The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid Read online

  “That she could not,” said Kirwan, “now that we’re all given this damned Saint-Rémy treatment that ties our tongues in knots when we try to impart useful information to the Krishnans.”

  A deep groan rolled across the plain. The ayas twitched their ears and increased their speed.

  “What’s that?” said Althea, shivering.

  “That would be a hunting yeki,” said Kirwan. “You know, one of those big brown things like a lion and a bear and an otter rolled into one, with six legs.”

  “Let us hope it does not hunt us,” said Bahr in a strained voice.

  “Ah, we wouldn’t let this Krishnan pussy-cat hurt the darling girl, now would we?” said Kirwan. “Anyway, she can pray to her E.-M. God.”

  “It is all very well to joke.” Bahr plucked the driver’s sleeve. “Can you not go faster?” he said in Gazashtanduu.

  “Any faster would overset us on these turns, my lord,” said the driver, leaning as they rounded a bend on two wheels.

  Althea asked, “Doctor Bahr, what’s your program? You said something about testing a strain of genius that has appeared on Zá. Is that near Zesh?”

  Bahr replied, “The Krishnanthropi kolofti live on Zá, between Jerud and Ulvanagh. Zesh is a much smaller island southwest of Zá.”

  “But all the other islands are inhabited by the tailless Krishnans, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, until one gets down south to Fossanderan.”

  “And what’s on Zesh? Do Mr. Kirwan’s Roussellians live with the tailed Krishnans?”

  “Not likely!” said Kirwan. “We’ve got an agreement with the king of the monkeys to leave us alone. The other monkeys all live on Zá, except one female they call the Virgin of Zesh—at least that’s what they call her—and come over only for ceremonies.”

  “Who’s this virgin?” asked Althea.

  “Oh, some kind of heathen priestess or oracle. When you get there, there’ll be two virgins, I suppose, unless you lose your status on the way, and a good thing, too.”

  Althea pressed her lips together but ignored the gibe. She asked Bahr, “Then why are you going to Zesh instead of to Zá?”

  “Because if one lands uninvited on Zá, the tailed ones knock one’s brains out.”

  “Hospitable fellows,” said Kirwan.

  “It is not surprising,” said Bahr. “The tailless Krishnans have been attacked so often by slavers that they are very, very touchy. So I propose to land first on Zesh, get in touch with this Virgin, and try through her to persuade the other Záva to let themselves be tested.”

  “And if that isn’t a silly thing for a grown man to do,” said Kirwan, “to spend your days asking a lot of monkeys which box you’ve hidden the apple under.”

  Bahr replied with strained politeness. “My dear Brian, I assure you that the mental level I anticipate testing is much higher than you are implying. It’s more likely I shall have to ask them problems in the calculus to solve.”

  “I thought,” said Althea, “the scientists agreed all races were equally intelligent.”

  Bahr smiled tolerantly. “That is an example of the lag between discovery and public understanding. Two centuries ago the opinion was, not that all races were exactly equal, but that there was no scientific reason to believe them unequal. Now that the tests have been further refined, we do know of some small differences.”

  “What differences?” asked Althea.

  “Well, you know it is very difficult to give tests that cancel out the effects of environment and upbringing, because so much of the adult’s aptitudes and abilities depend upon them. Then, when you have done that, you still have the wide variation of individuals within any one group, which masks any average difference. And then you have the sex difference, which is real, though small. Finally, when you eliminate all those variants, you find that there is no such thing as general intelligence, but only a lot of different mental abilities. And when you are done, you find that the average differences between one race and another are so microscopic, compared to the differences within each group, that one can nothing tell about—”

  Kirwan yawned. “Gottfried, you’re a nice lad in some ways, but a fearful bore at times. The Devil fly away with your aptitudes and statistics!”

  “Assuming there is a Devil, for which there is no scientific evidence,” said Bahr, “what is your objection?”

  “Sure, every intelligent man knows there’s just one superior race, and that’s the great and glorious Celtic race.”

  “Which is not a race but a language family,” interjected Bahr, but Kirwan continued:

  “All the rest of humanity is nought but apes with the hair shaved off, the lot of ’em. Wherever you find signs of genius, whether it’s the pyramids of Egypt, or Roman law, or the American skyscrapers, you can be sure there’s a touch of the true Celtic blood involved.”

