by Jack Vance
“Bah! Do you take me for a fool? You might bid me drive you out Fargon Peninsula.”
“No risk of that. A short distance into Dadiche, to look at something which interests me.”
“Done for fifteen sequins, no iota less.”
“Oh, very well,” said Reith. “But I’ll expect you to provide me drayer’s clothes.”
“Very well, and I’ll give you further instructions: carry none of your old metal; this retains a scent to alarm them. Throw off all your clothes, rub yourself in mire, and dry yourself with annel leaves, and chew annel to disguise your breath. And you must do this at once, for I load and leave in half an hour.”
Reith did as he was bid, though his skin crawled at the clammy feel of the drayer’s old garments, and the loose-brimmed old hat of wicker and felt. Emmink, as the drayer called himself, checked to make sure Reith carried no weapons, which were forbidden within the city. He pinned a plaque of white glass on Reith’s shoulder. “This is the license. When you pass the gate, call out your number, like this: ‘Eighty-six!’ Then say no more and do not get down from the dray. If they smell you out for a stranger, I can do nothing to help, so do not look to me.”
Reith, already uneasy, was not encouraged by the remarks.
The dray rumbled west toward the crumble of gray hills, carrying a cargo of reed-walker corpses, the yellow bills and staring dead eyes alternating with rows of yellow feet to form a macabre pattern.
Emmink was surly and uncommunicative, he showed no interest in the motive for Reith’s visit and Reith, after several attempts at conversation, fell silent.
The dray ground up the road, the torque generators at each wheel spinning and groaning. They entered the pass which Emmink named Belbal Gap, and before them spread Dadiche: a scene of bizarre and somewhat menacing beauty. Reith’s uneasiness became keener. Despite his soiled garments, he did not feel that he resembled the other drayers and could only hope that he smelled like a drayer. What of Emmink? Would he prove dependable? Reith considered him surreptitiously: a dry wisp of a man, with skin the color of boiled leather, all nose and narrow forehead, his little mouth pinched together. A man like Anacho, like Traz, like himself, ultimately derived from the soil of Earth, mused Reith. How dilute now, how tenuous, was the terrestrial essence! Emmink had become a man of Tschai, his soul conditioned by the Tschai landscape, the amber sunlight, the gunmetal sky, the quiet rich colors. Reith cared to trust the loyalty of Emmink no farther than the length of his arm, if as far. Looking out over the extent of Dadiche, he asked, “Where do you discharge your cargo?”
Emmink delayed before answering, as if searching for a plausible reason to decline response. Grudgingly he said, “Wherever I get the best price. It might be North Market or River Market. It might be Bonte Bazaar.”
“I see,” said Reith. He pointed to the great white structure he had located the day before. “That building there: what is that?”
Emmink gave his narrow shoulders a twitch of disinterest. “It is none of my affair. I buy, transport, and sell; beyond that, I care nothing.”
“I see ... Well, I want to drive past that building.”
Emmink grunted. “It is to the side of my usual route.”
“I don’t care if it is. That’s what I’m paying you for.”
Emmink grunted again, and for a moment was silent. Then he said: “First to the North Market, to secure a quote on my corpses, then to the Bonte Bazaar. On the way I will pass the building.”
They rolled down the hill, across a strip of barrens strewn with junk and refuse, then into a garden of feathery green shrubs and mottled black and green cycads. Ahead rose the wall surrounding Dadiche, a structure thirty feet high built of a brown glossy synthetic material. Through a gate passed drays from Pera submitting to scrutiny from a group of Chaschmen in purple pantaloons, gray shirts and tall conical hats of black felt. They carried sidearms and long thin rods, with which they prodded the loads of incoming drays. “What’s the reason for that?” Reith asked, as the Chaschmen somewhat lackadaisically stabbed through the heaped cargo of the dray ahead.
“They prevent Green Chasch from stealing into the city. Forty years ago a hundred Green Chasch entered Dadiche hidden in cargo; there was a great slaughter before all the Green Chasch were killed. Oh, Blue Chasch and Green Chasch are bitter enemies! They love to see the other’s blood!”
