Darzek abandoned the metal detector for this new perplexity. “Why would the Duke Merzkion be disguising his knights in his own province?” he demanded.
Riklo smiled enigmatically and did not answer.
Darzek lifted a tent flap, folded back the exquisitely woven carpet that covered the bottom of the cart, and opened a concealed panel. He placed the detector in a padded compartment, wondering as he did so what kind of shielding would be required to protect them from further harassment.
When he emerged, Riklo had grabbed the legs of one of the knights and was dragging him into the forest. “Where are you taking him?” Darzek called.
She answered over her shoulder. “Do you have a better idea?”
Darzek fretfully rubbed his head where an ear should have been. It was at times like this, when he was faced with a limited number of highly undesirable alternatives, that he missed his ears the most. “I suppose not,” he said reluctantly.
She vanished into the forest with the knight. When she came out again, she said, “I’ll bury their clothing and armor separately and disguise the bodies. You go on with the cart. Pull it into the first crosslane you come to, and take their nabrula into the forest and find them a grazing place. After I clean things up here, I’ll wait for you at the cart.”
“All right,” Darzek said.
She hauled the second knight away and returned for the third; and Darzek straightened the cart’s twisted harnesses, helped the paralyzed nabrulk to its feet—the charge that knocked out a knight for an hour or more only stunned this mammoth beast for a few minutes—tied the three riderless nabrula in tandem, and set off along the surlane.
* * * *
At nightfall, Darzek and Riklo were striding boldly through the forest, and every footstep sent clouds of winking lights soaring into the air, or leaping aside, or scurrying away.
For this was Kamm, the world where no life form possessed a sense of hearing, and darkness transformed it. It became a fairyland to the eye and hell to the nose. The world’s night creatures existed in a multiplicity of forms and sizes, and without sound to claim their territories, or attract their mates, or just exuberantly announce their presences, all of them did so with light or with pheromones. The lights were spectacular pulsations of sparkling, multicolored luminosity. The odors were equally dramatic but unfortunately were as likely to be spectacularly nauseous as exquisite. Darzek never took a night walk without longing for a gas mask.
The peculiarities of Kamm’s night creatures posed a serious problem for the alien agent. No one, and no thing, walked about secretly during a Kammian night. The creatures dodging his footsteps often supplied sufficient light to read by, and his path was a streak of illumination that could be seen for kilometers. In compensation, the natives of Kamm rarely were around to see it, because they shunned the night. They actually seemed to fear darkness; but even if they hadn’t, there was nothing for a nocturnal native to do in a sponge forest, so Darzek and Riklo strode along boldly.
Suddenly Riklo burst into laughter. “Some of your dabblings are less well formulated, perfumer,” she sputtered. “Some of your dabblings—”
“What the devil did he mean?” Darzek demanded.
“It’s the most cutting insult one could direct at a perfumer—to tell him he stinks.”
“Thank you. Now tell me a few cutting insults that can be directed at knights.”
She turned quickly. “Are you still brooding about those knights?”
Darzek said nothing.
“They would have done the same for you, cheerfully, and with far less provocation.”
“I know.”
“I find it appropriate that the last blood on their hands should be their own. They’ve washed often enough in the blood of innocents.”
“I know.”
“If we’d turned them loose, they would have set off a search such as Kamm has never known, and every perfumer on Storoz would have been subject to arrest, torture, and probably death.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you brooding? You Earth people are strangely tenderhearted.”
“I don’t like the idea of cutting a creature’s throat when it’s helpless.”
She turned and scrutinized him. “Did you speak truly when you said that your features are your own, and that you had hearing flaps which the surgeons removed to make you look like a Kammian?”
“Of course,” Darzek said irritably. “They removed the flaps and covered the openings.”
She tittered. “I don’t believe it. Where would the hearing flaps go? No natural process would produce a life form looking that absurd.”
“I wore the hearing flaps on my posterior,” Darzek told her. “When I didn’t want to listen, I sat down.”
They walked on. Some minutes later she announced, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it.”
Darzek thought she was rather unbelievable herself. On Earth she would have been an extremely attractive young female with an outlandish hairdo. On this world of Kamm, where all the females seemed extremely attractive and all of the hairdos were outlandish, she was an ordinary commoner wearing the cloak of a dubious occupation.
What perplexed Darzek was the fact that her appearance was synthetic. She wore an ingeniously contrived artificial body that perfectly represented the appearance of a Kammian native, and within it was concealed the utterly alien life form that was an agent of the Galactic Synthesis.
What that utterly alien life form actually looked like, Darzek had no idea. He knew that she was a native of the world of Hnolon, but he had never been there and couldn’t recall meeting one of its inhabitants before. Perhaps the Hnolonians were giant slugs. Or spiders. Or octopuses. Darzek had spent no small amount of time in watching Riklo and speculating as to what manner of creature was concealed under her synthetic Kammian exterior. Thus far, he had been too polite to ask her.
At the moment he had something more important to worry about. The previous night their young colleague, Wenz, had invaded the castle of the Duke Merzkion. Wenz had a peculiar talent that Darzek found incredible even after seeing it demonstrated. He could walk up a sheer wall. He had entered the castle at its weakest point, the highest window in the tallest turret, and his plan was to explore the building by night and hide by day. If he got into any kind of difficulty, all he had to do was step out the nearest window and walk around on the outside of the castle or perch on the roof until the uproar diminished. For the ultimate emergency, he wore a Winged Beast amulet like those of Darzek and Riklo.
Ten Synthesis agents had vanished on Kamm, several from the province of the Duke Merzkion. These inexplicable disappearances had further fueled the rumors of a pazul. Wenz was to search the castle for traces of the missing agents, while Darzek and Riklo combed the surrounding countryside on the same mission. On the previous night, they had seen Wenz signal his safe arrival at the upper level of the castle. Tonight, he was to signal how much longer his search would take.
It was the metal detector that worried Darzek. He wondered what other instruments of detection guarded the duke’s stronghold.
When finally they reached the edge of the forest, they stood for a long time looking upward at the looming castle. It perched on the cliff high above them, silhouetted against the richly starred sky and looking like a bulgy, many-pronged finger pointed at the infinite.
It was a finger rising from a sewer. The foul odor that clung noisomely to the foot of the cliff left both of them gasping, and above them the cliffside was a smear of lights. The nobility of Kamm was no more fastidious about its environment than the nobility of Earth had been in earlier