The Crystal Empire (57 page)

David remarked aloud concerning his observation that into the bared left arm of every individual there had been inserted the end of a narrow, flexible transparent tube whose origin was a large bottle hanging upside down from a metal stand beside the pallet.

The Sun explained that the bottles contained certain substances which aided the selectees in the performance of the service which was required of them here.

“Chiefly,” he added, “they partake of liquid nutrients—far more eff
i
cient than maintaining kitchen services in this place—also of an expe
n
sive synthetic enzyme based upon the concentrated extracts of the hearts of the artichoke plant. We Ourselves have tried it, even to the extent of taking the drugs.”

Ayesha swallowed, feeling herself pale at Zhu Yuan-Coyotl’s words.

He himself chuckled, as if at the guilty memory of some minor bo
y
hood naughtiness.

“We are afraid We have small talent for it: one brief glimpse of a pi
s
tol made of glass.”

Ayesha stumbled, seized Fireclaw’s great upper arm in both her small hands—then released it, feeling her breath grow short at the me
r
est touch of him, her face begin to redden. With an embarrassed look upon his own features, the warrior cleared his throat as the party conti
n
ued along the corridor.

“All else was ordinary wish-fulfillment, small dreams of Our own everyday travails. No matter, any single subject cannot tell us much in any event. It is the aggregate which counts.”

They peered through the panes of glass as if visiting a zoo. Other tubes, Ayesha saw, larger than the others, stretched from the middles of the sheet-draped forms down to recesses beneath the pallets. They gu
r
gled as they worked, dark shadows upon occasion sliding through them to disa
p
pear beneath the pallets.

In some alcoves, the supine inmates were being massaged by pairs of heavy-muscled attendants—not the filthy priests, but others, garbed in pale green—their limbs stretched and pounded, their skin chafed to stir the circul
a
tion.

Ayesha guessed that there existed no need—and no excuse—for the i
n
mates ever to leave their beds, let alone the rooms in which they were co
n
fined.

The idea sickened her.

Wherever the massage-teams or others performing similar services were not in attendance, some second imprisoned soul was seated in a low chair beside the pale reclining figure, writing as the inmate roused from drug-induced stupor for a while to speak. To others of the cubicles sketch-artists had been summoned—the party had collided with one such, hurrying down the hallway with his tablet and colored pencils—to draw something the inmate was describing.

“Written accounts are taken to a central processing area,” Zhu Yuan-Coyotl told his guests, “where they are sorted, collated together, and each day summ
a
rized. Seven hundred thousand scribes—a veritable army—supervisors, clerks, scholars, historians, and archivists busy themselves with the task. We Ourselves are each day presented summaries of the summaries. Sometimes We suggest sp
e
cific lines of inquiry for further pursuit. It takes up more of Our time and energy than any other of Our duties, but it is very often worth the cost.”

In many of the cubicles, both occupants—drugged recliner and a
t
tendant scribe—dozed in subdued lighting, oblivious to visitors, serv
i
tors, c
a
sual passersby, even to the tremors rattling the fixtures.

In one such, the “subject” sat up of a sudden, screamed, then fell back and lay silent.

The scribe nodding his chin beside her did not stir.

Some few of the rooms were empty, in the process of being cleaned, r
e
plastered, painted, or otherwise repaired—perhaps in response to that very rattling. In others yet the window to the corridor had been smeared over with some so
a
py, semi-opaque substance, as if what lay within were too terrible to behold.

Ayesha could keep her silence no longer.

“They are like chickens in a coop, these poor people!
Chanaa la ch
a
bhgham! Maa manna?
What have they done to deserve such cruel, i
n
human punishment?”

Zhu Yuan-Coyotl laughed.

“The ‘crime’ they have committed, my dear Princess, is a lifelong one, consisting of nothing more than the inadvertent possession of a ce
r
tain very peculiar excellence.”

He turned to take in all the visitors.

“No, foreign friends, these are not criminals, but the Dreamers, of whom We have often spoken, also at whose mention We have seen many a curious expression upon your faces.”

He looked about him at the many rooms within sight, as if attempting to choose among them.

“Now,” he asserted, “you shall learn more of them, perhaps, than you had wished to know.”

“My prayer, my ritual sacrifice, my living, my dying—all belongs to God, the Lord of all Being.
”
—
The
Koran,
Sura VI

Zhu Yuan-Coyotl stopped, entering one of the cubicles.

Despite themselves, Fireclaw and the others found themselves crowded about the doorway, looking in.

The cubicle’s occupant, a young, fragile-appearing boy of perhaps fifteen, looked up at the Sun Incarnate, blinked without recognizing his ruler. The recording-scribe beside him, a girl of about the same age, had tidied his coverlet, patted his thin shoulder, then thrown herself, face downward, upon the floor.

“We have commanded him,” explained Zhu Yuan-Coyotl in Arabic, having first spoken in one of the languages of the Han-Meshika, “to tell us what he has been dreaming of.”

“I d-dreamt of this very place.” The boy raised an emaciated arm, a
n
swering in a weak, high-pitched voice, employing the same language he had been addressed in.

Zhu Yuan-Coyotl translated every few words.

The boy gazed with drug-dulled eyes at the ceiling-fixtures. His body was white all over, pale as tendrils of the plantlife one finds growing b
e
neath a rock.

