Planet of Adventure Omnibus (27 page)

Traz gave an
inarticulate growl, too wise not to concede the conviction of Anacho’s logic,
too proud to abandon abjectly his point of view. And Anacho, in his turn, made
no attempt to push a superficial advantage home. In time, thought Reith, the two
might even learn to respect each other.

In the
morning Anacho again tinkered with the engine, while the others shivered in the
cold airs seeping down from the north. Traz gloomily predicted rain, and
presently a high overcast began to form, and fog eased over the tops of the
hills to the north.

Anacho
finally threw down the tools in boredom and disgust. “I have done what I can.
The raft will fly, but not far.”

“How far, in
your opinion?” asked Reith, aware that Ylin-Ylan had turned to listen. “To
Cath?”

Anacho
flapped up his hands, fluttering his fingers in an unknowable Dirdir
gesticulation. “To Cath, by your projected route: impossible. The engine is
falling to dust.”

Ylin-Ylan
looked away, studied her clenched hands.

“Flying
south, we might reach Coad on the Dawn Zher,” Anacho went on, “and there take
passage across the Draschade. Such a route is longer and slower-but conceivably
we will arrive in Cath.”

“It seems
that we have no choice,” said Reith.

FOR A PERIOD
they followed the southward course of the vast Nabiga River, traveling only a
few feet above the surface, where the repulsion plates suffered the least
strain. The Nabiga swept off to the west, demarcating the Dead Steppe from the
Aman Steppe, and the raft continued south across an inhospitable region of dim
forests, bogs, and morasses; and a day later returned to the steppe. On one
occasion they saw a caravan in the distance: a line of high-wheeled carts and
trundling house-wagons; another time they came upon a band of nomads wearing
red feather fetishes on their shoulders, who bounded frantically across the
steppe to intercept them, and were only gradually outdistanced.

Late in the
afternoon they painfully climbed above a huddle of brown and black hills. The
raft jerked and yawed; the black case emitted ominous rasping sounds. Reith
flew low, sometimes brushing through the tops of black tree-ferns. Sliding
across the ridge the raft blundered at head-height through an encampment of
capering creatures in voluminous white robes, apparently men. They dodged and
fell to the ground, then screaming in outrage fired muskets after the raft, the
erratic course of which presented a shifting target.

All night
they flew over dense forest, and morning revealed more of the same: a black,
green, and brown carpet cloaking the Aman Steppe to the limit of vision, though
Traz declared the steppe ended at the hills, that below them now was the Great
Daduz Forest. Anacho condescendingly took issue, and displaying a chart tapped
various topographic indications with his long white fingers to prove his point.

Traz’s square
face became stubborn and sullen. “This is Great Daduz Forest; twice when I carried
Onmale among the Emblems,
[iv]
I led the tribe here for herbs and dyes.”

Anacho put
away the chart. “It is all one,” he remarked. “Steppe or forest, it must be
traversed.” At a sound from the engine he looked critically aft. “I believe
that we will reach the outskirts of Coad, not a mile farther, and when we raise
the housing we shall find only a heap of rust.”

“But we will
reach Coad?” Ylin-Ylan asked in a colorless voice.

“So I
believe. Only two hundred miles remain.”

Ylin-Ylan
seemed momentarily cheerful. “How different than before,” she said. “When I
came to Coad a captive of the priestesses!” The thought seemed to depress her
and once more she became pensive.

Night
approached. Coad still lay a hundred miles distant. The forest had thinned to a
stand of immense black and gold trees, with intervening areas of turf, on which
grazed squat six-legged beasts, bristling with bony tusks and horns. Landing
for the night was hardly feasible and Reith did not care to arrive at Coad
until morning, in which opinion Anacho concurred. They halted the motion of the
raft, tied to the top of a tree and hovered on the repulsors through the night.

After the
evening meal the Flower of Cath went to her cabin behind the saloon; Traz,
after studying the sky and listening to the sounds of beasts below, wrapped
himself in his robe and stretched out on one of the settees.

