“Who you calling a schoolboy?” yelped Beck. “You’d just start a general war of Vishnuvans against Bembom, and first thing you know—”
“Faça o favor to be quiet, my dear friends!” cried Silva. “Are we civilized men? We get ourselves excited for nothing. Now, my idea is to try to bring in Kamatobden and Daatskhuna for a quiet discussion—”
“You tried that!” said Beck. “They wanted to kill each other the minute they set eyes—”
The argument raged for another half-hour, at the end of which Luther Beck won by sheer lung power and loquacity. It was decided that he should try his plan first; if it didn’t work, then it would be time enough to attempt another. Anyway, if Beck’s plan failed, he would probably not be around to argue against any that the others might want to try.
###
The pilot said: “These damn maps are practically useless, on account of the stuff grows so fast . . . Here, I think we got it.”
He pointed to a spot on the radar scope that corresponded to Koshay’s house on the top map. The craft sank slowly until the cleared ground around the house appeared out of the fog a few meters below. When they were less than a man’s height from the ground, Beck climbed out and lowered himself down the rope ladder to the ground.
He told the pilot: “Watch and see what happens.” Then he walked boldly up to Koshay’s door and pushed the buzzer. The fog swirled about him as the rotor of the helicopter sucked it down from above and blew it out in all directions from where the craft hovered.
When there was no answer after several minutes, Beck took out a key and opened the door. Gun in hand he slipped in. The last time there had been Koshay trouble he had made a duplicate of Koshay’s door key without telling the owner: not strictly legal, perhaps, but one of those dodges officers of the peace have to resort to sometimes.
A search of the premises discovered no Senhor Darius. The general neatness implied that Koshay had gone away at his own convenience. Beck inspected the kitchen where the animal crackers were made, finding a pair of little molds for stamping them out, one cut in the form of a Dzlieri and one in that of a Romeli.
“Both ends against the middle,” thought Beck. There were a couple of canisters half-full of the things: one of Romeli and the other of Dzlieri crackers. He ate a few, found them good, and then was oppressed by the ever-present need of water in this Turkish-bath atmosphere. He washed down a couple of salt tablets, wondering if being a Turk had anything to do with Koshay’s liking for Vishnu.
Beck went outside again and looked around. The mud was full of footprints, some new, some leading to the house and others away. Most were plainly the three-toed prints of the Dzlieri. After a diligent search, Beck found also a trail of human footprints leading away from the house. After a few steps, however, they stopped. There were indications that the person who had made them had turned at right angles and then hopped on one foot. Evidently Koshay had mounted one of his centaurine visitors and ridden off on it.
Beck called up to the pilot: “Throw me down my stuff, will you? I’m going to trail this guy, and I’ll probably have to stay down overnight.”
“You crazy?” replied the pilot, but nevertheless he tossed down the pack, the canteen, and the stick. Beck caught them, slung the first two over his shoulders and gripped the third. He called: “Come back for me here each day at this time, will you? Até logo!” and set out along the trail. The pilot, unable to follow him into the jungle, flew away.
Beck’s high canvas boots, supposed to keep out borers, sank into the black slime with each step and came out with squelching sounds. Where the path was flooded he poked with the steel-shod end of his staff to make sure the footing was sound. Perspiration ran off him in rivers; Luther Beck sometimes wondered himself how he kept both stout and active in a climate that wrung most men to lean washed-out rags.
A sudden shower made him no wetter than he was already. A reptilian swamp dweller gaped a pair of great jaws at him from beside the trail, but a whack on the nose sent it slithering off. Beck was glad he had not had to shoot, for he feared alerting his quarry.
He considered himself lucky when signs indicated that he was approaching a main corral well before dark. Here the vegetation had been thinned out and the ground was higher and drier.
The plop-plop of hooflike feet sent Beck bolting into the brush. There he crouched, hoping that he did not share his hiding place with anything poisonous, while half a dozen Dzlieri trotted past. Four were stallions with crested brass helmets on their heads, shields on their arms, and great quivers of javelins strapped to the upright part of their bodies. A war party making up, he thought.
