Space Opera Part 6

Captain Gondar reflected a moment. "I'll be quite frank," he said. "You put matters on the basis of trust, but your demands for information make it clear that you do not trust me. This arouses in me a counter-distrust. You control a great deal of money which is rightfully mine, and this is leverage you exert upon me. I have information you want and this is my leverage upon you. You are asking me to give up my leverage, to put myself in your power, without making a corresponding concession."

Dame Isabel gave a puzzled little shake of her head. "What you say might be sensible on Earth - but out here, en route to Rlaru, what do you gain? Both Mr. Bickel and I are persons of honor; I can't imagine us - for the sake of argument - marooning you, or - to be really melodramatic - causing your death."

"Stranger things have happened," said Captain Gondar with his most saturnine smile.

Dame Isabel sniffed. "You are quite impossible, Captain Gondar."

"If we had criminal designs upon you," Bernard Bickel argued, "we could achieve them just as easily after we left Rlaru, after you took us there, as now. In fact, if we were the sort you believe us to be, we would make sure that you had given us accurate directions before putting you out of the way."

Captain Gondar shook his head. "Let's drop the subject. When the time comes, I hope that you in your turn will give me my money."

"I suppose we have no choice in the matter," said Dame Isabel stiffly.

"Now as to the matter of the planet I mentioned - I believe a visit to this planet would be highly rewarding."

"That well may be. Reverting once more to Rlaru, in what configurational sector does it lie?"

"In Cetus," said Captain Gondar with poor grace.

"Well then - a visit to this planet in Hydra would take us almost directly away from Rlaru. We would be forced to make a tedious detour. Am I not correct?"

Captain Gondar seemed almost obsequious. "A slight detour perhaps - but a very rewarding one. Indeed, I think it would be a great mistake to avoid the planet; the folk are quite humanoid - almost human, I would say -"

Bernard Bickel frowned. "In Hydra? I don't recall any such planet in Hydra."

Dame Isabel asked, "What is the source of your information?"

"An old explorer described it to me," said Gondar, again with the faintly bra.s.sy heartiness which previously had aroused Dame Isabel's suspicion. "Ever since, I have wanted to visit this planet."

"You must do so on some other occasion," said Dame Isabel decisively. "Our current itinerary is already established; we cannot jerk here and there about the galaxy to gratify a single person's whim. I am sorry, Captain Gondar."

Gondar turned on his heel, started for the door. Dame Isabel said to his back: "Kindly notify the astrogator that our immediate destination is Zade, the second planet of Phi Orionis."

When the door had slid shut behind Gondar, Bernard Bickel turned to Dame Isabel, his eyebrows arched, his blue eyes round in puzzlement. "Odd! Why in the name of all the lesser demons is Gondar so anxious to visit this particular world?"

Dame Isabel had already dismissed the matter from her mind. "It makes small difference, since we will not be doing so."

While Dame Isabel and Bernard Bickel conferred with Captain Gondar, Roger Wool, wandering aimlessly about the s.h.i.+p, pa.s.sed across the stage in Globe C. The musicians and singers had completed their daily rehearsals, but the stage still retained a memory of their presence: an exhalation of perfume, camphor, rosin, and valve-oil. A single dim light illuminated the stage, and sitting quietly on one of the stage-property chairs was Madoc Roswyn.

She saw Roger without change of expression. Roger slowly approached. He said, "I wish you'd tell me why you acted the way you did - told those terrible stories about me ... As if I'd ever force you to do anything against your will ..."

She made a flippant gesture. "It seemed a good thing at the time. You must recognize, Roger, that I am fickle and perverse: not at all the girl you thought I was."

"I can't escape the feeling that you were using me, but to what end I can't imagine ... Once I thought you were fond of me. If you were, if you still are - for heaven's sake tell me, and we'll clear up this terrible misunderstanding."

"There's no misunderstanding, Roger." Madoc Roswyn's voice was gentle, but absolutely toneless.

Roger looked at her a moment, then shook his head. "How can anyone so beautiful, so sensitive, so clever, be so faithless? I can't understand!"

"It's not necessary that you understand, Roger. Now run off and find your aunt. She has an errand for you."

Roger turned on his heel, departed the stage. Madoc Roswyn watched him go with no expression other than a peculiar pinched look which might have meant one of a dozen things.

Roger, continuing moodily around the s.h.i.+p, encountered his aunt in the corridor outside the saloon, where she had been listening to the complaints of Ada Francini, regarding certain odd sounds.

Dame Isabel's eye fell on Roger, and indeed there was an errand for him to perform.

"Roger, have you noticed a grating thumping sound in Globe D? It occurs at irregular intervals and seems to come from nowhere in particular."

"I hadn't noticed," said Roger dully.

