The Dogtown Tourist Agency by Jack Vance Page B

where to look.
    White skull faces bobbed and blinked under crested helmets of cast iron; aprons of black leather swung to the motion of the legs. To the rear rolled six wagons pulled by ten-legged reptiles, loaded with objects Hetzel could not identify.
    “The Viszts are flyers,” said Janika. “The wagons carry their wings. They climb the mountains, put on their wings, and glide on the updrafts. Then, when they locate their enemies—I can’t think of a better word—they swoop down and attack.”
    “Curious creatures.”
    “You know how they breed, or mate?”
    “Sir Estevan gave me a pamphlet. In fact, you did too. I know that they are ambisexual, and that they go out to war in order to breed.”
    “It seems a dreary life,” Janika reflected. “They kill for love, and they die for love—all in a frenzy.”
    “They probably consider our love life rather dull,” said Hetzel.
    “My love life
is
rather dull,” said Janika. “Vv. Swince, Gidion Dirby, Vv. Byrrhis.”
    “Have patience. Somewhere among the twenty-eight trillion folk of the Gaean Reach is Vv. Right.”
    “Half of them are women, luckily. That cuts down the search by half.” Janika took up the binoculars. “I might as well take a look out over the swamp right now. There might be some kind of a fugitive or a divorcé out there.”
    “What do you see?” asked Hetzel.
    “Nothing. Not even a Gomaz, whom I wouldn’t consider anyway.”
    They flew above a land of rolling moors with tarns of dark water in the hollows. Ahead, the course of the Dz River lay in languid curves and loops; beyond spread the Great Kykh-Kych Swamp. Hetzel examined the chart with attention.
    Janika asked, “What are you looking for?”
    “An island five miles or so from the north shore, where Gidion Dirby was marooned by a man named Banghart. Have you ever heard that name, incidentally?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Three islands are possible. This one to the east—” Hetzel indicated the chart “—this one in the center, and this to the west. The center island is closest to the black circle on the chart.”
    “That’s the castle of the old Kanitze sept, which was wiped out by the Ubaikh two hundred years ago, and Kykh-Kych Inn, which is now closed down.”
    “We’re coming in over the east island. Look for a path leading to the mainland.”
    Hetzel circled the island—a hummock of twenty acres, crowned with a copse of iron trees and the tall rattling canes known as “galangal”. There was no area suitable for discharge of cargo; no path led away to the mainland.
    The central island lay twenty miles north—an area somewhat larger, with a level meadow marked and scarred as if by the arrival and departure of vehicles.
    Hetzel hovered over the meadow. “This is the place.” He pointed. “That iron tree yonder—there Dirby passed the night…And there—the path leading to the shore! Here we pick up the thread of Dirby’s adventures. Shall we land?”
    “We’re not supposed to land except in authorized locations,” said Janika. “That’s the rule, but it’s not always obeyed.”
    Hetzel glanced at his watch. “We don’t have all that much time if we want to meet the Ubaikh at the transport depot. So…we’d better fly on.”
    Janika looked at him in astonishment. “We’re to meet whom?”
    “The Ubaikh who witnessed the assassinations. If we want to learn the identity of the killer, he’s the obvious person to ask.”
    “Suppose he says it was Gidion Dirby?”
    “I don’t think he will. But I intend to ask him, no matter what he says.”
    “You seem very zealous all of a sudden.”
    “Yes, the mood strikes me once in a while.”
    Janika looked down at the swamp, now only a few hundred feet below: an expanse of black slime; various tufts of reeds, lung-plant, white whisker; wandering rivulets of dark water. The path slanted this way and that, following a series of slanted quartzite outcrops. “If I knew what you were looking for, I could