“Listen carefully,” he told Gud Baxak. “I want you to go back to Yorlq and make some motions toward buying Iwip nuts. Mind you, I don’t want to buy any. I don’t even want a free sample. I just want to know if Iwip nuts can be bought.”
Gud Baxak said slowly, “But if you don’t want to buy any—”
“Never mind. You’ve told me what I wanted to know.”
He dismissed him and signaled to Kxon.
Enormous tubes fanned out from the base of the transfer station, and arriving ships were netted and carefully guided into berths that lay at right angles beneath them. Darzek and Kxon rode a conveyor down a tube to the efa ship and stood looking down into its cavernous interior. Even though an unbroken procession of passenger and freight compartments traveled this same route to be packed into the ships, there were far more workers about than Darzek had expected. He concluded that the handling of the huge compartments under zero gravity required finesse and judgment that machines could not be trusted to exercise without constant supervision.
No one challenged their presence there. The workers seemed never to have heard of stowaways. Kxon boldly took a step forward and floated down into the ship, and Darzek followed him.
“What’s that?” Darzek asked, pointing.
“They’ve installed a special transmitter,” Kxon said. “A transmitter with a viewing screen.”
“What do they use it for?”
“I don’t know.”
Kxon rippled open a door and dropped to the deck in mid-stride as he moved into the light gravity of the ship’s service and control section. It was primarily a cargo ship, and the lounge was tiny. Darzek quickly investigated a row of storage compartments, rippling open doors, closing them.
“What’s this stuff?” he asked.
“Vacuum suits. For emergencies.”
Darzek backed into the compartment. “This is for me. It won’t be too uncomfortable, and they shouldn’t be looking in here before they get under way. If there is an emergency I’ll have first crack at a suit. Run along, before someone sees you and gets supicious.”
“You’ll have a long wait,” Kxon said. “The ship is only half-loaded.”
“A long wait will be good for me. I have several things to think about.”
“You won’t let me come?”
“I need you here on Yorlq. You know what to do. Off with you, now.”
He rippled the door shut and sank back upon the billowing softness.
The efa were trading with the Dark. There wasn’t a Iwip nut to be had on Yorlq, which meant that the efa still exercised its monopoly and thought it could make a greater profit by handling the entire crop itself. Probably it had a number of ships trading with Dark worlds. It had gotten overconfident and handled the purchase of this one so clumsily that E-Wusk had detected it.
“The efa may be agents of the Dark,” Darzek mused, “or they may be astute traders who know an opportunity when they see one. In either case I’ll be getting my first look at a Dark world. It’s up to me to see that it isn’t the last.”
He had given Kxon a verbal message for Miss Schlupe, a written message to be handed to her if he was gone more than three days, and another written message to be held against the possibility that he might not return at all.
He had only one real worry about her. He hoped she wouldn’t do something foolish, such as elope.
He dozed off, found the lounge still deserted when he awoke, and went back to sleep. He was awakened by a muffled babble of talk. The low, rumbling tones were familiar; at least two of the efa were present, but he had never been able to distinguish their voices. Carefully holding the door to keep it from collapsing, he opened it a crack and peeked out.
An argument was in progress. Brokefa, the most remote from Darzek, was sullenly silent. Three of his maf-cousins were discussing something with much heated waving of tendrils. An animate of a type Darzek did not recognize, probably the ship’s captain, stood at the far side of the room and studiously pretended to ignore the argument, if indeed he understood it. The language was a strange one, perhaps a private maf dialect. Darzek listened for a time, attempting to pick out the words, and then he disgustedly edged the door shut.
Much later he detected the subtle, almost imperceptible vibration that preceded the ship’s first transmission. He released the door for another peek at the lounge. Only Brokefa was there, sitting dejectedly in the same position. Darzek closed the door again. Whatever the efa were up to, Brokefa didn’t care for it.
Darzek’s position, close to the hull of the ship, received vibrations and sounds he had not experienced in a passenger compartment. Time stretched out tediously in the darkness as he tabulated the transmitting leaps, the long waits between them, and finally the interminable, humming approach by rocket.
The rockets cut off. They should have been jockeying into a berth at a transfer station, and Darzek strained his ears for sounds of a net scraping across the ship’s hull and tensed himself for its telltale jerk. He heard nothing, felt nothing.
He opened the door a crack and took a deep breath of fresh air. The time had come, he thought, to make his presence known. He allowed the door to collapse soundlessly and stepped out.
The lounge was empty. Beyond a distant, open door were the fantastic complexities of the control room, which was also deserted. Darzek turned the other way and stepped into the cargo section.
A narrow alley led between the stacked cargo compartments to an open space by the newly installed transmitter. The efa and all of the crew were gathered around it, watching its screen intently. A curved sliver of light hung there, motionless against a backdrop of deep black. It swooped toward them and gave Darzek a dizzying sensation of rushing headlong on a collision course. Surface details appeared: a range of snowcapped, cragged mountains marching in stately formation off into the night shadow; the green oval of an inland sea; a dark patch of forest.
