Homeward Bound (38 page)

But that was a small thing. The palace in front of him was anything but. Unlike most of the Race’s buildings, it had been designed when those within had to worry about their safety, and it looked the part. Sam wouldn’t have wanted to attack it with anything short of an armored division. Where the grounds looked Japanese, the palace seemed more Russian than anything else. He supposed the onion domes topping some of the gray stone towers put that thought in his mind. But the palace wasn’t really Russian, any more than the mausoleum was really a match for the Parthenon. Those were just comparisons his human mind groped for. The Race’s architecture had its own logic, and not all of it followed anything he was used to.

He looked at his watch again, then gathered himself. “I am ready,” he said. “It is time. Let us go on.”

On they went. The entry door was made of some flame-colored, tiger-striped wood truly unearthly in its beauty. It had been polished till it shone. The ironwork of the hinges and latch looked massive enough to stop a charging elephant. Sam laughed at himself. This door might have been built to stop a great many things, but elephants weren’t one of them.

The great portal silently swung open. Herrep, the protocol master, stood just inside. Sam took a deep breath. He’d faced up to presidents. He’d faced up to hard-throwing kids who’d stick one in your ear just because they had no idea where the lousy ball would go once they let loose of it. And he could damn well face up to this snooty Lizard.

He took one more deep breath, then crossed the threshold. As soon as he did, he assumed the posture of respect. He had to work to keep from laughing again.
I’m an old man. I must look like a real idiot crouched down here with my butt in the air.
No air conditioning, either, not even what passed for it among the Lizards. Sweat rolled off him.

“You may rise,” Herrep said.

“I thank you.” Sam’s back creaked as he got to his feet. “In the name of the people of the United States, in the name of the President of the United States, I thank you. I come in peace. In the name of peace, I convey my folk’s greeting to the Emperor, and wish him good health and many years.”

“In his name, I thank you, and I accept the greeting in the spirit in which you offer it,” the protocol master said. “Now, if you would be so kind as to follow me . . .”

“It shall be done,” Sam said. Remote-control cameras on the ceiling and the wall swung with him as he moved: no baying swarm of cameramales and -females here, as there had been at the mausoleum. Sam was old enough to remember the ballyhoo days of the 1920s. They had nothing on what the Lizards had done there.

Herrep led him past an elderly female who sat with a basin of water and a scrubbing brush: the imperial laver. Then the protocol master walked past another female, just as ancient, this one with a fancy set of body paints: the imperial limner. Sam sketched the posture of respect to each of them in turn without fully assuming it. They both returned the gesture. He recognized them as important parts of the imperial court; they recognized him as someone who did not require their services. It was a quiet compromise, and one that did not show how much argument lay behind it. Proper compromises seldom did.

After leaving the imperial limner behind a bend in the corridor, Herrep paused for a moment. “We are not on camera here,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you, researching this ceremonial was endlessly fascinating. I believe the Emperors of ancientest days would recognize what we do here. It might not be exactly what they were used to seeing, but they would recognize it.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” Yeager replied politely. “It is also not too different from the ceremonies we use on Tosev 3.”

Herrep waved that aside, as if of no account. That was, no doubt, how he felt about it. To him, Big Uglies were barbarians, and how could what barbarians did among themselves matter to a civilized male? The answer to that was simple: it began to matter when the barbarians grew too strong for a civilized male to ignore. And that was what had happened here.

“Shall we proceed, then?” the protocol master said.

“We can hardly stop now. Males and females would talk,” Sam answered. Herrep’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. Sam Yeager only waited. He wasn’t surprised to discover that the protocol master had no idea what to make of levity, even of the mildest sort. Herrep pointed forward. Sam made the affirmative gesture. As soon as he turned the next corner, he knew he would be back on camera.

Knowing this was all part of a fancy charade did not, could not, keep awe from prickling through him. The audience chamber was designed to make anyone of any species coming before the Emperor feel small and unworthy. The eons-dead males and females who’d done the designing had known their business, too. Up near the shadow-filled ceiling, a small flying thing chittered shrilly. Long colonnades of shining stone drew the eye up and drew it on toward the throne at the far end of the hall.

