The Dogtown Tourist Agency (11 page)

“Why are you looking at me so intently?” she asked. “Is my nose red?”

“I marvel at your confidence. After all, I’m a stranger to you, and out here beyond the Reach, a stranger is usually a depraved murderer, or a sadistic fiend, or worse.”

Janika laughed, perhaps a trifle uneasily. “Inside or outside the Reach—what’s the difference?”

“You don’t have too much to fear,” said Hetzel. “I’m far too gallant for my own good, although only an Olefract could fail to notice that you are extremely pretty. You make a stimulating companion for a trip like this one.”

“What kind of a trip is a trip like this one?”

“We intend to prove the innocence of one of your former lovers, and save him from the Exhibitory.”

“You astonish me! My ‘former lovers’ are all far away, living the most torpid lives imaginable. I wonder which of them you refer to, and how he managed to get into such mischief.”

“This one is a certain Gidion Dirby.”

Janika frowned. “Gidion Dirby?”

“Yes. A blond young man, obstinate, wrongheaded, seething with emotion. So he is now. Three months ago he might have been a different person entirely.”

“I remember Gidion Dirby, but our acquaintance was…well, almost casual. Certainly so, from my point of view.”

Hetzel looked down across the landscape—a savanna carpeted with green-black furze and clots of spike trees. In the far-eastern distance a glimmer of sea was visible, then a blur of atmospheric murk. Hetzel asked, “How did you happen to meet Gidion Dirby?”

“First,” said Janika, “tell me what he’s done, and also why you’re so mysterious.”

“Gidion Dirby is suspected of assassinating two Triarchs. I am not so much mysterious as confused and suspicious.”

“Confused about what? And who are you suspicious of? Me? I haven’t done anything.”

“I’m confused about Istagam…and why there is so much secrecy involved. Presumably the reason is money. I’m suspicious because effectuators are paid to be suspicious, and I’m an effectuator. A high-class and expensive effectuator, needless to say. I’m suspicious of you because you were associated with Gidion Dirby on Tamar, and here you are on Maz.”

“Sheer coincidence,” said Janika.

“Possibly. Why were you on Tamar?”

“Tamar was where my money took me when I left Varsilla. I worked for a week in the Central Market at Twisselbane, and I worked another week in what they call their Pageant of the Foam,
because it paid quite well. I had to dance and pose with not too many clothes on—occasionally none at all. While we were rehearsing, I met Gidion Dirby, who told me he was a spaceman, and lonely.”

“Like all spacemen.”

“I saw him a few times, and he became…well…possessive. Apparently he had fallen in love with me, and I was having trouble enough with one of the directors of the pageant. So I stopped seeing Gidion Dirby. I worked a week at the pageant, and some friends introduced me to Vv. Byrrhis, who mentioned that the Maz Tourist Agency needed a receptionist. I was only too pleased to leave the pageant and Director Swince. Vv. Byrrhis made me sign a six-month contract and gave me a ticket to Maz, and here I am.”

“You never saw Gidion Dirby again?”

“I’d almost forgotten him until just now.”

“Very odd.” They flew over an arm of the sea, a leaden expanse glistening with green luster. “You’ve been here how long?”

“About three months.”

“With another three months to go on your contract. Then what?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have enough money to go almost anywhere. I’d like to visit Earth.”

“You might be disappointed. Earth is a most subtle world. Very few outworlders feel at ease on Old Earth, unless they have friends there.”

Janika turned him an arch side glance. “Will you be there?”

“I couldn’t tell you where I’ll be a week from now.”

“Don’t you ever want to settle down somewhere?”

“I’ve thought about it. Gidion Dirby has invited me to his father’s loquat orchard.”

Janika made a sound of scornful amusement. “Gidion Dirby. You came to Maz on his account?”

“No. I came to learn something about Istagam. But the two matters might be connected.”

Janika said, “Perhaps I’ll become an effectuator. It seems like fun. One always stays in the best hotels and meets interesting people like myself, and there’s always a Sir Ivon Hacaway to pay the bills.”

“It’s not always like this.”

“And what takes us out toward the Great Kykh-Kych Swamp? Gidion Dirby business or Istagam?”

“Both. And then there’s another most peculiar element to the case, by the name of Casimir Wuldfache.”