Quarm.
As it moved closer Darzek realized that their approach was illusory, a process of the screen’s magnification. They were in a remote orbit, and the lighted crescent widened as they circled toward daylight.
Quarm. A primitive world. Darzek saw a network of roads, which no fully transmitterized planet would need. The viewer finally centered upon a village, and as the magnification brought it closer Darzek thought nostalgically that he was receiving a distorted glimpse of Earth. The dome-shaped buildings were capped with odd-looking cupolas, and the one principal street coiled out from a central, ovular park, with smaller ovals and their surrounding clusters of buildings threaded onto it like symmetrical ornaments.
The viewer focused on the central oval and brought it closer.
“Put down the transmitter,” the captain ordered.
A crew member thrust a frame with a weighted base into the ship’s transmitter; the others watched the screen in tense silence.
Suddenly Darzek understood what they were doing: they were attemping a difficult “point” transmission, the transmitting of an object to a precise point without the benefit of a receiver. If their calculations were even slightly off, the frame might materialize a hundred feet in the air and fall to its destruction.
But were there no transmitters operating on Quarm? He watched incredulously.
“It’s down,” the captain said, as though he could not quite believe it himself. “It’s operating.”
The efa turned in one motion to Brokefa, who gloomily said something in the maf language, stepped into the transmitter, vanished.
Darzek pushed past the crew members, excusing himself politely. The other three efa, suddenly aware of his presence, regarded him with mingled amazement and blank consternation. Before anyone could move to intercept him Darzek flung himself at the transmitter.
The sudden emergence in full gravity staggered him. His mo
mentum sent him stumbling forward. He slipped to one knee, scrambled to his feet, and hurried after Brokefa. “Wait for me!” he called.
Brokefa turned. “Gul Darr!” he exclaimed. His amazed features assumed an expression remarkably akin to relief. He said simply, “I’m very glad to see you.”
They crossed the oval, wading through knee-high, yellowish grass that crackled protestingly with every step. What Darzek could see of the village had the lazy, unhurried aspect of a rural town on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Only the automobiles were lacking. There was no traffic.
There were no people. As they came closer, Darzek revised his first impression and thought of the place as a ghost town. The yellowish grass grew in cracks in the pavement. The gardens around the dwellings were choked with riotous growths of tall, yellowish weeds.
Brokefa panted an explanation as they walked. He was obviously frightened, and he kept glancing about apprehensively. “Naturally the dirty work falls on me,” he grumbled. “I once had headquarters on Quarm, so I know the language. I obtained gems from this region, and I had two agents in this village. So I have the job of making contact with them. The others—” He gestured disgustedly. “They remain in the safety of the ship and share in the profits. It’s all your fault, really. You and your talk of trading with the Dark.”
“Then—this is your first attempt?”
“Of course. We had the monopoly of Iwip nuts. They won’t grow anywhere except Yorlq, and only the Quarmers have found uses for them. They extract their oil and use the pressed kernels as a confectionary. They even make a flour out of the ground kernels. It’s a favorite Quarmer food.”
“I didn’t know anyone had a favorite food.”
“Primitive peoples often have strange tastes. Anyway, the Dark took Quarm, and we were left with our commitment for the entire Iwip nut production on Yorlq, with no market for it. So when you produced your proof that someone was trading with the Dark, my maf-cousins determined that they could do the same, and dispose of our stock. And the dirty work falls on me.”
“Then that’s why there were no nuts available on Yorlq,” Darzek said. “When you decided to trade with the Dark, you took them off the open market. Isn’t anyone home?”
They had stepped from the central oval onto the coiling street, but there was still no sign of life. “They’re nocturnals,” Brokefa explained. “When the sun is highest, they sleep the slumber of midnight.”
Hesitantly Brokefa led the way along the cracked pavement to the first cluster of dwellings. He approached one of them and stepped onto a flat stone before the door.
“Something is wrong,” he said a moment later. “The call slab doesn’t operate.”
“What’s it supposed to do?”
“It makes a light flash. You can see it through the air vents.” He stomped heavily on the slab. Puzzled, he turned to look about him. “Something is wrong. I’ve never seen the ovals so overgrown. The gardens, too. The Quarmers are fond of night flowers, and they cultivate them with care.” He moved toward the nearest garden. “Look—there’s nothing left but weeds.”
“The place certainly looks deserted,” Darzek agreed. He turned back to the dwelling, heaved against the heavy sliding door—another mark of a primitive society—and opened it.
At first he could make out nothing in the dark interior. A damp, fetid odor smote him. Gagging, he took a step backward as a clicking sound approached the door. A Quarmer appeared in the opening and stood staring out at him. He wore no light shield, and the sunlight instantly made his large eyes drip copiously. Suddenly he lunged at Darzek, bleating a word, and Darzek backed away warily.
Brokefa called something in a strange language. The Quarmer ignored him and continued to mouth the same word until the sound became a blurred moan.
“What is he saying?” Darzek asked.
“Food,” Brokefa said.
