It was slippery and wet in the castle yard, like in a defrosted refrigerator. Kissur hadn't arrived yet. Old Elda was napping in an armchair in the upper hall. She looked at the nervous Earthman as she would look at a frog and said that the Earthman's iron cart would fall apart on the Earthmen's roads smooth like a eunuch's cheek before her son falls from a steep slope in the local mountains.
Bemish took off together with his nerves.
The young castle owner Ashidan, a Cambridge student, was passed out in the main hall having dropped his golden curls into a plate with leftovers. A bull mask with torches in place of horns bared its teeth above him and something smoldering in the fireplace under the mask produced a horrible smell; at a closer view it, appeared to be a hand phone remnants.
"What is it?" Bemish asked the majordomo.
"Lady Elda," he answered, "said that she didn't want any witchcraft objects in her house. She just found it in the morning having gone over the rooms."
Bemish looked Ashidan over more carefully. He slept shuddering nervously and he didn't appear to Bemish to be drunk.
"Aren't there any communication devices in the castle?"
"Oh," the servant said, "what communication are you talking about?! Look — even the cloth is homespun. She would burn anything else." And he pointed at his dress. Bemish felt his sleeve — it really was burlap. He hadn't understood that at first and thought in surprise that the servant had a very luxurious jacket — thick knotted cloth like this was fashionable this year.
Bemish didn't sleep at night and tossed; old pines squeaked behind a narrow window, designed to shoot out from not to look out of, and their squeaking branches made sounds like a hanged man's rope. Bemish pulled an antenna out of a small radio and started listening. Suddenly while he was searching for a station, he heard his name and a long string of words spitted out in Alom — Bemish didn't make them out through the noise. Bemish turned the dial again but the conversation had ended. "Hmm," Bemish thought, "Somebody in this castle hid a transmitter away from old Elda."
In the morning Bemish left for the village. He didn't really want to complain to old Elda that his iron cart fell apart on the road that even a ram would pass through in a snowstorm and he was also sure that the castle inhabitants knew as much about cars as he knew about divination on oil. Bemish walked down a fresh road passing boysenberry fences and curious chicken, thinking about this strange area where a phone in a house was a luxury and an assault rifle was a necessary tool.
He reached the car and stopped in surprise.
The car stood at the same place and the busted wheel still hunched in the rut. The other three wheels had disappeared in an unknown direction — the lonesome car sank on its axles. The wipers were gone off the windshield and the windshield was also gone. Bemish's eyes traveled into the car — radio, head supports, rugs, handles and all five windows beside the windshield had carefully packed up and left. An untouched first aid kit sat in the back seat.
Bemish walked around the car and opened the trunk. There was nothing inside except for a pair of old worn out bark sandals. Bemish was surprised at first because he didn't have a habit of wearing bark sandals but then he realized that the thief probably put Bemish's leather boots on and left the bark sandals there. With gloomy anticipation, Bemish raised the hood and gazed at the engine. Bemish was quite familiar with the car's design. He immediately realized that the night thieves were much more familiar with this design.
Bemish looked around — geese and turkey with red snot surrounded him and the same rocket launcher old guy was digging cabbage in his garden. He didn't have the rocket launcher next to him, probably thanks to the daylight.
"Hey," Bemish said.
The old guy turned around. He wore a shirt that used to be white in its youth and the pants that nobody would be able to say anything about.
"Come here," Bemish said. The old guy approached. Further into the garden, his son hoed the ground mechanically without looking around. Bemish waved the bark sandals and extended them over the fence.
"Do you know," Bemish said, "Who owns these?"
The old man took the sandals and fished out a ten dinar note that Bemish had pushed down the toe earlier. He rolled the note and stuck it behind his ear and handed the sandals back to Bemish.
"I don't know," he said.
Bemish lost his speech.
He looked at himself suddenly with the peasant's eyes. He looked at a well dressed alien coming out of the world that all the people, who worked well and obeyed the authorities, would go to after death — and he looked at this half bare destitute village where no phones existed but news about a car that could be stripped spread quickly without the phone, where no toilets existed but mortars were available, and everybody knew everything but would say nothing about his neighbors — and he realized with utter clarity that even if the night adepts had stripped the car in the view of the whole village and it probably had happened this way, not all the police in the world would be able to find out who had done this.
Wheels rustled on the road.
"What's the problem?"
Bemish turned around. Behind him in a sport car, turquoise and narrow like an orchid petal, Kissur's brother, Ashidan sat. A perfect shirt, a precise hairdo, the smell of cologne — a starting manager and a Cambridge graduate — Bemish felt his world pleasantly coming back to him.
Terence Bemish sardonically raised the bark footwear.
"Here," he said, "somebody decided to exchange transportation means with me."
But Ashidan had figured it out already. He got out of the car, opened the passenger's door and bowed to Bemish inviting him into the car. Bemish got in. The peasant watched them with frightened eyes.
"Hey," Ashidan shouted to the guy in the garden, "come here!" The peasant approached.
"Get in the car," Ashidan told the guy.
Bemish stretched to open a door.
"Get in the trunk," Ashidan added, looking in disgust at the guy's bare and dirty feet. "Ah, well, you may change your clothing."
The guy ran to the house. Bemish regained his speech.
"Why do you think," Bemish asked, "that he stripped the car? It could be anybody…"
"If," Ashidan said in an even voice, "a crime is committed in a village and the criminal is not apprehended, the lord should arrest several village inhabitants and keep them as hostages till they die or till the others deliver the guilty party."
Bemish stared at Ashidan with wide opened eyes. The charming boy — and he was a very beautiful lad — looked very much like a successful manager. "In this voice his ancestors spoke generation after generation," Bemish thought, "It looks like progress here is characterized by the lord putting a peasant in a car's trunk instead of tying him to a horse's tail."
"This man," Ashidan said, pointing at Bemish, "is a named brother of my brother and a guest of my ancestors. My brother is coming today — the servants brought news that he got stuck at the Trekking Pass and took a detour via Lokh."
The peasant dropped to his knees.
"Master!" it was unclear whether he addressed Ashidan or the alien.
The peasant's son walked out of the house in clean white clothing with a satchel in his hand. A ten-year-old boy accompanied him.
"Master," the oldster continued, "take the younger one, we have so much work now!"
Ashidan thoughtfully tapped the leather steering wheel.
"Our ancestor's guest," he said, "had a bad dream that somebody robbed his car. I had this dream, too, and I hurried here. But now it seems to me that it was a false dream and that the car, complete and unharmed, will return to the castle by the evening."