The Terridae dot-25 Page 6

  "I could," she admitted, and turned to face him. "I've thought about it and been tempted. My work on display for those who come to look and examine and buy. But I'm a creator, Earl. I need stimulation-what did you think of Nisbet?"

  He sensed her meaning. "Old and rigid in his ways."

  "A stickler for tradition and this world is full of others like him. It's a good world, Earl, a kind one, but the price you pay to enjoy living here is to yield your independence of thought and imagination. To stop wanting to know what is over the next hill. To live by the sound of a bell."

  The curfew at dusk and morning signaled the time to eat, sonorous echoes which punctuated the hours of existence.

  The echoes to Dumarest would have been the bars of a cage. He said, "Stay here and finish your wine. I'm going to take a walk outside."

  He stepped with long strides away from the building, heading west down the main street, taking the next left and then another. He slowed as he neared the corner forming the last side of the square he had traversed, halting at the junction to look at the tavern. Carina was nowhere in sight and he moved up the street to examine the blank wall where Nisbet's old shop had stood. The mortar was almost new, dry but unstained by weather. The place itself held half the capacity of his new premises.

  In the street where they had stood he walked slowly past, pausing to casually scan the area. The shop was closed with heavy shutters, the door to one side leading, he guessed, to the upstairs quarters, open to reveal a flight of wooden stairs. An inner door set into the wall would give access to the shop, but, like the shutters, it was closed.

  Dumarest walked to the end of the street and back up the one beyond so as to study the premises from the rear. The dying sunlight tinted the upper windows with a golden haze, touching the summit of the rear wall which circled a yard with amber sheens. The low wall could be easily climbed and was devoid of spikes or shards of protective glass. The offices would be to the rear of the workshops and so would open on the yard as did the large assembly area inside, as he had noticed. Unless workers lived within the shop itself the place would be deserted after the curfew bell had sent all to their beds.

  Dumarest walked on, thinking about the box Carina had painted, the one he had seen within the shop-small environments which could be sealed against the outside universe. Equipped with food, water, drugs, air-everything needed. Equipped, too, with antigrav units for easy handling, its own power source, an electronic shield which made it impossible to open from outside. A cocoon in which a person could while away the years, metabolism slowed, exterior time accelerated. A time machine in which to travel to the future.

  For whom?

  Nisbet wouldn't divulge the information and Carina didn't know. There was no reason for her to have been interested, but the decorations the box had carried made it important to Dumarest. As was the one now being completed. Later he would investigate.

  It was after midnight when he rose and quietly slipped on his boots. The tavern was as silent as the town, which had died after the sounding of the curfew. Within moments the streets had been deserted. Now, lying behind closed shutters, the inhabitants waited until the dawn.

  A board creaked as he left the room and he paused, listening. He heard nothing and moved on to halt at Carina's door. Beyond the panel he heard the soft, regular breathing of a person asleep and moved on to where stairs ran down into shrouded darkness.

  Above there had been ghost-light from the stars filtering through cracks to create a pale, nacreous glow but down in the lower rooms of the tavern even that illumination was missing. Dumarest eased himself forward, hands extended, ears strained to catch the whisper of echoes. Like a blind man he moved toward the remembered door, found it, felt at the bolt which held it fast. It slipped back beneath his hand, the door gaping, closing again behind him as he passed outside.

  The night was blazing with stars.

  They covered the firmament with a golden glitter, gilded by the drifting spores which hued the air. Sheets and curtains of luminescence marred by the ebon blotches of interstellar dust. The heart of the Zaragoza Cluster with its multitude of worlds. Planets which had offered safety of a kind but a safety which could turn into a trap for a man without money. For a moment Dumarest looked at the burning stars, then moved away. What he searched for was not to be found in the cluster.

