Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places) Read online

  “That and the privy, yes,” Radnal said.

  “Oh, yes, the privy.” The Eye and Ear wrinkled his nose. It was even more prominent than Radnal’s. Most Strongbrows had big noses, as if to counterbalance their long skulls. Lissonese, whose noses were usually flattish, sometimes called Tarteshans Snouts on account of that. The name would start a brawl in any port on the Western Ocean.

  Fer vez Canthal accompanied one of Peggol’s men to the stables; the Eye and Ear obviously needed support against the ferocious, blood-crazed donkeys inside — that was what his body language said, anyhow. When Peggol ordered him out, he’d flinched as if told to invade Morgaf and bring back the king’s ears.

  “You Eyes and Ears don’t often deal with matters outside the big cities, do you?” Radnal asked.

  “You noticed that?” Peggol vez Menk raised a wry eyebrow. “You’re right; we’re urbanites to the core. Threats to the realm usually come among crowds of masking people. Most that don’t are a matter for the army, not us.”

  Moblay Sopsirk’s son went over to the shelf where the war board was stored. “If we can’t go out today, Radnal, care for the game we didn’t have last night?”

  “Maybe another time, freeman vez Sopsirk,” the tour guide said, turning Moblay’s name into its nearest Tarteshan equivalent. Maybe the brown man would take the hint and speak a bit more formally to him. But Moblay didn’t seem good at catching hints, as witness his advances toward Evillia and this even more poorly timed suggestion of a game. The Eye and Ear returned from the stable without the solution to Dokhnor’s death. By his low-voiced comments to his friends, he was glad he’d escaped the den of vicious beasts with his life. The Trench Park staffers tried to hide their sniggers. Even a few of the tourists, only two days better acquainted with donkeys than the Eye and Ear, chuckled at his alarm.

  Something on the roof said hig-hig-hig! in a loud, strident voice. The Eye and Ear who’d braved the stables started nervously. Peggol vez Menk raised his eyebrow again. “What’s that, freeman vez Krobir?”

  “A koprit bird,” Radnal said. “They hardly impale people on thornbushes.”

  “No, eh? That’s good to hear.” Peggol’s dry cough served him for a laugh.

  The midday meal was ration packs. Radnal sent Liem vez Steries a worried look: the extra mouths at the lodge would make supplies run out faster than he’d planned for. Understanding the look, Liem said, “We’ll fly in more from the militia outpost if we have to.”

  “Good.”

  Between them, Peggol vez Menk and Liem vez Steries spent most of the afternoon on the radiophone. Radnal worried about power, but not as much. Even if the generator ran out of fuel, solar cells would take up most of the slack. Trench Park had plenty of sunshine.

  After supper, the militiamen and Eyes and Ears scattered sleepsacks on the common room floor. Peggol set up a watch schedule that gave each of his and Liem’s men about half a daytenth each. Radnal volunteered to stand a watch himself.

  “No,” Peggol answered. “While I do not doubt your innocence, freeman vez Krobir, you and your colleagues formally remain under suspicion here. The Morgaffo plenipo could protest were you given a post which might let you somehow take advantage of us.”

  Though that made some sense, it miffed Radnal. He retired to his sleeping cubicle in medium dudgeon, lay down, and discovered he could not sleep. The last two nights, he’d been on the edge of dropping off when Evillia and Lofosa called. Now he was awake, and they stayed away.

  He wondered why. They’d already shown they didn’t care who watched them when they made love. Maybe they thought he was too shy to do anything with militiamen and Eyes and Ears outside the entrance. A few days before, they would have been right. Now he wondered. They took fornication so much for granted that they made any other view of it seem foolish.

  Whatever their reasons, they stayed away. Radnal tossed and turned on his sleepsack. He thought about going out to chat with the fellow on watch, but decided not to: Peggol vez Menk would suspect he was up to something nefarious if he tried. That annoyed him all over again, and drove sleep further away than ever. So did the Martoisi’s furious row over how one of them — Eltsac said Nocso, Nocso said Eltsac — had managed to lose their only currycomb.

  The tour guide eventually dozed off, for he woke with a start when the men in the common room turned up the lights just before sunrise. For a heartbeat or two, he wondered why they were there. Then he remembered.

