Collected Short Fiction, page 846
Yet, save for the muffled hum of human voices, it seemed strangely silent. Muscle power is noiseless, and Periclaw had no mechanized transport. Silent, and strangely peaceful. If the black rebellion was a threat, I saw no shadow of it. From a street that took us to a higher level, I caught a glimpse of the harbor and the twin city on the other side. Freighters lined the docks, but I saw no battle craft, no hint of coming war.
An artist might have made it a scene of peace. The silver-bright canals branching from the riverbank. The white Sheko spire standing on its river islet beyond the ruined bridge and causeway. The flat green delta plantations stretching on as far as I could see. Nearer, slaves at the commercial docks were as busy as ants, loading cargos for Norlan. Our black runners seemed docile, even cheerful, calling soft greetings to friends they met.
Periclaw looked secure, Ram’s peace mission tragically forlorn.
The museum stood beyond a long pool of water lilies and well-cut lawns. We left the rickshaws at the white-columned entrance. The officer escorted us up the wide stone steps. Inside, we waited until a yellow-clad mulatto girl brought Tyba Crail to accept our custody.
In a neat white cap and jacket, she was still brightly attractive, still an enigma to me. She had a quick smile for Kenleth, and opened her hands to me in a brisk, official manner. I caught a hint of her lilac scent. She took us into her office, itself almost a museum. Native artifacts hung along the walls: reed baskets, enormous hats, colorful rugs, knives and spears and prayer mats.
She nodded me into a seat before her desk, which faced a great window that looked out across the harbor. It held a sheaf of papers, a stack of slates, and an odd, two-handled drinking up. Standing by my chair, Kenleth saw it and caught his breath.
“My mother!” he whispered. “She had that.”
“A lovely thing.” She picked it up very carefully and held it for me to see.”
It looked like fine white porcelain, the lip rimmed with gold. The handles were green, shaped like palm leaves. One side held the image of a black head that looked almost like Ram’s, even to the golden crown of worlds on the forehead. The woman’s ivory head, on the other side, could have been modeled from hers, the crown done in black.
“Sheko and Anak.” She turned to Kenleth. “You’ve seen it?”
“My mother traded her diamond ring for it,” he said. “It came from a tomb. Ty Hake sold it to a man from Periclaw.”
“A unique item,” she said. “We bought it for the Grand Dominion collection.”
Kenleth’s eyes were still fixed on it.
“My mother.” He made a sad face. “I think she’s dead.”
She set it back on the desk and turned gravely to face me.
“I’m removing you from the prison,” she said. “For your own safety.”
“Who would hurt us?” Kenleth started anxiously. “We aren’t hurting anybody.”
“People who fear you,” she said. “People who fear the power of Ty Chenji. They want to believe his story is a lie. If they got rid of Ty White, there would be nobody to say that it’s true.”
“Thank you.” He wiped his eyes and smiled. “I’m afraid for us, and afraid for Ty Ram.”
She turned the cup on her desk and sat for a moment with her eyes on the black god’s image before she looked back at me.
“You must be uneasy?”
“I certainly am.”
“I understand.” Her smile held a flash of warmth. “We have talked of prehistory. To help you grasp the crisis, perhaps we should review later times.”
She pushed the cup back to its place and sat a moment organizing what she meant to say.
“The Hotlan continent was discovered ten generations ago. The jungles and people here on the east coast seemed so hostile that the first explorers passed it by. The west coast seemed more inviting. Gold was discovered in the sands of the dry riverbeds in the narrow desert strip between the mountains and the sea. Adventures came to wash it out and abandoned their shantytowns when it was gone.
“Settlement of the east coast began generations later. One of my own forefathers was an officer on the first ship to sail into the Blood. He led a group ashore on the delta and stayed behind lived with a native tribe. He learned languages and guided later expeditions up the river.
