"We cannot wait so long! We must be at Fasm for business of great importance."
"I assure you, old mother, that I will deliver you to your seminary with all the expedition possible."
"Not fast enough! You must take us on at once!" This was the hoarse expostulation of the other, the burly slab-cheeked woman Reith had seen previously.
"Impossible, I fear," said Baojian briskly. "Was there anything else you wished to discuss?"
The women swung away without response and went to a table beside the wall.
Reith could not restrain his curiosity. "Who are they?"
"Priestesses of the Female Mystery. Do you not know the cult? They are ubiquitous. What part of Tschai is your home?"
"A place far away," said Reith. "Who is the young woman they keep in a cage?
Likewise a priestess?"
Baojian rose to his feet. "She is a slave, from Charchan, or so I suppose. They take her to Fasm for their triennial rites. It is nothing to me. I am a caravaneer; I ply between Coad on the Dwan to Tosthanag on the Schanizade Ocean.
Whom I convoy, where, to what purpose-" He gave a shrug, a purse of the lips.
"Priestess or slave, Dirdirman, nomad or unclassified hybrid: it's all the same to me." He gave them a cool grin and departed.
The three returned to their table.
Anacho inspected Reith with a thoughtful frown. "Curious, curious indeed."
"What is curious?"
"Your strange equipment, as fine as Dirdir stuff. Your garments, of a cut unknown on Tschai. Your peculiar ignorance and your equally peculiar competence.
It almost might seem that you are what you claim to be: a man from a far world.
Absurd, of course."
"I made no such claim," said Reith.
"The boy did."
"The question, then, is between you and him." Reith turned to watch the priestesses, who brooded over bowls of soup. Now they were joined by two more priestesses, with the captive girl between them. The first two reported their conversation with the caravan-master with many grunts, jerks of the arms, sour glances over the shoulder. The girl sat dispiritedly, hands in her lap, until one of the priestesses prodded her and pointed to a bowl of soup, whereupon she listlessly began to eat. Reith could not take his eyes from her. She was a slave, he thought in sudden excitement; would the priestess sell? Almost certainly not. The girl of extraordinary beauty was destined for some extraordinary purpose. Reith sighed, turned his gaze elsewhere, and noticed that others-namely the Ilanths-were no less fascinated than himself. He saw them staring, tugging at their mustaches, muttering and laughing, with such lascivious jocularity that Reith became annoyed. Were they not aware that the girl faced a tragic destiny?
The priestesses rose to their feet. They stared truculently in all directions and led the girl from the room. For a time they marched back and forth across the compound, the girl walking to the side, occasionally being jerked into a trot when her steps lagged. The Ilanth scouts, coming out of the common-room, squatted on their heels by the wall of the caravansary. They had exchanged their war-hats with the human skulls for square berets of soft brown velvet, and each had pasted a vermilion beauty disc on his lemon-yellow cheek. They chewed on nuts, spitting the shells into the dirt and never taking their eyes from the girl. There was badinage between them, a sly challenge, and one rose to his feet. He sauntered across the compound and, accelerating his steps, came up behind the marching priestesses. He spoke to the girl, who looked at him blankly. The priestesses halted, swung about. The tall one raised her arm, forefinger pointed at the sky, and called out an angry reprimand. The Ilanth, grinning insolently, held his ground. He failed to notice the burly priestess who came up from the side and dealt him a vicious blow on the side of the head.
The Ranth tumbled to the compound, but leapt to his feet instantly, spitting curses. The priestess, grinning, moved forward; the Ilanth tried to strike her with his fist. She caught him in a bear hug, banged his head with her own, lifted him, bumped out her belly, propelled him away. Advancing, she kicked him, and the others joined her. The Ilanth, surrounded by priestesses, finally managed to crawl away and regain his feet. He shouted invective, spat in the first priestess's face, then, retreating swiftly, rejoined his hooting comrades.
The priestesses, with occasional glances toward the Ilanths, continued their pacing. The sun sank low, sending long shadows across the compound. Down from the hills came a group of ragged folk, somewhat undersized, with white skins, yellow-brown hair, clear sharp profiles, small slanting eyes. The men began to play on gongs, while the women performed a curious hopping dance, darting back and forth with the rapidity of insects. Wizened children, wearing only shawls, moved among the travelers with bowls, soliciting coins. Across the compound the travelers were airing blankets and shawls, hanging the squares of orange, yellow, rust and brown out to flap in the airs drifting down from the hills. The priestesses and the slave girl retired to their ironbound dray-house.
The sun set behind the hills. Dusk settled over the caravansary; the compound became quiet. Pale lights flickered from the dray-houses of the caravan. The steppes beyond the outcrops were dim, rimmed by plum-colored afterglow.
Reith ate a bowl of pungent goulash, a slab of coarse bread and a dish of preserves for his supper. Traz went to watch a gambling game; Anacho was nowhere to be seen. Reith went out into the compound, looked up at the stars. Somewhere among the unfamiliar constellations would be a faint and minuscule Cepheus, across the Sun from his present outlook. Cepheus, an undistinguished constellation, could never be identified by the naked eye. The Sun at 212 light-years would be invisible: a star of perhaps the tenth or twelfth magnitude. Somewhat depressed, Reith brought his gaze down from the sky.
The priestesses sat outside their dray, muttering together. Within the cage stood the slave girl. Drawn almost beyond his will, Reith circled the compound, came up behind the dray, looked into the cage. "Girl," he said. "Girl."
She turned and looked at him, but said nothing.
"Come over here," said Reith, "so that I can speak to you."
Slowly she crossed the cage to peer down at him.
"What do they do with you?" Reith asked.
"I don't know." Her voice was husky and soft. "They stole me from my home in Cath; they took me to the ship and put me in a cage."
"Why?"
"Because I am beautiful. Or so they say... Hush. They hear us talking. Hide."
Reith, feeling craven, dropped to his knees. The girl stood holding to the bars, looking from the cage. One of the priestesses came to look in the cage and, seeing nothing amiss, returned to her sisters.
The girl called softly down to Reith. "She is gone."
Reith rose to his feet, feeling somewhat foolish. "Do you want to be free of this cage?"
"Of course!" Her voice was almost indignant. "I don't want to be part of their rite! They hate me! Because they are so ugly!" She peered down at Reith, studied him in the flicker from a nearby window, "I saw you today," she said, "standing beside the track."
"Yes. I noticed you too."
She turned her head. "They come again. You had better go."
Reith moved away. From across the compound he watched the priestesses thrust the girl into the dray-house. Then he went into the common-room. For a period he watched the games. There was chess, played on a board of forty-nine squares with seven pieces to a side; a game played with a disc and small numbered chips, of great complication; several card games. A flask of beer stood by every hand; women of the hill tribes wandered through the room soliciting; there were several brawls of no great consequence. A man from the caravan brought forth a flute, another a lute, another drew sonorous bass tones from a long glass tube; the three played music which Reith found fascinating if only for the strangeness of its melodic structure. Traz and the Dirdirman had long gone to their chambers; Reith presently followed.