The Crystal Empire (46 page)

Fireclaw snorted.

“Harsh punishment indeed, for a single, small infraction. One I can testify they were attempting manfully to correct. And little chance to learn from one’s mistakes.”

The sourceless voice laughed. The noise bounced round the great room, echoing from polished surfaces.

“They were attempting, not to do their duty as regards Us, but to avenge the death of their leader, Short-Bear-Who-Travels. Punishment? Oh, no, great warrior. This wasn’t a punishment at all, any more than your replacing an unreliable or defective part in one of the machines which We provided your former neighbors.”

Somehow, despite the exaggerated nails, the figure placed its finge
r
tips together.

“Sedrich Fireclaw, if peoples are to survive, they must begin lear
n
ing, not from their own mistakes, but from the mistakes of others. Teaching this—making the learning of it a necessity—is a task We’ve taken upon Ourselves. ’Tis oft unpleasant, but such doesn’t render it a whit less impo
r
tant.”

The figure paused, as if awaiting reply.

There came none.

“One thing’s certain: when Our ‘reeducation’ of the replacement population’s complete, when they’ve been installed in their respective territories, their languages will this time be constructed from wholly u
n
like roots. This regrettable incident happened in the first place because such a measure was left too long by Our esteemed predecessor. The ‘Ute’ and ‘Comanche’ came to learn one another’s languages, began to operate upon a friendly, mutually beneficial basis, instead of from di
s
trust and enmity, as is the na
t
ural order of things.”

Fireclaw shook his head.

“I fear I fail to understand you—”

“Likeliest you fear you do understand Us. Their languages, those of the ‘Ute’ and the ‘Comanche,’ were of course as artificial as their le
g
ends. Dear fellow, there ne’er were any ‘Dog-Eaters,’ simply an i
m
planted legend. The entire complex was long o’erdue for replacement in any event. Hist
o
ry—and Our Dreamers, of course—inform Us that these fringe provinces are invariably neglected, almost always to the incu
m
bent authority’s eve
n
tual regret.”

Fireclaw suppressed any visible manifestation of the shudder he felt traveling through his body, forced himself to listen to the cold-blooded voice addressing him.

“Of course,” the same voice continued, “another reason all this diff
i
cu
l
ty came to pass is that the current incumbent was o’ercurious—’tis a failing of Ours—philosophically interested in one Sedrich Fireclaw’s effect upon the Comanche.”

The near-naked figure leaned forward in his chair, placed one o
b
scenely nailed hand upon its suntanned thigh, rested its metallic chin in the palm of the other.

At some unseen signal, a section of the shelved wall to the Helv
e
tian’s left swung aside.

From within a dark interior there stepped—at gunpoint—Mochamet al Rotshild, followed by the Princess Ayesha and a terrified-looking Oln Woeck. Unlike Fireclaw’s escort, the guardsmen who brought these i
n
dividuals with them suffered no doubts as to the proprieties. They were forced to the floor, to their knees.

From there they were pressed forward upon their faces.

“The Rabbi Shulieman still lives as well, although but just,” offered the four-cornered voice. “Have no fear, Sedrich-called-Fireclaw, your great dog Ursi’s well, having been put to temporary rest with the sel
f
same potion, contained in a dart which struck him, as has embraced you in its gaseous form these past dozen hours.”

One of the new copper-kilts, wearing the black mask of an eagle, raised a large and awkward-looking pistol as if to illustrate the explan
a
tory words of his ruler. Someone else, then, thought Fireclaw, possesses enough He
l
vetian to get by in.

A foreign word was spoken.

One of Fireclaw’s escort, the helmetless messenger, climbed to his feet. From across the great hall the pistol made a snuffling sound. The volunteer went down again, this time upon his back, with a feathered dart protruding from his unarmored throat.

“He’ll awaken again in a few hours,” the masked figure offered, “just as you did, with little more than a headache and a few bruises to show for his unpleasant experience. ’Tis more than We can say for those in custody of your dog—who let the beast awaken and were slow in tra
n
quilizing him once again.

Three amputations were necessary, and one mercy-slaying. He’s your dog, sir, he could be no one else’s!”

A metallic flash caught Fireclaw’s attention. He took his eyes from the remainder of his party, let them travel once again to the figure, who’d raised both hands up to the golden mask.

“You’re a remarkable man, although you’ve ne’er realized quite how remarkable. A warrior of astonishing repute, well justified. Something of a philosopher.”

The hands came down again, taking the mask with them.

Sitting upon the elevated throne before the Helvetian warrior was the boy whom the Saracens had called Shrimp.

“Yes, mighty Fireclaw, ’tis We.” The voice was human now, no longer issuing from the walls and ceiling. “Better known within Our own domain as Zhu Yuan-Coyotl, ruler of the Han-Meshika, spirit of the Sun incarnate. A clumsy appellation, to be sure, but one which, now and then, impresses even Ourselves.”

The boy shook his head at these words, as if dismissing the topic with embarrassment.

“You can’t e’en begin to comprehend the intellectual prowess repr
e
sented by your leaping from coarse, dry-mixed gunpowder to repea
t
ing firearms in less than a single lifetime! Why, man, Our Dreamers tell us of civilizations entire who took a thousand years to accomplish what you have, all alone, within but a single generation!”

The boy-ruler leaned back again.

“Too, We’ve always debated privily with Ourselves the relative i
m
portance of the individual in society. Here was an unprecedented oppo
r
tunity to experiment.”

He sighed.

