by Jack Vance
At an abandoned mine the road ended. Simultaneously the power index reached zero. The car halted with a thud and a bump; there was silence except for a sigh of wind.
The group alighted with their meager possessions. The fog had dissipated; the sun shone cool through a high overcast, washing the landscape in honey-colored light.
Reith surveyed the mountainside, tracing a path to the ridge. He turned to Helsse. "Well, which is it to be? Kabasas, or back to Settra?"
"Settra, naturally." He looked disconsolately at the car.
"Afoot?"
"Better than afoot to Kabasas."
"What of the assassins?"
"I must take my chances."
Reith brought out his scanscope and studied the way they had come. "There seems no sign of pursuit; you-" He halted, surprised by the expression on Helsse's face.
"What is that object?" demanded Helsse.
Reith explained.
"Dordolio spoke accurately," said Helsse in a wondering voice. "He was telling the truth!"
Half-amused, half-annoyed, Reith said, "I don't know what Dordolio told you, other than that we were barbarians. Goodbye, then, and my regards to Lord Cizante."
"Wait a moment," said Helsse, staring indecisively west toward Settra. "Kabasas may be safer, after all. The assassins would be sure to consider me an auxiliary to your offense." He turned, assessed the bulk of the mountain, heaved a gloomy sigh. "Total insanity, of course."
"Needless to say, we are not here by our own volition," returned Reith. "Well, we might as well start."
They climbed the tailings dump in front of the mine, peered into the tunnel, from which issued an ooze of reddish slime. A set of footprints led into the tunnel. They were about human size, the shape of a bowling pin or a gourd; two inches ahead of the narrow forward end were three indentations as of toes.
Looking down at the marks Reith felt the hairs rise at the nape of his neck. He listened, but no sounds came from the tunnel. He asked Traz, "What sort of prints are these?"
"An unshod Phung, possibly-a small one. More likely a Pnume. The prints are fresh. It watched our approach."
"Come along; let's leave," muttered Reith.
An hour later they reached the ridge and halted to gaze out over the panorama.
The land to the west lay drowned in late afternoon murk, with Settra showing as a discolored spot, like a bruise. Far to the east glimmered Black Mountain Lake.
The travelers spent an eerie night at the edge of the forest, starting up at far noises; a thin uncanny screaming, a rap-rap-rap, like blows against a block of hard wood, the crafty hooting of nighthounds.
Dawn came at last. The group made a glum breakfast on pods from a pilgrim plant, then proceeded down over a basalt palisade to the floor of a wooded valley.
Ahead lay the Black Mountain Lake, calm and still. A fishing boat inched across the water and presently disappeared behind a jut of rock. "Hoch Har," said Helsse. "Ancient enemies of the Yao. Now they remain behind the mountains."
Traz pointed. "A path."
Reith looked. "I see no path."
"Nevertheless it is there, and I smell wood smoke, from a distance of three miles."
Five minutes later Traz made a sudden gesture. "Several men are approaching."
Reith listened; he could hear nothing. But presently three men appeared on the trail ahead: very tall men with thick waists, thin arms and legs, wearing skirts of a dirty white fiber and short capes of the same stuff. They stopped short at the sight of the travelers, then turned and retreated along the trail, looking anxiously back over their shoulders.
After a quarter-mile the trail left the jungle, and angled off across the swampy foreshore of the lake. The Hoch Har village stood on stilts over the water, terminating in a float to which a dozen plank boats were tied. On the shore a score of men stood in attitudes of nervous truculence, striding back and forth, bushknives and long spring-bows at the ready.
The travelers approached.
The tallest and heaviest of Hoch Hars called out in a ridiculously shrill voice:
"Who are you?"
"Travelers on the way to Kabasas."
The Hoch Hars stared incredulously, then peered back up the trail toward the mountains. "Where is the rest of your band?"
"There is no band; we are alone. Can you sell us a boat and some food?"
The Hoch Hars put aside their weapons. "Food is hard to come by," groaned the first man. "Boats are our dearest possessions. What can you offer us in exchange?"
"Only a few sequins."
"What good are sequins when we must visit Cath to spend them?"
