Tower of Zanid Read Online Free Page B

don’t know of any members of that cult in Balhib. You’ll have to dig that stuff up yourself. Well?”
    Fallon paused a minute more. Then, seeing Mjipa about to speak again, he said: “Oh, hell. You win, damn you. Now, let’s have some data. Who are these three missing Earthmen?”
    “Well, there was Lavrenti Botkin, the popular-science writer. He went out to walk on the city wall one evening and never came back.”
    “I read something about it in the Rashm at the time. Go on.”
    “And there was Candido Soares, a Brazilian engineer—and Adam Daly, an American factory manager.”
    Fallon asked, “Do you notice anything about their occupations?”
    “They’re all technical people, in one sense or another.”
    “Mightn’t somebody be trying to round up scientists and engineers to build modern weapons for them? That sort of thing has been tried, you know.”
    “I thought of that. If I remember rightly,” said Mjipa, “you once attempted something of the sort yourself.”
    “Now, now, Percy, let’s let the dead past bury the dead.”
    Mjipa continued: “But that was before we had the Saint-Remy pseudo-hypnotic treatment. If only it had been developed a few decades earlier… Anyway, these people couldn’t give out such knowledge—even under torture—any more than you or I could. The natives know that. However, when we find these missing people, we shall no doubt find the reason for their abduction.”

Chapter III
    The Long Krishnan day died. As he opened his own front door, Anthony Fallon’s. manner acquired a subtle furtiveness. He slipped stealthily in, quietly took off his sword-belt, and hung it on the hatrack.
    He stood for a moment, listening, then tiptoed into the main room. From a shelf he took down a couple of small goblets of natural crystal, the product of the skilled fingers of the artisans of Majbur. They were practically the only items of value in the shabby little living-dining room. Fallon had picked them up during one of his rare flush periods.
    Fallon uncorked the bottle (the Krishnans had not yet achieved the felicity of screw-caps) and poured two hookers of kvad. At the gurgle of the liquid a female Krishnan voice spoke from the kitchen: “Antane?”
    “It is I, dear,” said Fallon in Balhibou. “Home the hero…”
    “So there you are! I hope you enjoyed your worthless self at the Festival. By Anerik the Enlightener, I might be a slave for all the entertainment I receive.”
    “Now, Gazi my love, I’ve told you time and again…”
    “Of course you’ve told me! But need I believe such moonshine? How big a fool think you I am? Why I ever accepted you as jagain I know not.”
    Stung to his own defense, Fallon snapped: “Because you were a brotherless woman, without a home of your own. Now stop yammering and come in and have a drink. I’ve got something to show you.”
    “You zaft !” began the woman furiously, then as the import of his words sank in: “Oh, in that case, I’ll come forthwith.”
    The curtain to the kitchen parted and Fallon’s jagaini entered. She was a tall, powerfully built Krishnan woman, well made and attractive by Krishnan standards. Her relationship to Fallon was neither that of mistress nor that of wife, but something of both.
    For the Balhibuma did not recognize marriage, holding it impractical in a warrior race, such as they had been in earlier centuries. Instead each woman lived with one of her brothers, and was visited at intervals by her jagain—a voluntary relationship terminable at whim, but exclusive while it lasted. Meanwhile the brother reared the children. Therefore, instead of the patronymics of the other Varasto nations, the Balhibuma tagged themselves with the name of the maternal uncle who had reared them. Gazi’s full name was Gazi er-Doukh, Gazi the niece of Doukh. A woman who—like Gazi—actually lived with her jagain was deemed unfortunate and déclassé.
    Fallon, looking at Gazi in the doorway, wondered if he had been so