Servants of the Wankh

by Jack Vance

  “Our ancient persecutors, who destroyed the Hoch Har empire. Now they keep to their side of the mountain, which is well for them, as we can smell out a Yao like a bad fish.” He jumped nimbly ashore. “The swamps lie ahead. Unless you lose yourselves or arouse the swamp people you are as good as at Kabasas.” With a final wave he started up the path.

  The boat drifted through sepia gloom, the sky a watered silk ribbon high above. The afternoon passed, with the walls of the chasm gradually opening out. At sunset the travelers camped on a small beach, to pass a night in eerie silence.

  The next day the river emerged into a wide valley overgrown with tall yellow grass. The hills retreated; the vegetation along the shore became thick and dense, and alive with small creatures, half-spider, half-monkey, which whined and yelped and spurted jets of noxious fluid toward the boat. Other streams made confluence; the Jinga became broad and placid. On the following day trees of remarkable stature appeared along the shore, raising a variety of silhouettes against the smoke-brown sky, and by noon the boat floated with jungle to either side. The sail hung limp; the air was dank with odors of wet wood and decay. The hopping tree-creatures kept to the high branches; through the dimness below drifted gauze-moths, insects hanging on pale bubbles, bird-like creatures which seemed to swim on four soft wings. Once the travelers heard heavy groaning and trampling sounds, another time a ferocious hissing and again a set of strident shrieks, from sources invisible.

  By slow degrees the Jinga broadened to become a placid flood, flowing around dozens of small islands, each overgrown with fronds, plumes, fan-shaped dendrons. Once, from the corner of his eye, Reith glimpsed what seemed to be a canoe carrying three youths wearing peacock-tail headdresses, but when he turned to look he saw only an island, and was never sure what in fact he had seen. Later in the day a sinuous twenty-foot beast swam after them, but fifty feet from the boat it seemed to lose interest and submerged.

  At sundown the travelers made camp on the beach of a small island. Half an hour later Traz became uneasy and, nudging Reith, pointed to the underbrush. They heard a stealthy rustling and presently sensed a clammy odor. An instant later the beast which had swum after them lunged forth screaming. Reith fired one of his explosive pellets into the very maw of the beast; with its head blown off it careened in a circle, using a peculiar prancing gait, finally floundering in the water to sink.

  The group gingerly resumed their seats around the campfire. Helsse watched Reith return the handgun to his pouch, and could no longer restrain his curiosity. “Where, may I ask, did you obtain your weapon?”

  “I have learned,” said Reith, “that candor makes problems. Your friend Dordolio thinks me a lunatic; Anacho the Dirdirman prefers the term ‘amnesiac.’ So-think whatever you like.”

  Helsse murmured, as if for his own ears: “What strange tales we all could tell, if candor indeed were the rule.”

  Zarfo guffawed. “Candor? Who needs it? I’ll tell strange tales as long as someone will listen.”

  “No doubt,” said Helsse, “but persons with desperate goals must hold their secrets close.”

  Traz, who disliked Helsse, looked sideways with something like a sneer. “Who could this be? I have neither secrets nor desperate goals.”

  “It must be the Dirdirman,” said Zarfo with a sly wink.

  Anacho shook his head. “Secrets? No. Only reticences. Desperate goals? I travel with Adam Reith since I have nothing better to do. I am an outcast among the sub-men. I have no goals whatever, except survival.”

  Zarfo said, “I have a secret: the location of my poor hoard of sequins. My goals? Equally modest: an acre or two of river meadow south of Smargash, a cabin under the tayberry trees, a polite maiden to boil my tea. I recommend them to you.”

  Helsse, looking into the campfire, smiled faintly. “My every thought, willy-nilly, is a secret. As for my goals-if I return to Settra and somehow can appease the Security Company, I’ll be well content.”

  Reith looked up to where clouds were clotting out the stars. “I’ll be content to stay dry tonight.”

  The group carried the boat ashore, turned it over and, with the sail, made a shelter. Rain began to fall, extinguishing the campfire and sending puddles of water under the boat.

  Dawn finally arrived: a blear of rain and umber gloom. At noon, with the clouds breaking apart, the travelers once more floated the boat, loaded the provisions and set off to the south.