“Is that what the words means? Food?”
“Yes.”
The Quarmer stretched out multiple, segmented arms in a pathetic, pleading gesture. Others stumbled from the open doorway, cupping strange, handless fingers to protect their dripping eyes. Darzek looked about uneasily. Quarmers were staring down at them from the tinted cupolas of neighboring houses, or excitedly pouring into the street with light shields flapping.
Abruptly Darzek and Brokefa were surrounded by a crowd of bleating natives.
Brokefa said indifferently, “They ask for food. They say they are starving.”
“How can they be starving? Doesn’t this world produce food?”
“Ample food. Its principal exports were food. It imported only Iwip nuts.”
Quarmers filled the street and began to press closer, bleating their piteous cries and importuning with knobby, clicking arms. Their odd bodies did not look emaciated. The only evidence of malnutrition that Darzek could detect was the jerky unsteadiness of their movements.
“There is no trade here,” Brokefa said. “Let’s go.”
“They need food. They’ll certainly trade for your nuts.”
“They have nothing to trade. Let’s go.”
“We can’t leave them to starve.”
“Why not?” Brokefa demanded bitterly. “They ran us out, burned our warehouses, took our property. Now they bleat for food. Well—let them bleat!”
“Ask them why they have no food.”
Brokefa shouted the question, but the Quarmers could only sob brokenly for food. Darzek and Brokefa began to back away slowly. Darzek had his own bitter memories of the strength in those bristling arms, and though he very much wanted to feed these Quarmers, he vastly preferred to do it from the safety of the spaceship.
Surrounded by Quarmers, they moved along the street toward the central oval. No attempt was made to stop them, but the stumbling crowd matched their pace and mouthed its pleas with mounting frenzy. “Food! Food!”
Then the Quarmers saw the transmitter frame. They fell silent for a moment as they pondered the significance of this strange object. “Tell them we’ll send them food through the transmitter,” Darzek suggested.
He was too late. Brokefa could produce only an inarticulate sputtering as the Quarmers surged toward the transmitter with full-throated howls of rage. They deduced that these aliens were about to step into it and vanish forever, and all hope of food with them, and they sought to prevent that the only way they could. They tore the transmitter apart. The first Quarmer to reach it stumbled through and vanished. Others seized the frame and furiously bent and twisted it until its members parted.
“They may have something similar in mind for us,” Darzek observed. He turned the horrified Brokefa around and briskly walked him away.
The Quarmers abandoned the dismembered transmitter to chase after them, but they broke into a run and easily outdistanced their stumbling pursuers. They followed the curving street for a short distance and then veered off through a weed-choked garden. Brokefa, despite his quaking fright, could still mutter angrily as he ran. His indignation was directed mainly against his maf-cousins, Gudefa, Tizefa, and Linhefa by name. He had known what would happen. He had told them what would happen. He’d had his fill of running away from their smug Yorlqer safety—they had to trade with Quarm, and here he was: running away from Quarmers.
They crossed the spiraling street, circled a cluster of dwellings, crossed the street again. The Quarmers, tottering blindly in the bright afternoon sunlight, were left far behind, but from the dwellings they passed came a new horde, to string after them bleating, “Food! Food!”
“Will your cousins be able to see what is happening?” Darzek asked.
“I think so. Yes.”
“I hope they have another transmitter.”
“They have several. We didn’t expect to put one down safely on the first attempt.”
“May they be
as successful on the second attempt. Let’s open up more distance, so they can try.”
They skirted another cluster of dwellings, and saw, around the buildings ahead of them, a group of Quarmers milling about uncertainly. Their pursuers were still huffing and staggering in their wake, and the cries grew louder.
“Is there a shortcut out of town?” Darzek demanded.
Brokefa, who was huffing himself, did not answer.
“We’re surrounded,” Darzek said bluntly. “If we don’t get clear soon, the ship won’t have time to connect with us before dark.”
“Dark!” Brokefa sobbed. “They’re nocturnals! They can see in the dark! We could never get away from them at night.”
“Come on.”
They turned back toward the dwellings they had just passed, picked their way through an overgrown garden, circled around to the front of a house. The door stood open; the oval was deserted, its inhabitants probably having drifted off to join one of the mobs. Darzek grabbed Brokefa’s shoulder and firmly steered him into the house.
“We’ll be trapped here,” Brokefa sobbed.
“They can’t all get through the door at once. I’d rather face a few at a time here than take on the whole village out in the open.”
Darzek pushed the door shut and they faced each other in a dim shaft of light from an air vent. A peculiar, sweetish, musky odor filled the room. From somewhere in the darkness came a steady drip, drip of water. Quarmers began to stream past the house with a noisy clicking of segments, still gasping feebly for food. Darzek nudged a chair into position and climbed up to peer through an air vent. Quarmers were converging on the oval from three directions.
“Is there a back door to this place?” he whispered.
“Back door? No—”
“Then we’re stuck here until they get tired and go home.”
[Jan Darzek 02] - Watchers of the Dark Page 15
