The Dirdir Page 12

  Traz touched his arm. “Come; best that we leave! The rooms may be watched.”

  Reith picked up the bundle of sequins. They departed the building. Through the alleys of Sivishe they walked, ignoring the pale faces looking forth from doorways and odd-shaped windows.

  Reith became aware that he was ravenously hungry; at a small restaurant they ate boiled sea-thrush and spore-cake. Reith began to think more clearly. Anacho was in Dirdir custody; Woudiver would certainly be expecting some sort of reaction from him. Or would he be so assured of Reith’s essential helplessness that he would expect matters to go on as before? Reith grinned a ghastly grin. If Woudiver reckoned as much, he would be right. Unthinkable to jeopardize the ship for any circumstance whatever! Reith’s hate for Woudiver was like a tumor in his brain, and he must ignore it; he must make the best of an agonizing dilemma.

  Reith asked Traz, “You have not seen Woudiver?”

  “I saw him this morning. I went to the shed; I thought you might have gone there. Woudiver arrived and went into his office.”

  “Let’s see if he’s still there.”

  “What do you intend to do?”

  Reith gave a strangled laugh, “I could kill him but it would do no good. We need information. Woudiver is the only source.”

  Traz said nothing; as usual Reith was unable to read his thoughts.

  They rode the creaking six-wheeled public carrier out to the construction yard, and every turn of the wheels wound the tension tighter. When Reith arrived at the yard and saw Woudiver’s black car the blood surged through his brain and he felt lightheaded. He stood still, drew a deep breath and became quite calm.

  He thrust the pouch of sequins upon Traz. “Take it into the shed and hide it.”

  Traz took the sack dubiously. “Don’t go alone. Wait for me.”

  “I expect no trouble. We can’t afford the luxury, as Woudiver well knows. Wait for me by the shed.”

  Reith went to Woudiver’s eccentric stone office and entered. With his back to the charcoal brazier stood Artilo, legs splayed, arms behind his back. He examined Reith without change of expression.

  “Tell Woudiver I want to see him,” said Reith.

  Artilo sauntered to the inner door, thrust his head in, spoke. He backed away. The door swung aside with a wrench that almost tore it from its hinges. Woudiver expanded into the room: a glaring-eyed Woudiver with great upper lip folded down over his mouth. He looked across the room with the unfocused all-seeing glare of a wrathful god, then seemed to catch sight of Reith, and his malevolence concentrated itself.

  “Adam Reith,” spoke Woudiver in a voice like a bell. “You have returned. Where are my sequins?”

  “Never mind your sequins,” said Reith. “Where is the Dirdirman?”

  Woudiver hunched his shoulders. For a moment Reith thought he was about to strike out. If so Reith knew that his selfcontrol would dissolve, for better or worse.

  Woudiver spoke in a throbbing voice: “Do you think to fatigue me with wrangling? Think again! Give me my money and depart.”

  “You shall have your money,” said Reith, “as soon as I see Ankhe at afram Anacho.”

  “You wish to see the blasphemer, the renegade?” roared Woudiver. “Go to the Glass Box, you will see him clearly enough.”

  “He is in the Glass Box?”

  “Where else?”

  “You are certain?”

  Woudiver leaned back against the wall. “Why do you wish to know?”

  “Because he is my friend. You betrayed him to the Dirdir; you must answer to me.”

  Woudiver began to swell, but Reith said in a weary voice, “No more drama, no more shouting. You gave Anacho to the Dirdir; now I want you to save him.”

  “Impossible,” said Woudiver. “Even if I wished I could do nothing. He is in the Glass Box, do you hear?”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Where else should he be sent? He was taken for his old crimes; the Dirdir will learn nothing of your project, if that is your worry.” And Woudiver showed his mouth in a gigantic sneer. “Unless, of course, he himself reveals your secrets.”

  “In which case,” said Reith, “you would likewise find yourself in difficulties.”

  Woudiver had no comment to make.

  Reith asked in a gentle voice, “Can money buy Anacho’s escape?”

  “No,” intoned Woudiver. “He is in the Glass Box.”

  “So you say. How can I be sure?”

  “As I informed you-go look.”

  “Anyone who wishes can watch?”

