Trullion: Alastor 2262 (18 page)

At the stadium, Glnned bid Farero a muted farewell. He ran to the dressing room, slipped off his Tanchinaro uniform, and resumed his ordinary clothes.

The cab carried him back to the dock, where Glinnes hired a small runabout. He drove around the spit, out into Welgen Sound. The flat light of avness painted sea, sky, islets, and shore in pallid and subtle colors to which no name could be applied. The silence seemed surreal; the gurgle of water under the keel was almost an intrusion

He passed the islet where he had originally landed with Farero and Duissane, and went beyond, out into the area where the canoe had drifted. He circled the first of the islets, but saw no sign either of canoe or of Duissane. The next three islete sere also vacant. The sea spread vast and calm beyond the three islets yet to be investigated. On the second of these he spied a slender figure in a white gown, waving frantically.

When Duissane recognized the man who drove the boat, she abruptly stopped waving. Glinnes leapt ashore and pulled the boat up the beach. He secured the bowline to a crooked root, then turned and looked about. The flat low line of the mainland was dim in the inconclusive light. The sea heaved slow and supple, as if constricted under a film of silk. Glinnes looked at Duissane, who had maintained a cold silence. “What a quiet place. I doubt if even the merlings swim out this far.” Duissane looked at the boat. “If you came out to get me, I am now ready to leave.”

“There’s no hurry,” said Glinnes. “None whatever. I brought bread and meat and wine. We can bake plantains and quorls* and maybe a curset.** We’ll have a picnic while the stars come out.”

Duissane compressed her lips petulantly and looked off toward the shore. Glinnes stepped forward. He stood only afoot away from her-as close as he had ever been. She looked up at him without warmth, her tawny-gray eyes shifting, or so it seemed to Glinnes, through a dozen moods and emotions. Glinnes bent his head, and putting an arm around her shoulders, kissed her lips, which were cold and unresponsive. She pushed him away with a thrust of her hands, and seemed suddenly to recover her voice. “You’re all alike, you Trills! You reek with cauch; your brain is a single lecherous gland. Do you aspire only to turpitude? Have you no dignity, no self-respect?”

Glinnes laughed. “Are you hungry?”

“No. I have a dinner engagement and I will be late unless we leave at once.”

“Indeed. Is that why you stole the canoe?”

“I stole nothing. The canoe was as much mine as yours. You seemed content to ogle that insipid Karpoun girl. I wonder that you’re not still at it.”

“She feared that you would be offended.” Duissane raised her eyebrows high. “Why should I think twice, or even once, about your conduct? Her concern embarrasses me.”

“It is no great matter,” said Glinnes. “I wonder if you would gather firewood while I fetch plantains?” Duissane opened her mouth to refuse, then decided that such an act was self-defeating. She found a few dry twigs, which she tossed haughtily down upon the beach. She scrutinized the boat, which was pulled far up on the beach, and beyond her strength to float. The starting key had been removed from the lock.

gnorls: a type of mollusk living in beach sand.

* curset:: a crab-like sea insect.

Glinnes brought plantains, kindled a fire, dug up four fine quorls, which he cleaned, rinsed in the sea and set to baking with the plantains. He brought bread and meat from the boat, and spread a cloth on the sand. Duissane watched from a distance. Glinnes opened the fask of wine and offered it to Duissane.

“I prefer to drink no wine.”

“Do you intend to eat?”

Duissane touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “And then what do you plan?”

“We will relax on the beach and star-watch, and who knows what else?”

“Oh you are a despicable person; I want nothing to do with you. Untidy and gluttonous, like all the Trills.”

“Well, at least I’m not worse. Settle yourself; we’ll eat and watch the sunset.”

“I’m hungry, so I’ll eat,” said Duissane. “Then we must go back. You know how Trevanyi feel about indiscriminate amorousness. Also, never forget — I am the Tanchinaro sheirl, and a virgin!”

Glinnes made a sign to indicate that these considerations were of no great cogency. “Changes occur in all our lives.”

Duissane stiffened in outrage. “Is this how you plan to soil the team’s sheirl? What a scoundrel you are, who so sanctimoniously insisted upon purity and then told such vicious lies about me.”

“I told no lies,” declared Glinnes. “I never even told the truth — how you and your family robbed me and left me for the merlings, and how you laughed to see my lying for dead.”

Duissane said somewhat feebly, “You got only what you deserved.”

