"Elsewhere, no regulations?"
The draymaster squinted at Reith across the impressive beak of his nose. "Why do you ask such questions?"
"I want to ride with you, to Dadiche and back."
"Impossible. You have no license."
"You will provide the license."
"I see. No doubt you are prepared to pay?"
"A reasonable sum. How much will you demand?"
"Ten sequins. Another five sequins for the license."
"Too much! Ten sequins for everything, or twelve if you drive where I bid you."
"Bah! Do you take me for a fool? You might bid me drive you out Fargon Peninsula."
"No risk of that. A short distance into Dadiche, to look at something which interests me."
"Done for fifteen sequins, no iota less."
"Oh, very well," said Reith. "But I'll expect you to provide me drayer's clothes."
"Very well, and I'll give you further instructions: carry none of your old metal; this retains a scent to alarm them. Throw off all your clothes, rub yourself in mire, and dry yourself with annel leaves, and chew annel to disguise your breath. And you must do this at once, for I load and leave in half an hour."
Reith did as he was bid, though his skin crawled at the clammy feel of the drayer's old garments, and the loose-brimmed old hat of wicker and felt. Emmink, as the drayer called himself, checked to make sure Reith carried no weapons, which were forbidden within the city. He pinned a plaque of white glass on Reith's shoulder. "This is the license. When you pass the gate, call out your number, like this: 'Eighty-six!' Then say no more and do not get down from the dray. If they smell you out for a stranger, I can do nothing to help, so do not look to me."
Reith, already uneasy, was not encouraged by the remarks.
The dray rumbled west toward the crumble of gray hills, carrying a cargo of reed-walker corpses, the yellow bills and staring dead eyes alternating with rows of yellow feet to form a macabre pattern.
Emmink was surly and uncommunicative, he showed no interest in the motive for Reith's visit and Reith, after several attempts at conversation, fell silent.
The dray ground up the road, the torque generators at each wheel spinning and groaning. They entered the pass which Emmink named Belbal Gap, and before them spread Dadiche: a scene of bizarre and somewhat menacing beauty. Reith's uneasiness became keener. Despite his soiled garments, he did not feel that he resembled the other drayers and could only hope that he smelled like a drayer.
What of Emmink? Would he prove dependable? Reith considered him surreptitiously: a dry wisp of a man, with skin the color of boiled leather, all nose and narrow forehead, his little mouth pinched together. A man like Anacho, like Traz, like himself, ultimately derived from the soil of Earth, mused Reith. How dilute now, how tenuous, was the terrestrial essence! Emmink had become a man of Tschai, his soul conditioned by the Tschai landscape, the amber sunlight, the gunmetal sky, the quiet rich colors. Reith cared to trust the loyalty of Emmink no farther than the length of his arm, if as far. Looking out over the extent of Dadiche, he asked, "Where do you discharge your cargo?"
Emmink delayed before answering, as if searching for a plausible reason to decline response. Grudgingly he said, "Wherever I get the best price. It might be North Market or River Market. It might be Bonte Bazaar."
"I see," said Reith. He pointed to the great white structure he had located the day before. "That building there: what is that?"
Emmink gave his narrow shoulders a twitch of disinterest. "It is none of my affair. I buy, transport, and sell; beyond that, I care nothing."
"I see ... Well, I want to drive past that building."
Emmink grunted. "It is to the side of my usual route."
"I don't care if it is. That's what I'm paying you for."
Emmink grunted again, and for a moment was silent. Then he said: "First to the North Market, to secure a quote on my corpses, then to the Bonte Bazaar. On the way I will pass the building."
They rolled down the hill, across a strip of barrens strewn with junk and refuse, then into a garden of feathery green shrubs and mottled black and green cycads. Ahead rose the wall surrounding Dadiche, a structure thirty feet high built of a brown glossy synthetic material. Through a gate passed drays from Pera submitting to scrutiny from a group of Chaschmen in purple pantaloons, gray shirts and tall conical hats of black felt. They carried sidearms and long thin rods, with which they prodded the loads of incoming drays. "What's the reason for that?" Reith asked, as the Chaschmen somewhat lackadaisically stabbed through the heaped cargo of the dray ahead.
