I had made a living back home by ensuring people followed the vague minutia of countless laws and regulations. Now I was living in a world as lawless as any I’d heard of. The only thing of value that I had brought with me from Earth was scant knowledge gleaned from my memories of camping with Dad, and a knack for language.
I became uneasily aware of movement in the woods to my left. I heard rustling in the undergrowth. I picked up the pace. Twice I caught a glimpse of forms moving in the forest, something at least as big as a large dog.
The woods thinned ahead and to the right of the path. My pursuers had stuck to the trees, thus far. I chose to risk it and turned right, sprinting across the small clearing.
I strung my bow and readied an arrow. I watched the tree line and let the arrow fly when I first glimpsed movement. I overshot and struck only leaves. Something in the trees darted right and I saw a gap in brush, revealing grey-green hide. My next arrow hit solidly, answered by a loud yelping. The skulking shapes ran off to the east, leaving an injured comrade tumbling clumsily after them in the brush.
I returned the way I’d came, returning to the northbound trail to the okavi village. Now I kept my bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. I paid close attention to any rustle or other noise coming from the woods around me, but I caught no further sign of the tan skulkers. I rested lightly that night, my sleep troubled by thoughts of rogue shokhung or stalking predators.
Late the following day, I found myself at the gates of the okavi village.
“Ele, okavi!” I called out to the guard, my Shikachui much better than it had been on my last visit. “I am Diggory of Ami. I come to trade with Fotis!” As before, I was allowed to wander the compound only after the guards had inspected my belongings and verified I had no dangerous weapons. I was directed to Fotis’s cottage, but I remembered the way well enough. Once there, the tanner greeted me again with food and drink.
“You come here from D’Silva?” he asked.
“Yes, and I bring furs and skins from the woods.”
“Good, good,” said Fotis. “D’Silva is your pakren, true?” I confirmed. “You will be living there now?”
“No”, I said. “D’Silva likes to live alone. I want to find more pakren.”
Fotis waggled his fleshy moustache. “What is your hren called?”
“Human.” He repeated it, making it sound like ‘yoo min’.”
“Are more humans here? I have only seen you and D’Silva.”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But other humans have tried flying between the stars and never came home. Maybe they are here, in a trap like all of us.”
“If they are,” Fotis said, “they are far away. I have lived here fifteen years of this planet, and traveled much, but I have not seen any.”
“It is not much hope,” I said. “But I will look for them. I want to go north, to big town, and ask there. Can you tell me how to go?”
“It is not hard to find,” he answered. “It is north three days, on the big river. It is called Black Banks. There is a much bigger town up the river from there, where you will find more hren, so maybe more answers. I do not like to go there. The praad control that city, and they want our weapons. Since you have lesser weapons, it may be good for you. If you do not find much in Black Banks, maybe you go east to Sarnin.”
I offered to pay him the furs and skins I’d brought with me for directions to Black Banks. He refused to accept, as D’Silva had counseled me he would.
“For no more than that, I take no pay! But I will buy those from you, and then you will have better things to trade at Black Banks.” The rest of the evening was spent with Fotis taking me around the village and helping me to barter for goods.
I traded my furs for a handful of glass vials containing liquids unknown to me. Those became a pallet of aromatic wood that was traded for a jar of metallic powder, which, Fotis told me, was in demand with ceramics-makers. Of what the village could offer me at that time, he said that would be the best thing that I could actually carry with me. I had no choice but to accept his advice. I spent the night in the common room, and departed the following day with a simply scrawled map showing the way to Black Banks. The directions were simple, really. In that area, all roads led to Black Banks.
Chapter 9: The World
The weather grew cooler and the road sloped down as the land grew hilly. The road wound through valleys covered with lush teal feather ferns and dark boulders. On the second day I came across a troop of shokhung in a wagon. I hailed them and spoke a while. They were traveling from Black Banks. They knew Thashingi’s troop well, and said they had met up with them east of Black Banks a month or so ago. I did not to mention the rogue shokhung I had slain. They were eager to be about their business, so we parted after a brief conversation. I asked them to give my regards to Wuheka and company, should they pass that way.
By mid-afternoon the third day, I found myself on a hill overlooking Ovitan, the Big River. For someone who’d spent time on the Mississippi, it didn’t look that big to me. Muddy water swept between the banks of black rock that gave the city its name.
The city itself, from where I stood, looked like a chaotic jumble of shacks and cottages, as though a tornado had scooped up a small farm town then deposited the buildings in no particular order, somehow leaving most of them relatively undamaged. On the outlying edges stood tents like wigwams or yurts. The sounds of life drifted across the rushing of the river, and I saw shapes moving about, though I could make out few details of the inhabitants. I wondered how I was going to cross, but soon spotted a couple of barges making their way between the two sides. I wondered whether any would carry me, and what it might cost.
I made my way down to the river side, where I found small barge moored to a jutting rock. The creature attending it wore a green robe that concealed its bowed form. A wedge-shaped head with large eyes on the side sat atop a long neck. I approached slowly and called out.
