Planet of Adventure Omnibus (17 page)

“Those three
are drovers; they visit Dadiche regularly. The country is safe to the west of
Pera; the Green Chasch avoid the city guns. No one will molest us along the
road-”

“‘Us’? You
are coming?”

“Why not? I
have never seen Dadiche or its outlying gardens. We can hire a pair of
leap-horses and approach Dadiche within a mile or so. The Chasch seldom leave
the city, so the drovers tell me.”

“Good,” said
Reith. “I’ll have a word with Traz; he can keep the girl company.”

At a corral
to the rear of the inn Reith and the Dirdirman hired leap-horses of a tall
rubber-legged breed strange to Reith. The ostler threw on the saddles, shoved
guide-bars through holes in the creatures’ brains, at which they screamed and
whipped the air with their palps. The reins were attached, Reith and Anacho
vaulted up into the saddles; the beasts made angry sidling leaps, then sprang
off down the road.

They passed
through the center of Pera, where, over a considerable area, folk had built all
manner of dwellings from the rubble and slabs of concrete. There was a greater
population than Reith had expected, numbering perhaps four or five thousand.
And up on top of the old citadel, brooding over all, was the crude mansion in
which lived Naga Goho and his retinue of Ghashters.

Coming into
the central plaza Reith and Anacho stopped short before a display of horrid
objects. Beside a massive gibbet were flaying-stocks stained with blood. Poles
held aloft a pair of impaled men. From a derrick swung a small cage; inside
crouched a naked sun-blackened creature, barely recognizable as a man. A
Gnashter lounged nearby, a heavy-jowled young man wearing a maroon vest and a
knee-length black kilt: the Gnashter uniform. Reith reined up the leap-horse
and, indicating the cage, addressed the Gnashter. “What was his crime?”

“Recalcitrance,
when Naga Goho called his daughter to service.”

“What then?
How long does he swing thus?”

The Gnashter
glanced up indifferently. “Another three days he’ll last. The rain freshened
him up; he’s full of water.”

“What of
those?” Reith pointed to the impaled corpses.

“Defaulters.
Certain graceless folk begrudge a tithe of their wealth to Naga Goho.”

Anacho
touched Reith’s arm. “Come.”

Reith slowly
turned away; impossible to right all the wrongs of this dreadful planet. But
looking back toward the wretch in the cage, he felt a flush of shame.
Still-what options were open to him? To embroil himself with Naga Goho could
easily mean the loss of his life, with no benefit to anyone. If he were able to
regain his space-boat and return to Earth, the lot of all men on Tschai must be
improved. So Reith told himself, and tried to put the dismal scene out of his
mind.

Beyond Pera
were large numbers of irregular plots, where women and girls cultivated all
manner of crops. Drays loaded with food and farm produce moved westward along
the road toward Dadiche: a commerce surprising to Reith, who had expected no such
formalized trade.

The two rode
ten miles, toward a low range of gray hills. Where the road rose into a
steep-walled ravine a gate barred the way and they were forced to wait while a
pair of Gnashters inspected a dray piled with crates of cabbage-like pulps,
then levied a toll upon the drayman. Reith and Anacho, passing the gate, paid a
sequin each.

“Naga Goho
misses few chances to profit,” Reith grumbled. “What does he do with his
wealth?”

The Dirdirman
shrugged. “What does anyone do with wealth?”

The road
wound up, passed through a notch. Beyond lay the land of the Blue Chasch: a
wooded countryside meshed by dozens of little rivers, easing in and out of
innumerable ponds. There were a hundred sorts of trees: red feather-palm, green
conifer-like growths, black trunks and branches hung with white globes; and
many groves of adarak. The entire landscape was a single garden, tended with
meticulous care.

Below was
Dadiche: low flat domes and curving white surfaces, half-submerged in foliage.
The size and population of the city was impossible to estimate; there was no
differentiation between city and park. Reith was forced to admit that the Blue
Chasch lived in pleasant circumstances.

The
Dirdirman, conditioned to other aesthetic precepts, spoke with condescension. “Typical
of the Chasch mentality: formless, chaotic, devious. You have seen a Dirdir
city? Truly noble! a sight to stop the heart! This half-bucolic botchery”--Anacho
made a scornful gesture “reflects the caprice of the Blue Chasch. Not as
flaccid and decadent as the Old Chasch of course-remember Golsse? but then the
Old Church have been moribund for twenty thousand years ... What do you do?
What is that instrument?”