Beck resumed his approach, very cautiously this time. By flitting from bush to bush he got within sight of the corral, and by scouting around he found a place with a good view. Glasses were almost useless in this pea-soup atmosphere, with the fog billowing a few meters overhead.
The clearing swarmed with Dzlieri all talking at the tops of their naturally loud voices. Beck could make out no individual words above the general uproar. Sure enough, there was Koshay sitting on old Kamatobden’s back.
A couple of the creatures had rifles slung over their backs as well as their more usual weapons. Stolen from entrepreneurs in times past, thought Beck; probably without ammunition and rusted to uselessness. Still, the Dzlieri were pretty smart at metalwork and would someday perhaps start making their own, the way some primitives on Earth had done. In fact there were rumors . . . What would then happen to Bembom? Silva was a skilled diplomat and an awfully nice man personally, but Beck doubted that he had the spine for a shooting war. Silva was always one to gloss over and postpone in an effort to put the best face on things. Then command would devolve in fact upon the bluff and sometimes brutal sergeant, who lacked the imagination needed. As for himself, Luther Beck, it was no doubt true that he was too impulsive . . .
Some of the Dzlieri were throwing big leaves and other vegetable matter into a wooden bowl six meters in diameter. One of them poured liquid from a leather bottle over the mixture; another threw in handfuls of powders; a couple more vigorously stirred the mess with spears. Meanwhile others were mixing the Dzlieri cocktail in another bowl, a mere metre in diameter.
Somebody blew a whistle and the noise died. An old Dzlieri whom Beck recognized as Dastankhmden, the medicine man, appeared with what looked like (and probably was) an Earthly beer bottle. He shrilled something of which Beck caught only, “May the gods . . .” and emptied the bottle into the smaller bowl. A faint but pungent smell stole out to where Beck crouched behind his bush. This must be the secret bitters of the Dzlieri, for which such fabulous prices could be obtained on Earth after the stuff had been cut to one-thousandth of its original strength so that human throats could tolerate it. Could it be—it must be—that Koshay would take his pay from these indigenes in bitters.
The Dzlieri lined up with mugs and one by one scooped their drinks out of the bowl. They held some sort of drinking ceremony in which they paired off and drank with locked arms, Koshay pairing with Kamatobden. (Something with a lot of legs was crawling on Beck’s arm.)
Then the chief banged for silence on the edge of the large bowl and began a harangue: “You all know our dear friend, Darius, thanks to whose generosity we are at last to wipe our immemorial enemies, the vile Romeli, off the face of the planet. In time, I see a great alliance among all the tribes of Dzlieri to exterminate all the tribes of Romeli, even those that live across the great seas.
“Fetch forth the charms! Here they are, created by the invincible magic of the Earthmen on their far world, and smuggled from there over millions of miles, through the terrible emptiness of space, by our faithful friend at terrible risk and staggering cost.” (What a lot of fertilizer, thought Beck.) “Now the Reverend Dastankhmden will explain their use.”
The priest spoke: “First I will repeat the charm so you can become familiar with it. Then each of you will take one cracker, hold it up, and repeat each line of the charm after me. Whi
le you do that, try to keep a picture of a Romeli clearly in your minds. As you finish each line, you will bite off, chew, and swallow a small piece from your cracker. Just a small piece, mind you, since one cracker has to last through the entire charm. Are you ready? Here it is:
“ ‘As this cracker is consumed so may your life force—’ Hey, Dzalgoniten! I said this was just a rehearsal! You’re not supposed to be eating your cracker yet! Get another one and listen quietly.
“ ‘As this cracker is consumed, so may your life force be eaten away.
“ ‘As this cracker is chewed, so may your hopes be ground to bits.
“ ‘As this cracker goes down—’ ”
“Wow!” A piercing yell just behind Beck made him jump to his feet and whirl. He reached for his pistol just as a Dzlieri, who had stolen up behind him, let fly a lasso he had been whirling. Before Beck could draw, the rope settled over his head. It tautened with a jerk, pinning his arms, and pulled him off his feet.
