"Why not? It is a city which even Dirdirmen visit from time to time. If you have money anything is for sale in Coad."
"A spaceship?"
"Hardly ... It seems that you persist in your obsession."
Reith laughed. "Call it whatever you like."
"I admit to perplexity," Anacho went on. "The likeliest explanation, and one which I urge you to accept, is that you are amnesiac, and have subconsciously fabricated a fable to account for your own existence. Which of course you fervently believe to be true."
"Reasonable," Reith agreed.
"One or two odd circumstances remain," Anacho continued thoughtfully. "The remarkable devices you carry: your electronic telescope, your energy-weapon, other oddments. I cannot identify the workmanship, though it is equivalent to that of good Dirdir equipment. I suppose it to be home-planet Wankh; am I correct?"
"As an amnesiac, how would I know?"
Anacho gave a wry chuckle. "And you still intend to go to Cath?"
"Of course. What about you?"
Anacho shrugged. "One place is as good as another, from my point of view. But I doubt if you realize what awaits you in Cath."
"I know nothing of Cath," said Reith, "other than what I have heard. The people are apparently civilized."
Anacho gave a patronizing shrug. "They are Yao: a fervent race addicted to ritual and extravaganza, prone to excesses of temperament. You may find the intricacies of Cath society difficult to cope with."
Reith frowned. "I hope it won't be necessary. The girl has vouched for her father's gratitude, which should simplify matters."
"Formally the gratitude will exist. I am sure of this."
"'Formally'? Not actually?"
"The fact that you and the girl have formed an erotic accommodation is of course a complication."
Reith smiled sourly. "The 'erotic accommodation' has long since run its course."
He looked back toward the deck-house. "Frankly, I don't understand the girl. She actually seems disturbed by the prospect of returning home."
Anacho peered through the dark. "Are you so naive? Clearly she dreads the moment when she must sponsor the three of us before the society of Cath. She would be overjoyed if you sent her home alone."
Reith gave a bitter laugh. "At Pera she sang a different tune. She begged that we return to Cath."
"Then the possibility was remote. Now she must deal with reality."
"But this is absurdity! Traz is as he is. You are a Dirdirman, for which you are not to blame-"
"No difficulties in either of these cases," stated the Dirdirman with an elegant flourish of the fingers. "Our roles are immutable. Your case is different; and it might be best for all if you sent the girl home on a cog."
Reith stood looking out over the sea of moonlit treetops. The opinion, assuming its validity, was far from lucid, and also presented a dilemma. To avoid Cath was to relinquish his best possibility of building a spaceboat. The only alternative then would be to steal a spaceship, from the Dirdir, or Wankh, or, least appealing of all, from the Blue Chasch: all in all, a nerve-tingling prospect. Reith asked, "Why should I be less acceptable than you or Traz?
Because of the 'erotic accommodation'?"
"Naturally not. The Yao concern themselves with systematics rather than deeds. I am surprised to find you so undiscerning."
"Blame it on my amnesia," said Reith.
Anacho shrugged. "In the first place-possibly due to your 'amnesia' you have no quality, no role, no place in the Cath 'round.' As a nondescript, you constitute a distraction, a zizylbeast in a ballroom. Secondly, and more poignant, is your point of view, which is not fashionable in contemporary Cath."
"By this you mean my 'obsession'?"
"Unfortunately," said Anacho, "it is similar to an hysteria which distinguished a previous cycle of the 'round.' A hundred and fifty years* ago, a coterie of Dirdirmen were expelled from the academies at Eliasir and Anismna for the crime of promulgating fantasy. They brought their espousements to Cath, and stimulated a tendentious vogue: the Society of Yearning Refluxives, or the 'cult.' The articles of faith defied established fact. It was asserted that all men, Dirdirmen and sub-men alike, were immigrants from a far planet in the constellation Clari: a paradise where the hopes of humanity have been realized.
Enthusiasm for the 'cult' galvanized Cath; a radio transmitter was constructed and signals were projected toward Clari. Somewhere, the activity was resented; someone launched torpedoes which devastated Settra and Ballisidre. The Dirdir are commonly held responsible, but this is absurd; why should they trouble themselves? I assure you that they are much too distant, too uninterested.
"Regardless of agency, the deed was done. Settra and Ballisidre were laid low, the 'cult' was discredited; the Dirdirmen were expelled; the 'round' swung back to orthodoxy. Now even to mention the 'cult' is considered vulgarity, and so we arrive at your case. Clearly you have encountered and assimilated 'cult' dogma; it now manifests itself in your attitudes, your acts, your goals. You seem unable to distinguish fact from fancy. To speak bluntly, you are so disoriented in this regard as to suggest psychic disorder."
Reith closed his mouth on a wild laugh; it would only reinforce Anacho's doubts as to his sanity. A dozen remarks rose to his tongue; he restrained them all. At last he said, "All else aside, I appreciate your candor."
"Not at all," said the Dirdirman serenely. "I imagine that I have clarified the nature of the girl's apprehension."
The Dirdirman blinked up at the pink moon Az. "So long as she was outside the
'round' at Pera and elsewhere, she made sympathetic allowances. But now return to Cath is imminent..." He said no more, and presently went to his couch in the saloon.
Reith went to the forward pulpit under the great bow lantern. A cool draft of air fanned his face; the raft drifted idly about the treetop. From the ground came a furtive crackle of footsteps. Reith listened; they halted, then resumed and diminished off under the trees. Reith looked up into the sky where pink Az, blue Braz careened. He looked back at the deck-house where slept his comrades: a boy of the Emblem nomads, a clown-faced man evolved toward a race of gaunt aliens; a beautiful girl of the Yao, who thought him mad. Below sounded a new pad of footsteps. Perhaps he was mad indeed ...
By morning Reith had recovered his equanimity, and was even able to find grotesque humor in the situation. No good reason to change his plans suggested itself, and the sky-raft limped south as before. The forest dwindled to scrub, and gave way to isolated plantings and cattle-runs, field huts, lookout towers against the approach of nomads, an occasional rutted road. The raft displayed an ever more aggravated instability, with an annoying tendency for the stern to sag. At mid-morning a range of low hills loomed ahead, and the raft refused to climb the few hundred feet necessary to clear the ridge. By the sheerest luck a cleft appeared through which the raft wobbled with ten feet to spare.
Ahead lay the Dwan Zher and Coad: a compact town with a look of settled antiquity. The houses were built of weathered timber, with enormous high-peaked roofs and a multitude of skew gables, eccentric ridges, dormers, tall chimneys.
A dozen ships rode to moorings; as many more were docked across from a row of factors' offices. At the north of town was the caravan terminus, beside a large compound surrounded by hostelries, taverns, warehouses. The compound seemed a convenient spot to set down the raft; Reith doubted if it could have held itself in the air another ten miles.
The raft dropped stern first; the repulsors gave a labored whine and went silent with a meaningful finality. "That's that," said Reith. "I'm glad we've arrived."