He explored systematically, starting at one end of the city and circling closer and closer to the center, which appeared to be a huge civic or control area, with overgrown parks, large imposing buildings, and a forest of tri-dimensional televiz masts. The city itself stood on the banks of a wide river, an arm of which had been diverted to run in a circle around this Civic Center, with numerous bridges between.
He went in and out of private houses, what seemed to be hotels, stores, warehouses, schools, halls, factories, and one building apparently a center of worship. Not one solitary human being met him, nor any other living creature higher in the scale of evolution than the equivalent of a cow. The cow-like creatures were not abundant, but they looked well fed; apparently they browsed on the vegetation of the many parks and gardens. It was unthinkable that they could be the dominant race. This civilization had been built by animals with developed cortices and opposable thumbs.
The planet was as advanced artistically as it was scientifically. In the homes, under thick layers of dust, were delicate jewels and piles of beautiful thin coins engraved in strange designs. The walls of the larger buildings were all carved in bas-relief, in a manner nearer to ancient Mayan art than to any other Patrick knew. Demonology must have played a large part in the religion, for there were numerous carvings of small winged beings with long Grecoesque features and what looked like lightningbolts for arms and legs. In the temple, a grotesque and horrible statue, a hundred feet high, filled most of the great nave.
There were no libraries or museums, no books, no paintings, no musical instruments, no microfilm. Yet the inhabitants must have had some means of visual and auditory public communication, judging by the televiz masts at the Civic Center.
Patrick camped for his first two nights in the nearest house, spreading his blanket on a rug because the beds were too thick in dust. He had his own food supplies in a knapsack, but the stores were full of shelves of metal containers obviously (though he could not understand the drawings on the labels) with edible contents. He sampled one or two, after testing them for harmlessness, and found one to be a preserved fruit with a pleasant subacid flavor, another a sort of paste resembling pate de foie gras mixed with caviar. There was also a pale pink liquid in a plastic bottle which turned out to be a delicate wine somewhat like vin rose.
He felt like a cross between Goldilocks and Alice.
On the third day he passed over a bridge to the Civic Center. The buildings in their disheveled parks were grouped around a spreading stone edifice with a dome, which he took to be the City Hall. It was morning, a beautiful sunny summer day in the bluish whiteness of Altair. The ragged trees, something like oaks, were full of white and green birds, all singing their little hearts out. A metal fountain, carved in the likeness of a spreading tree, was spouting water from the tips of its branches into a little pond. The grass was covered with myriads of low-growing, velvety purple flowers run wild. Patrick took the broad road, whose ornamental green and brown tiles showed wide gaps through which grassy blades grew thickly, that led to the central building. A long flight of steps ended at a massive bronze-like door, heavily and intricately carved.
Before his eyes, the door opened. A man stood for a second in the doorway, then dashed down the steps toward him.
Patrick braced himself and reached for his raygun. But the man’s arms were opened wide, his mouth was stretched in an ecstatic smile, and tears were running down his cheeks.
He was a tall, burly man, seemingly in late middle age; his hair was white but his movements were lithe and supple. He was clean-shaven, and was dressed in a sort of overall made of a grey fabric which looked both soft and durable. He called out something in a harsh guttural tongue. The scout shook his head.
“Welcome, welcome to Xilmuch!” cried the man then in perfect Standard Galactic. “Who are you? How did you get here? Where are you from? I was never so glad to see anyone in all my life!”
He gave Patrick no time to answer. Seizing him by the arm, he hustled him inside.
It had been an official building all right, Patrick could see that. There was a great lobby rising unimpeded to the dome, with an enormous wasteful central staircase. There were banks of levescalators on either side, and wide hallways led to groundfloor offices with transparent plastic doors running from floor to ceiling.
But half the rooms to the right had been transformed into a dwelling place. Patrick was hurried into a living-room whose stone floors were covered with thick grey rugs into which his boots sank. There were couches and low chairs, heavy cream-colored curtains at all the tall windows, long tables of a dark gleaming wood, their legs carved in flowers and birds.
