by Jack Vance
“The Dead Steppe Inn is the best of Pera?”
“Yes, a fine hostelry indeed. The Gnashters will tax your wealth, but this is what we must pay for our security. In Pera no one may rob or rape but Naga Goho and the Gnashters; and this is a boon. What if everyone enjoyed this license?”
“Naga Goho is the ruler of Pera, then?”
“Yes, one might say so.” He pointed to a massive structure of blocks and slabs on the central eminence of the city. “There is his palace, on the citadel, and there he lives with his Gnashters. But I will say no more; after all, they have worried the Phung out to North Pera; there is trade with Dadiche; bandits avoid the city; affairs could be the worse.”
“I see,” said Reith. “Well then, where do we find the inn?”
“Yonder, at the foot of the hill: at the caravan’s end.”
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DEAD STEPPE INN was the most grandiose structure Reith had yet seen in a ruined city: a long building with a complicated set of roofs and gables built against the central hill of Pera. As in all the inns of Tschai, there was a large common-room with trestle-tables, but rather than rude benches, the Dead Steppe Inn boasted fine high-backed chairs of carved black wood. Three chandeliers of colored glass and black iron illuminated the room; on the walls hung a number of very old terra-cotta masks: visages of some fanciful half-human folk.
The tables were crowded with fugitives from the caravan; a savory odor of food hung in the air. Reith began to feel somewhat more cheerful. Here, at least, were a small few concessions to comfort and style.
The innkeeper was a small plump man with a neat red beard, protuberant red-brown eyes. His hands were in ceaseless motion and his feet shifted back and forth as if haste dominated his life. At Reith’s request for accommodation he waved his hands in despair. “Have you not heard? The green demons destroyed Baojian’s train. Here are the survivors, and I must find room. Some cannot pay; what of that? I am ordered by Naga Goho to extend shelter.”
“We were also with the caravan,” said Reith. “However, we can pay.”
The innkeeper became more optimistic. “I’ll find you a single room; you must make the best of this. A word of advice.” Here he looked swiftly over his shoulder. “Be discreet. There have been changes at Pera.”
The three were shown to a cubicle of adequate cleanliness; three pallets were brought in. The inn could provide no dry clothing; with garments still damp the three descended to the common-room, where now they discovered Anacho the Dirdirman, who had arrived an hour before. Off to the side, staring thoughtfully into the fire, was Baojian.
For supper they were served ample bowls of stew, wafers of hard bread. While they were eating seven men entered the room to stand looking truculently this way and that. All were strong big-boned men, a trifle fleshy with ease, florid with good living. Six wore dull red gowns, stylish black leather slippers, rakish caps hung with baubles. Gnashters, thought Reith. The seventh, wearing an embroidered surcoat, was evidently Naga Goho: a man tall and thin, with a peculiarly large vulpine head. He spoke to a room which had become hushed: “Welcome all, welcome all to Pera! We have a happy orderly city, as you will notice. Laws are sternly enforced. A sojourn tax is collected as well. If anyone lacks funds he must contribute his labor for the common benefit. So, then-are there questions or complaints?” He looked about the room, but no one spoke. The Gnashters circulated through the room, collecting coins. Reith grudgingly paid a tax of nine sequins for himself, Traz and the Flower of Cath. None of the folk present seemed to find the exaction unreasonable. So pervasive was the lack of social discipline, Reith decided, that exploitation of advantage was taken for granted.
Naga Goho noticed the Flower of Cath and stood erect, preening his mustache. He signaled to the innkeeper, who hastened to present himself. The two held a muttered colloquy, Naga Goho never taking his eyes from Ylin-Ylan.
The innkeeper crossed the room, muttered in Reith’s ear. “Naga Goho has taken note of the woman.” He indicated the Flower. “He wants to know her status: is she slave? daughter? wife?”
Reith glanced sidewise at Ylin-Ylan, at a loss for immediate response; already he saw the girl stiffening. If he declared her to be alone and independent he put her at the mercy of Naga Goho. If he claimed her as his own he would no doubt provoke her indignant disclaimer. He said, “I am her escort, she is under my protection.”