  “Certainly. The Box holds no secrets.”

  “What is the procedure?”

  “You cross to Hei, you walk to the Box, you climb to the upper gallery which overlooks the fields.”

  “Could a person lower a rope, or a ladder?”

  “Certainly, but he could not hope for long life; he would be thrust at once down upon the field… If you plan anything of this nature I myself will come to watch.”

  “Suppose I were to offer you a million sequins,” said Reith, “could you arrange that Anacho escape?”

  Woudiver darted his great head forward. “A million sequins? And you have been crying poverty to me for three months? I have been deceived!”

  “Could you arrange the escape for a million sequins?”

  Woudiver showed a dainty pink tip of tongue. “No, I fear not… a million sequins… I fear not. There is nothing to be done. Nothing. So you have gained a million sequins?”

  “No,” said Reith. “I only wanted to learn if Anacho’s escape was possible.”

  “It is not possible,” said Woudiver crossly. “Where is my money?”

  “In due course,” said Reith. “You betrayed my friend; you can wait.”

  Again Woudiver seemed on the verge of swinging his great arm. But he said, “You misuse language. I did not ‘betray’: I exposed a criminal to his just deserts. What loyalty do I owe you or yours? You have given none to me, and would do worse if opportunity offered. Bear in mind, Adam Reith, that friendship must work in two directions. Do not expect what you are unwilling to give. If you find my attributes distasteful, remember that I feel the same about yours. Which of us is correct? By the standards of this time and this place, it is certainly I. You are the interloper; your protests are ludicrous and unrealistic. You blame me for inordinacy. Do not forget, Adam Reith, that you chose me as a man who would perform illegal acts for pay. This is your expectation of me; you care nothing for my security or prospects. You came here to exploit me, to urge me to dangerous acts for trifling sums; you must not complain if my conduct seems merely a mirror of your own.”

  Reith could find no answer. He turned and left the office.

  In the shed, work was proceeding at its usual pace: a haven of normalcy after the Carabas and the mind-twisting colloquy with Woudiver. Traz waited just inside the portal. “What did he say?”

  “He said Anacho was a criminal, that I came here to exploit him. How can I argue?”

  Traz curled his lip. “And Anacho?”

  “In the Glass Box. Woudiver says it’s easy to get in but impossible to get out.” Reith walked back and forth across the shed. Halting in the doorway, he looked across the water toward the great gray shape. He spoke to Traz: “Will you ask Deine Zarre to step out here?”

  Deine Zarre appeared. Reith asked, “Have you ever visited the Glass Box?”

  “Long ago.”

  “Woudiver tells me that a man might lower a rope from the upper gallery.”

  “Should he care so little for his life.”

  “I want two quantities of high-potency battarache—enough, say, to destroy this shed ten times over. Where can I get it in a hurry?”

  Deine Zarre reflected a moment, then gave a slow fateful nod. “Wait here.”

  He returned in something over an hour with two clay pots. “Here is battarache; here are fuses. It is contraband material; please do not reveal where you obtained it.”

  “The subject wi
ll never arise,” said Reith. “Or so I hope.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SHROUDED IN GRAY cloaks Reith and Traz crossed the causeway to the mainland. By a fine wide avenue, surfaced with a rough white substance that rasped underfoot, they entered the Dirdir city Hei. To either hand rose spires, purple and scarlet; those of gray metal and silver stood far to the north behind the Glass Box. The avenue led close beside a hundred-foot shaft of scarlet. Surrounding this was an expanse of clean white sand upon which rested a dozen peculiar objects of polished stone. Art-things? Fetishes? Trophies? There was no way of knowing. In front of the spire, on a circular plat of white marble, stood three Dirdir. For the first time Reith saw a Dirdir female. The creature was shorter and seemed less resilient, less flexible, than the male; her head was wider at the scalp and pointed at the area corresponding to a chin; she was somewhat darker in color: a pallid gray subtly shaded with mauve. The two stood contemplating the third, a male Dirdir whelp, half the size of the adult. From time to time the effulgences of the three twitched to point to one or another of the polished rock-pieces, an activity which Reith made no effort to understand.

