by Hal Clement
It wouldn’t have worked had not two of the fugitives been soldiers. Ordinarily, unarmed men running as they were would quickly have picked up a pursuing crowd. Someone would have raised the ever-popular alarm of "thief," and they would sooner or later have been penned in by sheer numbers. As it was, however, the local citizens behaved exactly as those in the tavern had done. The sight of arms made each new witness to the flight decide without hesitation that this was none of his business, and the streets emptied rapidly around the fleeing trio. This was more favorable to the pursuers than a crowd might have been, but it left the issue up to straight speed and dodging skill; and in these the three proved superior.
Even Gizona, whose life had made a pretty good runner out of him, was feeling the strain when they finally stopped; and the two soldiers were panting heavily.
"I-J don’t think I could lift my sword, right now," Sargon gasped. "We’d better be out of reach. Will someone please tell me what those guardsmen wanted with us? We hadn’t done anything."
"If they knew what we plan to do, they’d certainly want us," retorted Nimshi. "I know about those Greeks; they were part of Niku’s personal guard. What I don’t see is how they could have heard of our plans so quickly; I’d have sworn no one in that place understood our language. Gizona, did anyone who was there when we entered leave during our talk?"
"Yes," replied the boy. "There were two. Both left before you really got to the important part, though. The only other possibility I can see is the tavern-keeper himself; he was in and
out several times while we talked."
"Hmph. He certainly went to a lot of trouble to prove he spoke nothing but Egyptian. Maybe we’d better go back and try him the way we did you, when we learned about your memory."
"Maybe we’d better stay away from there," growled Sargon, "I've run all I want today."
Nimshi shrugged. "We’d better learn what happened somehow. If those guardsmen just wanted us for breaking some law we didn’t know about, we’d better find out what it is before we wander around this city any more.’
Sargon and Gizona agreed with this, but neither had any ideas to offer. Nimshi stared around as he thought.
Their run had taken them away from the river. They were in a district near the edge of the city, where gardeners from the surrounding fields came to sell their vegetables and other produce. The crowds were denser here, and few seemed to notice the three foreigners. The streets were wider and the buildings smaller; there were many little squares or courts where the farmers had spread out their vegetables and were either waiting for customers or haggling with them. Some had spread bits of straw matting on sticks as a shade for themselves and their wares, while others were exposed to the blazing noonday sun of Egypt. Some of the sellers were men, but most were women or children. Many of the latter were as young or younger than Gizona; and the sight of these appeared to give Nimshi food for thought.
They were thin, ragged urchins for the most part, their skins a good deal darker than Gizona’s; but, as Nimshi seemed to be reflecting, dirt can cover a lot.
""T think," the Judean said after a while, "that Gizona is going to find out what we need to know. He can dress like one of these young ones, and go back to the tavern to listen."
"Even if you suppose that all they’d remember about me is my clothes, do you think they’ll still be talking about what happened today by the time I learn Egyptian?" asked Gizona. Nimshi paused; he had forgotten the language problem once more. Then he recovered his poise.
"I don’t suppose they will. What you will do is get back there as quickly as possible to see whether those guardsmen are still around-perhaps asking questions of the tavern-keeper. If you can find them, listen to them; they’re mostly Greeks, I’ve heard, in Pharoah’s guard, and certainly that bunch we fought were
Greek. You can understand them, and if anyone should be talking about what happened they’re the ones."
Gizona could find no objection to this, so the three sought and finally found a secluded space between two mud-walled houses where his clothing could be rearranged to something a little more Egyptian. He was wearing a light tunic of rough linen, which was removed; Sargon rolled it up and stuffed it into the big wallet which swung at his side. The loin cloth which was the boy’s only other garment was of finer material than those of the fellahin, and his skin was far lighter; but Egypt was able to furnish plenty of dirt to cover both deficiencies. Gizona emerged into the street a reasonable image of the urchins who could be seen on all sides. His only worry was that one of them would talk to him, and he was so preoccupied with his job that even that didn’t really come to the front of his mind.
He had, of course, no trouble finding the tavern by back tracking on the route of their recent flight. Once there, however, he found no sign of the armored men who had attacked them. There were plenty of customers and all of them were talking excitedly, probably about the recent fray, but that did Gizona no good.
He settled back against the wall, imitating the attitude he had seen others assume in the city, and pondered the problem of what to do next. Thinking was becoming a great deal easier, he found; it was even fun, figuring something out and then finding he was right.
In the present instance, he was trying to think where the Greek guardsmen might be. They would, of course, have followed Gizona and the others for some distance; they might possibly still be around the point where they had lost the trail. However, Gizona had had to use the same route on the way back and had seen nothing of them. He finally took the easy way; he would sit where he was for a while, in case one or more of them came back. If nothing happened by the time he got tired of waiting, he would start quartering the whole area in search of bronze armor. They might be expected to be around somewhere; after all, they had shown up fairly soon after Sargon and Nimshi and he had reached the tavern.