  Bahr sighed. “It is hard to argue with an Irishman, harder yet with a poet, and impossible with an Irish poet. Anyway, on Krishna we deal with separate species, not mere racial variants of one species as on Earth. So any presuppositions are premature and unscientific.”

  ###

  At the mouth of the Pichidé River, on the south bank of the estuary, lies the Free City of Majbur, a seething commercial metropolis noted for the height of its buildings, the acumen of its merchants, and the impenetrability of its traffic jams. Following the river road downstream from Novorecife, the barouche bearing Althea Merrick, Brian Kirwan, and Gottfried Bahr rattled into the fishing village of Qadr, across the river from Majbur. It was the fifth day after leaving the Viagens outpost.

  As they neared the village, the road converged with the rail line from Hershid, the capital of Gozashtand. Now the carriage rolled past the terminal, where a mahout astride the neck of a bishtar was making up a train. The bishtar, looking somewhat like a gigantic, six-legged tapir with a bifurcated proboscis, trundled the little four-wheeled cars up one spur and down another, pulling with its trunks or pushing with its forehead according to its rider’s commands.

  Beyond the railroad terminal, a fishy smell overhung the rows of sagging shacks that lined the highway. Small tame eshuna ran out to howl at the carriage. Krishnan working women sat in doorways, some with glass-topped incubators containing their unhatched eggs beside them. Swarms of Krishnan children, naked but for a coating of dirt, chased each other screaming.

  The fishy smell waxed as the vehicle coasted with squealing brakes down the slope to the shore. There Krishnan men mended nets, fished, smoked cheap cigars, and swapped yarns. Eshuna dug into stinking piles of marine offal and fought over the head of some denizen of the Krishnan deeps.

  The driver drew up at the empty ferry slip and set his brake. He drew from his wallet a saláf root, bit off a piece, and sat silently chewing.

  Althea and her companions got out of the carriage, which creaked on its suspension straps as they left it. In five days of fast riding over Krishnan roads, Althea had learned to stretch her cramped limbs at every chance. She and her companions strolled out to the end of the pier, where several Krishnans stood or sat on the tops of piles. These stared briefly at the Terrans and returned to their own concerns.

  Althea looked out over the broad estuary toward Majbur, whose five- and six-story buildings rose in a crowded mass against the flat skyline. To the right, the placid Pichidé sparkled in the late afternoon light of Roqir. To the left, the estuary merged with the emerald waters of the Sadabao Sea. Here and there a sail, bright in the sunlight, broke the horizon.

  “There’s the ferry,” said Kirwan.

  A big, rectangular, double-ended barge moved sluggishly on the estuary under the impulse of a pair of yellow triangular sails and a set of sweeps. Little by little it grew, until Althea could see the passengers clustering it: gentlefolk in satiny stuffs, with swords at their sides; laborers in breech-clouts; seafarers in sashes, with stocking-caps wound like turbans around their heads; even a Terran tourist in a rumpled white suit, a camera case dangling around his neck.
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br />   Althea watched the approach of the barge. During the past five days, the men had made it plain that they did not wish to be proselytized. Althea was not aggressive enough to thrust upon them a doctrine about which she herself entertained secret qualms. Bahr could talk about his specialty, but on such a technical level that he soon left the other two floundering. And Kirwan, the most garrulous of the three, had soon wearied his companions by boasting and self-assertion and by bursting into a tirade of insults whenever crossed.

  The ferry nosed into its slip. Its passengers streamed ashore. Those waiting on the pier boarded the craft, paying fares to a piratical-looking captain on the companionway. When the carriage started to move aboard, with members of the crew grasping the wheel hubs to help it over the bumps, a furious argument broke out between the driver and the ferry skipper.

  “What’s this?” said Kirwan in Brazilo-Portuguese.

  The driver said, “This rascal try to collect twice regular tariff for carriages. He think rich Earthmen can afford extra charge.”

  “The black-hearted spalpeen!” roared Kirwan. “Let me at him!” The poet began to yell at the captain in a mixture of English, Portuguese, and Gazashtanduu, which he apparently made up as he went along: Tamates, hishkako baghan! D’ye think I deixe você to swindle me?”

