The Terridae

Chapter Five

Caval rested on the edge of the Zaragoza Cluster, a small, fair world of balmy air and rolling fields, devoid of the stench of industrial waste, the bleak shapes of functional machines; a world in which time seemed to have slowed, even the clouds drifting with stately grace across the pale amber of the sky. The people matched their world, adapted and conditioned by inclination and environment: slow, stolid, a little bovine but far from stupid.

The Hurich Complex lay thirty miles from the landing field on the far side of a ridge of rounded hills now bright with yellow flowers which covered crests and slopes with a golden haze. The place itself was wrapped in the easy somnolence of a tranquil village; wide streets flanked by open-fronted shops in which craftsmen plied their trade. The air carried the endless tap of hammers, the scuff of files, the echoes of saws and planes. The place was a hive of industry devoid of the mechanical yammer of machines-all work was done by hand.

"There!" Carina lifted a hand, pointing. "It was down that street, I think. Yes, it was down there-I recognize the sign over that shop."

A swinging plaque bore the imprint of a rearing beast adorned with a crown-carved wood touched with gilt and paint bearing a startling likeness to a living creature. The street itself was given to residential establishments, only a few of the houses with the familiar open front, some closed with broad windows displaying the goods within.

"On the left," said Carina. "About halfway down."

She had insisted on accompanying him as a guide when he had left Shard. Now she walked three paces ahead of him as if eager to prove her memory correct. She wore the slacks and tunic she had donned when leaving Shard: loose fabric of dull green which disguised her femininity. Her boots were high but soft, the belt wide and fitted with pouches. She carried no visible weapons.

"Here!" She halted and looked to either side, frowning. "I'm sure it was here. Over there, I think."

Dumarest looked at a blank wall.

"I'm sorry, Earl. I'm sure it was there."

He said, "When you left here did you go straight to Shard?"

"No. I shipped to Mykal and moved around a little. I did the painting there and worked in the local hospital for a while. Then I got bored and went to the field and tossed a coin and moved on."

To Shard, and more time had been spent on the return voyage. Time enough for the shop to have closed, the owner to have died.

Had he arrived too late?

The sign of the rearing beast had denoted a tavern, and, in a long, cool room adorned with masks and weapons all carved from wood, the owner served beer and nodded in answer to Dumarest's inquiry.

"The shop down the street? Jole Nisbet sold it about a month ago. Young Zeal's taken it and should do well. A fine worker in glass and ceramics. He'll be open in a couple of weeks if you're interested."

"Nisbet?"

"To another shop, of course. It's on Endaven… Turn right at the junction and it's three hundred yards down."

They came to a big, bustling place filled with the scent of wood and resin and paint, littered with shavings and dust and scraps of metal. Jole Nisbet, old and gnarled, with the strength of a tree, looked at Dumarest, then at Carina. For a long moment he said nothing, then smiled.

"The artist. You are the artist-am I right?" He beamed as she nodded. "And you've come back to us and with a friend. I hope you will stay. We need such talent as yours."

"Thank you, Jole."

"And you?" The shrewd eyes met Dumarest's. "Not an artist, I think, though I could be wrong. A hunter? A farmer? No, your eyes are too restless. A hunter, then-but what else?"

"A student," said Dumarest.

"Of what? War?" The old man shook his head. "We have no place for such a thing here on Caval. A man is born and he works and develops his skills and he lives at peace. He has pride in what he has made or what he does for not all can create things of beauty. Even so someone must sweep the shop and sharpen the tools and carry the timber-no man need consider himself a failure."

A philosophy with obvious results. Since landing on Caval Dumarest had seen no beggars, no signs of abject poverty. Work and pride in work united all in a common bond. Ambition lay in producing something others would admire and their praise was reward enough. And a clean floor could be admired as sincerely as a carved statue, a well-cooked meal as much as any fabrication of metal.

Carina said, "The last time I was here I saw a box in your old shop. I asked about it, remember?" She continued as the old man nodded. "My companion is interested in it."

