The day after they reached the seashore, they picked up the main caravan trail. They were running low on food. That presented no pressing difficulty, because the onion-mushrooms here were edible. One could live for a while on these. To go for long without other foods, however, caused tooth decay and other ills.
They also encountered a couple of caravans headed the other way. Each time, the people were so interested in the story of Zaki Riadhi’s raid that they entertained Marko and Halran with all the food and drink they could hold.
As they turned the northeast corner of the Medranian Sea, the terrain became greener. Sometimes there was a spatter of rain. Cultivation appeared, then villages inhabited by folk of mixed Arabi-Anglonian descent. They crossed the guarded border from Arabistan into the Republic of Anglonia. Marko had worried about his lack of passport, which he knew to be needed in Anglonia and Eropia. But Halran assured him that he could get him in on his own, by a simple endorsement, as his assistant. So it proved.
Marko knew little of Anglonia, save what the Vizantian geography textbooks said: “… mostly flat, but hilly in the northern parts … the people are friendly and gay, but shamless, frivolous, and unreliable … their children are spoiled … the principal exports are wheat, bron fiber, iron ore, pure-bred livestock, and ingenious mechanical devices… .” Therefore he looked about him with interest.
The Anglonians, he found, were a tall, handsome people. Many had blond hair and blue eyes. They also had a widespread tendency towards obesity. Most of them over twenty (Kforrian years) were fat and paunchy.
They did not seem exactly frivolous. At least they were not lazy. They worked and played with furious intensity. They loved speed, and their light carriages tore through crowded towns at full gallop. They were not merely friendly; they were impudently and insatiably curious. Every time Marko and Halran sat down in an eating place, the Anglonians crowded ~ around, introducing themselves. They asked the details of Marko’s past history, present occupation, and future prospects. They asked about his love life until he turned purple with embarrassment and pretended not to understand them.
When the Anglonians were not inquiring, they talked about themselves. Marko had never met such garrulous people. As far as he could tell, their main topics were food and sex, mostly loud boasts of their own prowess in both lines. Both sexes dressed gaudily, used perfume, and were given to public drunkenness and quarreling. Thinking them decadent, Marko at times preferred the dour dignity and cold reserve of his native land.
Halran suggested that Marko could avoid this friendly persecution by looking more like an Anglonian. Accordingly, Marko bought a pair of knitted trunk-hose like those of his comrade and retired his baggy trousers to his bag. The new pants embarrassed him by then” tightness, but the Anglonians paid less attention to him. He kept his boots, because he was used to them. Anyway, they looked much like Anglonian riding boots.
The hair had grown on Marko’s scalp and jaw during his journey. Instead of having his pate shaven but for the scalp lock, he had that lock cut off and left the rest as it was, in a short blond bristle like that of the Anglonians. He also began cultivating one of the mustaches affected by these folk. He bought a tobacco pipe and learned, with much coughing and spitting, to smoke it, instead of chewing plug like a Vizantian.
On the fourteenth of Newton, they stopped at an eating place in Kambra. Marko was just getting well into his meal when Halran squeezed his wrist and said:
“Do not look around, Marko, but get ready to pay your bill and go.”
“Huh?”
“Do as I say. I shall explain subsequently.”
Grumbling, Marko did as he was told. When they were on the road again, he asked Halran what had happened. Halran said:
“Did you not notice that trio of youths at the bar, staring at us?”
“I did in a vague sort of way. Why?”
“I could tell by their actions they were contemplating an assault upon us.”
“Oh? If they had, I should have simply knocked their heads together hard enough to crack them.”
“That is what I feared. If, in defending us, you had injured one of them, we should have at least been mobbed. If we survived, the law would have dealt severely with us.”
“Napoin! Why?”
“They were minors, and nobody is allowed to injure a minor in Anglonia.”
“So what?” snorted Marko. “All the more reason to knock their heads together, to teach them respect for their elders.”
“Do not let anybody hear you say that. Minors are sacred in Anglonia. They are not held responsible for their actions, but any harm done them is severely punished.”
“Sometimes,” said Marko, “Anglonians almost act like reasonable people, and at others like a race of lunatics. What’s the reasoning behind this worship of minors?”
“Why, you see, we believe that if a child or young person is thwarted or curbed hi any way, he will grow up into a sour, frustrated, mentally diseased adult. So they are allowed to do pretty much as they please, on the theory that they will thus work off all their anti social impulses before reaching their majority. That is why all adult Anglonians are so well adjusted.”
Marko spat in the dust.
On the eighteenth of Newton, Marko and his companion came to the seaport of Niok, which rose in graceful spires and crude blocks from the estuary of the Mizzipa River.
6
When Marko Prokopiu and Boert Halran got to Niok, Marko wanted to stop a few days to make sure that his intended victims were not there. Halran was anxious to push on to Lann, in order to complete his aerostatic experiment in tune for the philosophers’ convention. They agreed to split up. Halran kept the horse and the burden camel, paying Marko half the estimated value of the horse. He said:
“Goodbye, then. If you get to Lann, come and visit me.”
“I will, sir,” said Marko.
Halran rode off towing his burden camel, still swaying under the four great jars of stupa gum. Marko spent the rest of the day in the stock market. Thinking himself a poor bargainer, he was sure that the more wordly-wise Halran would have obtained a better deal.
Actually, Marko -was not so bad as he thought. His embarrassment over haggling caused him to put on a stiff, stony air. This, together with his monstrous brawn, gave traders the impression that he was more self-assured than he was. Eventually he traded the camel for a large horse and a few extra dlars.
He spent the next two days searching for Mongamri and his wife. The search took him through Niok’s endless rows of drink shops, brothels, and the dives of marwan addicts. Sometimes rough-looking characters stared threateningly or muttered at him, but they turned away on noting his ax and musculature.
Niokers, he found, were an even noisier species than ordinary Anglonians, much given to outbursts of rage over trivial matters. They would leap up and down like tersors on perches and scream threats and insults. The minute Marko put on his fighting face and reached for his ax, however, they found reason to go elsewhere.
A suspicious, discourteous, and truculent race with no sense of dignity, Marko thought. He was puzzled by their common expletive “Cop!” (pronounced something like “kyop” or “chop”) until he realized that it was the shrunken remnant, hi Niokese dialect, of the name of the goddess of love, Cleopatra, or as Vizantians pronounced it “Kliopat.” Also, despite the alleged sanctity of human life in Anglonia, he got used to the sight of the bodies of murdered men in the gutters.
On the other hand, the Niokers were perfectly willing, if Marko acted friendly towards them, to suggest a joint foray into vice or crime. It was, he supposed, their notion of doing a stranger a good turn.