The Dirdir Read online

  “Why not?” Woudiver could no longer restrain a grin. “Assume that the rumors I cited are accurate; assume that by some wild accident you and your henchmen were the persons in question: then is it not true that you have shamefully deceived me?”

  “Assuming as much-not at all.”

  “What of the wonderful treasure?”

  “It is real. Assist me to the best of your abilities. In one month we can depart Tschai. In another month you will be repaid beyond your dreams.”

  “Where? How?” Woudiver hitched himself forward; he loomed over Reith and his voice came deep and rich from the far caverns of his chest. “Let me ask outright: did you promulgate a tale that the original home of man is a far world? Or even more to the point: do you believe this hideous fantasy?”

  Reith, with spirits plunging even deeper, tried to sidestep the quagmire. “We are dealing with side issues. Our arrangement was clear; the rumors you mention have no relevance.”

  Woudiver slowly, deliberately, shook his head.

  “When the spaceship leaves,” said Reith, “you shall have every sequin in my possession. I can do no better than that. If you make unreasonable demands…” He searched for a convincing threat.

  Woudiver tilted up the great expanse of his face, chuckled. “What can you do? You are helpless. One word from me and you are instantly taken to the Glass Box. What are your options? None. You must do as I demand.”

  Reith looked around the shed. In the doorway stood Artilo, applying ash-gray snuff to his nostrils. At his belt hung a handgun.

  Deine Zarre approached. Ignoring Woudiver he spoke to Reith. “The energy-cans are not to my order. They are a nonstandard size and appear to have been used for an indeterminate period. They must be rejected.”

  Woudiver’s eyes narrowed, his mouth jerked. “What? They are excellent canisters.”

  Deine Zarre said in a toneless but utterly definite voice, “For our purposes they are useless.” He departed. The boy and the girl looked after him wistfully. Woudiver turned to examine them, with what appeared to Reith a peculiar intensity.

  Reith waited. Woudiver swung about. For a moment he regarded Reith through narrow-lidded eyes. “Well, then,” said Woudiver, “it seems that different energy-cans are needed. How do you propose to pay for them?”

  “In the usual way. Take back those eight cans of junk; provide four fresh cans and submit an itemized bill. A fair account I am able to pay just barely. Don’t forget, I must meet labor costs.”

  Woudiver considered. Deine Zarre crossed the shed to speak to the boy and girl and Woudiver was distracted. He strutted over to join the group. Reith, limp with fatigue, went to the workbench and poured himself a mug of tea, which he drank with a shaking hand.

  Woudiver had become extremely affable, and went so far as to pat the boy on the head. Deine Zarre stood stiff, his face the color of wax.

  Woudiver at last turned away. He crossed the shed to Artilo, spoke a moment or two. Artilo went outside, where blasts of wind sent ripples scurrying across the puddles.

  Woudiver signaled Reith with one hand, Deine Zarre with the other. The two approached. Woudiver sighed with vast melancholy. “You two are dedicated to my poverty. You insist on the most exquisite refinements but refuse to pay. So be it. Artilo is taking away the canisters you so condemn. Zarre, come with me now and select cells to suit your needs.”

  “At this moment? I must take care of the two children.”

  “Now. At once. Tonight I visit my little property. I will not return for a period. It is evident that my help is undervalued here.”

  Deine Zarre acquiesced with poor grace. He spoke to the boy and girl, then departed with Woudiver.

  Two hours passed. The sun, breaking through the clouds, sent a single ray down upon Hei, so that the scarlet and purple towers glittered against the black sky. Down the road came Woudiver’s black car. It rolled to a halt in front of the shed; Artilo alighted. He sauntered into the shed. Reith watched him, wondering as to his air of purposefulness. Artilo approached the boy and girl, stood looking down at them, and they in turn looked up, eyes wide in their pale faces. Artilo spoke a few terse words; Reith could see the corded muscles at the back of his jaw jerk as he spoke. The children looked dubiously across the room at Reith, then reluctantly started to move toward the door. Traz spoke to Reith in a low urgent voice: “Something is wrong. What does he want with them?”

