And Anthony Fallon recognized Girej, the Yeshtite whom he had arrested for brawling two nights previously.
Chapter XV
For three seconds, Fallon stared at the armed Krishnan. Then the gambler’s instinct that had brought him such signal successes—and shattering failures—in the past prompted him to go up to the guard and say, “Hello there, Girej.”
“Hail, reverend sir,” said Girej with a questioning note in his voice.
Fallon raised his head so that his face was visible under the cowl. “I’ve come to collect on your promise.”
Girej peered at Fallon’s face and rubbed his chin. “I—I should know you, sir. Your face is familiar; I’ll swear by the virility of Yesht that I’ve seen you, but…”
“Remember the Earthman who saved you from being run through by the Krishnan Scientist?”
“Oh! You mean you’re really not...”
“Exactly. You won’t give us away, will you?”
The guard looked troubled. “But how—what—this is sacrilege, sirs! ‘Twould mean my…”
“Oh, come on! You don’t mind playing a bit of a joke on those pompous hierarchs, do you?”
“A jest? In the holy temple?”
“Certainly. I’ve made a bet of a thousand karda that I could get into and out of the crypt of the Safq with a whole skin. Naturally I shall need some corroboration that I’ve done so— so there’s one-tenth of that in it for you in return for your testifying that you saw me here.”
“But…”
“But what? I’m not asking you to do anything irreligious. I’m not even offering you a bribe. Merely an honest fee for telling the truth when asked. What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, good my sirs…” began Girej.
“And have you never wished to prick the pretensions of these conceited hierarchs? Even if Yesht is a great god, those who serve him are merely human like the rest of us, aren’t they?”
“So I ween…”
“And didn’t you promise me help when I needed it?”
This went on for some time; but few, Terran or Krishnan, could long resist Fallon’s importunities when he chose to turn on the charm.
At last, when Fallon had raised the ante to a quarter of his winnings, the bewildered Girej gave in, saying, “ ’Tis now near the end of the fourteenth hour, my masters. See that you return ere the end of the fifteenth, for at that time my watch does end. If you do not, you must needs wait until noon of the morrow, when I come on again.”
“You stand ten-hour watches?” said Fallon, cocking a sympathetic eyebrow. As Krishnans divided their long day into twenty hours beginning at dawn (or, more accurately, halfway -from midnight to noon) this would mean a watch of considerably more than twelve Terran hours.
“Nay,” said Girej. “I have the night trick but once in five nights, trading back and forth with my mates. Tomorrow I’m on from the sixth through the tenth.”
“We’ll watch it,” said Fallon.
The Krishnan leaned his halberd against the wall to open the door. This door, like many on Krishna, had a crude locking-mechanism consisting of a sliding bolt on both sides, and a large keyhole above each bolt, by means of which this bolt could be worked by a key thrust through from the other side. The bolt on the near side was in the home position, while that on the far side was withdrawn, and a large key stood idle in the keyhole giving access to the latter bolt.
Girej grasped the handle of the near bolt and snapped it -back, then pulled on the fixed iron doorhandle. The door opened with a faint groan.
Fallon and Fredro slipped through. The door clanged shut behind them.
Fallon noticed that the mysterious sound now came much more loudly, as from a source just out of sight. He identified these sounds as those of a metal-works. He led his companion down the long dim-lit flight of stairs into the crypt, wondering if he would ever succeed in getting out.
Fredro mumbled, “What if he gives us away to priests?”
“I should like the answer to that one, too,” said Fallon. “Luck’s been with us so far.”
“Maybe I should not have insisted on coming. Is bad place.”
“A fine time to change your so-called mind! Straighten up and walk as if you owned the place, and we may get away with it.” Fallon coughed as he got a lungful of the smoky atmosphere.
At the bottom of the stairs a passage of low-ceilinged, rough-hewn rock ran straight ahead, with openings on both sides into a congeries of chambers whence came the growing clangor. Besides the yellow glow of the oil-lamps in their wall-brackets, the labyrinth was fitfully lit by scarlet beams from forges and furnaces, the crisscrossing red rays giving an effect like that of a suburb of Hell.
