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

neighboring yards, were unbroken waves of flowers.
    In the outbuilding Darzek found a perfume factory. Strong-smelling leaves and roots and berries and flowers were hung up or spread out to dry. There were enormous ceramic kettles and crocks, some of them covered and filled with pungent liquids. There was elaborate distilling apparatus and a row of unvented stone fireplaces.
    A few perfunctory glances satisfied Darzek. Beyond the perfume factory was a low, flat-topped building that his nose told him must be a stable, even though it had not been used recently. It was empty. A ramp leading up to the roof puzzled him until he looked next door and saw a pair of nabrula, the ugly Kammian beasts of burden, looking down at him. They got their air and exercise on their stable roof and thus avoided tramping their owner’s flower-filled yard.
    Darzek returned to the house. Again he paused at the front door, and then he stepped through it and turned for a careful look at the front facade of the building. A moment later, walking in the same direction as the now thinning line of vehicles, he set off for the mart.
    But he felt alertly cautious, rather than bold. He was accustomed to wandering about on strange worlds, but those worlds were accustomed to the presence of gawking, blundering aliens, of strange aspect, customs, and mannerisms. The world of Kamm did not know of the existence of aliens. If he gawked and blundered, he would be considered a gawking and blundering native and treated as such. Perhaps gawking and blundering had contributed to the loss of those nine or ten Synthesis agents.
    He reminded himself not to gawk, and to keep his wits about him so he wouldn’t blunder.
    But even a seasoned traveler like Darzek found it difficult not to gape about him on his first glimpse of a spectacularly beautiful world. It was hideously noisy; in direct compensation, as though the deaf Kammians had deliberately set about developing their remaining senses, it was vividly, dramatically, extraordinarily colorful.
    And it was just as vividly, dramatically, and extraordinarily scented.
    The very cobblestones underfoot had been selected for their colors, and they had been laid out by an artist. The varying shades of pink had been sorted and matched and arranged in a fabric of color that formed a magnificent mosaic, a textured pattern that was unending, that caught the eye and carried it as far as any winding section of the lane permitted, with striking visual motifs that received endlessly varied repetitions.
    And where each narrow sublane appeared on either side—the city was not laid out in squares, and the lanes came and went haphazardly—colors flowed into colors, for each lane had its own individual shades and hues and patterns.
    The stone dwellings were constructed in equally vivid patterns. They were two or three stories tall, set close on the lane with narrow yards at the sides and a vast expanse of yard in the rear—inevitably terminated by a low, flat-roofed nabrula stable.
    The yards were filled with flowers, and floral ornaments and displays were seen everywhere. Vines with strikingly colored leaves entwined over lintels, providing splashes of contrast against the softer shades of the stones. Flowers filled windows and lined balconies. The yards were flower gardens without apparent formal planning; but colors shaded into colors and blossoms into strikingly hued foliage.
    And on the fronts of the dwellings, placed with artful care, were baskets and ceramic containers of growing and cut flowers.
    Kamm, the Silent Planet: World of color and of scent.
    Each flower garden wafted such potent blendings of perfume that Darzek thought the owners arranged the plants as much for their scents as for their colors. And in the entranceway of each house, an alcove in which the door was set, hung a large ceramic beehive of a contraption, fashioned with artist’s care and fired with splendid multicolored glazes. It was an incense burner. Each