"First I must have your solemn oath that you will tell absolutely no one what you hear in this booth. Second, that if you reject my idea you do not then use it later on. Third, that if you do accept you will never attempt later on to kill me or get rid of me and thus reap the profits."
Miran's face had been blank, but at the word "profits" it twisted into many folds and creases, all expressive of joy.
He reached into the huge purse he carried slung over his shoulder and pulled out a little golden idol of the patron deity of the Clan Effenycan. Putting his right hand upon its ugly head, he lifted his left and said, "I swear by Zaceffucanquanr that I will obey your wishes in this matter. May he strike me with lice, leprosy, lecher's disease and lightning if I should break this, my solemn vow."
Satisfied, Green said, "First I want you to arrange for me to be aboard your windroller when you leave for Estorya."
Miran choked on his wine and coughed and sputtered until Green pounded his back.
"I do not ask that you give me passage back. Now, here's my idea. You plan to be taking a large cargo of dried fish because the Estoryans' religion requires that they eat them at every meal and because they use them in great quantities at their numerous festivals."
"True, true. Do you know, I've never been able to figure out why they should worship a fish-goddess. They live over five thousand miles from the sea, and there's no evidence that any of them have ever been to the sea. Yet, they demand saltwater fish, won't use the fish from a nearby lake."
"There're many mysteries about the Xurdimur. However, they needn't concern us. Now, do you know that the Estoryans' Book of Gods places much more ritual-power in freshly killed and cooked fish than in smoked fish? However, they've always had to be content with the dried fish the windrollers brought them. What price would they not pay for living sea-fish?"
Miran rubbed his palms together. "Indeed it does make one wonder...?"
Green then outlined his idea. Miran sat stunned. Not at the audacity or originality of the plan, but because it was so obvious that he wondered why neither he nor anyone else had ever thought of it. He said so.
Green drank his wine and said, "I suppose that people wondered the same when the first wheel or bow and arrow were invented. So obvious, yet no one thought of them until then."
"Let me get this straight," said Miran. "You want me to buy a caravan of wagons, build water-tight tanks into them and use them to transport ocean fish back to here? Then the wagon bodies, with their contents, will be lifted onto my windroller and fitted into specially prepared racks-- or perhaps, holes-- on the middeck? Also, you will show me how to analyze sea water so that its formula may be sold to the Estoryans, and they can thus keep the fish alive in their own tanks?"
"That's right."
"Hmmm." Miran ran his fat, ring-studded finger over his hook nose and the square gold ornament hanging therefrom. His single eye glared pale-bluely at Green. The other was covered with a white patch to hide the emptiness left after a ball from a Ving musket had struck it.
"It's four weeks until the very last day on which I can set sail from here and still get to Estorya and back before the rains come. It's just barely possible to have the tanks built, get them convoyed down to the seashore, get the fish in and bring them back. Meantime, I can be having the deck altered. If my men work day and night we can make it."
"Of course, this is a one-shot proposition. You can't possibly keep a monopoly on the idea, once the first trip is over. Too many people are bound to talk, and the other captains will hear of it."
"I know; don't teach an Effenycan to suck eggs. But what if the fish should die?"
Green shrugged and spread out his palms, "A possibility. You're taking a tremendous gamble. But every voyage on the Xurdimur is, isn't it? How many windrollers come back? Or how many can boast your list of forty successful trips?"
"Not many," said Miran.
He slumped in his seat, brooding over his goblet of wine. His eye, sunk in ranges of fat, seemed to stare through Green. The Earthman pretended indifference, though his heart was pounding, and he controlled his breathing with difficulty.
"You're asking a great deal," Miran finally said. "If the Duke were to find out that I'd agreed to help a valued slave escape, I'd be tortured in a most refined way, and the Clan Effenycan would be stripped of all its rights to sail windrollers and would probably be exiled to its native hills. Or else would have to take to piracy. And that, despite all the glamorous stories you hear, is not a very well-paying profession."
