Wayness rode the omnibus from Tzem to Draczeny, and apparently was not followed. At Draczeny she changed to a slideway car and was conveyed at great speed to the west.
Late in the afternoon the car halted at Pagnitz, a transfer station on the route which continued all the way across the continent to Ambeules. Wayness pretended to ignore the stop; then, at the last possible instant, jumped to the station platform. For a moment she stood watching to see if anyone else had altered his or her plans at the last minute, but no one had done so — specifically no plump little man in a dark suit with a black mustache like a smudge across his pallid face.
Wayness took looking at the Inn of the Three Rivers. From her room she telephoned Pirie Tamm at Fair Winds. Pirie Tamm spoke cordially: 'Aha, Wayness It is good to hear your voice! Where are you calling from?”
“At the moment I am at Castaing, but I am leaving at once for Maudry and the Historical Library. I will call you as soon as possible.”
“Very well; I won’t keep you on the line. Until tomorrow. “Half an hour later Wayness placed a second call to Pirie Tamm at the bank in Yssinges.
The circumstances had made him testy. “I never thought I would see the day when I distrusted my own telephone! It’s a damned outrage!”
“I'm sorry, Uncle Pirie. I know that I am causing no end of trouble.”
Pirie Tamm held up his hand. ”Nonsense girl! You are doing nothing of the sort of the sort. It’s the uncertainty I find galling! I have had experts in to check out the entire system but they have found nothing. They also guarantee nothing. There are too many ways to tap into a system, so we must continue to take precautions, at least for the time. Now then, what have you been doing?”
As succinctly as possible Wayness told of her activities. 'I am now on the way to Trieste where I hope to find Xantief, whoever he is.'
Pirie Tamm gave a deprecatory grunt, the better to mask his feelings. “It seems, then, that you have climbed — or is it descended? — another rung on the ladder. Either way, should we consider this an achievement?”
'I hope so. The ladder is already longer than I might like.'
“Hmf, yes indeed. Stand by a moment while I look into the directory. We'll pick up a line on this fellow.”
Wayness waited. A minute passed and another. Pirie Tamm’s face returned to the screen. ' 'Alcide Xantief’: this is his nature. There is a business address, no more: Via Malthus 26,Trieste Old Port. He is listed as a dealer in ‘Arcana,’ which means whatever you want it to mean.”
Wayness made a note of the address. “I wish I could rid myself of the conviction that I was being followed.”
'Ha! Perhaps you are, for a fact, being followed and this is the basis of your conviction.”
Wayness gave a cheerless laugh. ”But I don’t see anyone. I just imagine things, like dark figures stepping back into the shadows when I turn to look. I wonder if I might not be neurotic.'
“I hardly think so,“ said Pirie Tamm. “You have good reason to be nervous.”
'So I keep telling myself. But it is no great comfort. I would prefer to be neurotic, I think, with nothing to fear.'
'Certain kinds of surveillance are hard to avoid,” said Pirie Tamm. “You probably know of tracer buttons and tags.” And he suggested several procedures of avoidance. ”Like the telephone experts, I guarantee nothing.'
“I'll do what I can,” said Wayness. “Goodbye for now, Uncle Pirie.”
During the evening, Wayness bathed, washed her hair, scrubbed her shoes, handbag and suitcase in order to remove any radiant substance which might have been sprayed or smeared upon them. She laundered her cloak and outer garments and made sure that no spy cell or tracer button had been affixed to the hem of her cloak. In the morning she used all the ploys suggested by Pirie Tamm and others of her own contrivance to elude any possible follower or flying spy cell, and at last set off for Trieste by subterranean slideway.
At noon she arrived at the Trieste Central Depot, which served New Trieste, north of the Carso, one of the few remaining urban areas still dominated by the Technic Paradigms: a checkerboard of concrete and glass shapes, rectilinear and identical save for the numbers on the flat roofs. The ‘Technic Paradigms' had been applied to New Trieste, and thereafter rejected almost everywhere else on Earth in favor of construction less intellectual and less brutally efficient.
From the Central Depot, Wayness rode by subway ten miles south to the old Trieste station: a structure of black iron webbing and opal-green glass covering five acres of transit terminals, markets, cafes and a cheerful animation of porters, school children, wandering musicals, persons arriving and departing.
At a kiosk Wayness bought a map, which she took to a cafe by a pair of flower stalls. While she lunched on mussels in a bright red sauce redolent of garlic and rosemary she studied the map. On the front page the editor had included an instruction:
— A. Bellors Foxtehude.
Wayness unfolded the map and after a puzzled glance or two decided that she was holding it upside down. She turned it about, but nothing was clarified; she had evidently been holding it correctly in the first place. Again she reversed the map, to what must be the proper orientation, with the Adriatic Sea on the right hand. For several minutes she studied the tangle of marks. According to the legend, they indicated streets, major and minor cartels, incidental waterways, alleys, bridges, special walkways, squares, plazas, promenades and major edifices. Each Item was identified by a printed super-or sub-script, and it seemed that the shortest streets had been assigned the longest names. Wayness looked from right to left in bewilderment and was about to return to the kiosk for a less challenging map when she noticed Via Malthus, on the western bank of the Canal Bartolo Seppi, in the Porto Vecchio district.
Wayness folded the map and looked around the cafe. She discovered no portly waxen-skinned gentleman with a black mustache, and no one else seemed to be paying her any unusual attention. Unobtrusively she departed the cafe and the shelter of the station, to find the sun hidden behind scudding gray clouds and a raw wind blowing in from the Adriatic.
Wayness stood for a moment, skirts flapping against her legs, then ran to a cab rank and approached the driver of a three-wheeled cab, of a sort which seemed to be in general use. She showed the driver her map, pointed out Via Malthus and explained that she wanted to be taken to a hotel nearby. The driver responded confidently: “The Old Port is charming! I will take you to the Hotel Sirenuse. You will find it both convenient and agreeable, nor are its charges a confiscation.”
Wayness climbed into the cab and was whirled away through Old Trieste: a city of unique character, built half on a narrow apron of land under the stony hills and half on piles driven into the Adriatic. Canal of dark water flowed everywhere, washing the foundations of the tall narrow houses. A dark mysterious city, thought Wayness.
By slants this way and that, by sudden darts over humped bridges, into the Plaza Dalmatio by the Via Condottiere and out by the Via Strada, went the cab, with Wayness unable trace the course on her map so that if the driver were inserting a mile or two into the route she had no sure way of knowing. At last the cab swung into the Via Severin, crossed the Canal Flacco by the Ponte Fidelius and into a district of crabbed streets and crooked canals, below a gaunt skyline of a thousand odd angles and shapes. This was the Porto Vecchio hard by the wharves: a district silent by night but bustling by day with the movement of the locals and the surge of tourists, in and out, predictable as tides.
The Way of the Ten Pantologues ran beside the Bartolo Seppi Canal, and was lined with bistros, cafes, flower stalls, booths selling fried clams and potatoes in paper packets. Along the side streets dim little shops dealt in specialty merchandise: curios, off-world artifacts, incunabula; rare weapons and musical instruments pitched in every key imaginable. Certain shops specialized in puzzles, cryptography, inscriptions in unknown languages; others sold coins, glass insects, autographs, minerals mined from the substance of dead stars. Still other shops purveyed softer stuff: dolls costumed in the styles of many times and places, also dolls cleverly programmed to perform acts polite and acts not at all polite. Spice shops vended condiments and scents, oils and esters, of an interesting sort; confectioneries sold cakes and bonbons available nowhere else on Earth, as well as dried fruits, syrups and glazes.