  The street behind Nisbet's shop was as deserted as the rest of the town and Dumarest climbed the wall, dropping on the far side to wait, crouching, as he searched the area. Nothing. The windows shone with the dull gleam of reflected starlight and that was all. Rising, he moved to the big door facing the yard, tested it, moved on, when it remained fast, to the windows which ran beside it, found one that yielded beneath his hand.

  A moment later he was inside a room which smelt of resin and spirit and gum and sawdust.

  This was a storeroom with shelves supporting rows of bottles, cans, flasks of various sizes. Bins held rags and others tufted cotton. Drawers contained sheets of fine paper coated with dustlike abrasives. One corner smelt of assorted oils.

  The door next to it opened beneath his hand and Dumarest moved softly through a thicker darkness to another which opened on a room holding different smells. A third and he was among inks and papers and the paraphernalia of an office. The desk was unlocked. By the starlight streaming through the window he looked at papers taken from its drawers.

  They were in no sort of obvious order, and he frowned as he tried to determine the reference system used. From the look of things they had been stuffed at random into their compartments: lists of material purchased, credits extended to various workers, sums received and balances struck-normal accounting to be found on any world using money as a means of exchange.

  He delved on, finding some elaborate designs traced on thick parchments in faded inks: geometric patterns which had little to commend them aside from their complexity. Others were of living creatures, together with finely detailed depictions of joints and corner-pieces, dadoes, architraves, mitres and other examples of the woodworker's art. As he reached for another drawer he heard the soft scuffle of someone coming over the wall.

  Dumarest froze, staring through the window, seeing in the golden starlight an indistinct shape which ran lightly across the yard in a direct path to the window by which he had entered. An apprentice, he guessed, and the reason for the unfastened window was plain. The youth had broken curfew, leaving by the window he had left ajar for easy readmittance. At the door of the office Dumarest rested his ear against the panel, listening to the soft pad of feet, the rasp of the inner door, the dying sounds of footsteps mounting the stairs.

  Back at the desk he continued his search. The final drawer yielded nothing of value and he stood, searching the office with his eyes, trying to put himself in Nisbet's place. Work in hand would mean the relevant papers would be within easy reach. The desk was the obvious place but would a craftsman, impatient with office routine, follow the normal pattern? The filing system he used was unique to himself and relied wholly on memory. He had wasted time following accepted patterns.

  Where then?

  Dumarest stepped from the office and into the area outside where the air was heavy with the scent of wood and lacquer. The box rested beneath a high row of narrow panes, starlight touching a shelf, the folder lying on it. The first page held a printed slip, the second a list of specifications, the next was covered with designs, shapes which formed familiar symbols.

  The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins and next the Crab, the Lion shines, the Virgin and the Scales. The Scorpion, Archer and Sea Goat, the Man that holds the Watering Pot, the Fish with shining scales.

  A mnemonic learned on a distant world. Symbols which represented the constellations as seen from Earth. One had led him to the Original People. He had seen them all when finding the spectrum of a forgotten sun.

  These signs of the zodiac had decorated the box Carina had depicted.

  Whoever had ordered them must know of Earth.

>   Chapter Six

  Carina had been wrong; the ships began to arrive in days, not weeks, but the passengers they carried were not interested in the Sporing. They were the forefront of the flood to come, getting in early so as to complete their business. Shrewd-eyed men interested in local crafts hired rafts to carry them to outlying communes where they would live as guests, checking the times available, buying, trading, striking mutually satisfying bargains-dealers and entrepreneurs of all kinds. To control them and the crowds yet to come the Fathers of Caval had hired professional guards who now patrolled the streets, keeping the peace with words when possible, force when not.

  "Serpents in a fair garden, Earl." Nubar Kusche, plump, bland, with graying hair roached and set with painstaking care over eyes which moved like liquid metal in time-stained sockets, shook his head as he stared down into the street from the balcony. "Vipers which betray the illusion of a Utopia. A pity that gentle consideration is too delicate a bloom to survive without protection."

