Read Online Tower of Zanid by L. Sprague de Camp - Free Book Online Page B

enemy—one Hulil, who preceded Chilian as Zanid’s leading public menace. This Hulil was blackmailing Ve’qir. Then the silly ass leaned too far out of a window and broke his skull on the flagstones below. Well, Ve’qir insists that I had something to do with it, though I proved to the prefect’s investigators that, at the time, I was in conference with Percy Mjipa and couldn’t have pushed the blighter.”
    As they passed the Safq, Fredro craned his neck to stare at it and began to babble naively about getting in, until Fallon kicked his shins. Fortunately Gazi knew a mere half-dozen words of English, all of them objectionable.
    “Where we going?” asked Fredro.
    “To my house to drop off these packages and put on our sufkira .”
    “Please, can we not stop to look at Safq?”
    “No, we should miss our bath.”
    Fallon glanced at the sun with concern, wondering if he was not late already. He had never gotten altogether used to doing without a watch; and the Krishnans, though they now made crude wheeled clocks, had not yet attained to watch-culture.
    Gazi and Fredro kept Fallon busy interpreting, for Gazi knew practically nothing of the Terran tongues and Fredro’s Balhibou was still rudimentary; but Fredro was full of questions about Krishnan housewifery, while Gazi was eager to impress the visitor. She tried to disguise her embarrassment when they stopped in front of the sad-looking little brick house that Fallon called home, jammed in between two larger houses, and with big cracks running across the tiles where the building had settled unevenly. It did not even have a central court, which in Balhib practically relegated it to the rank of hovel.
    “Tell him,” Gazi urged, “that we do but dwell here for the nonce, till you can find a decent place to suit us.”
    Fallon, ignoring the suggestion, led Fredro in. In a few minutes, he and Gazi reappeared, clad in sufkira—huge togalike pieces of towelling wrapped around their bodies.
    “It’s only a short walk,” said Fallon. “Be good for you.”
    They walked east along Asada Street until this thoroughfare joined Ya’fal Street coming up from the southwest and turned into the Square of Qarar. As they walked, more people appeared, until they were engulfed in a sufkid-wrapped crowd.
    Scores of Zaniduma were already gathered in the Square of Qarar where, only the night before, Fallon and his squad had stopped the sword-fight. There were but few non-Krishnans in sight; many non-Krishnan races did not care for the Balhibo bath-customs. Osirians, for example, had no use for water at all, but merely scrubbed off and replaced their body-paint at intervals. Thothians, expert swimmers, insisted on total immersion. And most human beings, unless they had become well assimilated to Krishnan ways, or came from some country like Japan, observed their planet’s tabu against public exposure.
    The water-wagon, drawn by a pair of shaggy, six-legged shaihans, stood near the statue of Qarar. The cobbles shone where they had been watered down and scrubbed by the driver’s assistant, a tailed Koloftu of uncommon brawn, now securing his long-handled scrubbing-brush to the side of the vehicle.
    The driver himself had climbed up on top of the tank and was extending the shower-heads over the crowd. Presently he called out: “Get ye ready!”
    There was a general movement. Half the Krishnans’ took off their sufkira and handed them to the other half. The unclad ones crowded forward to get near the shower-heads, while the rest wormed their way back toward the outer sides of the square.
    Fallon handed his sufkir to Fredro, saying: “Here, hold these for us, old man!”
    Gazi did likewise. Fredro looked a little startled but took the garments, saying: “Used to do something like this in Poland before period of Russian domination two centuries ago. Russians claimed it was nye kulturno . I suppose one cannot have the bath without someone to hold these things?”
    “That’s right.