The Great Fetish

6

When Marko Prokopiu and Boert Halran got to Niok, Marko wanted to stop a few days to make sure that his intended victims were not there. Halran was anxious to push on to Lann, in order to complete his aerostatic experiment in tune for the philosophers’ convention. They agreed to split up. Halran kept the horse and the burden camel, paying Marko half the estimated value of the horse. He said:

“Goodbye, then. If you get to Lann, come and visit me.”

“I will, sir,” said Marko.

Halran rode off towing his burden camel, still swaying under the four great jars of stupa gum. Marko spent the rest of the day in the stock market. Thinking himself a poor bargainer, he was sure that the more wordly-wise Halran would have obtained a better deal.

Actually, Marko -was not so bad as he thought. His embarrassment over haggling caused him to put on a stiff, stony air. This, together with his monstrous brawn, gave traders the impression that he was more self-assured than he was. Eventually he traded the camel for a large horse and a few extra dlars.

He spent the next two days searching for Mongamri and his wife. The search took him through Niok’s endless rows of drink shops, brothels, and the dives of marwan addicts. Sometimes rough-looking characters stared threateningly or muttered at him, but they turned away on noting his ax and musculature.

Niokers, he found, were an even noisier species than ordinary Anglonians, much given to outbursts of rage over trivial matters. They would leap up and down like tersors on perches and scream threats and insults. The minute Marko put on his fighting face and reached for his ax, however, they found reason to go elsewhere.

A suspicious, discourteous, and truculent race with no sense of dignity, Marko thought. He was puzzled by their common expletive “Cop!” (pronounced something like “kyop” or “chop”) until he realized that it was the shrunken remnant, hi Niokese dialect, of the name of the goddess of love, Cleopatra, or as Vizantians pronounced it “Kliopat.” Also, despite the alleged sanctity of human life in Anglonia, he got used to the sight of the bodies of murdered men in the gutters.

On the other hand, the Niokers were perfectly willing, if Marko acted friendly towards them, to suggest a joint foray into vice or crime. It was, he supposed, their notion of doing a stranger a good turn.

Marko had given much thought to the handling of Mongamri and Petronela. While he was not sure that he had done right in promising Halran not to kill them, he could not go back on his promise without feeling even guiltier than he did over sparing them. Vizantians took the keeping of one’s word with as much seriousness as they did sexual morality. And there was something to the maxim “When in Roum, behave as do the Roumians.”

The idea of copying the loose morals of the Anglonians had a certain sinister appeal to Marko. But, brought up where such matters were surrounded by a high wall of puritanical inhibitions, he could no more have advanced an improper proposal to a woman than he could have walked on the Medranian Sea. The mere thought of exposing himself to rebus and embarrassment gave him cold chills.

Marko jogged into Lann, a sprawling old city built of the dark-gray limestone of that region. When he had taken quarters, he set out through the narrow, crooked streets to find Mongamri.

First he went to the public library. By asking for Mongamri’s books, he learned the names of his publishers. He found that he could understand literate Lanners well enough, although the slurred, whining dialect of the working class defeated him.

Then he found where these people did business. This was a matter of some difficulty, because the Lanners had no rational system of naming or numbering their streets. One thoroughfare might have five different names in the course of ten blocks.

Marko called at the office of the first publisher on his list and asked where Mongamri lived. He presented himself as a friend whom Mongamri had met In his travels. The publisher gave the address with what seemed to Marko a rash lack of suspicion. In Vizantia one was chary of giving out such information, because the seeker might be a feudist out to kill a member of a hostile family.

He returned to his quarters for siesta. Afterwards he got detailed directions to get to Mongamri’s address and drew a sketch map. Since the place was well out in the suburbs, he rode his horse out to Mongamri’s house.

The house was smaller and less impressive than Marko had expected. He had a vague idea that an Anglonian literary man would live in the style of a Vizantian magnate. Here, the address turned out to be a little fieldstone bungalow hi a medium-poor neighborhood.

Marko still had not finally decided just what to do with these people. He would not kill them save in self-defense, but he owed it to his self-respect to give the faithless Chet the beating of a lifetime. As for Petronela … If. she were willing to come back to him, that might be worked out for as long as he stayed in Anglonia. But he could not take her back to Vizantia, as his disgraceful failure to slay her would then be patent to all. Of course, he might never go back to Vizantia… .

