"An Osirian!" said Barnevelt. "And a male from his wattle. Jeepers, I didn't expect to see one of those here."
Tangaloa shrugged. "There are quite a few on Earth. Not a bad lot, though tending towards hypomania: impulsive and excitable."
"I've seen them, but I don't know any. I once took a girl who was deathly scared of snakes to see Ingrid Demitriou in Lust Incorporated, and when the lights went on an Osirian was sitting next to her and she fainted."
"They are mostly harmless," said Tangaloa, "but if you ever get in an argument with one, don't let him look you in the eye, or he will have you under pseudohypnosis before you can say 'thalamus.' Unless you are wearing a silver skullcap next to your scalp."
"Say, George, d'you suppose that's our roommate?" Barnevelt caught the waiter's eye and beckoned.
The servitor approached and murmured: "Seeing that you're Nyamen, my lords, perchance you'd like a brazier of nyomnige; we have a secluded alcove for the purpose…"
"No thanks," said Barnevelt, not sure what nameless vice the waiter was trying to tempt him into. "Who's the^ fellow with the tail?"
"That's Sishen, who dwells here," said the waiter. "A generous tipper, for all his horrid form."
"Well, let's hope the species is honest. When will our chow by ready?"
The Osirian made it plain that the gulf that divided intelligent beings with tails from those without was one not easily crossed. After filing his order in a shrill whistling accent that the cook could hardly understand, he squatted in a corner facing the wall, his tail lying along the floor out into the room, and he looked up nervously every time somebody walked near. The waiter brought him his drink in a special vessel like a large oil-can.
Barnevelt, glancing in the other direction, said: "Oh-oh, if there are ghosts around, this would seem to be it. At least he's haunting us."
It was the whiskered ancient with the box-camera. He had been speaking to the man in the mask and now came over to the Earthmen, quavering: "Pictures, my lords? Magic pictures?"
"Let's give the old sundowner a break," said Tangaloa. "The swindle-sheet will stand it." He turned to the photographer. "How soon can you deliver prints?"
"Tomorrow morn, good my lord. I'll toil and swink all night…"
Barnevelt felt like objecting, for several reasons. But he held his peace, not wishing always to be cast in the role of penurious fussbudget by his colleague's easygoing ways. Besides, it was a chance to see what Earthly pioneers in photography like Daguerre and Steichen had had to go through.
The photographer spent some minutes focussing, moving first one leg of the tripod and then another. Then he got out a little tray with a handle protruding from the center of its lower surface and a ball of string. He cut off a length of the string arid caught one end of the piece under a little cleat on the upper surface of the tray.
Then he brought out a phial from which he sprinkled on the tray a yellow powder like that which Vizqash had extracted from the pods at the start of the abortive picnic. He stoppered and put away the phial, still holding the tray by its handle so that its powdered surface remained level. Then he brought out a flint-and-steel lighter, which he snapped against the dangling end of the string until the latter caught and sizzled. It was a fuze.
"Hold ye still, noble sirs," he said, reaching around to the front of the camera and flipping a switch.
The old man stepped back, holding the tray over his head. The fuze burned with little spitting sounds, the flame running up the string and over the edge of the tray out of sight.
Foomp!
A bright flash lit up the room, and a mushroom of thick yellow smoke boiled up from the tray. As the photographer reached around the camera and again flipped the shutter-switch, a clatter drew eyes down the room to where Sishen the Osirian had leaped to his feet in startlement and upset his drinking-vessel.
The Osirian took two long steps towards the photographer who, peering up, seemed to see the creature for the first time.
"Iya!" howled the old man. Snatching up tray and camera, he rushed from the tavern.
"Now wherefore did he thus?" asked Sishen. "I did but mean to ask him if he would take one of me as well, and off he goes as though Dupulan were hard upon his trail. These Krishnans are difficult folk to fathom. Well, sirs, be you my new roommates? For by your shaven polls I do perceive you are Nyamen, and Angur has but now advised me that I'd share my quarters with such this night."
"It seems so," said Barnevelt.
"Yes? Then let us hope you come not in twixt midnight and morn, in riotous mood to rouse me from my rest. We'll meet again, fair sirs."
As the Osirian returned to his place, Barnevelt said: "It occurs to me old Wiskers might be another janru man."
"You're too suspicious," said Tangaloa. "It's as Castanhoso told us: Everthing out of the ordinary gets blamed… Look, here comes our fish-faced friend with the bad manners."
CHAPTER X
The tall Sir Gavao er-Gargan was pushing his way in. He spotted the Earthmen and approached with a cry of: "What-ho, O Nyamen! As a reward for the due deference you've shown my rank, I permit you to eat with me," And he flung himself down. "Waiter!" he boomed. "A cup of burhen, and sprackly! Where's our Mejrou man? The parcel-carrier?"
"Haven't seen him," said Barnevelt, and to the waiter: "The same for us."
"Ah well, small loss. An ignorant wight, crediting the myths of magic powers of the accursed Earthmen. I, now, am emancipate from superstitious follies, in which I do include all talk of gods, ghosts, witches, and powers thaumaturgic. All's governed by unbending laws of nature, even the damned Terrestrials."
He stuck a finger in his drink, flicked a drop to the floor, muttered a minor incantation, and drank.
Barnevelt said in English: "Watch this guy. He's up to no good."
"What say you?" barked Gavao.
Barnevelt answered: "I spoke my native language, warning Tagde against such incautious over-indulgence as cost us dear in Hershid."
'Tis the first I ever heard of hardened mercenaries counting costs with such unwarlike clerkly caution, but 'tis your affair. At whom do you stare so fixedly, fat one?"
Tangaloa looked around with a grin. "The little dancer over there. Either my old eyes deceive me, or she's giving me the high-sign."
Barnevelt looked in the direction indicated. Sure enough, there sat the dancer, still wrapped in her meters of gauze.
"This bears looking into," said Tangaloa. "You order dessert for me, D—Snyol."
"Hey…" said Barnevelt weakly. While he did not like to see Tangaloa headed for some escapade, he knew George would be hard to stop. Therefore he sat still and unhappily watched Tangaloa's broad back recede into the shadows in pursuit of the dancer, in temper amourous as the first of May.
"Ao, here comes the singer!" said Gavao, pointing.
" 'Tis Pari bab-Horaj, well-known along the Sadabao Coast for her imitations. I mind me of the time I was in an Inn in Hershid with a singer, a dancer, and a female acrobat, and in order to decide…" and Gavao was off on another of his Paphian anecdotes.
A young female Krishnan with the bluish hair of the western races had dragged in a stool of intricate workmanship and now seated herself upon it. Her costume consisted of a square of thin purple stuff, a little over a meter on a side, wrapped under one armpit and fastened with a jewelled clasp over the opposite shoulder. She carried an instrument something like an Earthly child's toy xylophone and a little hammer to strike it with.
She seated herself on the stool with the instrument in her lap and cracked a couple of jokes which caused many to make the gobbling sounds that passed here for laughter, though between the dialect and the speed of her speech Barnevelt could not understand them. (He lived in dread of running into a real Nyame who would insist on conversing with him in the difficult Nyami language.)