Jack Vance - Planet of Adventure

Ylin-Ylan looked away, studied her clenched hands.

"Flying south, we might reach Coad on the Dawn Zher," Anacho went on, "and there take passage across the Draschade. Such a route is longer and slower-but conceivably we will arrive in Cath."

"It seems that we have no choice," said Reith.

FOR A PERIOD they followed the southward course of the vast Nabiga River, traveling only a few feet above the surface, where the repulsion plates suffered the least strain. The Nabiga swept off to the west, demarcating the Dead Steppe from the Aman Steppe, and the raft continued south across an inhospitable region of dim forests, bogs, and morasses; and a day later returned to the steppe. On one occasion they saw a caravan in the distance: a line of high-wheeled carts and trundling house-wagons; another time they came upon a band of nomads wearing red feather fetishes on their shoulders, who bounded frantically across the steppe to intercept them, and were only gradually outdistanced.

Late in the afternoon they painfully climbed above a huddle of brown and black hills. The raft jerked and yawed; the black case emitted ominous rasping sounds.

Reith flew low, sometimes brushing through the tops of black tree-ferns. Sliding across the ridge the raft blundered at head-height through an encampment of capering creatures in voluminous white robes, apparently men. They dodged and fell to the ground, then screaming in outrage fired muskets after the raft, the erratic course of which presented a shifting target.

All night they flew over dense forest, and morning revealed more of the same: a black, green, and brown carpet cloaking the Aman Steppe to the limit of vision, though Traz declared the steppe ended at the hills, that below them now was the Great Daduz Forest. Anacho condescendingly took issue, and displaying a chart tapped various topographic indications with his long white fingers to prove his point.

Traz's square face became stubborn and sullen. "This is Great Daduz Forest; twice when I carried Onmale among the Emblems,* I led the tribe here for herbs and dyes."

Anacho put away the chart. "It is all one," he remarked. "Steppe or forest, it must be traversed." At a sound from the engine he looked critically aft. "I believe that we will reach the outskirts of Coad, not a mile farther, and when we raise the housing we shall find only a heap of rust."

"But we will reach Coad?" Ylin-Ylan asked in a colorless voice.

"So I believe. Only two hundred miles remain."

Ylin-Ylan seemed momentarily cheerful. "How different than before," she said.

"When I came to Coad a captive of the priestesses!" The thought seemed to depress her and once more she became pensive.

Night approached. Coad still lay a hundred miles distant. The forest had thinned to a stand of immense black and gold trees, with intervening areas of turf, on which grazed squat six-legged beasts, bristling with bony tusks and horns.

Landing for the night was hardly feasible and Reith did not care to arrive at Coad until morning, in which opinion Anacho concurred. They halted the motion of the raft, tied to the top of a tree and hovered on the repulsors through the night.

After the evening meal the Flower of Cath went to her cabin behind the saloon; Traz, after studying the sky and listening to the sounds of beasts below, wrapped himself in his robe and stretched out on one of the settees.

Reith leaned against the rail watching the pink moon Az reach the zenith just as the blue moon Braz rose behind the foliage of a far tall tree.

Anacho came to join him. "So then, what are your thoughts as to the morrow?"

"I know nothing of Coad. I suppose we inquire as to transportation across the Draschade."

"You still intend to accompany the woman to Cath?"

"Certainly," said Reith, mildly surprised.

Anacho hissed through his teeth. "You need only put the Cath woman on a ship; you need not go yourself."

"True. But I don't care to remain in Coad."

"Why not? It is a city which even Dirdirmen visit from time to time. If you have money anything is for sale in Coad."

"A spaceship?"

"Hardly ... It seems that you persist in your obsession."

Reith laughed. "Call it whatever you like."

"I admit to perplexity," Anacho went on. "The likeliest explanation, and one which I urge you to accept, is that you are amnesiac, and have subconsciously fabricated a fable to account for your own existence. Which of course you fervently believe to be true."

"Reasonable," Reith agreed.

"One or two odd circumstances remain," Anacho continued thoughtfully. "The remarkable devices you carry: your electronic telescope, your energy-weapon, other oddments. I cannot identify the workmanship, though it is equivalent to that of good Dirdir equipment. I suppose it to be home-planet Wankh; am I correct?"

"As an amnesiac, how would I know?"

Anacho gave a wry chuckle. "And you still intend to go to Cath?"

"Of course. What about you?"

Anacho shrugged. "One place is as good as another, from my point of view. But I doubt if you realize what awaits you in Cath."

"I know nothing of Cath," said Reith, "other than what I have heard. The people are apparently civilized."

Anacho gave a patronizing shrug. "They are Yao: a fervent race addicted to ritual and extravaganza, prone to excesses of temperament. You may find the intricacies of Cath society difficult to cope with."

Reith frowned. "I hope it won't be necessary. The girl has vouched for her father's gratitude, which should simplify matters."

"Formally the gratitude will exist. I am sure of this."

"'Formally'? Not actually?"

"The fact that you and the girl have formed an erotic accommodation is of course a complication."

Reith smiled sourly. "The 'erotic accommodation' has long since run its course."

He looked back toward the deck-house. "Frankly, I don't understand the girl. She actually seems disturbed by the prospect of returning home."

Anacho peered through the dark. "Are you so naive? Clearly she dreads the moment when she must sponsor the three of us before the society of Cath. She would be overjoyed if you sent her home alone."

Reith gave a bitter laugh. "At Pera she sang a different tune. She begged that we return to Cath."

"Then the possibility was remote. Now she must deal with reality."

"But this is absurdity! Traz is as he is. You are a Dirdirman, for which you are not to blame-"

"No difficulties in either of these cases," stated the Dirdirman with an elegant flourish of the fingers. "Our roles are immutable. Your case is different; and it might be best for all if you sent the girl home on a cog."

Reith stood looking out over the sea of moonlit treetops. The opinion, assuming its validity, was far from lucid, and also presented a dilemma. To avoid Cath was to relinquish his best possibility of building a spaceboat. The only alternative then would be to steal a spaceship, from the Dirdir, or Wankh, or, least appealing of all, from the Blue Chasch: all in all, a nerve-tingling prospect. Reith asked, "Why should I be less acceptable than you or Traz?

Because of the 'erotic accommodation'?"

"Naturally not. The Yao concern themselves with systematics rather than deeds. I am surprised to find you so undiscerning."

"Blame it on my amnesia," said Reith.

Anacho shrugged. "In the first place-possibly due to your 'amnesia' you have no quality, no role, no place in the Cath 'round.' As a nondescript, you constitute a distraction, a zizylbeast in a ballroom. Secondly, and more poignant, is your point of view, which is not fashionable in contemporary Cath."

"By this you mean my 'obsession'?"

"Unfortunately," said Anacho, "it is similar to an hysteria which distinguished a previous cycle of the 'round.' A hundred and fifty years* ago, a coterie of Dirdirmen were expelled from the academies at Eliasir and Anismna for the crime of promulgating fantasy. They brought their espousements to Cath, and stimulated a tendentious vogue: the Society of Yearning Refluxives, or the 'cult.' The articles of faith defied established fact. It was asserted that all men, Dirdirmen and sub-men alike, were immigrants from a far planet in the constellation Clari: a paradise where the hopes of humanity have been realized.