Tschai - Complete Part 64

Reith kept his eye to the crack. On each occasion Cauch and Widisch had risked a pair of sequins. On the third betting round each placed thirty sequins on white.

"Bets are now made," came the eel-master's voice. The lid came down.

Tap tap came the sounds.

"Brown," whispered the apprentice.

"White," said Reith. "The white eel wins."

The apprentice groaned in muted distress. He put the white eel into the chute.

"Another contest between these baffling little creatures," came the complacent voice of the eel-master. "On this occasion the winning color is- brown ... Brown? White. Yes, white it is! Ha! In my old age I become color- blind. Tribulation for a poor old man! ... A pair of handsome winners here!

Three hundred sequins for you, three hundred sequins for you ... Take your winnings, gentlemen. What? You are betting the entire sum, both of you?"

"Yes, luck appears to be with us today."

"Both on dark red?"

"Yes; notice the flight of yonder blood-birds! This is a portent."

The eel-master smiled off into the sky. "Who can divine the ways of nature? I pray that you are incorrect. Well, then, all bets are made? Then in with the eels, down with the lid, and let the most determined eel issue forth the winner." His hand rested a moment on the lid; his fingernail struck the surface a single time. "They twist, they search, the light beckons; we should soon have a winner ... Here comes-is it blue?" He gave an involuntary groan. "Dark red." He peered into the faces of the Zsafathrans. "Your presages, astonishingly, were correct.""Yes," said Cauch. "Did I not tell you as much? Pay over our winnings."

Slowly the eel-master counted out three thousand-worth of sequins to each. "Astonishing." He glanced thoughtfully toward the reservoir. "Do you observe any further portents?"

"Nothing significant. But I will bet nonetheless. A hundred sequins on black."

"I bet the same," declared Widisch.

The eel-master hesitated. He rubbed his chin, looked around the counter. "Extraordinary." He put the eels into the reservoir. "Are all bets laid?" His hand rested on the lid; as if by nervous mannerism he brought his fingernails down in two sharp raps.

"Very well; I open the gate." He pulled the lever and strode up to the end of the chute. "And here comes-what color? Black!"

"Excellent!" declared Cauch. "We reap a return after years of squandering money upon perverse eels! Pay over our gains, if you please!"

"Certainly," croaked the eel-master. "But I can work no more. I suffer from an aching of the joints; the eel-racing is at an end."

Reith and the apprentice immediately returned to the shed. The apprentice donned his pink cape and hat and took to his heels.

Reith and Schazar returned through the Old Town to the portal, where they encountered the eel-master, who strode past in a great flapping of his white gown. The normally benign face was mottled red; he carried a stout stave, which he swung in short ominous jerks.

Cauch and Widisch awaited them on the quay. Cauch handed Reith a pleasantly plump pouch. "Your share of the winnings: four thousand sequins. The day has been edifying."

"We have done well," said Reith. "Our a.s.sociation has been mutually helpful, which is a rare thing for Tschai!"

"For our part we return instantly to Zsafathra," said Cauch. "What of you?"

"Urgent business calls me onward. Like yourselves, my companion and I depart as soon as possible."

"In that case, farewell." The three Zsafathrans went their way. Reith turned into the bazaar, where he made a variety of purchases. Back at the hotel he went to Zap 210's cubicle and rapped on the door, his heart pounding with antic.i.p.ation.

"Who is it?" came a soft voice.

"It is I, Adam Reith."

"A moment." The door opened. Zap 210 stood facing him, face flushed and drowsy. She wore the gray smock which she had only just pulled over her head.

Reith took his bundles to the couch. "This-and this-and this-and this-for you.""For me? What are they?"

"Look and see."

With a diffident side-glance toward Reith, she opened the bundles, then for a period stood looking down at the articles they contained.

Reith asked uneasily, "Do you like them?"

She turned to him a hurt gaze. "Is this how you want me to be--like the others?"

Reith stood nonplussed. It was not the reaction he had expected. He said carefully, "We will be traveling. It is best that we go as inconspicuously as possible. Remember the Gzhindra? We must dress like the folk we travel among."

"I see."

"Which do you like best?"

Zap 210 lifted the dark green gown, laid it down, took up the blood- orange smock and dull white pantaloons, then the rather jaunty light brown suit with the black vest and short black cape. "I don't know whether I like any of them."

"Try one on."

"Now?"

"Certainly!"

Zap 210 held up first one of the garments, then another. She looked at Reith; he grinned. "Very well, I'll go."

In his own cubicle he changed into the fresh garments he had bought for himself: gray breeches, a dark-blue jacket. The gray furze smock he decided to discard. As he threw it aside he felt the outline of the portfolio, which after a moment's hesitation he transferred to the inner lining of his new jacket. Such a set of doc.u.ments, if for no other reason, had value as a curio.

