The Dogtown Tourist Agency Page 9

  Janika turned him an arch side glance. “Will you be there?”

  “I couldn’t tell you where I’ll be a week from now.”

  “Don’t you ever want to settle down somewhere?”

  “I’ve thought about it. Gidion Dirby has invited me to his father’s loquat orchard.”

  Janika made a sound of scornful amusement. “Gidion Dirby. You came to Maz on his account?”

  “No. I came to learn something about Istagam. But the two matters might be connected.”

  Janika said, “Perhaps I’ll become an effectuator. It seems like fun. One always stays in the best hotels and meets interesting people like myself, and there’s always a Sir Ivon Hacaway to pay the bills.”

  “It’s not always like this.”

  “And what takes us out toward the Great Kykh-Kych Swamp? Gidion Dirby business or Istagam?”

  “Both. And then there’s another most peculiar element to the case, by the name of Casimir Wuldfache.”

  The name seemed to mean nothing to Janika. For a period they rode in silence over a sprawling range of ancient basalt mountains, black crags protruding like rotten stumps from maroon detritus. Janika pointed. “Look yonder—the castle of the Viszt.” She took up binoculars. “Warriors are returning from a campaign, probably against the Shimrod, and the tourists have been cheated again.” She passed the binoculars to Hetzel and showed him where to look.

  White skull faces bobbed and blinked under crested helmets of cast iron; aprons of black leather swung to the motion of the legs. To the rear rolled six wagons pulled by ten-legged reptiles, loaded with objects Hetzel could not identify.

  “The Viszts are flyers,” said Janika. “The wagons carry their wings. They climb the mountains, put on their wings, and glide on the updrafts. Then, when they locate their enemies—I can’t think of a better word—they swoop down and attack.”

  “Curious creatures.”

  “You know how they breed, or mate?”

  “Sir Estevan gave me a pamphlet. In fact, you did too. I know that they are ambisexual, and that they go out to war in order to breed.”

  “It seems a dreary life,” Janika reflected. “They kill for love, and they die for love—all in a frenzy.”

  “They probably consider our love life rather dull,” said Hetzel.

  “My love life is rather dull,” said Janika. “Vv. Swince, Gidion Dirby, Vv. Byrrhis.”

  “Have patience. Somewhere among the twenty-eight trillion folk of the Gaean Reach is Vv. Right.”

  “Half of them are women, luckily. That cuts down the search by half.” Janika took up the binoculars. “I might as well take a look out over the swamp right now. There might be some kind of a fugitive or a divorcé out there.”

  “What do you see?” asked Hetzel.

  “Nothing. Not even a Gomaz, whom I wouldn’t consider anyway.”

  They flew above a land of rolling moors with tarns of dark water in the hollows. Ahead, the course of the Dz River lay in languid curves and loops; beyond spread the Great Kykh-Kych Swamp. Hetzel examined the chart with attention.

  Janika asked, “What are you looking for?”

  “An island five miles or so from the north shore, where Gidion Dirby was marooned by a man named Banghart. Have you ever heard that name, incidentally?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Three islands are possible. This one to the east—” Hetzel indicated the chart “—this one in the center, and this to the west. The center island is closest to the black circle on the chart.”

  “That’s the castle of the old Kanitze sept, which was wiped out by the Ubaikh two hundred years ago, and Kykh-Kych Inn, which is now closed down.”

  “We’re coming in over the east island. Look for a path leading to the mainland.”

  Hetzel circled the island—a hummock of twenty acres, crowned with a copse of iron trees and the tall rattling canes known as “galangal”. There was no area suitable for discharge of cargo; no path led away to the mainland.

  The central island lay twenty miles north—an area somewhat larger, with a level meadow marked and scarred as if by the arrival and departure of vehicles.

  Hetzel hovered over the meadow. “This is the place.” He pointed. “That iron tree yonder—there Dirby passed the night…And there—the path leading to the shore! Here we pick up the thread of Dirby’s adventures. Shall we land?”

  “We’re not supposed to land except in authorized locations,” said Janika. “That’s the rule, but it’s not always obeyed.”

  Hetzel glanced at his watch. “We don’t have all that much time if we want to meet the Ubaikh at the transport depot. So…we’d better fly on.”

