Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 16
In this mingled light, the lawns and trees were green and bright. The spill of joyful colors, from the surrounding farms and gardens with their flowerbeds was a symphony to the eye: buttercup and livid rose, bluebell and amaranth and tulip of all hues, all swaying in the scented breeze, and rippling like the sea.
The clouds overhead were clear to see. They were not clouds at all, but a myriad of floating platforms, some opaque and some translucent, made of canvas, silk, or gossamer, wider than pavilions, sculpted and folded and enameled to form a merry heraldry of masquerade faces, or birds, or beasts.
Similar designs adorned the doorposts and archways of villas, gardens, and market-squares, and stood at crossroads.
As he walked on, two of the suns had passed behind this cloud-layer, which made it not so bright and hot, but the land was more colorful, for the lightbeams of these occluded suns streamed through the images and cloud-gaps like a stained glass window.
There was no wall around the town, no gate, no checkpoint. No one stopped Flint as he walked or asked him his business. He took his holster from under his tunic and hung it from a shoulder strap, plain to see. No one noticed.
He wondered that the smiling crowds were not deferential to a soldier with a side arm. Could the whole world be an asylum for the mentally defective? That would explain the singing and dancing. And it was in keeping with the kind-hearted reputation of Angrima the Abundant to find a place where idiots could be safely stowed away.
But then he recalled that he was not in uniform. But that puzzled him more. No one was darting to any police hush-phones to report an armed civilian at large, walking the streets. In fact, there were no hush-phones on the streets in any case.
He walked on.
The humans were in green and yellow cloaks woven with bright patterns, and the women favored long trailing skirts. Some of the Fuliguline wore bells on their sombreros and sarapes.
The Vulpino here were like something from a history file: fox-gentlemen in lace collars a yard across, with tunics of slashed silk and muttonleg sleeves; fox-ladies in mantillas and hoopskirts, tall combs nodding above their periwigs; fox-damsels with dark eyes in gitana skirts, belts of gold coins strung about their swaying hips, and strutting bravos adorned in lace and ribbons, swishing their fine red tails, with jewel-hilted snickersnees or target pistols on their baldricks. Nearly everyone held a folding fan, or had one tucked in amid his ribbons.
Among these were other figures, dressed in white or purple like princes of the senate, sporting sunglasses and wide straw hats, or ladies in chlamys, some hooded and veiled. These seemed to be nobles here, being followed by robots carrying packages for them.
But then he saw more than one vendor bowing and flattering, addressing the figures as guests and visitors, and more than one masquerader with a guitar was loitering after them, strumming and singing and begging for coins. The figures in purple and white were offworld tourists.
The streets of the town were crowded with carts and stalls selling fruits and drinks and iced treats, miniature balloons, bouquets, roasted peanuts, and toy puppets that danced and told jokes.
The strangers here did not act like strangers. As Flint walked on, vendors offered him free samples of cheese or scented wines, strawberries dipped in chocolate or bites of floating balloon-candy.
6. Noon of Gold
As the silver giant rose toward its noon, yet another sun, which had been eclipsed all this while by its huge brother, emerged like a wheel of fire from behind, mingling its golden light with the silver sunbeams, to shed a bright glow across the clouds above. Multiple shadows were gathered at the foot of column and edifice. The yellow sun was hot, and beat down mercilessly.
All things were now clear to view, and the mingled lights made every object burst with color, so that the eye became as if drunk on splendor.
A flotilla of these floating pavilion-cloths from the cloudbank overhead now sailed grandly across the multicolored sky to occlude the gold, hot newcomer sun.
They were parasols. Flint now saw some of the platforms were lens-shaped, no doubt meant to brighten the dimness, and heat the coolness of the twilight at times when few suns were aloft, or only one.
As they moved, however, the heraldic beasts and festival masks changed, and became those of the parasols they passed before, and the icons and arrows surrounding each mask or image changed as well. It was as if the images were supposed to remain in the same position, even if the parasol folded and shaped to form those images found a new position in the floating flotilla.
