Planet of Adventure Omnibus (30 page)

Reith
shrugged and grinned. Dordolio was a man Reith found impossible to take
seriously.

Twice other
sails were spied in the distance; on one occasion a long black motor-galley
changed course in a sinister fashion.

Reith
inspected the vessel through his scanscope. A dozen tall yellow skinned men
wearing complicated black turbans stood looking toward the
Vargaz
. Reith
reported as much to the captain, who made a casual glance. “Pirates. They won’t
bother us: too much risk.”

The galley
passed a mile to the south, then turned and disappeared into the southwest.

Two days later
an island appeared ahead: a mountainous hump with foreshore cloaked under tall
trees. “Gozed,” said the captain, in response to Reith’s inquiry. “We’ll put in
for a day or so. You’ve never touched at Gozed?”

“Never.”

“You have a
surprise in store. Or then, on the other hand” here the captain gave Reith a
careful inspection-”perhaps you don’t. I can’t say, since the customs of your
own land are unknown to me. And unknown to yourself perhaps? I understand you
to be an amnesiac.”

Reith made a
deprecatory gesture. “I never dispute other people’s opinions of myself.”

“In itself, a
bizarre custom,” declared the captain. “Try as I may, I cannot decide the land
of your birth. You are a sort strange to me.”

“I am a
wanderer,” said Reith. “A nomad, if you like.”

“For a
wanderer, you are at times strangely ignorant. Well then, ahead lies Gozed.”

The island
bulked large against the sky. Looking through the scanscope Reith could see an
area along the foreshore where the trees had been defoliated and trimmed to the
condition of crooked poles, each supporting one, two or three round huts. The
ground below was barren gray sand, clear of refuse and raked smooth. Anacho the
Dirdirman inspected the village through the scanscope. “About what I expected.”

“You are
acquainted with Gozed? The captain made quite a mystery of the place.”

“No mystery.
The folk of the island are highly religious; they worship the sea-scorpions
native to the waters around the island. They are as large or larger than a man,
or so I am told.”

“Why then are
the huts so high in the air?”

“At night the
scorpions come up from the sea to spawn, which they accomplish by stinging eggs
into a host animal, often a woman left down on the beach for that purpose. The
eggs hatch, the ‘Mother of the Gods’ is devoured by the larvae. In the last
stages, when pain and religious ecstasy produce a curious psychological state
in the ‘Mother; she runs down the beach and flings herself into the sea.”

“An
unsettling religion.”

The Dirdirman
admitted as much. “Still it appears to suit the folk of Gozed. They could
change anytime they chose. Sub-men are notoriously susceptible to aberrations
of this sort.”

Reith could
not restrain a grin, and Anacho examined him with surprise. “May I inquire the
source of your amusement?”

“It occurs to
me that the relationship of Dirdirmen to Dirdir is not unlike that of the Gozed
toward their scorpions.”

“I fail to
see the analogy,” Anacho declared rather stiffly.

“Simplicity
itself: both are victims to non-human beings who use men for their particular
needs.”

“Bah!”
muttered Anacho. “In many ways you are the most wrongheaded man alive.” He
walked abruptly aft, to stand staring out over the sea. Pressures were working
in Anacho’s subconscious, thought Reith, causing him uneasiness.

The
Vargaz
nosed cautiously in toward the beach, swung behind a jut of barnacle-encrusted
rock and dropped anchor. The captain went ashore in a pinnace; the passengers
saw him talking to a group of sternfaced men, white-skinned, totally naked save
for sandals and fillets holding down their long iron-colored hair.

Agreement was
reached; the captain returned to the
Vargaz
. A half hour later a pair of
lighters came out to the boat. A boom was rigged; bales of fiber and coils of
rope were brought aboard, other bales and crates were lowered to the lighters.
Two hours after arriving at Gozed the
Vargaz
backed sail, hoisted anchor
and set off across the Draschade.