“Yeow!” screamed his captor, hauling him bumpety-bump over roots and through bushes out into the clearing. “Look what we have!”
Strong arms jerked Beck, who was still a little dazed, to his feet. They relieved him of his gear. “Anybody know this Earthman?” bellowed Kamatobden. “He looks familiar, but they all look alike.”
Koshay said: “He’s the customs inspector at Bembom.”
“Now I know him,” said the chief. “What’s he doing here?”
“How should I know?”
“Which shall we do to him?”
Koshay shrugged. “That’s up to you.”
“All right.” Kamatobden raised his powerful voice. “There are only two things to do: either kill him quickly now, or wait until after the salad and give him a proper execution, with refinements. All in favor of the first . . .”
The later and more lingering death carried by a large majority. Beck was hustled over to the far side of the corral and thrust into a well-made cage of wooden bars the thickness of his arm and not much farther apart than they were thick. The door shut with a clank and a Dzlieri locked it with an iron key a foot long.
At least the smell of the herd was less overpowering here than in the middle of the corral. The Dzlieri who had locked the door was evidently the official guard, for he hung Beck’s belt over one shoulder and tapped the holster affectionately. “I know how to shoot one of these things,” he said with a leer. “So no tricks.”
Beck doubted that he did know how to shoot a pistol, since under the strict Viagens control, a Vishnuvan was lucky if he got a chance to fire a real gun once in a lifetime. However, this was something to remember; no use taking unnecessary chances.
The other Dzlieri went back to their party, and the medicine man resumed his instructions. After he finished, the Dzlieri in charge of the mixing bowl was kept busy by the continuous line of customers waiting their turn for a refill. The party got noisier, some of the creatures singing hoarsely and others demonstrating that the breeding season was not after all quite over.
Koshay came up to the bars with a mug in his hand and looking a little upset. He said: “You damn fool, why didn’t you mind your own business? Now that you’ve come snooping around here I can’t help you.”
“You didn’t try very hard just now,” said Beck, wondering how the entrepreneur could drink the Dzlieri cocktail straight.
“Why should I? I know them. They’d kill you no matter what I said, and if I interfered it would only make trouble for me.”
“You might try to steal that key and slip it to me.”
“While the sentry’s standing a couple of meters away watching us? And then have you get out and try to spoil my deal? How silly do I look, anyway?”
“But—”
“Serves you right for not keeping your nose where it belongs, though I personally wouldn’t have punished you so drastically. Adeus!”
Koshay strolled off, leaving Beck to mutter curses after him. A couple of the Dzlieri had gotten into a fist fight, and pounded each other mightily until others separated them.
Beck, trying to fight off despair, got the sentry’s attention and said in halting Dzlieri: “You—you make big mistake. That Koshay, he sell magic crackers to your enemies too, so you—uh—all get killed while he get rich . . .”
“Stow it,” growled the guard. Another Dzlieri brought him a drink, and when he had drunk that one he yelled until somebody brought him another.
A Dzlieri stumbled up to the cage with an armful of canes and shoved them through, saying: “Here—hic—Earthman, we can’t decide on a death horrible enough, so this’ll keep you alive for a few hours.”
As he lurched off, Beck remembered that these organisms had fast digestive systems. No doubt they thought that his was equally active and required nourishment soon if he were not to die of starvation. A Dzlieri spent about two-thirds of his waking time just eating. Beck chewed on the end of one of the canes and found it sweet. Well, he might as well die on a full stomach.
The pearly fog overhead was darkening when the party ended in general stupor. The corral was full of Dzlieri lying about in odd attitudes as if they had been machine-gunned, feet in the air, tongues lolling, and fragments of the salad scattered about. The place snored like a sawmill. Koshay had passed out early and even Beck’s sentry was laid out like the rest.
