Planet of Adventure Omnibus (77 page)

Reith took a
final look over his shoulder at the gap, and started down the hill. Zap 210,
with a dubious glance toward the sun, followed. Reith halted. He removed the
hated black hat and sailed it off over the rocks. Then he took Zap 210’s hat and
did the same despite her startled protest.

FOR REITH THE
walk down the wide valley in the brown-gold light of afternoon was euphoric. He
felt light-headed; his torpor had vanished; he felt strong and agile and full
of hope; he even felt a new and tolerant affection for Zap 210. An odd wry
creature, he thought, watching her surreptitiously, and pale as a ghost. She
clearly felt uneasy in this sudden wilderness of space. Her gaze moved from the
sky, along the sweep of hills to either side, out to the horizon of what Reith
had decided must be the First Sea.

They reached
the floor of the valley. A sluggish stream wandered between banks of dark red
reeds. Nearby grew pilgrim plant, the pods of which formed the indispensable
staple food of Tschai. Zap 210 looked at the gray-green pods skeptically,
failing to recognize the shriveled dry yellow tablets imported into the
Shelters. She ate with fatalistic disinterest.

Reith saw her
looking back the way they had come, somewhat wistfully, he thought. “Do you
miss the Shelters?” he asked.

Zap 210
considered her reply. “I am afraid. We can be seen from all directions. Perhaps
the
zuzhma kastchai
watch us from the gap. They may send night-hounds
after us.”

Reith looked
up toward the gap: a shadow, almost invisible from where they sat. He could
detect no evidence of scrutiny; they seemed alone in the open valley. But he
could not be sure. Eyes could be watching from the gap; the black cloaks made
them conspicuous. He looked toward Zap 210. Almost certainly she would refuse
to remove the garment ... Reith rose to his feet. “It’s growing late; perhaps
we can find a village along the shore.”

Two miles
downstream the river spread wide to become a swamp. Along the opposite shore
grew a dense forest of enormous dyans, the trunks on the periphery slanting
somewhat outward. Reith had seen such a forest before; it was, so he suspected,
a sacred grove of the Khors, a truculent folk living along the south shore of
the First Sea.

The presence
of the sacred grove, if such it was, gave Reith pause. An encounter with the
Khors might immediately validate Zap 210’s fears regarding the
ghaun
,
and the unpleasant habits of those who lived there.

At the moment
there were no Khors in sight. Proceeding along the verge of the swamp they came
out on a knoll overlooking a hundred yards of mud flat, with the sluggish First
Sea beyond. Far to right and left were crumbling gray headlands, almost lost in
the afternoon murk. Somewhere to the southeast, perhaps not too far, must lie
the Carabas, where men sought sequins and where the Dirdir came to hunt.

Reith looked
up and down the coast, trying to locate himself by sheer instinct. Zap 210
stared glumly off to sea, wondering what the future held. A mile or so along
the shore to the southeast Reith noticed the crazy stilts of a pier extending
across the mud flats, out into the sea; at the end half a dozen boats were
moored. A swelling of ground beyond the swamp concealed the village which must
lie at the head of the pier.

The Khors,
while not automatically hostile, lived by a complicated etiquette,
transgressions of which were not tolerated. A stranger’s ignorance received no
sympathy; the rules were explicit. A visit with the Khors thus became a chancy
occasion.

“I don’t dare
risk the Khors,” said Reith. He turned to look back over the desolate hills. “Sivishe
is a long way south. We’ll have to make for Cape Braise. If we get there we can
take passage by ship down the west coast, although at the moment I don’t know
what we’ll use for money.”

Zap 210
looked at him in slack-mouthed surprise. “You want me to come with you?”

So here was
the explanation for her melancholy inspection of the landscape, thought Reith.
He asked, “Did you have other plans?”

She pursed
her lips sullenly. “I thought that you would want to go your way alone.”

“And leave
you by yourself? You might not fare too well.”

She looked at
him with sardonic speculation, wondering at the reason for his concern.

“There’s a
good deal of ‘boisterous conduct’ up here on the surface,” said Reith. “I don’t
think you’d like it.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll have
to go warily. These cloaks-we’d better take them off.”

