Silence is Deadly (6 page)

Darzek called out again and got no answer. He continued to fumble about. Finally he chanced onto what seemed to be a candle holder complete with candle, but he had nothing to light it with.

Windows of the other rooms did not catch the moonlight, and they were, all of them, dark. Darzek seated himself on the half-circle sofa and wondered what he should do. Obviously the agents who operated from this base were out. There was little that he could accomplish before morning, so he decided to go to bed. He didn’t feel tired, but the sooner he got his time cycle co-ordinated with that of Kamm, the better.

He fumbled his way up the narrow stairway to the upper story. The moonlight touched one bedroom sufficiently to delineate the bed—a monstrosity that looked somewhat like a giant mushroom with an oversized stem and a flattened top. Darzek thought it symbolic of the problem of Kamm, which thus far he had seen neither head nor tail of. He went to bed and slept restlessly.

* * * *

On his first morning on the world of Kamm, Darzek was awakened by an execution that took place immediately below his window. The shrieks of torment brought him to the window in a bound. He opened the sash, folded the shutter aside, and looked out.

Dawn was only the faintest figment of the new day’s imagination, and all of the moons had set. Looking down on the dim street, which Kammians called a lane, Darzek saw a solitary cart passing, and each of its two wheels was uttering screams of anguish.

Darzek closed shutter and sash and returned to his bed, and before his eyes closed another cart passed by. And another. By the time dawn touched his window, a seemingly endless procession of carts was passing, with one following on the tailgate of another, and Darzek had managed to deduce that this Synthesis headquarters was located on one of the principal lanes, which the Kammians called surlanes, leading to the market place, and that this same excruciating cacophony would take place every market day.

He also had grasped the fact that deafness is synonymous with silence only for the deaf. This world of Kamm, this infamous Silent Planet, was in fact the most revoltingly noisy place he had ever experienced. No New York City traffic jam, even in the days when New York City had traffic, could rival a convoy of Kammian carts on the way to market. The Kammian squeaking wheel never got the grease, because no one heard the squeaking; and the incredibly tough, ridiculously named sponge wood seemed to last forever without lubrication. Every cart and wagon on the entire world of Kamm continuously uttered the pathetic shrieks of a wracked body being dragged to perpetual damnation. The world’s ugly beasts of burden, the nabrula, snorted and hissed and moaned and bleated, splendidly oblivious to the fact that neither they, nor their fellow nabrula, nor any other creature native to the planet, could hear them. The Kammians themselves, for all their disconcertingly human appearance, did the same. They hummed and hacked and bellowed and wheezed constantly. Their very digestive noises provided a running counterpoint to every Kammian encounter. There could be no social constraint about noises—any kind of noises—when no one was able to hear them.

When it seemed pointless to remain in bed longer, Darzek began a daylight exploration of the house. He found no signs of recent occupancy. In the kitchen, an unvented stove that looked like a charcoal burner had not been used since being cleaned. In the pantry were bins of native foods and vegetables, none of which looked edible to him; but some of the bins were empty. The perishables had been removed.

He finally found a loaf of stale bread, and when he’d hacked the petrified crust away with a wood knife of surprising sharpness, the interior was quite fresh. It wafted a potent, perfume-like scent, and its taste was spicy and somewhat bitter. He dipped chunks of it into a highly scented, honey-like syrup and washed them down with a delightfully potent cider.

Then he returned to the vantage point of his bedroom window. He watched the passing traffic, and scrutinized the drivers and the occasional pedestrian, until the squinting windows and unbalanced facade of the imposing house across the lane began to irritate him.

He was becoming increasingly disgusted. There was a job to be done, time was critically important, and he couldn’t make a move until one of the resident agents returned and showed him what to do. He didn’t even know where he was.

Finally he said to himself, “You’ve got to learn to function on this world. Maybe the most effective way to learn is to walk out of the house and do it.”

Major professions and occupations on Kamm had their own distinctive clothing, and Darzek already had noted that the house’s occupant was a perfumer, a maker and vendor of perfumes—not only from the clothing, but from the jars and bottles and flasks of liquid scent that cluttered table and bureau tops in every room.

