The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (55 page)

“I’ll be pleased for the opportunity,” declared Murphy. “But tomorrow I’d like to prowl around the valley, meet your people, observe their customs, religious rites, courtships, funerals…”

The Sultan pulled a sour face. “We are ditch-water dull. Festivals are celebrated quietly in the home; there is small religious fervor; courtships are consummated by family contract. I fear you will find little sensational material here in Singhalût.”

“You have no temple dances?” asked Murphy. “No fire-walkers, snake-charmers—voodoo?”

The Sultan smiled patronizingly. “We came out here to Cirgamesç to escape the ancient superstitions. Our lives are calm, orderly. Even the
amoks
have practically disappeared.”

“But the sjambaks—”

“Negligible.”

“Well,” said Murphy, “I’d like to visit some of these ancient cities.”

“I advise against it,” declared the Sultan. “They are shards, weathered stone. There are no inscriptions, no art. There is no stimulation in dead stone. Now. Tomorrow I will hear a report on hybrid soybean plantings in the Upper Kam District. You will want to be present.”

Murphy’s suite matched or even excelled his expectation. He had four rooms and a private garden enclosed by a thicket of bamboo. His bathroom walls were slabs of glossy actinolite, inlaid with cinnabar, jade, galena, pyrite and blue malachite, in representations of fantastic birds. His bedroom was a tent thirty feet high. Two walls were dark green fabric; a third was golden rust; the fourth opened upon the private garden.

Murphy’s bed was a pink and yellow creation ten feet square, soft as cobweb, smelling of rose sandalwood. Carved black lacquer tubs held fruit; two dozen wines, liquors, syrups, essences flowed at a touch from as many ebony spigots.

The garden centered on a pool of cool water, very pleasant in the hothouse climate of Singhalût. The only shortcoming was the lack of the lovely young servitors Murphy had envisioned. He took it upon himself to repair this lack, and in a shady wine-house behind the palace, called the Barangipan, he made the acquaintance of a girl-musician named Soek Panjoebang. He found her enticing tones of quavering sweetness from the
gamelan
, an instrument well-loved in Old Bali. Soek Panjoebang had the delicate features and transparent skin of Sumatra, the supple long limbs of Arabia and in a pair of wide and golden eyes a heritage from somewhere in Celtic Europe. Murphy bought her a goblet of frozen shavings, each a different perfume, while he himself drank white rice-beer. Soek Panjoebang displayed an intense interest in the ways of Earth, and Murphy found it hard to guide the conversation. “Weelbrrr,” she said. “Such a funny name, Weelbrrr. Do you think I could play the
gamelan
in the great cities, the great palaces of Earth?”

“Sure. There’s no law against
gamelans.”

“You talk so funny, Weelbrrr. I like to hear you talk.”

“I suppose you get kinda bored here in Singhalût?”

She shrugged. “Life is pleasant, but it concerns with little things. We have no great adventures. We grow flowers, we play the
gamelan
.” She eyed him archly sidelong. “We love…We sleep…”

Murphy grinned. “You run
amok
.”

“No, no, no. That is no more.”

“Not since the sjambaks, eh?”

“The sjambaks are bad. But better than
amok
. When a man feels the knot forming around his chest, he no longer takes his kris and runs down the street—he becomes sjambak.”

This was getting interesting. “Where does he go? What does he do?”

“He robs.”

“Who does he rob? What does he do with his loot?”

She leaned toward him. “It is not well to talk of them.”

“Why not?”

“The Sultan does not wish it. Everywhere are listeners. When one talks sjambak, the Sultan’s ears rise, like the points on a cat.”

“Suppose they do—what’s the difference? I’ve got a legitimate interest. I saw one of them in that cage out there. That’s torture. I want to know about it.”

“He is very bad. He opened the monorail car and the air rushed out. Forty-two Singhalûsi and Hadrasi bloated and blew up.”

“And what happened to the sjambak?”

“He took all the gold and money and jewels and ran away.”

“Ran where?”

“Out across Great Pharasang Plain. But he was a fool. He came back to Singhalût for his wife; he was caught and set up for all people to look at, so they might tell each other, ‘thus it is for sjambaks’.”

