"Let's all go there tomorrow for a picnic," suggested Eileen Foley. "It's Sunday, and we can borrow the big V. I. rowboat."
Barnevelt and Tangaloa looked questioningly at one another.
"A good idea," said Castanhoso. "I cannot go, but it will give you two practice at being Krishnans. I suggest that Vizqash go along as your guide."
Barnevelt suspected that Castanhoso was politely urging them to get out of his hair, but saw no objections. When the details of the picnic had been settled, he let Vizqash sell him an undershirt of fine link mail, a rapier, and a dagger. Tangaloa balked at the sword.
"No!" he said. "I'm a civilized man and won't load myself down with primitive ironmongery. Besides, where we're going, if I can't talk us out of trouble it's unlikely we shall be able to fight our way out either."
"Anything else?" asked Vizqash. "I have some fine curios-charms in the form of the Balhibo god Bakh. You can wear them anywhere but Upper Gherra, where it's a capital offense. And Krishnan books: dictionaries, travel-books…"
"What's this?" inquired Barnevelt, untying the string that held together the two wooden covers between which a book, a single long strip of native paper, was folded zigzag. "Looks like a Mayan codex."
"A navigational guide published in Majbur," said Vizqash. "It has tables showing the motions of all three moons, the tides, the constellations, an almanac of lucky and unlucky days."
"I'll take it."
They paid, made a date with Miss Foley for a language lesson, and departed for the barber shop to receive their disguises.
CHAPTER V
In charge of the Viagens boathouse was a tailed man from the Koloft Swamps, hairy and monstrously ugly. Eileen Foley handed him a chit from Commandante Kennedy and inquired: "Any robbers on the Pichide lately, Yerevats?"
"No," said Yerevats. "Not since great battle. I there. Hit robber on head, like this…"
"He tells that story to everybody who'll listen," said Eileen Foley. "Let's take this boat."
She indicated a rowboat with semicircular hoops stuck in sockets in the thwarts, forming arches over the hull.
"Why not that one?" asked Tangaloa, pointing to a motor-boat.
"Good heavens, suppose it fell into the hands of the Krishnans! That's for emergencies only."
Barnevelt stepped into the boat and held out a hand to Miss Foley. Vizqash climbed in holding his scabbard. The boat settled markedly as Tangaloa added his weight to the load. Yerevats handed down the lunch basket, untied the painter, and pushed them out of their slip with a boathook.
As they emerged into the open, Tangaloa said: "While I'm no ringer on the local meteorology, I should hazard a conjecture that rain in the near fut…"
A crash of thunder drowned the rest of the sentence, and a patter of large drops made further comment unnecessary. Vizqash got a tarpaulin out of a compartment in the bow, and they wrestled it into place over the arches.
"The wettest summer since I was hatched," said the Krishnan.
Tangaloa said: "Whoever takes the tiller will get wet, I fear."
"Let Vizqash," said Barnevelt. "He knows the way."
Grumbling, the Krishnan wrapped himself in his cloak and took the tiller while the Earthmen unshipped the oars. Tangaloa took off the camera ring he was wearing and put it in his pocket. He said: "This reminds me of a picnic I attended in Australia."
"Is that a place on your planet?" asked Vizqash.
"Right-o. I spent some years there—went to school there in fact."
"Did it rain on this picnic too?"
"No, but they have ants in Australia: that long, with a sting at both ends…"
"What is an ant?"
By the time the Earthmen had explained ants, the rain had stopped and Roqir was again shining in a greenish sky crowded with deeply-banked clouds. They threw back the tarpaulin. The current had already carried them down the Pichide out of sight of the Novorecife boathouse. Presently they came to the end of the concrete wall that ran along the north bank of the river and protected Novorecife from surprise.
Tangaloa said: "Tell us about Qirib, Senhor Vizqash, since you come from there."
"Stay out of it," rasped Vizqash. "A—how do you say?— lousy country. The women's rule has ruined it. I escaped many years ago and don't intend to go back."
The terrain along the south bank became lower until all that could be seen between water and sky was a dark-green strip of reeds, with odd-looking Krishnan trees here and there.
"That's the Koloft Swamp, where Yerevats' wild relatives live," said Eileen Foley.
Tangaloa looked at his hands, as if fearing blisters, and said: "It will not be so easy rowing back upstream as down."
"We shall come back along the edge of the river, where the current is weak," said the Krishnan.
A V-shaped ripple, caused by some creature swimming under water, cut swiftly across their bow and disappeared in the distance.
Barnevelt asked: "Are we going all the way to Qou?"
"No," said Vizqash, "there is a landing on the south side before we reach Qou."
A pair of aqebats rose squawking from the reeds, circled on leathery wings to gain altitude, and flew away southward. Vizqash now and and then let go the tiller ropes to slap at small flying things.
"One nice thing," said Miss Foley, "the bugs don't bother us. Our smell must be different from poor Vizqash's."
"Maybe I should go to your planet, where they would not bother me either," said the sufferer. "I see our landing."
The reeds along the south side of the river had given place to low brown bluffs, two or three times the height of a man.
"How d'you tell time?" said Barnevelt. "Castanhoso wouldn't let us bring our watches."
Vizqash unclapsed a bracelet from his arm, clicked it shut again, and dangled it from a fine chain. "It is the ninth hour of the day lacking a quarter, or as you would say three-quarters of an hour past noon, though since your days and hours are different from ours I do not know what the exact equivalent would be. The sun shines through this little hole on these marks on the inside, as it did through the arrow slot in the haunted tower in the romance of Abbeq and Dangi. Perhaps I could sell you one of these back at Novorecife?"
"Perhaps" Barnevelt shipped his oars and hunkered forward.
A simple pier, made of a stockade of short logs with a gravel fill, extended out into the river at this point. Two other boats, of obvious Krishnan design, were tied to it with large padlocks. From the pier, a narrow dirt road ran back inland through a notch in the bluff. As the Viagens craft nosed in to shore, a couple of small scaly things slipped into the water with slight splashes.
When they had climbed out and secured the boat, Viz-qash led them up the road, which curved left towards Qou. Something roared in the distance, and the small animal noises, the rustlings and chirplings from the vegetation lining the road, stopped.
"It is all right," said Vizqash. "They seldom come this close to the village."
Barnevelt said: "Don't you wish you'd bought a sword now, George? Without mine I'd feel like a lawyer without his briefcase."
"With you and Vizqash to protect me I'm sweet enough. Here, you carry the basket."
Barnevelt took the basket, wishing he had the gall always to hand the heaviest burden to somebody else. The heat and the roughness of the path soon left them little breath for chatter.
Finally Vizqash said: "Here we are," and pushed through the shrubbery on the left side of the road.
They followed him. Since the country was of open savannah type, they found the going not too difficult.. After some minutes they came to an area like a terminal moraine, strewn with stones and boulders. As Barnevelt looked, he perceived that the stones were of unnaturally regular sizes and shapes and arranged in rows and patterns.