The innkeeper pursed his lips, shrugged and went to report to Naga Goho, who made a small curt gesture and turned his attention elsewhere. Not long after he departed.
In the small room Reith found himself in a state of disturbing propinquity with the Flower of Cath. She sat on her pallet, clasping her knees disconsolately. “Cheer up,” said Reith. “Things aren’t all that bad.”
She gave her head a mournful shake. “I am lost among barbarians: a pebble dropped in Tembara Deep, gone from mind.”
“Nonsense,” scoffed Reith. “You’ll be traveling home with the next caravan to leave Pera.”
Ylin-Ylan was unconvinced. “At home they will name another the Flower of Cath; she will take my flower at the Banquet of the Season. The princess will beseech the girls to name their names, and I will not be there. No one will ask me and no one will know my names.”
“Tell me your names then,” said Reith. “I’d like to hear.”
The Flower turned to look at him. “Do you mean this? Do you mean what you ask?”
Reith was puzzled by her intensity. “Certainly.”
The girl turned a swift glance toward Traz, who was occupied in arranging his pallet. “Come outside,” she whispered in Reith’s ear and jumped to her feet.
Reith followed her to the balcony. For a period they leaned together, elbows touching, looking out over the ruined city. Az rode high among broken clouds; below were a few dismal lights; from somewhere came a reedy chant, the twang of a plectrum. The Flower spoke in a quick hushed voice: “My flower is the Ylin-Ylan, and this you know; my Flower name. But that is a name used only at demonstrations and pageants.” She looked toward him breathlessly, leaning so close that Reith could smell the clean tart-sweet scent of her person.
Reith asked in a husky voice, “You have other names too?”
“Yes.” Sighing, she edged closer to Reith, who began to feel out of his depth. “Why have you not asked before? You must have known I would tell.”
“Well, then,” asked Reith, “what are your names?”
Demurely, she said, “My court name is Shar Zarin.” She hesitated then, leaning her head on his shoulder (for Reith’s arm was around her waist), she said, “My child name was Zozi, but only my father calls me that.”
“Flower name, court name, child name ... What other names do you have?”
“My friend-name, my secret name, and-one other. My friend-name, would you hear it? If I tell you, then we are friends, and you must tell me your friend-name.”
“Certainly,” croaked Reith. “Of course.”
“Derl.”
Reith kissed her upturned face. “My first name is Adam.”
“Is that your friend-name?”
“Yes ... I suppose you’d call it that.”
“Do you have a secret name?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
She gave a small nervous laugh. “Perhaps it is just as well. For if I asked you, and you told me, then I would know your secret soul, and then-” Breathlessly she looked up at Reith. “You must have a secret name; one that only you know. I have.”
Intoxicated, Reith tossed caution to the winds. “What is yours?”
She raised her mouth to his ear. “L’lae. She is a nymph who lives in clouds over Mount Daramthissa, and loves the star-god Ktan.” She looked toward him, melting, expectant, and Reith kissed her fervently. She sighed. “When we are alone, you shall call me L’lae and I will call you Ktan and that shall be your secret name.”
Reith laughed. “If you like.”
“We shall wait here, an
d soon there will be a caravan east: back across the steppe to Coad, then by cog across the Draschade, to Vervode in Cath.”
Reith put his hand on her mouth. “I must go to Dadiche.”
“Dadiche? The city of the Blue Chasch? Are you still so obsessed? But why?”
Reith raised his eyes, looked off into the night-sky, as if to draw strength from the stars, though none of those visible could possibly be the Sun ... What could he say? If he told the truth she would think him insane, even though her ancestors had beamed signals to Earth.
So he hesitated, disgusted by his own softness of spirit. The Flower of Cath--Ylin-Ylan, Shar Zarin, Zozi, Derl, L’lae, according to the social circumstances-put her hands on his shoulders and peered up into his face. “Since I know you for Ktan and you know me for L’lae, your mind is my mind; your pleasure is my pleasure. So-what prompts you for Dadiche?”
Reith drew a deep breath. “I came to Kotan in a space-boat. The Blue Chasch almost killed me, and conveyed the space-boat to Dadiche, or so I suppose. I must recover it.”