  Janika looked at him in astonishment. “We’re to meet whom?”

  “The Ubaikh who witnessed the assassinations. If we want to learn the identity of the killer, he’s the obvious person to ask.”

  “Suppose he says it was Gidion Dirby?”

  “I don’t think he will. But I intend to ask him, no matter what he says.”

  “You seem very zealous all of a sudden.”

  “Yes, the mood strikes me once in a while.”

  Janika looked down at the swamp, now only a few hundred feet below: an expanse of black slime; various tufts of reeds, lung-plant, white whisker; wandering rivulets of dark water. The path slanted this way and that, following a series of slanted quartzite outcrops. “If I knew what you were looking for, I could look too.”

  Hetzel pointed to the dun-colored loom of mainland ahead. “Look for a stone wall. Gidion Dirby found a stone wall and a gate and Sir Estevan Tristo waiting for him. Except it probably wasn’t Sir Estevan. More likely Casimir Wuldfache.”

  Janika looked through the binoculars. “I see the wall and the gate. I don’t see either Sir Estevan or Casimir Wolf-face, whatever his name is. Now I can see the old Kanitze castle.”

  “This is where Gidion Dirby passed several memorable months, or so I suspect. He described some of his adventures to me. His chair ejected him to the floor. Sir Estevan emptied a chamber pot over his head. He observed you dancing upon the surface of his brain without any clothes on.”

  “One thing you can take as certain,” said Janika. “I have never danced upon Gidion Dirby’s brain.”

  “No question about this. You were evidently filmed at the Pageant of Foam on Tamar and the sequences adapted to the circumstances here. Almost certainly, Casimir Wuldfache turned the pot over Dirby’s head, since Sir Estevan denies doing so. All in all a curious set of experiences.”

  “Unless Dirby is a madman, as I once suspected.”

  They approached the cyclopean bulk of the ruined Kanitze castle. The roof across the vast central keep had long since rotted away; the seven peripheral towers had tumbled to broken stubs surrounded by detritus. The tower at the far western edge of the complex had been fitted with a new roof and structurally refurbished—evidently the disused tourist inn.

  Hetzel allowed the air-car to drift quietly above the castle while he looked down through binoculars. He stared so long and so intently that Janika at last inquired, “What do you see?”

  “Nothing very definite,” said Hetzel. He put the binoculars in the rack and looked down at the ruined castle. In the shadows of the central keep he had observed a stack of crates, protected from the weather by a shroud of transparent membrane. Up from the castle rose a fume of danger, quivering like hot air.

  “I don’t dare to land,” Hetzel muttered. “In fact, I feel the urgent desire to leave, before someone or something destroys us.” He jerked the air-car into motion; they skidded away to the west.

  Janika looked back at the receding ruins. “This isn’t quite the placid excursion I had expected.”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you.”

  “I’m not complaining…So long as I escape with my life.”

  The castle of the extinct Kanitze became a dark smudge and disappeared into the murk.

  “The rest of the trip should be relative
ly uneventful. The Ubaikh depot is safe ground, or so I’m told.”

  “The Olefract or the Liss patrol might think you’re trying to sell weapons, and kill you.”

  “I’ve got Sir Estevan’s translator. If necessary, I can explain.”

  “Not to the Liss. They believe what they see, and they’re most suspicious.”

  “Well…they probably won’t see us.”

  “I hope not.”

  The depot stood on a pebbly plain beside a white-and-orange target a hundred yards in diameter. Mountain shadows loomed above the north horizon; to west and east the plain extended into the blur of the sky. To the south, two miles from the depot, stood the castle of the Ubaikh sept—like the Kanitze ruins, a bulk of awesome proportions. Parapets surrounded the central keep; an inner tower rose another hundred feet to a squat roof of sullen maroon tiles. Seven barbicans, taller and more slender than those of the Kanitze ruins, guarded the keep, each joined to the parapets by an arched buttress. The area under the castle flickered with motion—Gomaz, and Gomaz bantlings at their routines and drills. Wagons rolled along an east road and a west road, loaded with what Hetzel took to be provender. There seemed to be flapping black forms in the air surrounding the outer towers. Down, down the figures drifted, darting, wheeling, diving, and swooping, occasionally, by dint of furious effort, gaining altitude before once more gliding.

