Planet of Adventure Omnibus (46 page)

Reith searched
the surface for a period but saw no more of the Wankh. An hour later, checking
the progress of the vessel, he once more turned the scanscope on the western
shore. To his cold dismay he saw that the shapes he had thought to be crags
were the black glass towers of an extensive Wankh fortress city. Wordlessly
Reith examined the swamp to the north with a new interest born of desperation.

Tussocks of
white grass protruded like hairy wens from fields of black slime and stagnant
ponds. Reith went below to seek material for a raft, but found nothing. The
padding of the settee was welded to the structure and came away in shreds and
chunks. There was no lifeboat aboard. Reith returned to the deck and wondered
what his next move should be. The Lokhars joined him: disconsolate figures in
wheatcolored smocks, wind blowing the white hair back from their craggy black
faces.

Reith spoke
to Zarfo: “Do you know the place yonder?”

“It must be
Ao Khaha.”

“If we are
taken, what can we expect?”

“Death.”

*     *     *

The morning
passed; the sun climbing toward noon dissolved the haze which shrouded the
horizons, and the towers of Ao Khaha stood distinct.

The ship was
noted. On the water under the city appeared a barge, which surged across the
water leaving a ribbon of white wake. Reith studied it through the scanscope.
Wankhmen stood on the deck, perhaps a dozen, curiously alike; slender men with
death-pale skins, saturnine or, in some instances, ascetic features. Reith
considered resistance: perhaps a desperate attempt to seize the barge? He
decided against such a trial, which almost certainly could not succeed.

The Wankhmen
scrambled aboard the ship. Ignoring Reith, Traz and Anacho, they addressed the
Lokhars. “All down to the barge. Do you carry weapons?”

“No,” grunted
Zarfo.

“Quick then.”
Now they noticed Anacho. “What is this? A Dirdirman?” And they gave chuckles of
soft surprise. They inspected Reith. “And what sort is that one? A motley crew,
to be sure! Now then, all down to the barge!”

The Lokhars
went first, hulk-shouldered, knowing what lay ahead. Reith, Traz and Anacho
followed.

“All! Stand
on the deck, at the gunwales, in a neat line. Turn your backs.” And the
Wankhman brought out their handguns.

The Lokhars
started to obey. Reith had not expected such casual and perfunctory slaughter.
Furious that he had not resisted from the first he cried out: “Should we let
them kill us so easily? Let’s make a fight of it!”

The Wankhmen
gave sharp orders: “Unless you wish worse, quick! To the gunwales!”

Near the
barge the water roiled. A black shape floated lazily to the surface and
produced four plangent chimes. The Wankhmen stiffened; their faces sagged into
sneers of annoyance. They waved at their captives. “Back then, into the
cockpit.”

The barge
returned to the great black fortress, the Wankhmen muttering among themselves.
It passed behind a breakwater, magnetically clamped itself to a pier. The
prisoners were marshaled ashore and through a portal, into Ao Khaha.

SURFACES OF
BLACK glass, stark walls and areas of black concrete, angles, blocks, masses: a
negation of organic shape. Reith wondered at the architecture; it seemed
remarkably abstract and severe. Into a cul-de-sac, walled on three sides with
dark concrete, the captives were taken. “Halt! Remain in place!” came the
command.

The
prisoners, with no choice, halted and stood in a surly line.

“Water
yourselves at that spigot. Perform evacuation into that trough. Make no noise
or disturbance.” The Wankhmen departed, leaving the prisoners unguarded.

Reith said in
a wondering voice, “We haven’t even been searched! I still have my weapons.”

“It’s not far
to the portal,” said Traz. “Why should we wait here to be killed?”

“We’d never
reach the portal,” growled Zarfo.

“So we must
stand here like docile animals?”

“That’s what
I plan to do,” said Belje, with a bitter glance toward Reith. “I’ll never see
Smargash more, but I may escape with my life.”

Zorofim gave
a rude laugh. “In the mines?”