Krishnans—mostly tailed Koloftuma of both sexes—moved through the murk, naked save for leather aprons, trundling carts of materials, carrying tools and buckets of water, and otherwise exerting themselves. Supervisors walked about.
Here and there stood an armed Krishnan in the gear of one of Kir’s royal guard. Civic guards had replaced them only in the less sensitive posts. They shot keen looks at Fallon and Fredro, but did not stop them.
As the Earthmen walked down the corridor, a plan transpired out of the confusion about them. On the right were rooms in which iron ore was smelted down into pigs. These pigs were wheeled across a corridor to other rooms in which they were remelted and cast into smaller bars, which were turned over to smiths. The smith hammered the bars out into flat strips, beat them into rolls around iron mandrels, finally welded them into tubes.
As the Earthmen passed room after room, it became obvious what this establishment was up to. Fallon guessed the truth before they came to the chamber in which the parts were assembled. “Muskets!” he murmured. “Smoothbore muskets!”
He stopped at a rack, wherein a dozen or so of the firearms stood, and picked one out.
“How to shoot?” asked Fredro. “I see no trigger or lock.”
“Here’s a firing-pan. I suppose you could touch it off with a cigar-lighter. I knew this would happen sooner or later! It just missed happening when I tried to smuggle in machine-guns. The I. C. will never put this cat back in the bag!”
Fredro said: “Do you think some Earthmen did this, having —ah—having got around hypnotic treatment, or that Krishnans invented them independently?”
Fallon shrugged and replaced the musket. “Heavy damned things. I don’t know, but—I say, I think I can find out!”
They were standing in the assembly-room, where a couple of workmen were fitting carved wooden stocks to the. barrels. On the other side of the room three Krishnans were conversing about some production problem: two men with the look of overseers, and one small elderly Krishnan with bushy jade-pale hair and a long gown of foreign cut.
Fallon strolled over toward these three, timing his approach to arrive just as the two foremen went their ways. He touched the sleeve of the long-haired one. “Well, Master Sainian,” he said. “How did you get involved in this?”
The elderly Krishnan turned toward Fallon. “Aye reverend sir? You queried me?”
Fallon remembered that Sainian was a little hard of hearing, and it would not do to shout private business at him in public. “To your private chamber, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, aye. Hither, sirs.”
The senior Krishnan led them through the tangle of rooms and passages to a section devoted to sleeping-accommodations: dormitories for the workers, crudely furnished with heaps of straw now occupied by snoring and odorous Koloftuma of the off shift—and individual rooms for officials.
Sainian led the Earthmen into one of the latter, furnished austerely but not uncomfortably. While there was no art or grace to this cubicle, a comfortable bed and armchair, a heap of books, and a plentiful supply pf cigars and falat-wine were in evidence.
Fallon introduced the two savants in languages that each understood, then said to Fredro, “You won’t be able to follow our conversation much, anyway. So if you don’t mind, stand outside the door until we�
�re finished, will you? Warn us if anybody starts to come in.”
Fredro groused but went. Fallon closed the door and pushed back his hood, saying, “Know me now, eh?”
“Nay, sir, that I do not… but stay! Are you verily a Krishnan or a Terran? You look like one of the latter disguised as the former…”
“You’re getting close. Remember Hershid, four years ago?”
“By the superagency of the universe!” cried Sainian. “You’re that Earthman, Antane bad-Fain, sometime Dour of Zamba!”
“I say, not so loud!” said Fallon. Sainian, because of his infirmity, had a tendency to bellow an ordinary conversation.
“Well, what in the name of all the nonexistent devils do you here?” said Sainian in a lower voice. “Have you truly become a priest of Yesht? Never did you strike me as one who’d willingly submit to any cult’s drug-dreams.”
“I shall come to that. First, tell me: Are you down in this hole permanently, or can you come and go at will?”
“Ha! Then you cannot be an authentic priest, or you would know without the asking.”
“Oh, I know you’re clever. But answer my question.”