Flint stepped into the town square. There were three fountains here, one running with water, one with red wine, one with a carbonated sugar-drink. There was no fee; anyone could pluck a flimsy cup from a dispenser to drink his fill. There was no litter. Once empty, the cup would fold into an origami butterfly and flutter high above the rooftops, turning to bright sparkles in the air.
He idly drank, then followed his floating cup as it flitted and flew until it burst like silent fireworks. When he brought his eye down, he found he was standing in a fishmarket, which was commingled with a dozen cart-vendors cooking over open-air grills. The smell was mouth-watering.
Fishwives were crying out the glories of their wares, while in the air overhead was an elaborate fountainworks, held aloft by transparent forcefield shells and unseen tractor beams, so that globes and lenses of rippling water sent streams and gushes back and forth, up and down, from one levitating pond to the next. Within these ponds were dozens and scores of kinds of game fish.
Bathing beauties with naked limbs would curtsy and dive from a high platform into one pond or the other, snatching up fish in long-handled nets, which then were dropped over the pool's edge to waiting cooks below, to fry or grill and serve on the spot to waiting customers. The customer would call out his order and toss a coin, which one bathing beauty or another would neatly catch in her net.
Flint saw two kinds of salmon and three kinds of tuna, as well as halibut, sturgeon, paddlefish, stingray, angelfish and grouper. Other ponds held prawn and scallops. One pond was conical, and held a nest of crabs, all climbing over each other while trying to scale the unseen forcefield slope, the ones below pulling the ones above back down.
His wonder grew when he saw the coins being thrown were copper, not gold.
He remembered the near-empty shelves of the commissaries back home, even the ones reserved for the high-ranking officers and their families. He recalled the fish was always presented in prepackaged slabs in square, gray, boxes, with a quota on how many a family could buy. Meat was not available except on the last day of the ten-day work-span. And nothing was bought or sold without putting a hand or forehead to the chip-reader.
A pretty blonde in a lace apron beckoned him toward a vendor with a hot-cart, selling skewers of grilled crabmeat wrapped in sizzling bacon, which he cooked on a grill with a hand-beam. The vendor was a chubby Fuliguline in a chef's toque, who juggled the flaming skewers to amuse the bystanders, while grilling his meats.
Without asking, the little Duck thrust a toothpick holding a sizzling morsel into Flint's hand. When Flint reached for the bag of coins the Grandmaster had given him, the Duck called cheerily, "No worries! No fee! First bite always free!"
Another Duck, this one feathered in black and green and wearing a fez, now thrust his pushcart forward to intercept Flint. He also flourished a skewer of seafood wrapped in bacon. "Don't bother with that cheat! Mundle Bunle's got the real crabmeat! He sells pollock pressed in paste! Mine is bigger and better for less!"
The Duck in the toque, with the aid of his lithesome maid in her lace apron, shoved their pushcart to outflank the interloper. "Can't get much cheaper than free! Avoid his gristle! Eat with me! Porky Crabfork Eatery!"
Mundle Bundle, if that was the vendor's name, danced forward, flaming skewers in either feathery fist. "His grimy grub is all for lost! One Valentine is all mine cost!"
Flint was more than a little astounded by these antics. Neither vendor seemed to outrank the other, and neither tired of shouting the virtues of his wares. The one free bite was delicious. The smell was savory, and his stomach growled, so Flint opened his fist, displaying his coins. "Which is the which? What is the fee?"
The first Duck laughed. "The thruppence, sir. The three-cent piece. Copper. Bears the image and inscription of Valentinus, prince-consort of our good princess. Bless him! May his life be long and affluent!"
That name sounded familiar. Flint was sure he had heard it in a history tape. Valentinus was an admiral who turned traitor, sided with the rebels, and died a coward's death. "Is he — is he still alive, then? I had heard he had been — ah — I had heard otherwise. Admiral Valentinus? Mithra Simvian Valentinus? That same Valentinus?"
The first Duck said, "I know of but one! He is our favored local son. When Sir Jaywind could not finish his first term as Consul, it was Valentinus who took his place. Valentinus and Raphean were the first Consuls to hold power in the new republic."