“I know only
rumor of the mines.”

“Once a man
goes underground he never emerges. There are ambushes and terrible tricks by
Pnume and Pnumekin. If we are not executed out of hand we will go to the mines.”

“All for
avarice and mad folly!” lamented Belje. “Adam Reith, you have much to answer
for!”

“Quiet,
poltroon,” said Zarfo without heat. “No one forced you to come. The fault is
your own. We should abase ourselves before Reith; he trusted our knowledge; we
showed him ineptitude.”

“All of us
did our best,” said Reith. “The operation was risky; we failed; it’s as simple
as that ... As for trying to escape from here-I can’t believe that they’d leave
us alone, unguarded, free to walk away.”

Jag Jaganig
snorted sadly. “Don’t be too sure; to the Wankhmen we are animals.”

Reith turned
to Traz, whose perceptions at times bewildered him. “Could you find your way to
the portal?”

“I don’t
know. Not directly. There were many turns. The buildings confuse me.”

“Then we had
best remain here ... There’s a bare chance that we can talk our way out of the
situation.”

The afternoon
passed, then the long night, with Az and Braz creating fantasies of shapes and
shadows. In the chill morning, cantankerous with stiff joints and hunger, and
increasingly restless because of their captors’ inattention, even the most
fearful of the Lokhars were peering out of the cul-de-sac and speculating as to
the whereabouts of the portal through the black glass wall.

Reith still
counseled patience. “We’d never make it. Our only hope as I see it is that the
Wankh may decide to be lenient with us.”

“Why should
they be lenient?” sneered Thadzei. “Their justice is forthright: the same
justice we use toward pests.”

Jag Jaganig
was no less pessimistic. “We will never see the Wankh. Why else do they
maintain the Wankhmen, except to stand between themselves and Tschai?”

“We shall see,”
said Reith.

The morning
passed. The Lokhars slumped torpidly against a wall. Traz, as usual, maintained
his equanimity. Contemplating the boy, Reith could not help but wonder as to
the source of his fortitude. Innate character? Fatalism? Did the personality of
Onmale, the emblem he had worn so long, still shape his soul?

But other
problems were more immediate. “This delay can’t be accidental,” Reith fretted
to Anacho. “There must be a reason. Are they trying to demoralize us?”

Anacho, as
peevish as any of the others, said, “There are better ways than this.”

“Are they
waiting for something to happen? What?”

Anacho could
supply no answers.

Late in the
afternoon three Wankhmen appeared. One of these, wearing thin silver greaves
and a silver medallion on a chain around his neck, appeared to be a person of
importance. He surveyed the group with eyebrows lofted in mingled disapproval
and amusement, as if at naughty children. “Well then,” he said briskly, “which
among you is the leader of this group?”

Reith came
forward with as much dignity as he could summon. “I am.”

“You? Not one
of the Lokhars? What did you hope to achieve?”

“May I ask
who adjudicates our offense?” Reith asked.

The Wankhman
was taken aback. “‘Adjudication’? What needs to be adjudicated? The only point
at issue, and a minor one, is your motive.”

“I can’t
agree with you,” said Reith in a reasonable voice. “Our transgression was a
simple theft; only by sheer accident did we take aloft a Wankh.”

“A Wankh! Do
you realize his identity? No, of course not. He is a savant of the highest
level, an Original Master.”

“And he wants
to know why we took his spaceship?”

“What then?
It is no concern of yours. You need only transmit the information on through
me; that is my function.”

“I’ll be glad
to do so, in his presence, and, I hope, in surroundings more appropriate than a
back alley.”

“Zff, but you
are a cool one. Do you answer to the name of Adam Reith?”

“I am Adam
Reith.”

“And you
recently visited Settra in Cath, where you associated with the so-called ‘Yearning
Refluxives’?”

“Your
information is at fault.”

“Be that as
it may, we want your reason for stealing a spaceship.”