  Reith moved forward. He asked, “Where are you taking these two?”

  “No affair of yours.”

  Reith turned to the children. “Don’t go with this man. Wait until your uncle returns.”

  The girl said, “He says he is taking us to our uncle.”

  “He can’t be believed. Something is wrong.”

  Artilo turned to face Reith, an act as sinister as the coiling of a snake. He spoke in a soft voice. “I have my orders. Stand away.”

  “Who gave you the orders? Woudiver?”

  “It is no concern of yours.” He motioned to the two children. “Come.” His hand went under his old gray jacket and he watched Reith sidelong.

  The girl said, “We are not going with you.”

  “You must. I’ll carry you.”

  “Touch them and I’ll kill you,” said Reith in a flat voice.

  Artilo gave him a cool stare. Reith braced himself, muscles creaking with tension. Artilo brought forth his hand; Reith saw the dark shape of a weapon. He lunged, chopped down at the cold hard arm. Artilo had been expecting this; from the sleeve of his other hand sprang a long blade, which he thrust at Reith’s side, so swiftly that Reith, whirling away, felt the sting of the edge. Artilo sprang back, knife poised, though he had lost the handgun. Reith, intoxicated with fury and the sudden release of tension, edged forward, eyes fixed on the unblinking Artilo. Reith feinted. Artilo reacted by not so much as a quiver. Reith struck with his left hand; Artilo cut up; Reith seized his wrist, whirled, bent, heaved, threw him far across the room where he lay in a crumpled heap.

  Reith dragged him to the door, threw him outside into a puddle of slime.

  Artilo painfully hoisted himself to his feet and limped over to the black car. In a passionless matter-of-fact fashion, never looking toward the shed, he scraped the mud from his garments, entered the car and departed.

  Anacho said in a disapproving voice, “You should have killed him. Matters will be worse than ever.”

  Reith had no reply to make. He became conscious of the blood oozing down his side. Pulling up his shirt he found a long thin slash. Traz and Anacho applied a dressing; the girl somewhat timidly approached and tried to help. She seemed deft and capable; Anacho moved aside. Traz and the girl completed the job.

  “Thank you,” said Reith.

  The girl looked up at him, her face full of a hundred different meanings. But she could not bring herself to speak.

  The afternoon waned. The girl and boy stood in the doorway looking up the road. The technicians departed; the shed was silent.

  The black car returned. Deine Zarre stepped stiffly forth, followed by Woudiver. Artilo, going to the luggage compartment, brought forth four energy cells, which he carried at a painful hobble into the shed. His manner, as far as Reith could see, was no different from usual: dour, impersonal, silent.

  Woudiver turned a single glance toward the girl and the boy, who shrank back into the shadows. Then he approached Reith. “The energy canisters are here. They are approved by Zarre. They cost a great deal of money. Here is my statement for next month’s rent and Artilo’s salary—”

  “Artilo’s salary?” demanded Reith. “You must be joking.”

  “—the total, as you see, is exactly one hundred thousand sequins. The sum is not subject to diminution. You must pay at once or I will evict you from the premises.” And Woudiver pursed his lips in a cold smile.

  Reith’s eyes misted with hate. “I can’t afford this amount of money.”

  “Then you must go. Further, since you are no longer my client, I will be obl
igated to make a report of your activities to the Dirdir.”

  Reith nodded. “One hundred thousand sequins. And after that, how much more?”

  “Whatever sums you require me to lay out.”

  “No further blackmail?”

  Woudiver drew himself up. “The word is capricious and vulgar. I warn you, Adam Reith, that I expect the same courtesy that I accord.”

  Reith managed a sad laugh. “You’ll have your money in five or six days. I don’t have it now.”

  Woudiver cocked his great head skeptically sidewise. “Where do you propose to secure this money?”

  “I have money waiting for me in Coad.”

  Woudiver snorted, wheeled and marched to his car. Artilo hobbled after him. They departed.

  Traz and Anacho came to watch after the car.

  In a wondering voice Traz asked, “Where will you get a hundred thousand sequins?”

