Planet of Adventure Omnibus (13 page)

“Well, then,
assert your authority! Enforce your ban on violence!”

Baojian gave
his head a prim shake. “The affair occurred on that strip of the steppe between
the compound and the caravan, where I make no effort to maintain order. It
appears that the priestesses have recovered their property in the same manner
by which they lost it. You have no cause for complaint.”

“What?”
roared Reith. “You’ll let them inflict an innocent person with their Female
Mystery?”

Baojian held
out his hands. “I have no choice. I cannot police the steppe; I do not care to
try.”

Reith burnt
him with a stare of fury and contempt, then turned to examine the priestesses’
dray-house.

Baojian said,
“I must caution you against disorderly conduct while you are a passenger. I
meticulously enforce caravan discipline.”

Reith for a
space could find no words. At last he stuttered, “Have you no concern for evil
deeds?”

“‘Evil’?”
Baojian laughed sadly. “On Tschai the word has no meaning. Events exist-or they
do not exist. If a person adheres to some other system of conduct he himself
will swiftly cease to exist-or else becomes mad as a Phung. So now, permit me
to show you your compartment, as we set forth at once. I want to put leagues
behind us this night, before the Green Chasch return. It seems that now I have
only a single scout.”

REITH, TRAZ
AND Anacho were assigned compartments on one of the barrack drays, each
containing a hammock and a small locker. Four wagons ahead was the dray-house
of the priestesses. All night it rolled on its great wheels, showing no lights.

Unable to
contrive any feasible rescue scheme, Reith went to his hammock, and was sent
into a sleep almost hypnotic by the motion of the wagon.

Shortly after
the wan sun rose from the murk, the caravan halted. The folk of the caravan
filed past a commissary wagon and each was handed a pancake heaped with hot
meat, a mug of hot beer. Low mist hung in wisps and drifts; the small noises of
the caravan only seemed to accentuate the vast silence of the steppe. Color was
forgotten; there was only the slate of the sky, drab gray-brown of steppe,
watered milk of the mist. From the dray-house came no sign of life; the
priestesses did not appear, nor was the Flower of Cath permitted on the caged
foredeck.

Reith sought
out the caravan master. “How far is the way to the seminary? When will we
arrive?”

The
caravan-master munched his pancake while he considered. “We camp tonight by
Slugah Knoll. Another day to Zadno’s Depot, then the next morning to Fasm
Junction. None too soon for the priestesses; they fear that they will be late
for their Rite.”

“What is this
‘Rite’? What goes on?”

Baojian
shrugged. “I can only report rumor. They are a select group, the priestesses,
and they hate men, so I am told, with abnormal fervor. The feeling extends to
every aspect of the ordinary male-female relationship, and includes such women
who stimulate erotic conduct. The Rite seems to purge these intense emotions;
and I am told the priestesses become afflicted with a frenzy during the
solemnities.”

“Two and a
half days, then.”

“Two and a
half days to Fasm Junction.”

The caravan
moved across the steppe, on a course parallel to the hills which heaved up, now
high, now low, to the south. Occasionally clefts or chasms led away into the
hills; occasionally there were copses and groves of spindly vegetation. Reith,
sweeping the landscape with his spanscope, glimpsed creatures watching from the
shadows; he guessed them to be Phung, or possibly Pnume.

For the most
part his attention was fixed on the dray-house. It evinced no life or motion by
day, and the dimmest of flickering lamplight by night. Occasionally Reith
jumped down from the great wagon on which he rode to walk beside the caravan.
Whenever he approached the dray-house a weaponeer in a nearby guncart quickly
swiveled around his weapon. Baojian clearly had given orders that the
priestesses were not to be molested.

Anacho tried
to divert him. “Why concern yourself for this isolated female? You have spared
not a glance for the three slave troupes forward. Everywhere people live and
die: you are oblivious. What of the victims of the Old Chasch and their games?
What of the cannibal nomads who herd men and women through the Kislovan
mid-region as other tribes herd fat-humps? What of the Dirdir and Dirdirmen in
Blue Chasch dungeons? All these you ignore; you are bemused by moth-dust: a
fascination with this one female and her grotesque tribulations!”

