Silence is Deadly by Jr. Lloyd Biggle Read Free Book Online Page A

wracked body being dragged to perpetual damnation. The world’s ugly beasts of burden, the nabrula, snorted and hissed and moaned and bleated, splendidly oblivious to the fact that neither they, nor their fellow nabrula, nor any other creature native to the planet, could hear them. The Kammians themselves, for all their disconcertingly human appearance, did the same. They hummed and hacked and bellowed and wheezed constantly. Their very digestive noises provided a running counterpoint to every Kammian encounter. There could be no social constraint about noises—any kind of noises—when no one was able to hear them.
    When it seemed pointless to remain in bed longer, Darzek began a daylight exploration of the house. He found no signs of recent occupancy. In the kitchen, an unvented stove that looked like a charcoal burner had not been used since being cleaned. In the pantry were bins of native foods and vegetables, none of which looked edible to him; but some of the bins were empty. The perishables had been removed.
    He finally found a loaf of stale bread, and when he’d hacked the petrified crust away with a wood knife of surprising sharpness, the interior was quite fresh. It wafted a potent, perfume-like scent, and its taste was spicy and somewhat bitter. He dipped chunks of it into a highly scented, honey-like syrup and washed them down with a delightfully potent cider.
    Then he returned to the vantage point of his bedroom window. He watched the passing traffic, and scrutinized the drivers and the occasional pedestrian, until the squinting windows and unbalanced facade of the imposing house across the lane began to irritate him.
    He was becoming increasingly disgusted. There was a job to be done, time was critically important, and he couldn’t make a move until one of the resident agents returned and showed him what to do. He didn’t even know where he was.
    Finally he said to himself, “You’ve got to learn to function on this world. Maybe the most effective way to learn is to walk out of the house and do it.”
    Major professions and occupations on Kamm had their own distinctive clothing, and Darzek already had noted that the house’s occupant was a perfumer, a maker and vendor of perfumes—not only from the clothing, but from the jars and bottles and flasks of liquid scent that cluttered table and bureau tops in every room.
    “So I’ll be a perfumer,” Darzek told himself agreeably. The clothing fit him approximately well, which on the world of Kamm was well enough. He donned a one-piece undersuit with long legs and arms—the climate of Storoz was uniformly cool throughout the year. Leg and foot wrappings served as stockings. There were wide-legged trousers that came to a flapping end just below the knees, cloth-topped high boots with jointed wood soles, a waist-length tunic, a long apron that gave him the feeling of wearing a dress, and, finally, the perfumer’s trade-marks: the black and white striped cape and the imposing tall black and white striped hat.
    Darzek scrutinized himself in one of the ornately framed mirrors that adorned each bedroom and pronounced the effect adequate. In a drawer he found a ceramic box with an ingeniously hinged lid—a money box. It was half filled with triangular coins of various alloys, each minted with peculiar glyph marks and the image of Kamm’s hideous death symbol, the Winged Beast. Darzek helped himself liberally, distributing coins through the several pockets of his cape, his apron, and his trousers. He felt uncomfortable without some suggestion of a weapon, so he picked up a small wood knife in the kitchen. It was as sharp as a razor, and when he tested the blade, he found he could not break it.
    He went to the front door, hesitated, decided to investigate the back yard first. Some thirty meters behind the house stood a square building of colored stone resembling that of the house. A narrow walk connected the two; on either side, filling the yard and flowing into