A courtier appeared before Sam. He carried on a staff an American flag. Data transmissions from Earth meant the Race knew what the Stars and Stripes looked like. As Sam and the flagbearer walked down the aisle toward the throne, a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” blared out. No doubt Lizard commentators would be quietly explaining to their audience what the strange music meant.

Atvar had said that the banners displayed in the audience hall belonged to empires extinguished by
the
Empire here on Home, on Rabotev 2, on Halless 1—and on Earth. Yeager recognized the Mexican flag, and the Australian, and the Brazilian, and the Chinese. He could not stop to look for and look at others.

Spotlights gleamed from the gilded throne—or was it solid gold? They also gleamed from the Emperor’s gilded chest and belly. Sam thought that was funny. No doubt the Lizards found human royal regalia just as ridiculous.

Two large Lizards—they came up past the middle of his chest—in plain gray body paint stepped out to block his path. They were imperial guards: an ancient survival in an empire where no one had tried to assassinate a sovereign in tens of thousands of years. Like the Swiss Guards who protected the Pope, they looked as if they still knew how to fight, even if they didn’t have to.

“I come in peace,” Sam assured them. They drew back.

Yeager advanced to the end of the aisle, just in front of the throne. The spotlights on the 37th Emperor Risson made his all-gold body paint glow. That might have awed any Lizard who came before him. It didn’t do much for Sam one way or the other. He assumed the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor, there on the stone smoothed by uncounted tens of thousands of males and females of the Race, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi who’d done the same thing on the same spot.

From the throne, the Emperor said, “Arise, Ambassador Sam Yeager.”

“I thank you, your Majesty,” Sam replied, and again rose creakily to his feet. “I bring peaceful greetings from my not-emperor and from the males and females of the United States. Our hope is for trade, for mutual prosperity, and for mutual respect.”

“May this be so,” Risson said. “It has been a very long time since an independent ambassador came before an Emperor of the Race.”

“Everything changes, your Majesty,” Sam said. “Some things change quickly, some very slowly. But everything changes.”

Most members of the Race would have argued with him. Change here happened at a pace to make a snail into a bullet. It was seldom visible within the course of a single lifetime. For the Lizard in the street, that meant it might as well not have happened at all. But appearances deceived.

“Truth,” Risson said simply. Yeager was relieved the Emperor knew what he was talking about. Risson went on, “One thing I hope will never change, though, is the friendship and peace between your not-empire and the Empire.”

“Your Majesty, that is also my fondest hope.” Sam got to try out an emphatic cough for all the Lizards across the planet who might be watching.

“Excellent,” the Emperor replied. “So long as there is good will on both sides, much can be accomplished. I hope to converse with you again on other occasions, Sam Yeager of the United States.” Risson had been rehearsing, too; he pronounced the name of Sam’s country as well as any Lizard could.

And he spoke the words of dismissal as smoothly and politely as anyone could have. Yeager assumed the special posture of respect once more. This time, he could rise without waiting for permission. The flagbearer preceded him up the aisle, away from the imperial throne. The audience was over.

Risson had more personality than he’d expected. The gold paint and all the ceremonial hemming in the Emperor made him seem more a thing than an individual. Plainly, making any such assumption about Risson would be rash. Despite the role he played, he was very much himself.

“I thank you for your help,” Sam quietly told the Lizard who’d carried the Stars and Stripes.

“Ambassador, it was my privilege,” the Lizard replied, which might have meant that he was proud to have played a role, no matter how small, in history—or might have meant someone had told him to carry the flag and he’d done it.

He peeled off where he had joined the American. Yeager continued into the bend in the corridor where, Herrep had assured him, he was not being filmed. The protocol master waited for him there. “I congratulate you, Ambassador,” Herrep said. “Your performance was most satisfactory.”

“I thank you,” Sam answered. Not splendid or magnificent or brilliant or anything like that. Most satisfactory. He nodded to himself. Under the circumstances, and from such an exacting critic, it would definitely do.