“So I’ll be a perfumer,” Darzek told himself agreeably. The clothing fit him approximately well, which on the world of Kamm was well enough. He donned a one-piece undersuit with long legs and arms—the climate of Storoz was uniformly cool throughout the year. Leg and foot wrappings served as stockings. There were wide-legged trousers that came to a flapping end just below the knees, cloth-topped high boots with jointed wood soles, a waist-length tunic, a long apron that gave him the feeling of wearing a dress, and, finally, the perfumer’s trade-marks: the black and white striped cape and the imposing tall black and white striped hat.

Darzek scrutinized himself in one of the ornately framed mirrors that adorned each bedroom and pronounced the effect adequate. In a drawer he found a ceramic box with an ingeniously hinged lid—a money box. It was half filled with triangular coins of various alloys, each minted with peculiar glyph marks and the image of Kamm’s hideous death symbol, the Winged Beast. Darzek helped himself liberally, distributing coins through the several pockets of his cape, his apron, and his trousers. He felt uncomfortable without some suggestion of a weapon, so he picked up a small wood knife in the kitchen. It was as sharp as a razor, and when he tested the blade, he found he could not break it.

He went to the front door, hesitated, decided to investigate the back yard first. Some thirty meters behind the house stood a square building of colored stone resembling that of the house. A narrow walk connected the two; on either side, filling the yard and flowing into neighboring yards, were unbroken waves of flowers.

In the outbuilding Darzek found a perfume factory. Strong-smelling leaves and roots and berries and flowers were hung up or spread out to dry. There were enormous ceramic kettles and crocks, some of them covered and filled with pungent liquids. There was elaborate distilling apparatus and a row of unvented stone fireplaces.

A few perfunctory glances satisfied Darzek. Beyond the perfume factory was a low, flat-topped building that his nose told him must be a stable, even though it had not been used recently. It was empty. A ramp leading up to the roof puzzled him until he looked next door and saw a pair of nabrula, the ugly Kammian beasts of burden, looking down at him. They got their air and exercise on their stable roof and thus avoided tramping their owner’s flower-filled yard.

Darzek returned to the house. Again he paused at the front door, and then he stepped through it and turned for a careful look at the front facade of the building. A moment later, walking in the same direction as the now thinning line of vehicles, he set off for the mart.

But he felt alertly cautious, rather than bold. He was accustomed to wandering about on strange worlds, but those worlds were accustomed to the presence of gawking, blundering aliens, of strange aspect, customs, and mannerisms. The world of Kamm did not know of the existence of aliens. If he gawked and blundered, he would be considered a gawking and blundering native and treated as such. Perhaps gawking and blundering had contributed to the loss of those nine or ten Synthesis agents.

He reminded himself not to gawk, and to keep his wits about him so he wouldn’t blunder.

But even a seasoned traveler like Darzek found it difficult not to gape about him on his first glimpse of a spectacularly beautiful world. It was hideously noisy; in direct compensation, as though the deaf Kammians had deliberately set about developing their remaining senses, it was vividly, dramatically, extraordinarily colorful.

And it was just as vividly, dramatically, and extraordinarily scented.

The very cobblestones underfoot had been selected for their colors, and they had been laid out by an artist. The varying shades of pink had been sorted and matched and arranged in a fabric of color that formed a magnificent mosaic, a textured pattern that was unending, that caught the eye and carried it as far as any winding section of the lane permitted, with striking visual motifs that received endlessly varied repetitions.

And where each narrow sublane appeared on either side—the city was not laid out in squares, and the lanes came and went haphazardly—colors flowed into colors, for each lane had its own individual shades and hues and patterns.

The stone dwellings were constructed in equally vivid patterns. They were two or three stories tall, set close on the lane with narrow yards at the sides and a vast expanse of yard in the rear—inevitably terminated by a low, flat-roofed nabrula stable.