“Where do the sjambaks hide out?”

“Oh,” she looked vaguely around the room, “out on the plains. In the mountains.”

“They must have some shelter—an air-dome.”

“No. The Sultan would send out his patrol-boat and destroy them. They roam quietly. They hide among the rocks and tend their oxygen stills. Sometimes they visit the old cities.”

“I wonder,” said Murphy, staring into his beer, “could it be sjambaks who ride horses up to meet the spaceships?”

Soek Panjoebang knit her black eyebrows, as if preoccupied.

“That’s what brought me out here,” Murphy went on. “This story of a man riding a horse out in space.”

“Ridiculous; we have no horses in Cirgamesç.”

“All right, the steward won’t swear to the horse. Suppose the man was up there on foot or riding a bicycle. But the steward recognized the man.”

“Who was this man, pray?”

“The steward clammed up…The name would have been just noise to me, anyway.”

“
I
might recognize the name…”

“Ask him yourself. The ship’s still out at the field.”

She shook her head slowly, holding her golden eyes on his face. “I do not care to attract the attention of either steward, sjambak—or Sultan.”

Murphy said impatiently. “In any event, it’s not who—but
how
. How does the man breathe? Vacuum sucks a man’s lungs up out of his mouth, bursts his stomach, his ears…”

“We have excellent doctors,” said Soek Panjoebang shuddering, “but alas! I am not one of them.”

Murphy looked at her sharply. Her voice held the plangent sweetness of her instrument, with additional overtones of mockery. “There must be some kind of invisible dome around him, holding in air,” said Murphy.

“And what if there is?”

“It’s something new, and if it is, I want to find out about it.”

Soek smiled languidly. “You are so typical an old-lander—worried, frowning, dynamic. You should relax, cultivate
napaû
, enjoy life as we do here in Singhalût.”

“What’s
napaû?”

“It’s our philosophy, where we find meaning and life and beauty in every aspect of the world.”

“That sjambak in the cage could do with a little less
napaû
right now.”

“No doubt he is unhappy,” she agreed.

“Unhappy! He’s being tortured!”

“He broke the Sultan’s law. His life is no longer his own. It belongs to Singhalût. If the Sultan wishes to use it to warn other wrong-doers, the fact that the man suffers is of small interest.”

“If they all wear that metal ornament, how can they hope to hide out?” He glanced at her own bare bosom.

“They appear by night—slip through the streets like ghosts…” She looked in turn at Murphy’s loose shirt. “You will notice persons brushing up against you, feeling you,” she laid her hand along his breast, “and when this happens you will know they are agents of the Sultan, because only strangers and the House may wear shirts. But now, let me sing to you—a song from the Old Land, old Java. You will not understand the tongue, but no other words so join the voice of the
gamelan
.”

“This is the gravy-train,” said Murphy. “Instead of a garden suite with a private pool, I usually sleep in a bubble-tent, with nothing to eat but condensed food.”

Soek Panjoebang flung the water out of her sleek black hair. “Perhaps, Weelbrrr, you will regret leaving Cirgamesç?”

“Well,” he looked up to the transparent roof, barely visible where the sunlight collected and refracted, “I don’t particularly like being shut up like a bird in an aviary…Mildly claustrophobic, I guess.”

After breakfast, drinking thick coffee from tiny silver cups, Murphy looked long and reflectively at Soek Panjoebang.

“What are you thinking, Weelbrrr?”

Murphy drained his coffee. “I’m thinking that I’d better be getting to work.”

“And what do you do?”

“First I’m going to shoot the palace, and you sitting here in the garden playing your
gamelan
.”

“But Weelbrrr—not
me!”

“You’re a part of the universe, rather an interesting part. Then I’ll take the square…”

“And the sjambak?”

A quiet voice spoke from behind. “A visitor, Tuan Murphy.”

Murphy turned his head. “Bring him in.” He looked back to Soek Panjoebang. She was on her feet.

“It is necessary that I go.”

“When will I see you?”

“Tonight—at the Barangipan.”

The quiet voice said, “Mr. Rube Trimmer, Tuan.”

