The Search for Zei

CHAPTER XII

So it came about that evening found them putting out into Bajjai Bay aboard a tubby wallowing coastal lateener, the Giyam, so laden with wine jars that her freeboard could only be measured in centimeters. The master laughed at their obvious apprehension when a lusty wave sent a sheet of water racing across the deck.

"Nay," he said, "'twill not be the season of the hurricane for several ten-nights yet."

For want of anything better to do, Barnevelt dug out of the bag the navigational handbook he had bought in Novorecife and tried to work out a line-of-position from the meager data provided by the ship's compass (which spun this way and that in maddening disregard of direction), the time as given by his pocket sundial, and Roqir's altitude as worked out by an improvised astrolabe. With so many sources of inaccuracy, however, his calculations showed the ship hundreds of hoda up the Zigros River, between Jeshang and Kubyab.

"Reading's useless baggage for the true sailorman," said the master, watching Barnevelt's struggles with amusement. "Here I have never learned the clerkly art, and look at me! Nay, 'tis better to spend one's time watching wave and cloud and flying thing, and becoming wise in their ways—or yet in learning the habitudes of the local gods, so that ye please each in his own bailiwick. Thus in Qirib I'm a faithful follower of their Mother Goddess, but in Majbur I'm a votary of jolly old Dashmok, and in Gozashtandu ports a devotee of their cultus, astrological. Did our seas reach to your cold Nyamdze, I'd doubtless learn to adore squares and trigons as do the sour Kangandites."

It was high time, Barnevelt thought, that he and George decided how they were going to gain access to the Sunqar. After some casting about for ideas, they resolved to combine those that had already been suggested to them by their friends and acquaintances on Krishna. In other words, they would seek entry with one or both of them disguised as expressmen of the Mejrou Qurardena with a package to deliver.

The wind held fair and true, and the morning of the third day found the Givam heading into the harbor of Ghulinde. As the sun rose out of the sparkling sea, Barnevelt stared in silent wonder.

Before them lay the port, not properly Ghulinde at all but the separate city of Damovang. Southwest of Damovang rose tall Mount Sabushi. In times long past, before the matriar-chate had elevated the cult of the fertility goddess and suppressed its competitors, men had carved the mountain into an enormous squat likeness of the war-god Qondyor (called Qunjar by the Qiribuma) as though sitting on a throne half-sunk in the earth, to the height of the god's calves. Time had blurred the sculptors' work, especially around the head, but the city of Ghulinde proper with its graceful forest of spiky spires lay in the great flat lap of the god.

Finally, far behind Mount Sabushi, against the sky rose the towering peaks of the Zogha, the range from which came the mineral wealth that gave the matriarchal kingdom a power out of proportion to its modest size.

Another hour and they were climbing the steep hill that led up the apron of Qondyor to the city of Queen Alvandi, through a crowd of Qiribuma, whose dress convention seemed to be that if one had a piece of fabric with one, one was clad—even though one merely draped it over one arm. Barnevelt observed that, whereas the women dressed with austere simplicity, the men went in for gaudy ornaments and cosmetics.

"Now," said Barnevelt, "all we need is a present for the queen to replace that damned macaw."

"Do you think the stage-coach line would have kept it? I don't suppose they have a lost-and-found department."

They sought out the coach company and inquired. No, they were told, nobody knew anything about a cage containing an unearthly monster. Yes, that stage held up between Mishdakh and Kyat had come in again, but the driver was off on a run at the moment. If they had left such a cage on the diligence, the driver had probably sold it in Ghulinde't Why didn't the gentlemen make the rounds of the pet shops?

There were three of these in town, all in the same block. Before they had even entered one, the Earthmen knew where their quarry was by the shrieks and obscenities that issued from the shop harboring Philo.

Inside there was a tremendous noise. In a cage near that of Philo, a bijar rustled its leathery wings and made a sound like a smith beating on an anvil, while in another a two-headed rayef brooded over a clutch of eggs and quacked. A big watch-eshun scrabbled at its wire netting with the front pair of its six paws and howled softly. The smell was overpowering.

"That thing?" said the shopkeeper when Barnevelt told him he was interested in the macaw. "Take it for half a kard and welcome. I was about to drown the beast. It has bitten one of my best customers, who was minded to buy it ere he learned of its frampold disposition, and it screams insults at all and sundry."

They bought back their bird, but then Barnevelt wanted to linger and look over the other animals. He said: "George, couldn't I buy one of these little scaly things? I don't feel right without a pet."

"No! The kind of pet you need walks on two legs. Come on." And the xenologist dragged Barnevelt out. "It must be that farm background that makes you so fond of beasts."

Barnevelt shook his head. "It's just that I find them easier to understand than people."

At last, when Roqir was westering in the sky and the folk of Ghulinde stopped their work for their afternoon cup of shurab and snack of fungus cakes, Dirk Barnevelt and George Tangaloa, weary but alert, entered the palace. Barnevelt repressed his terror at the prospect of meeting a lot of strangers. After passing between pairs of woman guards in gilded kilts and brazen helms and greaves and brassieres, they were run through a long series of screening devices before being ushered into the presence of Alvandi, Douri of Qirib.

They found themselves in the presence, not of one woman, but two: one of advanced years, square-jawed, heavy-set, the other young and—not exactly beautiful, but handsome in a bold-featured way. Both wore the simple unoppressive sort of garb that ancient Greek sculptors attributed to Amazons, which contrasted oddly with the flashing tiaras they bore upon their heads.

The Earthmen, having forehandedly boned up on Qiribo protocol, knelt while a functionary presented them.