Marko opened the flap of his ax sheath and reached for the door knocker. It took all his self-mastery to force himself to bang the knocker. What should he say if…

The door opened. There stood Petronela, tall and big-boned, looking like any other young Anglonian housewife. Marko felt a boil of conflicting emotions rising within him.

Petronela recognized Marko despite the budding mustache. She screamed and tried to slam the door, but Marko had thrust his boot into the crack. • Petronela let go the door and ran back into the house. Marko followed, surmising that she would lead him to Mongamri.

“Chet!” shrieked Petronela in Anglonian. “He’s here!” She led Marko into a room at the back. Mongamri sat at a desk littered with papers and cigarette butts, correcting a set of proof sheets. When Marko shouldered his way into the room, Mongamri said:

“Kyopt! You, eh?”

Marko began in a coldly cutting tone: “Yes, you swine, it’s I. Perhaps you’d be so good as to explain—”

Mongamri picked up a large Arabistani knife, which he kept on his desk as a paperweight and letter opener. He lunged towards Marko, raising his arm for a stab.

Marko threw up his left arm. The point of the knife pierced skin and flesh and stuck into the bone, while with his right hand Marko fumbled for his ax. Although he had not meant to kill Mongamri, this attack altered matters. As Mongamri drew back the dagger for another stab, Marko got his ax out. Lacking room to swing, he thrust the spike on the end into Mongamri’s chest and gave a push that hurled Mongamri across the room.

Mongamri fell back against his desk, knocking a lamp off with a crash. Marko stood where he was, ax half raised. Mongamri slipped down until he was sitting on the floor with his back to the desk. He muttered something in which Marko heard the word “police,” fell over sideways, and lay still.

“You killed him!” cried Petronela. She glanced at the ax, which Marko had lowered so that blood dripped from the spike, and darted to the door.

“Petronela,” said Marko, “if you’ll promise—”

“I’ll see you hanged!” screamed Petronela, and fled.

“Hey!” called Marko. “I didn’t intend … If you will…”

The front door slammed. Marko hurried after Petronela, sure that, if he stayed where he was, he would soon find himself involved with the unknown laws of this strange land.

When he looked out the front door, there was no Sign of Petronela. He paused to think out a plan. Then he stepped back into Mongamri’s study to see if Mongamri were truly dead. (He was.) Marko went out, mounted, and rode briskly back to his lodging. There he bandaged his slight wound, paid his rent, gathered up his gear, and moved out. He rode to the house of Boert Halran.

“Oh, very well, very well,” said Halran, wrinkling his nose. “After all, you did save my life. According to your story, you acted in self-defense. So you may hide out here. But if anybody inquires, you told me nothing of your escapade, do you understand?”

“I understand, sir,” said Markoy staring at the floor and flushing. “I’ll try to be as little trouble as possible.”

‘I warned you something of that sort would happen. Oho!” said Halran, looking at Marko with bright piercing eyes. “That gives me an idea. When I got home I found that my apprentice, curse him, had gone away and refuses to return.”

“Can’t you have him flogged back?” said Marko.

“Not in Anglonia. It occurs to me, however, that you might have difficulty in making your exit from Lann in the usual manner, if the police are watching for you. I doubt if you are rich enough to obtain release by bribery in the event of your capture.”

“What then?” said Marko.

“Be my new assistant! You will pass out of Lann through the air where nobody can seize you.”

“What, me fly in your machine?” cried Marko.

“Certainly. Are you afraid?”

“A Skudran afraid? No, but the idea startled me. Are you sure I’m not too heavy?”

“No. The balloon was designed to carry my apprentice and me, and he was even heavier than you.”

Marko almost asked if Halran would pay him. But he remembered that, as a fugitive, he was already asking all that he decently could. He said:

“May I see the balloon now?”

“Come this way.”

Halran led Marko out the back of his house. His yard overflowed with a huge, shapeless mass of cloth, sewn together in contrasting strips of black and white. Clustered around the mass were a score of women of all ages, brushing on the stupa gum that Halran had brought from Vizantia. They chattered like a flock of tersors as they heaved the heavy folds this way and that in order to get the gum on every square inch.

“Come and meet my family,” said Boert Halran. “Dorthi, this is Marko Prokopiu, my new assistant. Marko, my wife, and these are my daughters Bitris, Viki, Greta, and Henrit.”

Marko acknowledged the introductions with the formal manners drilled into him years before. Halran said:

“The other women are housewives of Lann, mostly my wife’s brizh-playing friends. I got them organized.” He grinned like an imp and launched into a lecture on aerostatics, pacing about and gesturing to indicate mathematical concepts.