Zap 210
looked at him aghast. “And go without clothing?”

“No, just
without the cloaks. They attract attention and hostility. We don’t want to be
taken for Gzhindra.”

“But that is
what I must be!”

“At Sivishe
you may decide otherwise. If we arrive, of course. We don’t help ourselves
going as Gzhindra.” He pulled off his cloak. With her face angrily turned away
she removed her cloak and stood in her gray undergown.

Reith rolled
the cloaks into a bundle. “It may be cold at night; I’ll take them with us.”

He picked up
the blue portfolio, which now represented excess baggage. He wavered a moment
and at last slid the portfolio between the inner and outer layers of his
jacket.

They set off
to the northwest along the shore. Behind them the Khor grove became a dark
blur; the far headland grew bulky and dark. Carina 4269 moved down the sky and
the sunlight took on a late afternoon richness. To the north, however, a bank
of purple-black clouds threatened one of the sudden Tschai thunderstorms. The
clouds moved inexorably south, muffling, half-concealing spasms of electric
light. The sea below shone with the sallow luster of graphite. Ahead, close
underneath the headland, appeared another grove of dyan trees. A sacred grove?
Reith searched the landscape but saw no Khor town.

The grove
loomed above them, the exterior boles leaning outward, the fronds hanging down
in a great parasol. The headland conceivably concealed a village, but at the
moment they were the only animate creatures under the half-black,
half-golden-brown sky.

Reith
imparted none of his misgivings to Zap 210, who was sufficiently occupied with
her own. Exposure to the sunlight had flushed her face. In the rather flimsy
and clinging gray undergown, with the black hair beginning to curl down on her
forehead and her ears, she seemed a somewhat different person than the pallid
wretch Reith had met in the Pagaz refectory ... Was his imagination at fault? Or
had her body become fuller and rounder? She noticed his gaze and gave him a
glare of shame and defiance. “Why do you stare at me?”

“No
particular reason. Except that you look rather different now than when I first
saw you. Different and better.”

“I don’t know
what you mean,” she snapped. “You’re talking foolishness.”

“I suppose so
... One of these days-not just now-I’ll explain how life is on the surface.
Customs and habits are more complicated-more intimate, even more ‘boisterous’-than
in the Shelters.”

“Hmmf,”
sniffed Zap 210. “Why are you heading toward the forest? Isn’t it another
secret place?”

“I don’t
know.” Reith pointed to the clouds. “See the black trails hanging below? That’s
rain. Under the trees we might stay dry. Then, night is coming soon, and the
night-hounds. We have no weapons. If we climb a tree we’ll be safe.”

Zap 210 made
no further comment; they approached the grove.

The dyans
reared high overhead. At the first lines of boles they stopped to listen, but
heard only a breath of wind from the oncoming storm.

Step by step
they entered the grove. The sunlight shining past the clouds projected a
hundred shafts and beams of dark golden light; Reith and Zap 210 walked in and
out of shadow. The nearest branches were a hundred feet above; the trees could
not be climbed; the grove offered little more security from night-hounds than
did the open downs ... Zap 210 stopped short and seemed to listen. Reith could
hear nothing. “What do you hear?”

“Nothing.”
But she still listened, and peered in all directions. Reith became highly
uneasy, wondering what Zap 210 sensed that he did not.

They
proceeded, wary as cats, keeping to the shadows. A clearing free of boles
opened before them, shrouded by a continuous roof of foliage. They looked forth
into a circular area containing four huts, a low central platform. The
surrounding boles had been carved to the semblance of men and women, a pair at
each tree. The men were represented with long nutcracker chins, narrow
foreheads, bulging cheeks and eyes; the females displayed long noses and lips
parted in wide grins. Neither resembled the typical Khor man or woman, who, as
Reith recollected, almost exactly resembled one another in stature, physiognomy
and dress. The poses, conventionalized and rigid, depicted the act of
copulation. Reith looked askance at Zap 210, who seemed blankly puzzled. Reith
decided that she interpreted the not-too-explicit attitudes as representations
of sheer sportiveness, or simple “boisterous conduct.”