  Yawning, he grabbed his cap, tied the belt on his robe, and headed out of the cubicle. Zosel vez Glesir and a couple of tourists were already in the common room, talking with the militiamen and the Eyes and Ears. Conversation flagged when Lofosa emerged from her sleeping cubicle without dressing first.

  “A tough job, this tour guide business must be,” Peggol vez Menk said, sounding like everyone else who thought a guide did nothing but roll on the sleepsack with his tourists.

  Radnal grunted. This tour, he hadn’t done much with Lofosa or Evillia but roll on the sleepsack. It’s not usually like that, he wanted to say. He didn’t think Peggol would believe him, so he kept his mouth shut. If an Eye and Ear didn’t believe something, he’d start digging. If he started to dig, he’d keep digging till he found what he was looking for, regardless of whether it was really there.

  The tour guide and Zosel dug out breakfast packs. By the time they came back, everyone was up, and Evillia had succeeded in distracting some of the males from Lofosa. “Here you are, freelady,” Radnal said to Toglo zev Pamdal when he got to her.

  No one paid her any particular attention; she was just a Tarteshan woman in a concealing Tarteshan robe, not a foreign doxy wearing nothing much. Radnal wondered if that irked her. Women, in his experience, did not like being ignored.

  If she was irked, she didn’t show it. “I trust you slept well, freeman vez Krobir?” she said. She did not even glance toward Evillia and Lofosa. If she meant anything more by her greeting than its words, she also gave no sign of that — which suited Radnal perfectly.

  “Yes. I trust you did likewise,” he answered.

  “Well enough,” she said, “though not as well as I did before the Morgaffo was killed. A pity he’ll not be able to make his sketches — he had talent. May his Goddess grant him wind and land and water in the world to come: that’s what the islanders pray for, not so?”

  “I believe so, yes,” Radnal said, though he knew little of Morgaffo religious forms.

  “I’m glad you’ve arranged for the tour to continue despite the misfortune that befell him, Radnal vez,” she said.

  “It can do him no harm, and the Bottomlands are fascinating.”

  “So they are, fr-” Radnal began. Then he stopped, stared, and blinked. Toglo hadn’t used formal address, but the middle grade of Tarteshan politesse, which implied she felt she knew him somewhat and didn’t disapprove of him. Considering what she’d witnessed at the first night’s campsite, that was a minor miracle. He grinned and took a like privilege: “So do I, Toglo zev.”

  About a tenth of a daytenth later, as he and Fer carried empty ration packs to the disposal bin, the other Trench Park staffer elbowed him in the ribs and said, “You have all the women after you, eh, Radnal vez?”

  Radnal elbowed back, harder. “Go jump in the Bitter Lake, Fer vez. This group’s nothing but trouble. Besides, Nocso zev Martois thinks I’m part of the furniture.”

  “You wouldn’t want her,” Fer replied, chuckling. “I was just jealous.”

  “That’s what Moblay said,” Radnal answered. Having anyone jealous of him for being sexually attractive was a new notion, one he didn’t care for. By Tarteshan standards, drawing such notice was faintly disreputable, as if he’d got rich by skirting the law. It didn’t bother Evillia and Lofosa — they reveled in it. Well, he asked himself, do you really want to be like Evillia and Lofosa, no matter how ripe their bodies are? He snorted through his nose. “Let’s go back inside, so I can get my crew moving.”

  After two days of
practice, the tourists thought they were seasoned riders. They bounded onto their donkeys, and had little trouble guiding them out of their stalls. Peggol vez Menk looked almost as apprehensive as his henchman who’d gone to search the stable. He drew in his white robe all around him, as if fearing to have it soiled. “You expect me to ride one of these creatures?” he said.

  “You were the one who wanted to come along,” Radnal answered. “You don’t have to ride; you could always hike along beside us.”

  Peggol glared. “Thank you, no, freeman vez Krobir.” He pointedly did not say Radnal vez. “Will you be good enough to show me how to ascend one of these perambulating peaks?”

  “Certainly, freeman vez Menk.” Radnal mounted a donkey, dismounted, got on again. The donkey gave him a jaundiced stare, as if asking him to make up his mind. He dismounted once more, and took the snort that followed as the asinine equivalent of a resigned shrug. To Peggol, he said, “Now you try, freeman.”

