The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (13 page)

“Fifty-five,” said Shishirhe.

(Koshay, all the while, was desperately translating the numbers, which they gave in their own octonary number system, into his own decimal system. Their “percents” were actually sixty-fourths, and instead of “fifty percent,” Shishirhe had said “forty” and meant “thirty-two.”)

Yathasia hesitated, then picked up his briefcase and threw it through the window.
Crash!

“I have been grossly betrayed and insulted!” he shrieked in a voice like a calliope on the downgrade, hopping about in his fury. “I could never do business with a cold, calculating schemer like you, Mr. Gloppenheimer! Not only are you without a spark of sentiment, but worse, you do not even appear ashamed of the fact! And I am ashamed of you other two for not backing me up! You are as bad as the monster! Good day, honorable sirs!”

Fessahen said: “I apologize for my colleague, Mr. Gloppenheimer. He is excitable. Not but that you gave him some cause to feel provoked. If you will excuse me, I will leave you two to work out the details of your deal. I have an engagement to inspect our new sewage disposal plant.”

“Will you step this way?” said Shishirhe. He thrust aside the heavy leather curtain in one of the doorways that led out of the conference room. Osirians did not build doors, no doubt for fear of catching the long tails that stuck out behind them to balance their bodies.

Koshay, tired of squatting, was glad to find a sort of hassock in Shishirhe’s office on which he could sit.

“First,” he said, “I shall need a sizable tract of land.”

“That can be furnished,” said Shishirhe. “I control a large piece a few
sfisfi
beyond the limits of Cefef Aqh. What else?”

“I need an introduction to makers of textiles who can duplicate the ranch clothes I brought from Earth—with such modifications as are necessary to fit the Sha’akhfi shape.”

“I think that can be done, despite the fact that we never wrap ourselves in pieces of curtain as you Earthmen do. However, we have skilled workers.”

“And finally, does your law provide any sort of monopoly for the inventor or introducer of new ideas? The kind of thing we Earthmen call a patent.”

“I know what you mean. We do have such an exclusive license for all new types of business, good for one year.”

Koshay was a little disappointed by the shortness of the period until he remembered that an Osirian year equaled half a dozen years on Earth.

###

A year later, Earth time, Darius Koshay sat in his ranch house waiting for his dudes to return from their three-day camping trip to the Fyasen’iç Waterfall. He was a little concerned; it had been the first such trip on which he had not gone with them, and he hoped Haqhisae, the head wrangler, could handle them. He’d have gone except that he’d been a little lame from the scratch he’d got the day before in the swimming pool. A friend of one of the dudes had come out with a half-grown son, and had urged Koshay to give the creature a swimming lesson, something never before heard of on this comparatively dry planet. And the infant had got panicky and kicked out with its hind claws.

All too well he remembered that horrible time when that no-good cowboy Sifirhash seduced the daughter of that astronomy professor—or rather of that family group of which the astronomy professor was one of the husbands. (In the multiple Sha’akhfi families, nobody ever knew which of the adults were the actual biological parents of which offspring.) However, the Sha’akhfi, at least in this province, were fussier in some respects about such matters than Earthmen. There was one consolation: he, personally, couldn’t get into any trouble of that sort with these amiable if impulsive reptiles.

Or could he? There was Afasiè, the niece of one of the Inspectors of the Province, to whom Shishirhe had introduced him. Since she had such important relatives it behooved him to be nice to her, with the result that she had practically taken up a permanent residence at the ranch. He had been glad of an excuse to stay home from this camping trip in order to get away from her for once.

The sound of an Osirian automobile caused him to look up from his highball. The bare little wheeled platform with its handrails and levers drew up in front of the door of the ranch house. The tame Ihaehe chained in the yard in front of the house gave a whistle of recognition and Koshay’s partner, Shishirhe, came in.

“Hello, partner,” said the latter, doffing a ten-gallon hat and scaling it across the room, where it settled over one of the horns of the skull of the sassihih nailed to the wall. Shishirhe also wore a colored handkerchief around his neck, but had drawn the line at crowding his clawed feet into a pair of embroidered Western high-heeled boots with jingly spurs such as Koshay and most of his dudes wore.

