The Carpet Makers

by Andreas Eschbach

  “My greetings to you, stranger,” Ubhika responded hesitantly.

  The man smiled even more broadly. “My name is Nillian,” he said, and he seemed to be making an effort to match the rhythm of his speech to that of Ubhika. “I come from very far away.”

  “From where?” Ubhika asked almost automatically.

  “From Lukdaria,” the man said. He said it with a slight hesitation, like someone who is taking refuge in a lie and fears being found out.

  Ubhika had never heard of a city or a region with that name, but that might mean nothing. After all, it was obvious that the stranger had come from very far away. “My name is Ubhika, she said, and wondered why she was nervous. “I am a traveling peddler, as you can see.”

  He nodded. “That means you sell the things you have with you?”

  “Yes.” What else would that mean? she thought, and she studied his face. He looked strong and full of life—a man who could dance wildly and laugh out loud and drink along with everyone. He reminded her a bit of a boy she had loved when she was a very young girl. But nothing had happened there; he had married someone else, had learned the craft of a potter, and had died several years ago.

  She admonished herself to get her mind on business again. Whoever the man was, he had asked what she had to sell. “Yes,” she repeated. “What do you want to buy, Nillian?”

  The man looked the yuk mules over, with their tall packs. “Do you have clothing?”

  “Sure.” Actually, she had mostly fabric, but there were also a few ready-made garments for men.

  “I would like to dress the way that is customary in this region.”

  Ubhika looked around. She saw no mount anywhere. If the man came from so far away, how had he gotten here? Surely not on foot. And why was he standing here as though he knew he would come across a peddler? Something was going on that she didn’t understand.

  But business first. “Can you pay?” Ubhika asked. “Because that’s customary in this region, too—paying.”

  The man laughed and said with a broad sweep of his hand, “That’s not such an unusual custom; you find that one everywhere in the universe.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But I do have clothes for you if you have money.”

  “I have money.”

  “Good.”

  Ubhika dismounted, and she noticed that the man’s eyes were following her. Instinctively, she moved more energetically than usual, as though she needed to prove that she was still strong and agile and not as old as her skinny body and her wrinkled, weathered skin suggested. Then she was immediately cross with herself, and she roughly yanked the bundle containing men’s clothing out of her pack.

  She rolled it out on the ground, and when she looked up, he was holding a few coins in his outstretched hand. “This is the money we get where I live,” he explained. “Look first to see if you want to take it.”

  Ubhika took one of the coins from his hand. It was different from the coins she knew—more finely minted, shiny, made of some metal she had never seen. A beautiful coin. But not real money.

  “No,” she said with regret and gave him back the coin. “I can’t sell you anything for that.” And a little unexpected sale like this would really have been just what she needed.

  The foreigner looked at the coin as though he were seeing it for the first time. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked. “Don’t you like it?”

  “I like it fine,” Ubhika responded. “But that’s not the question. With money, it depends on whether other people like it.”

  She began to roll her bundle together again.

  “Stop, wait!” the man called out. “Wait just a moment. Let’s trade. Maybe I can give you something in exchange.”

  Ubhika paused and looked him over from head to toe. “What, for example?”

  “I don’t know.… Maybe the clothes I’m wearing?”

  Ubhika tried to imagine who would wear such a peculiar garment. Nobody with half his senses. And whether she could make something else out of it was very questionable.… She shook her head. “No.”

  “Wait. Then something else. Here, my bracelet. My mother gave it to me; it really is very valuable.”

  He’s not a very good trader, Ubhika thought with amusement. He wanted her miserable items of clothing at any price, and he wasn’t even trying to hide it. He was like an open book. Every one of his gestures said, Please give them to me; I’ll pay whatever you want. She almost felt sorry for him.

  “You don’t have our money, Nillian, and I can tell by your speech that you come from far away,” she said, “so it won’t do you much good to dress like the people here.”

  “The bracelet,” he repeated, and held out the jewelry, which Ubhika seemed to remember he had worn on his right wrist. “How do you like it?”

  She took the bracelet from his hand and felt a shiver at how heavy and cool it was to the touch. It was of a smooth metal that shone yellow and bore delicate, glittering designs on the outside. When she looked closely at the patterns, she noticed that the bracelet exuded a strong odor, a heavy, musky aroma that reminded her of the smell of oil from the musk glands of young baraq buffalo in heat. He must have worn this wristband a very long time. Maybe day and night since his mother gave it to him.

  But was that story true? And why would someone give away a gift from his mother, and such a valuable one, for a few poor rags?

  It didn’t really matter. “Take whatever you want,” Ubhika heard herself say; she was completely lost in examining the bracelet.

  “You have to tell me what I need!” the man protested.

  Sighing, Ubhika bent down to her bundle and fished out a pair of pants and a long shirt of crudely woven material and a jacket of the kind the herdsmen wore. Of course, she didn’t have any herdsmen’s boots; instead she gave him a pair of simple sandals.

  “That won’t fit me.”

  “Of course, it will fit you perfectly.”

  “I won’t believe that until I’ve tried it on,” the man replied, and to her boundless amazement, began to take off his clothes.