"The Snyol of Pleshch?" said the elder woman, evidently the queen. "An unexpected pleasure, this, for my agents had reported you slain. Rise."

As they rose, Tangaloa launched into his rehearsed speech of presentation, displaying the macaw. When he had finished, the functionary took the cage from him and retired.

"We thank you for your generous and unusual gift. We'll bear in mind what you have told us of this creature's habits— a bord, you said it was called upon its native planet? And now, sirs, to your business. You shall deal, not with me, but with my daughter, the Princess Zei, whom you see sitting here upon my left. For within a ten-night comes our yearly festival called kashyo, after which I'll abdicate in favor of my dutiful chick. 'Tis meet, therefore, that she should gain experience in bearing burdens such as sit upon our shoulders, before responsibility in very truth descends upon her. Speak."

Barnevelt and Tangaloa had agreed in advance that, while the latter made the first speech, the former should make the next. As he looked at the women, however, Dirk Barnevelt found himself suddenly tongue-tied. The seconds ticked away, and no words came.

The reason for this was not that Zei was a rather tall, well-built girl, rather dark of skin, with large dark eyes, a luscious mouth, and a nose of unusual aquilinity for a Krishnan. She might in fact have stepped off a Greek vase painting except for the antennae, the dark-green hair, and the leprechaunian ears.

No, Barnevelt had seen striking girls before. He had dated them too, even though his mother had always managed to break things up before they got serious. The real reason he found himself unable to speak was that Queen Alvandi, in tone and looks, reminded him forcibly of that same mother, only on a larger, louder, and even more terrifying scale.

As he stood with his mouth foolishly half-open, feeling the blush creep up his ruddy skin, he at last heard the soft voice of Tangaloa break into the embarrassing silence. Good old George! For having rescued him in that horrid moment, Barn-evelt would have forgiven his colleague almost anything.

"Your Altitude," said Tangaloa, "we are but wandering adventurers who beg two favors: first, to be allowed to present our respects to you, as you have generously permitted us to do. The second is to raise in Ghulinde a company to sail into the Banjao Sea in search of gvam stones."

The girl cast an appealing glance at her mother, whose face remained stony. Finally Zei answered.

"Gorbovast tells us of your gvam-hunting proposal in this his letter." (She touched the paper on her desk.) "Not sure am I, however, that the gvam-stone quest is sanctioned by the Mother Goddess, since if the common belief respecting it be true, it affords the male an advantage contrary to the principles of our state…"

While she hesitated, Queen Alvandi prompted her in a stage whisper: "Tell 'em 'tis lawful sobeit they pay our taxes and sell their baubles far from here!"

"Well—uh—however," said Zei, "we can extend permission on two conditions: that you sell not the stones within the bourne of Qirib, and that you pay, from your profits on this transaction, subject to the scrutiny of our auditors, one-tenth to the treasury of the realm of Qirib, and an additional tenth to the coffers of the Divine Mother."

"Agreed," said Barnevelt, recovering his voice at last. It is easy enough to promise a cut on the gvam-stone profit when he and George knew there wouldn't be any such profit.

"Make 'em put up a bond!" hissed Alvandi. "Otherwise how shall we collect our money, once they've got their stones and are beyond our reach?"

"A—a slight bond, sirs, will be required," said Zei. "Of— of, let's say, a thousand karda. Can you meet it? On your return, all above the amount of our tax shall be returned to you."

"We can meet it," said Barnevelt after some fast mental calculations.

"I'd have mulcted 'em for five thousand," grumbled Alvandi. "Oh, well, Snyol of Pleshch always bore the reputation of…"

At that instant a round-faced young Krishnan strode in unceremoniously, saying loudly in a high voice: "A bearer of ill tidings I, fair Zei, for the Prefect and his lady are laid low by some tisick and cannot come tonight… I crave pardon. Do I interrupt an audience of weight and worth?"

"Worth enough," growled Alvandi, "to make one of your graceless intrusions more vexing than is its usual wont. Here we have a pair of perfect gentle cutthroats from the regions of the nether pole, where folk have names none other can pronounce and where a bath is deemed a shocking heathen custom. Yon gangler on the left hight Snyol of Pleshch, while this unwieldy mass of flesh upon the right gives as his barbarous appellation Tagde of Vyutr. This lown who into the flow of your eloquence has broken, my widely traveled friends, is Zakkomir bad-Gurshmani, a ward of the throne and my daughter's familiar."

"General Snyol!" cried Zakkomir, his round made-up face taking on a reverent expression. "Sir, may I grasp your thumb in abject homage? Long have I followed your deeds in admiration. As when with but a single wing of troops having upon their feet those boards you use for sliding on snow-skids, I think they're called—you did overthrow and rout the wretched rabble of Olnega… But I looked to see you one of greater age?"

"We come of a long-lived family," said Barnevelt gruffly, wishing he knew more about the man he was impersonating. Although he was not too favorably impressed by this painted youth, the latter's admiration seemed unbounded.

Zakkomir addressed Zei: "Princess, 'twere unworthy of us to deal with one of such eminence as though he were a common hilding, merely because the false cult of the Kan-gandites has driven him forth from the realm he served so well—to become a wanderer upon the planet. Since the Prefect and his dame be indisposed, let's have these masters in their stead tonight. What say you?"

"An idea worth pondering," said Zei. " 'Twould give us a full table of chanizekash."

"Ever a creature of whim," said Alvandi. "Such an invitation before even have their bona fides been confirmed! Oh, have 'em in, since not without dishonor may we withdraw an invitation once extended. But post a guard over the best royal plate. Perchance they'll prove more guestly than the locals, all of whom axe either queer or dull, and ofttimes both."