After the
evening meal the passengers sat on the deck forward of the sterncastle with a
lantern swinging overhead, and the talk veered to the people of Gozed and their
religion. Val Dal Barba, wife of Palo Barba, mother of Heizari and Edwe,
thought the ritual unjust.

“Why are
there only ‘Mothers of Gods’? Why shouldn’t those flintfaced men go down on the
beach and become ‘Fathers of Gods’?”

The captain
chuckled. “It seems as if the honors are reserved for the ladies.”

“It would
never be thus in Murgen,” declared the merchant warmly. “We pay sizable tithes
to the priests; they take all responsibility for appeasing Bisme; we have no
further inconvenience.”

“A system as
sensible as any,” agreed Pal Barba. “This year we subscribe to the Pansogmatic
Gnosis, and the religion has much virtue to it.”

“I like it
much better than Tutelanics,” said Edwe. “You merely recite the litany and then
you are done for the day.”

“Tutelanics
was a dreadful bore,” Heizari concurred. “All that memorizing! And remember
that dreadful Convocation of Souls, where the priests were so familiar? I like
Pansogmatic Gnosis much better.”

Dordolio gave
an indulgent laugh. “You prefer not to become intense. I myself incline in this
direction. Yao doctrine, of course, is to some extent a syncresis; or, better
to say, in the course of the ‘round’ all aspects of the Ineffable are given
opportunity to manifest themselves, so that, as we move with the cycle, we
experience all theopathy.”

Anacho, still
smarting from Reith’s comparisons, looked across the deck. “Well then, what of
Adam Reith, the erudite ethnologist? What theosophical insights can he
contribute?”

“None,” said
Reith. “Very few, at any rate. It occurs to me that the man and his religion
are one and the same thing. The unknown exists. Each man projects on the
blankness the shape of his own particular world-view. He endows his creation
with his personal volitions and attitudes. The religious man stating his case
is in essence explaining himself. When a fanatic is contradicted he feels a
threat to his own existence; he reacts violently.”

“Interesting!”
declared the fat merchant. “And the atheist?”

“He projects
no image upon the blank whatever. The cosmic mysteries he accepts as things in
themselves; he feels no need to hang a more or less human mask upon them.
Otherwise, the correlation between a man and the shape into which he molds the
unknown for greater ease of manipulation is exact.”

The captain
raised his goblet of wine against the light of the lantern, tossed it down his
throat. “Perhaps you’re right, but no one will ever change himself on this
account. I have known a multitude of peoples. I have walked under Dirdir
spires, through Blue Chasch gardens and Wankh castles. I know these folk and
their changeling men. I have traveled to six continents of Tschai; I have
befriended a thousand men, caressed a thousand women, killed a thousand
enemies; I know the Yao, the Binth, the Walalukians, the Shemolei on one hand;
on the other the steppe nomads, the marshmen, the islanders, the cannibals of
Rakh and Kislovan; I see differences; I see identities. All try to extract a
maximum advantage from existence, and finally all die. None seems the better
for it. My own god? Good old
Vargaz
! Of course! As Adam Reith insists,
it is myself. When
Vargaz
groans through the storm waves, I shudder and
grind my teeth. When we glide the dark water under the pink and blue moons, I
play the lute, I wear a red ribbon around my forehead, I drink wine. I and
Vargaz
serve each other and the day
Vargaz
sinks into the deep, I sink with
her.”

“Bravo!”
cried Palo Barba, the swordsman, who had also drunk much wine. “Do you know,
this is my creed as well?” He snatched up a sword, held it high so that
lantern-light played up and down its spine. “What the
Vargaz
is to the
captain, the sword is to me!”

“Father!”
cried his orange-haired daughter Edwe. “And all the time we thought you a
sensible Pansogmatist!”

“Please put
down the steel,” urged Val Dal Barba, “before you become excited and cut
someone’s ear off.”

“What? Me? A
veteran swordsman? How can you imagine such a thing? Well then, as you wish. I’ll
trade the steel for another goblet of wine.”