  He did turn away from her, at least. He opened the jacket portion of his outfit at a seam that separated with a smacking sound, and he slipped out of the arms. A strong, naked torso appeared which shimmered velvety in the sunlight while the man began to fumble around with his belt.

  Ubhika, who had forgotten to breathe, gasped in surprise and involuntarily looked all around as though she feared someone might be watching them. That had never happened before, that a man had undressed in front of her!

  But the foreigner didn’t seem to think anything about it. He stepped out of his pants and pulled on his newly bought trousers.

  Ubhika stood there and stared at the naked, muscular back, so close she could have reached out her hand to touch it. And her hand actually twitched. Why not? she asked herself and was almost unable to master the desire to grasp the smooth, radiant skin of the man—just to experience for once how it would feel. And she saw his backside, small and powerful, covered only with a tight bit of clothing that looked like short trousers but lay incredibly tight against his skin. And she felt a peculiar wave of warmth spread throughout her abdomen.

  And crazy thoughts entered her head.…

  She rotated the wristband indecisively between her fingers. The patterns on the outside glittered wonderfully. Maybe she could give him back the bracelet and ask him instead to do the things with her that a man does with a woman—just once.…

  What a crazy idea. She shoved the bracelet firmly over her left wrist. Impossible. She didn’t want the humiliation of having him reject her and tell her she was too old.

  “You’re right,” she heard him say innocently. He stretched out his arms in all directions and looked down at himself. “It really does fit.”

  Ubhika said nothing. She was afraid he could read her thoughts in her face.

  But the stranger who called himself Nillian smiled distractedly at her and gathered up his things. He rolled the
glittering outfit up into a bundle, which he held under his arm, and he draped the belt over his shoulder. He thanked her kindly and said this and that, which the peddler woman hardly heard, although she did remember later that she had answered him. And then he said good-bye.

  She watched him go and he walked away, straight across the countryside. Not in the direction of the city. Shortly before reaching a depression in the ground, he turned again and waved to her. Then he disappeared.

  Ubhika stood there for quite a while and stared blindly into the distance. Sometime later she came to her senses again, raised her left arm, and looked at the bracelet: it really was there. It wasn’t all a dream.

  She suddenly felt as though there were people all around her, behind every rock and hill, whispering secrets she wasn’t supposed to hear. She made haste to roll up the remaining clothes and to pack them away. Then she took the reins of the two pack yuks, climbed on her mount, and kicked him in the ribs to get him to move. She felt a pressure on her chest that she couldn’t quite explain.

  And she tried not to think about the evening ahead. Tonight would be difficult.

  VI

  The Man from Someplace Else

  “A HARSH PLANET, MOSTLY DESERT and steppes. Population estimated at three to four hundred million. Many medium-size cities, all in a state of deterioration. Few mineral resources, agriculture only under the most difficult conditions. Shortage of water.”

  It was Nillian’s incredible dynamism he admired, the almost animal energy he radiated; it gave him a wild, untamable quality. Maybe it was because he seemed not to think too much: his words, his actions, and his decisions came more from his gut—immediate, unaffected, unpretentious, and barely thought out. Since he had been flying with Nillian, Nargant often noticed how his own thought processes made endless twists and turns, even to reach totally insignificant decisions, and how much energy he wasted, almost without thinking about it, trying to protect himself on all sides against all eventualities.

  He watched Nillian from the side. The young copilot sat back relaxed in his seat with the microphone of the recorder at his lips and attentively studied the video monitors and the readouts of the tele-analysis instruments. His concentration was almost tangible. Various pictures of the planetary surface glowed on the video screens, gray brown without dramatic contours. The computer had superimposed several white lines, together with data about the dependability of the analysis.

  “The instruments show something,” Nillian continued, “that may, with a fair degree of probability, represent the rudimentary remains of a highly advanced, vanished culture. From space, straight lines are visible to the naked eye; the coloring suggests that they are foundation walls of earlier large structures. Very large structures. In the atmosphere, I register decomposition products of radioactive elements, small amounts of residual radiation. Possibly an atomic war several tens of thousands of years ago. There is some limited electromagnetic activity, presumably a simple form of radio communication, but we can locate no large energy sources. In other words,” he concluded, and his voice took on a note of impatient irony, “the picture is very similar to all the previous surveys. I don’t believe we will learn more as long as we continue the policy of prohibiting landings on the planets we visit. Naturally, that’s my personal opinion, but I would not object, if the expedition leadership were to interpret this as a recommendation. Report from Nillian Jegetar Cuain on board the Kalyt 9. Standard time: 15-3-178002. Last instrument calibration: 4-2. Position: map quadrant 2014-BQA-57, orbiting the second planet of sun G-101. Out.”

  “Do you really want to send something like that?”

  “Why not?”

  “Those last comments are a bit … impertinent, aren’t they?”

  Nillian grinned and shook his head; he leaned toward the armatures of the communication unit and with the familiarity of routine, initiated the multiformat broadcast of his report. “Your problem, Nargant,” he declared, “is that your education was unconnected with the practical reality of life. You grew up believing that rules are more important than all the facts you could ever uncover, and that the slightest disobedience is deadly. Aside from that, you didn’t learn much, but this duty to obey has become your flesh and bone, and on some distant day after your death, when they cut you apart, they’ll probably find crystallized obedience in the place of your bone marrow.”

