Wyst: Alastor 1716 Page 13

  Skorlet snapped over her shoulder: “There’s Jantiff for you, full of pity, but always for the deviates. Well, Jantiff, that’s how such persons fare in Arrabus: double-drudge, no swill and they’re tapped three times a year besides. Hard lives, eh, Jantiff?”

  “What’s it to me?” Jantiff asked shortly. “I’m not an Arrabin.”

  “Oh?” inquired Skorlet in a voice of silken mockery. “I thought you had come to Wyst to enjoy our egalistic achievements.”

  Jantiff merely shrugged and turned back toward Sarp.

  “And what is this Metallurgical Syndicate?”

  “It’s the facility of the five High Contractors, so naturally it is here that the deviates learn egalism.” Sarp gave a cackle of wild laughter. “Let me name these eminent teachers: Commons, Grand Knight of the Eastern Woods. Shubart, Grand Knight of Blale. Farus, Grand Knight of Lammerland. Dulak, Grand Knight of Froke. Malvesar, Grand Knight of the Luess. There’re five good plutocrats for you despite subservience![28] And Shubart, who contracts the Mutuals, is the most arrant of all.”

  “Come now, if you please,” said Esteban shortly. “Don’t castigate Shubart, who is good enough to fly us out to Ao River Meadow; otherwise we’d all be for the bumbuster.”[29]

  A man named Dobbo called out jocularly: “What’s wrong with the old bumbuster? How better to see the countryside?”

  “And if you fall asleep you’re carried all the way to Blale,” snapped Esteban. “No, thanks. I’ll ride the flibbit, and let’s offer Contractor Shubert a soft lip.”

  Sarp, who seemed to take a positive delight in baiting Esteban, would not be daunted. “I’ll fly Shubart’s flibbit and hold never a grudge. He lives in manorial style at Balad; why shouldn’t he call himself ‘Grand Knight’ and go forth in pomp?”

  “I’d do the same,” said Dobbo, “given opportunity, of course. I’m egal, certainly, because I hold no other weapon against drudgery. Still, give and I’ll take.”

  Ailas said: “Dobbo takes even when no one gives. When he takes his title, it should properly go: ‘The Grand Knight of Snergery.’”

  “Oh, ho!” cried Dobbo, “you wield a most wicked tongue? Still I admit I’ll use anything available, including that title!”

  The man-way proceeded past the sorting belts, then curved toward the foundries and fabricating plants, glided beside slag dumps, hoppers where barges unloaded raw ore, and a pair of maintenance hangars. The man-way split; Esteban led the group to a terminus in front of the administration complex, then around to the side where a dozen vehicles rested on a landing plat. Esteban stepped into the dispatcher’s office, reappeared a moment later and signaled the group toward a battered old carry-all. “All aboard for the bonterfest! Transportation courtesy of Contractor Shubert whom I happen to know!”

  “While you were scrounging, why didn’t you promote a Kosmer Ace or a Dacy Scimitar?” called out Sarp.

  “No complaints from the infantry!” Esteban retorted. “This is not absolutely deluxe, but isn’t it better than traveling, by bumbuster? And here comes our operator.”

  From the administration office came a heavily muscled man with black hair, a sagging portentous visage. Jantiff leaned forward: could this be the fourth party to the cabal? Not impossibly, although this man seemed burly, rather than massive.

  Esteban addressed the group: “Bonterfesters, allow me to introduce the Respectable Buwechluter, factotum and, aide indispensable to Contractor Shubert, more commonly known as ‘Booch.’ He has kindly agreed to fly us to our destination.”

  Intoxicated with excitement, Tanzel cried out: “Three cheers for the Respectable Booch! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!”

  Esteban threw up his hands in facetious admonition. “Not too much adulation! Booch is a very suggestible man and we don’t want him to become vainglorious!”

  Jantiff cocked his ears as Booch gave a not, altogether amiable snort. Inconclusive. Jantiff studied Booch’s features: narrow heavy-lidded eyes, ropy jowls, a heavy mouth pouting over a creased receding chin. Booch was not a prepossessing man, though he exuded a coarse animal vitality. He muttered inaudibly to Esteban and swung up to the operator’s station. “Everybody aboard!” called Esteban. “Briskly, now! We’re an hour late.”