  “We left as much buried in the Carabas,” said Reith. “The only problem is bringing it back—and perhaps it won’t be so much of a problem after all.”

  Anacho’s lank white jaw dropped. “I’ve always suspected you of insane optimism…”

  Reith held up his hand. “Listen. I will fly north by the same route the Dirdir themselves use. They will take no notice, even should a search-screen be operating, which is doubtful. I will land after dark, to the east of the forest. In the morning I will dig up the sequins and take them back to the sky-car and at dusk I will fly back to Sivishe like a party of Dirdir returning from the hunt.”

  Anacho gave a derogatory grunt. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “As probably it will be, if all goes well.”

  Reith looked wistfully back toward the shed and the half-complete spaceship. “I might as well start now.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Traz. “You’ll need help.”

  Anacho made a dreary sound. “I had better go as well.”

  Reith shook his head. “One can do the job as well as three. You two remain here and keep our affairs moving.”

  “And if you don’t return?”

  “There are sixty or seventy thousand sequins still in the pouch. Take the money and leave Sivishe… But I’ll be back. I can’t doubt this. It’s not possible that we should toil and suffer so greatly only to fail.”

  “Hardly a rational assessment,” Anacho said dryly: “I expect never to see you again.”

  “Nonsense,” said Reith. “Well, I’ll get started. The sooner I leave, the sooner I return.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE SKY-CAR SAILED quietly through the night of old Tschai, over landscape ghostly in the light of the blue moon. Reith felt like a man drifting through a strange dream. He mused over the events of his life, his childhood, his years of training, his missions among the stars and finally his assignment to the Explorator IV. Then Tschai: destruction and disaster, his time with the Emblem nomads, the journey across Aman Steppe and the Dead Steppe to Pera; the sack of Dadiche; the subsequent journey to Cath and his adventures at Ao Hidis. Then the journey to Carabas, the slaughter of the Dirdir, the construction of the spaceship in Sivishe. And Woudiver! On Tschai both virtue and vice were exaggerated; Reith had known many evil men, among whom Woudiver ranked high.

  The night advanced; the forests of central Kislovan gave way to barren uplands and silent wasteland. In all the circle of vision, no light, no fire, no sign of human activity was visible. Reith consulted the course monitor, adjusted the automatic pilot. The Carabas lay only an hour ahead. The blue moon hung low; when it set the landscape would be dark until dawn.

  The hour passed. Braz sank behind the horizon; in the east appeared a sepia glimmer announcing the nearness of dawn. Reith, dividing his attention between the course monitor and the ground below, finally thought to glimpse the shape of Khusz. At once, he dropped the car low to the ground and veered to the east, swinging behind the Boundary Forest. As Carina 4269 thrust a first cool brown sliver over the edge of the horizon Reith landed, close under the first great torquils of the forest.

  For a period he sat watching and listening. Carina 4269 rose into the sky and the low light shone directly upon the sky-car. Reith gathered broken fronds and branches, which he laid against the car, camouflaging it to some extent.

  The time had come when he must venture into the forest. He could delay no longer. Taking a sack and a shovel, tucking weapons into his belt, Reith set forth.

  The trail was familiar. Reith recognized each bole, every dark sheaf of fungus, every hummock of lichen. As he passed through the forest he became aware of a sickening odor: the reek of carrion. This was to be expected. He halted. Voices? Reith jumped off the trail, listened.

  Voices indeed. Reith hesitated, then stole forward through the heavy foliage.

  Ahead lay the site of the trap. Reith approached with the most extreme caution, creeping on his hands and knees, finally crawling on his elbows… He looked forth upon an eerie sight. To one side, in front of a great torquil, stood five Dirdir in hunting regalia. A dozen gray-faced men stood in a great hole, digging with shovels and buckets: this was the hole, greatly enlarged, in which Reith, Traz and Anacho had buried the Dirdir corpses. From the splendid rotting carrion came an odious stench… Reith stared. One of these men was surely familiar—it was Issam the Thang. And next to him worked the hostler, and next, the porter at the Alawan. The others Reith could not positively identify, but all seemed somehow familiar, and he assumed them to be folk with whom he had dealings at Maust.