The clouds
submerged the sun. Gloom came to the glade; drops of rain touched their faces.
Reith scrutinized the huts. They were built in the usual Khor style, of dull
brown brick with conical black iron roofs. There were four, facing each other
at quadrants around the clearing. They appeared to be empty. Reith wondered
what the huts contained. “Wait here,” he whispered to Zap 210, and ran
crouching to the nearest hut. He listened: no sound. He tried the door, which
swung back easily. The interior exhaled a heavy odor, almost a stink, of poorly
cured leather, resin, musk. On a rack hung several dozen masks of sculptured
wood, identical to the male faces of the carved trees. Two benches occupied the
center of the room; no weapons, no garments, no articles of value were to be
seen. Reith returned to Zap 210 to find her inspecting the carved tree trunks,
eyebrows lifted in distaste.

A purple
dazzle struck the sky, followed immediately by a clap of thunder; down came
rain in a torrent. Reith led the girl at a run to the hut. They entered and
stood with rain drumming upon the iron roof. “The Khors are an unpredictable
people,” said Reith, “but I can’t imagine them visiting their grove on a night
like this.”

“Why would
they come at any time?” demanded Zap 210 peevishly. “There is nothing here but
those grotesque dancers. Do the Khor look like that?”

Reith
understood that she referred to the figures carved upon the tree trunks. “Not
at all,” he said. “They are a yellow-skinned folk, very neat and precise. The
men and women are exactly alike in appearance, and disposition as well.” He
tried to recall what Anacho had told him: “A strange secret folk with secret
ways, different by day and by night, or at least this is the report. Each
individual owns two souls which come and go with dawn and sunset; the body
comprises two different persons.” Later, Anacho had warned: “The Khor are
sensitive as spice-snakes! Do not speak to them; pay them no heed except from
necessity, in which case you must use the fewest possible words. They consider
garrulity a crime against nature ... Never acknowledge the presence of a woman,
do not look toward their children: they will suspect you of laying a curse.
Above all ignore the sacred grove! Their weapon is the iron dart which they
throw with accuracy. They are a dangerous people.”

Reith
paraphrased the remarks to the best of his recollection; Zap 210 went to sit on
one of the benches.

“Lie down,”
said Reith. “Try to sleep.”

“In the noise
of the storm, and this vile smell to all sides? Are all the houses of the
ghaun
so?”

“Not all of
them,” muttered Reith. He went to look out the door. The alternation of
lightning glare and dying twilight upon the tree-statues presented the illusion
of a frantic erotic jerking. Zap 210 might soon begin to ask questions to which
Reith did not care to respond ... Upon the roof came a sudden clatter of hail;
abruptly the storm passed over, and nothing could be heard but wind sighing in
the dyan trees.

Reith
returned into the room. He spoke in a voice which rang false even to his own
ears: “Now you can rest; at least the sound is gone.”

She made a
soft sound which Reith could not interpret, and went herself to stand in the
doorway. She looked back at Reith. “Someone is coming.”

Reith hurried
to the doorway and looked forth. Across the clearing stood a figure in Khor
garments: male or female Reith could not determine. It went into the hut
directly opposite their own. Reith said to Zap 210: “We’d better leave while we
have a chance.”

She held him
back. “No, no! There’s another one.”

The second
Khor, entering the clearing, looked up at the sky. The first came from the hut
with a flaring cresset on a pole, and the second ran quickly to the hut in
which Reith and Zap 210 were concealed. The first took no notice. As the Khor
entered Reith struck hard, ignoring all precepts of gallantry; in this case
male and female were all the same. The Khor fell and lay limp. Reith jumped
forward; the Khor was male. Reith stripped off his cape, tied his hands and
feet with sandal thongs and gagged him with the sleeve of his black coat. With
Zap 210’s help he dragged the man behind the rack of masks. Here Reith made a
quick search of the limp body, finding a pair of iron darts, a dagger and a
soft leather pouch containing sequins, which Reith somewhat guiltily
appropriated.