Green then outlined his idea. Miran sat stunned. Not at the audacity or
originality of the plan, but because it was so obvious that he wondered
why neither he nor anyone else had ever thought of it. He said so.
Green drank his wine and said, "I suppose that people wondered the same
when the first wheel or bow and arrow were invented. So obvious, yet no
one thought of them until then."
"Let me get this straight," said Miran. "You want me to buy a caravan
of wagons, build water-tight tanks into them and use them to transport
ocean fish back to here? Then the wagon bodies, with their contents,
will be lifted onto my windroller and fitted into specially prepared
racks--or perhaps, holes--on the middeck? Also, you will show me how to
analyze sea water so that its formula may be sold to the Estoryans, and
they can thus keep the fish alive in their own tanks?"
"That's right."
"Hmmm." Miran ran his fat, ring-studded finger over his hook nose and
the square gold ornament hanging therefrom. His single eye glared
pale-bluely at Green. The other was covered with a white patch to hide
the emptiness left after a ball from a Ving musket had struck it.
"It's four weeks until the very last day on which I can set sail from
here and still get to Estorya and back before the rains come. It's just
barely possible to have the tanks built, get them convoyed down to
the seashore, get the fish in and bring them back. Meantime, I can be
having the deck altered. If my men work day and night we can make it."
"Of course, this is a one-shot proposition. You can't possibly keep a
monopoly on the idea, once the first trip is over. Too many people are
bound to talk, and the other captains will hear of it."
"I know; don't teach an Effenycan to suck eggs. But what if the fish
should die?"
Green shrugged and spread out his palms. "A possibility. You're taking
a tremendous gamble. But every voyage on the Xurdimur is, isn't it? How
many windrollers come back? Or how many can boast your list of forty
successful trips?"
"Not many," said Miran.
He slumped in his seat, brooding over his goblet of wine. His eye, sunk
in ranges of fat, seemed to stare through Green. The Earthman pretended
indifference, though his heart was pounding, and he controlled his
breathing with difficulty.
"You're asking a great deal," Miran finally said. "If the Duke were to
find out that I'd agreed to help a valued slave escape, I'd be tortured
in a _most_ refined way, and the Clan Effenycan would be stripped of
all its rights to sail windrollers and would probably be exiled to
its native hills. Or else would have to take to piracy. And that,
despite all the glamorous stories you hear, is not a very well-paying
profession."
"You'd make a killing in Estorya."
"True, but when I think of what the Duchess will do when she discovers
you've fled the country! Ow, ow, ow!"
"There's no reason why you should be connected with my disappearance. A
dozen craft leave the harbor every day. Besides, for all she'll know,
I've gone the opposite way, over the hills and to the ocean. Or to the
hills themselves, where many runaway slaves are."
"Yes, but I have to return to Tropat. And my clansmen, though
notoriously tight-lipped when sober, are also, I must confess,
notorious drunkards. Someone'd be sure to babble in the taverns."
"I'll dye my hair black, cut it short, like a Tzatlam tribesman, and
sign on."
"You forget that you have to belong to my clan in order to be a crew
member."
"Hmmm. Well, what about this adoption-by-blood routine?"
"What about it? I can't propose that unless you've done something
spectacular and for the profit of the clan. Wait! Can you play any
musical instrument?"
Promptly, Green lied. "Oh, I am a wonderful harpist. When I play I can
soothe a hungry grass cat into lying down at my feet and licking my
toes with pure affection."
"Excellent! Though it would not be an affection so pure, since it is
well known that the grass cat considers a man's toes a great delicacy
and always eats them first, even before the eyes. Listen well. Here is
what you must do in four weeks' time, for if all goes well, or all goes
ill, we set sail on the Week of the Oak, the Day of the Sky, the Hour
of the Lark, a most propitious time...."
5
To Green, the next three weeks seemed to have shifted to low gear,
they crept by so slowly. Yet they should have raced by quickly enough,
so full of schemes and plots were they. He had to advise Miran on the
many technical details involved in building tanks for the fish. He
had to keep the Duchess happy, an increasingly difficult job because
it was impossible to pretend a one-hundred-per-cent absorption in her
while his mind desperately looked for flaws in his plans, found oh, so
many, and then as anxiously sought ways of repairing them. Nevertheless
he knew it was vital that he not displease or bore her. Prison would
forever ruin his chances.