Reith managed
a grin. “One man can’t do everything. I’ll make a start, saving the girl from
the Rite ... if I can.”

An hour later
Traz made a similar protest. “What of your space-boat? Are you abandoning your
plans? If you interfere with the priestesses, they will have you killed or
maimed.”

To which
Reith gave a series of patient nods, admitting the justice of Traz’s remarks,
but not allowing himself to be persuaded by them.

Towards the
end of the second day the hills became stony and abrupt, and at times cliffs
loomed over the steppe.

At sunset the
caravan came to Zadno’s Depot, a small caravansary dug into the face of one of
the cliffs, where it halted to discharge parcels of goods and to take on rock
crystals and slabs of malachite. Baojian marshaled his wagons close up under
the cliff, with the gun-carts facing the steppe. Reith, passing the priestesses’
dray-house, was galvanized by a low wail, the poignant call a person might give
while dreaming. Traz, almost in a panic, seized his arm. “Don’t you see that
you are watched every instant? The master expects you to make a disturbance!”

Reith turned
a wolfish grin around the caravan. “I’ll make a disturbance, no fear as to
that! Mind you, I want you to stay clear! Whatever happens to me, go on your
way!”

Traz gave him
a glance of reproach and indignation. “Do you think I would stand aside? Are we
not comrades?”

“Yes. Still-”

“There is no
more to be said,” stated Traz, with more than a trace of the Onmale crispness.

Reith threw
up his hands, walked away from the dray-house, out upon the steppe. Time was
growing short. He must act but when? During the night? During the trip to Fasm
Junction? After the priestesses left the caravan?

To act now
was to bring instant disaster upon himself.

Likewise
during the night, or on the morrow, when the priestesses, realizing his
desperation, would be at their most vigilant.

At Fasm
junction, after they had left the protection of the caravan-master, what then?
This was the unknown quantity. Presumably they would take steps to guard
themselves well.

Twilight gave
way to night; menacing sounds came from the steppe. Reith went to his
compartment, lay in his hammock. He could not sleep; he did not wish to sleep.
He jumped to the ground.

The moons
were in the sky. Az hung halfway down the west and presently disappeared behind
a cliff. Braz, low in the east, threw a melancholy glimmer across the
landscape. The depot was- almost completely dark, except for a few
guard-lights: no roisterous common-room here. Within the dray-house lights
still flickered, as the occupants moved here and there, more active than usual,
or so it seemed. Suddenly the lights were extinguished; the house went dark.

Reith,
restless and uneasy, circled back around the dray. A sound? He stopped short,
peering into the dark. Something was afoot. The sound came again: the scrape of
a moving vehicle. Abandoning caution, Reith ran forward. He stopped short. Near
at hand came the sound of low voices. Someone stood even nearer, a black bulk
in the shadows. There was sudden vicious motion, something struck Reith’s head.
Lights danced in his brain, the world turned over—

He recovered
consciousness to the same scraping sound that he had heard before:
creak-scrape, creak-scrape. From a subconscious reservoir of memory came the
knowledge that he had been handled, lifted, dealt with... He felt constricted;
he could not move his arms and legs. Under him was a hard surface which thudded
and jarred: the cargo deck of a small wagon. Above was the night sky, with
crags and ridges bulking up at either hand. The wagon evidently proceeded by a
rough track up through the hills. Reith strained to move his arms. They were
tied with coarse twine; the effort caused him agonizing cramps. He relaxed,
clenching his teeth. From the front came gruff conversation; someone looked
back at him. Reith lay still, feigning insensibility; the dark shape turned
away. Priestesses, almost certainly. Why was he bound, why had they not killed
him out of hand?

Reith thought
that he knew.

