by Jack Vance
The bait-box exerted an intolerable fascination. He went back out on the dock and flipped up the lid. There indeed a packet wrapped in metal foil. Glinnes took it forth and after a moment of indecision carried it into the house. What did thirty million ozols look like? No harm in soothing his curiosity. He unfolded the covering to find a wad of folded periodicals. Glinnes stared down aghast. He started for the telephone, then stopped short. If Akadie knew of the situation, his manner would be intolerably dry and jocular. If, on the other hand, Akadie were ignorant of the substitution, the news would shatter him, and might well be postponed until the morning.
Glinnes rewrapped the packet and replaced it in the bait-box. Then he brewed himself a cup of tea and took it out on the verandah, where he sat brooding across the water. Night now fully encompassed the fens; the sky was paved with stars. Glinnes decided that Akadie himself had transferred the money, leaving the foil-wrapped parcel as a decoy. A typically subtle joke…
Glinnes turned his head at the gurgle of water. A merling? No—a boat approaching slowly and softly from the direction of Ilfish Water. He jumped down from the verandah and went to stand in the deep shade under the sombarilla tree.
The air was absolutely quiet. The water lay like polished moonstone. Glinnes squinted through the starlight and presently perceived a nondescript skiff with a single, rather frail person aboard. Akadie returning for his ozols? No. Glinnes’ heart gave a queer quick throb. He started to step forward from the shade, then halted and drew back.
The boat drifted to the dock. The person aboard stepped ashore and dropped the mooring line over a bollard. Quietly through the starlight she came, and halted in front of the verandah. “Glinnes! Glinnes!” Her voice was hushed and secretive, like the call of a night bird.
Glinnes watched. Duissane stood indecisive, shoulders drooping. Then she went up on the verandah and looked into the dark house. “Glinnes!”
Glinnes came slowly forward. “I’m over here.”
Duissane walked while he crossed the verandah. “Did you expect me?”
“No,” said Glinnes. “Not really.”
“Do you know why I came?”
Glinnes slowly shook his head. “But I am frightened.”
Duissane laughed quietly. “Why should you be frightened?”
“Because once you gave me to the merlings.”
“Are you afraid of death?” Duissane moved a step closer. “What is there to fear? I have no fear. A soft-winged black bird carries our ghosts to the Vale of Xian, and there we wander, at peace.”
“The folk eaten by merlings leave no ghosts. And in this connection, where are your father and your brothers? Arriving by way of the forest?”
“No. They would grind their teeth if they knew I was here.”
Glinnes said, “Walk around the house with me.”
Without protest she came with him. To the best effort of Glinnes’ senses, Rabendary Island was deserted except for themselves.
“Listen,” said Duissane. “Hear the tree-croakers…”
Glinnes nodded shortly. “I heard them. There’s no one in the forest.”
“Then do you believe me?”
“You’ve told me only that your father and brothers aren’t here. I believe that, because I can’t see them.”
“Let’s go into the house.”
Inside the house Glinnes turned up the light. Duissane dropped her cape. She wore only sandals and a thin frock. She carried no weapon.
“Today,” she said, “I rode in a boat with Lord Gensifer, and I saw you. I decided that tonight I would come here.”
“Why?” asked Glinnes, not altogether puzzled but not altogether certain.
Duissane put her hands on his shoulders. “Do you remember on the little island, how I jeered at you?”
“Very well indeed.”
“You were too vulnerable. I longed for your harshness. I wanted you to laugh at my words, to take me and hold me close. I would have melted on that instant.”
“You dissembled very well,” said Glinnes. “As I remember, you called me despicable, untidy and gluttonous.’ I was convinced that you hated me.”
Duissane made a sad grimace. “I have never hated you never. But you must know that I am solitary and wayward, and I am slow to love. Look at me now.” She tilted up her face. “Do you think I am beautiful?”
“Oh indeed. I’ve never thought otherwise.”
“Hold me close, then, and kiss me.”