“Hello, yourself,” said Koshay. “Have a highball. How are the accounts?”

“Thank you,” said Shishirhe, mixing a highball in one of the native drinking vessels resembling a long-spouted oil can. “The accounts are doing well. We shall be out of debt in another score of days.”

Koshay beamed at the thought of lovely money at last rolling in. “Any more trouble with the professor?”

“Not a bit. After that cowboy of ours was wedded to his daughter, the professor used influence to have the fellow made an assistant in the Physical Education Department. She has acquired two more husbands and a co-wife since then, and if the first clutch of eggs arrives ahead of schedule, nobody will be so discourteous as to mention the fact. How are you making out with little Afasiè?”

“Too well, if anything,” said Koshay, and told of his troubles with that adhesive young female.

Shishirhe wagged his tongue in the Osirian equivalent of a grin. “If the idea were not too revolting to contemplate, one would almost think that she had—Well, anyway, you should get a wife of your own species, Gloppenheimer. That is, if you Earthmen recognize the sacred sentiment of matrimony.”

“Some do,” said Koshay. “And I manage. I have friends among the human colony in Cefef Aqh.”

“By the way, it looks as though we should soon have competition of a sort.”

Koshay sat up suddenly. “What sort?”

“Another Earthman arrived recently and went into business with my fellow mayor, Yathasia. His name is”—the Sha’akhfa struggled with unfamiliar sounds—“Sarius Khoshay.”

“What?”
Koshay almost leaped up to protest that a vile impostor was taking his name in vain, when it occurred to him that he was doing the same thing. “Is this Koshay a fat fellow with yellow hair?”

“What sort of business is he starting?”

“Something called the Cefef Aqh Hunt Club. I do not know the details, though apparently it does not infringe our patent.”

Koshay thought: must keep track of this guy, who’ll be after my blood. He must have beaten the rap I cooked up for him and set out after me, taking my name.

Shishirhe said: “If you will excuse me, I will take a dip in the pool.”

“Are you going to try to swim at last?” asked Koshay.

“You mean go in over my head? Horrors, no! Such an outlandish sport is all very well for the young. By the way, there are those in Cefef Aqh who do not like your introduction of this strange sport to our land. They say the water washes off our body paint, and that it is not decent for us to mix unpainted with those outside our families. However, it is nothing serious—” and he squirted the rest of his drink into his open mouth and went out.

Koshay refilled his glass and brooded over it until his meditations were interrupted by the sound of galloping, as the dudes poured up to the ranch house on their ’aheahei. These were beasts somewhere between large long-legged lizards and small brontosauri which the Sha’akhfi had ridden back in their premechanical age.

Koshay had collected a herd of ’aheahei for his “horses,” while for “cattle” he used the efaefin, a great horned reptile something like an Earthly triceratops, which the Sha’akhfi reared for food. Little by little, he had introduced the methods of an Earthly dude ranch. The Sha’akhfi, however, had balked at branding—said it was cruel, and efaefin should continue to be marked as before, by stenciling.

The dudes crowded into the ranch house, hissing the story of their wonderful trip. The shortest of the females bustled up to Koshay, her chaps of efaefan hide flapping. It was Afasiè, who gushed: “Oh, dear Mr. Gloppenheimer”—she said “Lhaffenhaimen”—“we had such a marvelous time, but we missed you so!” She pulled off her big hat, which had been held in place on her crest by an elastic chin strap. “Had I but known, I should have planned to stay here at the ranch house with you! And this evening may we have another square dance? The last was delightful, except that we got mixed up and went bumping into one another. This time why do you not let Haqhisae call the numbers while you dance with us? You never have, and I am sure you are very good at it. Would you consider me bold and unmaidenly if I asked you to be my partner? It will make the other girls simply slobber with jealousy! After all I am the only one of them who does not tower over you. You poor dear Earthman; it must give you a dreadful feeling of inferiority, between your short stature and your horrible soft pink skin. But there, I should not remind you of your shortcomings, should I? And then afterwards you can get out your guitar and sing us that wonderful song about ‘Git along, little dogies.’ By the way, if the singer is supposed to be driving cattle, as you told us, why does he speak of ‘dogies,’ which I always thought to be small domestic animals on your planet used for pets instead of food?”