"You'd make a killing in Estorya."
"True, but when I think of what the Duchess will do when she discovers you've fled the country! Ow, ow, ow!"
"There's no reason why you should be connected with my disappearance. A dozen craft leave the harbor every day. Besides, for all she'll know, I've gone the opposite way, over the hills and to the ocean. Or to the hills themselves, where many runaway slaves are."
"Yes, but I have to return to Tropat. And my clansmen, though notoriously tight-lipped when sober, are also, I must confess, notorious drunkards. Someone'd be sure to babble in the taverns."
"I'll dye my hair black, cut it short, like a Tzatlam tribesman, and sign on."
"You forget that you have to belong to my clan in order to be a crew member."
"Hmmm. Well, what about this adoption-by-blood routine?"
"What about it? I can't propose that unless you've done something spectacular and for the profit of the clan. Wait! Can you play any musical instrument?"
Promptly, Green lied, "Oh, I am a wonderful harpist. When I play I can soothe a hungry grass cat into lying down at my feet and licking my toes with pure affection."
"Excellent! Though it would not be an affection so pure, since it is well known that the grass cat considers a man's toes a great delicacy and always eats them first, even before the eyes. Listen well. Here is what you must do in four weeks' time, for if all goes well, or all goes ill, we set sail on the Week of the Oak, the Day of the Sky, the Hour of the Lark, a most propitious time..."
5
TO GREEN, the next three weeks seemed to have shifted to low gear, they crept by so slowly. Yet they should have raced by quickly enough, so full of schemes and plots were they. He had to advise Miran on the many technical details involved in building tanks for the fish. He had to keep the Duchess happy, an increasingly difficult job because it was impossible to pretend a one-hundred-per-cent absorption in her while his mind desperately looked for flaws in his plans, found oh, so many, and then as anxiously sought ways of repairing them. Nevertheless he knew it was vital that he not displease or bore her. Prison would forever ruin his chances.
Worst of all, Amra was getting suspicious.
"You're trying to conceal something from me," she told Green. "You ought to know better. I can tell when a man is deceiving me, There's something about the voice, the eyes, the way he makes love, though you've been doing very little of that. What are you plotting?"
"I assure you it's simply that I'm very tired," he said sharply. "All I want is some peace and quiet, a little rest and a little privacy now and then."
"Don't try to tell me that's all!"
She cocked her head to one side and squinted at him, managing somehow even in this grotesque attitude to look ravishingly beautiful.
Suddenly she said, "You wouldn't be thinking of running away, would you?"
For a second he became pale. Damn the woman anyway!
"Don't be ridiculous," he said, trying hard to keep his voice from cracking. "I'm too much aware of the penalties if I were caught. Besides, why should I want to run away? You are the most desirable woman I've ever known. (This was the truth.) Though you're not the easiest one in the world to live with. (A master understatement.) I would have gotten no place without you. (True; but he couldn't spend the rest of his life on this barbarous world.) And it is unthinkable that I would want to leave you." (Inexpressible, yes, but not unthinkable. He couldn't take her with him, for the simple rea
son that even if she would go she would never fit in his life on Earth. She'd be absolutely unhappy. Moreover, she'd not go anyway, because she'd refuse to abandon her children and would try to take them along, thus wrecking all his escape plans. He might just as well hire a brass band and march behind it out of the city and onto the wind-roller in the light of high noon.)
Nevertheless his conscience troubled him. If it was painful to leave Amra it was hell to leave Paxi, his daughter. For days he had considered taking her along with him, but eventually abandoned the idea. Trying to steal her from under Amra's fiercely watchful gaze was almost impossible. Moreover, Paxi would miss her mother terribly, and he had no business exposing the baby to the risks of the voyage, which were many. Amra would be doubly hurt. Losing him would be bad enough, but to lose Paxi also...! No, he couldn't do that to her.