Reith asked, “What do I say if they ask me questions?”
Emmink shrugged. “That’s your affair. If they ask me, I’ll tell them you paid for transportation into Dadiche. Is it not the truth? Then you must tell your truth, if you dare ... Shout your number when I shout mine.”
Reith gave a sour grin but said nothing.
The way was clear; Emmink drove up through the portal and stopped upon a red rectangle. “Forty-five,” he bawled. “Eighty-six,” yelled Reith. The Chaschmen stepped forward, thrust rods into the stack of reed-walker corpses while another walked around the dray: a stocky man with bandy legs, features crowded together at the bottom of his face, as chinless as Emmink but with a small snub nose, a lowering forehead rendered grotesque by the false scalp which rose into a cone six inches or more above his normal skull. His skin was leaden, tinged with blue which might have been cosmetic. His fingers were short and stubby, his feet broad. In Reith’s opinion he deviated from the human form, as Reith knew it, considerably further than did Anacho the Dirdirman. The man glanced indifferently at Emmink and Reith, stepped back with a wave of his arm. Emmink pushed forward the power-arm and the dray lurched ahead into a wide avenue.
Emmink turned to Reith with a sour grin. “You’re lucky none of the Blue Chasch captains were on hand. They’d have smelled you sweating. I could almost smell you. When a man is afraid he sweats. If you want to pass as a drayman, you’ll need a cold-blooded disposition.”
“That’s asking a lot,” said Reith. “I’ll do my best.”
Into Dadiche rolled the dray. Blue Chasch could be seen in their gardens, tending arbors, stirring stone troughs, moving quietly in the shadows surrounding their round-roofed villas. Occasionally Reith sensed odors from a garden or a trough: wafts tart, pungent, spicy, reeks of burnt amber, candied musk, anomalous ferments, disturbing by their uncertainty: were they repulsive or exquisitely delightful?
The road continued among the villas for a mile or two. The Blue Chasch put no store by what Reith considered a normal regard for privacy; and their villas seemed spaced without any concern for the road. Occasionally Chaschmen and Chaschwomen could be seen at menial or laborious tasks; seldom did Reith notice Chaschmen in the company of the Blue Chasch; always they worked separately, and when they were by chance in physical contiguity, each ignored the other as if he did not exist.
Emmink made no comments or observations. Reith expressed wonder at the apparent obliviousness of the Blue Chasch to the drays. Emmink gave a snort of bitter amusement. “Don’t be fooled! If you think them vague, only try to slip off the dray and walk into one of the villas! You’d be pinned down in a trice, and conveyed to the gymnasium to demonstrate at their games. Ah, cunning, cunning, cunning! As cruel as they are ludicrous! Pitiless and sly! Have you heard of their trick with poor Phosfer Ajan the drayer? He stepped down from his dray to answer a call of nature: mad folly, of course. What could he expect but resentment? So Phosfer Ajan, with feet tied, was placed in a vat, with putrid foulness up to his chin. At the bottom was a valve. When the slime became too hot, Phosfer Ajan must dive to the bottom, turn the valve, whereupon the stink would become bitter cold, and Phosfer must dive and grope again, while slime singed and froze him by turns. Still, he persevered; he dived and groped stoically, and on the fourth day they allowed him to his dray, so that he might bear his tale back to Pera. As may be adduced, they fit the game to the occasion, and a more resourceful set of humorists has never been known.” Emmink turned to Reith his calculating glance. “What offense do you plan against them? I can predict to some degree of accuracy how they will respond.”
“No offense,” said Reith. “I am curious, no more, and wish to see how the Blue Chasch live.”
“They live like facetious maniacs, from the standpoint of all who annoy them. I have heard that they especially enjoy pranks with a bull Green Chasch and a fledged Phung, together of course. Next, should they be lucky enough to capture a Dirdir and Pnume, these are urged through laughable antics. All in a spirit of fun, of course; the Blue Chasch above all dislike boredom.”
“I wonder why there is not a great war to the finish,” pondered Reith. “Are not the Dirdir more powerful than the Blue Chasch?”
