Tschai-Planet of Adventure (omnibus) (2012)

by Jack Vance

  Chasch and Chaschmen ran to the scout-boat, communicating in fluting glottal cries. Some clambered up the hull, peered into the interior, others investigated the head and torso of Paul Waunder, which they picked up and carried aboard the raft.

  From the control belvedere came a bawled alarm. Blue Chasch and Chaschmen looked up into the sky, then hurriedly pushed the raft under the trees and out of sight. Once again the little clearing was deserted.

  Minutes passed. Reith closed his eyes and considered the evil nightmare from which he hoped to awake, secure aboard the Explorator.

  A thudding of engines aroused him from torpor. Down from the sky sank still another vehicle: an airship which, like the raft, had been built with small regard for aerodynamic efficiency. There were three decks, a central rotunda, balconies of black wood and copper, a scrolled prow, observation cupolas, weapon ports, a vertical fin displaying a gold and black insignia. The ship hovered while those on the decks gave the space-boat a fastidious inspection. Some of these were not human, but tall attenuated creatures, hairless, pale as parchment, with austere countenances, languid and elegant attitudes. Others, apparently subordinates, were men, though they displayed the same attenuated arms, legs and torso, the sheep-like length of visage, the bald scalp, the carefully controlled mannerisms. Both races wore elaborate costumes of ribbons, flounces, sashes. Later Reith would know the non-human folk as Dirdir and their human subordinates as Dirdirmen. At the moment, dazed by the immensity of his disaster, he noted the splendid Dirdir airship only with disinterested wonder. The thought, however, seeped into his mind that either these tall pale folk or their predecessors at the scene had destroyed the Explorator IV, and both had evidently tracked the arrival of the scout-boat.

  Dirdir and Dirdirmen scrutinized the space-boat with keen interest. One of them called attention to the print left by the Chasch raft, and the discovery created an instant atmosphere of emergency. Instantly from the forest came stabs of purple-white energy; Dirdir and Dirdirmen fell writhing. Chasch and Chaschmen charged forth, Chasch firing hand-weapons, Chaschmen running to throw grapples at the ship.

  The Dirdir discharged their own hand-weapons, which exuded a violet flare and whorls of orange plasma; Chasch and Chaschmen were consumed in a purple and orange blaze. The Dirdir ship lifted, to be constrained by grapples. The Dirdirmen hacked with knives, burnt with energy pistols; the ship broke free, to fluting cries of disappointment from the Chasch.

  A hundred feet above the bog the Dirdir turned heavy plasma-beams upon the forest and burnt a series of reeking avenues, but failed to destroy the raft, from which the Chasch were now aiming their own great mortars. The first Chasch projectile missed. The second struck the ship under the hull; it slewed around under the impact, then gave a great dart off into the sky, flitting, lurching, jerking like a wounded insect, upside-down, then right-side up, with Dirdir and Dirdirmen falling off, black specks drifting down the slate-colored sky. The ship veered south, then east and presently was lost to sight.

  Chasch and Chaschmen came forth to gaze after the Dirdir ship. The raft slid forth from the forest, hovered over the scout-boat. Grapples were dropped; the boat was lifted from the mire. Chasch and Chaschmen climbed aboard the raft; it slanted up into the air and moved off to the northeast, with the space-boat slung below.

  Time passed. Reith hung in his harness, barely conscious. The sun settled behind the trees; dimness began to drift over the landscape.

  The barbarians reappeared. They went to the clearing, made a desultory inspection, looked up into the sky, then turned away.

  Reith gave a hoarse call. The warriors snatched out their catapults, but the youth made a furious gesture to restrain them. He gave orders; two men climbed the tree, cut the parachute shrouds to leave the ejection seat and Reith’s survival gear swinging in the branches.

  Reith was lowered to the ground, none too gently, and his senses went dim at the grating of bones in his shoulder. Forms loomed above him, speaking in harsh consonants and broad vowels. He was lifted, placed in a litter; he felt the thud and swing of footsteps; then he either fainted or fell asleep.

