Planet of Adventure Omnibus (53 page)

There were a
thousand aspects to the science of sequin-taking, with arrays of statistics to
illuminate every possible inquiry. Upon sighting a Dirdir band a sequin-taker
might run, hide or fight with chances of clean escape calculated in terms of
physiography, the time of day, proximity to the Portal of Gleams. Takers
organized into bands for self-protection attracted an overcompensating number
of Dirdir and their chances of survival decreased. Nodes were found in all
parts of the Zone, most being found in the Hills of Recall and upon the South
Stage, the savanna at the far side of the hills. The Carabas was reckoned
no-man’s-land, takers occasionally ambushing each other; such acts were
reckoned as eleven percent of the risk.

Dusk approached,
and the library became filled with gloom. The three went down to the refectory,
where under the light of three great chandeliers, servitors in black silk
livery had already laid out the evening meal. Reith was moved to remark at so
much elegance, to which Anacho gave a bark of sardonic amusement. “How else to
justify such exorbitant tariffs?” He went off to the buffet and returned with
three cups of spiced wine.

The three,
leaning back in the ancient settees, observed the other sojourners, most of whom
sat alone. A few were in pairs, and a single group of four huddled at a far
table, in dark cloaks and hoods which revealed only long ivory noses.

Anacho spoke:
“Eighteen men in the room, with ourselves. Nine will find sequins, nine will
find none. Two may locate a node of high value, purple or scarlet. Ten, perhaps
twelve, will pass through Dirdir guts. Six, or perhaps eight, will return to
Maust. Those ranging the farthest to find the choicest nodes run the most risk;
the six or eight will show no great profit.”

Traz said
dourly, “Every day in the Zone a man faces one chance in four of death. His
average gain is about four hundred sequins: it would seem that these men, and
ourselves as well, value life at only sixteen hundred sequins.”

“Somehow we’ve
got to change the odds,” said Reith.

“Everyone who
comes to the Zone makes similar plans,” said Anacho dryly. “Not all succeed.”

“Then we must
try something no one else has considered.”

Anacho made a
skeptical sound.

The three
went forth to explore the town. The music houses showed red and green lights;
on the balconies frozen-faced girls twitched and postured and sang strange soft
songs. The gambling houses showed brighter lights and more fervent activity.
Each seemed to specialize in a particular game, as simple as the throw of
fourteen-faced dice, as complex as chess played against the house
professionals.

They stopped
to watch a game call Locate the Prime Purple Node. A board thirty feet long by
ten feet wide represented the Carabas. The Forelands, the Hills of Recall, the
South Stage, the gorges and valleys, the savannas, the streams and forests were
faithfully depicted. Blue, red and purple lights indicated the location of
nodes, sparse along the Forelands, more plentiful in the Hills of Recall and on
the South Stage. Khusz, the Dirdir hunting camp, was a white block, with purple
prongs rising from each corner. A numbered grid was superimposed upon all. A
dozen players overlooked the board, each controlling a manikin. Also on the
board were the effigies of four lunging Dirdir hunters. The players in turn
cast fourteen-sided dice to determine the movement of all the manikins across
the grid, as each player elected. The Dirdir hunters, moving to the same
numbers, endeavored to cross an intersection on which rested a manikin,
whereupon the manikin was declared destroyed and removed from the game.

Each manikin
sought to cross the lights representing sequin nodes, thus augmenting his
score. Whenever he chose, he left the Zone by the Portal of Gleams and was paid
his winnings. More often, prompted by greed, the player held his manikin on the
board until a Dirdir struck it down, by which he lost the totality of his gain.
Reith watched the game in fascination. The players sat clenching the rails of
their booths. They stared and fidgeted, calling hoarse orders to the operators,
yelling in exultation when they won a node, groaning at the approach of the
Dirdir, leaning back with sick faces when their manikins were destroyed and
their winnings lost.

The game
ended. No further manikins roamed the Carabas.

