After this, Roberts was in something of a state of shock until they reached the planet.
* * *
The planet drifted up toward them like an old acquaintance that they knew well from some previous visit. Their first sight of the green and tan continent, its forbidding coastline lit in hard-shadowed relief by the early-morning sun, was like a familiar face. They stared down at half-lighted valleys, swift-flowing rivers, and numerous patchworks of small farms, many of them far removed from any sizable cities.
“That orientation,” growled Hammell, “was pretty effective.”
Roberts frowned at the screen and drifted down toward what looked at first like a collection of small towns inside a strong wall on a bluff above a wide swift-flowing river, with a granite palace near the center, and a number of large rectangular buildings in many separate walled enclosures throughout the city. Near the palace, on the other side of a wide stone wall, was an open square that Roberts knew to be the “Visitor’s Campground.”
As Roberts headed toward it, the colonel stepped into the control room.
“When we set down, gentlemen, I am going to need the services of my ‘lawyer’ and my ‘financial advisor.’ My ‘crew,’ however, is free to see the sights, and you’d better go through the city, and get as good a sense of the general atmosphere as you can. Are the people content, or miserable? Is the place well run? Are the people reasonably well fed? Take a look at the food-storage warehouses. Look over the roads. Watch for one particular phenomenon—If you’ve learned something in your orientation, and it’s contradicted by the facts here, there will be an instant of surprise and disorientation, and then the incorrect fact will vanish like the memory of a dream. The instant you feel that disorientation, hang on to the memory of the misleading ‘fact’ and tell me the first chance you get. If PDA is trying to run our head into a noose, we want to know it.”
Roberts set the ship down, and they looked out at the capital city of Mardukash, one of the larger of the planet’s two dozen kingdoms.
As the colonel conferred with the disguised Morrissey and Bergen, Roberts and Hammell put on native-style loose blouse and trousers, under long white robes, and set out through the city.
Their knowledge of the general layout proved accurate, and they found themselves walking down wide cobbled streets that sloped toward gutters in the center, with shops to either side whose owners were putting up their shutters to display earthenware jars, baskets woven of reeds, brightly-colored cloth, cheap jewelry, woven hats with wide down-curving brims, and a variety of handmade iron tools. Here and there, they passed more strongly built places, with iron grilles in front. These were spice shops and the business places of goldsmiths.
Everyone Roberts and Hammell saw seemed brisk and cheerful.
“O.K. so far,” said Hammell. “Isn’t one of their food-storage warehouses around here?”
“If we take that street to the left up ahead, it ought to bring us to it.”
They turned left, and gradually a massive gray stone wall came into view. Armed men, spears and bows ready, patrolled the walls. Beyond loomed the tops of buildings, long and with steeply-sloping roofs, that they wanted to look at. But they soon found that the outer wall blocked their view of the inside.
A long walk, past a part of the city devoted to stables for beasts that looked like a kind of big slender otter, and past a section devoted to the sale of seeds, and plows made of hard wood or iron, brought them to the city’s east gate. The gate was open, and beyond it, heavily braced from below, a bridge reached out across a wide ravine, turned ninety degrees toward the north, then swung ninety degrees east again to reach the opposite bank. The bridge was wide, but had only a flimsy rail at the edge. Just as Roberts and Hammell came up to it, a gaily-dressed rider, approaching at a gallop along the dirt road to the east, was desperately slowing his mount. After almost plunging into the ravine, he called out to the guards, “I come to purchase spice from far Iandul. May I enter?”
“Yes, friend, and we have the spice,” said the guard atop the wall. “For once, the cursed reefs let a ship through unhurt. But enter at a walk. No one rushes the Iatulon’s capital at a gallop.”
“So I see. Your roads are so good, compared to our own rutted bogholes, that I was careless. I will be more alert.”
The guard smiled. “I observe you are a noble, so let me warn you. If you use your lash on a commoner here, the Iatulon’s guards will have you in a flash, and you will spend the night in poor accommodations, and go out in the morning with a lighter pocket. On the other hand, if any commoner attempts to provoke you, report it to the first guard you see, and the nuisance will be ended. Go through with a plain, cheerful manner, and all will be well. Try haughty airs, and you will have your foot in a hole from now till you leave. The Iatulon doesn’t use the grand manner, and no one else can.”
“Ah? No one? And what then of the Iatulon’s queen?”
“Of that, friend, say no more. In any case, no one knocks a woman’s head off for pride, but you are a man.”
Smiling, the nobleman came through the gate, nodded to Roberts and Hammell, and trotted into the city.
Roberts called up to the guards, “We are strangers here, and want to go up into those hills to look at the city from a distance. Is it all right?”
“It is permitted, but if you go beyond the open pastureland into the forest, it is dangerous. There are beasts there that forage for nuts and the root bark of certain favored trees. They have an evil disposition, and worse yet, they are armed with a horn like a dagger in the center of their foreheads. If you come upon them amongst those trees, they will rip you open from groin to gizzard. The only safety is to climb a tree, and then you are stuck there till they decide to move on. Owing to their disposition, they will starve a while in the hope that thirst will bring you down. Best keep to the open. If they come at you there, yell at the top of your lungs, and run for your lives, downhill and away from the forest. They cannot catch you, and will fear that your screams will bring mounted men, who will attack them in the open. After a short run and much snorting, which will increase your speed, they will give up.”
Roberts laughed and thanked the guard.
The guard smiled and waved, and they walked on up the dirt road into the open grassy hills.
When they were high enough, but still well below the trees, they looked back. From here, they could see over the walls around the storehouses.
Each storehouse was white, made of a native concrete, and raised ten to fifteen feet off the ground on massive arches. The storehouses were rectangular, with steep roofs that had a wide overhang on all sides, and screened ventilators at the ends. Each was set apart from the others by a smooth, out-curving cement wall some eight feet high, with a tightly-fitted metal gate at either end.
Roberts and Hammell, studying the scene through binoculars, noticed men coming out of the warehouses with the critical look of inspectors, as others checked the walls and grounds. Wagons went in through the metal gates, and the gates closed tightly behind them. The wagons pulled out of sight under the storehouses, as other wagons reappeared heaped with yellow grain, to leave by the opposite gates. Within and between the separate walled warehouses, there roamed animals that Roberts at first though were the local form of rats. But a little more watching showed that they had no fear of the men, who in turn paid little attention to them. It followed that they were roughly the equivalent of barn cats.
After watching an hour or so the two men glanced at each other.
Everything they had seen spoke of foresight and good order. Without a word, they got up and started back.
On the way, the city seemed more familiar than ever, until they reached the Visitor’s Campground. Here, the ship was practically lost from sight, in the center of a host of tent makers and their poles, cords, and gorgeous rolls of purple, gold, and yellow cloth, with wagons hastily unloading chests and boxes, then rattling off at a fast trot, to bring in yet more merchandise.
When they finally located the colonel, he was examining a large ruby, while a beaming jeweler poured out a selection of flashing stones from a purple velvet bag. The colonel excused himself, listened to Roberts’ report, then smiled.