  The Jinga widened until the shores were no more than dark marks. The afternoon passed; sunset was a vast chaos of black, gold, and brown. Drifting through the gloom, the travelers sought for a place to land. Mud flats lined the shore, but at last, as purple-brown dusk became night, a sandy bluff appeared under which the travelers landed for the night.

  On the following day they entered the swamps. The Jinga, dividing into a dozen channels, moved sluggishly among islands of reeds, and the travelers passed a cramped night in the boat. Toward evening of the day following they came upon a canted dyke of gray schist which, rising and falling, created a chain of rocky islands across the swamp. At some immensely remote time, one or another people of old Tschai had used the islands to support a causeway, long toppled to a crumble of black concrete. On the largest of the islands the travelers camped, dining on the dried fish and musty lentils provided by the Hoch Hars.

  Traz was restless. He made a circuit of the island, clambered to the highest jut, looked back and forth along the line of the ancient bridge. Reith, disturbed by Traz’s apprehension, joined him. “What do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  Reith looked all around. The water reflected the dusky mauve of the sky, the hulks of the nearby islands. They returned to the campfire, and Reith set sentry watches. He awoke at dawn and instantly wondered why he had not been called. Then he noticed that the boat was gone. He shook Traz, who had stood the first watch. “Last night, whom did you call?”

  “Helsse.”

  “He did not call me. And the boat is missing.”

  “And Helsse as well,” said Traz.

  Reith saw this to be the case.

  Traz pointed to the next island, forty yards across the water. “There is the boat. Helsse went for a midnight row.”

  Going down to the water’s edge Reith called: “Helsse! Helsse!”

  No response. Helsse was not visible.

  Reith considered the distance to the boat. The water was smooth and opaque as slate. Reith shook his head. The boat so near, so obvious: bait? From his pouch he took the hank of cord, originally a component of his survival kit, and tied a stone to one end. He heaved the stone at the boat. It fell short. Reith dragged it back through the water. For an instant the line went taut and quivered to the presence of something strong and vital.

  Reith grimaced. He heaved the stone again, and now it wedged inside the boat. He pulled; the boat came back across the water.

  With Traz, Reith returned to the neighboring island, to find no trace of Helsse. But under a jut of rock they found a hole slanting down into the island. Traz put his head close to the opening, listened, sniffed, and motioned Reith to do the same. Reith caught a faint clammy odor, like that of earthworms. In a subdued voice he called down into the hole: “Helsse!” and once again, louder: “Helsse!” To no effect.

  They returned to their companions. “It seems that the Pnume play jokes,” said Reith in a subdued voice.

  They ate a silent breakfast, waited an indecisive fidgeting hour. Then slowly they loaded the boat and departed the island. Reith looked back through the scanscope until the island no longer could be seen.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE CHANNELS OF the Jinga came together; the swamp became a jungle. Fronds and tendrils hung over the black water; giant moths floated like ghosts. The upper strata of the forest were a distinct environment: pink and pale yellow ribbons writhed through the air like eels; black-furred globes with six long white arms swung nimbly from branch to branch. Once, far off along an avenue of vision, Reith saw a cluster of
large woven huts high in the branches and a little later the boat passed under a bridge of sticks and coarse ropes. Three naked people came to cross the bridge as the boat drifted close: frail thin-bodied folk with parchment-colored skin. Observing the boat, they halted in shock, then raced across the bridge and disappeared into the foliage.

  For a week they sailed and paddled uneventfully, the Jinga growing ever wider. One day they passed a canoe from which an old man netted fish; the next day they saw a village on the banks; the day after a power-boat throbbed past. On the night following they halted at a town and spent the night in a riverside inn, standing on stilts over the water.

  Two more days they sailed downstream, to a brisk wind from astern. The Jinga was now wide and deep and the wind raised sizable waves. Navigation began to be a problem. Coming to another town they saw a river packet headed downstream; abandoning the boat they took passage for Kabasas on the Parapan.

  Three days they rode the packet, enjoying the comfort of hammocks and fresh food. At noon on the fourth day, with the Jinga so broad that the far shore could not be seen, the blue domes of Kabasas appeared on rising land to the west.

