"Naturally."
Master Farra, a tall, weather-beaten Krishnan who scratched a lot, asked: "Whence come ye, Master Kavir? From Malayer in the far South? Both your accent and your face suggest it—no offense, of course. I can see ye're a man of quality, so we're delighted to have you sit with us. Well?"
"My parents came from there," said Hasselborg cautiously.
Qam, a small dried-up man with his hair faded to jade, said: "And whither now? To Rosid for the game?"
"I'm headed for Rosid," said Hasselborg, "but as to this game—"
"What's news from Novorecife?" said Qam.
"What are the Ertsuma up to now?" said Farra. (He meant Earthmen.)
"Is it true they're all of one sex?"
"Be ye married?"
"Has the dasht had any more woman trouble?"
"What's this about Haste's niece at Rosid?"
"What do ye for a living?"
"Like ye to hunt?"
"Are ye related to any of the folk of Rüz?"
"What think ye the weather'll be tomorrow?"
Hasselborg parried or evaded the questions as best he could, until the sight of the landlord with a wooden platter afforded him relief. The relief proved short, however, for the ambar turned out to be some sort of arthropod, something like a gigantic cockroach the size of a lobster, half buried under other ambiguous objects and an oily sauce that had been poured over all. His appetite, ravenous a minute before, collapsed like a punctured balloon.
Evidently the local people ate the thing without qualms, and with these jayhawkers staring at him he'd have to do likewise. He gingerly broke off one of the creature's legs and attacked it with one of the little eating spears. He finally gouged out a pale gob of muscle, braced himself, and inserted the meat into his mouth. Not quite nasty; neither was it good. In fact it had little taste, so the general effect was like chewing on a piece of old inner tube. He sighed and settled down to a dismal meal. Although he had had to eat strange things in the course of his career, Victor Hasselborg remained in his tastes a conservative North American with a preference for steaks and pies.
The innkeeper had meanwhile set down a dish of what looked like spaghetti and a mug of colorless liquid. The liquid proved both hot and alcoholic. Hasselborg's conditioned revulsion almost brought up his gorge, but he steeled himself and gulped.
The "spaghetti" was the worst trial, proving to be a mass of white worms, which wriggled when poked. Nobody at Novorecife had asked him to eat a dish of live worms with chopsticks. Cursing Yussuf Batruni and his addlepated daughter under his breath, he wound up half a dozen of the creatures in a bunch on the sticks. However, when he raised them toward his mouth, they sloomped back into the dish.
Luckily, Qam and Farra were arguing some point of astrology and failed to notice. The former, Hasselborg observed, also had a dish of worms, now reduced to a few survivors who twitched pathetically from time to time. Hasselborg concentrated on the insect and its accessories, gloomily thinking of the billions of bacteria he was forcing into his system, until Qam picked up his dish and shoveled the rest of the worms from the edge with his spears into his mouth. Hasselborg followed suit, only mildly comforted by the knowledge that the germs of one planet seldom found an organism from another a congenial host. Outside, the rain hissed on the flat roofs.
When the main course was over, the innkeeper set a big yellow fruit before him. Not bad, he thought.
He wiped his mouth and asked: "Did either of you see a man who went through here toward Rosid about ten ten-nights ago?"
"No," said Qam. "I wasn't here. What sort of man?"
"About my height, but less heavy, with a dark-skinned girl. They looked like this." Hasselborg brought the pencil drawings out of his wallet.
"No, nor I either," said Farra. "Asteratun, have ye seen such people?"
"Not I," said the innkeeper. "Somebody run off with your girl, Master Kavir? Eh?"
"My money," corrected Hasselborg. "I paint for a living, and this rascal took a portrait I'd made of him and went away with out paying. If I catch him—" Hasselborg slapped the hilt of his rapier in what he hoped was the correct swashbuckling manner.
The others giggled. Qam said: "And ye be for Rosid to paint more pictures in hope ye'll be paid this time?"
"That's the general idea. I have introductions."
Farra, scratching his midriff, said: "I hope ye've better luck than that troubadour fellow last year."
"What was that?"
"Oh, the dasht became convinced the man was a spy from Mikardand. No reason, y' understand; only that our good Jam mortally fears spies and assassins. So, ye see, the poor lute-plucker ended up by being eaten at the games."
Hasselborg gulped, mind racing. There had been something in his indoctrination about the public spectacles of certain Krishnan nations on the Roman model.
He drank the rest of the liquor, which was making his head buzz. He'd better locate a good lawyer in Rosid before he began snooping. Of course he was a lawyer too, but not in Krishnan law. And a lawyer might not be of much avail in a land where a feudal lord had what in European medieval law was called the high justice and could have you killed on his say-so.
"Excuse me," he said, pushing his stool back. "After a day's ride—"
"Certainly, certainly, good sir," said Qam. "Will you be back for supper?"
"I think not."
"Then I hope you leave not too early in the morning, for I should like to ask you more questions of far places."
"We'll see," said Hasselborg. "The stars give you a good night."
"Oh, Master Kavir," said Farra, "Asteratun gives us the second bed to the right at the head of the stairs. Take the middle, and Qam and I will creep in on the sides later. We'll try not to rouse you."
Hasselborg almost jumped out of his skin as he digested this information. Whatever was making Farra scratch, the thought of spending a night in the same bed with it filled the investigator with horror. He took Asteratun aside, saying:
"Look here, chum, I paid for a bed, not a third of a bed."
The innkeeper began to protest but, by a lengthy argument, a claim of insomnia, and an extra quarter-kard, Hasselborg got a bed to himself.
Next morning, Hasselborg was up long before his fellow guests, not yet being used to the slower rotation of this world. Breakfast consisted of flat doughy cakes and bits of something that appeared to be meat; organs from an organism, no doubt, but that was all you could say for them.
He washed down a handful of pills, wrapped himself in his cloak, and sallied forth into the drizzle. Faroun looked hurt at being hitched up and driven forth into the rain. He kept peering back at Hasselborg with an indignant expression, balked, and had to be stung with the buggy whip to make him go.
In thinking over the evening's conversation, it struck Hasselborg that Qam's questions had been unnecessarily pointed, as if designed to unmask one who was not what he seemed. Hasselborg wondered if the lamented troubadour, too, had had a letter of introduction.
That reflection started another train of thought:
How about those quotations from Shakespeare with which Gois liked to show off his culture? Wasn't there a place in Hamlet where somebody gave somebody else a letter of introduction that actually contained instructions to kill the bearer forthwith?
Hasselborg suddenly wanted earnestly to know what was in that carefully sealed letter to the Dasht of Rüz. When he reached Rosid—
The drizzle stopped, and the sun threw a yellow beam down from time to time between great bulks of cloud. Hasselborg rolled a grimly appreciative eye at them. Whatever fate awaited him, at least he might this time avoid catching his death of cold.
He drove hard to make his destination in plenty of time to find himself a safe roost. About noon Krishnan time he pulled up, dismounted, hitched his animal to a bush, and sat on a convenient boulder. As he ate the lunch Asteratun's cook had put up for him, he swept his eye over the gently rolling terrain with its shrubby vegetation. Small flying things buzzed around him, and a creeping thing something like a land crab scuttled past his feet. A group of six-legged animals fed on the crown of a distant rise.