“His two sons were captains in the Norlan fleet. The elder turned pirate, preying on the river commerce. He built the first fort on the delta. The younger stayed loyal, captured the fort, hanged his brother, and became a one of the first delta planters.
“His son organized the first colonial assembly, to speak for the planters’ rights. The assembly is divided now. The high commission, appointed by Norlan, stands against the Blood River Authority, elected by the planters. My father is an authority director.
“Norlan claims the whole continent now, but it has never controlled anything more than Periclaw, the delta, and a few spots along the river. The commission tries to prohibit, tax, and control everything it can reach. The authority fights for free speech, free trade, free traffic on the river. We dream of independence.
“The slave rebellion is the big issue now. Norlan sneers at Chenji and his talk of a truce. They want to believe he’s a fraud, that shining marie is some kind of tattoo. They want to hang him and crush the revolt with military force. They expect an army and a fleet from Glacier Bay.”
She was speaking freely now, as if quoting arguments she had made to some authority.
“We colonials feel a little differently. The Norlaners might go hungry if their food imports were cut off, but their lives are not in danger. Here on the river we live side by side with the blacks. Planter families have already been slaughtered. And Chenji—”
Absently turning the cup to study the black god’s head, she frowned and sighed.
“He’s a problem we don’t know how to solve. He denies that he’s any kind of god, but he can’t explain the way that sacred mark glows at night. The natives are convinced that he was sent down from the sky to lead the rebellion and restore the Grand Dominion.
“And you, Ty White—”
She looked up from the cup to frown at me.
“You and Chenji will live or die together. Without you to prove the story of the holy gates and all those other worlds beyond them, he would hang today. Without your tie to him, you could die for treason. You’ve convinced me that the story is true. Others are harder to persuade, but most of those who want to hang Chenji are willing to listen when I tell them that a dead martyr would do more for the rebels than a live prisoner.”
Turning the cup again, she shook her head at Sheko’s image as it had spoken.
“So what will happen now?” I couldn’t help the uneasy question. “What do you expect?”
“That’s uncertain.” She shrugged, her lips drawn tight. “Chenji sees no peace without a truce and some plan to end to slavery. We can’t afford that. Our lives depend on slavery. Our whole culture is built on it. Yet the revolt is already killing us. Responsible planters in the assembly are hoping for some sort of compromise that will bring peace with the free tribes and let life go on.
“Feelings are high. Norlaners could lose the continent that feeds them. We colonials could lose our lives. No matter whether Chenji is a divine son of Anak or just a clever liar, both sides blame him for the crisis. Those who fear him fear you just as much.
“That’s the way things stand.” She pushed the cup aside. “No good for anybody, but I thought you ought to know.” She had smiled again at Kenleth. “Anak aid you, Tyba Crail.” Voice quavering, he opened his hands and bowed to her. “If you can save us.”
“I have your custody,” she said. “I’m taking you to my home.”
25.
Rickshaws waited at the museum door. She got into one and led the way. Kenleth and I followed in another, with two branded mulatto guards running behind us. We came into a section of wider streets and impressive mansions with garden parks or high stone walls around them. We stopped outside a thick-barred wrought iron gate.
“You’ll meet my people.” She spoke while we waited for a black keeper to open the gate. “My father is chairman of the assembly. He owns a delta plantation, with two thousand slaves. My mother’s an Icecape heiress. She didn’t want you in the house, but my father insisted and people are curious. She has invited guests for dinner.”
Eyes narrowed critically, she surveyed me, my ragged beard and uncut hair, my soiled and tattered clothing.
“You will dress for the affair.”
The gate swung open. Inside, a wide pavement curved to a marble-columned portico. A black butler in spotless white met us at the door and fixed Kenleth with a scornful stare.
“You will leave the boy,” she said. “He is not permitted in the house. He will sleep in the slave quarters.”
“He’s not a slave,” I told her. “He stays with me.”
She frowned severely.
“Residence in Periclaw is limited to whites. Others are not allowed.”
