His Conquering Sword (10 page)

“Rather like the emperor,” said David softly.

“What?” whispered Marco.

David shook his head. The field shrank in until it encompassed only the boundaries of the innermost ring of counter. Rajiv spoke, and a bewildering array of charts and graphs and figures emerged in three dimensions and multiple blocks in the field.

“He keeps coming back to this,” said Marco in a low voice, “all these figures, timetables. I think the Mushai must have stolen the contents of every data bank in the empire and compressed them into here. Why?”

“Knowledge is power.”

“Easy answer. Why does Charles keep coming back to this?”

“Easy question. Same answer.”

“It’s time,” said Rajiv suddenly.

“End program,” said Charles. The field broke into a thousand bright pinpricks and sparkled and faded and vanished. Charles rose. Echido hurried over to stand beside him, the Keinaba house steward at his heels. A moment later, the door between the two black megaliths that led into the buffer room opened to admit Maggie and the ke.

“Hon Echido.” Charles acknowledged the Chapalii merchant with a nod of his head. “Marco Burckhardt will escort you and your party back to your ship. Tonight is the new moon. It will be necessary for you to leave the planet during this window.”

“Tai-en.” Echido bowed, hands folded at his chest. “May I be allowed to inquire about the other errand we spoke of?”

“Oh, yes. Indeed, I shall require your services in this other matter. You will retrieve the equipment Dr. Hierakis has requested and stay in touch. We will arrange a rendezvous at some point along our journey south.”

“Keinaba House would be honored, Tai-en, to transport you to these southern latitudes on our shuttle, thus sparing you the arduous physical journey.”

“I hear your offer, Hon Echido, but you know that as this planet is interdicted, by my own order, we must travel in as unobtrusive a manner as possible.”

“As you command, Tai-en. I await your word.” He bowed, precise and low. His steward bowed. The ke was not of sufficient rank to be allowed to bow to a member of the nobility, but Charles glanced her way and acknowledged her with a nod. Marco led them away to the stables, where their horses waited.

“Well?” Charles asked, turning to look at Maggie in the now quiet room.

“I think I’ve just discovered something amazing,” said Maggie. “Rajiv, can you call up that image of the Imperial palace? Not that big. Yes, that’s a manageable size.”

The field remained within the confines of the inner counter, and the five people loitering in the chamber walked forward to stand leaning at the outer counter, staring in. The sight was less overwhelming, confined in a sphere of pale blue light.

“Li an sai,”
said Maggie, the code that instructed the banks to respond to her voice commands. “Show the Imperial palace as it existed in the days of the Tai-en Mushai.” The image did not change. “Show the Imperial palace as it exists in the days of Tai-en Charles Soerensen.”

The image did not change.

“Is this a trick question?” demanded David. “Is there some time paradox here? Jo says that her dating indicates that the Mushai must have lived a good ten thousand years ago, Earth standard.”

“No time paradox.” Maggie looked smug. “There’s an essential point missing. The Chapalii always say, ‘time uncounted, years beyond years.’”

“A phrase Tess once told me applies equally to past, present, and future,” said Charles suddenly. “She said that the Chapalii live in the present. That they have no concept of past or future, in the sense that we do. No strong concept of history. The Mushai’s revolt is more of a legend than a historical event.”

“The Imperial city is the same, as it always has been,” agreed Maggie. “As it is now, so must it have always been. The same with the emperor. He’s the same emperor now as he was ten thousand years ago, even though he’s a different individual. But we thought that was the Chapalii psyche, or mind-set.”

“Based on the language study Tess did, yes.” Charles nodded.

“Did Tess ever have access to Chapalii females?”

“Not that I know of. We never see Chapalii females on Earth. Or on Odys, for that matter.”

“We never see them anywhere.”

“I thought,” said Rajiv, “that they were inferior citizens. Put in seclusion, purdah. You know. It’s one of those primitive ancient Earth customs that human culture finally outgrew. You still see it in places here on Rhui. That’s one thing I’ll grant the jaran, however barbaric they might otherwise be. There’s a kind of shared authority between the women and the men. But anyway—”

“Damn it, Mags!” David laughed out of impatience and amusement at Maggie stringing them all along. “What did the ke tell you?”