Helsse muttered in Reith's ear. Reith said to the Hoch Hars, "Very well then, we shall continue. I understand that there are other villages around the lake."
"What? Would you deal with petty thieves and cheats? It is all those folks are.
Well, to save you from your own folly, we will strain ourselves to work out some sort of arrangement."
In the end Reith paid two hundred sequins for a boat in fair condition and what the Hoch Har chief gruffly claimed to be sufficient provisions to take them all the way to Kabasas: crates of dried fish, sacks of tubers, rolls of pepper-bark, fresh and preserved fruit. Another thirty sequins secured the services, as a guide, of a certain Tsutso, a moon-faced young man somewhat portly, with an affable big-toothed smile. Tsutso declared the first stages of their journey to be the most precarious: "First, the rapids; then the Great Slant, after which the voyage becomes no more than drifting downstream to Kabasas."
At noon, with the small sail set, the boat departed the Hoch Har village, and through the long afternoon sailed the dark water south toward a pair of bluffs which marked the outlet of the lake and the head of the Jinga River. At sunset the boat passed between the bluffs, each crowned by a tumble of ruins, black on the brown-ash sky. Under the bluff to the right was a small cove with a beach; here Reith wanted to camp for the night but Tsutso would not hear of it. "The castles are haunted. At midnight the ghosts of old Tschai walk the pavings. Do you want us all put under a taint?"
"So long as the ghosts keep to the castle, what's to prevent us from using the cove?"
Tsutso gave Reith a wondering look, and held the boat to midstream between the opposing ruins. A mile downstream the Jinga split around a rocky islet, to which Tsutso took the boat. "Here nothing from the forest can molest us."
The travelers supped, laid themselves down around the campfire and were troubled by no more than soft whistles and trills from the forest, and once, far in the distance, the mournful call of the night-hounds.
On the next day they passed across ten miles of violent rapids, during which Tsutso ten times over earned his fee, in Reith's estimation. Meanwhile the forest dwindled to clumps of thorn; the banks became barren, and presently a strange sound made itself heard from ahead: a sibilant all-pervading roar. "The Slant," explained Tsutso. The river disappeared at a brink a hundred yards ahead. Before Reith or the others could protest, the boat had pitched over the verge.
Tsutso said, "Everyone alert; here is the Slant. Hold to the middle!"
The roar of water almost overwhelmed his voice. The boat was sliding into a dark gorge; with amazing velocity the rock walls passed astern. The river itself was a trembling black surface, lined with foam static in relation to the boat. The travelers crouched as low as possible, ignoring Tsutso's condescending grin. For minutes they dashed down the race, finally plunged into a field of foam and froth, then floated smoothly out into still water.
The walls rose sheer a thousand feet: brown sandstone pocked with balls of black starbush. Tsutso steered the boat to a fringe of shingle. "Here I leave you."
"Here? At the bottom of this canyon?" Reith asked in wonder.
Tsutso pointed to a trail winding up the slope. "Five miles away is the village."
"In that case," said Reith, "goodbye and many thanks."
Tsutso made an indulgent gesture. "It is nothing in particular. Hoch Ha
rs are generous folk, except where the Yao are concerned. Had you been Yao, all might not have gone so well."
Reith looked toward Helsse, who said nothing. "The Yao are your enemies?"
"Our ancient persecutors, who destroyed the Hoch Har empire. Now they keep to their side of the mountain, which is well for them, as we can smell out a Yao like a bad fish." He jumped nimbly ashore. "The swamps lie ahead. Unless you lose yourselves or arouse the swamp people you are as good as at Kabasas." With a final wave he started up the path.
The boat drifted through sepia gloom, the sky a watered silk ribbon high above.
The afternoon passed, with the walls of the chasm gradually opening out. At sunset the travelers camped on a small beach, to pass a night in eerie silence.
