[Jan Darzek 04] - Silence is Deadly

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  They took a different route, and this time they were caught in a monumental traffic jam where their lane intersected one leading to and from the fair. Everyone seemed to be leaving the fairgrounds at once. Darzek continued to watch the passing pedestrians, and suddenly he saw the familiar figure and face he’d been searching for—Sajjo.

  Keeping his eyes on her, Darzek caught the attention of the weaver’s mate and pointed her out. Sajjo’s conduct amazed Darzek. She moved along slowly, her head tilted back and continuously moving from side to side, but she seemed to be looking at nothing in particular.

  The weaver’s mate stepped to the pavement and intercepted her. They spoke for a moment, and then Sajjo turned and headed back the way she had come, and the weaver’s mate followed her. From the cart behind them, a potter leaped out and followed the two of them, and another weaver appeared from somewhere nearby and set out after the potter—for the captain was taking great pains to make certain that the black-capes were not following Sajjo in the hope she would lead them to Darzek.

  The traffic jam continued. The weaver left the cart and strolled as far as the intersection, and when he returned he leaned inside the tent and spoke to Darzek. We didn’t need to worry about the black-capes following your daughter. They’ve got more important work on their hands. The duke has closed the fair, and they’re searching everyone leaving the fairgrounds and tearing apart all the merchandise displays. They must think the vendors are hiding you.

  He finally managed to turn the cart, and they headed for the harbor following a circuitous, roundabout route. Back aboard the ship, Darzek waited in a fever of impatience until finally his own cart arrived, with the potter driving and the weaver’s mate seated beside him. Sajjo’s pert young face peered out anxiously through the tent flaps.

  A moment later the cart was aboard the ship, and Sajjo, on being led into Darzek’s cabin, threw herself into his waiting arms.

  When she had stopped sobbing, he asked her about her peculiar conduct on the streets of OO. You weren’t even looking for me, he said jokingly. You were just waving your head around. I think you had your eyes shut.

  I did, part of the time, she agreed. I knew you’d he wearing different clothes and maybe have your face fixed different, and I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you. So I was trying to smell you.

  Captain Wanulzk and Nijezor, the perfumer, were due at the ship shortly after dark. Their perfumer came alone. He gloomily reported that he’d been stopped three times by black-capes on his way there.

  I, the most distinguished perfumer in OO! his hands exclaimed indignantly. I cannot even visit the harbor to arrange a shipment without being harassed by knights of my religion!

  He applied his latest concoction to Darzek, while Sajjo looked on with intense interest. Then he stepped back, and both of them sniffed carefully. Sajjo grimaced, and the perfumer slumped dejectedly onto a chair. His dejection increased when he learned that Darzek intended to leave for Northpor at the first opportunity.

  How can I disguise your odor if I do not have it to practice on? he protested.

  Darzek explained that he had a novice perfumer in his own family who could work on the problem.

  Bah! A beginner. Bah! When I, the foremost perfumer in Storoz, have tried twice and failed, you expect a beginner to succeed? Bah!

  They discussed the possibilities open to them. Finally Nijezor suggested shipping an assortment of scents for Darzek to try on himself. His own family could perform the smelling test. Darzek approved.

  The perfumer tucked away his flask and prepared to leave.

  Then the ship’s captain entered, accompanied by a young sailor. Black-capes now are guarding the harbor, the captain said. They’ve stopped all traffic to and from the ships.

  I had trouble slipping past them, the young sailor said. That’s why I’m so late. They’ve been following me all afternoon, and when I finally escaped them, they’d cordoned the docks.

  Darzek said politely, I congratulate you on your diligence. Do you know what happened to Captain Wanulzk?

  I bring you a message from the captain. He has learned for certain that the dukes—all of them—have given pledges of faith to the Protector, and the Protector in turn has pledged to restore the old canons. There will be a new King of Storoz, chosen in the ancient manner. The captain thinks the king will he chosen by lot, and in a manner difficult to tamper with. Otherwise, the dukes would not trust the Protector.