He went to the common room. Presently Zap 210 appeared. She wore the dark green gown. "Why do you stare at me?" she asked.

Reith could not tell her the truth, that he was recalling the first time he had seen her: a neurasthenic waif shrouded in a black cloak, pallid and bone-thin. She retained something of her dreaming wistful look, but her pallor had become a smooth sunshadowed ivory; her black hair curled in ringlets over her forehead and ears.

"I was thinking," said Reith, "that the gown suits you very well."

She made a faint grimace: a twitch of the lips approaching a smile.

They walked out upon the quay, to the cog Nhiahar. They found the taciturn master in the saloon, working over his accounts. "You desire pa.s.sage to Kazain? There is only the grand cabin to be had at seven hundred sequins, or I can give you two berths in the dormitory, at two hundred."

CHAPTER NINE.

A DEAD CALM held the Second Sea. The Nhiahar slid out of the inlet, propelled by its field engine; by degrees Urmank faded into the murk of distance.

The Nhiahar moved in silence except for the gurgle of water under the bow. The only other pa.s.sengers were a pair of waxen-faced old women swathed in gray gauze who appeared briefly on deck, then crept to their dark little cabin.

Reith was well-satisfied with the grand cabin. It ranged the entire width of the ship, with three great windows overlooking the sea astern. In alcoves to port and starboard were well-cushioned beds as soft as any Reith had felt on Tschai, if a trifle musty. In the center stood a ma.s.sive table of carved black wood, with a pair of equally ma.s.sive chairs at either end. Zap 210 made a sulky appraisal of the room. Today she wore the dull white trousers with the orange blouse; she seemed keyed up and tense, and moved with nervous abruptness in jerks and halts and fidgeting twitches of the fingers.

Reith watched her covertly, trying to calculate the exact nature of her mood. She refused to look toward him or meet his gaze. At last he asked: "Do you like the ship?"

She gave a sullen shrug. "I have never seen anything like it before." She went to the door, where she turned him a sour twitch of a smile-a derisive grimace-and went out on deck.

Reith looked up at the overhead, shrugged, and after a final glance around the room, followed her.

She had climbed the companionway to the quarterdeck, where she stood leaning on the taffrail, looking back the way they had come. Reith seated himself on a bench nearby and pretended to bask in the wan brown sunlight while he puzzled over her behavior. She was female and inherently irrational-but her conduct seemed to exceed this elemental fact. Certain of her att.i.tudes had been formed in the Shelters, but these seemed to be waning; upon reaching the surface she had abandoned the old life and discarded its points of view, as an insect molts a skin. In the process, Reith ruminated, she had discarded her old personality, but had not yet discovered a new one ... The thought gave Reith a qualm. Part of the girl's charm or fascination, or whatever it was, lay in her innocence, her transparency ... transparency?

Reith made a skeptical sound. Not altogether. He went to join her.

"What are you pondering so deeply?"She gave him a cool side-glance. "I was thinking of myself and the wide ghaun. I remember my time in the dark. I know now that below the world I was not yet born. All those years, while I moved quietly below, the folk of the surface lived in color and change and air."

"So this is why you've been acting so strangely!"

"No!" she cried in sudden pa.s.sion. "It is not! The reason is you and your secrecy! You tell me nothing. I don't know where we are going, or what you are going to do with me."

Reith frowned down at the black boil of the wake. "I'm not sure of these things myself."

"But you must know something!"

"Yes ... When I get to Sivishe I want to return to my home, which is far and remote."

"And what of me?"

And what of Zap 210? wondered Reith. A question he had avoided asking himself. "I'm not sure you'd want to come with me," he replied, somewhat lamely.

Tears glinted in her eyes. "Where else can I go? Should I become a drudge? Or a Gzhindra? Or wear an orange sash at Urmank? Or should I die?" She swung away and marched forward to the bow, past a group of the spade-faced seamen, who watched her from the side of their pale eyes.

Reith returned to the bench ... The afternoon pa.s.sed. Black clouds to the north generated a cool wind. The sails were shaken out, and the cog drove forward. Zap 210 presently came aft with a strange expression on her face.

She gave Reith a look of sad accusation and went down to the cabin.

Reith followed and found her lying on one of the couches. "Don't you feel well?"

"No."

"Come outside. You'll be worse in here."

She staggered out upon the deck.

"Keep your eyes on the horizon," said Reith. "When the ship moves, keep your head level. Do that for a while and you'll feel better."

Zap 210 stood by the rail. The clouds loomed overhead and the wind died; the Nhiahar lay wallowing with slatting sails ... From the sky came a purple dazzle, slanting and slashing at the sea-once, twice, three times, all in the flicker of an eye-blink. Zap 210 gave a small scream and jerked back in terror. Reith caught her and held her as the thunder rumbled down. She moved uneasily; Reith kissed her forehead, her face, her mouth.