“Only the windows of each cubicle were without glass,” he added, “fashioned from thick iron bars painted a lumpy white, with reddish rust-stains leaking through. More bars blocked access to the corridors.”

The boy sighed, licking his lips as if compelled to call up a distast
e
ful memory.

“Words were scratched or painted,” he continued, “upon the cubicle walls. Terrible words. Men, all dressed alike, brooded within them, co
n
sumed with a hatred many years in the making. They looked out upon ot
h
er men who carried clubs.

“I was one of those who brooded thus.”

A tear trickled down the boy’s face.

He stopped speaking.

The Sun stepped closer, wiped the liquid from the pale cheek, then wiped his fingers upon the sheet.

“Go on, child, tell Us more.”

“Somewhere outside the cubicles a great bell sounded. The door-bars all slid aside. The men—there were hundreds of us—stepped out and stood in rows while those with clubs inspected them, poking at them with the clubs, making rude jokes. Some of their charges looked upon the ot
h
ers, the youngest among us, like predators, their unclean thoughts written upon their faces. Upon one occasion, I...”

He shuddered.

“Then the bell rang once again—much shouting by the club-carriers—we ourselves being bidden to utter and eternal silence upon pain of terrible punishment. We turned and marched along a railed walkway which cla
t
tered with our heavy footfalls. I think we were being taken somewhere to work and then to eat.”

A sigh of envy tinged these final words.

As if this effort at speaking against his will to remember had e
x
hausted him, the bedridden boy let his thin, trembling hand drop to the coverlet. With a deep sigh, he closed his eyes.

The little scribe rose from the floor without being bidden by her so
v
ereign. Keeping her eyes averted from the Sun Incarnate, she kneaded the Dreamer’s hand.

Zhu Yuan-Coyotl spoke, not this time to the boy Dreamer, but to the girl beside the bed.

“We suspect, child, that you grow too fond of him of whose words you are but an instrument of recordance. This is disruptive. It is not Our will that it should be so. At the next sleep-period, you will ask your s
u
pervisor for immediate reassignment.”

“Yes, Lord.”

The girl’s voice, not loud to begin with, and a small sob, were mu
f
fled by the coverlet she stared at.

The Sun nodded, spread a hand to ruffle her shiny dark hair, and left the cubicle, continuing the party’s journey to yet another branching of the corridor.

Here, he stopped.

“It is a common enough dream here,” he told them, once well beyond being heard by the frail boy who had spoken. “A hundred thousand civ
i
lizations, it would seem, have at one time or another chosen to make a pri
s
on of this rocky islet.”

He gave a sigh of satisfaction.

“We Han-Meshika, at least, have made it something other than that, something proud, to be admired.”

Sickened, Fireclaw suppressed a remark which would have been a poor substitute for what, in truth, he thought to do. They walked a few paces down the corridor, entered yet another cubicle.

This Dreamer was a middle-aged man with exaggerated features and skin the color and texture of charcoal. His scribe, like the one in the pr
e
vious roomlet, was a young Han-Meshika girl.

“...was carrying a large leather bag through a great hall, amidst tho
u
sands of other travelers like myself, also carrying their possessions thus.”

As he spoke, the girl took his words down in writing. Zhu Yuan-Coyotl began to translate until Ayesha informed him that the man’s words were intelligible.

The Sun assumed a puzzled expression, glanced down at the scribe’s tablet, then nodded understanding.

“Ah, yes, one of those rarest of outsiders who has qualified for this position. From your father’s southernmost African domains, or so it says upon the form.”

Oblivious, the black man was still speaking.

“Disembodied voices came out of the air, offering instruction and advice, while at a dozen glass-fronted stalls merchants hawked cheap, flashy souvenirs, clothing, colored booklets, bland food and drink cos
t
ing more than it was worth.”

He shook his head.

“Uniformed guardsmen there were, inspecting people and the things they carried with them, bidding them pass through arches which made noises should any of the bags contain forbidden articles.”

Zhu Yuan-Coyotl folded his arms, the tolerant expression of bored amusement telling Fireclaw that he had heard tales such as this one many times before.

“I offered passage-papers,” said the Dreamer, “to a uniformed young woman, very pretty, who smiled and led me to a great door which I then walked through. I experienced dizziness, a flash of blue light. I found m
y
self—as I had expected to—standing before my own house, where my women and our many dear children came out to greet me as if I had been gone for a long while.”

He stopped, as if finished speaking.

The Sun had let his arms drop suddenly, and with them, his jaw.

“Girl,” he ordered, suppressed excitement in his voice, “this remar
k
able dream, which begins in an ordinary wise—it sounds, at first, like any of a million busy travel-terminals for wheeled or winged conve
y
ances—nevertheless bears further examination for the method of travel itself! Do you inform your supervisor. Convey to him my instruction to let me know of any progress you may make!”

The scribe nodded, making note without speaking of the Sun Inca
r
nate’s words upon her tablet.

Observing the confused expressions upon the faces of his guests, Zhu Yuan-Coyotl sighed.

“It often begins with something simple. During the reign of an illu
s
trious ancestor of Ours, for example, one Dreamer dreamt of turning the metal base of a small glassy ‘pear,’ as she described it, into a brass-lined hole in the ceiling. When it had been seated home, it lit up with a da
z
zling light!”

Fireclaw nodded. David Shulieman had long since explained Han-Meshikan electric lighting to the Helvetian. It was characteristic of him that he’d already begun taking it for granted.