“I think it’s just the males. The Chapalii males. That live in the present. They don’t deal with the concept of history, or past, or future. Because they’re the face we see, the face we’ve always seen, of the Chapalii, we assumed it was the only one they had. The ke gave me a date for the Mushai. An imperial date. Rajiv, you’ll have to run it through the computer. I can’t calculate these things. I’m just a damned journalist. I deal in image and word, not in mathematics.” She shut her eyes, concentrated, and then reeled off a string of numbers and strange sounding words.

Rajiv pulled out his slate and began some feverish work.

“Why not do it through the field?” Charles asked.

Rajiv glanced up. “If what Maggie says is true, then perhaps this field won’t even acknowledge this kind of data. Anyway, I’d prefer to do the initial calcs on my own equipment.”

Charles began to pace, looking thoughtful. “So there might be a whole strata of Chapalii life that we’ve missed? You know, I made Tess my heir because I thought with her language skills that she would then be allowed access to all levels of their culture, and thus she could penetrate deeper than we had yet managed into an understanding of their psyche. But now I wonder if by doing so, if by making her an honorary male, as it were, I limited her instead. History!” He lapsed into silence.

“A whole other strata?” Maggie asked. “I don’t know. All I got were the dates of the Mushai’s rise and fall. The rest—” She shrugged.

David leaned on his elbows on the counter and stared into the tiny image of the palace. The image shifted and rotated, highlighting first this cluster of slender pagodalike towers, then that tiered garden, then that ten-kilometer-long concourse of seamless diamond roadway. “But they keep referring to the women who build the towers. And the Tai-en Naroshi offered his
sister
to design and oversee a mausoleum for Tess.”

“Artists and craftsmen,” said Jo suddenly. “There is a difference.”

They all contemplated the difference for long minutes of silence while Rajiv’s fingers brushed the keys of his hemi-slate and he muttered under his breath in a singsong voice.

Charles tapped his ear suddenly. “Incoming from Cara,” he said. “Who has a—?”

David drew his slate out of its loop on his belt, unfolded it, and set it on the floor. He stepped back. “Receive,” he said into the air.

Cara’s face materialized above the slate. Her image looked gritty and flat after the Chapalii display. “Charles,” she said. She smiled. He smiled back. “You’re well?”

“I’m well,” he acknowledged.

“Any news?”

He lifted both hands. “Much news. You’ll hear about it when I get there.”

“Ah. I’ll look forward to it. Bakhtiian is sending his niece back to escort you. She’s leaving tomorrow.”

“As are we. We’ll look for her on our way.”

“Goddess,” muttered Maggie, “how are we supposed to meet without any tracking equipment, over such a distance?”

“We’ll have to trust that they know their way around,” said David softly. “Anyway, I’ve been teaching her to make decent maps.”

Maggie snorted, but said nothing more.

“I’ll pay no mind to the peanut gallery,” said Cara’s image, but she looked amused. “Have you ordered my shipment?”

“Yes. Suzanne requisitioned it. Delivery downside is being arranged. I still think that given the potential for serious complications, Tess must at least return to Jeds for the remainder of her pregnancy.”

“Charles, leaving aside questions of transport at this late date, I remind you that to remove her forcibly at this point would probably alienate her from you completely. You must trust to my judgment. With the additional equipment, with the antigen solution, and with the studies I’ve done on Bakhtiian’s chemistry and blood, I feel certain of a positive outcome even with complications.”

David knew well what Cara’s promises were worth. She had never been a person to offer what she could not deliver.

Charles frowned. “Perhaps if the experience is difficult and painful, then she won’t be so sanguine about remaining in these conditions.”

“Charles!” David was appalled.

Cara snorted. “I can’t imagine why you keep underestimating her stubbornness, Charles, since she inherited it from the same two people you did.”

“You don’t understand, Cara. Maggie’s overturned the boulder and we’ve found a whole new ecology lurking underneath. I need Tess.”

“You’re talking in riddles, my love. I’ll wait for the report. Have you gotten that fix on Hyacinth yet? Is it possible he’s still alive?”

“Yes, in fact, Rajiv has the fix. It’s moving steadily, if slowly, northeast. They’ll make the plains soon.”

A silence. “Well,” said Cara at last, her expression a mask of relief, “bless the Goddess for that, at least. May I tell the actors?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“You’re rather close with information sometimes.”