“They are indeed; and their cities are grand, or so I have heard. But the Chasch have torpedoes and mines ready to destroy all the Dirdir cities in case of attack. It is a common situation: each is sufficiently strong to obliterate the other; hence neither dares more than minor unpleasantness ... Ah well, so long as they ignore me, I shall do the same for them ... There ahead is North Market. Notice, the Blue Chasch are everywhere at hand. They love to bargain, though they prefer to cheat. You must be silent. Make no sign, give no nod or shake! Otherwise they will claim that I have sold at some ruinous price.”
Emmink turned his dray into an open area protected by an enormous parasol. Now began the most frantic bargaining Reith had ever seen. A Blue Chasch, approaching, examining the reed-walker corpses, would croak a proffer which Emmink would decline in a scream of outrage. For minutes the two would heap abuse on each other, sparing no aspect of the other, until suddenly the Blue Chasch would make a furious gesture of disgust and go to seek his reed-walkers at another dray.
Emmink gave Reith a malicious wink. “Once in a while I hold the price up, just to excite the Blues. Also I find out what the selling prices are about to be. Now we’ll try Bonte Bazaar.”
Reith started to remind Emmink of the wide oval building, then thought better of it. Crafty Emmink had forgotten nothing. He swung around the dray, drove it out along a road running south a quarter mile inland from the river, with gardens and villas intervening. On the left were small domes and sheds among sparse-foliaged trees, areas of dirt where naked children played: the homes of the Chaschmen. Emmink said with a leer: “There’s the start of the Blue Chasch themselves; so it was explained to me by one of the Chaschmen in loving detail.”
“How so?”
“The Chaschmen believe that in each grows a homunculus which develops throughout life and is liberated after death, to become a full Chasch. So the Blue Chasch teach; is it not ludicrous?”
“So I would say,” replied Reith. “Haven’t the Chaschmen ever seen human corpses? Or Blue Chasch infants?”
“No doubt. But they supply explanations for every discord and discrepancy. This is what they want to believe: how else can they justify their servitude to the Chasch?”
Emmink was perhaps a more profound individual than his appearance suggested, thought Reith. “Do they think the Dirdir originate in the Dirdirmen? Or Wankh in the Wankhmen?”
“As to that,” Emmink shrugged, “perhaps they do ... Look now; yonder is your building.”
The cluster of Chaschmen huts was behind, concealed by a bank of pale green trees with huge brown flowers. The dray skirted the central node of the city. Beside an avenue were public or administrative buildings, supported on shallow arches, with roof-lines of variously curved surfaces. Opposite rose the great structure which contained the space-boat, or so Reith believed. It was as long as a football field and as wide, with low walls and a vast half-ellipsoidal roof: an architectural tour de force by any standards.
The function of the building was not apparent. There were few entrances, and no large openings nor facilities for heavy transport. Reith finally decided that they were traveling along the building’s back elevation.
At Bonte Bazaar Emmink sold his corpses to the tune of furious haggling, while Reith kept to the side and downwind from Blue Chasch buyers.
Emmink was not totally pleased with the transaction. Returning to the dray after unloading, he grumbled, “I should have had another twenty sequins; the corpses were prime .... How could I make this clear to the Blue? He was watching you and trying to catch your air; the way you dodged and ducked would have aroused suspicion in an old Chaschwoman. By all standards of justice you should reimburse me for my loss.”
“I hardly think he got the better of you,” said Reith. “Come; let’s drive back.”
“What of my lost twenty sequins?”
“Forget them; they are imaginary. Look; the Blues are watching us.”
Emmink hastily jumped into the driver’s seat and started up the dray. Apparently from sheer perversity, he began to return by the same road he had come. Reith spoke sternly: “Drive by the east road, to the front of the big building; let’s have no more tricks!”
“I always drive to the west,” whined Emmink. “Why should I change now?”
“If you know what’s best for you—”
“Ha, threats? In the middle of Dadiche? When all I need do is signal a Blue—”
“It would be the last signal of your life.”
“What of my twenty sequins?”