“I still owe your father and your brothers a knock or two,” said Glinnes. “As for you, I am of two minds. Eat, drink wine, fortify yourself.”

“I have no appetite. None whatever. I do not think it just that a person should be so ill-treated.”

Glinnes gave no answer and began to eat. Presently Duissane joined him. “You must remember,” she said, “that if you carry out your threat, you will have betrayed not only me but all your Tanchinaros, and befouled them as well. Then, you will be faced with an accounting of another sort, from my family. They will dog you to the end of time; never will you know a moment’s peace. Thirdly, you will gain all my contempt. And for what? The relief of your gland. How can you use the word ‘love’ when you really plan revenge? And this of a most paltry kind. As if I were an animal, or something without emotion. Certainly use me, if you wish, or kill me, but bear in mind my utter contempt for all your disgusting habits. Furthermore — ”

“Woman,” roared Glinnes, “be kind enough to shut your mouth. You have blighted the day and the evening as well. Eat your meal in silence and we will return to Welgen.” Scowling, Glinnes hunched down upon the sand. He ate plantains, quorls, meat, and bread; he drank two flasks of wine, while Duissane watched from the corner of her eye, a peculiar expression on her face, half-sneer, half-smirk.

When he had eaten, Glinnes leaned back against a hummock and mused for a time upon the sunset. With absolute fidelity the colors were reflected in the sea, except for an occasional languid black cusp in the lee of a swell. Duissane sat in silence, arms clasped around her knees. Glinnes lurched to his feet and thrust the boat into the water. He signaled Duissane. “Get in.” She obeyed. The boat returned across the sound, around the point of the spit, and up to the Welgen dock..

A large white yacht floated beside the jetty, which Glinnes recognized to be the property of Lord Gensifer. Lights glowed from the portholes, signifying activity aboard. Glinnes looked askance at the yacht. Would Lord Gensifer be hosting a party tonight, after the starmenter raid? Strange. But then, the ways of the aristocrats always had been beyond his comprehension. Duissane, to his amazement, jumped from the boat and ran to the yacht. She climbed the gangplank and vanished into the salon. Glinnes heard Lord Gensifer’s voice: “Duissane, my dear young lady, whatever — ” The remainder of his sentence was muffled..

Glinnes shrugged and returned the boat to the rental depot As he walked back down the dock, Lord Gensifer hailed him; from the yacht. “Glinnes! Come aboard for a moment,: there’s a good fellow!”

Glinnes sauntered indifferently up the gangway. Lord Gensifer clapped him on the back and conducted him into the salon. Glinnes saw a dozen folk in fashionable garments, apparently aristocratic friends of Lord Gensifer, and also Akadie, Marucha, and Duissane, who now wore over her sheet white gown a red cloak, evidently borrowed from one of the ladies present. “Here then is our hero!” declared Lord Gensifer, “With cool resource he saved two lovely sheirls from the sarmenters. In our great grief we at least can be thankful for this boon.” Glinnes looked in wonder about the salon. He felt as if he were living a particularly absurd dream. Akadie, Lord Gensifer, Marucha, Duissane, himself what a strange mix of people!

“I hardly know what happened today,” said Glinnes, “beyond the bare fact of the raid.”

“The bare fact is about all anyone knows,” said Akadie. He seemed unusually subdued and neutral, and careful in his choice of words. “The starmenters knew exactly who they wanted. They took exactly three hundred folk of substance, and about two hundred girls as well. The three hundred are to be ransomed for a minimum of a hundred thousand ozols apiece. No ransom prices have been set on the girls, but we will do our best to buy them back.”

“Then they’ve already been in communication?”

“Indeed, indeed. The plans were carefully made, and each person’s financial capacity was carefully gauged.” Lord Gensifer said with facetious self-deprecation, “Those left behind have suffered a loss of prestige, which we keenly resent.”

Akadie went on. “For reasons apparently good and sufficient, I have been appointed collector of the ransom, for which effort I am to receive a fee. No great amount, I assure you in fact, five thousand ozols will requite my work.”

Glinnes listened, dumbfounded. “So the total ransom will be three hundred times a hundred thousand, which is — ”

“Thirty million ozols — a good day’s work.”

“Unless they end up on the prutanshyr”

Akadie made a sour face. “A barbaric relict. What benefit do we derive from torture? The starmenters come back regardless.”

“The public is edified,” said Lord Gensifer. “Think of the kidnaped maidens — one of whom might have been my good friend Duissane!” He placed his arm around Duissane’s shoulders and gave her a mock-fraternal squeeze. “Is, then, the revenge too severe? Not to my way of thinking.”