He strained
at his bonds but again succeeded only in causing himself pain. Whoever had
bound him had been in great haste. Only his sword had been taken from him; at
his belt was still his pouch.

The wagon
gave a great thump; Reith bounced, which gave him an idea. He squirmed, inched
himself toward the rear of the wagon, sweating for fear that someone would turn
to look at him. He reached the edge of the deck; again the wagon lurched and
Reith dropped off. The wagon rumbled on, into the dark. Ignoring his bruises,
Reith twisted, turned, rolled himself off the track, down a rocky slope into
deep shade. He lay still, fearful that his fall from the wagon had been
noticed. The squeak-scrape of the wagon had receded; the night was quiet except
for a hoarse whisper of wind.

Reith heaved,
lurched, raised to his knees. Groping through the dark, he found a rough edge
of rock and began to grind at his bonds. The process was interminable. His
wrists became raw and bloody; his head throbbed; a curious feeling of unreality
overcame him, a nightmarish identification with the dark and the rocks, as if
all shared the same elemental consciousness. He cleared his mind, sawed at his
bonds. The cords finally parted; his arms came free.

For a moment
he sat back, flexing his fingers, easing his muscles. Then he bent to free his
legs, an operation maddeningly tedious in the dark.

At last he
rose to his feet, to stand swaying, holding to a rock for support. Over the
highest ridge of mountainside came Braz to fill the valley with the palest of
illuminations. Reith painfully climbed up the slope and at last gained the
road. He looked up and down the track. Behind lay Zadno’s Depot; ahead at some
unknown distance rolled the wagon, going creak-scrape, creak-scrape, perhaps
more rapidly now that the priestesses had discovered his absence. Aboard the
wagon, almost certainly, was Ylin-Ylan. Reith set out in pursuit, limping,
hobbling, at as rapid a pace as he could manage. According to Baojian, Fasm
junction was another half a day by caravan, the Seminary at an unknown distance
from the junction. This mountain track was evidently a shorter and more direct
route.

The way began
to climb, angling up to a gap through the hills. Reith stumbled doggedly
forward, gasping for breath. He had no hope of overtaking the wagon, which
moved at that unvarying pace established by the pad pad pad of the pull-beast’s
eight soft feet. He reached the gap and paused to rest, then set off once more,
descending toward a forested upland, indistinct in the inkblue light of Braz.
The trees were wonderful and strange, with trunks of glimmering white rising as
spirals, winding round and round, sometimes engaging the spirals of near trees.
The foliage was tattered black floss, and each tree terminated in a rough
pitted ball, vaguely luminescent.

From the
forest came sounds: croaks, groans laden with such human woe that Reith paused
often in his stride, hand in his pouch on the comforting shape of his energy
cell.

Braz sank
into the forest; wisps of foliage glinted, zones of shimmer moved through the
trees to keep pace as Reith passed.

He walked,
trotted, loped, slowed to a walk once more. A large pallid creature glided
quietly through the air above him. It seemed as frail as a moth, with huge soft
wings and a round baby’s head. Another time Reith thought to hear grave voices
speaking, at not too far a distance. When he stopped to listen, there was
nothing to hear. He continued, fighting the conviction that he moved in a
dream, through an endless mental landscape, his legs carrying him back rather
than forward.

The road rose
sharply, angled through a narrow gorge. At one time a high stone wall had
barred the gap; now it lay in ruins. A tall arched portal remained standing,
under which passed the road. Reith stopped short, disturbed by a prickling
beneath the surface of his mind. The situation was too blandly innocent, or so
it seemed.

Reith tossed
a rock through the gap. No response, no reaction. He left the road and with
great care picked his way across the ruined wall, pressing close against the
side of the gorge. After a hundred feet he returned to the road. He looked back,
but if danger actually existed at the portal it could not be detected in the
dark.

Reith pushed
forward. Every few minutes he stopped to listen. The walls of the gorge fell
apart and dwindled in height, the sky came closer, the Tschai constellations lit
the gray rock of the hillsides.