"Republic…? What Republic?"
The Duck with feathery fingers plucked a gold coin from Flint's palm and pointed at it. One side held the Eagle-and-Stormbolt of the Commonwealth battle flag.
Flint stared, agog. It must be impossible. A counterfeit coin. A trick. The Grandmaster had him under a witch-spell, and was hoaxing his eyesight.
Flint said, "It is only a few worlds. It is just calling itself a republic. It is not the real one. Not the old one come again."
He took the coin back and held closer to his eye. It had to be fake.
The second Duck now made a little dance of exasperation, slapping his long, flat flipper-fleet on the flagstones with sharp sounds. "If you want to jape and mock, stuff your piehole with a sock! Not real? Of course the new Republic is real! Rules the galaxy from stem to stern! Rules over every star that burns! How could you not remember who our first Consuls were? How not know what happened after the Empire fell? All their crew now burns in hell!"
Flint was too overcome with surprise to move or speak. He could not even stammer.
These gay people overblessed with abundance, dancing and singing, free and carefree, did not even know the Empire existed.
It could not be. It could not be.
His thoughts became mad things in a cage, scraping and lunging, testing the bars, gnawing the lock and clawing at cracks, seeking some escape.
The first Duck saw his opportunity, and thrust the food into Flint's unresisting hand. "A bite to eat will clear your noggin, honored guest! Three pennies for a feast! Porky Crabfork are the best! Eat with us, forget the rest!"
And, relieving Flint of a small copper coin, he skipped away, to juggle his flaming meat-snacks toward other passers-by.
As the vendor was departing, Flint saw his grill cart was decorated with a grinning mask of swine in toques wearing duck bills and crab-claws. Flint, thunderstruck, remembered seeing this unlikely gargoyle before. Craning back his head, he saw the same mask design repeated on several of the flying parasols overhead. The parasol directly overhead kept pace with the vendor cart as it moved away.
Flint wandered back toward the town square, craning his neck, chewing slowly, dazed and half unaware of how simply delicious his cart-bought victual was.
The clouds overhead were advertisements for commerce. The images adorning the parasols were all pointing the way toward various restaurants, merchant halls or guilds, each in its own heraldic colors or logographs.
He saw forks and spoons crossed like swords, cups and cots and water closets, wine bottles and beer jugs, or various other amenities or necessities. Images of comdiscs or energy cells, mineral baths or beauty mirrors, or circus wheels, clowns, horses, or birds of various breeds, and on and on.
Some he could not guess their meaning: winged shoes, wide-horned bulls, four-pointed stars, branches and bells. Why was there a linkboy flourishing a candle pictured there, about a world which knew no candles?
The parasol images were arranged in lines and forking streams. Each market specialized in a different type of good. To find a market, one need only follow a line of signs, each pointing to the next, for its type of good. Over the market were separate, lower signs for each specific good, then, lower still, larger signs boasting a specific brand or hallmark. The final parasol in any line hung low over the hall or shop, stall or cart it represented, with a downward-pointing arrow. Even an illiterate child could find his way by following these bright signs in the air.
When his meal was done, he dropped the skewer. It fell up rather than down, weightless. The little stick dissolved into a puff of pine-scented ash, and vanished. There was no need to recycle this utensil.
Flint's gaze followed the smoke trail up. He stared at the floating billboards, posts, and hallmark signs until his eyesight swam.
The number of them was incomprehensible and vexing.
7. The Guild Hall
A pretty brunette in a lace apron now stepped up to him and curtseyed. She was so alike the blonde minding the bacon-vendor of Porky Crabfork, Flint wondered if she were the same lass in a different wig. He rejected the idea that humans on this world were cloned, as they were on his. He knew such cruelty was unknown here.
The girl made a graceful gesture toward a golden palace on a knoll nearby, bright with azure windows. A silver-based fountain at the top of a split staircase poured wine down a canal set in the steps in a singing sequence of miniature waterfalls. Beyond were grand double-doors of gold inset with images of seraphim and ophanim, fabulous creatures whose wings and wheels were set with eyes. Flint recognized these images from books commandeered from witches and anti-science heretics.
