The Queen of Zamba

III.

Victor Hasselborg rode for several Earth hours alone, mumbling sentences of Gozashtandou to himself. A couple of Earth hours after sunrise, the sun finally broke through the tumbled clouds. Hasselborg pulled up alongside an enormous two-wheeled cart drawn by a bishtar, an elephantine draft-animal with a pair of short trunks, and asked the driver how far it was to Avord.

The driver leaned over, then jerked a thumb towards the rear of the cart. "Twenty-five hoda, master."

Hasselborg knew it was over thirty, but these fellows always deducted a little to make the hearer feel good. The fellow looked like a thinner version of Chuen in his Krishnan disguise, with the same slant-eyed, flattened face, more like that of a Mongoloid like Chuen than a Caucasoid like Hasselborg. Maybe, he thought, that was why Chuen had been sent on his mysterious errand. Fortunately the bishtar driver seemed to find nothing odd about Hasselborg. He merely asked whether it was likely to rain.

Hasselborg said: "If the gods so decide. Thanks for the information." He waved and trotted off, pleased with having passed his first inspection.

He passed other travelers from time to time— riding, driving, or on foot. This was evidently a major highway. Gois had told him that the dasht had it patrolled to keep the danger of robbers and wild beasts to a minimum. Even so, towards the end of the day, a deep animal roar came over the plain, making his aya skitter.

He put on speed and soon sighted the cultivated strips that meant he was nearing Avord. The sun had disappeared into the towering clouds for good, and Hasselborg had felt a sprinkle of rain. Now the clouds were getting black and the wind was bothersome. Perhaps he should put up the collapsible top. He stopped the vehicle and struggled with the contraption for a while; it was evidently one of those one-man tops that could easily be erected by one man, four boys, and a team of horses. Finally the thing yielded, and Hasselborg whipped his animal to a gallop as he drew close to the village.

The houses of Avord were of plaster or concrete, with outside windows few, small, and high. Hasselborg found the inn where Gois had said it would be, and identified it by the animal skull over the door. He hitched his beast and went inside, where he found a big room with benches and a stout, wrinkled fellow with ragged antennae, whom Hasselborg took to be mine host. He rattled off:

"May the stars favor you; I am Kavir bad-Ma'lum. I wish a meal, a bed, and care for my aya."

"That will be five karda, sir," said the innkeeper.

"Four," said Hasselborg.

"Four and a half."

"Four and a quarter."

"Done. Hamse, see that the gentleman's baggage is stowed and his animal stabled and fed. Now, Master Kavir, will you sit with two of my regular customers? On the left is Master Farra, who owns one of the outlying farms. The other is Master Qam, on his way from Rosid to Novorecife. What would you? We have roast unha, ash stew, or I can boil you up a fine young ambar. Eh?"

"I'll take the last," said Hasselborg, not knowing one from the other and wishing he could inspect the kitchen to see if it measured up to his standards of sanitation. "And something to drink."

"Naturally."

Master Farra, a tall, weather-beaten Krishnan who scratched a lot, asked: "Whence come ye, Master Kavir? From Malayer in the far South? Both your accent and your face suggest it—no offense, of course. I can see ye're a man of quality, so we're delighted to have you sit with us. Well?"

"My parents came from there," said Hasselborg cautiously.

Qam, a small dried-up man with his hair faded to jade, said: "And whither now? To Rosid for the game?"

"I'm headed for Rosid," said Hasselborg, "but as to this game—"

"What's news from Novorecife?" said Qam.

"What are the Ertsuma up to now?" said Farra. (He meant Earthmen.)

"Is it true they're all of one sex?"

"Be ye married?"

"Has the dasht had any more woman trouble?"

"What's this about Haste's niece at Rosid?"

"What do ye for a living?"

"Like ye to hunt?"

"Are ye related to any of the folk of Rüz?"

"What think ye the weather'll be tomorrow?"

Hasselborg parried or evaded the questions as best he could, until the sight of the landlord with a wooden platter afforded him relief. The relief proved short, however, for the ambar turned out to be some sort of arthropod, something like a gigantic cockroach the size of a lobster, half buried under other ambiguous objects and an oily sauce that had been poured over all. His appetite, ravenous a minute before, collapsed like a punctured balloon.

Evidently the local people ate the thing without qualms, and with these jayhawkers staring at him he'd have to do likewise. He gingerly broke off one of the creature's legs and attacked it with one of the little eating spears. He finally gouged out a pale gob of muscle, braced himself, and inserted the meat into his mouth. Not quite nasty; neither was it good. In fact it had little taste, so the general effect was like chewing on a piece of old inner tube. He sighed and settled down to a dismal meal. Although he had had to eat strange things in the course of his career, Victor Hasselborg remained in his tastes a conservative North American with a preference for steaks and pies.