It was not remarkably good thinking, and actually a rather sloppy plan, but it satisfied Gizona. He relaxed against the wall, and began to watch and listen to what went on around him.
Nothing really important happened for some time. He
learned a few Egyptian words from a pair of children who were fighting over a slightly battered fruit, and a few more from conversations he could hear inside the tavern through the doorways, but he did not pick up enough to be really useful. For one reason, he fell asleep.
The sun was a good deal lower when he woke up. Looking around hastily, he saw that everything was about as it had been-a different set of children were fighting, some customers had left the tavern, and some others had arrived, but none of the newcomers wore armor. As far as the eye could tell, nothing unusual was going on.
However, Gizona had ears as well as eyes; and after a moment he began to realize that there was one odd fact. Somewhere, a conversation was being carried on-and he could understand it!
The reason was plain enough; the words were Greek, not Egyptian. They were coming from inside the tavern, and after a few moments of cautious looking around Gizona spotted the individuals who were talking. They looked exactly like the others at the various tables-rather ragged, not too clean, and of the usual Egyptian build. There were two of them, seated before their drinks with the same furtive air which seemed to Gizona to mark practically all the inhabitants of this quarter. Had it not been for the language they were using he would never have looked at them twice; and if he had not had his attention drawn to them, even Gizona might never have noticed that one of them had been in the tavern when he and his masters had arrived, and had left during their conversation.
That realization brought the boy wide awake on the instant, and started him listening to the talk as carefully as he could. He was not too close to the men, and many other customers were also chattering, so listening was not very easy. There was also, he feared, the danger of being noticed if he listened too obviously; in spite of what his masters had said, Gizona found it hard to believe that anyone who had seen him before could look at him again without recognition-he just cou
ldn’t imagine such a poor memory.
Nevertheless, he listened; and presently he became interested enough in what he was hearing to forget the danger.
The speakers were, quite plainly, agents of Niku; they seemed perfectly sure that no one in the neighborhood understood Greek, and showed no caution whatever in their
speech. One was giving the other instructions to remain at the tavern in the hope that the "foreigners"-Gizona could guess who was meant by that term-would return; he was then to follow them, learn where they were staying and anything else about them that he possibly could. The one taking the orders was the individual who had been there before and had therefore seen Sargon and Nimshi. The other one mentioned this fact, which removed any doubt there might have been as to who the "foreigners" were.
"Remember," Gizona heard him close, "We don’t know just what these strangers plan to do; but the innkeeper heard them speak of Pharoah several times by name and without any title, so they cannot respect him properly and must have some plans regarding him. It is unfortunate that the guards failed to take them for questioning, in a way; but on the other hand, we may learn more about their confederates, if they have any, this way."
"T understand." The other nodded casually and appeared to turn all his attention to his drinking vessel. The one in command emptied his own, rose to his feet, and strolled out of the building.
He passed within a foot of Gizona, but paid no attention to the youngster huddled against the wall. The boy returned the compliment; his whole mind was concentrated on the spy who
had remained.
It took Gizona some time to decide that the best thing to do was simply fade out of the neighborhood and go back to his masters-or, as he was beginning to consider them, his dupes. After all, it made no difference to any of them how long one of Niku’s information gatherers sat in the tavern; they weren’t coming back to the place. Also, he had found out what he had been sent to learn-evidently the use of Pharoah Niku’s name during their talk had aroused the suspicions of the agent who happened to be in hearing, and he had slipped out to get the guards.
Gizona finally realized all this, and without another look at the spy he started back along the route which he had taken much more rapidly a few hours before.
It might have been better if he had taken a final glance at the apparently casual drinker; there were few memories as good as Gizona’s, but some were a lot better than average.
CHAPTER 8
"So that’s it." Nimshi nodded thoughtfully. "From now on we'll have to be careful of mentioning the Pharoah’s name."
"But we weren’t talking Egyptian, or even Greek, which that spy could have understood," said Sargon. "I still don’t get it."
Nimshi looked at Gizona, and shrugged. Neither tried to explain to the Ninevite; Nimshi liked him too much to want to annoy him, and Gizona wouldn’t have dared. The Judean went on with his remarks.
"Not only will we have to be careful with our speech; that agent Gizona’s been talking about has seen us, and will know Sargon and me again. He must have told people what we look like, too. We’re going to have to keep out of sight, or else change our appearance the way Gizona did."
"I’m not going to wander around this city in a dirty waist cloth with no sword," retorted Sargon. "There are some things you can’t expect a warrior to do."
"You’d do it if it would do us any good," retorted Nimshi. "It wouldn’t, though. Changing your clothes wouldn’t turn you into an Egyptian. You’d be an AsSyrian no matter what you wore, and anyone seeing you would know it. I’m not sure what we can do to be safe in this town. We talked too soon and said too much, I guess."