Glinnes turned his head and listened. From Rabendary Forest the susurration of the tree croakers had never ceased. He looked back at the face close under his own. It swam with unusual emotions, which he could not define and which therefore troubled him; he had never seen such a look in any other eyes. He sighed; how difficult to love a person so intensely distrusted. How far more difficult not to do so! He bent his head and kissed Duissane. It was as if he had never kissed anyone before. She smelled of a fragrant herb, of lemon, and, vaguely, of wood-smoke. With his pulses racing, he knew he now could never turn back. If she had set out to enthrall him, she had succeeded; he felt he could never get enough of her. But what of Duissane? From around her neck she drew a heart-shaped tablet. Glinnes recognized it as a lovers’ cauch. With nervous fingers Duissane broke the tablet and gave Glinnes half. “I have never touched cauch before,” she said. “I have never wanted to love anyone before. Pour us a goblet of wine.”
Glinnes brought a flask of green wine from the cupboard and poured full a goblet. He went to the verandah and looked up and down the water. It lay calm and dreaming, broken only by the ripple of a merling who somewhere had surfaced.
“What did you expect to see?” asked Duissane softly. “Half a dozen Drossets,” said Glinnes, “with eyes spurting fire and knives in their mouths.”
“Glinnes,” said Duissane earnestly, “I swear to you that no one knows I am here but you and me. Are you not aware of how my people regard virginity? They would spare me no more than you.”
Glinnes brought the goblet of wine across the room. Duissane opened her mouth. “Do as a lover would.”
Glinnes placed the cauch on the tip of her tongue; she washed it down with the wine. “Now you.”
Glinnes opened his mouth. She put her half of the lovers’ tablet upon his tongue. It might be cauch, thought Glinnes, or she might have substituted a soporific, or a poison drug. He held the tablet in front of his teeth, and taking the goblet, drank the wine, and then made shift to eject the tablet into the goblet. He took the goblet to the sideboard, then turned to face Duissane. She had slipped off her gown; she stood nude and graceful before him, and Glinnes never had seen so delightful a sight And he was finally convinced that the male Drossets were not quietly approaching through the dark. He went to Duissane and kissed her; she loosened the fastenings of his shut. He slipped from his clothes and, taking her to the couch, would have proceeded, but she rose to her knees and held his head to her breast. He could hear her heart thumping; he felt sure her emotion was genuine. She whispered, “I have been cruel, but this is all past. Henceforth, I live only to exalt you, to make you the happiest of men, and you shall never regret it.”
“You intend to live here with me on Rabendary?’ inquired Glinnes, both cautious and puzzled.
“My father would kill me first,” sighed Duissane. “You cannot imagine his hate… We must fly to a far world and there live as aristocrats. Perhaps we shall buy a space yacht and wander among the colored stars.”
Glinnes laughed, “All very well, but all this requires money.”
“No problem there; we will use the thirty million ozols.”
Glinnes somberly shook his head. “I am sure Akadie would object to this.”
“How can Akadie deny us? My father and my brothers robbed him tonight. His case contained trash. He had the money today in the boat and he has been nowhere but here. He left the money here, did he not?” And Duissane peered into Glinnes’ face.
Glinnes smiled. “Akadie left a parcel in my bait-b
ox, for a fact.” And now he would wait no longer and drew her down to the couch.
They lay engaged, and Duissane, her face rapt, looked up at Glinnes. “You will take me from Trullion, and off and away? I so want to live in wealth.”
Glinnes kissed her nose. “Shh!” he whispered. “Be happy with what we have now and here…”
But she said, “Tell me, tell me that you’ll do as I ask.”
“I can’t,” said Glinnes. “All I can give you is myself and Rabendry.”
Duissane’s voice became anxious. “But what of the parcel in the bait-box?”
“That’s trash too. Akadie has fooled us all. Or someone else swindled him before he left Welgen.”
Duissane stiffened. “You mean that there is no money here?”
“So far as I know, not an ozol.”
Duissane moaned, and the sound rose in her throat to become a wail of grief for her lost virginity. She tore herself free from the embrace and ran across the dim room, out on the dock. She opened the bait-box, and pulling out the foil-wrapped package, tore it open. At the sight of the waste paper she cried out in agony. Glinnes watched from the doorway, rueful, grim and sad, but by no means bewildered. Duissane had loved him well enough, as well as she could. Heedless of her nakedness she ran blindly down the dock and jumped into her boat, but missed her footing and toppled screaming into the water. A splash, and her voice became a gurgle.