  Looking puzzled, the captain spoke to the driver, who translated. “He does not understand.”

  “Hell, don’t he understand his own language, and me so fluent and all?” said Kirwan. “The man must be half-witted.”

  Bahr addressed the captain in careful Gazashtandu. “Good my sir, pray take not advantage of our plight. For we’re no visitors rich to be bilked, but harried fugitives from our own kind’s vengeance and as such have a claim upon your mercy.”

  “What are you fugitives from?” asked the captain.

  “See you this wench? Her cruel mate swore to slay her because he’d learned of her love for us, so we snatched her from him. But he follows hard upon our track with—”

  “Mean you you’re both her lovers?” cried the captain. “Methought you Terrans were monogamists.”

  “Ah, but such is our love for her that she couldn’t spurn either lest the one rejected perish of a broken liver. So you’ll not—”

  Althea started as the purport of this speech reached her consciousness.

  “Nay, nay, get aboard,” said the captain. “I’ll pay your fee from my own pocket, so poignantly has your tale plucked at the strings of my affections. Yarely, now!”

  “Good heavens!” said Althea. “Doctor Bahr, you’ve made me out not only an adulteress but a polyandrous one as well! If that ever gets around in mission circles—”

  “Your missionary career will be mud,” said Kirwan, “and a good thing, too.”

  Althea sighed. Life on Earth may have had its shortcomings, but it was simple compared with the bizarre misadventures that had befallen her on Krishna. Each step seemed to plunge her further into quicksand. Kirwan continued: “At any rate, our professor got us a free ride. How’d you work it, Gottfried?”

  “I know the psychology of these folk. Although even more cruel and belligerent than Terrans, they are also romantic and sentimental. The captain could not resist an appeal to his sympathy for runaway lovers.”

  Althea said, “I’m sorry you couldn’t have done something like that to Gorchakov.”

  “A different type,” said Bahr. “A somatonic dynamophile, slightly schizoid and with a paranoid tendency, in addition to his obvious sadism. Very, very hard to influence.”

  Althea stood on the edge of the deck, holding a mast stay to steady herself. With much shouting, the crew swarmed about the rigging and reversed the set of the two yellow sails. One of these crewmen, Althea noticed, was a tailed Krishnan in a dirty loin cloth. He was covered with dark, olive-brown hair, not quite thick enough to be called a pelt. He was shorter and broader than his tailless fellows.

  The tailed one’s face reminded Althea, in a subhuman way, of that football player from Yale with whom she had thought herself in love, before her brothers had broken up the romance. It also seemed that the tailed one was something less than a perfect ferryhand, for the skipper shouted and swore at him more than at all the others put together.

  “Come down, Jinych, and may Dupulán flay you! I said to start the luff brace, not to trim it! Nay, not that line; that one! Beware! Ye’ll catch your cursed tail in the block! Oh, gods, that I should be afflicted with such a clodpate!” Then a moment later: “Jinych, what in the name of Dashmok are ye doing now? Whatever it be, cease forthwith!”

  The ferry got under way, with the hapless Jinych working an oar. Althea found it hard to imagine a being of that type developing an intellect of Newtonian power. Her brothers, she remembered, had likewise deemed the football player subhuman. Then he had become president of Amalgamated Lobbyists and richer than all the Merricks put together.

  IV

  Majbur rose behind a kind offence, which resolved itself into the masts and spars of the ships along the waterfront. There were war galleys with gilded figureheads; high-sided square-riggers from the stormy Va’andao Sea; lateen-rigged merchantmen from the Sadabao and Banjao ports, with yards slanting at all angles; and local craft: fishing smacks, river barges, timber rafts, and pleasure yachts.

  The ferry crew grunted at their sweeps as the craft crept into its dock, its yellow sails banging and flapping in the uncertain breeze. The sails subsided as crewmen shinnied up the slanting yards to furl them. The passengers streamed ashore. Crewmen heaved the carriage off the ship. Althea and the two Earthmen got back in, and they rolled into Majbur Town.

  The carriage picked its way through the traffic, which choked the narrow streets. The second and higher floors of the lofty buildings were built out over the sidewalks, upheld by long rows of arches of intricately carven stonework.