The name seemed to mean nothing to Janika. For a period they rode in silence over a sprawling range of ancient basalt mountains, black crags protruding like rotten stumps from maroon detritus. Janika pointed. “Look yonder—the castle of the Viszt.” She took up binoculars. “Warriors are returning from a campaign, probably against the Shimrod, and the tourists have been cheated again.” She passed the binoculars to Hetzel and showed him where to look.

White skull faces bobbed and blinked under crested helmets of cast iron; aprons of black leather swung to the motion of the legs. To the rear rolled six wagons pulled by ten-legged reptiles, loaded with objects Hetzel could not identify.

“The Viszts are flyers,” said Janika. “The wagons carry their wings. They climb the mountains, put on their wings, and glide on the updrafts. Then, when they locate their enemies—I can’t think of a better word—they swoop down and attack.”

“Curious creatures.”

“You know how they breed, or mate?”

“Sir Estevan gave me a pamphlet. In fact, you did too. I know that they are ambisexual, and that they go out to war in order to breed.”

“It seems a dreary life,” Janika reflected. “They kill for love, and they die for love—all in a frenzy.”

“They probably consider our love life rather dull,” said Hetzel.

“My love life
is
rather dull,” said Janika. “Vv. Swince, Gidion Dirby, Vv. Byrrhis.”

“Have patience. Somewhere among the twenty-eight trillion folk of the Gaean Reach is Vv. Right.”

“Half of them are women, luckily. That cuts down the search by half.” Janika took up the binoculars. “I might as well take a look out over the swamp right now. There might be some kind of a fugitive or a divorcé out there.”

“What do you see?” asked Hetzel.

“Nothing. Not even a Gomaz, whom I wouldn’t consider anyway.”

They flew above a land of rolling moors with tarns of dark water in the hollows. Ahead, the course of the Dz River lay in languid curves and loops; beyond spread the Great Kykh-Kych Swamp. Hetzel examined the chart with attention.

Janika asked, “What are you looking for?”

“An island five miles or so from the north shore, where Gidion Dirby was marooned by a man named Banghart. Have you ever heard that name, incidentally?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Three islands are possible. This one to the east—” Hetzel indicated the chart “—this one in the center, and this to the west. The center island is closest to the black circle on the chart.”

“That’s the castle of the old Kanitze sept, which was wiped out by the Ubaikh two hundred years ago, and Kykh-Kych Inn, which is now closed down.”

“We’re coming in over the east island. Look for a path leading to the mainland.”

Hetzel circled the island—a hummock of twenty acres, crowned with a copse of iron trees and the tall rattling canes known as “galangal”. There was no area suitable for discharge of cargo; no path led away to the mainland.

The central island lay twenty miles north—an area somewhat larger, with a level meadow marked and scarred as if by the arrival and departure of vehicles.

Hetzel hovered over the meadow. “This is the place.” He pointed. “That iron tree yonder—there Dirby passed the night…And there—the path leading to the shore! Here we pick up the thread of Dirby’s adventures. Shall we land?”

“We’re not supposed to land except in authorized locations,” said Janika. “That’s the rule, but it’s not always obeyed.”

Hetzel glanced at his watch. “We don’t have all that much time if we want to meet the Ubaikh at the transport depot. So…we’d better fly on.”

Janika looked at him in astonishment. “We’re to meet whom?”

“The Ubaikh who witnessed the assassinations. If we want to learn the identity of the killer, he’s the obvious person to ask.”

“Suppose he says it was Gidion Dirby?”

“I don’t think he will. But I intend to ask him, no matter what he says.”

“You seem very zealous all of a sudden.”

“Yes, the mood strikes me once in a while.”

Janika looked down at the swamp, now only a few hundred feet below: an expanse of black slime; various tufts of reeds, lung-plant, white whisker; wandering rivulets of dark water. The path slanted this way and that, following a series of slanted quartzite outcrops. “If I knew what you were looking for, I could look too.”

Hetzel pointed to the dun-colored loom of mainland ahead. “Look for a stone wall. Gidion Dirby found a stone wall and a gate and Sir Estevan Tristo waiting for him. Except it probably wasn’t Sir Estevan. More likely Casimir Wuldfache.”

Janika looked through the binoculars. “I see the wall and the gate. I don’t see either Sir Estevan or Casimir Wolf-face, whatever his name is. Now I can see the old Kanitze castle.”