The innkeeper had meanwhile set down a dish of what looked like spaghetti and a mug of colorless liquid. The liquid proved both hot and alcoholic. Hasselborg's conditioned revulsion almost brought up his gorge, but he steeled himself and gulped.

The "spaghetti" was the worst trial, proving to be a mass of white worms, which wriggled when poked. Nobody at Novorecife had asked him to eat a dish of live worms with chopsticks. Cursing Yussuf Batruni and his addlepated daughter under his breath, he wound up half a dozen of the creatures in a bunch on the sticks. However, when he raised them toward his mouth, they sloomped back into the dish.

Luckily, Qam and Farra were arguing some point of astrology and failed to notice. The former, Hasselborg observed, also had a dish of worms, now reduced to a few survivors who twitched pathetically from time to time. Hasselborg concentrated on the insect and its accessories, gloomily thinking of the billions of bacteria he was forcing into his system, until Qam picked up his dish and shoveled the rest of the worms from the edge with his spears into his mouth. Hasselborg followed suit, only mildly comforted by the knowledge that the germs of one planet seldom found an organism from another a congenial host. Outside, the rain hissed on the flat roofs.

When the main course was over, the innkeeper set a big yellow fruit before him. Not bad, he thought.

He wiped his mouth and asked: "Did either of you see a man who went through here toward Rosid about ten ten-nights ago?"

"No," said Qam. "I wasn't here. What sort of man?"

"About my height, but less heavy, with a dark-skinned girl. They looked like this." Hasselborg brought the pencil drawings out of his wallet.

"No, nor I either," said Farra. "Asteratun, have ye seen such people?"

"Not I," said the innkeeper. "Somebody run off with your girl, Master Kavir? Eh?"

"My money," corrected Hasselborg. "I paint for a living, and this rascal took a portrait I'd made of him and went away with out paying. If I catch him—" Hasselborg slapped the hilt of his rapier in what he hoped was the correct swashbuckling manner.

The others giggled. Qam said: "And ye be for Rosid to paint more pictures in hope ye'll be paid this time?"

"That's the general idea. I have introductions."

Farra, scratching his midriff, said: "I hope ye've better luck than that troubadour fellow last year."

"What was that?"

"Oh, the dasht became convinced the man was a spy from Mikardand. No reason, y' understand; only that our good Jam mortally fears spies and assassins. So, ye see, the poor lute-plucker ended up by being eaten at the games."

Hasselborg gulped, mind racing. There had been something in his indoctrination about the public spectacles of certain Krishnan nations on the Roman model.

He drank the rest of the liquor, which was making his head buzz. He'd better locate a good lawyer in Rosid before he began snooping. Of course he was a lawyer too, but not in Krishnan law. And a lawyer might not be of much avail in a land where a feudal lord had what in European medieval law was called the high justice and could have you killed on his say-so.

"Excuse me," he said, pushing his stool back. "After a day's ride—"

"Certainly, certainly, good sir," said Qam. "Will you be back for supper?"

"I think not."

"Then I hope you leave not too early in the morning, for I should like to ask you more questions of far places."

"We'll see," said Hasselborg. "The stars give you a good night."

"Oh, Master Kavir," said Farra, "Asteratun gives us the second bed to the right at the head of the stairs. Take the middle, and Qam and I will creep in on the sides later. We'll try not to rouse you."

Hasselborg almost jumped out of his skin as he digested this information. Whatever was making Farra scratch, the thought of spending a night in the same bed with it filled the investigator with horror. He took Asteratun aside, saying:

"Look here, chum, I paid for a bed, not a third of a bed."

The innkeeper began to protest but, by a lengthy argument, a claim of insomnia, and an extra quarter-kard, Hasselborg got a bed to himself.

Next morning, Hasselborg was up long before his fellow guests, not yet being used to the slower rotation of this world. Breakfast consisted of flat doughy cakes and bits of something that appeared to be meat; organs from an organism, no doubt, but that was all you could say for them.

He washed down a handful of pills, wrapped himself in his cloak, and sallied forth into the drizzle. Faroun looked hurt at being hitched up and driven forth into the rain. He kept peering back at Hasselborg with an indignant expression, balked, and had to be stung with the buggy whip to make him go.

In thinking over the evening's conversation, it struck Hasselborg that Qam's questions had been unnecessarily pointed, as if designed to unmask one who was not what he seemed. Hasselborg wondered if the lamented troubadour, too, had had a letter of introduction.