The outcome of this conversation with her was that she apparently dropped her suspicions. At least she never spoke of them again. He was glad of that, for it was impossible to keep entirely hidden his connection with the mysterious actions of Miran the Merchant. The whole city knew something was up. There was undoubtedly a lot of money tied up with this deal of the wagon caravan going to the seashore. But what did it all mean? Neither Miran nor Green would say a word, and while the Duke and Duchess might have used their authority to get the information from their slave, the Duke made no move. Miran had promised to let him in on a share of the profits, provided he gave the merchant a free hand and asked no questions. The Duke was quite content. He planned on spending the money to increase his collection of glass birds. He had ten large rooms of the castle glittering with his fantastic aviary: shining, silent and grotesquely beautiful, all products of the glass-blowers of the fabulous city of Metzva Moosh, far, far away across the grassy sea of the Xurdimur.
Green was present when the Duke talked to Miran about it.
"Now, Captain, you must understand just exactly what I do want," warned the ruler, lifting a finger to emphasize the seriousness of his words. His eyes, usually deep-sunk in their fat, had widened to reveal large, brown and soulful orbs. The passion for his hobby shone forth. Nothing: good Chalousma wine, his wife, the torture of a heretic or runaway slave, could make him quiver and glitter with delight as much as the thought of the exquisitely wrought image of a Metzva Moosh bird.
"I want two or three, but no more because I can't afford more. All made by Izan Yushwa, the greatest of the glass-blowers. I'd particularly like any modeled after the bird-of-terror...."
"But when I was last in Estorya I heard that Izan Yushwa was dying," said Miran.
"Excellent, excellent!" cried the Duke. "That will make everything recently created by him even more valuable! If he is dead now it is probable that the Estoryans, who control the export of the Mooshans, will be putting a high price on anything of his that comes their way. That means that bidding will be high during the festival and that you must outbid any prospective buyers. By all means do so. Pay any price, for I must have something created by him in his last days!"
The Duke, Green realized, was so eager because of the belief that a part of a dying artist's soul entered into his latest creations when he died. These were called "soul-works" and brought ten times as much as anything else, even if the conception and execution were inferior to previous works.
Sourly Miran said, "But you have given me no money to buy your birds."
"Of course not. You will lend me the sum, buy them yourself, and when you come back with them I will raise the money to repay you."
Miran didn't seem too happy, but Green knew that the fat merchant was already planning to charge the Duke double the purchase price. As for Green, he liked to see a man interested in a hobby, but he was disgusted because taxes would now be raised in order to allow the Duke to add to his collection.
The Duchess, bored as usual by her husband's conversation, suddenly said, "Honey, let's go hunting next weekend. I've been so restless lately, so unable to sleep nights. I think I've been cooped up too long in this dismal old place. My digestion has been so sluggish lately. I think I need the exercise and the fresh air." And she went into vivid detail about certain aspects of her gastrointestinal troubles. The Earthman, who'd thought he was hardened to this people's custom of dwelling on such matters, turned green.
At the suggestion of a hunt the Duke didn't exactly groan, but his eyes rolled upward in supplication to the gods. Until he had reached the age of thirty he had enjoyed a good hunt. But like most upper-class men of his culture, he rapidly put on flesh after thirty and became as sedentary as possible. The belief was that fat increased a man's life span. Also, a big belly and double chin were signs of aristocratic blood and a full purse. Unfortunately, along with this came an inevitable decline in vigor, which, coupled with the December-May marriages that their society expected of them, had given birth to another institution: the slave male companion of the rich man's young wife.
It was toward Green that the Duke looked. "Why not let him conduct the hunt?" he suggested hopefully. "I've so much business to take care of."
"Like sitting on your fat cushion and contemplating your glass birds," she said. "No!"
"Very well," he said, resignedly. "I've a slave in the work-pens who's to be executed for striking a foreman. We'll use him as the quarry. But I think we ought to give him two weeks to build up his wind and legs. Otherwise it would hardly be sporting, you know."