“You’ve already had fifteen from me, plus your profit. No more of your complaints! Drive as I tell you or I’ll wring your neck.”
Wheezing, protesting, casting spiteful glances from the side of his face, Emmink obeyed.
The white building loomed ahead. The road ran parallel to the front at a distance of seventy-five yards, with a strip of garden intervening. An access road turned off from the main avenue, to run in front of the building. To drive along the access road would have rendered them highly conspicuous, and they continued along the main avenue in the company of other drays and wagons, and a few small cars driven by Blue Chasch. Reith gazed anxiously at the facade. Three large portals broke the front wall. Those to the left and center were shut; the far right portal was open. As they passed Reith looked in, to see the loom of machinery, the glow of hot metal, the hull of a platform similar to that which had lifted the space-boat away from the swamp.
Reith turned to Emmink. “This building is a factory where airships and spacecraft are built!”
“Yes, of course,” grunted Emmink.
“I asked you as much; why did you not tell me?”
“You weren’t paying for information. I give nothing away.”
“Drive around the building again.”
“I must charge you an additional five sequins.”
“Two. And no complaints, or I’ll rattle your teeth.”
Cursing under his breath, Emmink swung the dray around the factory. Reith asked, “Have you ever looked into the center or the left of the building?”
“Oh yes; several times.”
“What is there?”
“How much is the information worth?”
“Not very much. I’d have to see for myself.”
“A sequin?”
Reith nodded shortly.
“Sometimes the other portals are ajar. In the center they construct sections of spaceships, which are then rolled out and carried away for assembly elsewhere. In the left they build smaller spaceships, when such are needed. Recently there has been little work; the Blue Chasch do not like to travel space.”
“Have you seen them bring spaceships or space-boats here for repair? Several months ago?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“The information will cost you money,” said Reith. Emmink showed great yellow teeth in a grin of sardonic appreciation and said no more.
They started along the front a second time. “Slow,” Reith ordered, for Emmink had pushed the power-arm hard over and the old dray rattled at full speed along the avenue.
Emmink grudgingly obliged. “If we go too slow they’ll think us curious, and ask us why we peer and crane our necks.”
Reith looked along the road adjacent to the building, along which walked a few Blue Chasch, a somewhat larger number of Chaschmen.
Reith said to Emmink, “Pull off the road; stop the dr
ay for a minute or two.”
Emmink began his usual protest, but Reith pulled back the power-lever and the dray wheezed to a halt. Emmink stared at Reith, speechless with fury.
“Get out; fix your wheels, or look at your energy cell,” said Reith. “Do something to keep occupied.” He jumped to the ground, stood looking at the great factory, for such seemed to be the nature of the building. The portal on the right was tantalizingly open. So near yet so far ... If only he dared cross the seventy-five yards to the portal, and look inside!
What then? Suppose he saw the space-boat. It certainly would not be in operative condition; chances were good that Blue Chasch technicians had at least partially disassembled the mechanism. They would be a puzzled group, thought Reith. The technology, the engineering, the entire rationale of design would seem strange and unfamiliar. The presence of a human body would only puzzle them the more. The situation was by no means encouraging. The boat was possibly within, in a dismantled and non-usable condition. Or it was not. If it should be there he had not the remotest idea of how to gain possession of it. If it was not in the building, if only Paul Waunder’s transcom was there, then he must revise his thinking and make new plans ... But at the moment the first step was to look inside the factory. It seemed easy. He needed only to walk seventy-five yards and look ... but he did not dare. If only he were in some disguise to deceive the Blue Chasch-which could only mean the guise of a Chaschman. Far-fetched, thought Reith. With his well-marked features, he resembled a Chaschman not at all.
The reflections had occupied him a very short time: hardly a minute, but Emmink clearly was becoming restive. Reith decided to seek his counsel.
“Emmink,” said Reith, “suppose you wanted to learn if a certain object-for instance, a small spaceship-was inside that building, how would you go about it?”
Emmink snorted. “I would consider no such folly. I would resume my place on the dray and depart while I still had health and sanity.”
“You can think of no errand to take us into the building?”