Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy (15 page)

“Yes, those dead volcanoes. Thank the sky there aren’t any Martian citizens there you could harm. I should also point out that before you barged in on me I was enjoying a rather extraordinary Period of Darkness. In fact, I had been looking forward to it ever since my bargain was struck with Kamath Clan. It really was a most extraordinary piece of luck, you know. For the mere promise that the house of Clan remain united with the house of Kris, thereby fulfilling the silly woman’s lifelong wish that her secular religion be accepted and legitimized on Mars—which it never will be, of course—she has sent Tabrel Kris back to me. In the process she has cut her own throat, of course, and probably that of her idiot son as well. At the same time, she has made sure that Wrath-Pei will cut short his acquisition raids on our outer colonies, and also guaranteed that the vermin will be on Titan when we strike.”

The High Leader turned his glowering eyes on Pynthas Rei. “All of this I was enjoying with the utmost languorousness, Pynthas. I cannot describe to you how pleasant thoughts become even more pleasant when they are drawn out to exquisite length. It is one of the decidedly positive aspects of my condition. And now, the message? I do hope it won’t offend my still languorous mood.”

“As I s-said, p-perhaps I should—”

“Screen, begin,” the High Leader said, ignoring the toady’s beseeching.

The Screen was filled with the ravaged, full-length picture of Senator Kris, suspended in his constraining upright field; the field’s faint yellow light made the senator appear slightly jaundiced.

“Did the camera in the garret record this?”

“
Yes,
High Leader.”

“Why is he smiling?” the High Leader asked.

“Because—” Pynthas began, but he was cut off not by the High Leader this time but by the senator, who began to speak.

“Prime Cor… nelian,” Senator Kris rasped; his mouth was indeed smiling—a very unattractive sight, since his mouth had long since been voided of teeth, which had fallen out one by one over the years due to the intravenous diet he had been subjected to, which kept him just one side of malnutrition.

The senator tried to move; but the tightness of his constriction caused him a pain that he seemed to have long since come to terms with. His face resumed a more passive demeanor, but his lips moved, and he spoke:

“Prime … Corn… elian. I know that… you think… you have… won. But I… must tell you other … wise.”

Exhausted by the effort, the senator seemed to drift off to sleep; the High Leader, impatient, shouted at the Screen, “Move on!”

The Screen froze. “That is not a directive command.”

The High Leader turned and shrieked at Pynthas, “Make it work!”

“Screen, resume,” Pynthas whispered, cowering. Instantly the senator began to speak again on the Screen.

“You … do not … under … stand my daughter,” he said. What the High Leader at first took to be a grin was actually a grimace. “For even if you have… her body… she will… still resist you . .

The High Leader felt his rage rising to new high levels, and yet he was able to bark out a laugh. “I still have you—you old foo—”

The Screen image of the senator managed to cut the High Leader off, even though his voice was a bare breath. “If I… were to remain… alive, my… daughter would… do your… bidding. However…”

Now the senator did manage a smile, and now the withered, paper-skinned hand at his side flickered upward, ever so slightly; there was the tiniest glint of something metallic, and then the field around Senator Kris brightened to blindness and then collapsed, leaving the senator’s blackened, charred body in a heap on the garret floor.

“What—happened?”
the High Leader screeched, managing a sound that was something between a gasp and a howl of fury. He turned on Pynthas.
“What happened?”

“He … t-t-terminated himself, High Lead—”

“How? How could he do this?” Prime Cornelian turned back to the Screen, staring with fascination at the senator’s dead body, its burned head angled back as if on cue to face the camera, the skeletal look of its mouth looking not much different than the painful penultimate grin the senator had managed in life.

“He… had a…”

“What?”

“… button, High Leader, a … metal button, which he… apparently hid in his palm when we put him in the … field. He … apparently was aware that it would… disrupt the phase and…”

Prime Cornelian said, “Do you mean to tell me that Senator Kris kept that
button
for three years, knowing that it could end his life at any time—end his pain—and yet he didn’t use it until it was most
useful
for
his
daughter?”

