"Where are the nodes usually found?"
"Anywhere within the Carabas. There is no rule, no system of discovery. Where many folk seek, nodes are naturally few."
"Then why not choose a less popular entry?"
"Maust is popular because it is most convenient."
Reith looked ahead toward the yet unseen coast of Kislovan and the unknown future. "What if we use none of these entries, but some point in between?"
"What is there to gain? The Zone is the same from any direction."
"There must be some way to minimize risks and maximize gains."
Anacho shook his head in disparagement. "You are a strange and obstinate man!
Isn't this attitude a form of arrogance?"
"No," said Reith. "I don't think so."
"How," argued Anacho, "should you succeed with such facility where others have failed?"
Reith grinned. "It's not arrogant to wonder why they failed."
"One of the Dirdir virtues is zs'hanh," said Anacho. "It means 'contemptuous indifference to the activity of others.' There are twenty-eight castes of Dirdir, which I will not enumerate, and four castes of Dirdirmen: the Immaculates, the Intensives, the Estranes, the Cluts. Zs'hanh is reckoned an attribute of the fourth through the thirteenth Dirdir grades. The Immaculates also practice zs'hanh. It is a noble doctrine."
Reith shook his head in wonder. "How have the Dirdir managed to create and coordinate a technical civilization? In such a welter of conflicting wills-"
"You misunderstand," said Anacho in his most nasal voice. "The situation is more complex. To rise in caste a Dirdir must be accepted into the next highest group.
He wins acceptance by his achievements, not by causing conflicts. Zs'hanh is not always appropriate to the lower castes, nor for the very highest, which use the doctrine of pn'hanh: 'corrosive or metal-bursting sagacity.' "
"I must belong in a high caste," said Reith. "I intend to use pn'hanh rather than zs'hanh. I want to exploit every possible advantage and avoid every risk."
Reith, looking sidewise at the long sour face, chuckled to himself. He wants to point out that my caste is too low for such affectations, thought Reith, but he knows that I'll laugh at him.
The sun sank with unnatural deliberation, its rate of decline slowed by the westward progress of the sky-car. Toward the end of the afternoon a gray-violet bulk rose above the horizon, to meet the disc of the pale brown sun. This was the island, Leume, close under the continent of Kislovan.
Anacho turned the sky-car somewhat to the north and landed at a dingy village on the sandy north cape. The three spent the night at the Glass Blower's Inn, a structure contrived of bottles and jugs discarded by the shops at the sand-pits behind the town. The inn was dank and permeated with a peculiar acrid odor; the evening meal of soup, served in heavy green glass tureens, evinced something of the same flavor. Reith remarked on the similarity to Anacho, who summoned the Gray* servant and put a haughty question. The servant indicated a large black insect darting across the floor. "The skarats do indeed be pungent creatures, and exhale a chife. Bevol made a plague on us, until we put them to use and found them nutritious. Now we hardly capture enough."
Reith long had been careful never to make inquiry regarding foods set before him, but now he looked askance into the tureen. "You mean ... the soup?"
"Indeed," declared the servant. "The soup, the bread, the pickles: all be skarat-flavored, and if we did not use them of purpose, they'd infest us to the same effect, so we make a virtue of convenience, and think to enjoy the taste."
Reith drew back from the soup. Traz ate stolidly. Anacho gave a petulant sniff and also ate. It occurred to Reith that never on Tschai had he noticed squeamishness. He heaved a deep sigh, and since no other food was forthcoming, swallowed the rancid soup.
In the dim brown morning breakfast was again soup, with a garnish of sea vegetables. The three departed immediately after, flying northwest across Leume Gulf and the stony wastes of Kislovan.
Anacho, usually nerveless, now became edgy, searching the sky, peering down at the ground, scrutinizing the knobs and bubbles, the patches of brown fur and vermilion velvet, the quivering mirrors which served as instruments. "We approach the Dirdir realm," he said. "We will veer north to the First Sea, then bear west to Khorai, where we must leave the sky-car and travel the Zoga'ar zum Fulkash am* to Maust. Then ... the Carabas."
CHAPTER FIVE
OVER THE GREAT Stone Desert flew the sky-car, parallel to the black and red peaks of the Zopal Range, over parched dust-flats, fields of broken rock, dunes of dark pink sand, a single oasis surrounded by plumes of white smoke-tree.
Late in the afternoon a windstorm drove lion-colored rolls of dust across the landscape, submerging Carina 4269 in murk. Anacho swung the sky-car north.
Presently a black-blue line on the horizon indicated the First Sea.
Anacho immediately landed the sky-car upon the barrens, some ten miles short of the sea.
"Khorai is yet hours ahead; best not to arrive after dark. The Khors are a suspicious folk, and flourish their knives at a harsh word. At night they strike without provocation."
"These are the folk who will guard our sky-car?"
"What thief would be mad enough to trouble the Khors?"
Reith looked around the waste. "I prefer supper at the Glass Blower's Inn to nothing whatever."
"Ha!" said Anacho. "In the Carabas you will recall the silence and peace of this night with longing."
The three bedded themselves down into the sand. The night was dark and brilliantly clear. Directly overhead burned the constellation Clari, within which, unseen to the eye, glimmered the Sun. Would he ever again see Earth?
Reith wondered. How often then would he lie under the night sky looking up into Argo Navis for the invisible brown sun Carina 4269 and its dim planet Tschai?
A flicker inside the sky-car attracted his attention: he went to look and found a mesh of orange lines wavering across the radar screen.
Five minutes later it disappeared, leaving Reith with a sense of chill and desolation.
In the morning the sun rose at the edge of the flat plain in a sky uncharacteristically clear and transparent, so that each small irregularity, each pebble, left a long black shadow. Taking the sky-car into the air, Anacho flew low to the ground; he too had noticed the orange flicker of the night before. The waste became less forbidding: clumps of stunted smoke-tree appeared, and presently black dendron and bladderbush.
They reached the First Sea and swung west, following the shoreline. They passed over villages: huddles of dull brown brick with conical roofs of black iron, beside copses of enormous dyan trees, which Anacho declared to be sacred groves.
Rickety piers like dead centipedes sprawled out into the dark water; double-ended boats of black wood were drawn up the beach. Looking through the scanscope Reith noted men and women with mustard-yellow skins. They wore black gowns and tall black hats; as the sky-car passed over they looked up without friendliness.
"Khors," stated Anacho. "Strange folk with secret ways. They are different by day and by night-at least this is the report. Each individual owns two souls which come and go with dawn and sunset, so that each is two different persons.
Peculiar tales are told." He pointed ahead. "Notice the shore, where it draws back into a funnel."
Reith, looking in the direction indicated, saw one of the now familiar dyan copses and a huddle of dull brown huts with black iron roofs. From a small compound a road led south over the rolling hills toward the Carabas.