"Why not?"
"The Sultan does not wish it. Everywhere are listeners. When one talks
sjambak, the Sultan's ears rise, like the points on a cat."
"Suppose they do--what's the difference? I've got a legitimate interest.
I saw one of them in that cage out there. That's torture. I want to know
about it."
"He is very bad. He opened the monorail car and the air rushed out.
Forty-two Singhalûsi and Hadrasi bloated and blew up."
"And what happened to the sjambak?"
"He took all the gold and money and jewels and ran away."
"Ran where?"
"Out across Great Pharasang Plain. But he was a fool. He came back to
Singhalût for his wife; he was caught and set up for all people to look
at, so they might tell each other, 'thus it is for sjambaks.'"
"Where do the sjambaks hide out?"
"Oh," she looked vaguely around the room, "out on the plains. In the
mountains."
"They must have some shelter--an air-dome."
"No. The Sultan would send out his patrol-boat and destroy them. They
roam quietly. They hide among the rocks and tend their oxygen stills.
Sometimes they visit the old cities."
"I wonder," said Murphy, staring into his beer, "could it be sjambaks
who ride horses up to meet the space-ship?"
Soek Panjoebang knit her black eyebrows, as if preoccupied.
"That's what brought me out here," Murphy went on. "This story of a man
riding a horse out in space."
"Ridiculous; we have no horses in Cirgamesç."
"All right, the steward won't swear to the horse. Suppose the man was up
there on foot or riding a bicycle. But the steward recognized the man."
"Who was this man, pray?"
"The steward clammed up.... The name would have been just noise to me,
anyway."
"_I_ might recognize the name...."
"Ask him yourself. The ship's still out at the field."
She shook her head slowly, holding her golden eyes on his face. "I do
not care to attract the attention of either steward, sjambak--or
Sultan."
Murphy said impatiently. "In any event, it's not who--but _how_. How
does the man breathe? Vacuum sucks a man's lungs up out of his mouth,
bursts his stomach, his ears...."
"We have excellent doctors," said Soek Panjoebang shuddering, "but alas!
I am not one of them."
* * * * *
Murphy looked at her sharply. Her voice held the plangent sweetness of
her instrument, with additional overtones of mockery. "There must be
some kind of invisible dome around him, holding in air," said Murphy.
"And what if there is?"
"It's something new, and if it is, I want to find out about it."
Soek smiled languidly. "You are so typical an old-lander--worried,
frowning, dynamic. You should relax, cultivate _napaû_, enjoy life as we
do here in Singhalût."
"What's _napaû_?"
"It's our philosophy, where we find meaning and life and beauty in every
aspect of the world."
"That sjambak in the cage could do with a little less _napaû_ right
now."
"No doubt he is unhappy," she agreed.
"Unhappy! He's being tortured!"
"He broke the Sultan's law. His life is no longer his own. It belongs to
Singhalût. If the Sultan wishes to use it to warn other wrongdoers, the
fact that the man suffers is of small interest."
"If they all wear that metal ornament, how can they hope to hide out?"
He glanced at her own bare bosom.
"They appear by night--slip through the streets like ghosts...." She
looked in turn at Murphy's loose shirt. "You will notice persons
brushing up against you, feeling you," she laid her hand along his
breast, "and when this happens you will know they are agents of the
Sultan, because only strangers and the House may wear shirts. But now,
let me sing to you--a song from the Old Land, old Java. You will not
understand the tongue, but no other words so join the voice of the
_gamelan_."
* * * * *
"This is the gravy-train," said Murphy. "Instead of a garden suite with
a private pool, I usually sleep in a bubble-tent, with nothing to eat
but condensed food."
Soek Panjoebang flung the water out of her sleek black hair. "Perhaps,
Weelbrrr, you will regret leaving Cirgamesç?"
"Well," he looked up to the transparent roof, barely visible where the
sunlight collected and refracted, "I don't particularly like being shut
up like a bird in an aviary.... Mildly claustrophobic, I guess."
After breakfast, drinking thick coffee from tiny silver cups, Murphy
looked long and reflectively at Soek Panjoebang.
"What are you thinking, Weelbrrr?"
Murphy drained his coffee. "I'm thinking that I'd better be getting to
work."
"And what do you do?"
"First I'm going to shoot the palace, and you sitting here in the garden
playing your _gamelan_."
"But Weelbrrr--not _me_!"
"You're a part of the universe, rather an interesting part. Then I'll
take the square...."
"And the sjambak?"