The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid Read Online Free PDF Page A

containing their unhatched eggs beside them. Swarms of Krishnan children, naked but for a coating of dirt, chased each other screaming.
    The fishy smell waxed as the vehicle coasted with squealing brakes down the slope to the shore. There Krishnan men mended nets, fished, smoked cheap cigars, and swapped yarns. Eshuna dug into stinking piles of marine offal and fought over the head of some denizen of the Krishnan deeps.
    The driver drew up at the empty ferry slip and set his brake. He drew from his wallet a saláf root, bit off a piece, and sat silently chewing.
    Althea and her companions got out of the carriage, which creaked on its suspension straps as they left it. In five days of fast riding over Krishnan roads, Althea had learned to stretch her cramped limbs at every chance. She and her companions strolled out to the end of the pier, where several Krishnans stood or sat on the tops of piles. These stared briefly at the Terrans and returned to their own concerns.
    Althea looked out over the broad estuary toward Majbur, whose five- and six-story buildings rose in a crowded mass against the flat skyline. To the right, the placid Pichidé sparkled in the late afternoon light of Roqir. To the left, the estuary merged with the emerald waters of the Sadabao Sea. Here and there a sail, bright in the sunlight, broke the horizon.
    “There’s the ferry,” said Kirwan.
    A big, rectangular, double-ended barge moved sluggishly on the estuary under the impulse of a pair of yellow triangular sails and a set of sweeps. Little by little it grew, until Althea could see the passengers clustering it: gentlefolk in satiny stuffs, with swords at their sides; laborers in breech-clouts; seafarers in sashes, with stocking-caps wound like turbans around their heads; even a Terran tourist in a rumpled white suit, a camera case dangling around his neck.
    Althea watched the approach of the barge. During the past five days, the men had made it plain that they did not wish to be proselytized. Althea was not aggressive enough to thrust upon them a doctrine about which she herself entertained secret qualms. Bahr could talk about his specialty, but on such a technical level that he soon left the other two floundering. And Kirwan, the most garrulous of the three, had soon wearied his companions by boasting and self-assertion and by bursting into a tirade of insults whenever crossed.
    The ferry nosed into its slip. Its passengers streamed ashore. Those waiting on the pier boarded the craft, paying fares to a piratical-looking captain on the companionway. When the carriage started to move aboard, with members of the crew grasping the wheel hubs to help it over the bumps, a furious argument broke out between the driver and the ferry skipper.
    “What’s this?” said Kirwan in Brazilo-Portuguese.
    The driver said, “This rascal try to collect twice regular tariff for carriages. He think rich Earthmen can afford extra charge.”
    “The black-hearted spalpeen!” roared Kirwan. “Let me at him!” The poet began to yell at the captain in a mixture of English, Portuguese, and Gazashtanduu, which he apparently made up as he went along: Tamates, hishkako baghan! D’ye think I deixe você to swindle me?”
    Looking puzzled, the captain spoke to the driver, who translated. “He does not understand.”
    “Hell, don’t he understand his own language, and me so fluent and all?” said Kirwan. “The man must be half-witted.”
    Bahr addressed the captain in careful Gazashtandu. “Good my sir, pray take not advantage of our plight. For we’re no visitors rich to be bilked, but harried fugitives from our own kind’s vengeance and as such have a claim upon your mercy.”
    “What are you fugitives from?” asked the captain.
    “See you this wench? Her cruel mate swore to slay her because he’d learned of her love for us, so we snatched her from him. But he follows hard upon our track with—”
    “Mean you you’re both her lovers?” cried the captain.