets of a dense dark wood.

Maloof studied his tankard at length, turning it this way and that. He asked the bartender: “Does this black wood have a name?”

“Of course; it is swamp-gnarl, a tree which grows half-submerged in the swamp, never more than nine feet tall and four feet wide. The tree cannot be cut in place; it must be pulled up entire by a floating derrick. The piece is trimmed, cut into baulks, and seasoned for five years. Then it is sliced into billets, and turned in a special lathe — to become unfinished vessels, known as ‘blanks’. The ‘blanks’ are boiled in a special oil for three days, then are shaped, carved, and finished by hand. Now they are tankards, no two alike; they cannot be broken, and last forever.”

Maloof held up the heavy black tankard. “It has an extraordinary appeal. Are they available for purchase, and if so, where?”

The bartender looked at the clock upon the wall behind him, then said: “My information is both good and bad.” He pointed through the window toward a shop on the opposite side of the street with a green starburst over the door. “Yonder shop is directed by a true galardinet named Dame Florice. She sells curios, objects of vertu, and miscellaneous oddments to tourists, spacemen and local folk alike, making no distinction so long as they can pay. She keeps an adequate supply of tankards, which she sells at reasonable prices. That is the good news. In five minutes, she turns off the lights and closes her shop with inexorable determination — that is the bad news.”

Maloof stared up at the clock. “Five minutes?”

“Ten seconds less — you have time to finish your ale, pay the score, and dash across the street, with about two minutes and thirty seconds remaining to make your purchases, if Dame Florice sympathizes with your plight. I myself close at the same instant.”

The four men drained their tankards. Between gulps, Myron gestured toward the chess-players, one of whom had just made a move. “What of them?”

The bartender shrugged. “They will continue their game by candle-light, and I shall find them here in the morning.”

Maloof paid the score, and the four men, departing the Court of King Gambrinus, hastened across the street to the shop under the green starburst.

Dame Florice was a tall woman with a long bony nose; she eyed the last-minute customers with disfavor. “You are overly casual; the shop is about to close. Business is done for the day.”

“Not quite,” declared Maloof. “There is time for you to sell me six swamp-gnarl tankards.”

Myron added, “While you are serving Captain Maloof, it will save time if you will bring me six tankards as well.”

Dame Florice spoke sharply: “By the time I bring your orders from the stock-room, it will be time to turn out the lights. Do you propose to pay in the dark?”

“It might be more expedient if you would extend your business hours by another minute, or perhaps a minute and a half,” Maloof suggested. “But you must do as you think best.”

Dame Florice turned on her heel and strode off to her stock-room. The four men took advantage of the delay to look about the shop; Myron came upon a small effigy of Atlas on his knees, supporting Old Earth on his shoulders. The figure was about six inches tall and carved from a dense white wood. Ever the romantic, Myron was charmed; here was an amusing souvenir of Falziel and its taverns, and he added the item to his purchases. A moment later he discovered a rack from which hung a number of delicate chains about five feet long. Looking more closely, Myron saw that the chains were carved with exquisite nicety from long wands of pale wood.

By this time Dame Florice had returned from the stock-room with the tankards, and had reconciled herself to the unprecedented experience of working after the close of regulation business hours. In response to Myron’s questions, she told him that the chains were carved by a coterie of old women in an isolated mountain village. These women were held to be witches by local folk, said Dame Florice. This was sheer nonsense, of course, she added with a frosty smile, the chains were carved from long shoots of mountain hazel, and the work was uncannily precise, but witchery? “Bah! Rank superstition!” Myron noted that despite her words, Dame Florice made a surreptitious sign with the fingers of her left hand. He selected two of the chains, to be used as necklaces to delight a certain Tibbet at the city Duvray on Alcydon.

The spacemen settled their accounts and seven minutes after the ordinary closing hour returned to the spaceport.

In the morning warehousemen appeared and cargo was off-loaded. At noon the
Glicca
lifted from the spaceport. The burnished mahogany domes dwindled below, and the
Glicca
slanted away toward the next port of call.

3

After Falziel, the next two stops were Chancelade on Avente, then Organon on Archimbal. Despite many similarities, the populations of the two worlds differed significantly in social philosophy; the folk of Avente were tolerant, sensitive to aesthetic subtlety, and intensely aware of themselves as individuals; the people of Archimbal, while of equivalent culture, were guided by altruistic ideals and were gregarious and most comfortable when working in communal groups. At Organon, Captain Maloof and his crew encountered circumstances which shocked and surprised them to an inordinate degree, making their visit memorable; although the
Glicca
had first put into Chancelade on Avente, where events no less significant occurred.

Even before the cargo had been fully discharged, the port director of Chancelade offered Myron a parcel of onward cargo, on terms so advantageous that Myron immediately agreed to the transaction, though there would be a delay of three or four days before the cargo could be made ready.

