On Tith, there were fallen towers that had once been two miles high, lying in rows pointing north, like a forest felled by a meteor strike. We talked to the descendants of the tower builders, and they told me that a H’eeaq ship had called; a year ago, a century ago, a thousand years—it was all the same to them.
We pushed on, hearing rumors, legends, hints that a vessel like the one I described had been seen once, long ago, or had visited the next world out-system, or that creatures like Srat had been found, dead, on an abandoned moon. Then even the rumors ran out; and Srat was fresh out of worlds.
“The trail’s cold,” I told him. “There’s nothing out here but death and decay and legends. I’m turning back for Center.”
“Only a little farther, Master,” Poor Srat pleaded. “Master will find what he seeks, if only he presses on.” He didn’t have quite the whimpering tone now that he used to use. I wondered about poor Srat; what he had up his sleeve.
“One more try,” I said. “Then I turn back and try for Center, even if every post office this side of Earth has my picture in it.”
But the next sun that swam into range was one of a small cluster; eight small, long-lived suns, well past Sol on the evolutionary scale, but still in their prime. Srat almost tied himself into a knot.
“Well do I remember the Eight Suns, Master! These are rich worlds, and generous. After we filled our holds here with succulent lichens—”
“I don’t want any succulent lichens,” I cut off his rhapsody. “All I want is a hot line on a H’eeaq ship.”
I picked the nearest of the suns, swung in on a navigation beam from Drath, the ninth planet, with Srat doing the talking to Control, and sat the ship down on a ramp that looked as though it had survived some heavy bombardments in its day. A driverless flatcar riding on an airstream came out to pick us up. We rode in it toward a big pinkish-gray structure across the field. Beyond it, a walled city sprawled up across a range of rounded hills. The sky was a pre-storm black, but the sun’s heat baked down through the haze like a smelter.
There were rank, tropical trees and fleshy-looking flowers growing along the drive that ran the final hundred yards. Up close, I could see cracks in the building.
There were no immigration formalities to clear through, just a swarm of heavy-bodied, robed humanoids with skin like hard olive-green plastic and oversized faces—if you can call something that looks like a tangle of fish guts a face. Eureka stayed close to my side, rubbing against my leg as we pushed through the crowd inside the big arrival shed. Srat followed, making the oof!ing sounds that meant he didn’t like it here. I told him to find someone he could talk to, and try for some information; he picked a non-Drathian, a frail little knob-kneed creature creeping along by a wall with the fringe of its dark blue cloak dragging in the mud. It directed him along to a stall at the far side of the lobby, which turned out to be a sort of combination labor exchange and lost-and-found. A three-hundred-pound Drathian in a dirty saffron toga listened to Srat, then rumbled an answer
“No vessel of H’eeaq has called here, says he, Master,” Srat reported. “Drath trades with no world; the produce of Drath is the most magnificent in the Universe; he demands why anyone would seek items made elsewhere. He says also that he can offer an attractive price on a thousand tons of glath.”
“What’s glath?”
“Mud, Master,” he translated.
“Tell him thanks, but I’ve sworn off.” We left him and pushed on through to take a look at the town.
The buildings were high, blank-fronted, stuccoed in drab shades of ochre and pink and mauve. There was an eerie feeling hanging over the place, as if everyone was away, attending a funeral. The click and clatter and pat-pat of our assorted styles of feet were jarringly loud. A hot rain started up, to add to the cheer. It struck me again how alike cities were, on worlds all across the Galaxy. Where creatures gather together to build dwellings, the system of arranging them in rows along open streets is almost universal. This one was like a Mexican village, with water; all poverty and mud. I saw nothing that would pass for a policeman, an information office, a city hall or government house. After an hour of walking I was wet to the skin, cold to the bone, and depressed to the soul.
I was ready to give it up and head back to the ship when the street widened out into a plaza crowded with stalls and carts under tattered awnings of various shades of gray. Compared to the empty streets, the place looked almost gay.
The nearest stall displayed an assortment of dull-colored balls, ranging from lemon to grapefruit size. Srat tried to find out what they were, but the answer was untranslatable. Another bin was filled with what seemed to be dead beetles. I gathered they were edible, if you liked that sort of thing. The next displayed baubles and gimcracks made of polished metal and stone, like jewelry in every time and clime. Most of the metal was dull yellow, lead-heavy gold, and I felt a faint stir of an impulse to fill my pockets. Up ahead, an enterprising merchant had draped the front of his stall with scraps of cloth. From the colors, I judged he was color-blind, at least in what I thought of as the visible spectrum. One piece of rag caught my eye; it was a soft, silvery gray. I fingered it and felt a shock go through me as if I’d grabbed a hot wire. But it wasn’t electricity that made my muscles go rigid; it was the unmistakable feel of Zeridajhan cloth.
It was a piece about two feet long and a foot wide, raggedly cut. It might have been the back panel from a shipsuit. I started to lift it and the stall-keeper grabbed for it, and cracked something in the local language, a sound like hot fat sizzling. I didn’t let go.
“Tell him I want to buy it,” I told Srat
The stall-keeper tugged and made more hot-fat sounds.
“Master, he doesn’t understand the trade tongue,” Srat said.
The merchant was getting excited, now. He made an angry buzzing and yanked hard; I ripped the cloth out of his balled fists; then Srat was clutching at my arm and saying, “Beware, Master!”
2
I looked around. A large Drathian who could have been the same one who offered me the load of glath except for the white serape across his chitinous shoulder was pushing through the gathering crowd toward me. Something about him didn’t look friendly. As he came up, he crackled at the merchant. The merchant crackled back. The big Drathian planted himself in front of me and spit words at me.
“Master,” Srat gobbled, “the Rule-keeper demands to know why you seek to rob the merchant!”
“Tell him I’ll pay well for the cloth.” I took out a green trade chip that was worth six months’ pay back on the Bar Worlds, and handed it over, but the Rule-keeper still didn’t seem satisfied.
“Find out where he got the cloth, Srat,” I said. There was more talk then; I couldn’t tell whether the big Drathian was a policeman, a guild official, a racket boss, or an ambulance-chasing shyster, but he seemed to pull a lot of weight. The stall-keeper was scared to death of him.
“Master, the merchant swears he came by the rag honestly; yet if Master insists, he will make him a gift of it.”
“I’m not accusing him of anything. I just want to know where the cloth came from.”
This time the bully-boy did the talking, ended by pointing across the plaza.
“Master, a slave sold the cloth to the merchant.”
“What kind of slave?”
“Master . . . a Man-slave.”
“Like me?”
“He says—yes, Master.”
I let my elbow touch the butt of my filament pistol. If the crowd that had gathered around to watch and listen decided to turn nasty, it wouldn’t help much; but it was comforting anyway.
“Where did he see this Man-slave?”
“Here, Master; the slave is the property of the Least Triarch.”
“Find out where the Triarch lives.”
“There, Master.” Srat pointed to a dusty blue facade rising behind the other buildings like a distant cliff-face. “That is the palace of His Least Greatness.”
“Let’s go.” I started past the Rule-keeper and he jabbered at Srat.
“Master, he says you have forgotten his bribe.”
“My mistake.” I handed over another chip. “Tell him I’d like his assistance in getting an interview with the Triarch.”
A price was agreed on and he led the way across the plaza and through the network of dark streets, along a complicated route that ended in a tiled courtyard with a yellow glass roof that made it look almost like a sunny day. There were trees and flowering shrubs around a reflecting pool, a shady cloister along the far side. Srat was nervous; he perched on a chair and mewed to himself. Eureka stretched out and stared across at a tall blue-legged bird wading in the pool.