Worst of all, Amra was getting suspicious.
"You're trying to conceal something from me," she told Green. "You
ought to know better. I can tell when a man is deceiving me. There's
something about the voice, the eyes, the way he makes love, though
you've been doing very little of that. What are you plotting?"
"I assure you it's simply that I'm very tired," he said sharply. "All
I want is some peace and quiet, a little rest and a little privacy now
and then."
"Don't try to tell me that's all!"
She cocked her head to one side and squinted at him, managing somehow
even in this grotesque attitude to look ravishingly beautiful.
Suddenly she said, "You wouldn't be thinking of running away, would
you?"
For a second he became pale. Damn the woman anyway!
"Don't be ridiculous," he said, trying hard to keep his voice from
cracking. "I'm too much aware of the penalties if I were caught.
Besides, why should I want to run away? You are the most desirable
woman I've ever known. (This was the truth.) Though you're not the
easiest one in the world to live with. (A master understatement.) I
would have gotten no place without you. (True; but he couldn't spend
the rest of his life on this barbarous world.) And it is unthinkable
that I would want to leave you." (Inexpressible, yes, but not
unthinkable. He couldn't take her with him, for the simple reason that
even if she would go she would never fit in his life on Earth. She'd be
absolutely unhappy. Moreover, she'd not go anyway, because she'd refuse
to abandon her children and would try to take them along, thus wrecking
all his escape plans. He might just as well hire a brass band and march
behind it out of the city and onto the windroller in the light of high
noon.)
Nevertheless his conscience troubled him. If it was painful to
leave Amra it was hell to leave Paxi, his daughter. For days he had
considered taking her along with him, but eventually abandoned the
idea. Trying to steal her from under Amra's fiercely watchful gaze was
almost impossible. Moreover, Paxi would miss her mother terribly, and
he had no business exposing the baby to the risks of the voyage, which
were many. Amra would be doubly hurt. Losing him would be bad enough,
but to lose Paxi also...! No, he couldn't do that to her.
The outcome of this conversation with her was that she apparently
dropped her suspicions. At least she never spoke of them again. He
was glad of that, for it was impossible to keep entirely hidden his
connection with the mysterious actions of Miran the Merchant. The
whole city knew something was up. There was undoubtedly a lot of money
tied up with this deal of the wagon caravan going to the seashore.
But what did it all mean? Neither Miran nor Green would say a word,
and while the Duke and Duchess might have used their authority to get
the information from their slave, the Duke made no move. Miran had
promised to let him in on a share of the profits, provided he gave
the merchant a free hand and asked no questions. The Duke was quite
content. He planned on spending the money to increase his collection
of glass birds. He had ten large rooms of the castle glittering with
his fantastic aviary: shining, silent and grotesquely beautiful, all
products of the glass-blowers of the fabulous city of Metzva Moosh,
far, far away across the grassy sea of the Xurdimur.
Green was present when the Duke talked to Miran about it.
"Now, Captain, you must understand just exactly what I do want," warned
the ruler, lifting a finger to emphasize the seriousness of his words.
His eyes, usually deep-sunk in their fat, had widened to reveal large,
brown and soulful orbs. The passion for his hobby shone forth. Nothing:
good Chalousma wine, his wife, the torture of a heretic or runaway
slave, could make him quiver and glitter with delight as much as the
thought of the exquisitely wrought image of a Metzva Moosh bird.
"I want two or three, but no more because I can't afford more. All made
by Izan Yushwa, the greatest of the glass-blowers. I'd particularly
like any modeled after the bird-of-terror...."
"But when I was last in Estorya I heard that Izan Yushwa was dying,"
said Miran.
"Excellent, excellent!" cried the Duke. "That will make everything
recently created by him even more valuable! If he is dead now it is
probable that the Estoryans, who control the export of the Mooshans,
will be putting a high price on anything of his that comes their way.
That means that bidding will be high during the festival and that you
must outbid any prospective buyers. By all means do so. Pay any price,
for I must have something created by him in his last days!"
The Duke, Green realized, was so eager because of the belief that a
part of a dying artist's soul entered into his latest creations when he
died. These were called "soul-works" and brought ten times as much as
anything else, even if the conception and execution were inferior to
previous works.