  Reith turned to inspect the five Dirdir. They stood stiff and attentive, effulgences flaring out behind. If they felt emotion, or disgust, none was evident.

  Reith did not allow himself to reason, to weigh, to calculate. He brought forth his hand-gun; he aimed, he fired. Once, twice, three times. Three Dirdir fell dead; the other two sprang around in questioning fury. Four times, five times: two glancing hits. Emerging from his cover Reith fired twice more down into the thrashing white bodies before they became still.

  The men in the pit stood frozen in wonder. “Up!” cried Reith. “Out of there!”

  Issam the Thang yelled hoarsely, “It is you, the murderer! Your crimes brought us here!”

  “Never mind that,” said Reith. “Get up out of that hole and fly for your life!”

  “What good is that? The Dirdir will track us! They will kill us in some abominable fashion—”

  The hostler was already out of the hole. He went to the Dirdir corpses, availed himself of a weapon, and turned back to Issam the Thang. “Don’t bother to climb from the hole.” He fired; the Thang’s yell was cut short; his body rolled down among the decaying Dirdir.

  The hostler said to Reith, “He betrayed us all, hoping for gain; he gained only what you saw; they took him with the rest of us.”

  “These five Dirdir—were there more?”

  “Two Excellences who have gone back to Khusz.”

  “Take the weapons and go your way.”

  The men fled toward the Hills of Recall. Reith dug under the roots of the torquil. There, the sack of sequins. To the value of a hundred thousand? He could not be sure.

  Shouldering the pouch, looking for a last time on the scene of carnage and the pitiful corpse of Issam the Thang, he departed the scene.

  Back at the sky-car he loaded the sequins into the cabin and set himself to wait, anxiety gnawing at his stomach. He dared not depart. If he flew low he might be seen by hunt parties; if he flew high the screen across the Carabas would detect him.

  The day passed. Carina 4269 dropped behind the far hills. Sad brown twilight fell over the Zone. Along the hills the hateful flickers sprang into existence. Reith could wait no longer. He took the sky-car into the air.

  Low over the ground he skimmed until he was clear of the Zone, then rising high drove south for Sivishe.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE DARK LAND passed astern. Reith sat staring ahead, visions flitting across his inner eye: faces, twisted in passion, horror, pain. The shapes of
Blue Chasch, Wankh, Pnume, Phung, Green Chasch, Dirdir, all leaped upon the stage of his imagination, to stand, turn, perform a gesture and leap away.

  The night passed. The sky-car slid south and when Carina 4269 rose into the east the spires of Hei glistened far ahead.

  Without incident Reith landed the sky-car, though it seemed that a passing party of Dirdirmen scrutinized him with suspicious intensity as he departed the field with his sack of sequins.

  Reith went first to his room at the Ancient Realm. Neither Traz nor Anacho were on the premises, but Reith thought nothing of this; they often passed the nights at the shed.

  Reith stumbled to his couch, threw the bag of sequins against the wall, stretched out and almost immediately slept.

  He awoke to a hand on his shoulder. He rolled over to find Traz standing above him.

  Traz spoke in a husky voice: “I was afraid you’d come here. Hurry, we must leave. The apartment is now dangerous.”

  Reith, still torpid, swung himself to a sitting position. The time was early afternoon, or so he judged by the shadows outside the window.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “The Dirdir took Anacho into custody. I was out buying food, or they would have taken me as well.”

  Reith was now fully awake. “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday. It was Woudiver’s doing. He came to the shed, and asked questions about you. He wanted to know if you claimed to come from another world; he persisted and would not accept evasion. I refused to speak, as did Anacho. Woudiver began to reproach Anacho as a renegade. ‘You, a former Dirdirman, how can you live like a subman among sub-men?“ ‘ Anacho became provoked and said that Bifold Genesis was a myth. Woudiver went away. Yesterday morning the Dirdir came here to the rooms and took Anacho. If they force him to talk, we are not safe and the ship is not safe.”

  Reith’s fingers were numb as he pulled on his boots. All at once the structure of his life, contrived at such cost, had collapsed. Woudiver, always Woudiver.