Philip Farmer - The Green Odyssey

Grizquetr grinned crookedly but delightedly. «Oh, I imagine that a certain fat one-eyed merchant-captain who shall remain nameless must have had one or two rubies within that bag he keeps inside his shirt.»

«Yes, I can imagine. The question that alarms me is how did she get it off Miran? He'd sooner lose a quart of blood than one of his precious jewels. And he'd notice its loss quicker than he would the blood.»

Grizquetr looked thoughtful. «I really don't know. Mother didn't say,»

He brightened with a smile and said, «But I'd like to know how she did it! Maybe she'll teach me some day.»

«She seems to have a lot to teach both of us,» said Green.

He sighed. «Well, I'm eternally indebted to her. No getting out of it. Let's call a rickshaw and see what kind of a place she has selected.»

Once both had settled in the high-backed chair of their vehicle, and the two men who pulled it had begun their slow trotting through the crowded streets, Green said, «Have you any idea where Miran is?»

«Some. He was detained by the port-officers, too, because he had to explain what had happened to his 'roller. Then he called a rickshaw and left in a big hurry. He had an officer with him. Not a naval officer. A soldier from the palace, one of the King's Own.»

Green felt a sinking sensation. «Already? Tell me, does he know where we are staying?»

«Oh, no, When I saw him coming out of the customshouse, I hid behind a bale of cotton. Mother had told me to stay out of his sight. She explained how treacherous he is, and how he hates you because he thinks you brought all his bad luck upon him.»

«That's only the half of it,» Green replied. He was silent for a while, thinking, his gaze roving idly over the crowds. There were many foreigners in town, sailors from every nation that had a border on the Xurdimur, pilgrims who belonged to the far-flung cult of the Fish Goddess and had come here for the Festival. The majority, however, were Estoryans, a fairly tall people, brown or red-haired, green or blue-eyed, with big noses, thick lips and a slight epicanthic fold. They spoke a guttural polysyllabic semi-analytic language. They wore broad-rimmed hats shaped like open umbrellas, tight-necked shirts with long stringties and pants that were skintight from crotch to knee, then ballooned out into many ruffles. Little bells tinkled on their ankles, and the women carried canes. All had a fish, a star, or a rocket-shaped tower tattooed on their cheeks.

Along the narrow winding street were many little shops, flowering with a variety of articles. Green was intrigued by the magical charms being hawked everywhere. Many of these were little towers, replicas of the large ones that encircled the country. On Earth they could have passed for toy spaceships. He bought one. It was made of white-painted wood and was about seven inches long. The big flaring fins and landing struts were well reproduced, but there weren't any of the fine details that he could have found in such a toy on Earth. There were no holes in the stern or nose for the drive-exhaust or any indications of doors or detector apparatus.

He gave it to Grizquetr and leaned back to do some more thinking. The charm hadn't disappointed him, because he had not expected any more than what he'd seen. If, in the beginning, those models had been furnished with every little detail, the passage of many thousands of years would have seen them blunted and reduced to their present state of fuzzy symbolic images. Time ate down to the skeleton of things.

He wondered how the charm could have survived up to the present, because it surely must have been over twenty thousand years ago that the prototype, the real spaceship, disappeared and man sank back to savagery again. Then, why had this lasted here, whereas it had not done so on other planets, Earth included?

Abruptly, he noticed that his rickshaw had stopped.

«A procession of priests, going to the palace of the King, where they will spend all night preaching to the demon,» said one of their rickshaw boys. He yawned and stretched. «I suppose that it will be a fine burning, since the priests have predicted that the sun will shine at high noon. They are safe doing that, as it has not failed to shine on Festival Day for a thousand years.»

Green leaned forward, his hands gripping the sides of his chair, and said, «Demon? You meant demons, didn't you? Weren't there two of them?»

«Oh yes, there were. But one died two days ago. Hung himself, I heard, though I can't swear to it since the priests have released no details. The holy ones have been giving the demons a rough time.»

«Demons?» said Grizquetr, snorting with disbelief and disgust. «Doesn't the very fact that one killed himself prove they're not fiends? Everyone knows that a demon can't kill himself.»

«Quite true, my small friend,» replied the taxi man. «The priests have admitted their error. They are truly sorry-so they say.»

«Then aren't they letting the other man loose?»

«Oh no. Because he may still be a demon. Tomorrow, at high noon, the prisoner goes under the Sun's Eye and there meets the only death a demon may know. By fire he was born, by fire he shall perish. Chapter Twenty, Verse Sixty-Two. Or so I remember the High Grauchning saying in his sermon yesterday. Myself, I'm not much for reading. Too busy making a living, running my legs off, killing myself so my wife and kids may eat and have clothes on their backs.»

Green scarcely heard the garrulous rickshaw man, so shocked was he at the news. Had he been too late? What if the man who'd died was the pilot and the other one unable to handle the ship?

The rest of the ride he was sunk in such deep gloom he hardly saw any of the many sights that Grizquetr kept pointing out. But he did rouse when the boy said, «Look, Father, there's the King's palace, on top of the hill! Beyond that is the ship of the demon. You can't see it from here, but you will tomorrow when you go to the burning.»

«Don't be so heartless,» said Green, but he looked carefully at the great marble structure that rambled all over the hill. Somewhere below that, probably filled with dirt, undoubtedly forgotten, was just such an entrance as he'd found on the island of the cannibals. He'd also discovered a similar one upon the fortress of Shimdoog, the night before when he'd gone exploring and Miran had followed him.

The palace, he thought, looked quite romantic and beautiful, enveloped in a dim red haze cast by the setting sun, which lay directly behind it. Probably it would look different in the harsh glare of day, when the dirt and garbage would be so apparent.

The area in which Amra had rented the room was one which had once belonged to the rich and the noble but had decayed when the aristocracy moved their homes elsewhere. The inn before which the rickshaw boys stopped was a three-story pile of granite blocks. It had an enormous porch and six huge pillars in the images of the Fish Goddess. Green could not help admiring the building even in its present state of decay, because he knew that it must have cost a fortune to build it. The granite would have had to be transported by 'roller across the Xurdimur, since there would be no stone in this neighborhood. He imagined that the landlord charged high rents and that Amra must have paid a pretty price indeed if she'd given him three times the usual amount. One thing you could say for her, when she traveled she did it in style.

The caryatids of the Fish Goddess also interested him, and at another time he'd have examined them closely by the light of the torches in the hands of the servants standing by them. The cult of the Goddess indicated that the original Estoryans must have migrated from the oceanside to the center of the vast and level plains. And here they must have built this imposing city, which was to become such a great focus of trade. Its central location made it a great clearing house for goods from every country bordering the Xurdimur.