  Kabasas, like Coad, served as a commercial depot for extensive hinterlands and like Coad seemed to seethe with intrigue. Warehouses and sheds faced the docks; behind, ranks of arched and colonnaded buildings, of beige, gray, white and dark blue plaster, mounted the hills. A wall of each building, for reasons never clear to Reith, leaned either inward or out, giving the city a curiously irregular appearance by no means dissonant with the conduct of the inhabitants. These were a slender alert people, with flowing brown hair, wide cheekbones, burning black eyes. The woman were notably handsome and Zarfo cautioned all: “If you value your lives, pay no heed to the women! Do not so much as look after them, even though they provoke and tease! They play a strange game here in Kabasas. At any hint of admiration they set up furious outcry and a hundred other women, screaming and cursing, rush up to knife the miscreant.”

  “Hmmf,” said Reith. “And the men?”

  “They’ll save you if they can, and beat the women off, which suits all parties very well. Indeed this is the way of courtship. A man desiring a girl will set upon her and beat her black and blue. No one would think to interfere. If the girl approves, she comes the same way again. When he rushes forth to pummel her, she throws herself on his mercy. Such is the painful wooing of the Kabs.”

  “It seems somewhat awkward,” said Reith.

  “Exactly. Awkward and perverse. Such are affairs in Kabasas. During our stay you had best rely on my counsel. First, I nominate the Sea Dragon Inn as a base of operations.”

  “We’ll hardly be here that long. Why not go directly to the dock and find a ship to take us across the Parapan?”

  Zarfo pulled at his long black nose. “Things are never so easy! And why cheat ourselves of a sojourn at the Sea Dragon Inn?… Perhaps a week or two.”

  “You naturally intend to pay for your own accommodations?”

  Zarfo’s white eyebrows dipped sharply. “I am as you know a poor man. My every sequin represents toil. On a joint venture of this sort openhanded generosity should certainly be the rule.”

  “Tonight,” said Reith, “we stay at the Sea Dragon Inn. Tomorrow we leave Kabasas.”

  Zarfo gave a dismal grunt. “It is not my place to dispute your wishes. Hmmf. As I understand the matter, you plan to arrive at Smargash, recruit a team of technicians, then continue to Ao Hidis?”

  “Correct.”

  “Discretion then! I suggest that we take ship to Zara across the Parapan and up the Ish River. You have not lost your money?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Take good care of it. The thieves of Kabasas are deft; they use thongs which reach out thirty feet.” Zarfo pointed. “Observe that structure just above the beach? The Sea Dragon Inn!”

  The Sea Dragon Inn was indeed a grand establishment, with wide public rooms and pleasant sleeping cubicles. The restaurant was decorated to suggest a submarine garden, even to the dark grottos where members of a local sect, who would not publicly perform the act of deglutition, were served.

  Reith ordered fresh linen from the staff haberdashery and descended to the great bath on the low terrace. He scrubbed himself and was sprayed with tonic and massaged with handfuls of fragrant moss. Wrapping himself in a gown of white linen he returned to his chamber.

  On the couch sat a man in a soiled dark blue suit. Reith stared. Helsse looked back at him with an unfathomable expression. He made no move and uttered no sound.

  The silence was intense.

  Reith slowly backed from the room, to stand uncertainly on the balcony, heart pounding as if he had seen a ghost. Zarfo appeared, swaggering back to his room with white hair billowing.

  Reith signaled to him. “Come, I want to show you something.” He took Zarfo to the door, thrust it ajar, half-expecting to find the room unoccupied. Helsse sat as before. Zarfo whispered: “Is he mad? He sits and stares and mocks us but does not speak.”

  “Helsse,” said Reith. “What are you doing here? What happened to you?”

  Helsse rose to his feet. Reith and Zarfo moved involuntarily back. Helsse looked at them with the faintest of smiles. He stepped out on the balcony, walked slowly to the stairs. He turned his head; Reith and Zarfo saw the pale oval of his face; then, like an apparition, he was gone.

  “What is the meaning of all this?” Reith asked in a husky voice.

  Zarfo shook his head, for once subdued. “The Pnume love their pranks.”

  “Should we have held him?”

  “He could have stayed, had he wished.”

  “But-I doubt if he is sane.”

  Zarfo’s only response was a hunch-shouldered shrug.