  The bonterfesters climbed into the carry-all and took seats. Esteban bent over Booch and gave instructions. Jantiff studied the back of Booch’s head. Almost definitely, Booch was not the fourth conspirator.

  Esteban seated himself behind Booch, who with contemptuous familiarity flicked fingers across the controls: the carry-all rose into the air and flew south over the scarp. In the seat behind Jantiff Antis and a woman named Cadre seemed to be discussing Esteban. Cadra said, “This carry-all enhances a bonterfest beyond description; suddenly all the tedium disappears! As a scrounger Esteban ranks supreme.”

  “Agreed,” said Atlas sadly. “I wish I knew his technique.”

  “There’s no mystery whatever,” said Cadra. “Combine persistence, ingenuity, charm, an exact sense of timing, persuasiveness: you’ve created a scrounger.”

  “For best effect, include bravado and a quantum of sheer brashness!” noted a man named Descart, to which Rismo, a tall plain woman, replied rather sarcastically: “What about simple ordinary luck? Has that no meaning?”

  Cadre chuckled. “Most significant of all: Esteban is acquainted with the Contractor Shubert!”

  “Oh, give the devil his due!” Alas said. “Esteban definitely has a flair. Out in the Bad Places he’d be a top-notch entrepreneur!”

  “Or a tycoon.”

  “Or a starmenter,” suggested Rismo. “I can just see him swaggering about in a white uniform and a gold helmet—great codgers in his harness, bluskin at his hip.”

  “Esteban, come listen to this!” Descart called. “We’re trying to establish your previous incarnations!”

  Esteban came aft. “Indeed? What indignities are you putting me to now?”

  “Nothing extreme, nothing outrageous,” said Cadra. “We—just consider you a monster of anti-egalism.”

  “So long as you don’t accuse me of anything sordid,” said Esteban with suave equanimity.

  “Today we’re all anti-egal!” Atlas declared grandly. “Let’s wallow in our shortcomings!”

  ‘Ti! drink to that!” called a man named Feder. “Esteban! Where’s the swill?”

  “No swill aboard “ said Esteban shortly. “Control your thirst till we put down at Galsma. The gypsies are providing an entire keg of Houlsbeima wine.”

  Cadra asked mischievously: “Does anyone know that song: ‘Anti-Egalists Eat Roast Bird, While Arrabins Get Only Feathers in the Mouth’?”

  “I know it but I don’t intend to sing it,” said Skorlet. “Oh, come! Don’t be stuffy, today of all days!”

  “I know the song,” said Tanzel. “We sing it at the crèche. It goes like this.” in an earnest voice she sang the scurrilous ditty. One by one the others joined in—all except Jantiff„ who had never heard the song and in any case was, in no mood to sing.

  The landscape slid past below: the long southern slopes of the scarp, forests and high moors, then valleys-opening down upon a rolling plain. The Great Dasm river, smooth as an eel, coiled across the landscape. Near a bend where the river turned southeast appeared a village of a hundred small houses, and the carry-all started to descend. Jantiff at first assumed that the village was their destination, but the carry-all flew another twenty miles over a marsh overgrown with reeds, then a forest of gray and russet spider-leg, then a sluggish tributary of the Great Dasm, then another forest and at last down into a clearing from which rose a wisp of smoke.

  “We’ve arrived!” Esteban announced. “At this point a word or two of caution, no doubt unnecessary to so many veteran bonterfesters, but I’ll say them anyway. Tanzel, take special note! The gypsies are a peculiar race, and all very well in their own way, no doubt, but they have callous habits and they are by no means egalists. As Arrabins, we mean no more to them than so many shadows! Don�
��t drink too much wine: if for no other reason than you’ll lose zest for your bonter. And naturally—it goes without saying!—don’t stray off by yourself—for unknown reasons!”

  “Unknown reasons?” An odd phrase, thought Jantiff. If “reason” were “unknown,” why had everyone’s face gone bland and blank? Jantiff decided that when opportunity offered, he would put a question. to Sarp. Meanwhile, whether for reasons known or unknown, he would heed Esteban’s warning.

  The carry-all touched ground; the passengers, pushing rather rudely past Jantiff, alighted. He followed with ostentatious deliberation, which, however, no one noticed.

