The trip to Tharbad

Seen from the air, Tharbad, Cardolan looked more or less similar to the Gondorian city of Sarmaltar, a frozen firework of light spreading out across the land and meandering up the hills surrounding the vale and with the dark crack of a broad river cutting through the explosion of light – in this case the river of Gauathlon. However as the airship closed in one soon noted that the buildings seemed lower than those of Sarmaltar and the city appeared more sprawled, disappearing in the haze surrounding it. And the flight station was smaller and more modern than the worn monstrosity that was Ithilium International.

It hadn't taken long between the bumps of the wheels hitting the runway and the de-embarkment through a docked gate and an arrival directly into the station building without having to cross the tarmac below. A sliding floor had then taken Narheda and Luwan off to immigration and well through that, they reached the exit of the structure. While Luwan had taken care of getting them a Taxi (Narheda praying for better luck with this ride than the one earlier in the day) she sat down on a stone bench, delighting in the fact that it was heated up, and produced her portable communicator to do her best to try to find the number to Professor Iusa Vinidad. Thus she discovered that the Cardolan system for retrieving comsubscribers was a worm nest making Gondorian bureaucracy feel like a walk in the park.

Finally there had been a clicking sound at the other end of the receiver and a soft and slightly twangy voice had responded with the second name. Vinidad. The way the Cardolans were proffering their second name was still a riddle to Narheda and she almost hesitated before presenting herself, using her most professional scholar voice.
"I'm calling because of the tragic event involving a colleague to both of us, Doctor Arlig, son of Derlor. And a good friend of you, as I have come to understand too."

"Derlor?" Narheda thought she traced a small tremor in the voice of the Tharbadian. "What has he now been involved in? What has happened?"
"Professor, I'd rather not talk about it right here, right now out in the middle of a busy street. I and a young man named Luwan al Magni, who has been a student and an assistant of Arlig, we are now here in Tharbad. Because we believe the situation has become so serious that we need to pay a visit to you face to face."

"Face to face," the woman breathed in on the other side of the line. "What can really be so essential..."
"We'll explain when we get to you."
"And I should just take your words for it?"
"You'd better do."
"Now, listen here, Mrs..."
"Narheda of Nihaya," she repeated her name. "And I know this sounds insane, but this is very important and it's slowly getting out of our hands."
"And now you want my help because I knew Derlor?"

"Yes. As you will want our help as well," Narheda said, putting more stress to her wording. At the same time she caught sight of Luwan waving her over from a few yards away, he had apparently gotten them a ride. "Now where can we meet you?"
"Mrs. Nihaya, it's not like I don't hear the distress in your voice – no, don't sigh at me, but I've had one too many prank calls from drunk students to beware of what I'm accepting to do."
"Well, name a neutral place, a café over at your campus or a nearby bar or something. Do trust me! This is no prank call and you won't regret it. My distress is very much sincere, I bet you can hear that if you listen closely."

Finally the Tharabadian professor had relented and a minute later Narheda had slid into the passenger's compartment of the taxi, next to Luwan and provided the driver with an address. In response the woman behind the wheel gave the accelerator a smooth squeeze and inched the car out in the traffic.

While they were rolling towards central Tharbad, Narheda glanced out the window at the sights of the city. It was not much telling her they were in a foreign country, the street signs were slightly different and the houses had a certain otherness to them as well. They were narrower and higher, rows and rows of similar townhouses where the only differences were colours of doors and window blinds and the divergence in the abundance of wine that clung to the wrought iron balconies and other cornucopias decorating the houses.

Narheda reminded herself that from time to time Tharbad had belonged to Gondor. That was why they spoke the same language, unlike the people of for instance Harnendor or Khazad-Dûm. Tharbad had also been part of a now defunct kingdom named Eriador, a name which these days lived on as the name of a province.

About half an hour later the taxi driver turned into an insignificant side street and by a small but fancy looking tavern, the car had come to a halt. Narheda paid the driver and as they exited the ride, they became aware of a light rain which had began to fall. The air was misty, painting glowing halos around the street lights and the cobblestones were gleaming with moist, reflecting the light and shifting in hue as the traffic light at the exit of the street turned blue and their taxi disappeared down the yonder esplanade its engine roar fading and blending into the ambient sound of the city traffic.