An inner door opened, revealing a corner of a white shining room that must be a kitchen. A woman burst through it and ran to them.
She was about as old as the man, sturdy also, but too plump, with grey hair elaborately curled. She too was dressed in an overall, but hers was bright purple and over it she wore a fancy apron of lace with pink bows at its corners. She had been pretty once, in a vapid way—probably a piquant blonde of the buttercup-and-daisy variety.
She burst into excited chatter in the unknown tongue, clutching at the man’s hand. Her voice was high and twittering, with a whine beneath it. The man answered her, and though Patrick could not understand the words, the contemptuous tone was clear enough. The scolding ran off her like water; she gazed at the man meltingly, then turned to stare angrily at the Terran.
The man disengaged himself from her. In Galactic he said to the scout:
“Oh, this is wonderful! A visitor—a visitor at last!
“We must celebrate. We will have a feast. The last case of rexshan I could find—I must open it now. Tell me what you want: if there is any of it left, it is yours.
“Oh, what a miracle! Somebody to talk to after so terribly long!”
The woman had sidled up and cuddled against the man, holding his hand to her cheek. He jerked away impatiently, and barked what must have been an order, for she nodded brightly and trotted back to the kitchen, throwing a kiss as she went. The man shrugged as if throwing off a weight and turned to Patrick with undisguised relief.
“Sit here,” he said. “It is the most comfortable. And now tell me who you are, my friend, and how you found me.”
Patrick showed his credentials. The stranger shook his head. He explained them in words. The man nodded sagely.
“I understand. I had never dared to hope for a visitor from beyond Xilmuch. But I have heard of space travel, though we never attained it.”
“And yet you speak Galactic.”
“Is that what it is? That is one of my— But tell me first—”
“No, you tell me. Who are you? What happened to this city? Why did I see nobody in three days, until I found you and—and the lady? Is all your world like this?”
“My name is Zoth—Zoth Cheruk, but you must call me Zoth, and I shall call you Patrick. All the rest you ask—I shall be glad to tell you everything, but we have plenty of time. We’ll talk and talk! But first I want to know all about you, your world, how you all live, your own life—everything. I have been so starved for conversation—you can’t imagine how much, or how long!”
“But oughtn’t we to be helping the lady?” Patrick asked uneasily.
“Her name is Jyk. She is my wife.” He scowled. “She can manage. She cooks well, at least. It will take her hours; I have ordered all the best for us. Meanwhile, we will drink while we wait.”
He opened a tall cabinet with carved doors and took out goblets and a squat yellow bottle.
“Not rexshan—we shall have that at dinner. But almost as good; it is pure stralp of a very good year.”
He poured an iridescent liquid.
“You smell it for a few minutes, then you sip, then you smell it again,” he explained.
“Like brandy,” Patrick agreed.
“That I do not know. But that is as good a place to start as any. Tell me of your foods and drinks.”
&nbs
p; There was no help for it. This guy was going to give in his own good time only. Planet scouts are trained in diplomacy. Patrick settled down to being a vocal encyclopedia attached to a question-machine.
Twice they were interrupted by calls from the kitchen. Each time Zoth rose reluctantly and went out, first replenishing Patrick’s goblet; he could be heard lifting and setting down some heavy object, his annoyed voice interrupted by his wife’s cooing tones. The relation between the two puzzled Patrick as much as anything else he had chanced upon in this strange world, this seeming Mary Celeste of the space-seas.
Several hours and several glasses of the iridescent stralp later, he was feeling only relaxed and very hungry. Zoth’s wife appeared in the kitchen door, rosy and dimpling. This time Zoth beamed. “Now we shall eat,” he said. “We are having a tender young ekahir I had been saving in the freezing-box. I shall bring it in.”