  Reith went to the edge of the balcony, looked out over the town. “The Pnume know the very rooms in which we sleep!”

  “A person floating down the Jinga ends up at Kabasas,” said Zarfo testily. “If he is able, he patronizes the Sea Dragon Inn. This is not an intricate deduction. So much for Pnume omniscience.”

  On the following day Zarfo went off by himself and presently returned with a short man with skin the color of mahogany, walking with a sore-footed swagger as if his shoes were too tight. His face was seamed and crooked; small nervous eyes looked slantwise past the beak of his nose. “And here,” declared Zarfo grandly, “I give you Sealord Dobagq Hrostilfe, a person of sagacity, who will arrange everything.”

  Reith thought that he had never seen a more obvious rascal.

  “Hrostilfe commands the Pibar,” explained Zarfo. “For a most reasonable sum he will deliver us to our destination, be it the far coast of Vord.”

  “How much across the Parapan?” Reith asked.

  “Only five thousand sequins, would you believe it?” exclaimed Zarfo.

  Reith laughed scornfully. He turned to Zarfo: “I need your help no longer. You and your friend Hrostilfe can try to swindle someone else.”

  “What?” cried Zarfo. “After I risked my life in that infernal chute and endured all manner of hardship?”

  But Reith had walked away. Zarfo came after him, somewhat crestfallen. “Adam Reith, you have made a serious mistake.”

  Reith nodded grimly. “Instead of an honest man I hired you.”

  Zarfo swelled up indignantly. “Who dares name me other than honest?”

  “I do. Hrostilfe would rent his boat for a hundred sequins. He gave you a price of five hundred. You told him: ‘Why should we not both profit? Adam Reith is credulous. I’ll name a price and anything over a thousand sequins is mine.’ So, be off with you.”

  Zarfo pulled ruefully at his black nose. “You do me vast wrong. I have only just come from chiding Hrostilfe, who admitted knavery. He now offers his boat at”—Zarfo cleared his throat—”twelve hundred sequins.”

  “Not a bice more than three hundred.”

  Zarfo threw his hands into the air and stalked away. Not long after Hrostilfe himself appeared with the plea tha
t Reith inspect his ship. Reith followed him to the Pibar: a jaunty craft forty feet long, powered by electrostatic jet. Hrostilfe kept up a halfhectoring, halfplaintive commentary. “A fast seaworthy vessel! Your price is absurd. What of my skills, my sea-lore? Do you appreciate the cost of energy? The voyage will exhaust a power cell: a hundred sequins which I cannot afford. You must pay for energy and additionally for provisions. I am a generous man but I cannot subsidize you.”

  Reith agreed to pay for energy and a reasonable amount for provisions, but not the installation of new water tanks, extra foul-weather gear, good-luck fetishes for the prow; furthermore he insisted on departure the following day, at which Hrostilfe gave a sour chuckle. “There’s one in the eye for the old Lokhar. He had counted on swanking it a week or more at the Sea Dragon.”

  “He can stay as long as he likes,” said Reith, “provided that he pays.”

  “Small chance of that,” chuckled Hrostilfe. “Well then, what about provisions?”

  “Buy them. Show me an itemized tally, which I will check in detail.”

  “I need an advance: a hundred sequins.”

  “Do you take me for a fool? Remember, tomorrow noon we leave.”

  “The Pibar will be ready,” said Hrostilfe in a sullen voice.

  Returning to the Sea Dragon Inn, Reith found Anacho on the terrace. Anacho pointed to a black-haired shape leaning against the seawall. “There he stands: Helsse. I called him by name. It was as if he never heard.”

  Helsse turned his head; his face seemed deathly white. For a moment or two he watched them, then turned and walked slowly away.

  At noon the travelers embarked on the Pibar. Hrostilfe gave his passengers a brisk welcome. Reith looked skeptically here and there, wondering in what fashion Hrostilfe thought he had won advantage for himself. “Where are the provisions?”

  “In the main saloon.”

  Reith examined boxes and crates, checked them against Hrostilfe’s tally sheet, and was forced to admit that Hrostilfe had secured good merchandise at no great price. But why, he wondered, were they not stored forward in the lazaret? He tried the door, and found it locked.