  Nargant stared at his hands, as though he were trying to see through his skin to find out if Nillian might be right. “You won’t be able to change me into a rebel, Nillian,” he mumbled uncomfortably.

  The stupid thing was that he felt it himself. Since he had been traveling with this former rebel and had observed himself in contrast, he always felt like a fossil.

  “No, Imperial Soldier, and you won’t turn into a rebel either,” Nillian responded. Now he was serious. “And thank God that’s no longer necessary. But I would appreciate it very much if you could forget your old drills just a little. How long have we been under way now? Nearly forty days. Forty days, just you and me in this little expedition ship, and to tell the truth, I still don’t have any idea if you even like me. Or if you are just sticking it out with me because you were commanded to do it.”

  “I do,” Nargant said. “I like you.” It sounded terribly wooden. Have I ever actually said that to anyone else? he wondered in amazement.

  “Thanks. I rather like you, too, and that’s why it bothers me when you tiptoe around me as though I had to report after the flight on your orthodoxy to a commission of priests or even just to the Rebel Council.”

  “Tiptoe?…”

  “Yes! So careful, so cautious … at all costs, don’t let an improper word slip out, and always behave correctly.… I think you should stand in front of the mirror every morning and evening and shout out loud to yourself, ‘There is no Emperor anymore!’ You should do that for at least a couple of years.”

  Nargant wondered whether he was really serious.

  “Well, I can try it.”

  “I only mean that, once in a while, you should turn off that damn censor they planted in your brain and say flat out what comes into your mind, regardless of what I think. Do you suppose you can do that—at least once in a while?”

  “I’ll try.” Sometimes he found the rebel quite irritating. For example, why was he laughing at this answer?

  “And do you think you could disobey a couple of rules sometime? Interpret a few directives a little more loosely?”

  “Hmmm … I don’t know. What, for example?”

  A conspiratorial look entered Nillian’s eyes. “For example, the directive that we shouldn’t land on any of the planets?”

  Nargant caught his breath. “Surely you’re not planning…?”

  Nillian nodded wildly, and his eyes sparkled with eagerness for adventure.

  “But you can’t!” Even the thought of it made him tremble. And after the previous conversation, he felt himself really in a bind. He felt his heart beat faster. “We have orders—strict orders!—not to land on the planets we visit.”

  “But we’re not really landing.” Nillian grinned broadly. It was hard to decide if it was a malicious or a satisfied grin, or both. We just dip down into the atmosphere a bit—”

  “And then?…”

  “You drop me off in an airboat.”

  Nargant took a deep breath and clenched his fists. Blood was pounding in his temples. He looked away and anchored his gaze on one of the unfamiliar stars that could be seen silent and mysterious through the hatch windows. But there was no help there.

  “We can’t do that.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because it’s disobeying a direct order!”

  “Tut tut,” Nillian clucked. “Terrible.” And he said nothing.

  Nargant avoided Nillian’s eyes; he was acquainted well enough with the former rebel to know Nillian was watching him in anticipation.

  Planet G-101/2 hung above them like a great dirty-brown ball. There were no cities visible w
ith the naked eye.

  “I don’t know what you think you’ll gain,” Nargant finally sighed.

  “Knowledge,” Nillian said simply. “We don’t know much yet, but we do know one thing for sure: we won’t find out what’s going on around here by approaching one planet after another and taking standard measurements from orbit.”

  “We’ve found out a whole lot of things,” Nargant contradicted him. “All the planets we have observed up until now are populated. Everywhere we find planetary civilization at a rather primitive level. And everywhere we’ve found traces of a very ancient war that was fought with atomic weapons.”

  “Boring,” the young copilot countered. “Basically, that’s only confirming what we already knew.”

  “But those were only wild legends, barely believable stories from a handful of smugglers. Now we finally know it from our own experience.”

  Nillian jumped up so suddenly that Nargant recoiled. “Does all this just leave you completely cold?” he shouted in agitation. “We’re cruising here in a galaxy that appears to have been part of the Empire for unimaginable ages—but that isn’t recorded on a single star map! We’ve discovered a vanished part of the Empire, about which there are no documents in the Imperial Archive. And nobody knows why. Nobody knows what’s waiting for us here. After all, that’s an incredible mystery!”

  He sank back again as though this outburst had exhausted him. “And when you imagine that the trail leading to this mystery came to light only through a chain of coincidences…” With fingers spread wide, his hands began to trace wondrous circles in the air. “All these coincidences had to fit together just to bring us here to this point. There was the magistrate of Eswerlund, who had a smuggler’s hideout tracked down, as though he didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to … there was the technician who looked through the memory units on board the confiscated spaceships instead of just erasing them and happened to find the star maps of the Gheera Galaxy … there was the vote in the Council that only decided on this mission by a one-vote majority.… And here we are. And damn it, it’s our duty to find out as much as possible about what’s going on here and how it was possible that an enormous chunk of the Empire could have disappeared and been forgotten for tens of thousands of years.”