The talk
proceeded. Dordolio swaggered across the deck to stand near Reith. Presently he
said, in a voice of facetious condescension, “A surprise to find a nomad so
accomplished in disquisition, so apt in subtle distinctions.”

Reith grinned
at Traz. “Nomads are not necessarily buffoons.”

“You perplex
me,” Dordolio declared. “Exactly which is your native steppe? What was your
tribe?”

“My steppe is
far away; my tribe is scattered in every direction.”

Dordolio
pulled thoughtfully at his mustache. “The Dirdirman believes you to be an
amnesiac. According to the Blue Jade Princess you have implied yourself to be a
man from another world. The nomad boy, who knows you best, says nothing. I
admit to what may be an obtrusive curiosity.”

“The quality
signifies an active mind,” said Reith.

“Yes, Yes.
Let me put what I freely acknowledge to be an absurd question.” Dordolio
examined Reith cautiously sidewise. “Do you consider yourself to be the native
of another world?”

Reith laughed
and groped for an answer. He said: “Four possible conditions exist. If I were
indeed from another world I could answer either yes or no. If I were not from
another world I could answer yes or no. The first case leads to inconvenience.
The second diminishes my self-respect. The third case is insanity. The fourth
represents the only situation you would not consider an abnormality. The
question, hence, as you admit it, is absurd.”

Dordolio
tugged angrily at his mustache. “Are you, by any farfetched chance, a member of
the ‘cult’?”

“Probably
not. Which ‘cult’ is this?”

“The Yearning
Refluxives who rode up the cycle to destroy our two gorgeous cities.”

“But I
understood that an unknown agency torpedoed the cities.”

“No matter;
the ‘cult’ instigated the attack; they are the cause.”

Reith shook
his head. “Incomprehensible! An enemy destroys your cities; your bitterness is
directed not against the cruel enemy but against a possibly sincere and
thoughtful group of your own people. A displaced emotion, or so it seems.”

Dordolio gave
Reith a cold inspection. “Your analyses at times border upon the mordant.”

Reith
laughed. “Let it pass. I know nothing of your ‘cult.’ As for my place of
origin, I prefer to be amnesiac.”

“A curious
lapse, when otherwise you seem so emphatic in your opinions.”

“I wonder why
you trouble to press the point,” Reith mused. “For instance, what would you say
if I claimed origin from a far world?”

Dordolio
pursed his lips, blinked up at the lantern. “I had not taken my thoughts quite
so far. Well, we will not pursue the subject. A frightening idea, to begin
with: an ancient world of men!”

“‘Frightening’?
How so?”

Dordolio gave
an uneasy laugh. “There is a dark side to humanity, which is like a stone
pressed into the mold. The upper side, exposed to sun and air, is clean; tilt
it and look below, at the muck and scurrying insects ... We of Yao know this
well; nothing will put an end to
awaile
. But enough of such talk!”
Dordolio gave his shoulders a jerk and a shake, and resumed his somewhat
condescending tone of voice. “You are resolved to come to Cath; what will you
do there?”

“I don’t
know. I must exist somewhere; why not in Cath?”

“Not too
simple for a stranger,” said Dordolio. “Affiliation with a palace is difficult.”

“Odd that you
should say that! The Flower of Cath declares that her father will welcome us to
Blue Jade Palace.”

“He would
necessarily show formal courtesy, but you could no more take up residence at
the Blue Jade Palace than you could on the bottom of the Draschade, merely
because a fish invited you to swim.”

“What would prevent
me?”

Dordolio
shrugged. “No man cares to make a fool of himself. Deportment is the definition
of life. What does a nomad know of deportment?”

Reith had
nothing to say to this. “A thousand details go into the conduct of a cavalier,”
stated Dordolio. “At the academy we learn degrees of address, signals, language
configuration, in which I admit a deficiency. We take instruction in sword
address and principles of dueling, genealogy, heraldry; we learn the niceties
of costume and a hundred other details. Perhaps you consider these matters
over-arbitrary?”

Anacho the
Dirdirman, standing nearby, chose to reply. “‘Trivial’ is a word more apt.”