“That would … appear to be the case, High Leader. It was actually easy for him to hold the button, since it was locked against his palm by the field—”

“That’s not what I mean, you idiot!” Prime Cornelian drew even closer to the Screen, marveling at the senator’s dead body. “Such… dedication. If only the Machine Master could manufacture that for me.”

“Would you like me to… summon the Machine Master, High Leader?”

The High Leader turned, as if seeing Pynthas for the first time. “What? No, of course not, you dolt. Just … get out.”

Pynthas, thankful for release, skittered backward toward the door.

“And turn out the lights on leaving.”

“Yes,
High Leader!” Pynthas fumbled for the switch, missing it twice before drawing the High Leader’s attention.

“I said get out! I’ll handle it myself!”

“Yes, High Leader!”

Fumbling still at the door, Pynthas Rei fell out into the hallway as the door opened unexpectedly behind him. As it began to close again, the lights were extinguished in the chamber, and the High Leader began to slip once more into a Period of Darkness. But now there was illumination in the room from the still-active Screen, before which Prime Cornelian had prostrated himself, as if hypnotized.

“A … maz … ing …” the High Leader said languidly, as the door closed tight in Pynthas Rei’s face.

Chapter 17

A
s an actor, Porto enjoyed immensely the Lost Lands.

Drama! The Lost Lands presented nothing if not drama: each moment was fraught with peril, the fight of mutant species that may have heaved into existence only the week or month before; the battle of twisted life that existed in a world where natural law had been turned upside down.

Action! The fights themselves—between four-eyed reptiles and three-eyed birds, for instance, provided plenty of that; there were minor skirmishes of a thousand varieties, and the constant, inevitable, age-old contest between hunter and prey. Since his departure from the rebel camp a week before, Porto had beheld tiny creatures with impossibly long limbs devour animals thrice their size by merely squeezing them to death; and then seen the same ten-meter-limb creatures bested by monsters half their size, who then proceeded to feast on both losers. Porto was less intrigued by the innards of these beasts; some seemed to ooze copper-colored sap in place of blood, and where there was blood it was too light in color to provide hope of normal human sustenance. Porto had, naturally, provided his own food for the trip.

Romance! Well, there wasn’t much of that, except goggly-eyed things courting other goggly-eyed things, during which times Porto amused himself with the scenery.

Scenery! And what scenery it was! Worthy of any nightmare stage. At night in the Lost Lands thunder may or may not be accompanied by lightning or clouds; clouds themselves, never a fluffy white, often a rancid yellow or brown, may or may not produce acid rain. Lightning, in fact, found its way to the ground without benefit of storm—by benefit, in fact, of the skewed atmosphere, whose ionization layer had picked up enough charged electrons to produce lightning whenever it liked. The sky itself was a constant slate gray and produced the not-infrequent tornado funnel that tore through the blasted landscape, driving infertile blue-black soil into the air, along with the rusted roots of dead plants and mutant mix-hires of plant and animal life: dun-leaved ferns with lionine features bulging from their stems, uprooted things walking with zombie gaits, daisies that screamed with the coming of each sickly dawn.

And the stage itself!

The stage!

Porto felt himself a man at home. Though he had had a few close calls, most of his days had been spent in happy contemplation at this thespian’s paradise he found himself in. Not since his boyhood days, while acting for food in Cairo’s slums, had he felt so free to improvise; his morning might be spent in happy soliloquy to a shivering (literally) oak tree; during an afternoon break from his northeastward trek, he might stop to serenade three leathery monsters in the process of devouring a chum, holding them in thrall with his juggling wizardry. Swamp globs, who thrived on acid rain, he discovered, were partial to jokes; so, too, were two-headed cranes biased in favor of the historical Shakespeare. Julius Caesar being Porto’s specialty, he escaped more than one close call by rattling off the death scene: “Et tu, Brutus!”