"Why do we have to stay in this town?" asked Gizona. "You said that the treasure land was to the south. Even if we don’t know just where it is, we can’t lose much by heading upriver."
"That’s a thought." Nimshi sounded pleased, and even Sargon nodded approval. "We’d have to go quite a way even before we have to decide whether we’re going overland or by the Red Sea. We can spend the time finding things out -Gizona can learn Egyptian as we travel. Maybe I can learn some, too. "I've only question would seem to be— do we walk, or
go by boat?" "Boat!" Sargon answered instantly and emphatically. "I’m not sure." Nimshi did not ask Gizona for an opinion. "I know walking’s a lot of work and this is a hot country, but at least there are places to hide. If the guards find us in a boat, we’re pretty well cornered."
"We could always go overboard and swim ashore. This is a river, not the sea."
"Not in this river. Haven't you ever heard of crocodiles?"
"Sure; a fellow who'd been here once told me about them. I thought — "
"You thought he was telling yarns like yours? Well, he wasn’t. I haven't been here before, but I’ve heard about them from too many different people. The story is always the same. People just don’t swim in this country, unless they have a pond they made themselves."
"I’m used to taking chances. I thought you were too."
"Swimming in the Nile isn’t taking chances, it’s suicide." Sargon digested this for a moment, then brightened.
"In that case, wouldn’t we be safe in a boat? No one could attack us unless they were in one, too; and if we found a good fast one, we’d be in fine shape."
Nimshi nodded slowly. "You may have something there. The big trouble is finding a boat, and arranging to travel in it,
when none of us speaks the language. That’s one difficulty we won’t face if we walk."
"We’ll have the same one in getting food."
""That shouldn’t be hard. You can always point to what you want and offer money for it; we got drink at that tavern."
"We got more than we wanted there. At least in a boat we won’t be leaving behind us a trail of people who noticed strangers who couldn’t speak Egyptian."
Nimshi nodded slowly. "All right. We'll try to find a boatman who’ll take us upstream. We’d better not go too far, though; we can land at the first city we see, and Gizona can start finding out what we want to know." The others nodded silently.
The three were sitting in the secluded corner where Gizona’s costume change had been made. The place had not been completely deserted -an occasional cluster of children
had raced through, and once or twice older people had passed ~ but no one seemed to pay any great amount of attention to
the three. The dress of the two soldiers had, of course, caused the youngsters to stare, but they had not collected in crowds as Gizona had rather expected they would. Curiosity didn’t seem to thrive in the city of Sai; he wondered if the rest of Egypt were the same.
Gizona was still in his disguise, though his skin was itching from the dirt. There seemed little chance to get rid of it; if he tried a bath in the Nile he would attract very undesirable attention even if he happened to live through it. It was decided to make use of his costume; he would keep fairly close to the others as they went back to the river, but not so close as to seem connected with them, and could check whether or not they were being followed. With that settled, the three got to - their feet, and Nimshi and Sargon walked out into the market place.
The crowd was thinner; many of the farmers had sold all their wares and gone, and most of the others seemed on the point of giving up hope of selling what they had left. Nimshi, testing out the suggestion he had made to Sargon, tried bargaining for a melon which caught his fancy, and had no difficulty in making himself understood. Gizona was close enough to hear what went on, and picked up another word or two of the Egyptian language.
He waited where he was until the other two were almost out of sight down the street, and then got to his feet to follow them. Then, almost instantly, he flopped back to his former squatting position and stared.
Another Egyptian had strolled toward the man from whom Nimshi had bought the melon, and was talking to him about something; and it did not take two looks for Gizona to recognize the man from the tavern. That offered food for thought - rapid thought,
since Gizona did not dare let Sargon and Nimshi get too far out of sight.
Either the fellow had managed to sniff out the trail of the fleeing soldiers from the memories of witnesses, or he had followed Gizona himself just now. In view of the orders they boy had heard him receive, it must have been the latter -the fellow hadn’t been doing any detective work; he was supposed to wait until he saw one of the party. That meant he must have recognized Gizona, in spite of the disguise.
The others were too far away to hear the boy say "I told you so," but he said it anyway - under his breath.
Since Gizona was in full sight of both agent and farmer, there was also the question of how he was to get away and rejoin the others. The agent was not obviously watching him, but Gizona was not going to trust that appearance again -he had looked the same back at the tavern. Perhaps the best thing to do was stay right where he was, trusting to luck or thought for finding Nimshi and Sargon later, and see what this fellow would do. It might also be a good idea if he got a little closer -he ought to be speaking Egyptian to the farmer, of course, but maybe the farmer was another agent. Gizona got to his feet, stretched, and in what he hoped was a natural manner walked across the little square. He did not head directly toward the agent -he had had no experience in this sort of thing, but even he could see that that would not be sensible. Instead, he settled down again beside the dwindling vegetable pile of another huckster a few yards away.