  Unlike Evillia or Lofosa, the Eye and Ear managed to imitate Radnal’s movements without requiring the tour guide to take him by the waist (just as well, Radnal thought — Peggol wasn’t smooth and supple like the Highhead girls). He said, “When back in Tarteshem, freeman vez Krobir, I shall stick exclusively to motors.”

  “When I’m in Tarteshem, freeman vez Menk, I do the same,” Radnal answered.

  The party set out a daytenth after sunrise: not as early as Radnal would have liked but, given the previous day’s distractions, the best he could expect. He led them south, toward the lowlands at the core of Trench Park. Under his straw hat, Moblay Sopsirk’s son was already sweating hard.

  Something skittered into hiding under the fleshy leaves of a desert spurge. “What did we just nearly see there, freeman?” Golobol asked.

  Radnal smiled at the physician’s phrasing. “That was a fat sand rat. It’s a member of the gerbil family, one specially adapted to feed off succulent plants that concentrate salt in their foliage. Fat sand rats are common throughout the Bottomlands. They’re pests in areas where there’s enough water for irrigated agriculture.”

  Moblay said, “You sound like you know a lot about them, Radnal.”

  “Not as much as I’d like to, freeman vez Sopsirk,” Radnal answered, still trying to persuade the Lissonese to stop being so uncouthly familiar. “I study them when I’m not being a tour guide.”

  “I hate all kinds of rats,” Nocso zev Martois said flatly.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Eltsac said. “Some rats are kind of cute.” The two Martoisi began to argue. Everyone else ignored them.

  Moblay said, “Hmp. Fancy spending all your time studying rats.”

  “And how do you make your livelihood, freeman?” Radnal snapped.

  “Me?” Flat-nosed, dark, and smooth, Moblay’s face was different from Radnal’s in every way. But the tour guide recognized the blank mask that appeared on it for a heartbeat: the expression of a man with something to hide. Moblay said, “As I told you, I am aide to my prince, may his years be many.” He had said that, Radnal remembered. It might even be true, but he was suddenly convinced it wasn’t the whole truth.

  Benter vez Maprab couldn’t have cared less about the fat sand rat. The spiny spurge under which it hid, however, interested him. He said, “Freeman vez Krobir, perhaps you will explain the relationship between the plants here and the cactuses in the deserts of the Double Continent.”

  “There is no relationship to speak of.” Radnal gave the old Strongbrow an unfriendly look. Try to make me look bad in front of everyone, will you? he thought. He went on, “The resemblances come from adapting to similar environments. That’s called convergent evolution. As soon as you cut them open, you’ll see they’re unrelated: spurges have a thick white milky sap, while that of cactuses is clear and watery. Whales and fish look very much alike, too, but that’s because they both live in the sea, not because they’re kin.”

  Benter hunched low over his donkey’s back. Radnal felt like preening, as if he’d overcome a squadron of Morgaffo marine commandos rather than one querulous old Tarteshan.

  Some of the spines of the desert spurge held a jerboa, a couple of grasshoppers, a shoveler skink, and other small, dead creatures. “Who hung them out to dry?” Peggol vez Menk asked.

  “A koprit bird,” Radnal answered. “Most butcherbirds make a larder of things they’ve caught but haven’t got round to eating yet.”

  “Oh.” Peggol sounded disappointed. Maybe he’d hoped someone in Trench Park enjoyed tormenting animals, so he could hunt down the miscreant.

  Toglo zev Pamdal pointed to the impaled lizard, which looked to have spent a while in the sun. “Do they eat things as dried up as that, Radnal vez?”

  “No, probably not,” Radnal said. “At least, I wouldn’t want to.” After he got his small laugh, he continued, “A koprit bird’s larder isn’t just things it intends to eat. It’s also a display to other koprit birds. That’s especially true in breeding season — it’s as if the male says to prospective mates, ‘Look what a hunter I am.’ Koprits don’t display only live things they’ve caught, either. I’ve seen hoards with bright bits of yarn, wires, pieces of sparkling plastic, and once even a set of old false teeth, all hung on spines.”

  “False teeth?” Evillia looked sidelong at Benter vez Maprab. “Some of us have more to worry about than others.” Stifled snorts of laughter went up from several tourists. Even Eltsac chuckled. Benter glared at the Highhead girl. She ignored him.