  Chapter II

  Reith awoke to the flicker of firelight, the murmur of voices. Above was a dark canopy, to either side a sky full of strange stars. The nightmare was real. Aspect by aspect, sensation by sensation, Reith took stock of himself and his condition. He lay on a pallet of woven reeds which exuded a sourish odor, half-vegetable, half-human. His shirt had been removed; a harness of withe constricted his shoulders and provided support for his broken bones. Painfully he raised his head, looked around. He lay in an open-sided shelter of metal poles covered with fabric. Another paradox, thought Reith. The metal poles indicated a high level of technology; the weapons and manners of the people were purely barbaric. Reith tried to look toward the fire, but the effort pained him and he lay back.

  The camp was in the open country; the forest had been left behind: so much was evident from the stars. He wondered about his ejection seat and the attached survival pack. Seat and pack had been left dangling, so he recalled to his regret. He had only himself and his innate resources to depend upon — a quality somewhat augmented by the training forced upon a scout, some of which Reith had considered pedantic over-elaboration. He had assimilated vast quantities of basic science, linguistic and communication theory, astronautics, space and energy technology, biometrics, meteorology, geology, toxicology. So much was theory; additionally he had trained in practical survival techniques of every description: weaponry, attack and defense, emergency nutrition, rigging and hoisting, space-drive mechanics, electronic repair and improvisation. If he were not killed out of hand, as had been Paul Waunder, he would live — but to what purpose? His chances of returning to Earth must be considered infinitesimal — which made the intrinsic interest of the planet less stimulating.

  A shadow fell across his face; Reith saw the youth who had saved his life. After peering through the dark the youth knelt down, proffered a bowl of coarse gruel.

  “Thanks very much,” said Reith. “But I don’t think I can eat; I’m constricted by the splints.”

  The youth leaned forward, speaking in a rather curt voice. Reith thought his face strangely stern and intense for a boy who could be not more than perhaps sixteen years old.

  With great exertion Reith pulled himself up on his elbow and took the gruel. The youth rose, moved a few paces back, stood watching as Reith tried to feed himself. Then he turned, called a gruff summons. A small girl came running forward. She bowed and taking the bowl fed Reith with earnest care.

  The boy watched a moment, evidently mystified by Reith, and Reith was perplexed no less. Men and women, on a world two hundred and twelve light-years from Earth! Parallel evolution? Incredible! Spoonful by spoonful the gruel was placed in his mouth. The girl, about eight years old, wore a ragged pajama-like garment, not too clean. A half-dozen men of the tribe came to watch; there was a growl of conversation which the youth ignored.

  The bowl was empty; the girl held a mug of sour beer to Reith’s mouth. Reith drank because it was expected of him, though the brew puckered his lips. “Thank you,” he told the girl, who returned a diffident smile and quickly departed.

  Reith lay back on the pallet. The youth spoke to him in a brusque voice: evidently a question.

  “Sorry,” said Reith. “I don’t understand. But don’t be irritated; I need every friend I can get.”

  The youth spoke no more and presently departed. Reith leaned back on his pallet and tried to sleep. The firelight flickered low; activity in the camp dwindled.

  From far off came a faint call, half howl, half quavering hoot, which was presently answered by another, and another, to become a half-musical chanting of hundreds of voices. Raising up on his elbow once more Reith saw that the two moons, of equal apparent diameter, one pink, the other pale blue, had appeared in the east.

  A moment later a new voice, nearer at hand, joined the far ululation. Reith listened in wonder: surely this
was the voice of a woman? Other voices joined the first, wailing a wordless dirge, which, joined to the far hooting, produced a colloquy of vast woe.

  The chant at last halted; the camp became quiet. Reith became drowsy and fell asleep.

