Late in the afternoon sand dunes closed in upon the river and Zarfo insisted that the Pibar be anchored in deep water for the night. "Ahead are sandbars and shallows. We would be certain to run aground and undoubtedly the Niss have followed. They would grapple the boat and swarm aboard."
"Won't they attack us if we lay at anchor?"
"No, they fear deep water and never use boats. At anchor we are as safe as if we were already at Smargash."
The night was clear with both Az and Braz wheeling through the sky of old Tschai. On the riverbank the Niss boldly lit their fires and boiled their pots, and later started up a wild music of fiddles and drums. For hours the travelers sat watching the agile shapes in black cloaks dancing around the fires, kicking, jumping, heads up, heads low; swinging, whirling, prancing with arms akimbo.
In the morning the Niss were nowhere to be seen. The Pibar passed through the shallows without incident. Late in the afternoon the travelers came to a village, guarded from the Niss by a line of posts to each of which was chained a skeleton in a rotting black cloak. Zarfo declared the village to be the feasible limit of navigation with Smargash yet three hundred miles south, across a land of deserts, mountain pinnacles and chasms. "Now we must travel by caravan, over the old Sarsazm Road, to Hamil Zut under the Lokhara Uplands. Tonight I'll make inquiry and learn what's to our advantage."
Zarfo stayed ashore overnight, returning in the morning with the news that by dint of the most furious bargaining he had exchanged the Pibar for first class passage by caravan to Hamil Zut.
Reith calculated. Three hundred miles? Two hundred sequins a person, at maximum: eight hundred for the four. The Pibar was worth ten thousand, even at a sacrifice price. He looked at Zarfo, who ingenuously returned the gaze. "You will recall," said Reith, "the ill feeling and dissension at Kabasas?"
"Of course," declared Zarfo. "To this day I become anguished by the injustice of your hints."
"Here is another hint. How much extra did you demand for the Pibar and receive?"
Zarfo gave an uneasy grimace. "Naturally, I was saving the news to be a glad surprise."
"How much?"
"Three thousand sequins," muttered Zarfo. "No more, no less. I consider it a fair price up here, far from wealth."
Reith allowed the figure to pass without challenge. "Where is the money?"
"It will be paid when we go ashore."
"And when does the caravan leave?"
"Soon-a day or so. There is a passable inn; we can spend the night ashore."
"Very well; let us all go now and collect the money."
Somewhat to Reith's surprise the sack which Zarfo received from the innkeeper contained exactly three thousand sequins, and Zarfo gave a sour sneer and, going into the tavern, called for a pot of ale.
Three days later the caravan started south: a file of twelve power wagons, four mounted with sandblasts. Sarsazm Road led through awesome scenery: gorges and great precipices, the bed of an ancient sea, vistas of distant mountains, sighing forests of keel and blackfern. Occasionally Niss were sighted but they kept their distance and on the evening of the third day the caravan pulled into Hamil Zut, a squalid little town of a hundred mud huts and a dozen taverns.
In the morning Zarfo engaged pack-beasts, equipment and a pair of guides, and the travelers set forth up the trail into the Lokharan highlands.
"This is wild country," Zarfo warned them. "Dangerous beasts are occasionally seen, so be ready with your weapons."
The trail was steep, the terrain indeed wild. On several occasions they sighted Kar Yan, subtle gray beasts slinking through the rocks, sometimes erect on two legs, sometimes dropping to all six. Another time they encountered a tiger-headed reptile gorging upon a carcass, and were able to pass unmolested.
On the third day after leaving Hamil Zut, the travelers entered Lokhara, a great upland plain; and in the mid-afternoon Smargash appeared ahead. Zarfo now told Reith: "It occurs to me, as it must have to you, that yours is a very ticklish venture."
"Agreed."
"Folk here are not indifferent to the Wankh, and a stranger might easily talk to the wrong people."
So.
"It might be better for me to select the personnel."
"Certainly. But leave the question of payment to me."
"As you wish," growled Zarfo.
The countryside was now a prosperous well-watered land, populated by peasant farms. The men, like Zarfo, were tattooed or dyed black, with a mane of white hair. The skins of the women, in contradistinction, were chalky white, and their hair was black. Urchins showed white or black hair according to their sex, but their skins were uniformly the color of the dirt in which they played.
A road ran on a riverbank, under majestic old keels. To either side were small bungalows, each in its bower of vines and shrubs. Zarfo sighed with vast feeling. "Observe me, the transient worker returning to his home. But where is my fortune? How may I buy my cottage by the river? Poverty has forced me to strange ways; I am thrown in with a stone-hearted zealot, who takes his joy thwarting the hopes of a kind old man!"
Reith paid no heed, and presently they entered Smargash.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
REITH SAT IN the parlor of the squat cylindrical cottage he had rented, overlooking the Smargash common, where the young folk spent much time dancing.
Across from him, in wicker chairs, sat five white-haired men of Smargash, a group screened from the twenty Zarfo originally had approached. The time was middle afternoon; out on the common, dancers skipped and kicked to music of concertina, bells and drums.
Reith explained as much of his program as he dared: not a great deal. "You men are here because you can help me in a certain venture. Zarfo Detwiler has informed you that a large sum of money is involved; this is true, even if we fail. If we succeed, and I believe the chances are favorable, you will earn wealth sufficient to satisfy any of you. There is danger, as might be expected, but we shall hold it to a minimum. If anyone does not care to consider such a venture, now is the time to leave."
The oldest of the group, one Jag Jaganig, an expert in the overhaul and installation of control systems, said, "So far we can't say yes or no. None of us would refuse to drag home a sack of sequins, but neither would we care to challenge impossibility for a chancy bice."
"You want more information?" Reith looked from face to face. "This is natural enough. But I don't want to take the merely curious into my confidence. If any of you are definitely not disposed for a dangerous but by no means desperate venture, please identify yourself now."
There was a slight stir of uneasiness, but no one spoke out.
Reith waited a moment. "Very well; you must bind yourselves to secrecy."
The group bound themselves by awful Lokhar oaths. Zarfo, plucking a hair from each head, twisted a fiber which he set alight. Each inhaled the smoke. "So we are bound, one to all; if one proves false, the others as one will strike him down."
Reith, impressed by the ritual, had no more qualms about speaking to the point.
"I know the exact location of a source of wealth, at a place not on the planet Tschai. We need a spaceship and a crew to operate it. I propose to commandeer a spaceship from the Ao Hidis field; you men shall be the crew. To demonstrate my sanity and good faith, I will pay to each man on the day of departure five thousand sequins. If we try but fail, each man receives another five thousand sequins."
"Each surviving man," grumbled Jag Jaganig.
Reith went on: "If we succeed, ten thousand sequins will seem like ten bice.
Essentially, this is the scope of the venture."