Reith leaned
against the rail watching the pink moon Az reach the zenith just as the blue
moon Braz rose behind the foliage of a far tall tree.

Anacho came
to join him. “So then, what are your thoughts as to the morrow?”

“I know
nothing of Coad. I suppose we inquire as to transportation across the
Draschade.”

“You still
intend to accompany the woman to Cath?”

“Certainly,”
said Reith, mildly surprised.

Anacho hissed
through his teeth. “You need only put the Cath woman on a ship; you need not go
yourself.”

“True. But I
don’t care to remain in Coad.”

“Why not? It
is a city which even Dirdirmen visit from time to time. If you have money
anything is for sale in Coad.”

“A spaceship?”

“Hardly ...
It seems that you persist in your obsession.”

Reith
laughed. “Call it whatever you like.”

“I admit to
perplexity,” Anacho went on. “The likeliest explanation, and one which I urge
you to accept, is that you are amnesiac, and have subconsciously fabricated a
fable to account for your own existence. Which of course you fervently believe
to be true.”

“Reasonable,”
Reith agreed.

“One or two
odd circumstances remain,” Anacho continued thoughtfully. “The remarkable
devices you carry: your electronic telescope, your energy-weapon, other
oddments. I cannot identify the workmanship, though it is equivalent to that of
good Dirdir equipment. I suppose it to be home-planet Wankh; am I correct?”

“As an
amnesiac, how would I know?”

Anacho gave a
wry chuckle. “And you still intend to go to Cath?”

“Of course.
What about you?”

Anacho
shrugged. “One place is as good as another, from my point of view. But I doubt
if you realize what awaits you in Cath.”

“I know
nothing of Cath,” said Reith, “other than what I have heard. The people are
apparently civilized.”

Anacho gave a
patronizing shrug. “They are Yao: a fervent race addicted to ritual and
extravaganza, prone to excesses of temperament. You may find the intricacies of
Cath society difficult to cope with.”

Reith
frowned. “I hope it won’t be necessary. The girl has vouched for her father’s
gratitude, which should simplify matters.”

“Formally the
gratitude will exist. I am sure of this.”

“‘Formally’?
Not actually?”

“The fact
that you and the girl have formed an erotic accommodation is of course a
complication.”

Reith smiled
sourly. “The ‘erotic accommodation’ has long since run its course.” He looked
back toward the deck-house. “Frankly, I don’t understand the girl. She actually
seems disturbed by the prospect of returning home.”

Anacho peered
through the dark. “Are you so naive? Clearly she dreads the moment when she
must sponsor the three of us before the society of Cath. She would be overjoyed
if you sent her home alone.”

Reith gave a
bitter laugh. “At Pera she sang a different tune. She begged that we return to
Cath.”

“Then the
possibility was remote. Now she must deal with reality.”

“But this is
absurdity! Traz is as he is. You are a Dirdirman, for which you are not to
blame-”

“No
difficulties in either of these cases,” stated the Dirdirman with an elegant
flourish of the fingers. “Our roles are immutable. Your case is different; and
it might be best for all if you sent the girl home on a cog.”

Reith stood
looking out over the sea of moonlit treetops. The opinion, assuming its
validity, was far from lucid, and also presented a dilemma. To avoid Cath was
to relinquish his best possibility of building a spaceboat. The only
alternative then would be to steal a spaceship, from the Dirdir, or Wankh, or,
least appealing of all, from the Blue Chasch: all in all, a nerve-tingling
prospect. Reith asked, “Why should I be less acceptable than you or Traz?
Because of the ‘erotic accommodation’?”

“Naturally
not. The Yao concern themselves with systematics rather than deeds. I am
surprised to find you so undiscerning.”

“Blame it on
my amnesia,” said Reith.

Anacho
shrugged. “In the first place-possibly due to your ‘amnesia’ you have no
quality, no role, no place in the Cath ‘round.’ As a nondescript, you
constitute a distraction, a zizylbeast in a ballroom. Secondly, and more
poignant, is your point of view, which is not fashionable in contemporary Cath.”