"Why?"

Dumarest said, "I told you I was a student. It poses a mystery to me which you could answer."

"Why anyone should want to stretch their life-span at the cost of living?" Nisbet shook his head. "I can't help you. I don't know. To be cooped is always bad but to spend a life in sleep and dreams-" He broke off, shaking his head. "Why anyone should do that is beyond me. You must find your answer somewhere else."

He had jumped to the wrong assumption but Dumarest didn't correct him. Instead, he said, "Who could that person be? The owner of the box?"

"Perhaps."

"Who would that person be?" In a moment Dumarest recognized the mistake he had made. "I apologize," he said quickly. "The question could have been misunderstood. It was badly phrased. I was not, of course, asking you to divulge a confidential matter." His tone lowered a little. "As an intruder into your life I ask your tolerance for any unwitting errors I may make or insults I may tender as the result of my ignorance. Of your charity I beg that you take no offense where none is intended."

The old man relaxed beneath the formal intonation. Politeness, in his culture, ranked with deference to acknowledged skills and the respect due to age.

"Confidence must be respected," he said. "Even if only implied. Now, as to the box, some things I can tell you for they are common knowledge. The contents, for one, though they could be varied aside from the essential basics. We are actually at work on one now. If you would care to see it?"

He led the way into a back room where the casket stood supported on stands in the center of the floor. Men were busy at work within the interior, soft scrapings coming from beneath their hands, small tappings, rasps, the sound of abrasions. They rose and stepped back at the old man's command and Dumarest looked at the product of their labors.

The carvings were incomplete as yet but recognizable. A row of tiny depictions ran around the upper surface of the interior-animals, birds, people, fish, insects-a gamut of life-forms, each image a potential gem. The artistry converted something hard and cold and efficient into something no less efficient but far more pleasing.

As yet the outside was untouched, smooth surfaces bearing a soft sheen. The lack seemed to make the container larger and uglier than the one Carina had depicted. Perhaps she had distorted its true dimensions to achieve an artistic symmetry. Dumarest measured it with his eyes: twelve feet long, half as much high and wide. Huge for a coffin, large even for a sarcophagus, but small for a miniature world.

"The outside?"

"Will be decorated in due time."

"According to instruction?"

"Naturally." Nisbet lifted his head as the deep notes of a bell echoed from somewhere outside. "The evening bell and the time of relaxation."

"About the decorations," said Dumarest. He raised his voice against the bustle of noise as craftsmen rose and stretched and put aside their tools. "Could you-"

"Later," said Nisbet. He was curt though his tone remained polite. "For today, work is over. Come again tomorrow."

The tavern provided accommodation as it provided a meal.

Dumarest sat with Carina in the long, low-roofed chamber and ate succulent vegetables served with tangy sauces and a variety of nuts. A dish between them held livers of meat roasted and spiced and set on long skewers. The bread was rough but pleasingly flavored. The wine the same.

"Nice." Carina leaned back and sighed with enjoyment. "At times, Earl, everything seems to be just right. This place, the food, the atmosphere-it's what they mean when they talk of perfection."

"Who?"

"All those who've never had it but have imagination enough to guess what it must be like." She sobered a little. "Of course the right company helps."

He said nothing, looking through the window toward the hills, dusted with gloom now but still bright with their golden mantle.

"In a few weeks the ships will come," she said as if reading his mind. "The blooms will be near-venting then and, when they open, the air will be a cloud of spores and perfume. Golden spores in a scented mist." Her eyes, her voice, held the fascination of a dream. "A time of wonder, Earl, when reality yields to magic and all things are possible. Love, friendship, companionship." Her hand reached out to rest fingers on his own. "That, I think, is the most important. To be close to someone on equal terms. To share his life yet to remain an individual. Something a wife can never do."

"Or a lover?"

"What is love? A man says he loves you and what he really means is that he wants you to love him. For some, it seems, it is enough but there is so much more. To stand beside someone, to be important to him, to be a comrade, a friend." Carina shook her head and sipped at her wine, then, apparently casual, changed the subject. "What do you think of life here?"