  High in the sky, almost too small to see, were a couple of moving black specks. As Radnal pointed them out to the group, a third joined them. “Another feathered optimist,” he said. “This is wonderful country for vultures. Thermals from the Bottomlands floor make soaring effortless. They’re waiting for a donkey — or one of us — to keel over and die. Then they’ll feast.”

  “What do they eat when they can’t find tourists?” Toglo zev Pamdal asked.

  “Humpless camels, or boar, or anything else dead they spy,” Radnal said. “The only reason there aren’t more of them is that the terrain is too barren to support many large-bodied herbivores.”

  “I’ve seen country that isn’t,” Moblay Sopsirk’s son said. “In Duvai, east of Lissonland, the herds range the grasslands almost as they did in the days before mankind. The past hundred years, though, hunting has thinned them out. So the Duvains say, at any rate; I wasn’t there then.”

  “I’ve heard the same,” Radnal agreed. “It isn’t like that here.”

  He waved to show what he meant. The Bottomlands were too hot and dry to enjoy a covering of grass. Scattered over the plain were assorted varieties of succulent spurges, some spiny, some glossy with wax to hold down water loss. Sharing the landscape with them were desiccated — looking bushes — thorny burnets, oleander, tiny Bottomlands olive plants (they were too small to be trees).

  Smaller plants huddled in shadows round the base of the bigger ones. Radnal knew seeds were scattered everywhere, waiting for the infrequent rains. But most of the ground was as barren as if the sea had disappeared yesterday, not five and a half million years before.

  “I want all of you to drink plenty of water,” Radnal said. “In weather like this, you sweat more than you think. We’ve packed plenty aboard the donkeys, and we’ll replenish their carrying bladders tonight back at the lodge. Don’t be shy — heatstroke can kill you if you aren’t careful.”

  “Warm water isn’t very satisfying to drink,” Lofosa grumbled.

  “I am sorry, freelady, but Trench Park hasn’t the resources to haul a refrigerator around for anyone’s convenience,” Radnal said.

  Despite Lofosa’s complaint, she and Evillia both drank regularly. Radnal scratched his head, wondering how the Krepalgan girls could seem so fuzzbrained but still muddle along without getting into real trouble.

  Evillia had even brought along some flavoring packets, so while everyone else poured down blood-temperature water, she had blood-temperature fruit punch instead. The crystals also turned th
e water the color of blood. Radnal decided he could do without them.

  They got to the Bitter Lake a little before noon. It was more a salt marsh than a lake; the Dalorz River did not drop enough water off the ancient continental shelf to keep a lake bed full against the tremendous evaporation in the eternally hot, eternally dry Bottomlands. Salt pans gleamed white around pools and patches of mud.

  “Don’t let the donkeys eat anything here,” Radnal warned. “The water brings everything from the underground salt layer to the surface. Even Bottomlands plants have trouble adapting.”

  That was emphatically true. Despite the water absent everywhere else in Trench Park, the landscape round the Bitter Lake was barren even by Bottomlands standards. Most of the few plants that did struggle to grow were tiny and stunted.

  Benter vez Maprab, whose sole interest seemed to be horticulture, pointed to one of the exceptions. “What’s that, the ghost of a plant abandoned by the gods?”

  “It looks like it,” Radnal said: the shrub had skinny, almost skeletal branches and leaves. Rather than being green, it was white with sparkles that shifted as the breeze shook it. “It’s a saltbush, and it’s found only around the Bitter Lake. It deposits the salts it picks up from ground water as crystals on all its aboveground parts. That does two things: it gets rid of the salt, and having the reflective coating lowers the plant’s effective temperature.”

  “It also probably keeps the saltbush from getting eaten very often,” Toglo zev Pamdal said.

  “Yes, but with a couple of exceptions,” Radnal said. “One is the humpless camel, which has its own ways of getting rid of excess salt. The other is my little friend the fat sand rat, although it prefers desert spurges, which are juicier.”

  The Strongbrow woman looked around. “One of the things I expected to see when I came down here, both the first time and now, was lots of lizards and snakes and tortoises. I haven’t, and it puzzles me. I’d have thought the Bottomlands would be a perfect place for cold-blooded creatures to live.”