The sun settled into a tattered panoply of gold and black and brown; with the dusk came rain. Reith and Zap 210 retreated to their cabin, where the steward served supper: mincemeat, seafruit, biscuits. They ate, looking out through the great windows at the sea and rain and lightning, and afterwards, with lightning sparking the dark, they became lovers.At midnight the clouds departed; stars burnt down from the sky. "Look up there!" said Reith. "Among the stars are other worlds of men. One of them is called Earth." He paused. Zap 210 lay listening, but Reith for some obscure reason could say no more, and presently she fell asleep.

The Nhiahar, driven by fair winds, plunged down the Second Sea, crashing through great white billows of foam. Cape Braise reared up ahead; the ship put into the ancient stone city of Stheine to take on water, then fared forth into the Schanizade.

Twenty miles down the coast a tongue of land hooked out to the west.

Along the foresh.o.r.e a forest of dark blue trees shrouded a city of flat domes, cambered cusps, sweeping colonnades. Reith thought to recognize the architecture, and put a question to the captain: "Is that a Chasch city?"

"It is Songh, most southerly of the Blue Chasch places. I have taken cargoes into Songh, but it is risky business. You must know the games of the Chasch: antics of a dying race. I have seen ruins on the Kotan steppes: a hundred places where Old Chasch or Blue Chasch once lived, and who goes there now? Only the Phung."

The city receded into the distance and disappeared from view as the ship pa.s.sed south beyond the peninsula. Not long after a cry from one of the crew brought everyone out on deck. In the sky a pair of airships fought.

One was a gleaming contrivance of blue and white metal, shaped to a set of splendid curves. A bal.u.s.trade contained the deck, on which lay a dozen creatures in glistening casques. The other craft was austere and bleak: a vessel sinister, ugly, gray, built with only its function in mind. It was slightly smaller than the Blue Chasch ship and somewhat more agile; in the dorsal bubble crouched the Dirdir crew, intent at the work of destroying the Chasch ship. The vessels circled and swung, now high, now low, careening around each other like venomous insects. From time to time, as circ.u.mstances offered, the ships exchanged volleys of sandblast fire, without noticeable effect. Far up into the gray-brown sky spun the sparkling shapes, to spiral giddily down, one after the other, veering only yards above the ocean's surface.

The whole company of the Nhiahar came on deck to watch the battle, even the two old women who had not previously shown themselves. As they scanned the sky the hood fell back from the head of one of them to reveal a keen pale countenance. Zap 210, standing beside Reith, uttered a soft gasp, and quickly turned away her gaze.

The Blue Chasch ship slid suddenly down; the bow guns struck under the counter of the Dirdir ship, knocking it up, tumbling it over and down into the sea, where it struck with a soundless splash. The Blue Chasch vessel swung in a single grand circle, then cruised back toward Songh.

The old women had disappeared below. Zap 210 spoke in a tremulous whisper: "Did you notice?""Yes. I noticed."

"They are Gzhindra."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am sure."

"I suppose Gzhindra make voyages like other folk," said Reith, somewhat hollowly. "So far at least they've done nothing to bother us."

"But they are here, aboard the ship! They do nothing without purpose!"

Reith made another skeptical sound. "Perhaps so-but what can we do about it?"

"We can kill them!"

Zap 210, for all the strictures of her upbringing, was still a creature of Tschai, thought Reith. He said: "We'll keep close watch on them. Now that we know who they are, and they don't know that we know, the advantage is ours."

It was Zap 210's turn to make a skeptical sound. Reith nevertheless refused to waylay the old women in the dark and strangle them.

The voyage proceeded, southwest toward the Saschan Islands. Days pa.s.sed without event more noteworthy than the turn of the heavens. Each morning Carina 4269 broke through the horizon into a dull bronze and old rose dawn. By noon a high haze had formed, to filter the sunlight and lay a sheen like antique silk on the water. The afternoons were long; sunsets were sad glories; allegorical wars between dark heroes and the lords of light. After nightfall the moons appeared: sometimes pink Az, sometimes blue Braz, and sometimes the Nhiahar rode under the stars.

For Reith the days and nights would have been as pleasant as any he had known on Tschai except for the worry which nagged him: what was happening at Sivishe? Would he find the s.p.a.ceboat intact or destroyed?

What of crafty Aila Woudiver; what of the Dirdir in their horrid city across the water? And what of the two old women, who might be Gzhindra? They never appeared except in the deep of night, to walk the foredeck. One dark evening Reith watched them, the hair p.r.i.c.kling at the nape of his neck.

Either they were Gzhindra or they were not, but lacking information Reith felt obliged to a.s.sume the worst-and the implications were cause for the most dismal foreboding.