"They prevent Green Chasch from stealing into the city. Forty years ago a hundred Green Chasch entered Dadiche hidden in cargo; there was a great slaughter before all the Green Chasch were killed. Oh, Blue Chasch and Green Chasch are bitter enemies! They love to see the other's blood!"
Reith asked, "What do I say if they ask me questions?"
Emmink shrugged. "That's your affair. If they ask me, I'll tell them you paid for transportation into Dadiche. Is it not the truth? Then you must tell your truth, if you dare ... Shout your number when I shout mine."
Reith gave a sour grin but said nothing.
The way was clear; Emmink drove up through the portal and stopped upon a red rectangle. "Forty-five," he bawled. "Eighty-six," yelled Reith. The Chaschmen stepped forward, thrust rods into the stack of reed-walker corpses while another walked around the dray: a stocky man with bandy legs, features crowded together at the bottom of his face, as chinless as Emmink but with a small snub nose, a lowering forehead rendered grotesque by the false scalp which rose into a cone six inches or more above his normal skull. His skin was leaden, tinged with blue which might have been cosmetic. His fingers were short and stubby, his feet broad. In Reith's opinion he deviated from the human form, as Reith knew it, considerably further than did Anacho the Dirdirman. The man glanced indifferently at Emmink and Reith, stepped back with a wave of his arm. Emmink pushed forward the power-arm and the dray lurched ahead into a wide avenue.
Emmink turned to Reith with a sour grin. "You're lucky none of the Blue Chasch captains were on hand. They'd have smelled you sweating. I could almost smell you. When a man is afraid he sweats. If you want to pass as a drayman, you'll need a cold-blooded disposition."
"That's asking a lot," said Reith. "I'll do my best."
Into Dadiche rolled the dray. Blue Chasch could be seen in their gardens, tending arbors, stirring stone troughs, moving quietly in the shadows surrounding their round-roofed villas. Occasionally Reith sensed odors from a garden or a trough: wafts tart, pungent, spicy, reeks of burnt amber, candied musk, anomalous ferments, disturbing by their uncertainty: were they repulsive or exquisitely delightful?
The road continued among the villas for a mile or two. The Blue Chasch put no store by what Reith considered a normal regard for privacy; and their villas seemed spaced without any concern for the road. Occasionally Chaschmen and Chaschwomen could be seen at menial or laborious tasks; seldom did Reith notice Chaschmen in the company of the Blue Chasch; always they worked separately, and when they were by chance in physical contiguity, each ignored the other as if he did not exist.
Emmink made no comments or observations. Reith expressed wonder at the apparent obliviousness of the Blue Chasch to the drays. Emmink gave a snort of bitter amusement. "Don't be fooled! If you think them vague, only try to slip off the dray and walk into one of the villas! You'd be pinned down in a trice, and conveyed to the gymnasium to demonstrate at their games. Ah, cunning, cunning, cunning! As cruel as they are ludicrous! Pitiless and sly! Have you heard of their trick with poor Phosfer Ajan the drayer? He stepped down from his dray to answer a call of nature: mad folly, of course. What could he expect but resentment? So Phosfer Ajan, with feet tied, was placed in a vat, with putrid foulness up to his chin. At the bottom was a valve. When the slime became too hot, Phosfer Ajan must dive to the bottom, turn the valve, whereupon the stink would become bitter cold, and Phosfer must dive and grope again, while slime singed and froze him by turns. Still, he persevered; he dived and groped stoically, and on the fourth day they allowed him to his dray, so that he might bear his tale back to Pera. As may be adduced, they fit the game to the occasion, and a more resourceful set of humorists has never been known." Emmink turned to Reith his calculating glance. "What offense do you plan against them?