"It goes on."

"But better than most. To sit and create a thing of beauty for its own sake and the pleasure of doing it. To sell it or not as you please. A man could work for a year and set his work in a window and wait for someone to offer something he is willing to take in exchange."

"Money."

"No, Earl, not always. That's what I like about this world-they are not contaminated by greed. And they are right. Money isn't everything. There are so many things it can't buy."

He said, smiling, "Name three."

"You're a cynic."

"Name them!"

She responded to his challenge. "Happiness, honesty, health."

"How about truth?"

"Truth?" She picked up a scrap of bread and crumpled it between her fingers, not meeting his eyes, her own fastened on the dusty hills. "A thing to be searched for and not often to be found. Still less to be recognized when it is. Always to be hated when revealed. Truth is reality. Dreams shield us from it."

As the boxes shielded those who used them. Dumarest looked at the window; her face was dimly reflected in the pane. Like these people Carina had built defenses against a universe not to her liking. Did she travel to find one she could accept?

Gently he said, "Why don't you stay here? As an artist you would be welcome. You could make a home here for yourself. A place to call your own."

"I could," she admitted, and turned to face him. "I've thought about it and been tempted. My work on display for those who come to look and examine and buy. But I'm a creator, Earl. I need stimulation-what did you think of Nisbet?"

He sensed her meaning. "Old and rigid in his ways."

"A stickler for tradition and this world is full of others like him. It's a good world, Earl, a kind one, but the price you pay to enjoy living here is to yield your independence of thought and imagination. To stop wanting to know what is over the next hill. To live by the sound of a bell."

The curfew at dusk and morning signaled the time to eat, sonorous echoes which punctuated the hours of existence.

The echoes to Dumarest would have been the bars of a cage. He said, "Stay here and finish your wine. I'm going to take a walk outside."

He stepped with long strides away from the building, heading west down the main street, taking the next left and then another. He slowed as he neared the corner forming the last side of the square he had traversed, halting at the junction to look at the tavern. Carina was nowhere in sight and he moved up the street to examine the blank wall where Nisbet's old shop had stood. The mortar was almost new, dry but unstained by weather. The place itself held half the capacity of his new premises.

In the street where they had stood he walked slowly past, pausing to casually scan the area. The shop was closed with heavy shutters, the door to one side leading, he guessed, to the upstairs quarters, open to reveal a flight of wooden stairs. An inner door set into the wall would give access to the shop, but, like the shutters, it was closed.

Dumarest walked to the end of the street and back up the one beyond so as to study the premises from the rear. The dying sunlight tinted the upper windows with a golden haze, touching the summit of the rear wall which circled a yard with amber sheens. The low wall could be easily climbed and was devoid of spikes or shards of protective glass. The offices would be to the rear of the workshops and so would open on the yard as did the large assembly area inside, as he had noticed. Unless workers lived within the shop itself the place would be deserted after the curfew bell had sent all to their beds.

Dumarest walked on, thinking about the box Carina had painted, the one he had seen within the shop-small environments which could be sealed against the outside universe. Equipped with food, water, drugs, air-everything needed. Equipped, too, with antigrav units for easy handling, its own power source, an electronic shield which made it impossible to open from outside. A cocoon in which a person could while away the years, metabolism slowed, exterior time accelerated. A time machine in which to travel to the future.

For whom?

Nisbet wouldn't divulge the information and Carina didn't know. There was no reason for her to have been interested, but the decorations the box had carried made it important to Dumarest. As was the one now being completed. Later he would investigate.

It was after midnight when he rose and quietly slipped on his boots. The tavern was as silent as the town, which had died after the sounding of the curfew. Within moments the streets had been deserted. Now, lying behind closed shutters, the inhabitants waited until the dawn.

A board creaked as he left the room and he paused, listening. He heard nothing and moved on to halt at Carina's door. Beyond the panel he heard the soft, regular breathing of a person asleep and moved on to where stairs ran down into shrouded darkness.