  In the morning Reith saw more of the camp. It lay in a swale between a pair of broad low hills, among multitudes rolling off to the east. Here for reasons not immediately apparent to Reith the tribesmen elected to sojourn. Each morning four young warriors wearing long brown cloaks mounted small electric motorcycles and set off in different directions across the steppe. Each evening they returned, to make detailed reports to Traz Onmale the boy-ruler. Every morning a great kite was paid out, hoisting aloft a boy of eight or nine, whose function was evidently that of lookout. Late in the afternoon the wind tended to die, dropping the kite more or less easily. The boy usually escaped with no more than a bump, though the men handling the lines seemed to worry more for the safety of the kite: a four-winged contraption of black membrane stretched over wooden splints.

  Each morning, from beyond the hill to the east, sounded a fearful squealing, which persisted for almost half an hour. The tumult, Reith presently learned, arose from the herd of multi-legged animals from which the tribe derived meat. Each morning the tribe butcher, a woman six feet tall and brawny to match, went through the herd with a knife and a cleaver, to excise three or four legs for the needs of the day. Occasionally she cut flesh from a beast’s back, or reached through a wound to carve chunks from an internal organ. The beasts made little protest at the excision of their legs, which soon renewed themselves, but performed prodigies of complaint when their bodies were entered.

  While Reith’s bones mended his only contacts were with women, a spiritless group, and with Traz Onmale, who spent the greater part of each morning with Reith, talking, inspecting Reith’s habiliments, teaching the Kruthe language. This was syntactically regular but rendered difficult by scores of tenses, moods and aspects. Long after Reith was able to express himself, Traz Onmale, in the stern manner so much at odds with his years, would correct him and indicate still another intricacy of usage.

  The world was Tschai, so Reith learned; the moons were Az and Braz. The tribesmen were Kruthe or ‘Emblem Men’, after the devices of silver, copper, stone and wood which they wore on their hats. A man’s status was established by his emblem, which was reckoned a semi-divine entity in itself, with a name, detailed history, idiosyncrasies and rank. It was not too much to say that rather than the man carrying the emblem, the emblem controlled the man, as it gave him his name and reputation, and defined his tribal role. The most exalted emblem was Onmale, carried by Traz, who prior to assuming the emblem had been an ordinary lad of the tribe. Onmale was the embodiment of wisdom, craft, resolution and the undefinable Kruthe virtu. A man might inherit an emblem, take possession after killing its owner, or fabricate a new emblem for himself. In the latter case, the new emblem held no personality or virtu until it had participated in noteworthy feats and so acquired status. When an emblem changed hands the new owner willy-nilly assumed the personality of the emblem. Certain emblems were mutually antagonistic, and a man coming into possession of one of these at once became the enemy of the holder of the other. Certain emblems were thousands of years old, with complex histories; some were fey and carried a weight of doom; others impelled the wearer to hardihood or some specific sort of berserker élan. Reith was sure that his perception of the symbolic personalities was pale and gray compared to the intensity of the Kruthe’s own comprehensions. Without his emblem the tribesman was a man without a face, without prestige or function. He was in fact what Reith presently learned himself to be: a helot, or a woman, the words in the Kruthe language being the same.

  Curiously, or so it seemed to Reith, the Emblem Men believed him to be a man from a remote region of Tschai. Far from respecting him for his presence aboard the space-boat, they thought him a subordinate to some non-human race unknown to them, as the Chaschmen were subordinate to the Blue Chasch, or the Dirdirmen to the Dirdir.

  When Reith first heard Traz Onmale express this point of view, he refuted the idea indignantly. “I am from Earth, a far planet; we are not ruled by anyone.”

  “Who built the space-boat then?” Traz Onmale asked in a skeptical voice.

  “Men, naturally. Men of Earth.”

  Traz Onmale gave his head a dubious shake. “How could there be men so far from Tschai?”

  Reith gave a laugh of bitter amusement. “I’ve been asking myself the same question: how did men come to Tschai?”

  “The origin of men is well-known,” said Traz Onmale in a frigid voice. “We are taught this as soon as we can speak. Did you not receive the same instruction?”

  “On Earth we believe that men evolved from a proto-hominid, which in turn derived from an ancient mammal; and so on back to the first cells.”

  Traz Onmale looked askance at the women who worked nearby. He gave them a brusque signal. “Be off, we are discussing men’s matters.”