Beck wondered if he couldn’t take advantage of the situation. The key to his cage was hanging in plain sight from his jailer’s harness, and Beck’s belt with its holster and pouches lay around his neck. However, the sentry had prudently passed out beyond Beck’s reach.
Beck looked around the cage. The only loose objects that might possibly be used for reaching were the canes he had been chewing. He handled a few of them and chose one that seemed stiffer than the rest.
It would not reach.
That was a hell of a thing, thought Beck. Surely there must be some way. Wouldn’t he look stupid if he thought of the answer to this little puzzle after the Dzlieri had come to and were flaying him alive? Then he remembered that when he was boning up on biology for his scholarship (which now, alas, seemed more remote than ever), he had read a book on the Earthly great apes. It seemed that a genius of a chimpanzee named Sultan had once reached a fruit outside his cage by taking two sticks and fitting one into a socket in the other to make one long stick.
Well, Beck thought, at least I should be as smart as a chimpanzee. The canes were not ideal for the purpose, being soft, but at length he succeeded in telescoping two of them one into the end of the other. With this extended arm he found he could reach the key easily enough.
The only trouble was that the key was looped by a stout cord to a snap ring on the Dzlieri’s harness, and try as he might, he could not work it loose from that distance, not yet undo the knot in the cord. He thought some more. If he could get his belt . . .
He eased the belt off the sentry’s head—a tough job, for the belt was heavy with gear and the canes bent. Finally the belt came adrift, and Beck scraped it slowly toward the cage. At least he now had his gun.
What next? While he knew a little about picking locks as a result of his customs work, he had no tools suitable for the purpose. He made a resolve never to set forth on an expedition like this without a length of heavy iron wire for lock-picking.
Of course he had the gun, but so what? Could he hold up the herd and force them to let him go? They didn’t look as if they would be aroused even by gunshots. And if he did arouse them, would they obey him, or would they rush the cage and spear him despite his fire, or would they scatter into the woods and leave him there to starve? Unless he could be sure they would follow the first of these courses there was no point in killing a few, which would merely enrage the rest.
Could he open fire now and massacre the lot before they awoke? He had 42 shots—fourteen in the gun and two spare magazines—but there were over a hundred Dzlieri present. And anyway he did not know how sound asleep they were. So that was out, especially since he was not sure he
could make every shot count in this fading light. Could he blast the lock with his pistol? Maybe, but the ironwork looked solid if crude, and perhaps he would merely jam the works so the door could not be opened without a cutting torch, and even if he succeeded they might wake up . . .
No, altogether shooting did not seem to be the answer except as a last-ditch measure. He went through the pockets and attachments that hung from his belt. The most promising item seemed to be the sheath knife. If he had a stout cord to fasten the knife to the end of his pole with, perhaps he could saw the cord that held the key. Unfortunately he had not brought any string along either, and the nearest cord was that which held the key in question.
Well, perhaps he could improvise some string. The canes had twigs with long slim leaves, and by twisting a lot of these together he managed to achieve a fairly secure lashing. Then with the knife on the end of the pole, he reached out and began to saw the cord. He dreaded pricking the Dzlieri with the knife point and bringing the extra-terrestrial up with a roar of rage, but he had to take that chance. And he couldn’t exert any really powerful force on the knife for fear of breaking his slender canes or his precarious lashing.
His arms ached from muscular tension. At this rate it would be black by the time he finished . . . And then the cord parted. Beck scraped the key towards himself, losing it in the semi-darkness several times and having to feel for it. But at last it was his.
He stowed the knife and the string from the key, released the safety of his pistol, and unlocked the door. The screech of the lock he expected to bring all the Dzlieri up standing, but it failed to arouse them.
He picked his way through the gloom among the sprawled Vishnuvans until he found Koshay, whose shoulder he shook.
“Que quer você?” mumbled the entrepreneur, rubbing his eyes. These eyes widened suddenly when they took in Beck. Koshay tensed himself for action, but subsided when Beck shoved the pistol into his face.
The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens Page 11