The next day the river emerged into a wide valley overgrown with tall yellow grass. The hills retreated; the vegetation along the shore became thick and dense, and alive with small creatures, half-spider, half-monkey, which whined and yelped and spurted jets of noxious fluid toward the boat. Other streams made confluence; the Jinga became broad and placid. On the following day trees of remarkable stature appeared along the shore, raising a variety of silhouettes against the smoke-brown sky, and by noon the boat floated with jungle to either side. The sail hung limp; the air was dank with odors of wet wood and decay. The hopping tree-creatures kept to the high branches; through the dimness below drifted gauze-moths, insects hanging on pale bubbles, bird-like creatures which seemed to swim on four soft wings. Once the travelers heard heavy groaning and trampling sounds, another time a ferocious hissing and again a set of strident shrieks, from sources invisible.
By slow degrees the Jinga broadened to become a placid flood, flowing around dozens of small islands, each overgrown with fronds, plumes, fan-shaped dendrons. Once, from the corner of his eye, Reith glimpsed what seemed to be a canoe carrying three youths wearing peacock-tail headdresses, but when he turned to look he saw only an island, and was never sure what in fact he had seen.
Later in the day a sinuous twenty-foot beast swam after them, but fifty feet from the boat it seemed to lose interest and submerged.
At sundown the travelers made camp on the beach of a small island. Half an hour later Traz became uneasy and, nudging Reith, pointed to the underbrush. They heard a stealthy rustling and presently sensed a clammy odor. An instant later the beast which had swum after them lunged forth screaming. Reith fired one of his explosive pellets into the very maw of the beast; with its head blown off it careened in a circle, using a peculiar prancing gait, finally floundering in the water to sink.
The group gingerly resumed their seats around the campfire. Helsse watched Reith return the handgun to his pouch, and could no longer restrain his curiosity.
"Where, may I ask, did you obtain your weapon?"
"I have learned," said Reith, "that candor makes problems. Your friend Dordolio thinks me a lunatic; Anacho the Dirdirman prefers the term 'amnesiac.' So-think whatever you like."
Helsse murmured, as if for his own ears: "What strange tales we all could tell, if candor indeed were the rule."
Zarfo guffawed. "Candor? Who needs it? I'll tell strange tales as long as someone will listen."
"No doubt," said Helsse, "but persons with desperate goals must hold their secrets close."
Traz, who disliked Helsse, looked sideways with something like a sneer. "Who could this be? I have neither secrets nor desperate goals."
"It must be the Dirdirman," said Zarfo with a sly wink.
Anacho shook his head. "Secrets? No. Only reticences. Desperate goals? I travel with Adam Reith since I have nothing better to do. I am an outcast among the sub-men. I have no goals whatever, except survival."
Zarfo said, "I have a secret: the location of my poor hoard of sequins. My goals? Equally modest: an acre or two of river meadow south of Smargash, a cabin under the tayberry trees, a polite maiden to boil my tea. I recommend them to you."
Helsse, looking into the campfire, smiled faintly. "My every thought, willy-nilly, is a secret. As for my goals-if I return to Settra and somehow can appease the Security Company, I'll be well content."
Reith looked up to where clouds were clotting out the stars. "I'll be content to stay dry tonight."
The group carried the boat ashore, turned it over and, with the sail, made a shelter. Rain began to fall, extinguishing the campfire and sending puddles of water under the boat.
Dawn finally arrived: a blear of rain and umber gloom. At noon, with the clouds breaking apart, the travelers once more floated the boat, loaded the provisions and set off to the south.
The Jinga widened until the shores were no more than dark marks. The afternoon passed; sunset was a vast chaos of black, gold, and brown. Drifting through the gloom, the travelers sought for a place to land. Mud flats lined the shore, but at last, as purple-brown dusk became night, a sandy bluff appeared under which the travelers landed for the night.
On the following day they entered the swamps. The Jinga, dividing into a dozen channels, moved sluggishly among islands of reeds, and the travelers passed a cramped night in the boat. Toward evening of the day following they came upon a canted dyke of gray schist which, rising and falling, created a chain of rocky islands across the swamp. At some immensely remote time, one or another people of old Tschai had used the islands to support a causeway, long toppled to a crumble of black concrete. On the largest of the islands the travelers camped, dining on the dried fish and musty lentils provided by the Hoch Hars.