  Hetzel dropped the air-car to the ground beside the depot. “We’ve got something less than an hour to wait, if the carrier is on schedule.”

  Half an hour passed. Across the sky came the carrier—an ellipsoidal compartment supported on four pulsor pods. It dropped to a landing at the exact center of the orange-and-white target. The entry port slid open; steps unfolded; a single figure disembarked. The carrier paused a moment, like a resting insect, then swept off at a slant to the south. Hetzel meanwhile had approached the Ubaikh with the language translator.

  The Ubaikh paused to assess the situation, wattles distended but uncolored. He wore an iron collar, which appeared to indicate status, and carried a sword of pounded iron in a harness over his back. Hetzel halted ten feet from the Ubaikh—as close as he dared approach.

  The Ubaikh’s wattles remained a pallid white, with a network of pulsing green veins, indicating simple antagonism.

  Hetzel spoke into the translator. “You have just now returned from Axistil.” The instrument produced a set of hisses and squeaks, fluting up into inaudibility and down again.

  The Ubaikh stood rigid, the white bone of his face immobile, the eyes glowing like black gems. Hetzel wondered whether it might be taking telepathic counsel with its fellows in the castle.

  The Ubaikh hissed, clicked, squeaked; the translator printed out on the tape: “I have visited Axistil.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “I yield no information.”

  Hetzel grimaced in frustration. “I have come far to talk to you, a noble and notable Ubaikh warrior.”

  The translator evidently failed to reproduce the exact implications of Hetzel’s remark, for the Ubaikh emitted a hiss which the tape merely identified in red italics as “anger”. The Ubaikh said, “My rank is high, and more than high: I am a chieftain. Did you come to traduce me in the very shadow of my castle?”

  “Not at all,” said Hetzel hastily. “There has been a misunderstanding. I came respectfully to request information of you.”

  “I yield no information.”

  “I will express my appreciation with a metal tool.”

  “Your bargains are worthless, like all Gaean bargains.” Words appeared on the tape faster than Hetzel could read them. “The Gomaz were defeated by metal and energy, not by courage. It indicates weakness that the Gaeans and Olefract and Liss hide in metal cells and send forth mechanical objects to fight for them. The Gomaz are strong warriors, the Ubaikh are supreme. They often defeat the Kzyk, whom the Gaeans choose to favor. The Gaeans are deceitful. The Ubaikh demand equal access to the secrets of metal and energy. Since we are denied, the Kzyk must suffer a Class III ‘Rivalry’ war, to the detriment of our long ages of love and war and esteem. The Liss and the Olefract are intractable cowards. The Gaeans are cowards, traitors and lie mongers. The Kzyk will never profit from the scandal of their activities. Bantlings and striplings must be tested and trained. The Kzyk will become a race of diseased monsters, sapped of strength, unworthy of love, but the Ubaikh will destroy the sept. We too are anxious for the secrets of metal and energy, but we will never become suppliants.”

  The spate of words ended abruptly. Hetzel made what he thought might be a conciliatory statement: “The Triarchy intends justice for the noble Ubaikh sept.”

  The Ubaikh’s wattles became mottled with green patches. Hetzel watched in fascination. The Ubaikh produced sounds, and the translator printed out a new storm of words. “The remark is empty of meaning. The Gomaz are constrained by strength of metal and bite of energy. Otherwise we would bring a Class III war upon our enemies. The Triarchy is a monument to pusillanimity. Will the Triarchs dare to fight any of us? They sit in fear.”

  “The Triarchs were killed before they could deal with your business. Two of your companions were killed as well.”

  The Ubaikh stood silently.

  Hetzel said, “The killer of these individuals has wronged us all. Will you return to Axistil and help to apprehend the criminal?”

  “I will never return to Axistil. The Triarchs are excellently killed. The Gomaz are an oppressed folk; their current status is a tragedy. Let the Gaeans teach all Gomaz the secrets of fire and metal, rather than just the Kzyk, then all will join to defeat the mutual enemy. Be off with you; this is the vicinity of the superlative Ubaikh sept. I would grind you to a powder if I did not fear your weapons.” The creature turned and stalked away.