  The women departed with clacking tongues, and Traz Onmale looked after them in disgust. “The foolishness will be all over camp. The magicians will be annoyed. I must explain to you the true source of men. You have seen the moons. The pink moon is Az, abode of the blessed. The blue moon is Braz, a place of torment, where evil folk and kruthsh’geir* are sent after death. Long ago the moons collided; thousands of folk were dislodged and fell to Tschai. All now seek to return to Az, good and evil alike. But the Judgers, who derive wisdom from the globes they wear, separate good men from the bad and send them to appropriate destinations.”

  * An untranslatable word, roughly: a man who has defied and defiled his emblem, and hence perverted his destiny.

  “Interesting,” said Reith. “What of the Chasch and the Dirdir?”

  “They are not men. They came to Tschai from beyond the stars, as did the Wankh; Chaschmen and Dirdirmen are unclean hybrids. Pnume and Phung are spew of the northern caves. We kill all with zeal.” He regarded Reith sidelong, brows knit severely. “If you derive from a world other than Tschai, you cannot be a man, and I should order you killed.”

  “That seems overly harsh,” said Reith. “After all, I have done you no harm.”

  Traz Onmale made a gesture to indicate that the argument had no relevance. “I will defer judgment.”

  Reith exercised his stiff limbs and diligently studied the language. The Kruthe, he learned, held to no fixed range, but wandered the vast Aman Steppe, which spread across the south of the continent known as Kotan. They had no great knowledge of conditions elsewhere on Tschai. There were other continents — Kislovan to the south; Charchan, Kachan, Rakh on the other side of the world. Other nomad tribes roamed the steppe; in the marshes and forests to the south lived ogres and cannibals, with a variety of supernatural powers. The Blue Chasch were established to the far west of Kotan; the Dirdir, who preferred a cold climate, lived on Haulk, a peninsula reaching south and west of Kislovan, and on the northeast coast of Charchan.

  Another alien race, the Wankh, were also established on Tschai, but the Emblem Men knew little of these folk. Native to Tschai was an eerie race known as the Pnume, also their mad relatives, the Phung, regarding whom the Kruthe were reluctant to speak, lowering their voices and looking over their shoulders when they did so.

  Time passed: days of bizarre events, nights of despair and longing for Earth. Reith’s bones began to knit and he unobtrusively explored the camp.

  About fifty sheds had been erected in the lee of the hill, the roofs butted end to end to form what from the air would seem a fold or declivity on the hillside. Beyond the sheds was a cluster of enormous six-wheeled motor drays, camouflaged under tarpaulins. Reith was awed by the bulk of the vehicles and would have examined them more closely were it not for the band of sallow urchins which followed him about, attentive to his every move. Intuitively they sensed his strangeness and were fascinated. The warriors, however, ignored him; a man without an emblem was little more than a ghost.
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  At the far end of camp Reith found an enormous machine mounted on a truck: a giant catapult with a thrust-arm fifty feet long. A siege engine? On one side was painted a pink disk, on the other a blue disk: reference, so Reith assumed, to the moons Az and Braz.

  Days passed, weeks, a month. Reith could not understand the inactivity of the tribe; they were nomads; why did they keep so long to this particular camp? Every day the four scouts rode forth, while overhead swung the black kite, veering and dipping while the rider’s legs swung doll-like back and forth. The warriors were clearly restive, and occupied themselves practicing the use of their weapons. These were of three sorts: a long flexible rapier with a cutting and stabbing tip, like the tail of a ray; a catapult, which used the energy of elastic cables to shoot short feathered bolts; a triangular shield, a foot in length, nine inches across the base, with sharp elongated corners and razor-sharp side-edges serving additionally as a thrusting and hacking weapon.

  Reith was tended first by the eight-year-old urchin, then by a small hunched crone with a face like a raisin, then by a girl who, were it not for her joylessness, might have been attractive. She was perhaps eighteen years old, with regular features, fine blonde hair typically tangled with twigs and bits of fodder. She went barefoot, wearing only a smock of coarse gray homespun.