“As to that,” said Sainian, lighting a cigar and pushing the box toward Fallon, “I am as free as an aqebat—in one of the cages in King Kir’s zoo. I come and go as I please—as does a tree in the royal gardens. In short, I roam this small kingdom of the cellar of the Safq without let or hindrance. But so much as a motion toward escape is worth a pike in my chaudron, or a bolt in my back.”
“Do you like that state of affairs?”
“ ’Tis a relative matter, sir. To say I like this gloomy crypt as well as the opulent court of Hershid were tampering with the truth. To say I mislike it as ill as being flayed and broiled like one of those wretches the Yeshtites employ in their major services were less than utter verity. Relativity, you see. As I have ever maintained, such terms as ‘like’ are meaningless in any absolute sense. One must know what one likes better than…”
“Please!” Fallon, who knew his Krishnan, held up a hand. “Then I can count on you not to give me away?”
“Then it is some jape or masque, as I suspected! Fear not; your enterprises are nought to me, who tries to look upon the world with serene philosophical detachment. Albeit such traps as this wherein I presently find myself do betimes render difficult that worthy enterprise. Did a chance present itself of dropping demented Kir into some convenient cesspool, I think mundane resentment would overcome the loftiest…”
“Yes, yes. But how did you get caught?”
“First, good sir, tell me what do you do in this cursed mew? Not mere idle curiosity, I trust?”
“I’m after information. So…” Fallon, without going into the reason for wishing this information, briefly told of the methods by which he had penetrated the crypt.
“By Myande the Execrable! Hereafter I shall believe all tales I hear of the madness of Terrans. You had perhaps one chance in the hundred of getting this far without apprehension.”
“Da’vi has stood by me this time,” said Fallon.
“Whether she stands by you so staunchly on your way out is another matter whose outcome I eagerly await. I would not see your quivering body stretched upon the gruesome altar of Yesht.”
“Why combine worship with torture? Just for fun?”
“Not entirely. There was once an ancient superstition in the land, that by periodically slaying a victim in such wise that the wretch was made copiously to weep, the heavens—by the principles of sympathetic magic—would likewise be induced to weep, thereby causing the crops to grow. And in time this grim usage attached itself to the worship of the earth-god Yesht. But the truth is, in very fact, that many folk like to see others hurt—a quality wherein, if I read my Terran history aright, we’re not so different from you. Will you have a beaker of wine?”
“Just one—and don’t tempt me with a second. If I have to fight my way out I shall need all my coordination. But let’s have your story, now.”
Sainian drew a deep breath and looked at the glowing end of his cigar. “Word came to me in Hershid that the Dour of Balhib was hiring the world’s leading philosophers, at fabulous stipends, for a combined assault upon the mysteries of the universe. Being—like all men of intellect—somewhat of a fool in worldly affairs, I gave up my professorship in the Imperial Lyceum, journeyed to Zanid, and took service here.
“Now, mad though he be, Kir did have one shrewd idea— unless that cunning son-in-law of his, Chabarian, first put the burr in his drawers. Myself inclines to the Chabarian hypothesis, for the man once visited your Earth and picked up all sorts of exotic notions there. This particular idea was to collect such credulous lackwits as myself, clap us up in these caves, ply us with liquor and damsels, and then inform us that we should either devise a thing wherewith to vanquish the Qaathians or end up on the smoking altars of Yesht. Faced with this grim alternative, mightily have we striven, and after three years of sweat and swink we have done what no others on this planet have hitherto accomplished.”
“And that was?” said Fallon.
“We have devised a workable gun. Not so handy and quick at vomiting forth its deadly pellets as those of Earth, but yet a beginning. We knew about Terran guns. And though none had ever seen one in fact, we sought information from those who had—such as the Zambava whom you led in your rash raid into Gozashtand back in the reign of King Eqrar. From this we ascertained the basic principles: the hollow metal tube, the ball, the charge of explosive and means for igniting it. The tube with its wooden stock presented no great difficulties, nor did the bullets.
“The crux of the matter was the explosive. We were chapfallen to find that the spore-powder of the yasuvar-plant, however lively in firecrackers and other pyrotechnics, was useless for our present purpose. After much experiment, the problem was solved by my colleague Nele-Jurdare of Katai-Jho-gorai with a mixture of certain common substances. Thenceforth ‘twas but a matter of cut-and-try.”
