needs.'
'What does he do?'
'Exports fruit and vegetables. You'll go along as one of his laborers. He won't be punished if you get away from the market - but they will take away his landing pass. He won't mind.'
'When do I get to see him?'
'We go to his warehouse tonight, after dark.'
'Then…'
'I leave you there. Are you hungry?'
'We just ate. '
'That is not what I mean,' she answered in a very husky voice.
The dark streets were lit only by occasional torches at the corners, the air heavy with menace. We walked in silence; perhaps everything that might be said had already been said. I had bought a sharp dagger which hung at my waist, and another club that I slammed against a wall occasionally to be sure any watchers knew it was there. All too soon we reached our destination, for Bibs knocked on a small gate let into a high wall. There were some whispered words and the gate creaked open. I could smell the sweetness of fruit all about us as we threaded through the dark mounds, to the lamplit corner where an elderly man slumped in a chair. He was all gray beard and gray hair to his waist, where the hair spread out over a monstrous paunch held up by spindly legs. One eye was covered by a cloth wound round his head, but the other looked at me closely as I came up.
'This is the one you are taking,' Bibs said.
'Does he speak Esperanto?'
'Like a native,' I said.
'Give me the money now.' He held out his hand.
'No. You'll just leave him behind. Ploveci will give it to you after you land.'
'Let me see it then.' He turned his beady eye on me and I realized that I was Ploveci. I took out the leathern bag, spread the coins out on my hands, then put them back into the bag. Grbonja grunted what I assumed was a sign of assent. I felt a breeze on my neck and wheeled about.
The gate was just closing. Bibs was gone.
'You can sleep here,' he said pointing to a heap of tumbled sacks against the wall. 'We load and leave at dawn.'
When he left he took the lamp with him. I looked into the darkness, toward the closed gate.
I had little choice in the matter. I sat on the sacks with my back to the wall, the club across my legs and thought about what I was doing, what I had done, what we had done, what I was going to do, and about the conflicting emotions that washed back and forth through my body. This was apparently too much thinking because the next thing I knew I was blinking at the sunlight coming through the opening door, my face buried in the sacks and my club beside me on the floor. I scrambled up, felt for the money - still there - and was just about ready for what the day would bring. Yawning and stretching the stiffness from my muscles. Reluctantly.
The large door was pulled wider and I saw now that it opened onto a wharf with the fog-covered ocean beyond.
A sizable sailing vessel was tied up there and Grbonja was coming down the gangway from the deck.
'Ploveci, help them load,' he ordered and passed on.
A scruffy gang of laborers followed him into the warehouse and seized up filled sacks from the pile closest to the door. I couldn't understand a word they said, nor did I need to. The work was hot, boring, and exhausting, and consisted simply of humping a sack from the warehouse to the ship, then returning for another. There was some pungent vegetable in the sacks that soon had my eyes running and itching. I was the only one who seemed to mind. There was no nonsense about breaks either. We carried the sacks until the ship was full, and only then did we drop down in the shade and dip into a bucket of weak beer. It had foul wooden cups secured to it by thongs and after a single, fleeting moment of delicacy I seized one up, filled and emptied it, filled and drank from it once again.
Grbonja reappeared, as soon as the work was done, and gurgled what were obviously orders. The longshoremen became sailors, pulled in the gangplank, let go the lines and ran up the sail. I stood to one side and fondled my club until Grbonja ordered me into the cabin and out of sight. He joined me there a few moments later. 'I'll take the money now,' he said.
'Not quite yet, grandpop. You get it when I am safely ashore, as agreed.'
'They must not see me take it!'
'Fear not. Just stand close to the top of the gangplank and I will stumble against you. When I'm gone you will find the bag tucked into your belt. Now tell me what I will find when I get ashore.'
'Trouble!' he wailed and raked his fingers through his beard. 'I should never have gotten involved. They will catch you, kill you, me too…'
'Relax, look at this.' I held the money bag in the beam of light from the grating above and let the coins trickle between my fingers. 'A happy retirement, a place in the country, a barrel of beer and a plate of porkchops every day, think of all the joys this will bring.'
He thought and the sight of the clinking coins had great calming effect. When his fingers had stopped shaking I gave him a handful of money which he clutched happily.
'There. A down payment to show that we are friends. Now think about this - the more I know about what I will find when I get ashore the easier it will be for me to get away. You won't be involved. Now… speak.'
'I know little,' he mumbled, most of his attention on the shining coins. 'There are the docks, the market behind. All surrounded by a high wall. I have never been past the wall.'
'Are there gates?'
'Yes, large ones, but they are guarded.'
'Is the market very large?'
'Gigantic. It is the center of trade for the entire country. It stretches for many myldyryow along the coast.'
'How big is a myldyryowP'
'Myldyr, myldyryow is plural. One of them is seven hundred lathow.'
'Thanks. I'll just have to see for myself.'
Grbonja, with much grunting and gasping, threw open a hatch in the deck and vanished below, undoubtedly to hide the coins I had given him. I realized then that I had had enough of the cabin so I went out on deck, up to the bow where I would not be under foot. The sun was burning off the morning haze and I saw that we were passing close to an immense tower that rose up from the water. It was scarred, ancient, certainly centuries old. They had built well in those days. The mist lifted and revealed more and more of the structure, stretching up out of sight. I had to lean back to see the top, high, high above.
With the remains of the fractured bridge hanging from it. The once-suspended roadway hung crumpled and broken, dipping down into the ocean close by. Rusted, twisted, heaped with the broken supporting cables which were over two meters thick. I wondered what catastrophe had brought it down.
Or had it been deliberate? Had the rulers of Nevenkebla destroyed it to cut themselves free from the continent that was slowly sinking back into barbarism? A good possibility. And if they had done this they showed a firmness of mind that made my penetration of their island that much more difficult.
Before I could worry about this a more immediate threat presented itself. A lean, gray ship bristling with guns came thundering up from ahead. It cut across our bow and turned sharply around our stern; our sailing ship bobbed in its wake and the sails flapped. I emulated the sailors and tried to ignore the deadly presence, the pointed weapons that could blow us out of the water in an instant. We were here on legitimate business - weren't we?
The gunboat's commander must have believed this as well because, with an insulting blare on their horn, the vessel changed course again and blasted away across the sea. When the ship had dwindled into the distance one of the sailors shook his fist after them and said something bitter and incomprehensible that I agreed with completely.
Nevenkebla rose out of the mists ahead. Cliffs and green hills backing an immense, storied city that rose up from a circular harbor. Factories and mineheads beyond, plumes of smoke from industry already busy in the early morning. And forts at the water's edge, great guns gleaming. Another fort at the end of the seawall as we entered the harbor. I could feel the glare of suspicious eyes behind the gunsights as the black mouths of the barrels
