"Pun dessoi!" called the gatekeeper.
The expressman got up and shouldered his parcel sack, and the Earthmen picked up their duffel bag and birdcage. So Earth was a depraved and unwholesome planet, eh? thought Barnevelt, amused and patriotically irked at the same time. Unfortunately he was in no position to start waving the checkered World Federation flag.
The train consisted of five little four-wheeled carriages: two flatcars heaped with goods and three passenger cars that looked like converted stagecoaches, running on a track of about one-meter gage. The locomotive was a bishtar, hitched to the leading car by a rope harness. The beast stood, swinging its two trunks, switching its tail, and swivelling its trumpet-like ears.
The rearmost car was occupied by a noisy family comprising a small male, a large female, three young, and one of the portable incubators in which Krishnans carried their un-hatched eggs. To avoid the woman's chatter, Barnevelt and Tangaloa and their new acquaintance took the foremost car.
When all the waiting passengers were stowed, the mahout on the bishtar's neck blew a little trumpet and whacked his beast with his goad. The links between the cars clanked as the slack was taken up, and the car occupied by the Earth-men started with a jerk. They clicked over switch points and rolled past a bishtar moving cars on an adjoining track, so close that Barnevelt, had he been so rash, could have reached out and touched one of its six columnar legs.
They rolled out of the yard, along a right-of-way between building lots, and finally out on to one of Majbur's main streets, down whose middle ran two tracks. Presently they passed a local headed in the opposite direction and standing at an intersection to discharge passengers.
Other Krishnans swarmed the street, some on scooters, some on short six-legged ayas or tall four-legged shomals, and some in carriages. A team of six ay a pulled a great double-decked contraption, evidently a public omnibus. At a main intersection an official-looking Krishnan in a helmet directed traffic with a sword, which he waved with such verve that Barnevelt half expected to see him slice an ear from some passing pedestrian.
Barnevelt quoted: "New things and old co-twisted, as if time were nothing."
Gradually the traffic thinned and the houses got smaller. The railroad left the middle of the street for its own right-of-way again, and a branch line curved off to the right, up-river. The city turned to suburbs, and then houses alternating with cultivated plots. The two tracks became one, and they were in open country. Once they stopped to let the frontier guards of the Republic of Mikardand, men in Moorish-looking armor, look them over and wave them through.
The ride was uneventful, save when they stopped at a nameless hamlet to water the bishtar and let the passengers eat a snack and otherwise care for their comfort, and the oldest child of the noisy family aft stealthily uncoupled the rearmost car, so that when the train started up it was left standing with the fat woman screeching louder than Philo. The train halted and the male passengers pushed the abandoned car along the track until its connection with the train was reestablished, the conductor all the while calling upon Qondyor, Dashmok, Bakh, and other deities to destroy the young culprit in some lingering and humorous manner.
The expressman explained why he merely showed a pass instead of presenting a ticket: The Mejrou Qurardena had an arrangement with all the main transportation media like the railroad to carry its couriers on credit and then bill the express company for mileage.
CHAPTER VIII
They stopped the first night at Yantr, where a train going the other way was standing on a siding to let them by; and the next night at another village. At the end of the third day they reached Qa'la, where they again came in sight of the waves of the Sadabao Sea. The climate was noticeably warmer, and they began to see people dressed in Qiribo fashion, in wrap-around kilts and blanketlike mantles.
Next morning they were taking their places in the train when a deep voice said: "Be this seat occupied?"
A tall young Krishnan with a face like a fish dressed much like themselves but more expensively, climbed aboard. Without waiting for an answer he kicked the Earthmen's duffel-bag off the empty seat it occupied and tossed his own bag on the rack above that seat. Then he unfastened his scabbard and leaned it in the corner, and sat down on the crosswise seat facing the Earthmen.
Another would-be passenger, looking through the cars for a choice seat, put his head into the one where Barnevelt sat.
"All filled!" barked the new arrival, though there was obviously room for one more. The passenger went away.
Barnevelt felt himself grow cold inside. He was about to say: "Pick that up!" and enforce his command, if need be, by tearing the young man limb from limb, when Tangaloa's musical voice spoke up: "Do my senses deceive me, or are we honored with the companionship of one of rank?"
Barnevelt stole a quick look at his companion, whose round brown face showed nothing but amiable interest. Where xenological investigations were concerned, George could take as detached and impersonal an attitude towards Krishnans as if they were microorganisms under his microscope. Their amiabilities and insolences were alike mere interesting data, not touching his human emotions in the least. In that respect, thought Barnevelt, George was one up on him, for he tended to react emotionally to the stimuli they presented.
"A mere garm," replied the youth briefly, but in a slightly less belligerent tone. "Sir Gavao er-Gargan. Who be you?"
"Tagde of Vyutr," said Tangaloa, "and this is my trusty companion in many a tight predicament, answers to Snyol of Pleshch."
"The Snyol of Pleshch?" said Sir Gavao. "While I've no use for foreigners, the Nyamen are well spoken of, save that they bathe less often than is meet for folk of culture."
"It's a cold country, sir," said Tangaloa.
"That could be the way of it. As 'tis, I must spend a ten-night amongst these effeminate Qiribuma, who let their women rule 'em. Be you bound thither also?"
The expressman said "Aye."
Barnevelt wondered at the phrase "The Snyol of Pleshch"; he thought he'd heard it from Gorbovast, too. When Cas-tanhoso had bestowed the nom-de-guerre upon him, he had assumed that it was that of some ancient gloop. If the authentic Snyol were still about, the consequences might, to put it mildly, be embarrassing.
"Have a cigar?" he said. "Where do you come from?"
"Balhib," said Sir Gavao. He drew on the cigar, looked at it with distaste, and threw it away. He then got out a jeweled case, took out and lit one of his own and put the case away. Barnevelt gritted his teeth, trying to take George's detached view.
Tangaloa purred: "Balhib, eh? Do you know anything about a survey of the kingdom ordered by the king?"
"Not I."
"We heard a most fascinating tale about that land," continued the xenologist. "Something to do with the king's beard."
"Oh, that!" Gavao's face cracked in its first smile. " 'Twas indeed a saucy piece of ropery, that this Sir What's-his-name from Mikardand did commit. Were't not that the Republic outweighs us five to one, there would have been robustious war betwixt us. Serves old Kir right for being so free with dirty foreigners."
"How did Sir Shurgez get close enough to the king?" asked Barnevelt.
"By a crafty cautel. He came disguised as an expressman like our friend here, saying he bore a package marked for i special personal delivery, to be yielded only on signature of a receipt by His Altitude himself."
Tis nothing special," said the expressman, "but our routine procedure, to avoid suits for non-delivery of parcels."