“Stimulus-diffusion.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” said Fallon. “Just a Terran term I got from Fredro. Who was in on this project besides you?”
Sainian relit his cigar. “There were but two others worthy the name of philosopher: Nele-Jurdare—who, alas, perished in an accidental explosion of his mixture a while ago… What date is it by the way? With nought to tell the time by but the changing of the guard, one loses track.”
Fallon told him, adding, “Before I forget, three Earthmen— Soares, Botkin, and Daly—have disappeared from Zanid in the last three years. Have you seen any sign of them? They weren’t included in Chabarian’s ordnance department, were they?”
“Nay, the only other is my colleague, Zarrash bad-Rau of Majbur. The other leaders in this enterprise were but high-class mechanics, five of ‘em, Krishnans all. Of these, three have died of natural causes. The other two remain on as supervisors till, if Kir keeps his promise, these tubes have proved their might upon the sanguinary field of battle, whereupon we shall be released with all the gold we can carry. Assuming, that is to say, the Dour does not cut our throats to silence us for certain, or that the Yeshtites do not track us down and slay us for knowing too much about their infernal cultus.”
“Where’s this Zarr-ash now?”
“He has the third chamber down. He and I are at the moment on terms of cold courtesy only.”
“Why?” asked Fallon.
“Oh, a difference of opinion. A slight epistemological dissension, wherein Zarrash—as a realist-transcendentalist—upheld the claims of deductive reasoning. Now, I, as a nominalist-positivist was asserting those of inductive. Tempers rose, words flew—childish, I grant you, but long confinement frays the temper. But withal, in a few days we find ourselves driven to reconciliation by sheer tedium of having nobody else with whom intelligently to converse.”
Fallon asked, “Do you know what the explosives are made of?”
“Oh, aye. But think not I will babble th
e news.”
“You hope to sell that knowledge to some other Krishnan potentate—say the Dour of Gozashtand?”
Sainian smiled. “You may draw your own inferences, sir. I don’t risk a straight answer before I am free of this trammel.”
“What think you of the coming of the gun to this planet?”
“Well, the late Nele-Jurdare deplored the whole enterprise, assisting but unwillingly to preserve his own gore. He maintained that to further such murderous novelties were a sin against one’s fellow being, unworthy of a true philosopher. Zarrash on’t’other hand favors the gun on the ground it will end all war upon the planet, by making it too frightful for men to contemplate—for all that it had not that effect in Terran history.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I look upon the matter from a different angle of vision: Until we Krishnans have some rough equality with you Terrans in force of arms, we cannot expect equality of treatment.”
“Why, what’s the matter with how you’ve been treated?”
“Nought is the matter, sir. Considering what you could have done, you’ve displayed exemplary moderation. But you’re a variable and various lot. You have furnished us on one hand with Barnevelt—a paragon of manly virtue who has put down the Sunqar pirates and atop of that brought us the boom of soap. On the other hand, there have been palpable swindlers like that Borel. Your methods of selecting those who shall visit us baffle us. On one hand you stop your men of science from imparting their knowledge of useful arts to us—lest by taking advantage thereof we destroy your comfortable superiority. On the other hand, you unleash upon us a swarm of trouble-stirring missionaries and proselytizers for a hundred competing and contradictory religious sects, whose tenets are at least as absurd as those of our native cults.”
Fallon opened his mouth to speak, but Sainian rattled on. “You are, as I have said, more variable than we. No two of. you are alike, wherefore no sooner have we adapted ourselves to one of you when he is replaced by another of utterly different character. Take, for instance, when Masters Kennedy and Abreu—both credits to their species—retired at Novorecife and were replaced by those scottish barbarians Glumelin and Gorchakov. And your relations with us are at best those of a kindly and solicitous master to an inferior—who is not to be wantonly abused, but who will, if he knows what is well for him, bear himself in an acquiescent and deferential manner toward his natural lord. Take this consul at Zanid—what’s his name…”
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