Planet of Adventure Omnibus (19 page)

“Done for
fifteen sequins, no iota less.”

“Oh, very
well,” said Reith. “But I’ll expect you to provide me drayer’s clothes.”

“Very well,
and I’ll give you further instructions: carry none of your old metal; this
retains a scent to alarm them. Throw off all your clothes, rub yourself in mire,
and dry yourself with annel leaves, and chew annel to disguise your breath. And
you must do this at once, for I load and leave in half an hour.”

Reith did as
he was bid, though his skin crawled at the clammy feel of the drayer’s old
garments, and the loose-brimmed old hat of wicker and felt. Emmink, as the
drayer called himself, checked to make sure Reith carried no weapons, which
were forbidden within the city. He pinned a plaque of white glass on Reith’s
shoulder. “This is the license. When you pass the gate, call out your number,
like this: ‘Eighty-six!’ Then say no more and do not get down from the dray. If
they smell you out for a stranger, I can do nothing to help, so do not look to
me.”

Reith,
already uneasy, was not encouraged by the remarks.

The dray
rumbled west toward the crumble of gray hills, carrying a cargo of reed-walker
corpses, the yellow bills and staring dead eyes alternating with rows of yellow
feet to form a macabre pattern.

Emmink was
surly and uncommunicative, he showed no interest in the motive for Reith’s
visit and Reith, after several attempts at conversation, fell silent.

The dray
ground up the road, the torque generators at each wheel spinning and groaning.
They entered the pass which Emmink named Belbal Gap, and before them spread
Dadiche: a scene of bizarre and somewhat menacing beauty. Reith’s uneasiness
became keener. Despite his soiled garments, he did not feel that he resembled
the other drayers and could only hope that he smelled like a drayer. What of
Emmink? Would he prove dependable? Reith considered him surreptitiously: a dry
wisp of a man, with skin the color of boiled leather, all nose and narrow
forehead, his little mouth pinched together. A man like Anacho, like Traz, like
himself, ultimately derived from the soil of Earth, mused Reith. How dilute
now, how tenuous, was the terrestrial essence! Emmink had become a man of
Tschai, his soul conditioned by the Tschai landscape, the amber sunlight, the
gunmetal sky, the quiet rich colors. Reith cared to trust the loyalty of Emmink
no farther than the length of his arm, if as far. Looking out over the extent
of Dadiche, he asked, “Where do you discharge your cargo?”

Emmink
delayed before answering, as if searching for a plausible reason to decline
response. Grudgingly he said, “Wherever I get the best price. It might be North
Market or River Market. It might be Bonte Bazaar.”

“I see,” said
Reith. He pointed to the great white structure he had located the day before. “That
building there: what is that?”

Emmink gave
his narrow shoulders a twitch of disinterest. “It is none of my affair. I buy,
transport, and sell; beyond that, I care nothing.”

“I see ...
Well, I want to drive past that building.”

Emmink
grunted. “It is to the side of my usual route.”

“I don’t care
if it is. That’s what I’m paying you for.”

Emmink
grunted again, and for a moment was silent. Then he said: “First to the North
Market, to secure a quote on my corpses, then to the Bonte Bazaar. On the way I
will pass the building.”

They rolled
down the hill, across a strip of barrens strewn with junk and refuse, then into
a garden of feathery green shrubs and mottled black and green cycads. Ahead
rose the wall surrounding Dadiche, a structure thirty feet high built of a
brown glossy synthetic material. Through a gate passed drays from Pera
submitting to scrutiny from a group of Chaschmen in purple pantaloons, gray
shirts and tall conical hats of black felt. They carried sidearms and long thin
rods, with which they prodded the loads of incoming drays. “What’s the reason
for that?” Reith asked, as the Chaschmen somewhat lackadaisically stabbed
through the heaped cargo of the dray ahead.

“They prevent
Green Chasch from stealing into the city. Forty years ago a hundred Green
Chasch entered Dadiche hidden in cargo; there was a great slaughter before all
the Green Chasch were killed. Oh, Blue Chasch and Green Chasch are bitter
enemies! They love to see the other’s blood!”