For Reith,
unable to contrive a method to read his transcom dials discreetly, had brought
it forth. “This,” said Reith, “is a device which indicates the direction and
distance of three and a half miles.” He sighted along the needle. “The line
passes through that large structure with the high dome.” He pointed. “The
distance is about right.”

Anacho was
looking at the transcom with gloomy fascination. “Where did you get this
instrument? It is of a workmanship I have never seen before. And those
markings: neither Dirdir nor Chasch nor Wankh! Is there some far corner of
Tschai where submen make goods of this quality? I am astounded! I have believed
the sub-men incapable of any activity more complicated than agriculture!”

“Anacho, my
friend,” said Reith, “you have a great deal to learn. The process will come as
an appalling shock to you.”

Anacho massaged
his undershot jaw, pulled the soft black cap down over his forehead. “You are
as mysterious as a Pnume.”

Reith brought
the scanscope from his pouch, inspected the landscape. He traced the course of
the road, down the hill, through a grove of flame-shaped trees with enormous
green and purple leaves, thence to a wall which he had not previously noticed
and which evidently guarded Dadiche from the Green Chasch. The road passed
through a portal in this wall and into the city. At intervals along the road were
drays entering Dadiche loaded with comestibles, leaving with crates of
manufactured goods.

Anacho,
inspecting the scanscope, made a clicking sound of irritated puzzlement, but
restrained his comments.

Reith said, “No
point in going further down the road; however, if we rode along the ridge a
mile or two, I could take another sight on that big building.”

Anacho made
no objection; they rode south almost two miles, then Reith took a new reading
of the transcom. The line of sight passed through the same large domed
structure. Reith gave a nod of certainty. “In that building are articles which
at one time were mine, and which I want to recover.”

The Dirdirman’s
lips twitched in a grin. “All very well-but how? You can’t ride into Dadiche,
pound on the door and cry ‘Bring out my object!’ You will be disappointed. I
doubt if you are a thief sufficiently deft to fool the Chasch. What will you
do?”

Reith looked
longingly down at the great white dome. “First, closer reconnaissance. I need
to look inside that building. Because what I want most might not be there at
all.”

Anacho shook
his head in mild reproach. “You talk in riddles. First you declare that your
articles are there, then that they may not be there after all.”

Reith merely
laughed, far more confidently than he felt. Now that he was close to Dadiche,
and presumably to the space-boat, the task of regaining possession seemed
overwhelming. “Enough for today, at any rate. Let’s be back to Pera.”

They rode,
swaying and lurching on the leap-horses, and returned to the road, where they
halted for a space watching the drays rumble past. Some were propelled by
engines, others by slow-going pull-beasts. Those to Dadiche carried foodstuffs:
melons, stacks of dead reed-walkers, bales of dingy white floss spun by swamp insects,
nets bulging with purple bladders. “These drays go into Dadiche,” said Reith. “I’ll
go with them. Why should there be difficulty?”

The Dirdirman
gave his head a lugubrious shake. “The Blue Chasch are unpredictable. You might
find yourself performing tricks for their amusement. Such as walking rods over
pits full of filth or white-eyed scorpions. As you gain equilibrium, the Chasch
heat the rods, or send electricity through, so that you bound back and forth
and perform desperate antics. Or perhaps you will find yourself in a glass maze
with a tormented Phung. Or you might be blindfolded and set in an amphitheater
with a cyclodon, also blindfolded. Or-were you Dirdir or Dirdirman, you might
be set to solving logical problems to avoid unpleasant penalties. Their
ingenuity is endless.”

Reith scowled
down at the city. “The draymen risk all this?”

“They are
licensed and go and come unmolested, unless they violate an ordinance.”

“Then I will
go as a drayman.”

Anacho
nodded. “The obvious stratagem. I suggest that tonight you strip off your
clothes, rub yourself with damp soil, stand in the smoke of burning bones, walk
in pull-beast dung, eat panibals, ramp and smudgers, all of which permeate the
body with odor, and wipe the grease into your skin. Then dress from skin
outward in drayman’s garments. As a last precaution, never pass upwind of a
Blue Chasch and never exhale where one might detect the odor of your teeth or
your breath.”

Reith managed
a wry grin. “The scheme sounds less feasible every minute. But I don’t care to
die. I have too many responsibilities. Such as returning the girl to Cath.”