“By this you
mean my ‘obsession’?”

“Unfortunately,”
said Anacho, “it is similar to an hysteria which distinguished a previous cycle
of the ‘round.’ A hundred and fifty years
[v]
ago, a coterie of Dirdirmen were
expelled from the academies at Eliasir and Anismna for the crime of
promulgating fantasy. They brought their espousements to Cath, and stimulated a
tendentious vogue: the Society of Yearning Refluxives, or the ‘cult.’ The
articles of faith defied established fact. It was asserted that all men,
Dirdirmen and sub-men alike, were immigrants from a far planet in the
constellation Clari: a paradise where the hopes of humanity have been realized.
Enthusiasm for the ‘cult’ galvanized Cath; a radio transmitter was constructed
and signals were projected toward Clari. Somewhere, the activity was resented;
someone launched torpedoes which devastated Settra and Ballisidre. The Dirdir
are commonly held responsible, but this is absurd; why should they trouble
themselves? I assure you that they are much too distant, too uninterested.

“Regardless
of agency, the deed was done. Settra and Ballisidre were laid low, the ‘cult’
was discredited; the Dirdirmen were expelled; the ‘round’ swung back to
orthodoxy. Now even to mention the ‘cult’ is considered vulgarity, and so we
arrive at your case. Clearly you have encountered and assimilated ‘cult’ dogma;
it now manifests itself in your attitudes, your acts, your goals. You seem
unable to distinguish fact from fancy. To speak bluntly, you are so disoriented
in this regard as to suggest psychic disorder.”

Reith closed
his mouth on a wild laugh; it would only reinforce Anacho’s doubts as to his
sanity. A dozen remarks rose to his tongue; he restrained them all. At last he
said, “All else aside, I appreciate your candor.”

“Not at all,”
said the Dirdirman serenely. “I imagine that I have clarified the nature of the
girl’s apprehension.”

The Dirdirman
blinked up at the pink moon Az. “So long as she was outside the ‘round’ at Pera
and elsewhere, she made sympathetic allowances. But now return to Cath is
imminent...” He said no more, and presently went to his couch in the saloon.

Reith went to
the forward pulpit under the great bow lantern. A cool draft of air fanned his
face; the raft drifted idly about the treetop. From the ground came a furtive
crackle of footsteps. Reith listened; they halted, then resumed and diminished
off under the trees. Reith looked up into the sky where pink Az, blue Braz
careened. He looked back at the deck-house where slept his comrades: a boy of
the Emblem nomads, a clown-faced man evolved toward a race of gaunt aliens; a
beautiful girl of the Yao, who thought him mad. Below sounded a new pad of
footsteps. Perhaps he was mad indeed ...

By morning
Reith had recovered his equanimity, and was even able to find grotesque humor
in the situation. No good reason to change his plans suggested itself, and the
sky-raft limped south as before. The forest dwindled to scrub, and gave way to
isolated plantings and cattle-runs, field huts, lookout towers against the
approach of nomads, an occasional rutted road. The raft displayed an ever more
aggravated instability, with an annoying tendency for the stern to sag. At
mid-morning a range of low hills loomed ahead, and the raft refused to climb
the few hundred feet necessary to clear the ridge. By the sheerest luck a cleft
appeared through which the raft wobbled with ten feet to spare.

Ahead lay the
Dwan Zher and Coad: a compact town with a look of settled antiquity. The houses
were built of weathered timber, with enormous high-peaked roofs and a multitude
of skew gables, eccentric ridges, dormers, tall chimneys. A dozen ships rode to
moorings; as many more were docked across from a row of factors’ offices. At
the north of town was the caravan terminus, beside a large compound surrounded
by hostelries, taverns, warehouses. The compound seemed a convenient spot to
set down the raft; Reith doubted if it could have held itself in the air
another ten miles.

The raft
dropped stern first; the repulsors gave a labored whine and went silent with a
meaningful finality. “That’s that,” said Reith. “I’m glad we’ve arrived.”