“With your capture, of course, the experiment’s o’er, proving only what We expected it to prove. In the long run, that the individual—any individual—counts for naught. A sobering thought indeed, friend Fir
e
claw, for an absolute monarch.”

The complicated mixture of feelings within the Helvetian was begi
n
ning to congeal into anger and hatred.

“’Tis the water washes,’” he quoted, almost to himself, “‘not the soap.’ Tell me, what’s
this
individual to expect—”

He indicated the others with a sweep of his arm.

“—and these, now the experiment’s o’er? Or has this already been decided?”

The youth raised his hands to shoulder level, palms up. For a moment he resembled one of the many idols in the room behind. The jewels set into his artificial nails glittered in the sunlight.

“All here will serve Us, as indeed all people upon this earth eventua
l
ly serve Us in one wise or another. Like every traveler to this forbidden land, you and your expedition have been brought before its official mi
n
isters for questioning.”

He chuckled.

“Unlike most of them, you’ve been brought before its supremest off
i
cial. This privilege, though rare, makes little practical difference. Info
r
mation, you will in due course discover, is always allowed to flow
into
what Our more fanciful minions call the Crystal Empire. Never out. Whatever travelers happen to learn in the process of interrogation dies with them, usually sooner than later.”

He shifted upon his throne more as if the topic were uncomfortable than the green-stone seat.

“But We see what you’re asking: what of your ranch, your shop, your dog-pack, your wife, your child-to-be? Were they, too, ‘erased’ by Our pe
r
sonal guard?”

Fireclaw nodded but conceded nothing more.

Zhu Yuan-Coyotl shook his head.

“We assure you, sir, that no such action was necessary upon Our part, or that of Our guard. We’re afraid ’twas already taken care of—by your old friend Oln Woeck.”

“Oln Woeck?” Fireclaw felt the prickling at the back of his neck and along his limbs which presaged disminded killing anger. A veil of cri
m
son washed over his eyes.

At the side of the room, the Cultist glanced up for a moment, horror upon his face.

Fireclaw, fighting blood-haze, believed he heard a whimper.

“Yes, Fireclaw,” the Sun Incarnate continued. “Ere leaving the ranch, he used some poison stolen from your shop to contaminate your wells, killing Dove Blossom and the dogs, as he tells me in some pride he did your father in his time.”

Great pain swept through Fireclaw’s body as the words sank in. He trembled in the grip of rage.

“We’re afraid, b’time Our copper-kilts arrived, ’twas far too late to save them. They’d all spent many days in the process of a lingering and painful death. Our guardsmen gave the evil work a decent finish—cremation, one might call it. E’er they were through with the Comanche, they burned your establishment to the ground.”

Blood-haze replaced all pain and struggle in a single, blessed wave. Filled with blackness, his body thinking for him, Fireclaw whirled, drew his mighty greatsword with a joyous ringing shout.

He leapt toward Oln Woeck.

A snuffling sound came from the pistol-bearing guard standing over the Saracens.

Fireclaw knew a different sort of blackness.

“They say, “Why does he not bring a sign from his Lord?”...Had We destroyed them with a chastisement aforetime, they would have said, ‘Our Lord, why didst Thou not send a Messenger, so that we might have followed Thy signs before that we were hum
i
liated and degraded?’”—
The
Koran,
Sura XX

Whatever medicament was in the pistol-dart, Ayesha thought, it could make no claim to harmlessness.

She mopped at the unconscious Fireclaw’s sweat-sheened face with a dampened bit of toweling from the cabin’s little lavatory. In the ha
m
mock, slung between a pair of steel hooks embedded in smooth-painted walls, he swung back and forth as if in nightmare, weeping, grimacing, muttering in several languages incomprehensible syllables.

His perspiration reeked of something evil.

At her knee, the bear-dog Ursi lay uneasy, eyes closed at the m
o
ment, his square jaw resting upon giant overlapping paws, seeming to take some heart himself in her ministrations to his master. The pygmy marmoset Sagheer groomed himself upon one arm of Ayesha’s low chair, nipping at i
m
aginary tangles in his pristine fur,

He smelled of disinfectant.

Almost as if in imitation, Po ran his short, curved ebon beak through overlapping gray-white belly-feathers, ducked his head beneath his wings in short thrusts, combed his long black flight-plumes with an u
n
comfort
a
ble-looking stretch of the neck, twisted round in comic wise to pay similar a
t
tentions to his scarlet-orange tail.

He shook himself, wings flapping, shrieked, and filled the air with an annoying blizzard of preening-powder and little floating clots of lacy down. Sagheer sneezed, a tiny
chiff
of a noise, then glared at the parrot in resen
t
ment.

The room throbbed, as it had each second since Ayesha had awa
k
ened, with the deeper sound of engines.

It appeared proper to Ayesha that, at least in recompense for his re
s
cuing her, it was now her turn to comfort Sedrich, in his injury if not in his grief. But, as she had already had sufficient opportunity to observe, life was seldom that symmetrical a thing. Fireclaw would recover, with or without her help.

It was Mochamet al Rotshild who was in a state of shock, and not o
n
ly in reaction to the death of Lishabha.

Nearby, the much-subdued Commodore had puzzled out the secret of the golden sun-disks which decorated each of the staterooms—or cells—they had been given. The obscene tongue was a latch. Once r
e
leased, it had gently lifted of its own accord upon a spring-loaded hinge. Now the re
d
dish sunlight of a late afternoon streamed through the thick glazed po
r
thole it had concealed.