Kassquit watched Sam Yeager’s audience from a hotel room in Preffilo. She had not come to the imperial capital with the delegation of wild Big Uglies, but separately. She did not want her audience with the 37th Emperor Risson to be seen as merely an afterthought to that of the American ambassador. It probably would be—she was, after all, a Big Ugly herself, even if not a wild one—but she wanted to distance it as much as she could.

She studied the ambassador’s performance with a critical eye. Since he represented an independent not-empire, the ceremony was somewhat different for him. He did more than well enough, remembering his responses and acting with dignity. He also seemed unaware that billions of eyes would be upon him, here on Home and then on the other worlds fully ruled by the Empire and on Tosev 3. He surely wasn’t, but seeming that way was all that mattered.

She hoped she would be able to bring off such an unaffected performance herself. She remembered hearing that Sam Yeager, when he was younger, had been an athlete of some sort. Perhaps that gave him an edge in seeming natural, for he would already have appeared before large audiences.

Let me not disgrace myself,
Kassquit thought.
Spirits of Emperors past, show all the worlds that I truly am a citizen of the Empire.
She was not used to the idea of prayer, but it seemed more natural here in Preffilo than it ever had before. After all, the remains of the past Emperors were here. Surely their spirits would linger here as well.

She visited the mausoleum a few days after the American Tosevites had done so. The guide, a male named Jussop, said, “We had a little trouble with the wild Big Uglies. Some reporters got their livers all in an uproar when it came to asking questions. That will not happen with you.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Kassquit answered. She recognized the need for publicity every now and again, but faced the prospect without enthusiasm. Having had no privacy whatever as a hatchling and young adult, she jealously clung to what she’d been able to accumulate since.

With a disapproving hiss, Jussop went on, “Another thing is, those wild Big Uglies thought the mausoleum was handsome and everything like that—they said all the right things—but you could tell it did not
mean
anything to them, the way it is supposed to.”

“They have different beliefs,” Kassquit said. “They know no better. In a way, I am sorry for them.”

“Well, you sound like a proper person, a person with the right kind of attitude,” Jussop said. “Come along, then, and I will show you what there is to see.”

“I thank you.” Kassquit sketched the posture of respect without fully assuming it.

She went into the full posture once she got inside the mausoleum. It might not have meant much to the wild Big Uglies, but it certainly did to her. It was, in fact, the most spiritual moment of her life. Surrounded by the ashes of Emperors past, she also felt surrounded by their spirits. And they seemed to accept her; she seemed to belong there. She might have the body of a Tosevite, but she was part and parcel of the Empire.

Slowly, reverently, she walked from one urn to the next, glancing briefly at the memorial plaque by each. So many sovereigns, so many names . . . Some she knew from history. Some she’d never heard of. No doubt no one but scholars or collectors of trivia would have heard of them. Well, that was fine, too. They were all part of the ancient, magnificent edifice that was the Empire. All of their spirits would cherish her when she passed from this world.

The Americans will never know this certainty,
she thought sadly.
Yes, I am sorry for them.

At last, when her liver was full of peace, she turned to Jussop. “I thank you. I am ready to leave now. This has been the most awe-filled day of my life. I do not see how anything could surpass it.”

“You are going to have an audience with the Emperor, are you not?” the guide asked. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. Jussop said, “In that case, you would do well not to speak too soon.”

Kassquit thought about it, then made the affirmative gesture again. “Truth. I stand corrected.”

Which counted for more, she wondered as she lay down on the sleeping mat of her hotel room: the spirits of Emperors past or the actual physical presence of the reigning Emperor? She had trouble deciding, but she knew she would be one of the lucky few who
could
decide, for she would soon meet the 37th Emperor Risson in the flesh.

A few reporters did wait outside the imperial palace when she and Atvar were driven up to it. She wondered if it was built like a fortress to hold them at bay. She wouldn’t have been surprised. “How does it feel to be the second Tosevite granted an audience with his Majesty?” one of them called as she and her sponsor got out of their car.