He returned to the moon base again and tackled the base file. It was a simplified code computer, but he still had to work out the code. Eventually he succeeded in dialing the personnel records, and he read them with care. Nine agents had been lost on Kamm. (There was of course no mention of Rok Wllon, who had arrived secretly.) As Darzek suspected, all of the remaining agents had been transferred to Storoz, probably to search for the missing nine. At the date of final entry, there had been ten agents on Storoz, organized into two teams.
Now there were none. The missing nine, plus Rok Wllon, had become a missing twenty, and he was the only Synthesis agent at large. There could be no more impulsive forays into maz forests, whatever the attraction. He would have to weigh each action with care, plan it meticulously—and make certain that each room he entered had more than one exit.
He returned to Northpor. He saw no reason why he should not make that headquarters his own. Kom Rmmon had assured him that the Free Cities were the safest places on Kamm.
But he had to start behaving like a normal Kammian, and at once. This was a perfumer’s house. Probably the Synthesis agents had acquired it from a perfumer and adopted his trade. If the perfume factory remained idle much longer, the neighbors might get curious—and curious neighbors were a leading cause of problems for agents anywhere. Further, Darzek needed a trade that would give him status at home and a lawful excuse to travel, and he had to be proficient enough to pass as a native.
When Sajjo awoke, Darzek led her out to the perfume factory. As they stood looking at the enormous stock of dried and drying leaves and roots and berries and seeds and flowers, he asked her, Do you know how to make perfume?
She dropped a shoulder negatively.
Do you know anyone who does?
I know one who helps a perfumer sometimes, she answered.
Is it far? Would it take you long to find him?
She gestured negatively.
Go get him, Darzek said.
Sajjo dashed away.
Darzek returned to the house. Wesru had a pot of a savory-smelling stew simmering, and she was bustling about giving the house a long overdue dusting and cleaning. Darzek slipped away to the subbasement, where he had hidden the stolen electrical generator. He sat there in darkness, occasionally pressing the lever and watching the crude bulb glow and fade.
“Twenty missing agents,” he told himself, “and at least some of them must be alive somewhere and desperately in need of help, and what are you doing?”
If the generator illuminated any part of the answer Darzek needed, he was too blind to see it.
It was almost evening when Sajjo reappeared, this time with a Kammian youth of about twenty trailing after her. Except for his height, he looked very much as Sajjo had looked when Darzek first saw her—pale, thin, and extremely ragged. Sajjo introduced him—Hadkez.
He didn’t know me, she said proudly, encompassing in a gesture her grand clothing and her hairdo.
Darzek sat the two of them down to Wesru’s stew, and Hadkez ate enormously. Only after they had finished did Darzek ask him, Do you know how to make perfume?
Some kinds, he answered.
Would you like to live here and help us make perfume?
His affirmative was ecstatic.
When can you move in?
He had nothing to move, and he was there. Darzek assigned a second-floor bedroom to him. Wesru took the adjoining room with Badje; there also was an unused spare pantry that could be converted into a nursery off the kitchen so she could keep an eye on the child during the day, while she worked. The role of housekeeper delighted her.
Sajjo found a bedroom for herself on the third floor, a small room with white furnishings. Darzek, going up later to see how she liked it, found her looking out of the window just as he’d seen her in the warehouse when she’d had to stand on a crock to reach a high window; but her face no longer had the same remote, lost expression. Now she belonged to something, though she hadn’t yet comprehended what it was.
Neither had Darzek, but he had learned that establishing a solid Kammian identity for himself was going to require more work and planning than he had expected. He took the one downstairs bedroom for himself, so his comings and goings would be less likely to arouse curiosity; and before he retired he went to the subbasement and again pondered the mystery of the electrical generator.
In the morning Darzek went out with Sajjo and Hadkez and bought a cart and nabrulk. Hadkez proudly drove it home and made the beast comfortable in the flat-roofed stable.
Then he went to work making one of the perfumes he was familiar with, soaking a mixture of dried leaves and roots and then beginning the tedious distillation process that would extract the oils.
While Hadkez worked, Darzek considered the amount of labor involved in looking after a nabrulk, tending the garden, and running errands. He asked Sajjo if she had another friend, and she dashed off and returned with Sjelk, who looked like a younger brother of Hadkez—which he was. Sjelk immediately went to work on the flower garden.
Darzek returned to the perfume factory to watch Hadkez. So tedious did the process of distillation prove to be that he worked far into the night at it, and Darzek and Sajjo made their excursion to the mart without him.
It was on the following day, while they were bottling their first perfume—which to Darzek smelled very attractive indeed—that Darzek learned about wholesale perfumers. Most vendors of perfume had a few special scents that they prepared themselves, but in order to offer the variety that the people of Kamm required, they patronized wholesalers.
Darzek immediately ordered out the nabrulk and cart, and they drove to the wholesaler Hadkez had worked for and returned home with twenty crocks of perfumes. These they could bottle as needed; and they could make enough perfume of their own to give the impression that the factory was functioning.