  The Gomaz were an obstinate race, thought Hetzel. He returned to the air-car.

  Janika asked, “Well, who killed the Triarchs?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything except that he approved of the whole affair.” Hetzel took the air-car aloft.

  “Now where?”

  “Where are the Kzyk territories?”

  “A hundred miles north, more or less. Beyond the Shimkish Mountains yonder.”

  Hetzel studied the chart, then considered the sun, which hung halfway down the western sky. He turned the car toward the Black Cliff Inn, and Janika relaxed into her seat.

  “What do you want with the Kzyk?”

  Hetzel passed her the translator tape. “It’s more or less a tirade on the sins of the Gaeans.”

  Janika read the tape. “It sounds as if he went to Axistil to protest favors to the Kzyk.”

  “And why should the Kzyk get special treatment?”

  “I don’t know,” said Janika.

  “I don’t know either. But it might be Istagam.”

  Chapter X

  The Black Cliff Inn hung half over the brink of a mighty basalt scarp, under a complex of titanic ruins. Below spread a landscape which might have been contrived by a mad poet: a sodden moor clotted with turf of an unreal magenta, clumped with black water willow and an occasional eruption of extravagantly tall and frail galangal reeds glistening like silver threads.

  Hetzel came out upon the terrace, to find a dozen other guests taking refreshment and enjoying the smoky-green sunset. He seated himself at a table and ordered a beaker of pomegranate punch with two stone-and-silver goblets. The perquisites of his occupation were occasionally most pleasant, thought Hetzel. The air drifting up from the plain brought a musky reek of moss and galangal and a dozen unnamable balsams. From far across the moor, thin, high-pitched calls shivered the quiet, and once a distant ululation evoked so much mystery and solitude that the hair rose at the back of Hetzel’s neck.

  Janika slipped into the chair beside him. She wore a soft white frock and had combed her hair into lustrous loose curls. A most appealing creature, thought Hetzel, and quite probably as careless and candid as she appeared. He poured her a goblet of punch. “S
unset at the Black Cliff Inn is a remarkable occasion, and Vv. Byrrhis is a remarkable man for having created all this.”

  “No doubt about that,” said Janika in an even voice. “Vv. Byrrhis is a remarkable man.”

  “These inns—how many are there? Six? Seven?…They represent considerable capital. I wonder how Byrrhis financed such an operation.”

  Janika gave her fingers a flick to indicate her lack of interest in the matter. “I’m not supposed to know anything about it—and actually, I don’t. But…it’s well known that Sir Estevan Tristo is very wealthy.”

  “It seems a chancy investment,” said Hetzel. “There’s no possibility of firm title to the real estate.”

  “Vv. Byrrhis has as good title as anyone else. The Gomaz don’t object; ruined castles are taboo. Black Cliff is famous for sunsets,” said Janika. “And tonight we’ll see ghosts.”

  “Ghosts? Are you serious?”

  “Of course. The Gomaz call the plain yonder the Place of Wandering Dreams.”

  “Do persons other than the Gomaz see the ghosts?”

  “Certainly. A few dull souls see only wisps of marsh gas, or white-veiled night crakes, but no one believes such drab nonsense.”

  Other guests came out on the terrace. “The inn must be almost full,” said Hetzel. “I suspect that Vv. Byrrhis is coining money.”

  “I don’t know. He seems harried and anxious most of the time. I suspect that he isn’t as prosperous as he would like to be, but who is?”

  “Certainly not I.”

  “Suppose you solved this case brilliantly and Gidion Dirby gave you a million-SLU bonus—what would you do with it?”

  “More likely a million loquats from Gidion Dirby. From Sir Ivon Hacaway…” Hetzel gave his head a rueful shake. “First I have to solve the case.” He brought forth the translator tape and studied it a moment. “The tirade includes a few scintillas of information, no doubt by mistake. Someone is teaching the Kzyk ‘secrets of fire and metal’. Who? Why? Istagam naturally comes to mind. The Kzyk provide labor and are paid off in technology, which I presume to be illegal. The Ubaikh object. The Liss and the Olefract are also certain to object, so their Triarchs are killed off for this reason. Just speculation, of course.”