Traz was restless. He made a circuit of the island, clambered to the highest jut, looked back and forth along the line of the ancient bridge. Reith, disturbed by Traz's apprehension, joined him. "What do you see?"
"Nothing."
Reith looked all around. The water reflected the dusky mauve of the sky, the hulks of the nearby islands. They returned to the campfire, and Reith set sentry watches. He awoke at dawn and instantly wondered why he had not been called.
Then he noticed that the boat was gone. He shook Traz, who had stood the first watch. "Last night, whom did you call?"
"Helsse."
"He did not call me. And the boat is missing."
"And Helsse as well," said Traz.
Reith saw this to be the case.
Traz pointed to the next island, forty yards across the water. "There is the boat. Helsse went for a midnight row."
Going down to the water's edge Reith called: "Helsse! Helsse!"
No response. Helsse was not visible.
Reith considered the distance to the boat. The water was smooth and opaque as slate. Reith shook his head. The boat so near, so obvious: bait? From his pouch he took the hank of cord, originally a component of his survival kit, and tied a stone to one end. He heaved the stone at the boat. It fell short. Reith dragged it back through the water. For an instant the line went taut and quivered to the presence of something strong and vital.
Reith grimaced. He heaved the stone again, and now it wedged inside the boat. He pulled; the boat came back across the water.
With Traz, Reith returned to the neighboring island, to find no trace of Helsse.
But under a jut of rock they found a hole slanting down into the island. Traz put his head close to the opening, listened, sniffed, and motioned Reith to do the same. Reith caught a faint clammy odor, like that of earthworms. In a subdued voice he called down into the hole: "Helsse!" and once again, louder:
"Helsse!" To no effect.
They returned to their companions. "It seems that the Pnume play jokes," said Reith in a subdued voice.
They ate a silent breakfast, waited an indecisive fidgeting hour. Then slowly they loaded the boat and departed the island. Reith looked back through the scanscope until the island no longer could be seen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CHANNELS OF the Jinga came together; the swamp became a jungle. Fronds and tendrils hung over the black water; giant moths floated like ghosts. The upper strata of the forest were a distinct environment: pink and p
ale yellow ribbons writhed through the air like eels; black-furred globes with six long white arms swung nimbly from branch to branch. Once, far off along an avenue of vision, Reith saw a cluster of large woven huts high in the branches and a little later the boat passed under a bridge of sticks and coarse ropes. Three naked people came to cross the bridge as the boat drifted close: frail thin-bodied folk with parchment-colored skin. Observing the boat, they halted in shock, then raced across the bridge and disappeared into the foliage.
For a week they sailed and paddled uneventfully, the Jinga growing ever wider.
One day they passed a canoe from which an old man netted fish; the next day they saw a village on the banks; the day after a power-boat throbbed past. On the night following they halted at a town and spent the night in a riverside inn, standing on stilts over the water.
Two more days they sailed downstream, to a brisk wind from astern. The Jinga was now wide and deep and the wind raised sizable waves. Navigation began to be a problem. Coming to another town they saw a river packet headed downstream; abandoning the boat they took passage for Kabasas on the Parapan.
Three days they rode the packet, enjoying the comfort of hammocks and fresh food. At noon on the fourth day, with the Jinga so broad that the far shore could not be seen, the blue domes of Kabasas appeared on rising land to the west.
Kabasas, like Coad, served as a commercial depot for extensive hinterlands and like Coad seemed to seethe with intrigue. Warehouses and sheds faced the docks; behind, ranks of arched and colonnaded buildings, of beige, gray, white and dark blue plaster, mounted the hills. A wall of each building, for reasons never clear to Reith, leaned either inward or out, giving the city a curiously irregular appearance by no means dissonant with the conduct of the inhabitants.
These were a slender alert people, with flowing brown hair, wide cheekbones, burning black eyes. The woman were notably handsome and Zarfo cautioned all: "If you value your lives, pay no heed to the women! Do not so much as look after them, even though they provoke and tease! They play a strange game here in Kabasas. At any hint of admiration they set up furious outcry and a hundred other women, screaming and cursing, rush up to knife the miscreant."