  Dumarest made no comment, staring as had Kusche at the street below, the environs beyond. The field was now busy and to one side the striped awnings of booths sprouted like a thrusting mass of exotic fungi. A carnival was to be expected on any world at such a time: a home for the gamblers and touts, the entertainers and artists who would harvest the fruits of the occasion. A lure for the local youth and a temptation the elders could have done without.

  "Life," mused Kusche. "It goes on and who would stop it? But you are not drinking, my friend. Come, now, let me fill your glass!"

  The act was done even as he spoke, the glint of his eyes matching the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. Kusche radiated an easy bonhomie and had shared a table with Dumarest the previous evening. He seemed to know all about Caval.

  "Look at them!" He gestured toward a raft which lifted from the edge of the field and headed south. "Agents of the Romesh Syndicate, without a doubt. Heading into the Muuain and the Elton Hamlets. They hope to buy beads carved with delectable miniatures and nose-stones fashioned in the likeness of tiny birds. A forlorn quest."

  "Because someone has got in first?"

  "No. The craftsmen of the area have suffered this past season from an affliction of the eyes. Nothing serious, a form of ophthalmia, but it precluded fine and delicate work."

  "Introduced by a previous visitor who will now return with the appropriate cure?"

  "And so earn gratitude and a foothold in a lucrative market." Nubar Kusche beamed his appreciation of Dumarest's quick grasp of the situation. "You betray a shrewd knowledge of human nature, my friend. An asset on any world. But let me answer your unspoken query-it was not I who introduced the ophthalmia."

  "But you know, who did?" Dumarest watched the bland, unchanging smile. "You have to know-or why be so certain those men are on a forlorn quest? Not that it matters. I'm not after miniatures."

  "Single pieces, then? If so I could guide you to certain favorable locations. The Weldach Village, for example. A long journey but, armed with the right goods and information, you could make a handsome profit."

  "And you a fat commission?"

  Kusche shrugged. "Why not? Surely you would not begrudge it? What have you to lose?"

  The expenses of the trip, the trade goods purchased, time, lost opportunities-Dumarest was no stranger to what Kusche proposed.

  He said, bluntly, "You're wasting your time."

  "Allow me to be the judge of that. You have great potential, my friend. I recognize it. What would you say if I offered to stake you? A partnership, Earl. You would be interested in that?"

  "It depends on the terms," said Dumarest. "I'd be interested in nothing less than for you to meet all costs. You provide the finance, I'll provide the labor and we split any profit made." He added, "One more thing-you hand over the money and I'll do all the shopping."

  Inflating the bills and retaining the discounts-a sure way to make a profit no matter what the outcome of the trip. Something Kusche recognized.

  "You are a hard man, my friend. The wine?"

  "A debt I shall remember."

  "Very hard." Nubar Kusche sighed and dabbed at his face with a square of embroidered silk. "Something I sensed on our first meeting, but a man must try. And no harm has been done." He smiled as he replaced the silk in a pocket. "A matter of practice and it is early days as yet. There will be others more interested in what I have to offer. And you?"

  Dumarest returned the smile, shaking his head.

  "A pity. We would make a good team, I think. If anything should come up and I should bump into you again-well, time enough for that when it happens. In the meantime there is work to be done." Kusche rose from the table and stood for a moment looking down into the street at the gaudy booths of the fair. "To deal," he said. "To trade. To lie a little in anticipation of the truth. The oldest profession, some say, though others would have it otherwise." He looked at a pavilion garish with phallic symbols which left no doubt as to the entertainment to be obtained inside. "Good luck, Earl."

  "And to you, Nubar."

  A genuine wish; Dumarest had no reason not to like the man. He was honest in his fashion and could not be blamed for what he was. An entrepreneur who was not too successful at the moment. His clothing showed telltale traces of wear, the rings he wore carried imitation gems, and he displayed a lack of judgment when selecting Dumarest as a potential victim. A mistake he had quickly realized but he had played the game to the end. A man with a stubborn streak and a sense of humor.

  As he left the table Carina Davaranch took his place.