"Miss Francini tells me that this sound is seriously disturbing the rest of the company. She said something about it to Captain Gondar, but he took very little interest."

"Somebody snoring?" asked Roger.

"I thought of that too, but Miss Francini says the sound is quite unlike a snore."

Again Roger stated that he had not noticed this particular sound.

"Well, I want you to find what causes it, and if the source is mechanical, call it to the attention of the Chief Technician."

Roger agreed to do his best, and slouched off toward Globe D. He knocked at the cubicle which Ephraim Zerner shared with Otto von Scheerup and inquired for particulars regarding the offensive noises.

Both Zerner and von Scheerup supplied information, though they were not in precise agreement. Ephraim Zerner mentioned a reedy whistling sound which occasionally accompanied the throbbing and rasping, while von Scheerup emphasized a "b.u.mping and booming, which together with the rattling and squealing creates a most fearful racket." The sound occurred unpredictably, at intervals of a day or two, persisting sometimes for two hours or even longer.

Roger made other inquiries among the company. Some were more troubled than others; everyone had his own definition as to the essential quality of the sound, though all agreed as to its painful nature.

Roger walked here and there around Globe D, but the disagreeable sound did not manifest itself. He spoke once more to Ada Francini and asked that she notify him the instant the noise started, whereupon he would make a more careful investigation.

Six hours later the occasion offered itself. Ada Francini sought out Roger, who, as good as his word, returned with her to Globe D. Ada Francini took him to her cabin, raised up her finger. "Listen!"

Roger listened. Distinctly he heard the sound in question. He was forced to admit that no one had described it incorrectly, for it comprised a whole variety of rasping, rattling, booming, b.u.mping, squealing, whining and throbbing noises. The sound seemed to come from the wall, from the air, from everywhere, from nowhere.

He stepped into the corridor and the sound became fainter. Carefully he maneuvered through the cabin and finally ascertained that the basic source of the sound was the air-conditioning duct. Putting his ear to the mesh, he listened for several minutes. Then he rose to his feet, dusted off his knees. "I have a notion as to what is causing the noise," he told Ada Francini, "but first I'd better check more extensively."

An hour later Dame Isabel found Roger sitting in the saloon playing solitaire. "Well, Roger?" she demanded. "What have you been doing? Miss Francini tells me that the rattling sound is worse than ever and furthermore she says that you know what causes it."

"Yes, I did manage to track it down," said Roger. "It comes from the crew's mess-hall in Globe E and travels by the air-duct into Globe D."

"Indeed! And what goes on in the crew's mess-hall to occasion such a clatter?"

"Well - it seems that certain members of the crew have formed a washboard band."

"A what?"

"A what?" inquired Bernard Bickel who had entered the saloon.

Roger explained as well as he could the instrumentation and rationale of the Tough Luck Jug Band, as the group was known in the mess-hall. When in full voice, there might be heard banjo, harmonica, washboard, kazoo, tub-ba.s.s, jug, and occasionally a nose-flute.

Dame Isabel sat with an expression of utter disbelief. "But why in the world should the crew want to create this pandemonium? A group of children in high spirits will beat on pots and pans -"

"They play various tunes," said Roger. "It's actually rather lively."

"What nonsense," said Dame Isabel. "Bernard, have you ever heard the like?"

Bernard Bickel shook his head in disparagement. "Whatever they call the racket, we can't have it disturbing everybody aboard."

"Please see to it, Bernard. My word, what will they think of next?"

s.p.a.ce, that dark emptiness which when related to a system of stars seems almost as palpable as an ocean separating a group of islands, pa.s.sed astern - if emptiness can be said to do anything whatsoever. And yet, something pa.s.sed astern, for Sirius receded and Phi Orionis approached, and in order to achieve this effect, a significant process evidently was underway. Roger, wandering through the saloon, picked up a book and read a trifle of speculation from the pen of the eminent cosmologist Dennis Kertesz: "Infinity is a fascinating idea with which all of us have struggled, especially the infinity of extension, which cannot be evaded by proposing a universe of finite circ.u.mference. Less carefully considered is an infinity in the other direction: the infinity of smallness, and it extends as far and is as bemusing as that other infinity.

"What happens to matter at the lower reaches? Matter exhibits a constantly finer texture, until it no longer can be dealt with experimentally, or even mathematically. Eventually, or so it would seem, all matter, all energy, all everything, even s.p.a.ce itself, must be expressed by some single ant.i.thesis: a basic yes or no; back or forth; in or out; clock-wise or counter-clock-wise; fourth-dimensional coiling in, or fourth-dimensional coiling out. Even at this level, the infinite recession into smallness continues. No matter how small is anything it serves only as a gauge by which to define extremes (if only formal extremes) a hundred times smaller ..."

Roger, already suffering melancholy, found the cosmic immensities appalling, and laid aside the book.

