Anacho turned the sky-car somewhat to the north and landed at a dingy village on the sandy north cape. The three spent the night at the Glass Blower's Inn, a structure contrived of bottles and jugs discarded by the shops at the sand-pits behind the town. The inn was dank and permeated with a peculiar acrid odor; the evening meal of soup, served in heavy green glass tureens, evinced something of the same flavor. Reith remarked on the similarity to Anacho, who summoned the Gray* servant and put a haughty question. The servant indicated a large black insect darting across the floor. "The skarats do indeed be pungent creatures, and exhale a chife. Bevol made a plague on us, until we put them to use and found them nutritious. Now we hardly capture enough."
Reith long had been careful never to make inquiry regarding foods set before him, but now he looked askance into the tureen. "You mean ... the soup?"
"Indeed," declared the servant. "The soup, the bread, the pickles: all be skarat-flavored, and if we did not use them of purpose, they'd infest us to the same effect, so we make a virtue of convenience, and think to enjoy the taste."
Reith drew back from the soup. Traz ate stolidly. Anacho gave a petulant sniff and also ate. It occurred to Reith that never on Tschai had he noticed squeamishness. He heaved a deep sigh, and since no other food was forthcoming, swallowed the rancid soup.
In the dim brown morning breakfast was again soup, with a garnish of sea vegetables. The three departed immediately after, flying northwest across Leume Gulf and the stony wastes of Kislovan.
Anacho, usually nerveless, now became edgy, searching the sky, peering down at the ground, scrutinizing the knobs and bubbles, the patches of brown fur and vermilion velvet, the quivering mirrors which served as instruments. "We approach the Dirdir realm," he said. "We will veer north to the First Sea, then bear west to Khorai, where we must leave the sky-car and travel the Zoga'ar zum Fulkash am* to Maust. Then ... the Carabas."
CHAPTER FIVE
OVER THE GREAT Stone Desert flew the sky-car, parallel to the black and red peaks of the Zopal Range, over parched dust-flats, fields of broken rock, dunes of dark pink sand, a single oasis surrounded by plumes of white smoke-tree.
Late in the afternoon a windstorm drove lion-colored rolls of dust across the landscape, submerging Carina 4269 in murk. Anacho swung the sky-car north.
Presently a black-blue line on the horizon indicated the First Sea.
Anacho immediately landed the sky-car upon the barrens, some ten miles short of the sea.
"Khorai is yet hours ahead; best not to arrive after dark. The Khors are a suspicious folk, and flourish their knives at a harsh word. At night they strike without provocation."
"These are the folk who will guard our sky-car?"
"What thief would be mad enough to trouble the Khors?"
Reith looked around the waste. "I prefer supper at the Glass Blower's Inn to nothing whatever."
"Ha!" said Anacho. "In the Carabas you will recall the silence and peace of this night with longing."
The three bedded themselves down into the sand. The night was dark and brilliantly clear. Directly overhead burned the constellation Clari, within which, unseen to the eye, glimmered the Sun. Would he ever again see Earth?
Reith wondered. How often then would he lie under the night sky looking up into Argo Navis for the invisible brown sun Carina 4269 and its dim planet Tschai?
A flicker inside the sky-car attracted his attention: he went to look and found a mesh of orange lines wavering across the radar screen.
Five minutes later it disappeared, leaving Reith with a sense of chill and desolation.
In the morning the sun rose at the edge of the flat plain in a sky uncharacteristically clear and transparent, so that each small irregularity, each pebble, left a long black shadow. Taking the sky-car into the air, Anacho flew low to the ground; he too had noticed the orange flicker of the night before. The waste became less forbidding: clumps of stunted smoke-tree appeared, and presently black dendron and bladderbush.
They reached the First Sea and swung west, following the shoreline. They passed over villages: huddles of dull brown brick with conical roofs of black iron, beside copses of enormous dyan trees, which Anacho declared to be sacred groves.
Rickety piers like dead centipedes sprawled out into the dark water; double-ended boats of black wood were drawn up the beach. Looking through the scanscope Reith noted men and women with mustard-yellow skins. They wore black gowns and tall black hats; as the sky-car passed over they looked up without friendliness.
"Khors," stated Anacho. "Strange folk with secret ways. They are different by day and by night-at least this is the report. Each individual owns two souls which come and go with dawn and sunset, so that each is two different persons.
Peculiar tales are told." He pointed ahead. "Notice the shore, where it draws back into a funnel."
Reith, looking in the direction indicated, saw one of the now familiar dyan copses and a huddle of dull brown huts with black iron roofs. From a small compound a road led south over the rolling hills toward the Carabas.
Anacho said, "Behold the sacred grove of the Khors, in which, so it is said, souls are exchanged. Yonder you see the caravan terminus and the road to Maust.
I dare not take the sky-car further; hence we must land and make our way to Maust as ordinary sequin-takers, which is not necessarily a disadvantage."
"And when we return will the sky-car still be here?"
Anacho pointed down to the harbor. "Notice the boats at anchor."
Looking through his scanscope Reith observed three or four dozen boats of every description.
"Those boats," said Anacho, "brought sequin-takers to Khorai--from Coad, Hedaijha, the Low Isles, from the Second Sea and the Third Sea. If the owners return within a year, they sail from Khorai and to their homes. If within the year they do not return, the boat becomes the property of the harbor-master. No doubt we can arrange the same contract."
Reith made no arguments against the scheme, and Anacho dropped the sky-car toward the beach.
"Remember," Anacho warned, "the Khors are a sensitive people. Do not speak to them; pay them no heed except from necessity, in which case you must use the fewest possible words. They consider garrulity a crime against nature. Do not stand upwind of a Khor, nor if possible downwind; such acts are symbolic of antagonism. Never acknowledge the presence of a woman; do not look toward their children-they will suspect you of laying a curse; and above all ignore the sacred grove. Their weapon is the iron dart which they throw with astonishing accuracy; they are a dangerous people."
"I hope I remember everything," said Reith.
The sky-car landed upon the dry shingle; seconds later a great gaunt brown-skinned man, with deep-sunk eyes, concave cheeks, a crag of a nose, came running forward, his coarse brown smock flapping. "Are you for the Carabas, the dreadful Carabas?"
Reith gave a cautious assent: "This is our design."
"Sell me your sky-car! Four times I have entered the Zone, creeping from rock to rock; now I have my sequins. Sell me your sky-car, so that I may return to Holangar."
"Unfortunately we will need the sky-car upon our return," said Reith.
"I offer you sequins, purple sequins!"
"They mean nothing to us; we go to find sequins of our own."
The gaunt man gave a gesture of emotion too wild to be expressed in words and lunged off down the beach. A pair of Khors now approached: men somewhat slender and delicate of physique, wearing black gowns and cylindrical black hats which gave the illusion of height. The mustard-yellow faces were grave and still, the noses thin and small, the ears fragile shells. Fine black hair grew up rather than down, to be contained within the tall hat. They seemed to Reith a stream of humanity as divergent as the Chaschmen-perhaps a distinct species.