Glinnes raced down the dock and jumped into her boat. Her pale form floundered six feet beyond his reach. In the starlight he saw her terrified face she could not swim. Ten feet behind her appeared the oily black dome of a merling head, with eye-disks glowing silver. Glinnes gave a hoarse call of desperation and reached for Duissane. The merling wallowed close and seized her ankle. Glinnes jumped at its head and managed to strike it between the eyes with his fist, which damaged his knuckles and perhaps surprised the merling. Duissane seized Glinnes in a frantic drowner’s grip, and I wrapped her legs around his neck. Glinnes swallowed water. He wrenched the girl loose and, gaming the surface, thrust her toward the boat. A merling’s palp seized his ankle, and this was the nightmare that haunted every mind of Trullion—to be dragged alive down to the merlings’ dinner table. Glinnes kicked like a maniac; his heel ground into the merling’s maw. He twisted and broke loose. Duissane clung whimpering to the dock piling. Glinnes floundered to the ladder; he clambered into the boat and pulled her over the gunwales and aboard. They lay limp and gasping like netted fish.
Something bumped the bottom of the boat disappointed merling. It might try to tip the boat in its hunger. Glinnes staggered onto the dock, pulled Duissane up after him, and took her back along the starlit path to the house.
She stood, withdrawn and miserable, in the middle of the room, while Glinnes poured two goblets of Olanche rum. Duissane drank apathetically thinking her own dreary thoughts. Glinnes rubbed her dry with a towel, and himself as well, then took her to the couch, where she began to cry. He stroked her and kissed her cheeks and forehead. Gradually she became warm and relaxed. Cauch worked in her blood; the thought of dark still water thrilled her mind; she became responsive and again they embraced.
Early in the morning Duissane rose from the couch and without words donned her gown and her sandals. Glinnes watched, dispassionate and lethargic, as if seeing her through a telescope. When she drew the cape around her shoulders, he sat up, “Where are you going?”
Duissane threw him the briefest of wide-glances; her expression stilled the words in his mouth. He rose from the couch, wrapped a paray around his waist. Duissane was already out the door. Glinnes followed her down the path and out upon the dock, trying to think of something to say that would sound neither hollow nor petulant.
Duissane stepped into her boat. She turned him a flat glance and then departed. Glinnes stood looking after her, his mind whirling and confined. Why did she act so? She had come to him he had solicited nothing, offered nothing… He discerned his error. It was necessary, he told himself, to see the situation from the Trevanyi point of view. He had seared her extravagant Trevanyi pride. He had accepted from her something of immeasurable value; he had returned nothing, let alone that which she had hoped to receive. He was callous, shallow, unfeeling; he had made a fool of her. There were further, darker implications deriving from the Trevanvi world view. He was not just Glinnes Hulden, not just a lecherous Trill; he represented dark Fate, the hostile Cosmic Soul against which the Trevanyi felt themselves in heroic opposition. For the Trills, life flowed with mindless ease—that which was not here today would arrive tomorrow; in the meantime it was negligible. Life itself was pleasure. For the Trevanyi, each event was a portent to be examined in all aspects and tested for consequences and aftermath. He shaped his universe piece by piece. Any advantage or stroke of luck was a personal victory to be celebrated and gloated over; any misfortune or setback, no matter how slight, was a defeat and an insult to his self-esteem. Duissane had therefore suffered psychological disaster, and by his instrumentality, even though from the Trill point of view, he had only accepted what had been freely offered.
Heavy at heart, Glinnes turned back to the house. His eye fell on the bait-box. A curious idea entered his mind. He raised the lid and looked within. There the foil-wrapped parcel of wastepaper, which he took forth. He raked his fingers into the bottom layer of chaff and sawdust and encountered an object which proved to be a packet wrapped in transparent film. Glinnes saw pink and black Bank of Alastor certificates. Akadie had employed a sly trick to hide the money. Glinnes mused a moment, then took the foil-wrapped packet, discarded the wastepaper. He used the foil to wrap the money, which he replaced in the bait-box. Scarcely had he finished when he heard the sound of an approaching boat.