  The gypsies waited across the meadow, beside a row of trestle tables. Jantiff first saw a flutter of rich costumes striped in ocher, maroon, blue and green. Upon closer inspection he noted, four men in short loose pantaloons, and three women swathed in ankle-length gowns: slender dark-haired folk, quick of motion, fluid of gesture, sallow-olive of complexion, with straight narrow noses, eyes tilted mournfully down at the corners and shadowed under dark eyebrows. A handsome people, thought Jantiff, but in some inexplicable fashion rather repellent. And once again he was assailed by second thoughts in regard to his participation at the bonterfest, though again for no definable reason: perhaps because of the gypsies’ expressions as they regarded the Arrabins: a coolness distinguished from contempt only by virtue of indifference. Jantiff wondered whether he cared to eat gypsy food: surely they would feed the Arrabins anything palatable, without regard to fastidiousness. Jantiff managed a wry grin for his own qualms; after all, he had eaten ration after ration of Arrabin wump, prepared from straw, with hardly more than a grimace or two. He followed the other bonterfesters across the meadow.

  Despite Esteban’s warnings all hurried to the keg, where the youngest of the gypsy women dispensed wooden cups of wine. Jantiff approached the keg, then moved back because of the crush. Turning away he appraised the other arrangements. The tables supported pots, tureens and trenchers, all exuding odors which Jantiff despite his reservations found undeniably appetizing. To the side hard knots of timber burnt to coals under a metal rack.

  Esteban and the oldest of the gypsy men went to the table. Esteban checked items off against his list, and apparently found all to his satisfaction. The two turned and surveyed the group at the wine keg and Esteban spoke with great earnestness.

  Tanzel tugged at Jantiff’s sleeve. “Please, Jantiff: get me a cup of wine! Every time I step forward someone reaches past me.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Jantiff dubiously, “although I’ve had the same experience. This group of egalists seems unusually assertive.”

  Jantiff managed to obtain two cups of wine, one of which he brought to Tanzel. “Don’t drink it too fast or your head will swim, and you won’t want to eat.”

  “No fear of that!” Tanzel tasted the wine. “Delicious!”

  Jantiff cautiously sipped from the mug, to find the wine tart, and light, with a faintly musky redolence. “Quite decent, indeed.”

  Tanzel drank again. “Isn’t this fun? Why can’t bonterfests be, for every day? Everything smells so good! And, no argument, I’m ravenous!”

  “You’ll probably overeat and get sick,” said Jantiff morosely.

  “I have no doubt!” Tanzel drained her wine cup. “Please—”

  “Not just yet,” said Jantiff. “Wait a few minutes; you might not want another.”

  “Oh, I’ll want another, but I suppose there’s no great hurry. I wonder what Esteban is talking about; he keeps looking over toward us.”

  Jantiff turned his head, but Esteban and the gypsy had completed their conversation.

  Esteban came over to the group. “Appetizers will be served in five minutes. I’ve had an understanding with the hetman. Courtesy and freedom have been guaranteed; everyone is safe from molestation so long as he doesn’t stray toe far from the clearing. The wine is of prime quality, as I specified; you need fear neither agues nor gripes. Still, moderation, I beg of all of you!”

  “But not too much of it!” Dobbo called out. “We’d be defeating only ourselves. Moderation must be practiced in moderation.”

  Esteban, now in the best of moods, made a gesture of concession. “Well, no matter. Enjoy yourself in your own fashion. That’s the slogan for today!”

  “Here’s to Esteban and future bonterfests!” called out Cadra. “Damnation to all croakers!”

  Esteban smilingly accepted the congratulations of his friends, then gestured toward the table. “We can now enjoy our appetizers. Don’t overeat; the meat is just now going on the grill.”

  And again Jantiff stood back as the group surged toward the table.

  Never, for so long as Jantiff lived, was the bonterfest far from his memory. The recollections came always in company with a peculiar throat-gripping emotion which Jantiff’s mind reserved for this occasion alone, and always in swirling clots of sensation: the gypsy gowns and breeches, in striking contrast to the pallid faces; flames licking up at the spitted meat; the table loaded with post and tureens; the bonterfesters themselves: in Jantiff’s memory they became caricatures of gluttony while the gypsies moved in the background, silent as shadows. Ghost odors might drift through his mind: pungent pickles, pawpaws and sweetsops, roasting meat. Always the faces reasserted themselves: Skorlet, at one juncture transcending the imaginable limits of emotion; Tanzel, vulnerable to both pleasure and pain; Sarp with his slantwise leer, Booch, coarse, reeking, suffused with animal essence; Esteban …

  Nowhere to be seen was the fourth man to the cabal, and Jantiff lost whatever zest he might have felt for the occasion. Tanzel brought her mug and—a heaped platter of food to the bench where he sat. “Jantiff! Aren’t you eating?”