Glinnes blinked and gaped back and forth between Lord Gensifer and Duissane, who seemed to be smiling at a secret joke. Had the world gone mad? Or was he in truth living a preposterous dream?

Akadie formed a quizzical arch with his eyebrows. “The starmenters’ sins are real enough; let them suffer.”

One of Lord Gensifer’s friends asked, “By the way, which particular band of starmenters is responsible?”

There has been no attempt at anonymity,” said Akadie. “We have attracted the personal attention of Sagmondo Bandolio Sagmondo the Stern who is as wicked as any.”

Glinnes knew the name well; Sagmondo Bandolio had long been the quarry of the Whelm. “Bandolio is a terrible man,” said Glinnes. “He extends no mercy.”

“Some say he is a starmenter only for sport,” Akadie remarked. “They say he has a dozen identities about the cluster, and that he could live forever on the fortunes he has gained.” The group mused in silence. Here was evil on a scale so fast that it became awesome.

Glinnes said, “Somewhere in the prefecture is a spy, someone intimate with all the aristocrats, someone who knows the exact level of every fortune.”

“That statement must be reckoned accurate,” said Akadie.

“Who could it be?” pondered Lord Gensifer. “Who could it be?”

And all persons present considered the matter, and each formed his private speculation.

The Tanchinaros, by defeating the Karpouns, had done themselves a disservice. Since Sagmondo Bandolio and his starmenters had taken their treasure, the team was without resources, and because of their demonstrated abilities, Perinda could schedule no one thousand-ozol or two-thousand-ozol games.. And now they lacked the treasure to challenge any teams in the ten-thousand-ozol class. A week after the Karpoun game the Tanchinaros met at Rabendary Island, and Perinda explained the sorry state of affairs. “I’ve found only three teams willing to play us, and not one will risk their sheirl for less than ten thousand ozols. Another matter: we lack a sheirl. Duissane seems to have caught the interest of a certain lord, which naturally was her ambition. Now neither she nor Tammi choose to risk the exposure of her precious hide.”

“Bah!” said Lucho. “Duissane never loved hussade in the first place.”

“Naturally not,” said Warhound. “She’s Trevanyi. Have you ever seen a Trevanyi play hussade? She’s the first Trevanyi sheirl I’ve ever known.”

“Trevanyi play their own games,” said Gilweg.

“Like ’Knives and Gullets’, said Glinnes.

“And ’Trills and Robbers’ ”

““And ’Merling, Merling, who’s got the Cadaver?’”

“And ’Hide and Sneak’”

Perinda said, “We can always recruit a sheirl. Our problem is money.”

Glinnes said grudgingly, “I’d put up my five thousand ozols if I thought I’d get it back.”

Warhound said, “I could scrape up a thousand, one way or another.”

“That’s six thousand,” said Perinda. Until I put in a thousand or rather, I can borrow a thousand from my father … Who else? Who else? Come then, you miserly mud-thumpers, bring out your wealth.”

Two weeks later the Tanchinaros played the Ocean Island Kanchedos, at the great Ocean Island Stadium, for a twenty-five-thousand-ozol purse, with fifteen thousand hazarded by each team and ten thousand by the stadium. The new Tanchinaro sheirl was Sacharissa Simone, a girl from Fal Lal Mountain pleasant, naive and pretty, but lacking in that imponderable quality sashei. There was likewise general doubt as to her virginity, but no one wanted to make an issue of the matter.

“Let’s all of us have a night with her,” grumbled Warhound, “and resolve the question to everybody’s satisfaction.”

Whatever the reason, the Tanchinaros played sluggishly and committed a number of startling errors. The Kanchedos won an easy three-ring victory. Sacharissa’s possibly innocent body was displayed in every detail to thirty-five thousand, spectators, and Glinnes found himself with only three or four hundred ozols in his purse. In a state of stupefied depression he returned to Rabendary Island, and flinging himself down in one of the old string chairs, he spent the evening staring across the broad at Ambal Isle. What a chaotic mess he had made of his life! The Tanchinaros impoverished, humiliated, on the verge of fragmentation. Ambal Isle now farther from his grasp than ever. Duissane, a girl who had worked a curious enthrallment upon him, had now fixed her ambitions upon the aristocracy, and Glinnes, previously only Lutewarm, now roiled at the thought of Duissane in another man’s bed.