“Bah!”
snorted Anacho. “You are a victim of sentimentality. She is a troublemaker,
vain and self-willed. Leave her to her destiny„

“If she were
not vain I’d suspect her of stupidity,” declared Reith with feeling.

Anacho kissed
his fingertips: a gesture of Mediterranean fervor. “When you say ‘beauty,’ you
must mean the women of my race! Ah! Elegant creatures, pale as snow, with pates
naked and glossy as mirrors! So near to Dirdir that the Dirdir themselves are
beguiled ... Each to his own taste. The Cath girl can never be other than a
source of tribulation. Such women trail disaster as a cloud trails rain; think
of the times she has led you into contention!”

Reith
shrugged, and kicked the leap-horse into motion; they bounded east along the
road, back down upon the steppe, off toward the mound of gray-white rubble
which was Pera.

Late in the
afternoon they entered the ruined city. They returned the leap-horses to the
stables, crossed the plaza to the long half-subterranean inn, with the low sun
shining on their backs.

The
common-room was half-full of folk consuming an early supper. Neither Traz nor
the Flower of Cath was here, nor were they in the sleeping cubicles on the second
floor. Reith returned downstairs and found the innkeeper. “Where are my
friends: the boy and the Cath girl? They are nowhere on the premises.”

The innkeeper
drew a sour face, looked everywhere but into Reith’s eyes. “You must know where
she is; how could she be elsewhere? As for the lad, he went into an
unreasonable fury when they came to take her. The Gnashters broke his head and
dragged him off to be hanged.”

In a voice
precise and controlled Reith asked, “How long ago did this occur?”

“Not long. He’ll
still be kicking. The lad was a fool. A girl like that is flagrant enticement;
he had no right to defend her.”

“They took
the girl to the tower?”

“So I
suppose. What’s it to me? Naga Goho does as he pleases; he wields power in
Pera.”

Reith turned
to Anacho, handed over his pouch, retaining only his weapons. “Take care of my
belongings. If I don’t return, keep them.”

“You plan to
risk yourself again?” asked Anacho in wonder and disapproval. “What about your ‘object’?”

“It can wait.”
Reith ran off toward the citadel.

THE LIGHT OF
the setting sun shone full on the stone platforms and mounting blocks
surrounding the gibbet. Colors held the curious fullness of all the Tschai
colors: even the browns and grays, mustards, dull ochers, earthen colors in the
garments of those who had come to watch the hanging imparted a sense of rich
essence. The dull-red jackets of the Gnashters glowed rich and ripe; there were
six of these. Two stood by the gibbet rope; two supported Traz, who stood on
limp legs, head bowed, a trickle of blood down his forehead. One leaned
negligently by a post, hand by his slung catapult; the last spoke to the
apathetic herd before the gibbet.

“By order of
Naga Goho, this furious criminal who dared use violence upon the Gnashters must
be hanged!”

The noose was
ceremoniously dropped around Traz’s neck. He raised his head, turned a glassy
look around the crowd. If he noticed Reith he gave no sign. “May the incident
and its consequences teach obedience to all!”

Reith walked
around to the side of the gibbet. No time now for delicacy or squeamishness-if,
in fact, such occasions ever occurred on Tschai. The Gnashters at the
hoist-rope saw him approach, but his demeanor was so casual that they gave him
no heed and turned to watch for their signal. Reith slid his knife into the
heart of the first, who croaked in surprise. The second looked about; Reith cut
his throat with a back-hand stroke, then threw the knife to split the forehead
of the Gnashter who stood by the gibbet-pole. In an instant the six had become
three. Reith stepped forward with his sword and cut down the man who had
uttered the proclamation, but now the two holding Traz, drawing blades, rushed
at Reith, jostling each other in outrage. Reith jumped back, aimed his Emblem
catapult, shot the foremost; the second, now the sole survivor of the six,
stopped short, Reith attacked him, struck the sword from his hand, felled him
with a blow to the side of the head. He freed the noose, yanked it tight around
the neck of the fallen Gnashter, pointed to two men at the front of the
fascinated onlookers. “Heave now; heave on the rope. We’ll hang the Gnashter,
not the boy.” When the men hesitated, Reith cried: “Heave on the rope; do my
bidding! We’ll show Naga Goho who rules Pera! Up with the Gnashter!”