“This is where Gidion Dirby passed several memorable months, or so I suspect. He described some of his adventures to me. His chair ejected him to the floor. Sir Estevan emptied a chamber pot over his head. He observed you dancing upon the surface of his brain without any clothes on.”

“One thing you can take as certain,” said Janika. “I have never danced upon Gidion Dirby’s brain.”

“No question about this. You were evidently filmed at the Pageant of Foam on Tamar and the sequences adapted to the circumstances here. Almost certainly, Casimir Wuldfache turned the pot over Dirby’s head, since Sir Estevan denies doing so. All in all a curious set of experiences.”

“Unless Dirby is a madman, as I once suspected.”

They approached the cyclopean bulk of the ruined Kanitze castle. The roof across the vast central keep had long since rotted away; the seven peripheral towers had tumbled to broken stubs surrounded by detritus. The tower at the far western edge of the complex had been fitted with a new roof and structurally refurbished—evidently the disused tourist inn.

Hetzel allowed the air-car to drift quietly above the castle while he looked down through binoculars. He stared so long and so intently that Janika at last inquired, “What do you see?”

“Nothing very definite,” said Hetzel. He put the binoculars in the rack and looked down at the ruined castle. In the shadows of the central keep he had observed a stack of crates, protected from the weather by a shroud of transparent membrane. Up from the castle rose a fume of danger, quivering like hot air.

“I don’t dare to land,” Hetzel muttered. “In fact, I feel the urgent desire to leave, before someone or something destroys us.” He jerked the air-car into motion; they skidded away to the west.

Janika looked back at the receding ruins. “This isn’t quite the placid excursion I had expected.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you.”

“I’m not complaining…So long as I escape with my life.”

The castle of the extinct Kanitze became a dark smudge and disappeared into the murk.

“The rest of the trip should be relatively uneventful. The Ubaikh depot is safe ground, or so I’m told.”

“The Olefract or the Liss patrol might think you’re trying to sell weapons, and kill you.”

“I’ve got Sir Estevan’s translator. If necessary, I can explain.”

“Not to the Liss. They believe what they see, and they’re most suspicious.”

“Well…they probably won’t see us.”

“I hope not.”

The depot stood on a pebbly plain beside a white-and-orange target a hundred yards in diameter. Mountain shadows loomed above the north horizon; to west and east the plain extended into the blur of the sky. To the south, two miles from the depot, stood the castle of the Ubaikh sept—like the
Kanitze ruins, a bulk of awesome proportions. Parapets surrounded the central keep; an inner tower rose another hundred feet to a squat roof of sullen maroon tiles. Seven barbicans, taller and more slender than those of the Kanitze ruins, guarded the keep, each joined to the parapets by an arched buttress. The area under the castle flickered with motion—Gomaz, and Gomaz bantlings at their routines and drills. Wagons rolled along an east road and a west road, loaded with what Hetzel took to be provender. There seemed to be flapping black forms in the air surrounding the outer towers. Down, down the figures drifted, darting, wheeling, diving, and swooping, occasionally, by dint of furious effort, gaining altitude before once more gliding.

Hetzel dropped the air-car to the ground beside the depot. “We’ve got something less than an hour to wait, if the carrier is on schedule.”

Half an hour passed. Across the sky came the carrier—an ellipsoidal compartment supported on four pulsor pods. It dropped to a landing at the exact center of the orange-and-white target. The entry port slid open; steps unfolded; a single figure disembarked. The carrier paused a moment, like a resting insect, then swept off at a slant to the south. Hetzel meanwhile had approached the Ubaikh with the language translator.

The Ubaikh paused to assess the situation, wattles distended but uncolored. He wore an iron collar, which appeared to indicate status, and carried a sword of pounded iron in a harness over his back. Hetzel halted ten feet from the Ubaikh—as close as he dared approach.

The Ubaikh’s wattles remained a pallid white, with a network of pulsing green veins, indicating simple antagonism.

Hetzel spoke into the translator. “You have just now returned from Axistil.” The instrument produced a set of hisses and squeaks, fluting up into inaudibility and down again.

The Ubaikh stood rigid, the white bone of his face immobile, the eyes glowing like black gems. Hetzel wondered whether it might be taking telepathic counsel with its fellows in the castle.

The Ubaikh hissed, clicked, squeaked; the translator printed out on the tape: “I have visited Axistil.”