Down Farwan Water came Akadie’s white boat, with two passengers: Akadie and Glay. The boat coasted up to the dock; Glinnes took the line and dropped the loop over the bollard.
Akadie and Glay jumped up on the dock. “Good morning,” said Akadie in a voice of subdued cheer. He examined Glinnes with a clinical eye. “You are pale.”
“I slept poorly,” said Glinnes, “what with worrying over your money.”
“It is safe, I hope?” asked Akadie brightly.
“Duissane Drosset looked at it,” said Glinnes ingenuously. “For some reason she let it lie.”
“Duissane! How did she know it was there?”
“She asked where it was; I told her that you had left a packet in the bait-box. She claims that it contains only waste-paper.”
Akadie laughed. “My little joke. I concealed the money rather cunningly, I do believe.” Akadie went to the bait-box, removed the foil-wrapped package, which he dropped to the dock, and reached through the layer of chaff. His face froze. “The money is gone!”
“Imagine that!” said Glinnes. “It is hard to believe Duissane Drosset a thief.”
Akadie scarcely heard him. In a voice strained with fear he cried, “Tell me, where is the money? Bandolio will not be kind; he’ll send men to tear me apart… Where, oh where? Did Duissane take the money?”
Glinnes could torment Akadie no further. He nudged the foil-wrapped packet with his toe. “What’s this?”
Akadie swooped at the packet and tore it open. He looked up at Glinnes in gratitude and exasperation. “How wicked, to bait a man already on tenderhooks!”
Glinnes grinned. “What now will you do with the money?”
“As before, I wait for instructions.”
Glinnes looked at Glay. “And what of you? Still a Fanscher, it seems.”
“Naturally.”
“What of your headquarters, or central institute whatever you call it?”
“We have claimed a tract of open land not too far from here, at the head of the Karbashe Valley.”
“At the head of the Karbashe? Is that not the Vale of Xian?”
“The Vale of Xian is close at hand.”
“A strange choice of location,” said Glinnes.
“How strange?” retorted Glay
. “The land is free and unoccupied.”
“Except for the Trevanyi death-bird and uncounted Trevanyi souls.”
“We will not disturb their occupancy, and I doubt if they will trouble ours. The land will be used in joint tenancy, so to speak.”
“What then of my twelve thousand ozols, if your land is coming so cheap?”
“Never mind the twelve thousand ozols. We have sufficiently discussed the matter.”
Akadie had already stepped into his boat. “Come along then; let us return to Rorquin before thieves appear on the river.”
Chapter 17
Glinnes watched the white boat until it disappeared. He examined the sky. Heavy clouds hung over the mountains and loomed against the sun. The water of Ambal Broad seemed heavy and listless. Ambal Isle was a charcoal sketch on mauve-gray broad. Glinnes went up to the verandah and eased himself into one of the old string chairs. The events of last night, so rich and dramatic, now seemed stuff built of dream-vapor. Glinnes took no pleasure in the recollection. Duissane’s motives, however ingenuous, had not been altogether false; he might have mocked her and sent her home in anger, but not in shame. How different everything seemed in the ashen light of day! He jumped to his feet, annoyed at the uncomfortable trend of his thoughts. He would work. There was much to be done. He could pick musk-apples. He could go to the forest and gather pepperwort for drying. He could spade up the garden plot. He could repair the shed, which was about to collapse. The prospect of so much effort made him drowsy; he took himself inside to his couch and slept.
About midday he awoke to the sound of light rain on the roof. Glinnes drew a cloak over himself and lay pondering. Somewhere at the back of his mind hung a dark urgency, a matter requiring attention. Hussade practice? Lute Casagave? Akadie? Glay? Duissane? What about Duissane? She had come, she had gone, and would no longer wear a yellow flower in her hair. She might do so anyway, to hide the facts from Vang Drosset. On the other hand, she might risk his fury and tell him all. More likely, she might present an altered version of her nocturnal adventures. This possibility, already recognized by his subconscious, now caused Glinnes overt uneasiness. He rose to his feet and went to the door. A silver drizzle obscured much of Ambal Broad, but so far as Glinnes could detect, no boats were abroad. The Trevanyi, nomads by nature, considered rain an unlucky portent; not even to wreak vengeance would a Trevanyi set forth in the rain.
