"Yes."
"Well, at that time, you said you'd vouchsafe me anon the reason for this antic. Methinks the time has come for full confession. So answer, sir: wherefore this caprice?"
Barnevelt took so long about answering that she said: "Well, dear my lord?"
"That man," said Barnevelt carefully, "is Igor Shtain, a Terran who disappeared from the ken of his kind. I promised the Earthmen at Novorecife—for a consideration—to try to find and rescue him. Well, as you saw, he doesn't want to be rescued. Evidently that dinosaur thing who heads the gang—Sheafase—has put the Osirian hex on friend Shtain, so he no longer knows who he is but thinks he's just another Sunqaro buccaneer. At the time I signed up, of course, I didn't know I'd be called upon to rescue you, too."
"How sad that my poor self should thus by inadvertence clog the cogwheels of your worthy enterprise!"
"Oh, don't talk nonsense, darling. I'd rather rescue one of you than a dozen Shtains. Give me a kiss!"
Again, Barnevelt demonstrated the Earthly custom that he had taught Zei while they waited on the raft for dawn. Aside from the natural pleasure of making love to this gorgeous creature, he hoped thus to distract her mind from further questions.
Moreover, he was more than half in love with her and suspected that—as nearly as one could tell in dealing with one of another species—she felt the same towards him. They had become good friends during the time that he and George Tangaloa, the xenologist, had stayed at Ghulinde, capital of Qirib. Although Zei was the only daughter of Queen Al-vandi, a combination of circumstances had caused Barnevelt and Tangaloa to be welcomed at the palace as distinguished and sought-after guests while they abode in Ghulinde. They had been outfitting an expedition, supposedly for hunting gvam stones but actually for seeking the missing Shtain.
Then the pirates of the Sunqar had raided Ghulinde and carried off Zei. In the fracas, Tangaloa had been wounded. Fierce old Queen Alvahdi had seized the genial Samoan as a hostage to force Barnevelt, still under his alias of Snyol, to try to recover her daughter. Although he had succeeded with Zei, two rescues at once had proved too many. So Shtain, still believing himself a Sunqaruma, remained behind in the settlement.
The daring rescue and the brilliant improvisation of skis to cross the uncrossable weed had naturally enlarged Barnevelt still further in the eyes of the princess. In fact, an hour earlier, when they had removed their soaking garments and hung them on the mast stay to dry, they had come perilously close to consummating their mutual* desire.
Two natures had struggled for supremacy in Barnevelt. One was the healthy young animal, which was all for it; the other was the cautious, calculating man of affairs. The latter nature had warned that such intimacy might cost Barnevelt his head.
For Qirib was a matriarchate, where the queen took a new consort every year. At the end of the year, the old king was executed and ceremonially eaten at a solemn religious festival. It was this festival, the kashyo, which the piratical raid had interrupted. In the confused fighting, old King Kaj had perished, struck down while wielding the executioner's axe, in a last-minute recovery of his manhood, against the raiders.
Barnevelt, knowing that Queen Alvandi meant to abdicate in favor of her daughter, foresaw a year of bliss for himself—followed, however, by the chopping block and the stew pan. While his impulses contended, the sight of the Shambor had tipped the scale in favor of cautious self-restraint.
Zei kissed him briefly but continued to ask questions. After all, even though hers was a mild and friendly nature, as a princess she was used to having her own way with everybody except her mother.
"Then," said she, "that tale of the search for gvam stones was but a taradiddle wherewith to cozen us?"
"Not entirely. I hoped to pick up some of the stones, too, in case I failed with Shtain." (Always, he told himself, mix enough truth with your lies and vice versa to make it hard to separate the true from the false.)
"Then neither of us is wholly what he seems." She looked back at the Shambor, slowly meandering towards them. "Will they never come nigh enough to settle our doubts?"
"They have to zigzag to avoid the weed, so it takes much longer than you'd think."
She glanced towards the settlement, springing into full view in the strengthening light. "Is there no shift whereby we could get word of young Zakkomir's fate?"
" 'Fraid not. He's on his own."
Zakkomir was a young Qiribu, a ward of the crown, who had come with Barnevelt on his expedition out of admiration for the heroic deeds of the supposed General Snyol of Pleshch. In the fight on the ships they had become separated. Zakkomir fled in one direction, and Zei and Barnevelt in the other.
Barnevelt peered again at the Shamhor. "By Bakh, that's Chask, my boatswain, at the tiller!" He stood up, waved, and whooped: "O Chask! Ship ahoy! Here we are!
"It'll take them some time yet," he told Zei. "Let's hope the Sunqaruma don't see us."
" 'Tis a wonder they returned to rescue us, once they'd won free. Snyol of Pleshch must command deathless loyalty from his men."
"I'm not so good as all that, darling. In fact, Chask is the only one I'd really trust, and I daresay it was his doing that the ship's here."
Barnevelt then confessed to having spoiled his sailors at the start of the voyage by treating them in too familiar and democratic a manner. After one of them had been snatched from the deck by a sea monster, the rest in terror wished to turn back, and he had almost had to quell a mutiny.
"That smart young squirt Zanzir's at the bottom of the trouble," he growled. "Instead of encouraging him, I should have gotten rid of him the first chance I had."
As the Shatnbor nosed through the weed a few meters from the raft, Barnevelt remembered one of his duties. He stood up and pointed his fist at the ship, moving it slowly back and forth. For the big ring on his finger was really a Hayashi motion-picture camera, and he was filming the approach of the Shambor.
Igor Shtain, Limited, had a contract with Cosmic Features for 50,000 meters of film about the Sunqar. One task of Barnevelt and Tangaloa had been to shoot as much of this film as possible to keep the firm from going bankrupt. Although the regulations of the Interplanetary Council forbade the importation into Krishna of inventions not already known there, an exception was made for the Hayashi camera, because it was so small and inconspicuous that it could hardly upset Krishnan culture. Besides, a destructor spring would make it fly apart in a fine mist of tiny wheels and lenses if a tyro tried to open it up.
"What's that?" said Zei. "Dost cast a spell?"
"Of sorts. Get your sandals on. Here we go." He boosted Zei over the rail and climbed aboard himself, grumpily telling himself that he had been lucky to escape from forming an intimate connection with the princess and ending up as an Earthburger at the next kashyo festival. But, at the same time, the less practical side of his nature— the romantic-dreamer side—whispered: Ah, but you do love her! And some day, perhaps, you and she will be united somehow, somewhere. Some day. Some day…
CHAPTER TWO
As Barnevelt and Zei came over the rail, Chask called another man to the tiller, came forward, and cried: " 'Tis the Lady Zei herself! The sea gods have surely prospered our enterprise!"
He knelt to the princess while grasping Barnevelt's thumb, looking like some gnarled old sea god himself.
Barnevelt gave the rest of the crew a wave and a grin. "Greetings, men!"
The sailors, resting on their oars or standing by the lines, looked back in silence. One or two smiled feebly,, but the rest seemed to glower. With a chill of self-doubt, Barnevelt reflected that he had never been able to get back on good terms with them since he turned down their demand for giving up the expedition.