Above there had been ghost-light from the stars filtering through cracks to create a pale, nacreous glow but down in the lower rooms of the tavern even that illumination was missing. Dumarest eased himself forward, hands extended, ears strained to catch the whisper of echoes. Like a blind man he moved toward the remembered door, found it, felt at the bolt which held it fast. It slipped back beneath his hand, the door gaping, closing again behind him as he passed outside.

The night was blazing with stars.

They covered the firmament with a golden glitter, gilded by the drifting spores which hued the air. Sheets and curtains of luminescence marred by the ebon blotches of interstellar dust. The heart of the Zaragoza Cluster with its multitude of worlds. Planets which had offered safety of a kind but a safety which could turn into a trap for a man without money. For a moment Dumarest looked at the burning stars, then moved away. What he searched for was not to be found in the cluster.

The street behind Nisbet's shop was as deserted as the rest of the town and Dumarest climbed the wall, dropping on the far side to wait, crouching, as he searched the area. Nothing. The windows shone with the dull gleam of reflected starlight and that was all. Rising, he moved to the big door facing the yard, tested it, moved on, when it remained fast, to the windows which ran beside it, found one that yielded beneath his hand.

A moment later he was inside a room which smelt of resin and spirit and gum and sawdust.

This was a storeroom with shelves supporting rows of bottles, cans, flasks of various sizes. Bins held rags and others tufted cotton. Drawers contained sheets of fine paper coated with dustlike abrasives. One corner smelt of assorted oils.

The door next to it opened beneath his hand and Dumarest moved softly through a thicker darkness to another which opened on a room holding different smells. A third and he was among inks and papers and the paraphernalia of an office. The desk was unlocked. By the starlight streaming through the window he looked at papers taken from its drawers.

They were in no sort of obvious order, and he frowned as he tried to determine the reference system used. From the look of things they had been stuffed at random into their compartments: lists of material purchased, credits extended to various workers, sums received and balances struck-normal accounting to be found on any world using money as a means of exchange.

He delved on, finding some elaborate designs traced on thick parchments in faded inks: geometric patterns which had little to commend them aside from their complexity. Others were of living creatures, together with finely detailed depictions of joints and corner-pieces, dadoes, architraves, mitres and other examples of the woodworker's art. As he reached for another drawer he heard the soft scuffle of someone coming over the wall.

Dumarest froze, staring through the window, seeing in the golden starlight an indistinct shape which ran lightly across the yard in a direct path to the window by which he had entered. An apprentice, he guessed, and the reason for the unfastened window was plain. The youth had broken curfew, leaving by the window he had left ajar for easy readmittance. At the door of the office Dumarest rested his ear against the panel, listening to the soft pad of feet, the rasp of the inner door, the dying sounds of footsteps mounting the stairs.

Back at the desk he continued his search. The final drawer yielded nothing of value and he stood, searching the office with his eyes, trying to put himself in Nisbet's place. Work in hand would mean the relevant papers would be within easy reach. The desk was the obvious place but would a craftsman, impatient with office routine, follow the normal pattern? The filing system he used was unique to himself and relied wholly on memory. He had wasted time following accepted patterns.

Where then?

Dumarest stepped from the office and into the area outside where the air was heavy with the scent of wood and lacquer. The box rested beneath a high row of narrow panes, starlight touching a shelf, the folder lying on it. The first page held a printed slip, the second a list of specifications, the next was covered with designs, shapes which formed familiar symbols.

The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins and next the Crab, the Lion shines, the Virgin and the Scales. The Scorpion, Archer and Sea Goat, the Man that holds the Watering Pot, the Fish with shining scales.

A mnemonic learned on a distant world. Symbols which represented the constellations as seen from Earth. One had led him to the Original People. He had seen them all when finding the spectrum of a forgotten sun.

These signs of the zodiac had decorated the box Carina had depicted.

Whoever had ordered them must know of Earth.