The three returned to the Alawan. In the foyer a single chandelier exuded the light of a hundred sullen jewels, which lost itself in the shadows, with only a colored gleam here and there on the dark wood. The refectory was also dim, occupied by a few murmuring groups. From an urn they drew bowls of pepper-tea and settled themselves in a booth.
Traz spoke in a disgruntled voice: "This place is insane: Maust and the Carabas together. We should leave and seek wealth in some normal manner."
Anacho gave an airy wave of white fingers and spoke in a didactic and fluting voice: "Maust is merely an aspect of the interplay between men and money, and must be viewed on this basis."
"Must you always talk gibberish?" demanded Traz. "To gain sequins either in Maust or in the Zone is a gamble, at poor odds. I do not care to gamble."
"As far as I am concerned," said Reith, "I plan to gain sequins, but I do not intend to gamble."
"Impossible!" Anacho declared. "In Maust you gamble with sequins; in the Zone you gamble with your life. How can you avoid doing so?"
"I can try to reduce the odds to a tolerable level."
"Everyone hopes to do the same. But Dirdir fires burn nightly across the Carabas, and at Maust the shopkeepers earn more than most sequin-takers."
"Taking sequins is uncertain and slow," said Reith. "I prefer sequins already gathered."
Anacho pursed his lips in quizzical calculation. "You plan to rob the sequin-gatherers? The process is risky."
Reith looked up at the ceiling. How could Anacho still misread the processes of his mind? "I plan to rob no sequin-takers."
"Then I am puzzled," said Anacho. "Whom do you intend to rob?"
Reith spoke with care. "While we watched the hunting game, I began to wonder: when Dirdir kill a taker, what happens to his sequins?"
Anacho gave his fingers a bored flutter. "The sequins are booty; what else?"
"Consider a typical Dirdir hunt-party: how long will it remain in the Zone?"
"Three to six days. Grand hunts and commemoratives are longer; competition hunts are somewhat less extended."
"And, in a day, how many kills will a typical party make?"
Anacho considered. "Each hunter naturally hopes for a trophy each day out. The usual well-seasoned party kills two or three times each day, sometimes more.
They waste much meat, necessarily."
"So that the typical hunting party returns to Khusz with sequins from as many as twenty takers."
Anacho said curtly, "So it might be."
"The average taker carries sequins to the value of, let us say, five hundred.
Hence each hunting party returns with a value of ten thousand sequins."
"Don't allow the calculation to excite you," Anacho remarked in the driest of voices. "The Dirdir are not a generous folk."
"The game-board, I take it, is an accurate representation of the Zone?"
Anacho gave a dour nod. "Reasonably so. Why do you ask?"
"Tomorrow I want to trace the hunt routes out from Khusz and back again. If the Dirdir come to the Carabas to hunt men, they can hardly protest if men hunt Dirdir."
"Who can imagine men hunting the Effulgents?" croaked Anacho.
"It's never been done before?"
"Never! Do gekkos hunt smur?"
"In this case we gain the benefit of surprise."
"No doubt of that!" declared Anacho. "But you must proceed without me; I will have none of it."
Traz choked back a guffaw; Anacho swung about. "What amuses you?"
"Your fear."
Anacho leaned back in his seat. "If you knew the Dirdir as I do, you would fear too."
"They are alive. Kill, they die."
"They are hard to kill. When they hunt, they use a separate region of their mind, what they call the 'Old State.' No man can stand against them. Reith's concept verges upon insanity."
"Tomorrow we'll study the hunt board again," said Reith in a soothing voice.
"Something may suggest itself."
CHAPTER SIX
THREE DAYS LATER, an hour before dawn, Reith, Traz and Anacho departed Maust.
Passing through the Portal of Gleams, they set out across the Foreland toward the Hills of Recall, black on the mottled dark brown and violet sky, ten miles to the south. Ahead and behind, a dozen other shapes ran half-crouched through the cool gloom. Some had burdened themselves with equipment: digging implements, graders, weapons, deodorizing ointment, face-stains, camouflage; others had no more than a sack, a knife, a wad of alimentary paste.
Carina 4269 shouldered up through the murk, and some of the takers, crawling into patches of scrub, concealed themselves under camouflage cloth, to await the coming of dusk before proceeding further. Others plunged ahead, anxious to reach the Boulder Patch, accepting the risk of interception. Stimulated by evidence of this riskashes mingled with burned bones and scraps of leather-Reith, Traz and Anacho accelerated their pace. Half-trotting, half-running they gained the haven of the Boulder Path, where Dirdir did not care to hunt, without untoward incident.
They put down their packs and stretched out to rest. Almost at once a pair of hulking figures drew near: men of no race identifiable to Reith, brown of skin with long tangled black hair and curly beards. They wore rags; they stank abominably and inspected the three with truculent assurance. "We are in command of these premises," groaned one in a guttural voice. "Your cost for respite is five sequins each; if you refuse we will thrust you into the open, and notice!
Dirdir stalk the northern ridge."
Anacho instantly leapt to his feet and with his shovel struck the speaker a great blow on the head. The second man swung his cudgel; Anacho cut up with his shovel blade, catching the man a maiming blow under the wrists. The cudgel flew aside; the man tottered back, looking in horror at his hands. They flapped under his wrists like a pair of empty gloves. Anacho said, "Go forth yourself to face the Dirdir." He jumped forward with shovel raised; the two shambled off into the rocks. Anacho watched them go. "We had better move."
The three took their packs and started away; almost as they did so a great chunk of rock flew down to smash into the ground. Traz jumped up on a boulder and fired his catapult, evoking a wail of distress.
The three took themselves a hundred yards south, somewhat up the slope from the Boulder Patch, where they commanded a view across the Forelands and yet could not easily be approached from the rear.
Settling back, Reith brought out his scanscope and studied the landscape. He discerned half a dozen furtive takers, and a band of Dirdir on a promontory to the east. For ten minutes the Dirdir stood immobile, then suddenly disappeared.
A moment later he picked them out again, moving with long lunging strides down the slope and out upon the Forelands.
During the afternoon, with no Dirdir in view, takers began to venture from the Boulder Patch. Reith, Traz and Anacho climbed the slope, making for the ridge as directly as caution permitted. They were alone now. Not a sound could be heard.
What with the need for stealth, progress was slow; sunset found them toiling up a gulch just below the ridge, and they came forth just in time to see the last corroded sliver of Carina 4269 fade from sight. To the south the ground sloped in long rolls and swales down to the Stage: rich ground for sequins, but highly dangerous owing to the proximity of Khusz, about ten miles to the south.
With twilight a curious mood, mixed of melancholy and horror, settled over the Carabas. In all directions, winking fires appeared, each with its macabre implication. Amazing, thought Reith, that men, for any inducement whatever, would enter such a place. No more than a quarter-mile distant a fire sprang into existence, and the three quickly crouched into the shadows. The pale shapes of the Dirdir were clear to the naked eye.