  Reith watched them in a mingling of revulsion and reluctant admiration, and he could not avoid thinking of the “mysteries.”

  Some time previously Anacho had explained the Dirdir sexual processes. “Essentially, the facts are these: there are twelve styles of male sexual organs, fourteen of the female. Only certain pairings are possible. For instance, the Type One Male is compatible only with Types Five and Nine Female. Type Five Female adjusts only to Type One Male, but Type Nine Female has a more general organ and is compatible with Types One, Eleven and Twelve Male.

  “The matter becomes fantastically complex. Each male and female style has its specific and theoretical attributes, which are very seldom realized-as long as an individual’s type is secret! These are the Dirdir ‘mysteries’! Should an individual’s type become known, he is expected to conform to the theoretical attributes of the type, regardless of inclination; he rarely does so, and is constantly embarrassed on this account.

  “As you can imagine, a matter so complicated absorbs a great deal of attention and energy and, perhaps, by keeping the Dirdir fragmented, obsessed and secretive, has prevented them from overrunning the world of space.”

  “Amazing,” said Reith. “But if the types are secret and generally incompatible, how do they mate? How do they reproduce?”

  “There are several systems: trial marriage, the so-called ‘dark gatherings,’ anonymous notices. The difficulties are transcended.” Anacho paused a moment, then proceeded delicately. “I need hardly point out that low-caste Dirdirmen and Dirdirwomen, lacking the ‘noble divinity’ and without ‘secrets,’ are thus held to be deficient and somewhat clownish.”

  “Hmm,” said Reith. “Why do you specify ‘low-caste Dirdirmen’? What of the Immaculates?”

  Anacho cleared his throat. “The Immaculates obviate shame by elaborate surgical methods. They are allowed to alter themselves in accordance with one of eight styles; thus they are conceded ‘secrets’ as well, and may wear Blue and Pink.”

  “What about mating?”

  “It is more difficult, and in fact becomes an ingenious analogue of the Dirdir system. Each style will match at most two styles of the other sex.”

  Reith could no longer restrain his mirth. Anacho listened with an expression, half-grim, half-rueful. “What of yourself?” asked Reith. “How far did you involve yourself?”

  “Not far enough,” said Anacho. “For certain reasons I wore Blue and Pink without providing myself the requisite ‘secret.’ I was declared an outlaw and an atavism: this was my situation at our first meeting.”

  “A curious crime,” said Reith.

  Now Anacho darted for his life across the simulated landscape of Sibol.

  The avenue leading to the Glass Box became even broader, as if in some attempt to keep it in scale with the vast bulk. Those who walked the rasping white surface—Dirdir, Dirdirmen, common laborers in gray cloaks-seemed artificial and unreal, like figures in classical perspective exercises. As they walked they looked neither right nor left, passing Reith and Traz as if they were invisible.

  Scarlet and purple spires reared to all sides; ahead stood the Glass Box, dwarfing all else. Reith began to suffer oppression of the spirit; Dirdir artifacts and the human psyche were in discord. To tolerate such surroundings, a man eventually must deny his heritage and submit to the Dirdir world-view. In short, he must become a Dirdirman.

  They came up beside two other men, like themselves muffled in hooded gray cloaks. Reith spoke: “Perhaps you will inform us. We want to visit the Glass Box but we do not understand the procedure.”

  The two men gave him an uncertain appraisal. They were father and son, both short, round-faced, with round little paunches, thin arms and legs. The older man said in a reedy voice, “One merely mounts by the gray ramps; there is no more to know.”

  “You yourselves go to the Glass Box?”

  “Yes. There is a special hunt at noon, for a great Dirdirman villain, and there may well be a tossing.”

  “We had heard nothing of this. Who is this Dirdirman villain?”

  The two again examined him dubiously, apparently from a condition of innate uncertainty. “A renegade, a blasphemer. We are scourers at the Number Four Fabrication Plant; we received information from the Dirdirmen themselves.”

  “You go often to the Glass Box?”

  “Often enough.” The father spoke rather tersely. The son amplified: “It is authorized and endorsed by the Dirdirmen; there is no expense.”

  “Come,” said the father. “We must hurry.”

  “If you have no objection,” said Reith, “we will follow you and take advantage of your familiarity with the procedures.”