The yards were filled with flowers, and floral ornaments and displays were seen everywhere. Vines with strikingly colored leaves entwined over lintels, providing splashes of contrast against the softer shades of the stones. Flowers filled windows and lined balconies. The yards were flower gardens without apparent formal planning; but colors shaded into colors and blossoms into strikingly hued foliage.

And on the fronts of the dwellings, placed with artful care, were baskets and ceramic containers of growing and cut flowers.

Kamm, the Silent Planet: World of color and of scent.

Each flower garden wafted such potent blendings of perfume that Darzek thought the owners arranged the plants as much for their scents as for their colors. And in the entranceway of each house, an alcove in which the door was set, hung a large ceramic beehive of a contraption, fashioned with artist’s care and fired with splendid multicolored glazes. It was an incense burner. Each poured out its own highly individual scent: pungent, spicy, sweet, or bitter; or it burned a blended, delicate orchestration of scents. Did each householder have his own aromatic insignia? Or was the scent perhaps a greeting or a signal to the passer-by: welcome, stop in any time. Or—busy today, come back tomorrow. Darzek pondered the labyrinthine twists and turns of the alien mentality and was awed.

There was a scattering of pedestrians in sight, all of them headed in the same direction as Darzek. For a time Darzek observed the couple walking in front of him, probably a husband and wife. In the fashion of Kammian females, each plait of the wife’s enormously long hair had been dyed a different color. These were piled into a towering headdress, where they were woven into vividly contrasting patterns. This edifice was a suitable companion piece for the tall, patterned hat of her husband; the two structures attained approximately the same altitude.

The female wore a tunic and flopping trousers matching those of her husband, but hers were in variegated color patterns where his were the solid colors of his profession. Her trousers were longer, extending to her ankles, and she seemed to be wearing low-topped shoes instead of boots. Her attire looked more masculine than her husband’s because she wore no artisan’s apron.

Darzek assiduously studied the male for a time—his gait; his mannerisms; the way he carried his hands when he walked; his chivalrous posture in politely bending over his wife’s flickering fingers when she spoke to him, as though every syllable had monumental importance to him and he wanted her to know it.

The lane veered again, and its rows of residences ended at a broad boulevard. It continued on the opposite side as a lane of artisan’s shops. He could see the mart beyond, with its makeshift avenues of tents, booths, wagons, carts. Darzek turned and strolled along the boulevard. Here the buildings were enormous—office warehouses, he speculated, for shipping and importing companies; through the mingled aromas that impinged on him from all sides, he had caught the tang of sea air.

He crossed to the stretch of park that lay in the middle of the boulevard. Stone paths crisscrossed it; rocks of striking shape or color were piled up in seemingly haphazard fashion, but these were used as seats by resting pedestrians. Around them grew lush plants and shrubs of such peculiar form and coloration that Darzek guessed them to be exotic imports. Vendors were selling food and beverages.

Darzek found himself a seat on a large rock and watched the passers-by. Almost at once he made an important discovery. When two males of the same craft or profession met, they exchanged signals that varied with the occupation and sometimes were extremely complicated. For one purple-patterned pair, an uplifted palm. For a pair with green and black, a hand gripping the wrist. For one with pink and white, a bent elbow. The only exception occurred when one male was carrying something. Then both exchanged shrugs.

Darzek continued to watch. Eventually he saw two perfumers exchange their own mystic salute: Index finger of right hand held against the nose. Darzek got to his feet and walked on.

A moment later he was confidently exchanging the finger-against-nose signal with a fellow perfumer. He crossed to the far side of the boulevard and strolled down one of the narrow lanes of artisan shops, marveling at the variety and quality of workmanship—carvings, furniture, jewelry, knickknacks, every kind of item he could think of and not a few whose function he could not imagine, all fashioned exquisitely out of wood. There were lovely ceramics in dazzling colors, masterfully woven rugs and cloths, varieties of baskets and containers that looked like wickerwork. Occasionally he saw a representation of the hideous Winged Beast, the mythical symbol of Kamm’s death religion, in plaques, ornaments, or jewelry. He was surprised to see it so seldom. It seemed to play a much more minor part in Kammian thought than Rok Wllon had believed.