“Be on hand
when I communicate with the Original Master. The matter is complex and I am
certain he will have questions which cannot be answered casually.”

The Wankhman
swung away in disgust.

Zarfo
muttered, “You are a cool one indeed! But what do you gain by talking to the
Wankh?”

“I don’t
know. It’s worth trying. I suspect that the Wankhmen report only as much as
suits their purposes.”

“That’s
understood by everyone but the Wankh.”

“How can it
be? Are they innocent? Or remote?”

“Neither.
They have no other sources of information. The Wankhmen make sure the situation
remains that way. The Wankh have small interest in the affairs of Tschai; they’re
only here to counter the Dirdir threat.”

“Bah,” said
Anacho. “The Dirdir threat’ is a myth; the Expansionists are gone thousands of
years.”

“Then why are
they still feared by the Wankh?” demanded Zarfo.

“Mutual
distrust; what else?”

“Natural
antipathy. The Dirdir are an insufferable race.”

Anacho walked
away in a huff. Zarfo laughed. Reith shook his head in mild disapproval.

Zarfo now
said, “Take my advice, Adam Reith: don’t antagonize the Wankhmen, because you
can’t win but through them. Ingratiate, truckle, fawn-and at least they’ll bear
you no malice.”

“I’m not too
proud to truckle,” said Reith, “if it would do any good-which it won’t. Our
only hope is to push ahead .... And I’ve come up with an idea or two which may
help our case, if we get a chance to talk with the Wankh.”

“You won’t
defeat the Wankhmen that way,” gloomed Zarfo. “They’ll tell the Wankh only as
much as they see fit, and you’ll never know the difference.”

“What I’d
like to do,” said Reith, “is work up to a situation where only the truth makes
sense and where every other statement is an obvious falsity.”

Zarfo shook
his head in puzzlement and walked to the spigot to drink. Reith remembered that
none of the group had eaten for almost two days; small wonder they were
listless and irritable.

Three
Wankhmen appeared. The official who previously had spoken to Reith was not
among them. “Come along. Look sharp, now; form a neat line.”

“Where are we
going?” Reith asked, but received no reply.

The group
walked five minutes, through odd-angled streets and irregular courts, by acute
and obtuse angles, past unexpected juts and occasional clear vistas, through
deep shadow and the wan shine of Carina 4269. They entered the ground floor of
a tower, entered an elevator which took them up a hundred feet and opened upon
a large octagonal hall.

The chamber
was dim; a great lenticular bulge in the roof held water; windblown ripples
modulated light from the sky and sent it dancing around the hall. Tremors of
sound were barely audible, sighing chords, complex dissonances; sound both more
and less than music. The walls were stained and discolored, a fact which Reith
found peculiar, until looking closer he recognized Wankh ideograms, immense and
intricately detailed, one to each wall. Each ideogram, thought Reith,
represented a chime; each chime was the sonic equivalent of a visual image.
Here, reflected Reith, were highly abstract pictures.

The chamber
was empty. The group waited in silence while the almost unheard chords drifted
in and out of consciousness, and amber sunlight, refracted and broken into
shimmers, swam through the room.

Reith heard
Traz gasp in surprise: a rare event. He turned. Traz pointed. “Look yonder!”

Standing in
an alcove was Helsse, head bent in an attitude of brooding reverie. His guise
was new and strange. He wore black Wankhman garments; his hair was
close-cropped; he looked a person worlds apart from the suave young man Reith
had encountered in Blue Jade Palace. Reith looked at Zarfo. “You told me he was
dead!”

“So he seemed
to me! We put him out in the corpse shed, and in the morning he was gone. We
thought the night-hounds had come for him.”

Reith called:
“Helsse! Over here! It’s Adam Reith.”

Helsse turned
his head, looked at him and Reith wondered how he ever could have taken Helsse
for anything but a Wankhman. Helsse came slowly across the chamber, a
half-smile on his face. “So here: the sorry outcome to your exploits.”