“His mother was white.”
“He is not.” Her voice grew sharper. “Resident non-whites must be registered, licensed, and numbered. They are commonly branded.”
I saw Kenleth flinch as if he saw the hot iron coming.
“His mother was born here in Periclaw. Her father was an Authority official. She had to leave the city before he was born, to save her life and his. He didn’t choose the color of his skin.”
“His misfortune.” She shrugged. “The law is the law. Custom is custom. Our ways are own.”
“Kenleth stays with me,” I said. “Or I stay with him.”
“Out of the question.” Her face set. “I have your custody. I am responsible for your security.”
“I’ll take my chances.” I put my arm around him. “He’s with me. Call him my son.”
She shook her head, sternly impatient. “That could cost rights you need.” I drew him closer. She faced me half a minute, anger in her eyes.
“Your choice.” At last she shrugged. “His registration can be delayed.”
“Thank you, Tyba Crail.” He tried to smile at her, but she had turned away.
At a sharp word from her, the black butler shrugged and escorted us up a marble stair to a corner room on the third floor. He shut the door and left us there alone. Kenleth put his arms around me. I felt his heart thumping. “Thank you, Ty Will,” he whispered.
“I don’t like it here.”
He stared around him in uneasy wonder. The walls were high; the room seemed enormous. Mosquito nets hung around a huge four-poster at center of the floor. White lace curtained tall glass doors that looked across a railed balcony to a sea of red-tiled roofs that ran down to the broad brown river and a far line of green plantations.
“My mother had pictures,” he said. “She lived in places like this. She grieved for her twin brother and the friends she had to leave. I think she was sorry she ever had me, but I do miss her. Terribly.”
I myself was longing. For news of Ram. For news of Derek and Lupe, wherever they were. Longing even for my students and my university friends and the tiny crises we used to debate in the faculty senate. Earth had become an impossible dream.
The lock had clicked when the butler left. I tried the door; it didn’t yield. I felt a sudden sense of suffocation. We’d been confined too long. Wanting to get out and walk, wanting sun and space and air to breath, I rapped on the door. A huge mulatto guard appeared at last.
“To go outside?” His eyes rolled in astonishment. “Ty, you have no permission.”
He closed the door and the lock clicked again.
To endure the empty time, we gave each other language lessons. I recited my scraps of Shakespeare and we tried to translate. Kenleth listened avidly when I tried to answer his questions about Elizabethan England. Earth must have been as strange and wonderful to him as the universe of the trilithons had been to me.
The door opened, late that afternoon, and quiet blacks came in to ready me for dinner. A silent barber shaved me and cut my hair. A black valet measured me as carefully a tailor back at home and came back with the equivalent of a tux. A tight white jacket, tight white hose that came above my knees, a green silk sash embroidered with the Crail monogram.
The butler escorted me down the spiral stair to a spacious hall and steered me to my place at a long dining table, elaborately set with hand-painted china and sterling silver had come from Icecape. Scented candles already burned in the gold chandelier above it.
The guests had not arrived. I stood behind my chair until Celya Crail appeared. In a white silk gown, she looked a fresh and chic as a film starlet back at home. She inspected me critically, adjusted the sash, and showed me around the hall.
The high walls were hung with solemn portraits of the Crail dynasties. In a moment of family pride, she pointed out paintings of a Crail freight steamer, the Crail sugar mill, a steam locomotive on the Crail railway, which ran out of the delta to the coal fields and silver miles a hundred miles north.
Her family came in. Her father was a tall, austere whitebeard, who eyed me sharply through a gold-rimmed monocle he wore on a chain. He gave me a stiff formal bow and turned to mutter sharply at her. She murmured something that made him smile.
Her mother was a lean, hawk-featured woman who wore chalk-white makeup and a crown of bright orange hair. With only an absent nod for me, she turned angrily to scold the butler for a fault I never understood.