Reith asked, “What
do I say if they ask me questions?”

Emmink
shrugged. “That’s your affair. If they ask me, I’ll tell them you paid for
transportation into Dadiche. Is it not the truth? Then you must tell your
truth, if you dare ... Shout your number when I shout mine.”

Reith gave a
sour grin but said nothing.

The way was
clear; Emmink drove up through the portal and stopped upon a red rectangle. “Forty-five,”
he bawled. “Eighty-six,” yelled Reith. The Chaschmen stepped forward, thrust
rods into the stack of reed-walker corpses while another walked around the
dray: a stocky man with bandy legs, features crowded together at the bottom of
his face, as chinless as Emmink but with a small snub nose, a lowering forehead
rendered grotesque by the false scalp which rose into a cone six inches or more
above his normal skull. His skin was leaden, tinged with blue which might have
been cosmetic. His fingers were short and stubby, his feet broad. In Reith’s
opinion he deviated from the human form, as Reith knew it, considerably further
than did Anacho the Dirdirman. The man glanced indifferently at Emmink and
Reith, stepped back with a wave of his arm. Emmink pushed forward the power-arm
and the dray lurched ahead into a wide avenue.

Emmink turned
to Reith with a sour grin. “You’re lucky none of the Blue Chasch captains were
on hand. They’d have smelled you sweating. I could almost smell you. When a man
is afraid he sweats. If you want to pass as a drayman, you’ll need a
cold-blooded disposition.”

“That’s
asking a lot,” said Reith. “I’ll do my best.”

Into Dadiche
rolled the dray. Blue Chasch could be seen in their gardens, tending arbors,
stirring stone troughs, moving quietly in the shadows surrounding their
round-roofed villas. Occasionally Reith sensed odors from a garden or a trough:
wafts tart, pungent, spicy, reeks of burnt amber, candied musk, anomalous
ferments, disturbing by their uncertainty: were they repulsive or exquisitely
delightful?

The road
continued among the villas for a mile or two. The Blue Chasch put no store by
what Reith considered a normal regard for privacy; and their villas seemed
spaced without any concern for the road. Occasionally Chaschmen and Chaschwomen
could be seen at menial or laborious tasks; seldom did Reith notice Chaschmen
in the company of the Blue Chasch; always they worked separately, and when they
were by chance in physical contiguity, each ignored the other as if he did not
exist.

Emmink made
no comments or observations. Reith expressed wonder at the apparent
obliviousness of the Blue Chasch to the drays. Emmink gave a snort of bitter
amusement. “Don’t be fooled! If you think them vague, only try to slip off the
dray and walk into one of the villas! You’d be pinned down in a trice, and
conveyed to the gymnasium to demonstrate at their games. Ah, cunning, cunning,
cunning! As cruel as they are ludicrous! Pitiless and sly! Have you heard of
their trick with poor Phosfer Ajan the drayer? He stepped down from his dray to
answer a call of nature: mad folly, of course. What could he expect but
resentment? So Phosfer Ajan, with feet tied, was placed in a vat, with putrid
foulness up to his chin. At the bottom was a valve. When the slime became too
hot, Phosfer Ajan must dive to the bottom, turn the valve, whereupon the stink
would become bitter cold, and Phosfer must dive and grope again, while slime
singed and froze him by turns. Still, he persevered; he dived and groped
stoically, and on the fourth day they allowed him to his dray, so that he might
bear his tale back to Pera. As may be adduced, they fit the game to the
occasion, and a more resourceful set of humorists has never been known.” Emmink
turned to Reith his calculating glance. “What offense do you plan against them?
I can predict to some degree of accuracy how they will respond.”

“No offense,”
said Reith. “I am curious, no more, and wish to see how the Blue Chasch live.”

“They live
like facetious maniacs, from the standpoint of all who annoy them. I have heard
that they especially enjoy pranks with a bull Green Chasch and a fledged Phung,
together of course. Next, should they be lucky enough to capture a Dirdir and
Pnume, these are urged through laughable antics. All in a spirit of fun, of
course; the Blue Chasch above all dislike boredom.”

