Woudiver hulked himself within and lay groaning in a heap. Anacho started the vehicle and they departed the oval plaza.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THEY DROVE TO the shed. The technicians, in the absence of Deine Zarre, had not reported for work. The shed felt dead and abandoned; the space-boat, which had seemed on the verge of coming alive, lay desolate on its chocks.
The three marshaled Woudiver within, as they might lead a cantankerous bull, and tied him between two posts, Woudiver making a continual moaning complaint.
Reith watched him a moment. Woudiver was not yet expendable. Certainly he was still dangerous. For all his display and expostulation, he watched Reith with a clever and hard gaze.
"Woudiver," said Reith, "you have worked great harm upon me and my friends."
Woudiver's great body became racked with sobbing; he seemed a monstrous and ugly baby. "You plan to torment me, and kill me."
"The thought has presented itself," Reith admitted. "But I have more urgent desires. To finish the ship and return to Earth with news of this hellish planet I would even forgo the pleasure of your death."
"In that case," said Woudiver, suddenly businesslike, "all is as before. Pay over the money, and we will proceed."
Reith's jaw hung in disbelief. He laughed in admiration for Woudiver's wonderful insouciance.
Anacho and Traz were less amused. Anacho poked the great belly with a stick.
"What of last night?" he demanded in a suave voice. "Do you recall your conduct?
What of the electric probes, and the wicked harness?"
"What of Deine Zarre, the two children?" spoke Traz.
Woudiver looked appealingly toward Reith. "Whose words carry weight?"
Reith chose his words carefully. "All of us have cause for resentment. You would be a fool to expect ease and conviviality."
"Indeed, he shall suffer," said Traz through gritted teeth.
"You shall live," said Reith, "but only to serve our interests. I don't care a bice for your life unless you make yourself useful."
Again in Woudiver's eyes Reith discerned a cold and crafty glint. "So it shall be," said Woudiver.
"I want you to hire a competent replacement for Deine Zarre, at once."
"Expensive, expensive," said Woudiver. "We were lucky in Zarre."
"The responsibility for his absence is yours," said Reith.
"No one goes through life without making mistakes," Woudiver admitted. "This was one of mine. But I know just the man. He will come high, I warn you."
"Money is no object," said Reith. "We want the best. Secondly, I want you to summon the technicians back to work. All by telephone, of course."
"No difficulties whatever," declared Woudiver heartily. "The work will proceed with dispatch."
"You must arrange immediate delivery of the materials and supplies yet needed.
And you must pay all costs and salaries incurred henceforth."
"What?" roared Woudiver.
"Further," said Reith, "you will remain tied between those posts. For your sustenance you must pay a thousand-or better, two thousand sequins each day."
"What!" cried Woudiver. "Do you think to cheat and bewilder poor Woudiver?"
"Do you agree to the conditions?" Reith asked. "If not I will ask Anacho and Traz to kill you, and both of them bear you grudges."
Woudiver drew himself to his full height. "I agree," he said in a stately voice.
"And now, since it seems that I must sponsor your hallucinations and suffer the backbreaking expense in the bargain, let us instantly get to work. The moment I see you vanish into space will be a happy one, I assure you! Now then, release these chains so that I may go to the telephone."
"Stay where you are," said Reith. "We will bring the telephone to you. And now, where is your money!"
"You can't be serious," Woudiver exclaimed.
THE PHUME
CHAPTER ONE
IN THE WAREHOUSE at the edge of the Sivishe salt flats, Aila Woudiver sat perched on a stool. A chain connected the iron collar around his neck to a high cable; he could walk from his table to the closet against the wall where he slept, the chain sliding behind him.
Aila Woudiver was a prisoner on his own premises, insult added to injury, which by all accounts should have provoked him to spasms of tooth-chattering fury. But he sat placidly on the stool, great buttocks sagging to either side like saddlebags, wearing an absurd smile of saintly forbearance.
Beside the spaceship which occupied the greater part of the warehouse Adam Reith stood watching. Woudiver's abnegation was more unsettling than rage. Reith hoped that whatever schemes Woudiver was hatching would not mature too quickly. The spaceship was nearly operative; in a week, more or less, Reith hoped to depart old Tschai.
Woudiver occupied himself with tat-work, now and then holding it up to admire the pattern-the very essence of patient affability. Traz, coming into the warehouse, scowled toward Woudiver and asserted the philosophy of the Emblem nomads, his forebears: "Kill him this moment; kill him and have an end!"
Reith gave an equivocal grunt. "He's chained by the neck; he does us no harm."
"He'll find a means. Have you forgotten his tricks?"
"I can't kill him in cold blood."
Traz gave a croak of disgust and stamped from the warehouse. Anacho the Dirdirman declared, "For once I agree with the young steppe-runner: kill the great beast!"
Woudiver, divining the substance of the conversation, displayed his gentle smile. He had lost weight, so Reith noticed. The once-bloated cheeks hung in wattles; the great upper lip drooped like a beak over the pointed little chin.
"See him smirk!" hissed Anacho. "If he could he'd boil us in nerve-fire! Kill him now!"
Reith made another sound of moderation. "In a week we'll be gone. What can he do, chained and helpless?"
"He is Woudiver!"
"Even so, we can't slaughter him like an animal."
Anacho threw up his hands and followed Traz outside the warehouse. Reith went into the ship and for a few minutes watched the technicians. They worked at the exquisitely delicate job of balancing the power pumps. Reith could offer no assistance. Dirdir technology, like the Dirdir psyche, was beyond his comprehension. Both derived from intuitive certainties, or so he suspected; there was little evidence of purposeful rationality in any aspect of Dirdir existence.
Long shafts of brown light slanted through the high windows; the time was almost sunset. Woudiver thoughtfully put aside his fancy-work. He gave Reith a companionable nod and went off to his little room against the wall, the chain dragging behind him in a rattling halfcatenary.
The technicians emerged from the ship as did Fio Haro the master mechanic. All went off to their supper. Reith touched the unlovely hull, pressing his hands against the steel, as if he could not credit its reality. A week-then space and return to Earth! The prospect seemed a dream; Earth had become the world remote and bizarre.
Reith went to the larder for a chunk of black sausage, which he took to the doorway. Carina 4269, low in the sky, bathed the salt flats in ale colored light, projecting long shadows behind every tussock.
The two black figures which of late had appeared at sunset were nowhere to be seen.
The view held a certain mournful beauty. To the north the city of Sivishe was a crumble of old masonry tinted tawny by the slanting sunlight. West across Ajzan Sound stood the spires of the Dirdir city Hei and, looming above all, the Glass Box.