And always, Porto was startled by something new. He discovered, for instance, that the reports of recent years had been true: that parts of the Lost Lands were not lost anymore. Here and there amid the supposed ruins were spots of new fecundity; where a few years earlier might have stood a stand of rotting elms, now these elms had found reason to thrive again, and flower green as ever their ancestors. Where a fetid swamp, filled with pestilence and drinkable death, had lain, now flowed a stream-fed pool of real water (a good thing, since at one point Porto’s own water supply had been depleted during an unfortunate flight from ungrateful patrons who thought him food instead of food for thought). Here and there, a patch of real blue shone overhead—even if the shining be fleeting; and, once, a cloud of, yes, fluffy white made its appearance at undewy dawn—only to be devoured by acidic brothers later in the morning, naturally, but the appearance was duly noted, and applauded.

What did Porto make of it? Nothing, for that was not his job; but he made note nevertheless.

There were way stations: pseudo-principalities of human mutants and outcasts and, occasionally, other, smaller rebel camps. Through half of what had once been Africa, Porto was never without promise of aid for long, and often met with more deference than he was used to. One outer fiefdom feted him as if he were visiting royalty—though the dishes, which included among other delicacies six-toed monkey, were not to his liking, the attention was pleasing. Not a few dinners ended with impromptu performances by the traveling ambassador; his Cyrano, especially, was enjoyed on this occasion. Another camp provided a ride in a rickety contraption that mimicked the flight of an airplane; Porto enjoyed the shortening of the trip, if not the method.

A
nd then, suddenly, he was on the edge of the World again. The sky cleared; the grass was green, the Lost Lands left behind. Now his situation became more official. There were officials to kowtow to, ceremonies to partake in. Here his acting served him more than well. When he left these borderline states behind, the goodwill he had engendered did nothing to endanger the recent alliances the rebels had made. For this, Porto was thankful.

And then, he was among the unfriendly.

It was an abrupt change; a borderline between governorships distinct perhaps on a map but not beneath Porto’s feet. From friendly territory he passed, one beautiful morning, into unfriendly territory, and found himself surrounded by Imperial soldiers.

“Hello?” he said, seeking to keep the conversation light.

But these were serious fellows, the most serious of which held a bayoneted raser to his throat.

“You are?” the man said, with anything but friendliness.

“I am Porto, on an official mission to see Prime Minister Acron.”

The bayonet flicked, and the man blinked.

“Keep him here,” the soldier said, leaving Porto surrounded by merely five men with weapons, instead of six, while the soldier went off to check Porto’s story.

He was back soon enough.

“Come with me,” he ordered, and when Porto bowed in a theatrical fashion, he found the point of a bayonet in his derriere.

“Just follow,” he was ordered, and thenceforth did as he was told.

There followed numerous trips in numerous forms of transport, mostly with blackened windows, at the end of which Porto found himself face-to-face with Acron himself, in the man’s capacious office.

The man was drunk—a state which Porto wished himself to be in. He had already been roughed up, and knew that more of the same was on the way.

“So you were stupid enough to come, eh?” Acron said, poking at Porto with what looked like a sharpened metallic stick—but which proved to have a nasty electrical shock associated with its touch.

Porto flinched back, but Acron followed him closely with a parry, poking the weapon into the actor’s belly.

“I was sent on a diplomatic mission—” Porto began in a dignified voice.

“Diplomatic?” Acron laughed, the sound breaking into a drunken cough. “Look at you! You don’t look like a diplomat to me! From what I hear you’re nothing but a second fiddle of an actor!”

Porto smiled, until the pig-eyed prime minister’s stick once again found his midsection, imparting a nasty shock.

“I have been sent—” Porto said.

“You’ve been sent as a lamb to slaughter, you simpleton! Did you think I would truly negotiate with your band of cutthroats?”

“There was mention of a truce—”

“Ha! Bait! That’s all it was—and look what it’s caught!”

The prime minister jabbed the electric stick viciously at Porto, who nearly blacked out with its effect. When his eyes cleared, he was on the floor with fat Acron astride him, his bloodshot eyes full of malevolence.

“You’re here, and you’re mine,” the prime minister growled. “I’ve murdered greater men than you with my bare hands. And once you tell me where your vermin compatriots are, I’ll wipe them from the face of the Lost Lands as if they were toilet droppings.”