  “After a bit, when the elbowing subsides.”

  “Be sure to try the pickles. Here, take this one. Isn’t it wonderful? The whole inside of my mouth tingles.”

  “Yes, it’s very good.”

  “You’d better hurry or there’ll be none left.”

  “I don’t care much, one way or the other.”

  “Jantiff, you are a strange, strange person! Excuse me while ,I eat.”

  Jantiff at last went to the table. He served himself a plate of food and accepted a second mug of wine from the impassive woman at the keg. Returning to the bench he found that Tanzel already had devoured the contents of her platter. “You have an excellent appetite!” said Jantiff.

  “Of course! I’ve been starving myself for two days. So now, more chobchows? Or another portion of those delicious pepper pancakes? Or should I wait until the meat is served out?”

  “If I were you rd wait,” said Jantiff. “Then you can go back for whatever you like the best.”

  “I believe you’re right. Oh, Jantiff, isn’t this exciting? I wish times like these would go on forever. Jantiff! Are you listening?”

  “Yes indeed.” Jantiff had in fact been distracted by a rather odd incident. Off to the side Esteban stood talking to the gypsy hetman. Esteban gestured with his mug, and both turned to look in Jantiff’s direction. Jantiff feigned inattention, but a thrill ran along his nerves.

  Someone had approached. Jantiff looked up to find Skorlet standing beside him. “Well, Jantiff? How goes the boater?”

  “Very well. I like these little sausages—although I can’t help but wonder what goes into them.”

  Skorlet gave a bark of harsh laughter. “Never ask, never wonder! If it’s savory, eat every morsel! Remember, it all flushes down the same drain in the end.”

  “Yes, no doubt you’re right”

  “Eat hearty, Jantiff!” Skorlet returned to the table and filled her platter for the third time. Jantiff watched from the corner of his eye, not altogether happy with her manner. Now he saw Esteban saunter across the clearing to where Skorlet stood devouring her food. Esteban spoke a question into her ear; Skorlet, her mouth full, shrugged, and managed to utter a reply. Esteban nodded and continued his circuit around the fringes of the group.

  He
halted beside Jantiff. “Well, how goes it? Is everything to your satisfaction?”

  “Exactly so,” said Jantiff guardedly.

  “All I want to know,” declared Tanzel, “is when we can come again!”

  “Aha! We mustn’t become guttricks, with thought for nothing but food!”

  “Of course not; still—”

  Esteban laughed and patted her head. “We’ll make plans, never fear. So far, it’s been a great success, eh?”

  “It’s all wonderful.”

  ‘Well, don’t fill up too soon. There’s more to come. Jantiff, have you taken photographs?”

  “Not yet.”

  “My dear Jantiff! The banquet table: loaded, aromatic, inviting! You missed that?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And our picturesque hosts? Their magnificent faces, so placid and remote? Their boisterous breeches and pointed boots? Ah, then, allow me the use of your camera!”

  Jantiff hesitated, “Well, I don’t know. In fact rd prefer not. You might somehow lose it.”

  “By no means! Put that other small escapade out of your mind; it was only a lark. The camera will be safe, I assure your’

  Jantiff reluctantly brought out the instrument.

  “Thank you,” said Esteban. “I assume there’s still ample scope to the matrix?”

  “Take as many pictures as you like,” said Jantiff. “It’s a new matrix.”

  Esteban stiffened; his fingers clenched at the camera. “What of the other matrix?”

  “It was almost full,” said Jantiff. “I didn’t want to risk losing it.”

  Esteban stood silent “Where is this old matrix? Are you carrying it with your’

  Surprised by the blunt question, Jantiff raised his eyes to find Esteban glowering in obvious annoyance. Jantiff spoke with cold politeness: “Why do you ask? I can’t account for your interest!”

  Esteban. tried to throttle the fury in his own voice, without success. “Because there are pictures of mine on that matrix, as you’re perhaps aware.”

  “You need not worry,” said Jantiff. “The matrix is absolutely safe.”