That reflection started another train of thought:

How about those quotations from Shakespeare with which Gois liked to show off his culture? Wasn't there a place in Hamlet where somebody gave somebody else a letter of introduction that actually contained instructions to kill the bearer forthwith?

Hasselborg suddenly wanted earnestly to know what was in that carefully sealed letter to the Dasht of Rüz. When he reached Rosid—

The drizzle stopped, and the sun threw a yellow beam down from time to time between great bulks of cloud. Hasselborg rolled a grimly appreciative eye at them. Whatever fate awaited him, at least he might this time avoid catching his death of cold.

He drove hard to make his destination in plenty of time to find himself a safe roost. About noon Krishnan time he pulled up, dismounted, hitched his animal to a bush, and sat on a convenient boulder. As he ate the lunch Asteratun's cook had put up for him, he swept his eye over the gently rolling terrain with its shrubby vegetation. Small flying things buzzed around him, and a creeping thing something like a land crab scuttled past his feet. A group of six-legged animals fed on the crown of a distant rise.

He was seeing Alexandra's face in the clouds when the faint drumming of animal feet brought his attention back to earth. A pair of riders on four-legged camel-like beasts were approaching. There was a jingle of armor, and he could see slender lances held upright like radio antennae.

With a flash of alarm, he hitched his sword and his dagger around to where he could get at them quickly, though he feared that against two armored men a tyro like himself would have no chance to buckle a swash. True, the look of the men suggested soldiers rather than bandits, but in a country like this the line might be hard to draw.

Hasselborg saw with displeasure that they were going to rein up. Their armor was a composite of plate and chain with a slightly Moorish effect: chain mail over the joints connecting squares and cylinders of plate. As one of them stopped and signaled his mount to kneel, Hasselborg said:

"Good day to you, sirs; may the stars protect you. I'm Kavir bad-Ma'Ium."

The man who had dismounted exchanged a brief glance with his companion and advanced towards Hasselborg, saying:

"Is that so? What's your rank?"

"I'm an artist."

The man turned his head back over his shoulder and said: "He says he's an artist." He turned back to Hasselborg. "A commoner, eh?"

"Yes." Hasselborg regretted the word as soon as he spoke it. If these birds were going to turn nasty, he should have claimed the rank oigarm—knight—or better.

"A commoner," said the man afoot to his companion. "A fair aya you have."

"Glad you like him."

Although the man smiled, as nearly as Hasselborg could interpret Krishnan expressions the smile was predatory rather than friendly. Sure enough the man's next words were:

"We do indeed. Give him to us."

"What?" Hasselborg instinctively reached for his shoulder holster before remembering that his beloved weapon was not with him.

"Surely," continued the man. "Also your sword and those rings and any money you have. You're well-starred that we let you keep your garments."

"Forget not the carriage," said the mounted man. "He looks strong; he can pull it himself, ha-ha!"

"I'll do nothing of the sort," said Hasselborg. "Who are you two, anyway?"

"Troopers of the dasht's highway patrol. Come now, make us no trouble, or we'll arrest you as a spy."

The mounted man said: "Or kill you for resisting arrest."

Hasselborg thought that even if he gave up his goods, they might kill him anyway to prevent complaints. A firm line might be equally risky, but he had no alternative.

"I wouldn't if I were you. I have an introduction to the dasht from an important Ertsu, and if I disappeared there'd be a terrible howl."

"Let's see it," said the dismounted soldier.

Hasselborg drew the letter out of his wallet and held it up for the soldier's inspection. The latter put out a hand to take it, but Hasselborg jerked it back, saying:

"The address is enough. What do you want the letter for?"

"To open, fool!"

Hasselborg shook his head as he put the letter away. "The dasht likes his letters untampered with, chum."

"Slay him," said the mounted trooper. "He does but try to fool us with talk."

"A good thought," said the man afoot. "Spear him. if he tries to run, Kaikovarr." And the trooper drew sword and dagger and hurled himself upon Hasselborg.

Tumbling backward to get out of range of the wicked blades, Hasselborg got his own sword out just in time to parry a slash. Clang! Clang! So far so good, though the trooper addressed as Kaikovarr was guiding his shomal off the road and around toward Hasselborg's rear.

The dismounted man, finding that Hasselborg could stop his crude swings, changed tactics. He stalked forward, blade out horizontally; then suddenly caught Hasselborg's sword in a prise and whipped it out of his grasp. Out shot the blade again; the soldier's legs worked like steel springs as he hopped forward and threw himself into a lunge. The point struck Hasselborg full in the chest, just over the heart.