The Green Odyssey

Satisfied, Green said, «First I want you to arrange for me to be aboard your windroller when you leave for Estorya.»

Miran choked on his wine and coughed and sputtered until Green pounded his back.

«I do not ask that you give me passage back. Now, here's my idea. You plan to be taking a large cargo of dried fish because the Estoryans' religion requires that they eat them at every meal and because they use them in great quantities at their numerous festivals.»

«True, true. Do you know, I've never been able to figure out why they should worship a fish-goddess. They live over five thousand miles from the sea, and there's no evidence that any of them have ever been to the sea. Yet, they demand saltwater fish, won't use the fish from a nearby lake.»

«There're many mysteries about the Xurdimur. However, they needn't concern us. Now, do you know that the Estoryans' Book of Gods places much more ritual-power in freshly killed and cooked fish than in smoked fish? However, they've always had to be content with the dried fish the windrollers brought them. What price would they not pay for living sea-fish?»

Miran rubbed his palms together. «Indeed it does make one wonder…?»

Green then outlined his idea. Miran sat stunned. Not at the audacity or originality of the plan, but because it was so obvious that he wondered why neither he nor anyone else had ever thought of it. He said so.

Green drank his wine and said, «I suppose that people wondered the same when the first wheel or bow and arrow were invented. So obvious, yet no one thought of them until then.»

«Let me get this straight,» said Miran. «You want me to buy a caravan of wagons, build water-tight tanks into them and use them to transport ocean fish back to here? Then the wagon bodies, with their contents, will be lifted onto my windroller and fitted into specially prepared racks-or perhaps, holes-on the middeck? Also, you will show me how to analyze sea water so that its formula may be sold to the Estoryans, and they can thus keep the fish alive in their own tanks?»

«That's right.»

«Hmmm.» Miran ran his fat, ring-studded finger over his hook nose and the square gold ornament hanging therefrom. His single eye glared pale-bluely at Green. The other was covered with a white patch to hide the emptiness left after a ball from a Ving musket had struck it.

«It's four weeks until the very last day on which I can set sail from here and still get to Estorya and back before the rains come. It's just barely possible to have the tanks built, get them convoyed down to the seashore, get the fish in and bring them back. Meantime, I can be having the deck altered. If my men work day and night we can make it.»

«Of course, this is a one-shot proposition. You can't possibly keep a monopoly on the idea, once the first trip is over. Too many people are bound to talk, and the other captains will hear of it.»

«I know; don't teach an Effenycan to suck eggs. But what if the fish should die?»

Green shrugged and spread out his palms, «A possibility. You're taking a tremendous gamble. But every voyage on the Xurdimur is, isn't it? How many windrollers come back? Or how many can boast your list of forty successful trips?»

«Not many,» said Miran.

He slumped in his seat, brooding over his goblet of wine. His eye, sunk in ranges of fat, seemed to stare through Green. The Earthman pretended indifference, though his heart was pounding, and he controlled his breathing with difficulty.

«You're asking a great deal,» Miran finally said. «If the Duke were to find out that I'd agreed to help a valued slave escape, I'd be tortured in a most refined way, and the Clan Effenycan would be stripped of all its rights to sail windrollers and would probably be exiled to its native hills. Or else would have to take to piracy. And that, despite all the glamorous stories you hear, is not a very well-paying profession.»

«You'd make a killing in Estorya.»

«True, but when I think of what the Duchess will do when she discovers you've fled the country! Ow, ow, ow!»

«There's no reason why you should be connected with my disappearance. A dozen craft leave the harbor every day. Besides, for all she'll know, I've gone the opposite way, over the hills and to the ocean. Or to the hills themselves, where many runaway slaves are.»

«Yes, but I have to return to Tropat. And my clansmen, though notoriously tight-lipped when sober, are also, I must confess, notorious drunkards. Someone'd be sure to babble in the taverns.»

«I'll dye my hair black, cut it short, like a Tzatlam tribesman, and sign on.»

«You forget that you have to belong to my clan in order to be a crew member.»

«Hmmm. Well, what about this adoption-by-blood routine?»

«What about it? I can't propose that unless you've done something spectacular and for the profit of the clan. Wait! Can you play any musical instrument?»