The next day Darzek obtained a market permit for Lazk, perfumer, and rented a permanent booth. Hadkez and Sjelk, outfitted in new perfumers’ costumes, delightedly took to selling perfumes in the mart, and Sajjo helped out as much as she could. Wesru was instructed in keeping the process of distillation going while Hadkez was away.
Overnight Darzek had created a prospering business. The stock of coins he’d found in the house was getting perilously low, but already there was income from the mart; and when he belatedly thought about it, he gave the other Synthesis headquarters a thorough search and discovered more hordes of coins in each.
The other headquarters were still deserted. No one had been in the house in Southpor since he left his note there, and it now seemed certain to Darzek that there were twenty missing Synthesis agents on Kamm.
For the moment there was nothing he could do about that. He first had to establish himself solidly as a Kammian; then he could think about tracing the missing agents.
Already the other vendors and exhibitors at the mart greeted him as a colleague. To the populace, as he made his well-perfumed way about the mart in his distinctive perfumer’s cape and hat, he was a member of one of the most respected professions. He found that he did not need a personal perfume for himself. A perfumer, handling scents throughout his working day, as well as distilling and bottling them, always carried with him a potently blended aroma of his profession.
For several days he delighted in wandering about the mart; in pondering why one keeper of secrets, or fortuneteller, had a line of waiting customers and another was ignored; or why the patients of one purger or manipulator emerged wearing expressions of contentment while the patients of another staggered out looking ill.
He continued to marvel at the way the deaf people of Kamm assiduously cultivated their remaining sensations: sight, smell, touch, and—now that he had experienced some of the gourmet foods available at the mart—taste. The major professions on Kamm were paint, dye, and perfume making, and the weaving of special fabrics with tactile qualities. The Kammian passion for color was everywhere flamboyantly evident. Wherever Kammians lived or worked or simply
passed by, one smelled perfumes and incense. And weavers hung up strips of cloth so that passers-by could pause and stroke them, and they did so with eyes closed, as though they were receiving erotic stimulation from the sensations the various textures provided.
There were in fact Temples of Sensation at the mart—tents offering brief excursions into the forbidden limits of sight, touch, and smell. Giggling couples entered them self-consciously and emerged an hour or two later, complacently perspiring. But no Synthesis agent, no alien, would dare to venture into a place where his reactions, if not his anatomy, were so likely to advertise his alienness.
Darzek soon decided that his fascination with the Kammians was getting him nowhere. He left the perfume business to Hadkez, and he submerged himself in moon base records, searching for information about the world of Kamm that would supplement his abbreviated training. He devoted an entire day to the study of Kammian history.
The island of Storoz was a sizable land form located midway between the two major continents of Kamm. Northpor was one of the five Free Cities located there, the five being seaports owned and governed by the Sailor’s League, a political power to be reckoned with on Kamm. The League also owned Free Cities on each of the continents.
The measure of freedom in a Free City was considerable. Away from those conclaves, Storoz was made up of a dozen provinces, eleven ruled by dukes. The twelfth, located in the interior mountains that ran down the center of the island like a deformed backbone, was a theocracy. In all of these provinces, a decadent aristocracy or an entrenched priesthood maintained despotic control over a terrorized peasantry, and strangers were subject to arrest and torture or death at the whim of any passing knight—as Darzek knew full well.
Under the circumstances, it did not seem unusual that an occasional agent would be lost; but the Synthesis lost no agents on Kamm for more than a hundred years. During that period of time its training methods for service on the planet were perfected and its agents amply demonstrated their ability to take care of themselves.
The sudden loss of nine—or ten, or twenty—agents suggested the unexpected introduction of a new element. The Department of Uncertified Worlds thought it knew what that new element was: a pazul.
Darzek turned to the history of the Sailor’s League. The island of Storoz was the original home of Kamm’s sailors. They were ideally situated to prey on shipping passing between the two Kammian continents, and Storoz fostered a sturdy race of pirates long before there was any mitten history of Kamm. The pirates were so efficient that they drove other shipping from the seas; so they switched from piracy to commerce and made an absolute monopoly of intercontinental transport. They were and remained such admirable sailors that the name for Storoz in one native language was, “Land of intrepid men who master ocean storms.”
For centuries the sailors had been refugees from the feudal system run by the oppressive Dukes of Storoz, and it still was possible for a bright peasant youth to escape to a career at sea—and ultimate wealth—but at this late date apprentice sailors usually were sons of sailors, most of whom maintained homes in one of the Free Cities.
The Sailor’s League operated all of its ships on a unique profit-sharing system whereby even an apprentice sailor did very well for himself. Much of that wealth was invested in beautifying the Free Cities, and all of the impressive larger homes there belonged to sailors. The exquisite taste responsible for the loveliness of Northpor was typical of Kammians, but not of Kamm. It occurred only where the citizens could afford it. The one conspicuous exception was the great ducal city and seaport of OO. Most of the dukes were notoriously parsimonious—where beauty or anything else was concerned.
And it was the dukes that interested Darzek. Fascinating as the sailors were, with their skills, and their ships, and their cities, and their wealth, he saw no clue to the fate of the missing agents in any of those. His mission lay in the opposite direction.