Bernard Bickel pointed out to him that s.p.a.ce as observed from the Phoebus was essentially no different from s.p.a.ce as observed from the terrace at Ballew on a clear night. Roger agreed in principle, but became only slightly less depressed in consequence.

Ahead Phi Orionis grew bright, and the day came when the second planet Zade could be seen, and presently the Phoebus went into landing orbit.

The Resident Commissioner at Earth-town radioed up a landing clearance; down to Zade settled the Phoebus.

Chapter VIII.

Like most inhabited planets of the galaxy, Zade was a highly diversified world physiographically. There was a single continent which sprawled around two-thirds of the globe, with dozens of arms, inlets, peninsulas, extensions, fjords, capes and bays. Earth-town, a complex of warehouse, dormitory and administrative buildings, was situated on the banks of a river a few miles inland from the South Ocean. The Resident Commissioner, Edgar Cam, a tall thoughtful man with a big nose, big chin, big hands and feet, and a manner of cautious deliberation, attempted to discourage Dame Isabel from her purpose.

Sitting in Dame Isabel's cabin he explained his pessimism. "Theoretically I have no argument with your goals. The natives of Zade are by and large neither hostile, nor uncooperative: they are simply unpredictable. There are at least sixteen variations of the intelligent species, much more disparate than the races of man, and with their differences of color and anatomy go cultural differences. I couldn't even begin to generalize on them."

"They are a humanoid people?"

"Yes indeed. No question about that. From a distance of a hundred yards you can hardly distinguish one from a man."

"And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?"

"Absolutely, though here again there is great diversity as to ways and means. One of the peculiar facets of life on Zade is the lack of cultural interchange. Each tribe seems to live sufficient to itself, and except for an occasional slave-raid, takes very little notice of its neighbors."

Dame Isabel frowned. "Do I understand you to say that in performing before audiences on Zade we would be in danger of physical harm or personal molestation?"

"Quite possibly, if you were rash enough to venture into the Brownback Mountains, or attempt to play before the Stagag-Ogog Clawbills. But these are isolated cases, and in general the folk of Zade are no more and no less to be feared than the people of Earth - if you a.s.siduously heed their special conventions and habits - and herein lies the unpredictability of Zade."

"I think you can trust us on that score," said Bernard Bickel. "We are not exactly greenhorns, and naturally we will make every conceivable allowance for native peculiarities."

"Nevertheless," said Dame Isabel, "I would be happy if you would arrange a suitable itinerary for us, so that we could play before those tribes which would profit the most."

"I can suggest an itinerary," said Cam rather pedantically; "I cannot arrange one. Our situation here by no means affords us automatic respect. In fact, quite the contrary: certain of the tribes are sure Earth is a place of desolation and misery; why else would we go to such exertion to come to other worlds? In any event I have no authority beyond the precincts of the enclave, and if you ran afoul somewhere I'd be powerless to help you. By and large, there is no particular risk, but I stress the fact that the people of Zade are various, complex and unpredictable."

Dame Isabel said, "As Mr. Bickel stated, we are hardly tyros. I am sure that our good intentions will be recognized everywhere."

Cam nodded without any great conviction. "So long as you are careful, patient and discreet you should have no difficulties. I can even spare you a man to serve as interpreter. As to specific areas to visit - let me think a moment ... The Water-people definitely. They have a well-developed music of their own. In fact music plays an important ceremonial part in their lives. And the Striads: a gentle, intelligent folk. And - who else? The Tree-walkers? Probably not. They're shy and not too intelligent ... The Mental Warriors. Yes. Don't be troubled by the name; it refers to their ritual of status by ordeal. They are a vigorous resourceful folk - probably the most intelligent of the planet."

"That should do nicely," said Dame Isabel. "What is your opinion, Bernard?"

"I agree. And we must definitely avoid the mistakes we made on Sirius Planet."

"Quite right. There will be no more tampering or adjusting; we will perform the operas precisely as they are performed at home."

Cam rose to leave. "I'll send Darwin Litchley over at once. He can take you to the districts I've mentioned, and he's an excellent linguist. Naturally I wish you all the best of luck."

He departed, and presently Darwin Litchley appeared: a short round man with a grave pink face and a bald pink scalp. "Commissioner Cam has explained your objectives," he told Dame Isabel in a portentous voice, "and while I applaud them in the abstract, I fear that problems of a lower level, the sheer ponderosity of the project, are almost certain to cause misunderstanding and difficulty."

Dame Isabel looked at him in frigid disdain. "You are a peculiarly confident man, Mr. Litchley. After weeks of meticulous planning, dedicated rehearsals and not inconsiderable expense, as well as a voyage across many miles of s.p.a.ce, we are finally here on Zade, prepared to present our program. You now make your pessimistic enunciations, and apparently envision us reeling back in doubt and dismay, abandoning all our plans and returning to Earth."

