Of course the reality was nothing so romantic. There was a place where the cliffs dipped to sea level and yielded to a crescent harbor, and here a squalid settlement existed, the shacks of a few dozen Sumarnu who had taken to living here so that they might meet the needs of such ships as occasionally did come from the northern continent. I had thought that all the Sumarnu lived somewhere in the interior, naked tribesmen camping down by the volcanic peak Vashnir, and that Schweiz and I would have to hack our way through the whole apocalyptic immensity of this mysterious land, unguided and uncertain, before we found what passed for civilization and made contact with anyone who might sell us that for which we had come. Instead, Captain Khrisch brought his little ship smartly to shore by a crumbling wooden pier, and as we stepped forth a small delegation of Sumarnu came to offer us a sullen greeting.
You know my fantasy of fanged and grotesque Earthmen. So, too, I instinctively expected these people of the southern continent to look in some way alien. I knew it was irrational; they were, after all, sprung from the same stock as the citizens of Salla and Manneran and Glin. But had these centuries in the jungle not transformed them? Had their disavowal of the Covenant not laid them open to infiltration by the vapors of the forest, and turned them into unhuman things? No and no. I They looked to me like peasants of any province’s back country. Oh, they wore unfamiliar ornaments, old jeweled pendants and bracelets of an un-Veladan sort, but there was nothing else about them, neither tone of skin nor shape of face nor color of hair, that set them apart from the men I had always known.
There were eight or nine of them. Two, evidently the leaders, spoke the dialect of Manneran, though with a troublesome accent. The others showed no sign of understanding northern languages, but chattered among themselves in a tongue of clicks and grunts. Schweiz found communication easier than I did, and entered into a long conversation, so difficult for me to follow that I soon ceased to pay attention. I wandered off to inspect the village, and was inspected in turn by goggle-eyed children—the girls here walked about naked even after they were of the age when their breasts had sprouted—and when I returned Schweiz said, “It’s all arranged.”
“What is?”
“Tonight we sleep here. Tomorrow they’ll guide us to a village that produces the drug. They don’t guarantee we’ll be allowed to buy any.”
“Is it only sold at certain places?”
“Evidently. They swear there’s none at all available here.”
I said, “How long a journey will it be?”
“Five days. On foot. Do you like jungles, Kinnall?”
“I don’t know the taste of them yet.”
“It’s a taste you’re going to learn,” said Schweiz.
He turned now to confer with Captain Khrisch, who was planning to go off on some expedition of his own along the Sumaran coast. Schweiz arranged to have our ship back at this harbor waiting for us when we returned from our trip into the jungle. Khrisch’s men unloaded our baggage—chiefly trade-goods for barter, mirrors and knives and trinkets, since the Sumarnu had no use for Veladan currency—and got their ship out into the strait before night fell.
Schweiz and I had a shack for ourselves, on a lip of rock overlooking the harbor. Mattresses of leaves, blankets of animal hide, one lopsided window, no sanitary facilities: this is what the thousands of years of man’s voyage through the stars have brought us to. We haggled over the price of our lodgings, finally came to an agreement in knives and heat-rods, and at sundown were given our dinner. A surprisingly tasty stew of spicy meats, some angular red fruits, a pot of half-cooked vegetables, a mug of what might have been fermented milk—we ate what was given us, and enjoyed it more than either of us had expected, though we made edgy jokes about the diseases we were likely to catch. I poured out a libation to the god of travelers, more out of habit than conviction. Schweiz said, “So you still believe, after all?” I replied that I found no reason not to believe in the gods, though my faith in the teachings of men had been greatly weakened.
This close to the equator, darkness came on swiftly, a sudden black curtain rolling down. We sat outside a little while, Schweiz favoring me with some more astronomy, and testing me on what I had already learned. Then we went to bed. Less than an hour later, two figures entered our shack; I was still awake and sat up instantly, imagining thieves or assassins, but as I groped for a weapon a stray moonbeam showed me the profile of one of the intruders, and I saw heavy breasts swinging. Schweiz, out of the dark far corner, said, “I think they’re included in tonight’s price.” Another instant and warm naked flesh pressed against me. I smelled a pungent odor, and touched a fat haunch and found it coated in some spicy oil: a Sumarnu cosmetic, I found out afterward. Curiosity warred with caution in me. As I had when a boy taking lodgings in Glain, I feared catching a disease from the loins of a woman of a strange race. But should I not experience the southern kind of loving? From Schweiz’s direction I heard the slap of meat on meat, hearty laughter, liquid lip-noises. My own girl wriggled impatiently. Parting the plump thighs, I explored, aroused, entered. The girl squirmed into what I suppose was the proper native position, lying on her side, facing me, one leg flung over me and her heel jammed hard against my buttocks. I had not had a woman since my last night in Manneran; that and my old problem of haste undid me, and I unloaded myself in the usual premature volleys. My girl called out something, probably in derision of my manhood, to her moaning and sighing companion in Schweiz’s corner, and got a giggled answer. In rage and chagrin I forced myself to revive and, pumping slowly, grimly, I ploughed her anew, though the stink of her breath nearly paralyzed me, and her sweat, mingling with her oil, formed a nauseous compound. Eventually I pushed her over the brink of pleasure, but it was cheerless work, a tiresome chore. When it was done she nipped my elbow with her teeth: a Sumarnu kiss, I think it was. Her gratitude. Her apology. I had done her good service after all. In the morning I scanned the village maidens, wondering which lass it was had honored me with her caresses. All of them gaptoothed, sagbreasted, fisheyed: let my couchmate have been none of the ones I saw. For days afterward I kept uneasy watch on my organ, expecting it each morning to be broken out in red spots or running sores; but all I caught from her was a distaste for the Sumarnu style of passion.
41
Five days. Six, actually: either Schweiz had misunderstood, or the Sumarnu chieftain was poor at counting. We had one guide and three bearers. I had never walked so much before, from dawn to sunset, the ground yielding and bouncy beneath my feet. The jungle rising, a green wall, on both sides of the narrow path. Astonishing humidity, so that we swam in the air, worse than on the worst day in Manneran. Insects with jeweled eyes and terrifying beaks. Slithering many-legged beasts rushing past us. Strugglings and horrid cries in the underbrush, just beyond sight. The sunlight falling in dappled streaks, barely making it through the canopy high above. Flowers bursting from the trunks of trees: parasites, Schweiz said. One of them a puffy yellow thing that had a human face, goggly eyes, a gaping pollen-smeared mouth. The other even more bizarre, for from the midst of its red and black petals rose a parody of genitalia, a fleshy phallus, two dangling balls. Schweiz, shrieking with amusement, seized the first of these that we found, wrapped his hand around the floral cock, bawdily flirted with it and stroked it. The Sumarnu muttered things; perhaps they were wondering if they had done right to send girls to our shack that night.