  I thank both you and the captain for the interesting news, Darzek told him. Now see if you can think of a way for me to get a message to Captain Wanulzk. He is supposed to come here this evening, but with the black-capes guarding the docks, I think it would be best that he doesn’t try.

  The young sailor spoke with engaging politeness. Captain Wanulzk was arrested by the black-capes this afternoon—shortly after he gave me that message.

  CHAPTER 15

  The ship’s captain decided to sail at once. Better to leave tonight with half a cargo than wait until tomorrow and not he able to leave at all, he remarked.

  Nijezor, the perfumer, had to choose between facing the black-capes again and sailing to Northpor. He said miserably, I can’t leave my family. The young sailor refused to leave OO with Captain Wanulzk under arrest. The captain put the two of them into a small boat and had them rowed across the harbor to a ship whose captain was determined to wait out the trouble.

  Darzek felt reluctant to leave himself. Captain Wanulzk had befriended and helped him—which was why he had been arrested.

  The ship’s captain said dryly, There are hundreds in OO who will work for Captain Wanulzk’s release. They know what to do, and how, and they aren’t subject to arrest by the first black-cape who smells them. Surely you can be of much more assistance somewhere else.

  Minutes later they were underway, and the captain was performing the delicate job of piloting them out of the harbor in darkness.

  The trip took them five days, in an unfavorable wind, and Darzek spent most of it in the bow with Sajjo, catching glimpses of Kamm’s rich marine life. On her one previous ocean voyage she had seen nothing at all because she’d had to remain hidden in the cart. Now she delighted in the sights, and scents, and sensations. Her enthusiasm filled the five days; even so, the slow trip tried Darzek’s patience sorely. He was eager to talk with Riklo, eager to find out if there’d been outside contacts, eager to consult the moon base file.

  In Northpor, Darzek remunerated the captain liberally for their passage. At first he refused to accept payment, but Darzek asked him, What pleasure is there in having money if one can’t use it to reward friends? It was a viewpoint alien to Kammian philosophy, and Darzek, when he drove their cart and nabrula ashore, left the captain staring after him perplexedly with his hand still uneasily clutching the money.

  They headed directly for the Synthesis headquarters that now was home to both of them; and the city of Northpor, bustling, energetic, beautiful, seemed a shade or two less colorful, its mart decidedly provincial, its lanes narrow and poorly planned, its buildings much smaller, after the grandeur of the city of OO.

  But the people were far happier, and the Winged Beast in the mart cast a shadow no longer than the height of its pole permitted.

  Sjelk welcomed them home excitedly and took charge of the cart and the nabrula. Darzek and Sajjo hurried to the house, where Wesru greeted them with effusion and then went to double the portions of the stew she was preparing. Darzek hastened to Riklo’s room. It was empty.

  He returned to the kitchen. Where’s Riklo? he asked.

  Gone, Wesru answered indifferently.

  Gone where? Darzek demanded.

  Wesru did not know. We could not keep her here. She said she had recovered and there was work to do.

  Did she say where she was going?

  No. But she went by ship. Hadkez took her to the harbor.

  Darzek retired to his own room, his anger tempered by his concern for Riklo’s safety. She had seemed too ill for anything but rest
, so he had given her no instructions. Even so, her departure without consulting him constituted insubordination, and she had disappeared at the moment he needed her most—needed the information she had acquired during her training.

  And she did not know about the Kammians’ sensitivity to alien odors. Her own body odor might be more or less offensive than that of Darzek—only a Kammian could tell her, and none would. By going off on her own, she probably had placed herself in certain jeopardy.

  After his household retired that night, Darzek went to the moon base. There he found a report prepared by Riklo offering her own observations to supplement the report he had written. With it was a note Riklo had left for him.

  “We need to find out what the other dukes are up to,” she had written. “I’m going to make myself a suklonor, a peddler to females. The Synthesis headquarters in Southpor has a collection of luxury goods of the type all the dukes’ wives covet. I’ll travel up the east side of the island and call at all the castles. If the females know what their mates are up to, I’ll find out. I’ll report to you in Northpor and then return to Southpor down the west side of the island.” She added, “At least, it’s something to do.”