Trimmer was small and middle-aged, with thin shoulders and a paunch. He carried himself with a hell-raising swagger, left over from a time twenty years gone. His skin had the waxy look of lost floridity, his tuft of white hair was coarse and thin, his eyelids hung in the off-side droop that amateur physiognomists like to associate with guile.

“I’m Resident Director of the Import-Export Bank,” said Trimmer. “Heard you were here and thought I’d pay my respects.”

“I suppose you don’t see many strangers.”

“Not too many—there’s nothing much to bring ’em. Cirgamesç isn’t a comfortable tourist planet. Too confined, shut in. A man with a sensitive psyche goes nuts pretty easy here.”

“Yeah,” said Murphy. “I was thinking the same thing this morning. That dome begins to give a man the willies. How do the natives stand it? Or do they?”

Trimmer pulled out a cigar case. Murphy refused the offer.

“Local tobacco,” said Trimmer. “Very good.” He lit up thoughtfully. “Well, you might say that the Cirgameski are schizophrenic. They’ve got the docile Javanese blood, plus the Arabian élan. The Javanese part is on top, but every once in a while you see a flash of arrogance…You never know. I’ve been out here nine years and I’m still a stranger.” He puffed on his cigar, studied Murphy with his careful eyes. “You work for
Know Your Universe!
, I hear.”

“Yeah. I’m one of the leg men.”

“Must be a great job.”

“A man sees a lot of the galaxy, and he runs into queer tales, like this sjambak stuff.”

Trimmer nodded without surprise. “My advice to you, Murphy, is lay off the sjambaks. They’re not healthy around here.”

Murphy was startled by the bluntness. “What’s the big mystery about these sjambaks?”

Trimmer looked around the room. “This place is bugged.”

“I found two pick-ups and plugged ’em,” said Murphy.

Trimmer laughed. “Those were just plants. They hide ’em where a man might just barely spot ’em. You can’t catch the real ones. They’re woven into the cloth—pressure-sensitive wires.”

Murphy looked critically at the cloth walls.

“Don’t let it worry you,” said Trimmer. “They listen more out of habit than anything else. If you’re fussy we’ll go for a walk.”

The road led past the palace into the country. Murphy and Trimmer sauntered along a placid river, overgrown with lily pads, swarming with large white ducks.

“This sjambak business,” said Murphy. “Everybody talks around it. You can’t pin anybody down.”

“Including me,” said Trimmer. “I’m more or less privileged around here. The Sultan finances his reclamation through the bank, on the basis of my reports. But there’s more to Singhalût than the Sultan.”

“Namely?”

Trimmer waved his cigar waggishly. “Now we’re getting in where I don’t like to talk. I’ll give you a hint. Prince Ali thinks roofing-in more valleys is a waste of money, when there’s Hadra and New Batavia and Sundaman so close.”

“You mean—armed conquest?”

Trimmer laughed. “You said it, not me.”

“They can’t carry on much of a war—unless the soldiers commute by monorail.”

“Maybe Prince Ali thinks he’s got the answer.”

“Sjambaks?”

“I didn’t say it,” said Trimmer blandly.

Murphy grinned. After a moment he said, “I picked up with a girl named Soek Panjoebang who plays the
gamelan
. I suppose she’s working for either the Sultan or Prince Ali. Do you know which?”

Trimmer’s eyes sparkled. He shook his head. “Might be either one. There’s a way to find out.”

“Yeah?”

“Get her off where you’re sure there’s no spy-cells. Tell her two things—one for Ali, the other for the Sultan. Whichever one reacts you know you’ve got her tagged.”

“For instance?”

“Well, for instance she learns that you can rig up a hypnotic ray from a flashlight battery, a piece of bamboo, and a few lengths of wire. That’ll get Ali in an awful sweat. He can’t get weapons. None at all. And for the Sultan,” Trimmer was warming up to his intrigue, chewing on his cigar with gusto, “tell her you’re on to a catalyst that turns clay into aluminum and oxygen in the presence of sunlight. The Sultan would sell his right leg for something like that. He tries hard for Singhalût and Cirgamesç.”