Turning their backs on the street, Narheda and Luwan entered the place named The Noldorinian Kiln And Kettle. It was dimly lit inside and furnished with round little tables covered in cream white tablecloths. About ¾ of the tables were occupied by guests and the room was filled with their muted talking together with the clinking sound of cutlery against china and soft claviature music emitting from hidden speakers.

A waiter met them at the door, a short and stout balding man with the kind of pencil mustache which was often seen on Cardolanian men.
"We're here to meet a lady named Iusa Vinidad," Narheda told the waiter and bowed her head politely. "Has she arrived yet?"
"Ah yes - the revered professor," the face of the waiter lit up as he obviously recognized the name. "She is here all the ready, just as you assumed, I will show you to your table."

With that he bowed in return before he turned around and began walking down an aisle and over to a booth at the back end of the restaurant. As they arrived they spotted an elegantly looking elderly lady with her purple and blue hair in a sophisticated updo decorated with crystal pearls which glistened in the dim light. She wore a high-necked velvet bodysuit, purple as well and with cyan coloured details which were almost luminescent in the dusky room. The lady stood, she was taller than she had appeared whilst sitting down and she presented her age-freckled hands to the newly arrivals, crinkled moss-coloured eyes regarding them with interest.

"I'm professor Vinidad, and you must be Dr. Nihaya."
"That's true," Narheda confirmed, feeling it odd to hear her mother's name in spite of knowing the manners of the Cardolanians. When Iusa Vinidad turned to Luwan he introduced himself as Luwan al Magni, also telling that he was from Harnendor. They pressed palms before they sat down around the square table in the booth and small talked briefly, letting Iusa tell them what she recommended for eating at this tavern. A waitress showed up at their table, the young woman had arrived almost soundlessly and she bowed politely while receiving their orders, and then she was off almost as if she had turned invisible on spot.

That was when Narheda decided to turn serious.
"The reason for this unexpected visitation, professor, is that Dr. Arlig, uh, Arlig of Derlor is dead."
"Dead?" not unexpectedly Iusa raised a neatly plucked brow.
"Unfortunately yes. Dead as in murdered," Narheda went on and Iusa opened her mouth again, but changed her mind and closed it, letting Narheda go on with her story. The Gondorite began with the closing down of her own archeological excavation in Rendell, moved on with the call from Dr. Arlig and then the arson at the campus and the tries to kill her and Luwan earlier in the day. Finally she had told about the discovery in the bank and how they therefore had come to dread that the Cardolanian professor might be in danger too.

When they had arrived to that point in the story the food had already landed on their table and they were eating slowly, savouring the spicy, flavory and rather exotic meat-based cuisine of Noldorin.
"I felt the need to warn you as well," Narheda finished her narrating, facing the professor. "I also reckoned the importance of doing so in person, just because of the resourcefulness and the ruthlessness of those people trying to stop us."

"This all is very surprising," the woman sitting opposite of Narheda said before she drunk from her cup of cider, looking down at the golden beverage as she was evidently collecting her thoughts. Putting the cup back down at the table, she faced the Gondorites again and went on. "I imagine you don't know who might be behind this, but do you have any theory of why they're seeking to silence you? Call me naïve, but I can't see no reason why anyone should not want the world to know that there once was a race of Elves walking the soil of Middle Earth."

"I think it has to do not so much with the Elves as with the orcs," Narheda said and savoured her cider as well. It was drier than the beverages she was used to, almost with an acerbic tang to it.
"Now, I'm not sure I follow," Iusa looked from Narheda to Luwan and then back again.
"It's very much Gondor politics," Narheda breathed in, putting down her cutlery. "Imagine that we should somehow manage to show that the Elves really existed. That they were their own specie and not some kind of mutation or inbreeding fluke, then it might very well be possible that the orcs are a race of their own too, and not a mutation the way most people are considering them as."