  “Damn!” said Kirwan, ever quick to complain. “If I knew where this beggar Gorbovast was, I’d walk.”

  When the driver dropped them at Gorbovast’s office and had been paid off, the Earthfolk had another half-hour’s wait before being ushered in.

  Gorbovast bad-Sár was an elderly Gozashtandu, his visage covered with tiny wrinkles and his hair faded to the color of pale jade. For decades he had sat behind this desk, serving as resident commissioner in Majbur, first to King Eqrar of Gozashtand and now to his successor, King Kudair. In addition, he fulfilled a number of other functions, some known to his imperial master and some not. He dabbled in the many business enterprises of Majbur. He helped out non-Krishnans who got into trouble. He furnished the Viagens security force with information. There had been talk of establishing a regular Terran consulate in Majbur, as there were in some other Krishnan cities. But nothing had been done, because it was thought that “Gorbovast can fix anything.”

  Gorbovast looked up from his mare’s nest of papers and said in accented but adequate English: “Good day, Madame Gorchakova. Good day, Doctor Bahr and Mr. Kirwan. I hope you are in good healt’?”

  Althea gasped. Bahr said, “Excuse me, my friend, but how did you know this lady?”

  Gorbovast smiled. “It is my business to know sings, sir. You arrived here more soon zan I expected. I suppose you still weesh to sail on ze Ta’zu day after tomorrow?”

  Kirwan said, “If you know so much, my man, perhaps you can tell if anybody’s following us?”

  Gorbovast made a negative gesture. “Alas, Mr. Kirwan! My information does not yet cover zat point. I do not know if Mr. Gorchakov is on ze trail of his run-off bride.”

  Althea shuddered. “Then,” said Kirwan, “we’d better get off on an earlier boat, d’ye get me?”

  Gorbovast looked dubious but pawed through his papers until he found one that he studied.

  “Hm,” he said. “Captain Memzadá sails wit’ his Labághti tonight for Darya via Reshr, Jerud, and Ulvanagh, wit’ a cargo of—mmm—never mind ze cargo. He could stop at Zesh. But he will leave wizzin ze hour, to take advantage of ze tide and ze offshore wind.
Small ship, not so comfortable as ze Ta’zu—but if we hurry we could make arrangements.”

  The three Terrans exchanged glances. Althea said, “I don’t like to trouble you boys when you’ve done so much for me, but if there’s any chance of that horrible man . . .”

  “We’ll go tonight,” said Kirwan. “Right, Gottfried my boy?”

  “Well—ah—all right.”

  “I will accompany you to ze ship,” said Gorbovast.

  ###

  The harbor of Reshr, the first stop of the Labághti after leaving Majbur, sank below the horizon. Althea Merrick sat on the deck at the bow with her long legs curled under her and her back against the rail. Ahead, the emerald Sadabao Sea lay dark against the darkening evening sky. Aft, the huge lateen mainsail, striped with scarlet and gold, shut off most of the feverishly colored sunset. The forward-raking mast rose almost over Althea’s head.

  Below the lower edge of the bellying sail, Althea could see the after-part of the ship, with its smaller mizzenmast and sail. Captain Memzadá, gloomily silent, gripped his tiller on the little poop deck. The captain and the crew were all Daryava, speaking a dialect of Gazashtandu that Althea, despite her conscientious struggle with that language, could hardly make out.

  As soon as they had left Majbur, the Daryava had reverted to their native costume, consisting solely of a coating of grease. After the first half-hour, Althea no longer noticed their nudity. The grease gave the brawny skipper a look of a fine bronze statue. The faintly greenish Krishnan complexion aggravated this effect. She could not, however, entirely ignore the smell of the grease.

  The little merchantman wallowed sluggishly under her overload through a cross-swell. As the Labághti pitched, Althea’s view aft, between sail and ship, alternated between sea and sky, with a glimpse of fading Zamba in between as the poop rose and fell.

  Althea had been a good sailor on Earth. Since coming aboard, some of the clouds of despondency had lifted from her. But for her fear of Gorchakov and doubt about her future, she might almost have enjoyed herself. The relaxation, the seemingly aimless wandering of the ship among the fairy-tale islands of this fanciful planet, suited her temperament.