  The father agreed with no great enthusiasm. “We do not care to be delayed.” The two set off up the avenue, heads crouched upon their shoulders, a gait characteristic to the Sivishe laborers. Imitating the sag-necked slouch Reith and Traz followed. The glass walls reared overhead like vitreous cliffs, showing spots of a red-magenta glow where the illumination from within penetrated the glass. Angling along the sides were ramps and escalators coded by color; purple, scarlet, mauve, white and gray, each rising to different levels. The gray ramps led to a balcony only a hundred feet from the ground, evidently the lowest. Reith and Traz, joining a stream of men, women and children, climbed the ramp, passed through an ill-smelling passage which twisted forward and back and suddenly emerged upon a bright bleak expanse, illuminated by ten miniature suns. There were low crags and rolling hills, thickets of harsh vegetation: ocher, tan, yellow, bone-white, pale whitish brown. Below was a brackish pond, a thicket of hard white cactus-like growths; in the near distance stood a forest of bone-white spires identical in shape and size to the Dirdir residential towers. The similarity, thought Reith, could not be coincidental; on Sibol the Dirdir evidently inhabited hollow trees.

  Somewhere among the hills and thickets wandered Anacho, in fear of his life, bitterly regretting the impulse which had brought him to Sivishe. But Anacho was not to be seen; in fact nowhere was there sign of either man or Dirdir. Reith turned to the two laborers for explanation.

  “It is a quiet period,” stated the father. “Notice the hill yonder? And its equal at the far north? These are base camps. During a quiet period the game takes refuge at one or the other of the camps. Let me see; where is my schedule?”

  “I carry it,” said the son. “Quiet continues yet an hour; the game is at this close hill.”

  “We are in good time. According to rules of this particular cycle, there will be darkness in one hour, for a period of fourteen minutes. Then South Hill becomes fair territory and the game must vacate to North Hill, which in its turn becomes refuge. I am surprised that with so notorious a criminal, they do not allow Competition rules.”

  “The schedule was established last week,” replied the son. “The criminal was taken only a
day or so ago.”

  “We still may see good techniques, and perhaps a tossing or two.

  “In one hour, then, the field goes dark?”

  “For fourteen minutes, during which the hunt begins.”

  Reith and Traz returned to the outside balcony and the suddenly dim landscape of Tschai. Pulling their hoods close, hunching their necks, they sidled down the ramp to the ground.

  Reith looked in all directions. Cloaked laborers marched stolidly up the gray ramp. Dirdirmen used the white ramps; Dirdir rode mauve, scarlet and purple escalators to the high balconies.

  Reith went to the gray glass wall. He sat down and pretended to adjust his shoe. Traz stood in front of him. From his pouch Reith brought forth a pot of battarache and an attached timer. He carefully adjusted a dial, pulled a lever, laid it beside a shrub, against the glass wall.

  No one heeded. He adjusted the timer on the second pot of battarache, gave pouch, battarache and timer to Traz. “You know what to do.”

  Traz reluctantly took the pouch. “The plan may succeed, but you and Anacho will both certainly be killed.”

  Reith pretended that Traz was wrong for once, for the encouragement of them both. “Drop off the battarache—you’ll have to hurry. Remember, just opposite to here. There isn’t much time. And I’ll see you at the construction shed.”

  Traz turned away, concealing his face in the folds of his hood. “Very well, Adam Reith.”

  “But just in case something goes wrong: take the money and leave as fast as you can.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Hurry now.”

  Reith watched the gray shape diminish along the base of the Glass Box. He drew a deep breath. There was little time. He must commit himself at once; if darkness arrived before he had located Anacho, all the effort and risk were in vain.

  He returned back up the gray ramp, passed through the portal into the Sibol glare.

  He scanned the field, taking careful note of landmarks and directions, then moved south around the deck, toward South Hill. The spectators became less numerous, most tending toward the middle or the north.

  Reith selected a spot near a stanchion. He looked right and left. No one stood within two hundred feet of him. The decks above were empty. He brought out a coil of light rope, parted it, passed it around the stanchion, threw the parts down. With a look to right and left he swung himself over the rail, lowered himself to the hunting ground.