“Only when it’s vital. I’ll do my best to swing our route south so that we can pick him up. Anything else?”

“Tess is fine. We’re heading west tomorrow toward the royal city of Karkand. If we have to besiege it, then doubtless that’s where you’ll find us when you get here in—what—I don’t know how fast you can travel.”

“Not as fast as the messengers, but I’ll encourage our escorts to push the pace. Out, here, then.”

“Out, here.” The image flickered and dissipated.

“I wonder why Bakhtiian decided to send his niece back?” asked David.

“She’s married now,” said Maggie. “And her husband is with us. That sounds like a reason. Doubtless he trusts her in a way he doesn’t necessarily trust a captain not of his own family. You’re a valuable hostage, Charles. Too valuable to lose.”

“Am I a hostage?” Charles looked amused.

“Don’t you think so? A hostage to force Tess’s cooperation.”

Charles quirked a smile at her and paced back to stand next to Rajiv. “I rather thought it was the other way around. That Tess was a hostage for
my
cooperation.”

“Are we really going to pick up the actor?” asked David.

“If we can.”

They all fell silent, waiting for Rajiv to finish.

“Wow!” exclaimed Rajiv suddenly, Rajiv, who was not wont to indulge in vulgar or antiquated expressions of astonishment. “According to this, he flourished for five hundred years. Do you suppose they live that long?”

“How should we know?” asked Jo. “We don’t know a damned thing about their physiology. They are clearly built for efficiency, though, or perhaps have engineered themselves to be so. Cara’s studies of the Rhuian population indicate that the humans transported here were engineered as well, to make them disease resistant and to adapt them to the planet. So why shouldn’t they live that long?”

“It might explain,” said Charles slowly, “why their social structure is so static. Longevity might encourage stability, or even stagnation.”

“Like the old folk stories of elves and the fairy kingdom?” asked Maggie. “Isn’t that the analogy Cara used? Their world is static because it can’t change.”

“Yes,” said David, breaking in, “but we don’t know if five hundred years is a short life span or a long one, then, even if it’s true. What if it refers to the amount of time the Mushai dukedom flourished? Not the individual?”

“No,” said Rajiv. “I’m certain it’s the individual. The famous.
Our
rebel Mushai. Hold on.” He mumbled under his breath, talking to himself as he manipulated a three-dimensional matrix that floated above the surface of his slate.

David stared at the Imperial palace and wondered what it had really looked like in the Tai-en Mushai’s time. Or had it looked the same? Was the empire so old and so unchanging? They did not know. And indeed, why should they, humanity, minor subjects of powerful alien masters, be granted access to such information?

Rajiv sighed. “All right. As far as I can calculate, the transportations from Earth to Rhui of human populations took place over a two hundred year period approximately fourteen thousand four hundred years ago. I’ve got three calendrical dates. Chapalii
yaotiwaganishi-chichanpa-oten-li.
Before League Concordance 14,185 to approximately 13,985. Let me see, or, archaeologically speaking, you could use the old Common Era dates of approximately 12,135 B.C.E. to 11,935 B.C.E. I’ll get exact figures in a moment.”

“It jibes with Jo’s dating.” Charles nodded. “Remarkable, and that’s from a Chapalii source.”

“If she was telling the truth,” said Maggie.

“If.” Charles walked over to stand next to David, examining the glories of the imperial palace. “But I have no evidence to suggest that she is lying. Rajiv. Bring up the tables again. Everything.”

Rajiv had ordered the sequence in some wildly confusing web, with spheres and cubes and flat tables displaying scrolling data bases. David found the spray of color and shifting symbols nauseating.

“Rajiv, what is your analysis of the material contained here?” asked Charles, seemingly unaffected by this dynamic.

Rajiv considered before he answered the question, because he preferred accuracy to speed. “The easiest analogy would be to imagine we had contained here all economic, political, transportation, and commercial schedules and statistics and timetables and—well, you get the idea—for all the planets contained within the League. Except it’s far more complex than that, and not only because it contains this vast amount of information on the inner workings and structure of the Chapalii Empire. Timetables, calendrical dates within the year although not of the years themselves, economic indices, shipping charts and cargo information, freight schedules, census of house affiliations and house wealth, an atlas of all inhabited and uninhabited regions with reference to population, movement, available resources and potential resource exploitation—” He paused only to take in a breath.