“Ele! Do you speak Shikachui? “
“Of course,” it said. I could see no mouth, but the voice came from the head.
“I want to go to the city. How can I get there?”
The creature’s head swung over the boat. “This is carry-boat. I take you there. How you pay?” And so began the haggling. The ferryman – ferry whatever – had no interest in the metallic powder, and I was loathe to part with any of my tools. The creature sampled the dried meat I offered, thrusting it under its “chin”, where, I now saw, the mouth was. It agreed to transport me for the remaining dried meat. I sat in the boat as the creature propelled the craft by means of a long oar. After a while, it spoke.
“What are you?” it said.
“Human.”
“I don’t know human. Where are humans?”
“I don’t know,” I responded.
“You came alone?” it said. “I came alone. Not easy, no pakren. If you have no pakren, Black Banks is a good enough place to be.”
Before long, I disembarked. There I was: one of a kind in an alien city, where everyone was an alien.
The place was not overly busy, but already I saw representatives of several species: a handful of three-foot tall orange bipeds with round heads and eyes on stalks; another built like a furry ostrich; and a brawny quadruped with nothing that I could identify as a head.
There were no streets, per se, just winding paths, many very broad, meandering between buildings of diverse size and construction. The doorways of many of them were two or three times as broad as most doors on Earth; others were much taller. The buildings themselves were mostly wooden construction: logs or sometimes planks. A few were stone or something like adobe. Roofs were dried ferns, wooden planks, clay shingles, or hides. Quite a few buildings had open booths in front with goods set out, presumably for sale.
“Ele!” called out an orange eye-stalk creature at one such booth. “What you looking for today? You are hungry, yes? I sell you good food.”
I turned aside and approached the peddler. The creatu
re’s mouth was on the very top of its head. It had thin arms long enough to reach the ground, terminating in what looked like a single, foot-long finger.
“I am not hungry now,” I said.
“That’s bad,” it said. “What do you want? I think you are new here.”
“I just arrived,” I answered. “I’m looking for my pakren.”
“Did you lose them here?” it replied.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know if there are any on this world. I am trying to find out. We’re called ‘humans’.”
The creature smacked its orange lips a few times. “No, I never saw human before you. Maybe you ask someone else. You sure you’re not hungry? I sell good food. Good for all kinds of hren.” I glanced about at the wide selection of fruits and vegetables stacked nearby.
“Do you have any brai-alu?” I asked. I had some with me, but I’d run out eventually.
“Never heard of it! What is it?”
I reached into my pouch and took one out. The salesman held it over its head and turned both eyestalks toward it.
“Ele! This is called gruiy. This is no good. Humans eat this trash?”
“It’s great!” I answered. “It is much like a plant on my home world.” It handed my food back to me.
“Ue! You can have all you find. To oiwepol like me, it tastes like death.”
“Do you know where I can find any…” I hesitated, not remembering the word Fotis had used for ceramics. “Do you know where I can any makers of… hard… mud things?”
“What mud things do you need?”
I held up the powder. “I want to sell this.”
“What is it?”
“It makes mud things harder when you mix it and bake it.”
“You want hefri makers.” Hefri registered in my memory as ceramics. “There are sellers here. Maybe you talk to them. They are in town middle, at the big market. Go there. When you are hungry, you come back and talk to Hwao,” he said, thumping his own head with a long finger. “I will sell you good oiwepol food.” I thanked him for his time and went off in search of the market.
I saw more of the oiwepol about the town, and a few more of the hairy ostrich things. The latter had no forelimbs, but I spotted them standing on one leg, using the other foot as a hand, assisted by a prehensile tail. I greeted a troop of shokhung, who again turned out to know Thashingi. They pointed me in the direction of a ceramics merchant named Vetuvenu.
I heard the market before I saw it. A constant murmur drifted through the air, punctuated by louder cries and interjections. The market was strewn about with booths and tables. A zoo would have only slightly greater variety of creatures. Oiwepol were common; I saw a couple of small groups of shokhung wandering about, one with a mongmoth ; the headless quadrupeds, I discovered, had faces, if not exactly heads, with multiple large black eyes and a long protrusion between their shoulders that may have been a proboscis.
Tables and counters were of varying heights, the taller ones accompanied by steps or stools so shorter species could access the wares. A creature with a long snout terminating in sharp, forward thrusting tusks waved a handful of cloth at me, calling “Ele, ele”. I told it I needed no cloth right now. An instant later I nearly tripped across a short creature built like a barrel with arms and legs spaced evenly around its diameter. I stumbled through a group of beings about nine feet tall, two-thirds of which was leg. One righted me with arms that nearly reached its knees. “Be careful!” it scolded me. There were cloth merchants and food vendors, tool peddlers and leather-mongers. Some of the aliens walked about unclothed, others wore kilts, loincloths, tunics, or robes. Nothing looked human, and few could have even been played by a human in a movie, however creative their makeup departments.
Vetuvenu turned out to the abandoned lovechild of a grizzly bear and an iguana—a hulking mass covered in scales, with a long thick tail. A short horn graced the tip of his snout, and a colorful frill behind his head lay along his thick, long neck. He was a little frightening.