"Madame, you misunderstand me," sputtered Litchley. "I merely hoped to present a realistic picture, in order that you should have no reason to reproach me later for irresponsibility. The peoples of Zade, while intelligent, are rather narrow in their perspective, and some are both uncertain and unreliable, and even volatile."

"Very well; you have made your point. Now let us examine the maps which I see you have brought."

Darwin Litchley gave a stiff nod, unfolded a Mercator projection of the single continent. "We are here." He indicated a point to the south and east. "Mr. Cam probably described the extreme diversity of the local aborigines, and I believe he recommended that you visit the Striads, the Water-folk and the Mental Warriors. I might have made other recommendations, but be that as it may. The Striads of the Tercera Zone -" he tapped the map "- are perhaps as good as any to visit first, and undoubtedly they are a picturesque folk."

While the Phoebus slid majestically across the black, orange and lime-green rain-forest, Darwin Litchley gave a brief description of the Striads.

"The folk of this planet are biologically more flexible than the people of Earth, for while all are of the same basic stock, the physical, as well as the psychological variations among them are quite extreme. The Striads, for instance, have adapted remarkably to their special circ.u.mstances. The Tercera Zone is a region of considerable volcanic activity; there are extensive hot springs and puddles of boiling mud, which the Striads use to build their castles. They are a mild people, and highly expert in the use of sound, which they project from an organ unique to them."

Ahead the rain-forest dwindled to a parkland of black bamboo-like trees and great b.a.l.l.s of orange fluff. In the distance a line of gray mountains raised into the sky, and Darwin Litchley indicated a drift of floating mist. "That's the thermal area. Look close and you'll see the Striad cities rising out of the steam."

A few minutes later the tall fortress-like dwellings of the Striads could be seen: heavy-walled buildings of six or seven stories constructed of colored mud.

On a flat field in front of the city the Phoebus landed. Immediately a group of several dozen Striads stepped forth from an iron gate. Darwin Litchley, with Dame Isabel, Bernard Bickel and Roger, alighted and waited for the approach of the Striads.

They were definitely a humanoid race, tall, thin in arms and legs, but with ma.s.sive ridged chests. The skins were copper-red with a glossy green sheen; the heads were tall and thin and covered with a black feathery growth; they wore s.h.i.+rts of coa.r.s.e cloth, bronze shoulder ornaments, leaving the ma.s.sive chest and the ridged shallow pit of their sound-diaphragm bare. Halting a few yards from the s.h.i.+p they stood rigid. Their diaphragms contracted, jerked, to emit a single soft explosion of ceremonial greeting.

Darwin Litchley spoke in a harsh language which seemed all fricatives and throat-clearings; the Striads replied after a brief consultation among themselves.

Litchley turned to Dame Isabel. "They will be happy to attend a musical performance. I must say I'm rather surprised. They're quite shy, and they've seen very few Earth people - half a dozen commercial missions, perhaps. When do you wish to stage your first performance?"

"Is tomorrow too soon?"

Darwin Litchley made the inquiry, then informed Dame Isabel that the time she had specified was quite suitable. Meanwhile the Earth folk were made welcome to the city. Litchley indicated a few simple taboos which should be observed: no entry into the buildings, no objects tossed into the thermal springs, no carousing or extravagant behavior; no special attentiveness to children, which according to Litchley were regarded as parasites and frequently eaten. When Dame Isabel expressed horror, Darwin Litchley laughed. "It is no more than t.i.t for tat. The children retaliate by pus.h.i.+ng the adults into the boiling springs." With Darwin Litchley's precepts in mind most of the company wandered the Striad city during the afternoon and evening. In wonder they saw the lakes of seething mud: the largest mustard-yellow; others of red, gray, chocolate brown. From this mud the tall buildings were built, and the Earth people watched in fascination as the Striads projected beams of sound and ultra-sonic vibration from their diaphragms to crack, stir or compact the mud, in its various stages of usefulness.

The Earth-people seemed to have made a good impression. A spokesman for the Striads invited the group to a banquet. After a hurried consultation with Dame Isabel, Darwin Litchley declined with thanks, stating that the group was accustomed to fasting on the eve of a musical performance.

On the following morning Globe C was opened, the central mast and canopy erected to form a theater. For the Striads Dame Isabel had selected The Magic Flute, and with the fiasco at Sirius Settlement fresh in mind, she had resolved that there would be no tampering or alteration. The audience would see and hear the opera precisely as it was performed on Earth. "After all," Dame Isabel told Bernard Bickel, "it smacks somehow of condescension to make these unpleasant little compromises. Our purpose is to bring the out-world folk our music as we know it, in all its power and majesty, not in some paltry bowdlerized version which the composer himself would be unable to recognize."