“I wonder why
there is not a great war to the finish,” pondered Reith. “Are not the Dirdir
more powerful than the Blue Chasch?”

“They are
indeed; and their cities are grand, or so I have heard. But the Chasch have
torpedoes and mines ready to destroy all the Dirdir cities in case of attack.
It is a common situation: each is sufficiently strong to obliterate the other;
hence neither dares more than minor unpleasantness ... Ah well, so long as they
ignore me, I shall do the same for them ... There ahead is North Market.
Notice, the Blue Chasch are everywhere at hand. They love to bargain, though
they prefer to cheat. You must be silent. Make no sign, give no nod or shake!
Otherwise they will claim that I have sold at some ruinous price.”

Emmink turned
his dray into an open area protected by an enormous parasol. Now began the most
frantic bargaining Reith had ever seen. A Blue Chasch, approaching, examining the
reed-walker corpses, would croak a proffer which Emmink would decline in a
scream of outrage. For minutes the two would heap abuse on each other, sparing
no aspect of the other, until suddenly the Blue Chasch would make a furious
gesture of disgust and go to seek his reed-walkers at another dray.

Emmink gave
Reith a malicious wink. “Once in a while I hold the price up, just to excite
the Blues. Also I find out what the selling prices are about to be. Now we’ll
try Bonte Bazaar.”

Reith started
to remind Emmink of the wide oval building, then thought better of it. Crafty
Emmink had forgotten nothing. He swung around the dray, drove it out along a
road running south a quarter mile inland from the river, with gardens and
villas intervening. On the left were small domes and sheds among
sparse-foliaged trees, areas of dirt where naked children played: the homes of
the Chaschmen. Emmink said with a leer: “There’s the start of the Blue Chasch
themselves; so it was explained to me by one of the Chaschmen in loving detail.”

“How so?”

“The
Chaschmen believe that in each grows a homunculus which develops throughout
life and is liberated after death, to become a full Chasch. So the Blue Chasch
teach; is it not ludicrous?”

“So I would
say,” replied Reith. “Haven’t the Chaschmen ever seen human corpses? Or Blue
Chasch infants?”

“No doubt.
But they supply explanations for every discord and discrepancy. This is what
they want to believe: how else can they justify their servitude to the Chasch?”

Emmink was
perhaps a more profound individual than his appearance suggested, thought
Reith. “Do they think the Dirdir originate in the Dirdirmen? Or Wankh in the
Wankhmen?”

“As to that,”
Emmink shrugged, “perhaps they do ... Look now; yonder is your building.”

The cluster
of Chaschmen huts was behind, concealed by a bank of pale green trees with huge
brown flowers. The dray skirted the central node of the city. Beside an avenue
were public or administrative buildings, supported on shallow arches, with
roof-lines of variously curved surfaces. Opposite rose the great structure
which contained the space-boat, or so Reith believed. It was as long as a
football field and as wide, with low walls and a vast half-ellipsoidal roof: an
architectural
tour de force
by any standards.

The function
of the building was not apparent. There were few entrances, and no large
openings nor facilities for heavy transport. Reith finally decided that they
were traveling along the building’s back elevation.

At Bonte
Bazaar Emmink sold his corpses to the tune of furious haggling, while Reith
kept to the side and downwind from Blue Chasch buyers.

Emmink was
not totally pleased with the transaction. Returning to the dray after
unloading, he grumbled, “I should have had another twenty sequins; the corpses
were prime .... How could I make this clear to the Blue? He was watching you
and trying to catch your air; the way you dodged and ducked would have aroused
suspicion in an old Chaschwoman. By all standards of justice you should
reimburse me for my loss.”

“I hardly
think he got the better of you,” said Reith. “Come; let’s drive back.”

“What of my
lost twenty sequins?”

“Forget them;
they are imaginary. Look; the Blues are watching us.”

Emmink
hastily jumped into the driver’s seat and started up the dray. Apparently from
sheer perversity, he began to return by the same road he had come. Reith spoke
sternly: “Drive by the east road, to the front of the big building; let’s have
no more tricks!”

“I always
drive to the west,” whined Emmink. “Why should I change now?”

“If you know
what’s best for you-”