  "A new friend, Earl?"

  She had left him the previous afternoon to go about her business and wore the same crimson dress she had then. He remembered it from Shard. Now, looking at her, he noted the lines of strain at the corners of her eyes, the tension of the muscles at lips and jaw. A tension which matched the tone of her voice.

  "A chance acquaintance," he said. "Some wine?" Kusche had left the bottle and a clean glass stood on a nearby table. Dumarest filled it and handed it to the woman.

  As she took it she said bitterly, "Why are men such bastards?"

  "Trouble?"

  "The usual. They will buy my work-if. If I am complaisant. If I agree to doubling their commission. If I'm willing to wait." She drank half the wine. "This place is a jungle."

  As were all worlds. Dumarest leaned back in his chair as he looked at her. Against the windows facing the balcony her reflection shone brightly gold and scarlet, the subtle touch of masculinity in her face and figure giving her an added depth of enigmatic attraction. Such a woman would be a challenge to every dealer she met-should they treat her as a normal female or regard her with the wary suspicion of a male?

  She said, "I've had enough of this place, Earl. When you ship out I want to come with you. I guess you'll be moving soon. Right?"

  There was no point in staying. Nisbet had known nothing more about the box than what Dumarest had learned and he'd gained more than the man was willing to tell. The folder had yielded only specifications, the printed sheet listing dates and the name of the agency handling the transaction. The Huag-Chi-Tsacowa-they had an office in town. From it Dumarest had learned that all cost-data were held in the computer of the depot on Brundel. Only they would know the name and whereabouts of the owner of the casket.

  Details he didn't mention. Instead, he said, "Why don't you stay here, Carina?"

  "I told you. I've had enough of this place. And we've been through that before. I'm a free agent and when I want to move then I damned well move." She drank the rest of her wine. "I can book passage on any vessel I choose."

  "If they're willing to take you."

  "I've money enough to make sure of that." She smiled, confident, then lost the smile as she saw his expression. "Earl?"

  "I've made my plans, Carina."

  "And they don't include me, is that it?" She blinked and swallowed to master her hurt. "Am I asking so much? All I want is to ride with you. To have some decent company on the jour
ney. I guess you could say I need a friend. Is that so hard to understand?"

  One journey leading to another, to more, the friend becoming a responsibility, a burden that he had no intention of bearing.

  He said, bluntly, "It ends here. Our association, I mean. I go my way and you go yours." He rose and stood looking down at her. "That's the way travelers are."

  "Yes." She took a deep breath then, smiling, rose to stand at his side. Chairs hampered movement and she stepped from the table to the open space before the line of windows. "You're right, Earl. I'm sorry-it's just that I've had too many hassles these past few hours. Well, let's forget it. But there's one thing I'd like to do before we part."

  "What?"

  She smiled again in answer and took his hand and led him to a space before a window. People moved around, some men, a bunch of women, youngsters staring at the displayed goods with sparkling eyes. Staring too at the dim shapes moving behind the darkened pane which held mirror-like reflections.

  Carina ignored them as she moved to stand between the window and Dumarest. In the pane he could see the sheen of her golden hair, the naked expanse of flesh between it and the top of her gown, the small bones of her spine, the hollow at the nape of her neck. Muscles shifted beneath her skin as she raised her hands to rest on his shoulders.

  "Kiss me, Earl. Before we part-kiss me!"

  For the first and last time. The golden helmet of her hair tilted as she turned her face upwards toward him. Her lips, pursed, were inches from his own.

  In the window something moved.

  The reflection of a man who stepped forward with sudden determination, his right hand lifted, metallic gleams coming from what he held.

  Dumarest saw him, recognized the danger and acted with instinctive speed, his reaction free of the hampering need of thought. As the glittering object neared the back of his neck he spun, the woman in his arms, the charge of the hypogun driving through her skin and fat into her blood as the man pressed the trigger. A shield Dumarest threw to one side as she slumped in his arms.