Jyk—what ought he to call her? Mrs. Cheruk—cleared one of the long tables and from the lower part of the cabinet took dishes of some transparent plastic, golden yellow and delicately etched. She drew from a drawer knives and spoons—there were no forks—of a metal that looked like steel. Patrick hurried to help her. Her manner was distrait, and she kept glancing yearningly toward the kitchen. Presently Zoth entered, bearing a large tray heaped with steaming food.
The ekahir turned out to be a crisply roasted bird, its flesh tasting like a combination of turkey and duck. Zoth carved it adroitly, using a long thin knife with a carved metal handle, while his wife piled the plates high with unknown but interesting-looking vegetables. The rexshan, poured into tall slender glasses, proved to be a cool bubbling wine, with a warm aftertaste and an insidious effect.
The food was delicious, the drink delightful, and the Terran’s appetite sharp; but after his first hunger was satisfied, Patrick found himself increasingly disquieted.
Something he could not understand was very wrong between these two. He didn’t need to comprehend the words they exchanged to realize that Zoth loathed his wife, and that she worshiped him. There was scorn in every harsh command he gave her, and to each she hastened to respond with servile promptness. It got on Patrick’s nerves, until at last Zoth himself noticed, and made an obvious effort to restrain himself.
The climax came when Jyk, watching her husband’s plate with anxious solicitude, suddenly jumped from her seat, carried a dish of tart blue jelly to Zoth’s place, placed a portion of it on his plate, and caressingly threw her other arm around his neck just as he was raising a spoonful of ekahir to his mouth.
The meat fell from his jostled arm to the table, and he leapt to his feet. The angry syllables he shouted were unmistakably a curse.
Then suddenly, before Patrick could take in what was happening, Zoth seized the long knife with which he had carved the bird—and plunged it full into his wife’s breast.
Patrick dived and caught him by the arm before he could strike again. Shaking with horror, he turned his eyes to the victim.
She was not dead, she had not fallen, she was not even bleeding. With a gay laugh she plucked the knife from her flesh, chirped a few words in a tone of affectionate teasing, patted her husband’s cheek, and returned amiably to her place at the foot of the table, where she calmly helped herself to more of the jelly.
Patrick’s hand fell. He stood staring in paralyzed astonishment. Zoth laughed then too—but his laugh was half a groan.
“Forgive me for interrupting our meal so impolitely, my friend,” he said. “Sometimes this woman exasperates me beyond endurance—but, as you see, it does her no harm.”
Patrick could only continue to stare, as he slowly resumed his seat.
As for Jyk, she sat drinking rexshan, and smiling at her husband as a mother smiles at her naughty child.
Patrick’s appetite was gone; he sat uncomfortably waiting for an explanation that did not come. Zoth cleaned the last scrap from his plate, drained the last drop of rexshan, and only then addressed a few curt remarks to his wife. She rose quickly and began removing the dishes. The host turned to his guest.
“Exercise is good after a full meal, Patrick. Let us walk for a while around the city, and I will show you how I get our food and all our supplies. There is still much I have not yet asked you about your world.”
“There is much I want to know also, Zoth,” the Terran reminded him.
“Later; there is no hurry. When it is dark I shall send the woman off to bed alone, and then we shall sit over glasses of stralp and you may ask me anything you wish to know. But now you must tell me more of this Galactic Presidium, and how it operates. You say there is an agreement by which hitherto undiscovered planets are opened for colonization by whatever life-form is best adapted to them? You may imagine how much this interests me, since I can detect no difference whatever between your form and mine—we are akkir together.”
“Akkir—that means human?”
“Yes. And here is a whole empty world, with all the foundations of civilization already laid.”
“I am only a scout, you understand,” said Patrick. “I have no authority.”
“I understand. But your recommendation would have great influence. I am only wondering how long it would take. Perhaps it would be better . . . However, all that we can discuss later. Now I want to ask you—”
Patrick turned again into a vocal encyclopedia.
Their walk took them to a large warehouse. Zoth opened the door.