###

For several days, life at the ranch ran smoothly, save that a dude was gored by a bull efaefan whom he had, in the manner of dudes, foolishly and wantonly provoked. Koshay was planning a roundup for the amusement of the dudes—an easy day’s ride out to watch his cowboys work and back. He wondered whether he ought not to try to introduce an element into the proceedings corresponding to rustlers or hostile Indians, but gave it up as too complicated. Still, Haquisae would look remarkable in a feathered war bonnet.

Afasiè hung around bothering him. When he tried to send her on rides she said: “Oh, but you are so much more fascinating, dear Mr. Gloppenheimer! Tell me more about the Earth. Ah, that my uncle would send me on a tour of the Solar System, like that which my fourth cousin Ahhas took last year! But being an honest politician he cannot afford it—”

The gruesome thought that the creature was in love with him oppressed Koshay more and more. If such were the case, he’d better sell out and beat it!

But where to? That warrant was still out for him in the Solar System and he couldn’t get to the Centaurine group, where he had good contacts, without stopping at at least one of the Solar planets. For the Osirian spaceline did not run ships beyond Sol in that direction, and even the Viagens Interplanetarias did not run direct service from the Procyon-Sirius group to the Centaurine group. Furthermore, these trips were so costly that he’d land as bare as an Osirian’s hide, without a decent stake.

Then how about the other galactic directions? Sirius IX had a race about as humanoid as the Sha’akhfi, but an antlike culture with a rigid communistic economy; no place for an enterpriser like himself.

He asked Afasiè: “Are you coming to the roundup tomorrow?”

“You are going, are you not?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then I will most certainly go. I would not miss the sight of your roping and shooting. Where did you learn those arts?”

“Oh, I learned to rope on Vishnu, among the Dzlieri, and I learned to shoot when I was a kid on my native Earth. But this old gun is worn more for atmosphere than looks; compared to a modern gun it’s so inaccurate that you might as well hit your victim over the head with it.”

“May I see how it works?”

“Sure. You pull back this thing with your thumb, and sight through this little notch. Watch out, she’s—”

Bang!
The Colt leaped like a bucking ’aheahea in the Sha’akhfa’s hand and shot out a tongue of yellow flame. Koshay could have sworn he felt the wind of the bullet. He snatched the pistol back.

“Now look at that hole in the roof!” he said. “Young lady, don’t monkey with machinery you don’t understand. You might have killed one of us.”

“I am so sorry, Mr. Gloppenheimer, but I did not know its battery was charged. What can I do? I will reshingle your roof myself. Give me your lovely boots that I may shine them.”

Koshay refrained with effort from grinding his teeth. “The most useful thing you can do is to run along and let me alone. I am working up the next order for supplies.”

Sulkily she went.

###

The party rode out to the scene of the roundup, brave in pseudo-Western finery. Most of the dudes dismounted while Koshay, still astride his ’aheahea, directed operations. Afasiè insisted upon riding beside him, the wind whipping the brim of her ten-gallon hat. As he bossed his reptilian wranglers, Koshay privately reflected that this was no way to rear efaefin for commercial purposes—chivvying them about this way must work hundreds of kilos off them.

The herd was finally bullied into a solid mass. The bulls took station around it in a circle, horns pointing outwards. Now if they could only get them moving in the right direction—

A strange sound came over the hills—the silvery notes of a horn. The scaly cowpokes looked this way and that.

Then a reptile scuttled over the brow of the nearest rise and raced through the scattered dudes, who leaped up with a shrill hiss. It was a theyasfa, the small wild relative of the Ihaehe, over a meter long and looking like a lizard with big pointed ears.

Koshay, twisting in his saddle to see, heard Afasiè’s voice: “Rope him, Mr. Gloppenheimer!”

Good idea, thought Koshay, provided his roping was good enough. He adjusted the loop in his lasso and turned his mount. The big rowels of his spurs dug into the leathery flanks of the ’aheahea, which broke into a gallop on a course converging with that of the theyasfa. Koshay leaned forward, whirling his lariat.

The loop shot out, whirling into a circle that settled around the forebody of the quarry. Koshay steered his mount to the other side to tighten the noose, and began to reel his rope in.