No Dirdir
hunted an empty Zone. The players stiffly descended from their booths; those
who had won free of the Zone took their winnings. The Dirdir returned to Khusz
beyond the South Stage. New players bought manikins, climbed into the booths
and the game began once more.

Reith, Traz
and Anacho continued along the street. Reith paused at a booth to scan packets
of folded paper on display. Placards read:

Meticulously annotated across seventeen
years: the chart of Sabour Yan, for a mere 1000 sequins, guaranteed to be
unexploited.

and

The chart of Goragonso the Mysterious, who
lived in the Zone like a shadow, nurturing his secret nodes like children, at a
mere 3500 sequins. Never exploited.

Reith looked
to Anacho for explanation.

“Simple
enough. Such folk as Sabour Yan and Goragonso the Mysterious over the years
explore the safer regions of the Carabas, seeking out low-grade nodes, the
waters and milks, the pale blues which are known as sards, the pale greens.
When they locate such nodes they carefully note their position and conceal them
as best they may, under heaps of gravel or slabs of shale, thinking to return
in later years after the nodes mature. If they find purple nodes so much the
better, but in the near regions which for safety’s sake they frequent, purple
nodes are few save those which as ‘waters’ or ‘milks’ or ‘sands,’ were
discovered and concealed a generation before. When such men are killed, their
charts become valuable documents. Unfortunately, buying such a chart can be
risky. The first person to come into possession of the chart might ‘exploit’
it, removing the choicest nodes, and then putting the chart up for sale as ‘unexploited.’
Who can prove otherwise?”

The three
returned to the Alawan. In the foyer a single chandelier exuded the light of a
hundred sullen jewels, which lost itself in the shadows, with only a colored
gleam here and there on the dark wood. The refectory was also dim, occupied by
a few murmuring groups. From an urn they drew bowls of pepper-tea and settled
themselves in a booth.

Traz spoke in
a disgruntled voice: “This place is insane: Maust and the Carabas together. We
should leave and seek wealth in some normal manner.”

Anacho gave
an airy wave of white fingers and spoke in a didactic and fluting voice: “Maust
is merely an aspect of the interplay between men and money, and must be viewed
on this basis.”

“Must you
always talk gibberish?” demanded Traz. “To gain sequins either in Maust or in
the Zone is a gamble, at poor odds. I do not care to gamble.”

“As far as I
am concerned,” said Reith, “I plan to gain sequins, but I do not intend to
gamble.”

“Impossible!”
Anacho declared. “In Maust you gamble with sequins; in the Zone you gamble with
your life. How can you avoid doing so?”

“I can try to
reduce the odds to a tolerable level.”

“Everyone
hopes to do the same. But Dirdir fires burn nightly across the Carabas, and at
Maust the shopkeepers earn more than most sequin-takers.”

“Taking
sequins is uncertain and slow,” said Reith. “I prefer sequins already gathered.”

Anacho pursed
his lips in quizzical calculation. “You plan to rob the sequin-gatherers? The
process is risky.”

Reith looked
up at the ceiling. How could Anacho still misread the processes of his mind? “I
plan to rob no sequin-takers.”

“Then I am
puzzled,” said Anacho. “Whom do you intend to rob?”

Reith spoke
with care. “While we watched the hunting game,

I began to
wonder: when Dirdir kill a taker, what happens to his sequins?”

Anacho gave
his fingers a bored flutter. “The sequins are booty; what else?”

“Consider a
typical Dirdir hunt-party: how long will it remain in the Zone?”

“Three to six
days. Grand hunts and commemoratives are longer; competition hunts are somewhat
less extended.”

“And, in a
day, how many kills will a typical party make?”

Anacho
considered. “Each hunter naturally hopes for a trophy each day out. The usual
well-seasoned party kills two or three times each day, sometimes more. They
waste much meat, necessarily.”

“So that the
typical hunting party returns to Khusz with sequins from as many as twenty
takers.”

Anacho said
curtly, “So it might be.”