"So?" Iusa kept her brows pulled together, urging Narheda to go on.
"Today the orcs are being used as cheap labour all over Gondor. Cheap labour bordering on – and in certain cases definitely being outright slavery. They are deployed in mines, in factories, in nuclear plants, on construction sites and in all other places where hard and hazardous manual work is in need to be done. The treatment of the orcs is mainly based upon the credence that they are nothing but mindless beasts. Strong and sturdy and thus fit for hard and heavy work. Easy to train to perform simpler tasks but without any deeper emotional gifts. You've probably heard that an orc was sent out in orbit in the beginning of the space program, its vital statistics monitored carefully, before the pod simply was left to crash down in the ocean outside the Thyriac Codyan reefs. Nobody caring for a second that a sentient being was on board the pod. As a matter of fact, the orcs are treated with lesser consideration than cattle, which after all are getting a humane euthanasia when their lives are done."

"In Gondor," Narheda continued, "the orcs are believed to be nothing but the result of a mutation of mine workers in the eastern parts of Mordor or perhaps even as far off as in Rhun, back somewhere in the fifteenth or perhaps fourteenth century. Something caused by the heavy radiation measured in certain cavities out in the badlands over there."
"It's no different here in Cardolan," Iusa confirmed. "Actually I believe the orcs are getting an even shorter leash here ever since the upheaval in Isengard in 4118."

"I can imagine, even if we have had nothing similar in Gondor," Narheda replied. "However the people of Gondor have begun opening their eyes regarding the orcs recently, demanding that they should be getting a more fair treatment. That they should be considered worthy of the same respect as at least horses or dogs. And I believe that if the Elves are proven to have once existed, people will start to question the orcs' place in the evolution as well. And that, I believe, is what those people pursuing us are fearing."

Now it was as if something dawned in the mind of professor Iusa. Her face lit up and she leaned forwards, putting her pointy elbows on the table.
"And these are resourceful people I imagine," Iusa mused. "They don't want to lose their cheap labour. They rather see some pesky annoying scientists becoming lost. Before these scientists stumble too close to the truth or at least too close to the ideas that will make people start raising questions about the treatment of the orcs."
"Yes," Luwan breathed out. "They were resourceful enough to successfully bribe, threat or lure themselves into someone else's bank safe. And that's what scares me. Because upon finding your writings in the bank safe, they must realize that you're also involved, Iusa, and they might try something against you too. I have no doubt that they might be able to reach across the Cardolanian border to try to get to you."

"It has already occurred," Iusa Vinidad confirmed while cutting a purplish red piilfruit in half. "The other day I was contacted by a woman explaining to me that if I told anyone anything regarding the Elven DNA, the presumed Elven DNA, she emphasized, I would be very sorry. To bring it all home, she then paid me well to shut up."
"So you won't tell us anything?" Narheda said in a slightly disappointed voice.
"No," Professor Iusa said and paused as she pushed the fruit between thin, painted lips. "I promised not to tell anything. And as a scholar and professor with the affection for the veracity I have never been an avid liar."

"But," Luwan began, disappointment clearly heard in his mellow tenor. However the professor silenced him by lifting a neatly manicured, small hand, indicating that she was not finished with what she desired to say.
"However I never promised to not hand over anything in written form," she then smirked almost mischievously. "Have you made accommodations for the night?"
"Um, no," Narheda shook her head.

"There's a hotel nearby, the Rearing Pegasus. A family affair, owned by good friends of mine. They have very good rooms and fair prices, especially now when it's off season. Tomorrow, take the tram across the street. Number 38 is what you want. That one takes 20 minutes to the Tharbad University. Be there at four hours after sunrise and seek out the Institution of Biology and ask for me or for Dr. Angenur Norista. The latter is my assistant and if you get hold on him, he can bypass whatever obstacles may be in the way for getting through to me. I happen to be a very busy woman, but Norista will be informed about your arrival and make sure I get to see you."
"Thank you, professor," Narheda replied with a smile, pleasantly surprised by the older woman's sudden change of heart.