  Darzek nodded thoughtfully. If it wasn’t for the fact that the first whiff of her, in the first castle she visited, would give her away, she might actually learn something.

  But now she was gone beyond recall, and Darzek would have to educate himself. It took him half an hour to find the correct modules and get the response he wanted from the base’s file computer, but eventually he was able to sit back and study the projection of a shallow slice of the galaxy that filled the communications room just above his head.

  He enlarged it until those suns with planets had noticeable pinpricks of light circling them. Then he adjusted his chair to semi-reclining and lay back to let the computer play detective for him. The sector was thinly populated with stars. Ninety-five per cent of the inhabited planets were at the same technological level as Kamm or lower. Darzek described the Duke Lonorlk’s crude electrical generator and asked which worlds in that slice of the galaxy boasted civilizations capable of supplying designs for it. Eight pinpoints of light began to blink rapidly.

  Six were widely scattered. The other two were Kamm’s neighboring solar systems. Scowling, Darzek punched buttons and put the file to work. The suns were Arrn and Zwentlax. Arrn had two habitable planets; Zwentlax had one, named Zruan.

  “Interesting,” Darzek muttered, “but I wish I knew why.”

  He described the strange metal detector he had taken from the phony black knights and asked which worlds could have created it. The blinking pinpoints of light dropped to four. Those of Arrn and Zwentlax were still among them.

  He punched another question. “Which worlds have achieved space flight?”

  The blinking pinpoints of light dropped to two: the worlds of Arrn and Zwentlax. Darzek amended the question to interstellar flight, and there was no response.

  “Those blithering bureaucratic butanones!” Darzek said furiously. An Uncertified World with space flight capabilities required a crisis rating. Here were two that actually had achieved space flight without a change of status. As a result, they almost certainly had gone on to interstellar flight without the Synthesis’s understaffed observation teams noticing.

  He turned again to the projection. The three suns, Arrn, Gwanor, and Zwentlax, lay almost in a straight line, with Gwanor close to the midpoint. This meant that Kamm, the Silent Planet, could serve as a convenient halfway station on a space trip from the Zwentlaxian system to the Arrnian system.

  Now he knew the source of the two kinds of aliens on Kamm and what they wanted there. It remained for him only to identify which aliens were in league with which dukes, and another question of the file accomplished that. The Duke of OO’s guest with the massive, encircling ear came from the Arrnian Union, the two planets of the sun Arrn that possessed a single government. Darzek had not seen the Duke Merzkion’s guests, but Captain Wanulzk’s description of their high-set, circular ears was certain indication that they came from Zruan.

  How could the Department of Uncertified Worlds have perpetrated such a massive blunder? No doubt the technologies of both civilizations were fumblingly inept by Synthesis standards, and someone in the department had considered them so remote from mastering interstellar travel that they were not even given the required crisis rating. The Department of Uncertified Worlds did not care how much an Uncertified World mucked about the ash heaps of its own solar system.

  “Never underestimate the capabilities of any intelligence,” Darzek murmured. Someone had, and now this quiet, technologically disadvantaged sector was in grave danger of becoming the setting for an interstellar war.

  Unfortunately for the world of Kamm, its location almost midway between the budding space powers made it a potential battleground. No doubt the interstellar capabilities of both powers were limited. Neither could get at the home worlds of the other without Kamm, without a place to refuel and supply.

  Darzek punched more buttons and found a mineral survey of Kamm. The planet’s resources were mediocre, but there were uranium deposits in the central mountains of the island of Storoz. If one of the space powers gained permission to mine and process the uranium, it could attack the home bases of its rival. Each of the powers would realize that it had to control Kamm or deny it to the other, for its own protection.