Celya introduced the guests when they came in. A uniformed commander from the constabulary. An intelligence officer and his wife. The secretary of the River Authority. Two commissioners from the High Council. A wizened river magnate who owed a stable of racing slaves. Crail’s banker, a license quadroon whose fat fingers glittered with diamonds and gold. They gave me casual nods or searching squints or formal bows or stares of cold disbelief, but never an open hand of friendship.
Ram’s testimony before the Council was still in progress. Some of the guests had questions of their own. Was it true, the intelligence officer asked, that we had come together from that magic planet in the sky? Had I seen any actual evidence that Chenji’s great-grandmother had been an escaped delta slave? Had he brought magic weapons with him?
Shrewd eyes on my face, he asked about our missing companions, the magician Ironcraft and his female assistant. Did they really know the secrets of thunder and lightning? Had they really been able to speak to each other around the world? Where were they now? Hiding in the jungle perhaps, casting evil spells for the rebels? He shrugged at last and walked away.
A scornful engineer probed me for more about the magic gates. How had we been able to jump between those worlds in the sky with no wings to lift us or bridges to walk across? The commander had searching questions about the Elders. Were they themselves warriors? Or priests of Anak and Sheko? Did they command the rebels?
A red-haired quadroon artist made me pose for a quick charcoal sketch. She worked for the Crail newspaper. Seeming a little more open than most of the others, she wanted to interview me about Earth and my life there when she could get permission. She never did.
Waiters were offering glasses of some fiery stuff from the Crail distillery. With no response at all when Celya tried to introduce me, the River Authority executive reached for a glass and turned to ask the commander about harbor security.
“No concern.” The commander shrugged. “The fleet will soon be here with troops to reclaim the river and put the trouble down.”
Standing near, Crail had overheard.
“We do need support from Norlan, but mark my word.” He raised the monocle to glare at me turned to shake his head at the commander. “I’ve heard too much of that blackbird and his puppets. We’ll have no peace on the river so long as they are allowed to sing.”
“True, sir.” The commander raised his glass and shouted for a toast. “Death to that black demon and all the witches with him! Death to all their jungle thugs and every traitor who seeks to aid or arm them!”
People turned to stare. I felt relieved when a troop of black musicians filed in. They were natives, Celya announced, that the museum had brought to display the culture of an isolated tribe in the northwest mountains. Their tunes were a harsh cacophony to me, but they were at peace with Periclaw and they got polite applause.
The butler held a gong for Crail to strike. His voice high and thin with age, he asked us to stand and began the meal with thanks to the Unknown Creator for all his bountiful blessings and a prayer for him to cleanse the errant soul of every traitor with the pain of holy fire.
“Please remain standing,” he said, “for a moment of silence in memory of Benkair Var, a daring explorer and a great friend of mine. You may have seen his collections of prehistoric antiquities in the hall of ancient art. He never returned from his last expedition into the unmapped area north of the Blood. I’ve just learned that he is dead.”
“Killed by the Slubro-slubrok,” Celya added. “Also called the gut worm. A jungle parasite.”
A young waitress, uniformed in something stiff and white, stood rigidly silent behind every chair. I was placed at the foot of the table, between the intelligence officer and the engineer. The engineer shuddered and asked if Var’s party could have brought infection back.
“No danger,” she said. “None of then got back. A rescue expedition has just returned with the tragic news. They found Var’s records and cameras in his last camp. Fortunately they escaped infection.”
“A nasty bug!” the officer muttered. “Chenji himself makes no threats, but he suggests that the rebels might attempt to use disease as a weapon. The medical corps is considering that possibility.”
He turned to me as if he expected some response. Afraid anything I said might somehow damage Ram, I kept silent. With nothing to say that he might believe, I felt happy when the actual meal began. The waitress at my place was young and lovely, probably an octoroon, her license number tattooed on her pale cream forehead. She bowed and smiled and said her name was Sherleth.