“The average
taker carries sequins to the value of, let us say, five hundred. Hence each
hunting party returns with a value of ten thousand sequins.”

“Don’t allow
the calculation to excite you,” Anacho remarked in the driest of voices. “The
Dirdir are not a generous folk.”

“The
game-board, I take it, is an accurate representation of the Zone?”

Anacho gave a
dour nod. “Reasonably so. Why do you ask?”

“Tomorrow I
want to trace the hunt routes out from Khusz and back again. If the Dirdir come
to the Carabas to hunt men, they can hardly protest if men hunt Dirdir.”

“Who can
imagine men hunting the Effulgents?” croaked Anacho.

“It’s never
been done before?”

“Never! Do
gekkos hunt smur?”

“In this case
we gain the benefit of surprise.”

“No doubt of
that!” declared Anacho. “But you must proceed without me; I will have none of
it.”

Traz choked
back a guffaw; Anacho swung about. “What amuses you?”

“Your fear.”

Anacho leaned
back in his seat. “If you knew the Dirdir as I do, you would fear too.”

“They are
alive. Kill, they die.”

“They are
hard to kill. When they hunt, they use a separate region of their mind, what
they call the ‘Old State.’ No man can stand against them. Reith’s concept
verges upon insanity.”

“Tomorrow we’ll
study the hunt board again,” said Reith in a soothing voice. “Something may
suggest itself.”

THREE DAYS
LATER, an hour before dawn, Reith, Traz and Anacho departed Maust. Passing
through the Portal of Gleams, they set out across the Foreland toward the Hills
of Recall, black on the mottled dark brown and violet sky, ten miles to the
south. Ahead and behind, a dozen other shapes ran half-crouched through the
cool gloom. Some had burdened themselves with equipment: digging implements,
graders, weapons, deodorizing ointment, face-stains, camouflage; others had no
more than a sack, a knife, a wad of alimentary paste.

Carina 4269
shouldered up through the murk, and some of the takers, crawling into patches
of scrub, concealed themselves under camouflage cloth, to await the coming of
dusk before proceeding further. Others plunged ahead, anxious to reach the
Boulder Patch, accepting the risk of interception. Stimulated by evidence of
this riskashes mingled with burned bones and scraps of leather-Reith, Traz and
Anacho accelerated their pace. Half-trotting, half-running they gained the
haven of the Boulder Path, where Dirdir did not care to hunt, without untoward
incident.

They put down
their packs and stretched out to rest. Almost at once a pair of hulking figures
drew near: men of no race identifiable to Reith, brown of skin with long
tangled black hair and curly beards. They wore rags; they stank abominably and
inspected the three with truculent assurance. “We are in command of these
premises,” groaned one in a guttural voice. “Your cost for respite is five
sequins each; if you refuse we will thrust you into the open, and notice!
Dirdir stalk the northern ridge.”

Anacho
instantly leapt to his feet and with his shovel struck the speaker a great blow
on the head. The second man swung his cudgel; Anacho cut up with his shovel
blade, catching the man a maiming blow under the wrists. The cudgel flew aside;
the man tottered back, looking in horror at his hands. They flapped under his
wrists like a pair of empty gloves. Anacho said, “Go forth yourself to face the
Dirdir.” He jumped forward with shovel raised; the two shambled off into the
rocks. Anacho watched them go. “We had better move.”

The three
took their packs and started away; almost as they did so a great chunk of rock
flew down to smash into the ground. Traz jumped up on a boulder and fired his
catapult, evoking a wail of distress.

The three
took themselves a hundred yards south, somewhat up the slope from the Boulder Patch,
where they commanded a view across the Forelands and yet could not easily be
approached from the rear.

Settling
back, Reith brought out his scanscope and studied the landscape. He discerned
half a dozen furtive takers, and a band of Dirdir on a promontory to the east.
For ten minutes the Dirdir stood immobile, then suddenly disappeared. A moment
later he picked them out again, moving with long lunging strides down the slope
and out upon the Forelands.