by Jack Vance
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, and 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 Gnashter 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.
Below was Dadiche: low flat domes and curving white surfaces, half-submerged in foliage. The size and population of the city was impossible to estimate; there was no differentiation between city and park. Reith was forced to admit that the Blue Chasch lived in pleasant circumstances.
The Dirdirman, conditioned to other aesthetic precepts, spoke with condescension. “Typical of the Chasch mentality: formless, chaotic, devious. You have seen a Dirdir city? Truly noble! a sight to stop the heart! This half-bucolic botchery”—Anacho made a scornful gesture “reflects the caprice of the Blue Chasch. Not as flaccid and decadent as the Old Chasch of course-remember Golsse? but then the Old Church have been moribund for twenty thousand years ... What do you do? What is that instrument?”
For Reith, unable to contrive a method to read his transcom dials discreetly, had brought it forth. “This,” said Reith, “is a device which indicates the direction and distance of three and a half miles.” He sighted along the needle. “The line passes through that large structure with the high dome.” He pointed. “The distance is about right.”
Anacho was looking at the transcom with gloomy fascination. “Where did you get this instrument? It is of a workmanship I have never seen before. And those markings: neither Dirdir nor Chasch nor Wankh! Is there some far corner of Tschai where submen make goods of this quality? I am astounded! I have believed the sub-men incapable of any activity more complicated than agriculture!”
“Anacho, my friend,” said Reith, “you have a great deal to learn. The process will come as an appalling shock to you.”
Anacho massaged his undershot jaw, pulled the soft black cap down over his forehead. “You are as mysterious as a Pnume.”
Reith brought the scanscope from his pouch, inspected the landscape. He traced the course of the road, down the hill, through a grove of flame-shaped trees with enormous green and purple leaves, thence to a wall which he had not previously noticed and which evidently guarded Dadiche from the Green Chasch. The road passed through a portal in this wall and into the city. At intervals along the road were drays entering Dadiche loaded with comestibles, leaving with crates of manufactured goods.
Anacho, inspecting the scanscope, made a clicking sound of irritated puzzlement, but restrained his comments.
Reith said, “No point in going further down the road; howe
ver, if we rode along the ridge a mile or two, I could take another sight on that big building.”
Anacho made no objection; they rode south almost two miles, then Reith took a new reading of the transcom. The line of sight passed through the same large domed structure. Reith gave a nod of certainty. “In that building are articles which at one time were mine, and which I want to recover.”
The Dirdirman’s lips twitched in a grin. “All very well-but how? You can’t ride into Dadiche, pound on the door and cry ‘Bring out my object!’ You will be disappointed. I doubt if you are a thief sufficiently deft to fool the Chasch. What will you do?”
Reith looked longingly down at the great white dome. “First, closer reconnaissance. I need to look inside that building. Because what I want most might not be there at all.”
Anacho shook his head in mild reproach. “You talk in riddles. First you declare that your articles are there, then that they may not be there after all.”
Reith merely laughed, far more confidently than he felt. Now that he was close to Dadiche, and presumably to the space-boat, the task of regaining possession seemed overwhelming. “Enough for today, at any rate. Let’s be back to Pera.”
They rode, swaying and lurching on the leap-horses, and returned to the road, where they halted for a space watching the drays rumble past. Some were propelled by engines, others by slow-going pull-beasts. Those to Dadiche carried foodstuffs: melons, stacks of dead reed-walkers, bales of dingy white floss spun by swamp insects, nets bulging with purple bladders. “These drays go into Dadiche,” said Reith. “I’ll go with them. Why should there be difficulty?”
The Dirdirman gave his head a lugubrious shake. “The Blue Chasch are unpredictable. You might find yourself performing tricks for their amusement. Such as walking rods over pits full of filth or white-eyed scorpions. As you gain equilibrium, the Chasch heat the rods, or send electricity through, so that you bound back and forth and perform desperate antics. Or perhaps you will find yourself in a glass maze with a tormented Phung. Or you might be blindfolded and set in an amphitheater with a cyclodon, also blindfolded. Or-were you Dirdir or Dirdirman, you might be set to solving logical problems to avoid unpleasant penalties. Their ingenuity is endless.”