The Flower was bewildered. “But where did you learn to fly a spaceboat? You are no Dirdirman or Wankhmen ... Or are you?”
“No, of course not. No more than you. I was instructed.”
“It is all such a mystery.” Her arms twitched on his shoulders. “And were you able to recover the space-boat, what would you do?”
“First, take you to Cath.”
The fingers now gripped his shoulders, the eyes searched his through the darkness. “Then what? You would return to your own land?”
“Yes.”
“You have a woman-a wife?”
“Oh no. No indeed.”
“Someone who knows your secret name?”
“I had no secret name until you gave me one.”
The girl took her hands from his shoulders, and, leaning on the rail, stared moodily out across old Pera. “If you go to Dadiche, they will smell you and kill you.”
“‘Smell me? How do you mean?”
She turned him a quick look. “You are a puzzle! So much you know, and so little! One would think you from the farthest island of Tschai! The Blue Chasch smell as accurately as we can see!”
“I still must make the trial.”
“I don’t understand,” she said in a dull voice. “I have told you my name; I have given what is most precious to me; and you are unmoved. You do not alter your way.”
Reith took her in his arms. She was stiff, then gradually yielded. “I am not unmoved,” said Reith. “Far from it. But I must go to Dadiche--for your sake as well as mine.”
“How my sake? To be carried back to Cath?”
“That, and more. Are you happy to be dominated by Dirdir and Chasch and Wankh, not to mention the Pnume?”
“I don’t know ... I had never thought of it. Men are freaks, afterthoughts, so they tell us. Though Mad King Hopsin insisted that men came from a far planet. He called to them for help, which of course never came. That was a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“It’s a long time to wait,” said Reith. He kissed her once more; she submitted listlessly. The fervor was gone.
“I feel-strange,” she mumbled. “I don’t know how I feel.”
They stood by the rail, listening to the sounds of the inn: soft hoots of laughter from the pot-room; complaints of children, the scolding of their mothers. The Flower of Cath said, “I think I will go to bed now.”
Reith held her back. “Derl.”
“Yes?”
“When I come back from Dadiche-”
“You will never come back from Dadiche. The Blue Chasch will take you for their games ... Now I will try to sleep, and forget that I am alive.”
She went back into the cubicle. Reith remained out on the balcony, first cursing himself, then wondering how he could have acted differently, unless he were composed of something other than flesh and blood.
Tomorrow, then: Dadiche, to learn once and for all the shape of his future.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE NIGHT PASSED; morning came: first a wash of sepia light, then a wan yellow glare, then the appearance of Carina 4269. From the kitchens rose the smoke of fires, the rattle of pans. Reith descended to the common-room, where he found Anacho the Dirdirman before him, sitting over a bowl of tea. Reith joined him and was likewise brought tea by a kitchen-wench. He asked, “What do you know of Dadiche?”
Anacho warmed his long pale fingers around the bowl. “The city is relatively old: twenty thousand years or so. It is the main Chasch spaceport, though they have little communication with their homeworld Godag. South of Dadiche are factories and technical plants, and there is even some small trade between Dirdir and Chasch, though both parties pretend to the contrary. What do you seek at Dadiche?” And he fixed Reith with his owlish water-gray eyes.
Reith reflected. He gained nothing by confiding in Anacho, whom he still regarded as something of an unknown quantity. Finally he said, “The Chasch took something of value from me. I want to get it back, if possible.”
“Interesting,” said Anacho with a sardonic overtone to his voice. “I am piqued. What could the Chasch take from a sub-man that he would travel a thousand leagues to recover? And how could he expect to recover it, or even find it?”
“I can find it. What happens next is the problem.”
“You intrigue me,” said the Dirdirman. “What do you propose to do first?”
“I need information. I want to learn if persons such as you and I can enter Dadiche and depart without hindrance.”