The Duchess frowned. "No. I'm getting bored; I can't stand this inaction any longer."
She shot a glance at Green. He felt his stomach muscles contracting. Evidently she'd noticed his lukewarm interest in her. This hunt was partly to suggest to him that he'd be meeting a like fate unless he perked up and began to be more entertaining.
It wasn't that thought that made his heart sink. It was that next weekend was when Miran's windroller raised sail and when he planned to be aboard it. Now, he'd be gone conducting the hunting party up in the hills.
Green looked appealingly at Miran, but the merchant's shoulders rose beneath the yellow robe as if to say, "What can I do?"
He was right. Miran couldn't suggest that he too go along on the hunt, and thus give Green a chance to slip aboard afterward. The day on which the Bird of Fortune was scheduled to leave the windbreak was absolutely the last date on which it could set sail. He couldn't afford to take the chance of being caught in the rains in the middle of the vast plains.
6
ALL THE NEXT DAY Green was too busy setting up the schedule of the hunting party to have time to be gloomy. But when night came he seemed to fold up inside himself. Could he pretend to be sick, too, and be left behind when the party set out?
No, for they would at once assume that he had been possessed by a demon and would pack him off to the Temple of Apoquoz, God of Healing. There he'd be under lock and key until he proved himself healthy, The terrible part about going to the Temple of Apoquoz was that it made death almost inevitable. If you didn't die of your own disease you caught somebody else's.
Green wasn't worried about catching any of the many diseases he'd be exposed to in the Temple. Like all men of terrestrial descent, he carried in his body a surgically implanted protoplasmic entity which automatically analyzed any invading microscopic organisms and/or viruses and manufactured antibodies to combat them. It lived in the space created by the removal of his appendix; when working to fulfill its mission it demanded food and radiated a heat that assured its host of its heartening presence. An increased appetite plus a slight fever indicated that it was killing off the disease and that within several hours it would successfully repel any boarders. In the two years Green had been on the planet it had had to attack at least forty times; Green calculated that he would have been dead each and every time if it had not been for his symbiote.
Knowing this didn't help him. If he played sick he'd be locked up and couldn't get on the 'roller. If he went on the hunting party he missed the boat, too.
Suppose he were to disappear the night before the party,
to hide on the windroller while the castle vainly looked for him?
Not very likely. The first thing that would occur to Zuni would be to order the windbreak closed and all 'rollers searched for a possible stowaway. And if that happened Miran would be so delayed that it was unlikely he'd sail. Even if he, Green, hid in Miran's cabin, where he would probably be safe, there would still be the inevitable and totally frustrating delay.
Then why not disappear several days earlier, so that Miran could have time to reload his cargo? He'd see the merchant tomorrow. If Miran fell in with his plans, Green would disappear four nights from this very night, which would leave three days for the windroller to be emptied and reloaded. Fortunately the tanks wouldn't have to be taken off, because any fool could see that the runaway wasn't hiding at the bottom among the fish.
Much relieved that he at least had a way open, if a very perilous one, Green relaxed. He was sitting on a bench along a walk on top of one of the castle walls. The sky was blazingly beautiful with stars larger than any seen from Earth. The great moon and the small moon had risen. The larger had just cleared the eastern horizon and the lesser one was just past the zenith. Mingled moonwash and starwash softened the grimness and ugliness of the city below him and laved it in a flood of romance and glamour. Most of Quotz was unlighted, for the streets had no lamps and the windows were shut up tight against thieves, vampires and demons. Occasionally the torchflares of the servants of a drunken noble or rich man moved down the dark canyons between the towering overhanging houses.
Beyond the city was the amphitheater formed by the hills curving out to the north and the great brick wall built to continue the natural windbreak. A wide opening had been left so that the 'rollers, their sails furled, could be towed in or out. Past this the great plain suddenly began, as if the hand of some immense landscaper had pressed the hills flat and declared that from here on there would be no unevennesses.