The layover was welcomed by everyone aboard the
Glicca
: crew and Mouse-riders alike, since Chancelade was a pleasant city of many charms, picturesque, romantic, casually elegant. The city occupied a parkland at the confluence of three rivers, joined by a dozen lazy canals. Along the banks of both rivers and canals were shops, salons, cafés, restaurants, conservatories and music halls, rendezvous for masked harlequins, gamins, dryads and nymphs, venues dedicated to the unexpected and the preposterous. East of the city rose massive mountains: crags and gorges, upland lakes, forests, and dozens of wilderness resorts, some rustic, others refined and luxurious.

Immediately upon arrival Moncrief went off to solicit employment for the Mouse-riders and encountered success. The crew went off as well, to explore the city and test its potentialities. Time passed quickly. Early on the day of departure, the cargo arrived at the spaceport and was loaded aboard the
Glicca
.

The crew opted for a final afternoon and evening visiting their favorite haunts about the city. During the afternoon, with the crew absent, the Mouse-riders boarded the ship, collected their belongings and departed, never so much as looking back. When the crew returned to the
Glicca
, Maloof discovered a note on the galley table, along with a sum of money. He read the letter aloud:

To the esteemed Captain Maloof and others of the crew:

By a happy circumstance we have been offered long-term employment among the mountain resorts. Contracts are lucrative and we must of necessity accept. Our best wishes to everyone aboard the Glicca; you will not soon be forgotten. I enclose funds sufficient to settle our outstanding accounts. With best respect:

Master Moncrief and the Mouse-riders.

Maloof tossed the note down upon the galley table. “So, that is the way of it. They are gone.” He stared down at the note. “All taken with all, their style of departure is commendable, or so it seems to me.”

Wingo spoke, his expression bleak. “The ship will seem very quiet.”

Schwatzendale leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. “For a fact, their going was opportune, for everyone. The atmosphere aboard ship was stale. Moncrief had become a derelict. His magic was fading. The Klutes crouched like lumps of rancid meat in the shadows. The girls were feckless creatures from a lost land; they danced their own dances and sang their own songs; they knew nothing of responsibility and distracted us all. Now they leave behind only bittersweet memories.”

Maloof, smiling a wan twisted smile, said: “That is a moving testimonial.”

“Bah,” growled Wingo. “It is more like an epitaph.”

“They leave a gap,” Myron agreed. “Still, life will be simpler without them.”

“Bah!” said Wingo again, more emphatically. “What good is simplicity? Even their foolishness was an event! With the Mouse-riders, anything was possible.”

Myron nodded somberly. “Including the possibility that they might never leave the
Glicca
, but remain aboard forever.”

Maloof winced. “The idea is alarming. It is almost an indelicacy.” Myron apologized, and the conversation came to an end.

Early the next morning the
Glicca
departed Chancelade and set off toward Organon, on Archimbal. The ship seemed unnaturally quiet; Wingo abruptly halted his production of novel pastries. The corner of the saloon where the Klutes had brooded and muttered seemed curiously naked.

As time passed, memories of the Mouse-riders became less vivid, and the new reality gradually submerged the old.

4

The
Glicca
arrived at the Organon spaceport halfway through the local morning. Cargo was expeditiously discharged and the crew set off to explore the city. If along the way they chanced to discover a hospitable tavern where they could test the quality of the beer, so much the better.

An omnibus conveyed the four men along a scenic boulevard to the central plaza: an immaculate area, paved with slabs of polished granite. At the center, fountains played around the base of a heroic statue celebrating the legendary locator Hans van der Veeke who had first set foot upon the world Archimbal. He was depicted wearing a black frock coat and a flat black hat. His pose was portentous, with one great arm raised on high, saluting generations of the future. Ranked around the periphery of the plaza were narrow-fronted buildings of a spare, almost gaunt architecture, generally five or six stories high. At the ground level, shops of understated elegance relieved the austerity of the structures in which they were housed. Most sold goods of discreet luxury; there were also restaurants in evidence, as well as a number of agencies and salons.

Upon alighting from the omnibus, the four off-worlders paused to take stock of their surroundings. Inhabitants of the city strolled about the plaza. Men and women alike wore garments of formal cut and excellent quality, as if it were not reputable to appear in public wearing clothes which might not be considered genteel. As they passed, they gave the spacemen quick side-glances, then immediately looked away, to avoid any imputation of undignified curiosity.

The four men from the
Glicca
turned their attention to shops around the square, noting restaurants and cafés but nowhere any establishment suggesting the presence of a tavern. Myron theorized that such premises might be relegated to the backstreets, or even a separate district of the city. Wingo agreed that the theory was as plausible as any, and that the mystery in good time would be resolved.

The four men set off around the plaza. Almost at once the group came to an establishment, apparently a café, identified by an ornamental sign as ‘The Blue Urn’. Windows under three wide arches afforded a view of persons sitting at tables, taking refreshment of various sorts. At a table nearby, four middle-aged gentlemen of obvious status drank from glass tankards containing amber liquid under a notable collar of white foam. With one accord the four spacemen entered the Blue Urn and seated themselves at a vacant table.