Jack Vance - Planet of Adventure

Dordolio stood back with eyebrows raised high. "I am satisfied with what I wear."

Reith put down the garments. "These are not suitable," he told the clothier.

"Show me your catalog, or whatever you work from."

"As you wish, sir."

Reith, with Anacho watching gravely, looked through a hundred or so color sketches. He pointed to a conservatively cut suit of dark blue. "What of this?"

Dordolio made an impatient sound. "The garments a wealthy vegetable grower might wear to an intimate funeral."

Reith indicated another costume. "What of this?"

"Even less appropriate: the lounge clothes of an elderly philosopher at his country estate."

"Hm. Well then," Reith told the clothier, "show me the clothes a somewhat younger philosopher of impeccable good taste would wear on a casual visit to the city."

Dordolio gave a snort. He started to speak but thought better of it and turned away. The clothier gave order to his assistants. Reith looked at Anacho with an appraising frown. "For this gentleman, the traveling costume of a high-caste dignitary." And for Traz: "A young gentleman's casual dress."

New garments appeared, conspicuously different from those ordered out by Dordolio. The three changed; the clothier made small adjustments while Dordolio stood to the side, pulling at his mustache. At last he could no longer restrain a comment. "Handsome garments, of course. But are they appropriate? You will puzzle folk when your conduct belies your appearance."

Anacho spoke scornfully. "Would you have us visit Settra dressed like bumpkins?

The clothes you selected hardly carried a flattering association."

"What does it matter?" cried Dordolio in a brassy voice. "A fugitive Dirdirman, a nomad boy, a mysterious nonesuch: is it not absurd to trick such folk out in noblemen's costume?"

Reith laughed; Anacho fluttered his fingers; Traz turned Dordolio a glance of infinite disgust. Reith paid the account.

"Now then," muttered Dordolio, "to the airport. Since you demand the best, we shall charter an air-car."

"Not so fast," said Reith. "As usual you miscalculate. There must be another, less ostentatious, means to reach Settra."

"Naturally," said Dordolio with a sneer. "But folk who dress like lords should act like lords."

"We are modest lords," said Reith. He spoke to the clothier. "How do you usually travel to Settra?"

"I am a man with no great regard or 'place' ;* I ride the public wheelway."

Reith turned back to Dordolio. "If you plan to travel by private air-car, this is where we part."

"Gladly; if you will advance me five hundred sequins."

Reith shook his head. "I think not."

"Then I also must travel by wheelway."

As they strode up the street Dordolio became somewhat more cordial. "You will find that the Yao set great store by consistency, and a harmony of attributes.

You are dressed as persons of quality, no doubt you will conduct yourselves in consonance. Affairs will adjust themselves."

At the wheelway depot Dordolio bespoke first class accommodation from the clerk; a short while later a long car trundled up to the platform, riding a wedge-shaped concrete slot on two great wheels. The four entered a compartment, seated themselves on red plush chairs. With a lurch and a grind, the car left the station and trundled off into the Cath countryside.

Reith found the car intriguing and somewhat of a puzzle. The motors were small, powerful, of sophisticated design; why was the car itself so awkwardly built?

The wheels-when the car reached top speed, perhaps seventy miles an hour-rode on cushions of trapped air, at times with silken smoothness, until the wheels came to breaks in the slot, whereupon the car jerked and vibrated abominably. The Yao, reflected Reith, seemed to be good theoreticians but poor engineers.

The car rumbled across an ancient cultivated countryside, more civilized than any Reith had yet seen on Tschai. A haze hung in the air, tinting the sunlight antique yellow; shadows were blacker than black. In and out of forests rolled the car, beside orchards of gnarled black-leaved trees, past parks and manors, ruined stone walls, villages in which only half the houses seemed tenanted.

After climbing to an upland moor, the car struck east over marshes and bogs, to outcrops of rotting limestone. No human being was in sight, though several times Reith thought to discern ruined castles in the distance.

"Ghost country," said Dordolio. "This is Audan Moor; have you heard of it?"

"Never," said Reith.

"A desolate region, as you can see. The haunt of outlaws, even an occasional Phung. After dark the night-hounds bell..."

Down from Audan Moor rolled the wheelway car, into a countryside of great charm.

Everywhere were ponds and watercourses, overlooked by towering black, brown and rust-colored trees. On small islands stood tall houses with high-pitched gables and elaborate balconies. Dordolio pointed off to the east. "See yonder, the great manse in front of the forest? Gold and Carnelian: the palace of my connections. Behind but you cannot see-is Halmeur, an outer district of Settra."

The car swung through a forest and came out into a region of scattered farmsteads with the domes and spires of Settra on the sky ahead. A few minutes later the car entered a depot and rolled to a halt. The passengers alighted, and walked to a terrace. Here Dordolio said: "Now I must leave you. Across the Oval you will find the Travelers' Inn, to which I recommend you and where I will send a messenger with the sum of my debt." He paused and cleared his throat. "If a freak of destiny brings us together in another setting-for instance, you have evinced a somewhat unrealistic ambition to make yourself acquainted with the Blue Jade Lord-it might serve our mutual purposes were we not to recognize each other."

"I can think of no reason for wanting to do so," said Reith politely.

Dordolio glanced at him sharply, then made a formal salute. "I wish you good fortune." He walked off across the square, his strides lengthening as he went.

Reith turned to Traz and Anacho. "You two go to the Travelers' Inn, arrange for accommodations. I'm off to the Blue jade Palace. With any luck I'll arrive before Dordolio, who seems in a peculiar state of haste."

He walked to a line of motorized tricycles, climbed aboard the first in line.

"The Blue Jade Palace, with all speed," he told the driver.

The mechanism spun off to the south, past buildings of glazed brick and dim glass panes, then into a district of small timber cottages, then past a great outdoor market, a scene as brisk and variegated as any Reith had observed in Cath. Turning aside, the motor-buggy nosed across an ancient stone bridge, through a portal in a stone wall into a large circular plaza. Around the periphery were booths, for the most part unoccupied and barren of goods; at the center a short ramp led up to a circular platform, at the back of which rose a bank of seats. A rectangular frame occupied the front of the platform, of dimensions which Reith found morbidly suggestive.

"What is this place?" he asked the driver, who gave him a glance of mild wonder.

"The Circle, site of Pathetic Communion, as you can see. You are a stranger in Settra?"

"Yes."

The driver consulted a yellow cardboard schedule. "The next event is Ivensday, when a nineteen-score comes to clarify his horrible desperation. Nineteen! The most since the twenty-two of Agate Crystal's Lord Wis."

"You mean he killed nineteen?"

"Of course; what else? Four were children, but still a feat these days when folk are wary of awaile. All Settra will come to the expiation. If you're still in town you could hardly do more for your own soul's profit."

"Probably so. How far to Blue Jade Palace?"

"Through Dalmere and we're almost there."