Ten ducal provinces, separated by sketchy or ill-defined boundaries, extended from the sea to the mountains all around the oblong island. The eleventh was the Province of OO, the smallest province, which was completely surrounded by that of the Duke Kiledj. The mountainous Central Province was ruled by the head of the ancient Death Religion of the Winged Beast, and he was designated Protector of the Faith. His barren province was in fact the wealthiest, because of its mines. His black knights were not only priests, but also miners and smelters and coiners—they made coins for the entire world of Kamm. What they did with their wealth was not known.
It seemed to Darzek that very little was known about any of the dukes. He read through the list of their names: Merzkion, Fermarz, Lonorlk, Kiledj, Rilornz, Suklozk, Borkioz, Pabinzk, Tonorj, Dunjinz, OO. None of them meant anything to him except the Duke Lonorlk, whose employee he had been.
He turned off the file and sat gazing at the blank screen. He’d found no clue whatsoever as to where the missing agents had gone or what they were trying to do.
He still did not have a starting point.
He returned to Northpor, and for a time he sat in the basement, working the lever that kept his stolen generator operating. This, too, should have provided a clue, but it continued to elude him.
He climbed the stairs and joined Wesru in the kitchen, and she smilingly placed a bowl of spiced vegetables before him with an enormous chunk of boiled meat floating in it. The baby Badje was happily playing in his nursery with toys Sajjo had brought from the mart. Sajjo came in herself a moment later, with excited tales of the day’s business, and Wesru filled a bowl for her.
Darzek suddenly realized that both of them were watching him anxiously.
His preoccupation had seemed alarming to them. He smiled, and they smiled back at him and began to eat.
Suddenly a voice exploded in the hallway behind him. “What in the name of the seven gods of Perquali is this?”
Darzek turned. A female of Kamm, with a monstrously piled hairdo, and a male, ostensibly a peddler, stood staring at them from the hallway.
Darzek asked conversationally, “How about the nine bastard gods of Wikwipolu?”
The two continued to stare. Then they burst into laughter.
CHAPTER 9
They were Riklo and Wenz, novice agents who had been on Kamm only a couple of months longer than Darzek. They had arrived at a moment of crisis over the missing agents, when the team leaders had other things to worry about, so they were plunked down in the safest corner of Storoz—the Free City of Southpor, which was surrounded by the province of the senile Duke Borkioz—and told to behave themselves and learn what they could, and eventually someone would get around to training them properly.
They’d been working as a team, peddler and keeper of secrets, in the Southpor mart and on the circuit of wayside forums through the Duke Borkioz’s province. But eventually they’d become curious about what the other agents were doing, so they visited the moon base and the headquarters on Storoz and on the two continents, and all of them were deserted except one. Someone had eaten food recently in the Northpor headquarters. That night they’d shouted in the streets, without any response, so they’d gone back to Southpor, resumed their traveling, and tried to think of what they should do next. It was after another circuit of the province that they’d found Darzek’s note.
Darzek’s Kammian family had gone to bed. The three agents were conferring in the sitting room, and Wenz was keeping the place lighted by operating the electrical generator, which fascinated him. It was Riklo who tersely recounted their history, and now she had a complaint.
She and Wenz were graduates of the Department of Uncertified Worlds Academy—which Darzek hadn’t known existed—and they’d thoroughly mastered the principles of sound operation on Uncertified Worlds, and Darzek was flagrantly violating all of them.
“Close contacts with natives,” Riklo announced, “are strictly forbidden.”
Darzek, who had based a career on his talent for ignoring stupid regulations, regarded her with interest. He already had be
gun to wonder what sort of alien life form that attractive Kammian female cocoon concealed. “Nonsense,” he said. “Who looks after the flower garden, and cleans the house, and takes care of the nabrula for you in Southpor?”
“Nobody,” Riklo said indignantly. “We do those things ourselves.”
“And look at the time you waste acting as your own servants. No wonder the agents on Kamm have accomplished so little! And here’s another point. Houses empty for long periods of time arouse curiosity. If there were servants in residence, or a native family with children to run errands and make friends with neighbor children, the place would look normal. Agents who keep strictly to themselves are going to attract suspicion a lot more quickly than those who share their residence with natives.”
“There’s no possible way to tell which natives can be trusted,” Riklo said stubbornly. “The risk is too great.”
“There’s another point,” Darzek said. “Look at that electric generator. No one knows how long the Duke Lonorlk has been using electric lights in his forests to avoid the danger of fire, and the Synthesis would never have known it if my adopted daughter hadn’t taken me to apply for a job. The more close contacts we have with natives, the more effective our work will be. A few agents simply can’t keep track of what happens on an entire world.”
“You keep changing the subject,” Riklo announced indignantly. “What about the danger from those close native contacts?”
“There isn’t any. I took some hungry people, and gave them jobs they can take pride in, and an excellent place to live, and all the food they want. There isn’t much they wouldn’t do for me in return. Let’s talk about the missing agents.”
They knew Rok Wllon—he had visited the academy while they were there. But they had no inkling that he was on Kamm. None of the agents they’d talked with had mentioned it.
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