“Here, you see,” he explained, “are stored garments made of furs—furs of the carnivorous animals which no longer exist on Xilmuch. When it is cold, and we need warm clothing, we have only to take our pick. In the same way, all the stores and warehouses of the city are open to us to obtain whatever we desire in the way of food, clothes, furniture, ornaments—anything at all. There is only one real scarcity: rhaz, the fuel by which we run our planes and cars. I have stored all of that I could find in our house, which was once the City Hall, and I use a vehicle only when it is necessary to carry heavy loads. Otherwise, I walk. One man cannot operate the rhaz supplier, though when mine is gone I shall have to find some way.”
“What about public utilities?” Patrick asked. “Water, lights, things like that?”
“Enough is still operating automatically to serve us. Much, of course, has failed. If, before I—if we of Xilmuch had only learned to split the atom, as you say your world has done— But we hadn’t, and so, you will understand, there is great deterioration in such things, though they could be easily rehabilitated with sufficient manpower. After all, it has been fifty years.”
“Fifty years since what?”
“Shall we turn back now? I don’t want to tire you, and the sun will be setting soon. There are no street lights any more, and I shouldn’t like you to stumble in our ruts and gullies in the darkness. Besides, I’m thirsty again, and so must you be. The woman will have finished cleaning up; I shall have her set out some refreshment for us and send her off.”
They had walked farther than Patrick had realized; it was twilight before they crossed the bridge to the Civic Center where the great dome dominated the skyline. A glow of lights came from the right-hand windows on the first floor, and as they mounted the steps they found Jyk pacing up and down before the bronze door.
As soon as she glimpsed them, she ran toward them and threw her arms around her husband with a babble of speech. Zoth pulled away impatiently.
“The fool thought she had lost me,” he said with a wry grin. “This is the first time I have been this long out of her sight in fifty years. She insists on following me everywhere I go, and it’s not worth the trouble to get rid of her when I have no other companion—but today, when I have you—today I ordered her to stay at home and leave me free. She has been weeping. I am glad of it. Let her weep.”
Pretty cool, thought Patrick, for a man who had just tried to murder his wife in cold blood, and had failed to do so only by a miracle!
The big municipal-office-turned-living-room was aglow with tubes of s
oft neo-neon light, and he sank wearily into one of the soft chairs. The cream-colored curtains were drawn, but through a gap he could see the dark sky. This world, he had found, had no moon; and since the city lay near the equator, twilight and dawn were very brief.
He could have done with some sleep; but after all, a scout is a sort of diplomat: if his host were looking forward to a long evening, there was nothing to do but acquiesce. Besides, curiosity was scratching at him; he could make nothing at all of the personal situation here, and it was time for Zoth to talk.
Zoth addressed his wife in a series of staccato remarks. She bustled obediently into the kitchen, while her husband laid out the goblets and fresh bottles of the stralp. In a few minutes she returned, bearing a plate heaped with strips of some crisp white substance glistening with what looked like salt. She threw her arms around her husband’s neck, and, standing on tiptoe, pressed kisses on his unresponsive face. Patrick looked about him nervously, but this time Zoth stood uncomplainingly like a statue, his fists clenched. He said a few curt words, and Jyk disentangled herself and with a rebellious pout bowed unsmilingly to Patrick, making no attempt to dissemble her jealousy. She departed slowly through another door.
“Ah!” said the host, stretching luxuriously. “She will not dare to trouble us again tonight.” He poured the glasses full. “You cannot imagine what this means to me! At last—an evening of social conversation with a congenial friend! I have waited so long—I had almost ceased to hope.”
“I think it is your turn to talk now,” said the scout coldly.
“I know. You are right. And I can see that you are displeased with me. You think me rude and brutal, you think I abuse a poor woman whose only fault is that she adores me too much. But when you have heard—”
“You tried to kill her, at dinner.”
“Precisely: she angered me beyond endurance . . . and I tried. You observed that I did not succeed.”
The Compleat Boucher Page 78
