Reith pursed his lips, frowning at this reminder of a stormy past, while Alicia's classic features revealed only her rigid self-control. "It's a long story; I'll tell you sometime. Meanwhile, what about quarters? The lady requires a private room."
" 'Twill cost you fifty karda the night, sir, counting the stabling for your beasts."
"Your price has risen," said Reith.
"Aye, so it hath. With this new paper money His Awesomeness in Hershid doth issue, all prices have soared."
Reith shrugged; Cosmic Productions would pay. After a wearisome day on the road, all were glad to retire after dinner. In the hall upstairs, Reith glimpsed Ordway in low-voiced conversation at Alicia's door. Then Alicia entered her room and closed the door in a marked manner.
Reith guessed that Ordway had renewed his importunities. Turning into his own room, Reith was fighting down his rising wrath when Ordway called: "I say! Reith! Fergus!"
"Yes?"
"May I speak to you for half a mo'?"
"What is it?"
Coming close, Ordway spoke softly. "About Alicia: first, I've been watching you two. I'd wager that you and she, although old acquaintances, aren't lovers. Am I right?"
"Gods of Krishna, what a question! Now look here—"
"I know; you're going to tell me it's none of my damned business. But it is in a way. You see, old boy, I love her, too."
"Indeed?"
"Rather! Been jolly well smashed on the sheila since I first met her in Montecito. I might even ask her to marry me, if it weren't that I may still have a wife kicking around somewhere."
"And what," said Reith with ice in his voice, "has that got to do with me?"
"Well, you see—ah—I thought that you, knowing her from way back, might be able to tell me what brings her round. Might even put in a good word for me. I can guarantee her a first-class roll in the hay. Ask any of the gels I've rogered if I don't give satisfaction. I can also help her to a career in Montecito. So, how can I get her to give it a try?"
Reith stared poker-faced. At last he said: "I can tell you one thing: if she says no, she means it. No blustering or wheedling will get you anywhere; and if you try any rough stuff, she might kill or cripple you. She knows how."
Ordway stared at the floor. "But Goddamn it, man, I'm so bloody horny it's driving me crackers!"
"Ask Asteratun if his barmaid will entertain a straight commercial proposal. He knows a little English. Good night!" Reith closed his own door sharply behind him.
As setting Roqir touched the gilded onion domes of Rosid with crimson, Reith's party wound through the crooked streets, the carriage wheels bumping over cobblestones. Krishnans crowded the roadway; some walked, some pushed along on scooters, some rode or drove the planet's saddle and draft animals.
When Reith signed his party in a Khenamos's Inn, Ordway said: "I say, Fergus, two days on these dusty roads have put a layer of dirt on me you could plow and plant. I was brought up to take a bath once a week whether I needed it or not."
"When we're settled," said Reith, "we'll walk to the bathhouse."
The bathhouse door, identified by the ornate shell of some marine organism, bore a placard with several words in a curly script. As they took their places in a shuffling line of patrons, White asked: "Fergus, what does the sign say?"
" 'Genuine soap,' " Reith translated. "Soap making is one of the few bits of Terran technology the Interplanetary Council has allowed into Krishna."
"Do you mean," asked White, "that they're trying to keep these people stuck in the Middle Ages, for fear they'll learn too much and blow up their planet?"
"That's the idea. But in practice, the Krishnans either smuggle in the technology they want or invent things themselves." As the bathhouse proprietor waved Reith's party in, Reith said in Gozashtandou: "Hail, good Master Himmash! How goes your business?"
"Well enough," said the stout Krishnan who stood behind the counter, handing out towels and collecting fees. In a lower voice he added: "Were't not for this new rule His Altitude would foist upon me, I had no complaint ... what rule?"
"He ordains that I shall divide my establishment into two, sundered by a wall, and admit males only to one pool and females to t'other. 'Tis said those Terran holy ones who infest the court have persuaded him to their ninnyish alien notions of modesty. How many Ertsuma bring ye this time?"
"Just these three." Reith dug out a small silver coin, then led his party into a locker room crowded with Krishnans of both sexes and all stages of undress. All were talking at once in their rolling, rhythmic speech, punctuated by oratorical gestures. The pungent Krishnan body odor saturated the air.
Reith spoke to an attendant, who handed him four keys on necklaces of string. As he distributed keys to White and Ordway, he said, pointing: "Yours are numbers nine and twenty-four. Just match the squiggles on the keys with those on the doors of your lockers, and be sure to lock up all your gear."
Ordway, who had been staring bemused at the Krishnans, began in an absentminded way to strip. White, looking appalled, said: "Fergus, I can't! If it was just men—I mean, males of both species;—but..."
"Do you want a bath or not?" rasped Reith, wrestling off one of Alicia's boots. "That's how we get clean on this world."
"Oh, no!" said White. "It's just too indecent for someone with my strict, Conservative Jewish upbringing ..."
"What ails your Terran?" said Himmash, who had poked his head and antennae into the locker-room doorway. "Doth he suffer some Ertso infirmity?"
"In a way," said Reith. "His religion forbids him to undress in mixed company."
"We can easily remedy that," said the bathhouse proprietor as he bustled away. Returning with a large square of cloth with a hole in the middle, he continued:
"There's a cult in the distant North that have a similar rule. I keep this sheet for the seldom-seen patron from those purlieus." He deftly lowered the sheet over White.
When Reith and Alicia had stowed their clothes, they turned to see Ordway, sitting on a bench with a forgotten sock in his hand, staring goggle-eyed at Alicia. Reith scowled like a berserker until Ordway looked away.
"Come on!" he said calmly. "We'll miss dinner if we don't hop along."
He chivvied his Terrans down a hall past several small chambers. In one, four mature Krishnans, three males and a female, sat around a small pool smoking cigars. Reith caught a sentence about a rise in the price of tunest. In the next room, a virile young Krishnan grunted as he heaved a barbell aloft. In the next, a masseur was busily slapping and thumping his voluntary victim.
The travelers emerged into a room containing a row of basins full of soapy water. A pair of Krishnan attendants slathered the bathers with suds, using spongelike objects, which were a land of fungus. Being old Krishnan hands, Reith and Alicia turned slowly to present all sides to be lathered. Ordway submitted uneasily to this ritual, while White huddled unhappily in his sheet until an attendant handed him a fungus and let him soap himself beneath the flapping poncho.
Clad from neck to foot in a thick layer of suds, Reith and Alicia led the way to the next room. From a large pool of water, plumes of vapor rose like indolent ghosts. The pool was full of Krishnans, standing, floating, or resting against the walls of the tank in torpid ecstasy.
"Ouch!" said Ordway, inching his way down the marble steps. "Any hotter and you could jolly well serve me up for dinner." White gingerly followed, his sheet billowing out around him.