Flint was impressed by the sight, and missed the beginning of the girl's remark, "… bids you enter, as a guest."
Flint said, "Who is your master? Why invite me into his fine and mighty house? I am no prince."
The girl was wide eyed for a moment, then she giggled behind her folding fan, which she quickly deployed to hide her mirth. "Oh, no sir! That is not a private home. That is a Guild Hall of Optometrists and Optic Surgeons. It is a place of business."
"Of — what?" Flint was not sure he had heard rightly.
"I was sent to cajole you to inspect our wares and services. Rates are reasonable, and we can, ah, ameliorate any of your … that is … if you are in need of any …"
She was staring at his facial scars, and at whatever metal parts of his prosthetic eye could be glimpsed about the edges of his eyepatch. He realized she was too gentle-hearted to refer to his wound directly. She had obviously never seen such a thing before.
A strange chill came over Flint, despite that the golden sun was hotter and fiercer than the other three currently visible. He had seen no one else with scars walking the streets.
Was there no war in the galaxy? Why was no one scarred?
Flint was shocked when the girl took his arm, and led him up the stairs to the palatial guildhall. It was not the lascivious gesture of a camp follower, nor the intimate gesture of a flirt. It seemed sisterly, unselfaware, as if the girl expected no ill from any.
Within was luxury hard to believe. The golden pillars studded with diamond, jasper, and sapphire upheld a vaulted ceiling, whose panes were painted with mythical scenes and figures of Odin or the Graeae Sisters, Tobit or Polyphemus, or the poet Homer.
Along the walls were prosthetic eyes and eye-lenses displayed in long glass cases, row upon row, of all shapes and colors, both mechanical and biological, as well as spectacles and monocles.
On the carpet to the left and right were booths. Here a laser surgeon was standing by a reclining chair, as if he could correct defective vision as quickly and casually as a barber might shave a gentleman's whiskers.
A plump matron was in the next booth, talking with a veterinarian, who was trying gently to force a squirming lapdog's head into a surgical helmet without getting bitten.
A surgeon in a white coat with a robotic speculum hovering next to his head strolled up to Flint and nodded in dignified greeting. "Honored guest, I could not help but notice how you blinked staring at the sky just now. I sent our greeting-maid out to ask you in. Forgive my forwardness, but the Optometrist Guild are forward-looking people — optimists, if you take my meaning!" The man had an odd laugh like a donkey bray. "Hee-heh! Hee-heh!"
Flint stared at the man, face blank. "I am sorry. I don't copy. Come again?"
"Our many suns have different strengths and compositions of light, and can sometimes cause optic disequilibrium, if the pupil is not dilating or contracting fully. We have a simple process of light-sensitivity correction for the fine muscle groups in and around the eye — not to mention an array of sunglasses made of programmable smart-glass. Also, from our line of monocles, if you wish to restore a simulacrum of binocular vision in your cortex, via a simple retrofitted implant…"
But Flint was not paying attention, for in that short amount of time, surely less than a minute, he saw the veterinarian remove the helmet from the lapdog, who was now running in circles, barking madly, chasing a scarf the veterinarian was fluttering before the yapping creature's muzzle.
What distracted Flint was not this sight, but the sound of the matron crying out in joy. "He can see again! He can see!"
Flint muttered, "The dogs are treated better here than our officers."
The surgeon followed Flint's unwinking gaze. "Sir? Did you have some question? Our procedures are guild-certified for a wide variety of domestic animals, as well as for men of nearly any Eutherian species. Iss are a special case, and, of course, the optical processes of Arachnids are far too complex for a humble facility like ours ..."
Flint took off his eyepatch, and pointed at his cybernetic eye "What do you make of this?"
The speculum hovering above the eye surgeon blinked and whistled, and then whispered to the surgeon's ear in highspeed bot-code. The man said, "It is inferior work, and miscalibrated. Even as a temporary to wear for an hour while your new eye is being biofactured, the optic pressure differentiation might give you headaches and throw off your depth perception."