  Darzek turned his attention to the solar configurations beyond Kamm. If one of these powers occupied Kamm and managed to knock off the other, it might start on a rampage of spacial conquest that would carry it all the way to the sector boundary and beyond. The inhabited planets it would encounter were primitively civilized at best and would constitute easy pickings for a power with space capabilities. And when that power finally collided with a member of the Galactic Synthesis, it would be master of an interstellar empire and a conqueror to reckon with.

  But the if was a formidable one, and so was the might. Considering the cost and tedium of primitive interstellar travel, few developing worlds would conceive of such a program of conquest or be able to follow through on it if they did. Subduing one world, even a world without technology, could take generations. Even if one of the powers produced a military genius, this Napoleon of the spaceways would not live long enough to do much damage, time and distance being the formidable factors they were in primitive space travel.

  But the threat to Kamm was genuine. Now Darzek knew why Supreme had listed it as a potential trouble spot! The Galactic Synthesis took a rather aloof attitude toward the internal wars of Uncertified Worlds, but an interstellar war was a different matter. Kamm must be protected. Arrn and Zruan, neither of which was in a position as yet for overt military action, were attempting to secure the bases they needed through corrupt political maneuvering. They had to be defeated resoundingly and then dealt with on their home worlds.

  “And that,” Darzek told himself, “takes care of everything except the pazul.” There was no evidence that the Duke of OO had one. Therefore it must have been brought from Zruan, by the allies of the Dukes Merzkion and Fermarz.

  Without expecting any result, Darzek punched out the word, pazul, and the computer screen immediately flashed a memo from Rok Wllon himself that shocked Darzek.

  Synthesis agents had failed to learn of the interstellar travel potentials on Arrn and Zruan, but when a suspected pazul occurred on the backward world of Kamm, they weren’t so stupid as to overlook the possibility that it came from a neighboring solar system. Their department had gone to considerable trouble and risk to enter and search the most secret weapons and research and development centers in both civilizations, and their conclusions were irrefutable. Neither Arrn nor Zruan had a death ray.

  The pazul, whatever it was, belonged exclusively to Kamm.

  * * * *

  Darzek returned to Northpor, wrote more reports, tried to figure out how to make the communications equipment work, and waited for someone, anyone, to bring him a
snippet of information he could act upon.

  The news from OO was alarming. The Duke of OO had dared to challenge the Sailor’s League. The port of OO had been closed permanently, and the sailors expected retaliatory measures against the Free Cities. Some of Darzek’s Northpor neighbors were moving their families to Free Cities on the mainlands.

  Reports from OO were tediously out of date and consisted mostly of gossip picked up by itinerant vendors who had been turned away by border guards but managed to acquire a rumor or two in the process. Darzek spread a net to pick up every scrap of information available, but in none of it did he find a useful snippet.

  While he waited, he put Hadkez to work on the problem of his human scent, and he began to train Sajjo as a Synthesis agent. The child already had demonstrated an exceptional aptitude. Darzek told her to find out anything she could about the Dukes of Storoz or the Protector, and thereafter she prowled the mart, peeking in on conversations of visitors from other cities or provinces. Whenever she could, she asked questions. In this way they gradually built up character profiles of all of the dukes, but the Protector remained enigmatic. Sajjo never heard him mentioned.

  Interesting as some of this information was, nothing actually intriguing turned up until Sajjo related an unexpected discovery about the Duke Borkioz, the elderly, senile duke of the southernmost province. It was rumored that he had moved from his own province to the Free City of Midpor and taken a palatial dwelling there for himself, his family, and his retainers.

  Darzek reviewed his notes on the Duke Borkioz. He wondered if there was a coup in the process, and the old duke had been deposed or sent to safety. Either way it was an oddity, and he told Sajjo to ask travelers from the south about their duke.

  Then a totally unexpected visitor arrived: a rather wan Captain Wanulzk.

  Darzek greeted him warmly. It grieved me to hear of your captivity, he told him. Especially so since I was responsible. I felt that I should stay in OO and do something about it, but your sailors thought I would be more hindrance than help.