“Not I,” said Anacho. “They would smell me for a Dirdirman. They have noses of astonishing particularity. The food you eat delivers essences to your skin; the Chasch can identify these, and separate Dirdir from Wankh, marsh-dwellers from steppe-men, rich from the poor; not to mention the variations caused by disease, uncleanliness, unguents, waters, a dozen other conditions. They can smell salt air in a man’s lungs if he has been near the ocean; they can detect ozone on a man coming down from the heights. They sense if you are hungry, or angry, or afraid; they can define your age, your sex, the color of your skin. Their noses provide them an entire dimension of perception.”
Reith sat reflecting.
Anacho arose, went to a nearby table where sat three men in rough garments: men with waxy white-gray skins, light-brown hair, mild large eyes. To Anacho’s questions they gave deferent responses; Anacho ambled back to Reith.
“Those three are drovers; they visit Dadiche regularly. The country is safe to the west of Pera; the Green Chasch avoid the city guns. No one will molest us along the road-”
“‘Us’? You are coming?”
“Why not? I have never seen Dadiche or its outlying gardens. We can hire a pair of leap-horses and approach Dadiche within a mile or so. The Chasch seldom leave the city, so the drovers tell me.”
“Good,” said Reith. “I’ll have a word with Traz; he can keep the girl company.”
At a corral to the rear of the inn Reith and the Dirdirman hired leap-horses of a tall rubber-legged breed strange to Reith. The ostler threw on the saddles, shoved guide-bars through holes in the creatures’ brains, at which they screamed and whipped the air with their palps. The reins were attached, Reith and Anacho vaulted up into the saddles; the beasts made angry sidling leaps, then sprang off down the road.
They passed through the center of Pera, where, over a considerable area, folk had built all manner of dwellings from the rubble and slabs of concrete. There was a greater population than Reith had expected, numbering perhaps four or five thousand. And up on top of the old citadel, brooding over all, was the crude mansion in which lived Naga Goho and his retinue of Ghashters.
Coming into the central plaza Reith and Anacho stopped short before a display of horrid objects. Beside a massive gibbet were flaying-stocks stained with blood. Poles held aloft a pair of impaled men. From a derrick swung a small cage; inside crouched a naked sun-blackened creature, barely recognizable as a man. A Gnasht
er lounged nearby, a heavy-jowled young man wearing a maroon vest and a knee-length black kilt: the Gnashter uniform. Reith reined up the leap-horse and, indicating the cage, addressed the Gnashter. “What was his crime?”
“Recalcitrance, when Naga Goho called his daughter to service.”
“What then? How long does he swing thus?”
The Gnashter glanced up indifferently. “Another three days he’ll last. The rain freshened him up; he’s full of water.”
“What of those?” Reith pointed to the impaled corpses.
“Defaulters. Certain graceless folk begrudge a tithe of their wealth to Naga Goho.”
Anacho touched Reith’s arm. “Come.”
Reith slowly turned away; impossible to right all the wrongs of this dreadful planet. But looking back toward the wretch in the cage, he felt a flush of shame. Still-what options were open to him? To embroil himself with Naga Goho could easily mean the loss of his life, with no benefit to anyone. If he were able to regain his space-boat and return to Earth, the lot of all men on Tschai must be improved. So Reith told himself, and tried to put the dismal scene out of his mind.
Beyond Pera were large numbers of irregular plots, where women and girls cultivated all manner of crops. Drays loaded with food and farm produce moved westward along the road toward Dadiche: a commerce surprising to Reith, who had expected no such formalized trade.
The two rode ten miles, toward a low range of gray hills. Where the road rose into a steep-walled ravine a gate barred the way and they were forced to wait while a pair of Gnashters inspected a dray piled with crates of cabbage-like pulps, then levied a toll upon the drayman. Reith and Anacho, passing the gate, paid a sequin each.
“Naga Goho misses few chances to profit,” Reith grumbled. “What does he do with his wealth?”
The Dirdirman shrugged. “What does anyone do with wealth?”
The road wound up, passed through a notch. Beyond lay the land of the Blue Chasch: a wooded countryside meshed by dozens of little rivers, easing in and out of innumerable ponds. There were a hundred sorts of trees: red feather-palm, green conifer-like growths, black trunks and branches hung with white globes; and many groves of adarak. The entire landscape was a single garden, tended with meticulous care.