“Somebody told me you sell ceramics—is that right?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he rumbled in a deep gravelly voice that I could feel almost as much as hear.
“You don’t know if you sell ceramics?” I asked, perplexed.
“I don’t know whether somebody told you that. Why did you ask me?”
“I am sorry, I am new to the language,” I answered.
“I am sorry you are new to the language, too,” he replied. “It makes you hard to understand.”
“Do you sell ceramics?” I asked.
“Yes. That is why my sign says ‘ceramics for sale’,” he said, gesturing to a plaque with inked squiggles.
“Ah. I don’t know how to read this language,” I said. Vetuvenu looked at me impassively, not answering. Several seconds went by before I realized he had no intention of commenting on my statement. “Do you know anyone who would want to buy some of this?” I said, pouring a small handful of the metallic powder into one palm. His frill rippled a little.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you tell me who that is?” I asked.
“Of course I can,” he answered. “Why would I not be able to tell you that?”
I was sensing that Vetuvenu was very literal and straight-forward. I would need to be less… polite?
“Who wants to buy this?” I said.
“I do,” he answered.
“What will you give me for this?” I asked.
“I will give you thirty-two frim of maketas,” he answered, telling me exactly nothing.
“I don’t know what that means,” I responded. He stared at me several seconds.
“It means that if you give me that powder I will give you thirty-two frim of maketas.”
“I don’t know what a maketas is, or what a frim is.”
“Ah,” he said. “Maketas is a metal. It is very useful and many people trade for it, especially here and Sarnin, or places with large markets. Frim is an amount. These are real praad frim, so they will be useful most anywhere.” As he spoke, Vetuvenu looked under his counter and brought forth a dark wooden box, opened it, and withdrew a sheet of metal. It looked like copper. The metal sheet was stamped into multiple ingots which looked they could be broken off, like pieces of a chocolate bar. Each ingot bore an small elaborate insignia stamped on its center.
“How much is thirty-two frim?” I asked. He stared again. Then he broke off a piece of the sheet, eight ingots by four.
“That is thirty-two frim,” he rumbled.
“But how much is it worth?” I said. He stared.
“To me, it is worth that jar of binding powder.”
“Yes, but how much can I buy with it?”
“How much what?” he responded.
“I don’t know!” I said, my exasperation growing.
“Then I do not know how much of it you can buy,” he said flatly.
I took several deep breaths. Vetuvenu was answering all my questions quite precisely without telling me much of anything. Whether it was a personal quirk or a racial one, it made dealing with him maddening. He was offering me an exact quantity that was, for all purposes, an unknown amount. I decided to feel him out more.
“Will you give me thirty six frim?” I said.
“No,” he said, “I will give you thirty-two.”
“What about thirty three?”
“I will give you thirty-two.” I dug into my backpack and brought out a bottle of the blue fruit wine. “What if I gave you this, as well?”
“I do not want that,” he said. “I want the binding powder.”
He didn’t want to haggle. Vetuvenu was very straight-forward. So much so, in fact, that I could not imagine the creature to be duplicitous. My gut told me that if he was offering thirty-two ingots of copper, that was probably a fair price.
“I accept your offer,” I said. I placed the jar on the table and he scooted the ingots closer to me. “I don’t know how long I will be here, or how long this copper will last
me. Is there any work in town?”
“Of course there is work,” he said, and I immediately recognized my blunder. “All here at the market are working.”
“I mean, is there anyone who will pay me to work for them?”
“What work can you do?”
“Lots of things. I have few skills, but I am willing to learn.”
“You are small and do not look strong,” he said.
“Compared to you, that’s true, but I have povum serta,” I said, wiggling the fingers of my povum serta—my ‘clever hands’.”
Vetuvenu examined my digits without comment. “You might find work. I don’t need any help right now, but others may.” The reptilian went about his work.
And so… now what? I had arrived at the city. I had money, but did not know how much. I would need to find sources of food. I would need shelter. And of course, I had come here for a reason. I turned back to the shopkeeper.
“Have you ever seen a hren like me?” I asked. “Or heard of any? We are called humans.” He looked at me.
“No,” he said.
So I meandered through the market a while. At the next booth I confronted a lumpy brown creature with sagging skin like a mastiff. I asked it, “I am looking for my pakren. We are called ‘humans’. Have you ever seen or —”
It cut me off with a wave of a flappy limb over its wares. “You buy? You no buy?” It sold a variety of tools, some unidentifiable, carved out of wood and something like ivory.
“Uh, no, I don’t need any—”
“You no buy?” he cut me off again.
“No.”
“Leave now,” he said and turned away.
I spoke to oiwepol, shokhung, a miniature lizard/monkey/bird, an ostrich-thingy, and a couple of okavi. None were as rude as the wrinkled merchant. None had heard of humans or seen anything that looked like me. As I saw that daylight was dwindling, I realized I needed to ask about lodging. As capricious fate would have it, I had circled around to Vetuvenu’s booth when the thought struck me.
Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1) Page 16