The Nutcracker Coup (5 page)
He climbed into the seat beside her, gave her a long thoughtful look, and said, “So Clarence has restricted all of the other ethnologists to the embassy grounds, has he?” He shook his head in mock sadness and clicked his tongue. “I see I haven’t trained my team in the proper response to embassy edicts.” He grinned at Marianne. “So the embassy advises that I stay off the streets, does it?”
“Yes,” said Marianne. She hated being the one to tell him but he’d asked her. “The Super Plenipotentiary Etc. has issued a full and formal Advisory to all non-governmental personnel....”
“Okay,” said Nick. “You’ve done your job: I’ve been Advised. Now I want to go have a look at this revolution-in-progress.” He folded his arms across his chest and waited.
He was right. All Clarence could do was issue an Advisory; he had no power whatsoever to keep the ethnologists off the streets. And Marianne wanted to see the revolution as badly as Nick did.
“All right,” she said. “I am responsible for your safety, though, so best we go in the transport. I don’t want you stuck.” She set the supply-transport into motion and headed back toward the Grande
Allez.
Nick pressed his nose to the window and watched the streets as they went. He was humming cheerfully under his breath.
“Uh, Nick-if Clarence calls us....”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” he said.
Worry is right, thought Marianne, but she smiled. He’d been humming Christmas carols, like some excited child. Inappropriate as all hell, but she liked him all the more for it.
She pulled the supply-transport to the stop at the entrance to the palace courtyard and turned to ask Nick if he had a good enough view. He was already out the door and making his way carefully into the crowd of Rejoicers. “Hey!” she shouted-and she hit the ground running to catch up with him.
“Nick!”
He paused long enough for her to catch his arm, then said, “I need to see this, Marianne. It’s my
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job.”
“It’s my job to see you don’t get hurt-”
He smiled. “Then you lead. I want to be over there where I can see and hear everything Halemtat and his advisors are up to.”
Marianne harbored a brief fantasy about dragging him bodily back to the safety of the supply-transport, but he was twice her weight and, from his expression, not about to cooperate.
Best she lead, then. Her only consolation was that, when Clarence tried to radio them, there’d be nobody to pick up and receive his orders.
“Hey, Marianne!” said Chornian from the crowd. “Over here! Good view from here!”
And safer too. Grateful for the invitation, Marianne gingerly headed in that direction. Several quilled Rejoicers eased aside to let the two of them safely through. Better to be surrounded by beaded
Rejoicers.
“Welcome back, Nick,” said Chornian. He and Chaylam stepped apart to create a space of safety for the two humans. “You’re just in time.”
“So I see. What’s going on?”
“Halemtat just had Pilli’s Chippet clipped for playing with a Halemtat cracker. Halemtat doesn’t like the Halemtat crackers.”
Beside him, a fully quilled Rejoicer said, “Halemtat doesn’t like much of anything. I think a proper prince ought to rattle his spines once or twice a year at least.”
Marianne frowned up at Nick, who grinned and said, “Roughly translated: Hapter thinks a proper prince ought to have a sense of humor, however minimal.”
“Rattle your spines, Halemtat!” shouted a voice from the crowd. “Let’s see if you can do it.”
“Yes,” came another voice-and Marianne realized it was Chornian’s-”Rattle your spines, Great Prince of the Nutcrackers!”
All around them, like rain on a tin roof, came the sound of rattling spines. Marianne looked around-the laughter swept through the crowd, setting every Rejoicer in vibrant motion. Even the grand
vizier rattled briefly, then caught himself, his ruff stiff with alarm.
Halemtat didn’t rattle.
From his pouch, Chornian took a nutcracker and a nut. Placing the nut in the cracker’s smirking mouth, Chornian made the bite cut through the rattling of the crowd like the sound of a shot.
From somewhere to her right, a second crack resounded. Then a third.... Then the rattling took up a renewed life.
Marianne felt as if she were under water. All around her spines shifted and rattled. Chornian’s beaded spines chattered as he cracked a second nut in the smirking face of the nutcracker.
Then one of Halemtat’s guards ripped the nutcracker from Chornian’s hands. The guard glared at Chornian, who rattled all the harder.
Looking over his shoulder to Halemtat, the guard called, “He’s already clipped. What shall I do?”
“Bring me the nutcracker,” said Halemtat. The guard glared again at Chornian, who had not stopped laughing, and loped back with the nutcracker in hand. Belatedly, Marianne recognized the smirk on the nutcracker’s face.
The guard handed the nutcracker to the grand vizier-Marianne knew beyond a doubt that he recognized the smirk too.
“Whose teeth carved this?” demanded Halemtat.
An unclipped Rejoicer worked his way to the front of the crowd, sat proudly back on his haunches, and said, “Mine.” To the grand vizier, he added, with a slight rasp of his quills that was a barely suppressed laugh, “What do you think of my work, Corten? Does it amuse you?
You have a strong jaw.”
Rattling swept the crowd again.
Halemtat sat up on his haunches, his bristles stood straight out. Marianne had never seen a Rejoicer bristle quite that way before. “Silence!” he bellowed.
Startled, either by the shout or by the electrified bristle of their ruler, the crowd stopped rattling.
As Marianne watched, the crowd spread itself thinner. The laughter had subsided only because each of the Rejoicers had gone as bristly as Halemtat. Chornian shifted slightly to keep Marianne and Nick near the protected cover of his beaded ruff.
“Marianne,” said Nick softly, “That’s Tatep.”
“I know,” she said. Without meaning to, she’d grabbed his arm for reassurance.
Tatep.... He sat back on his haunches, as if fully at ease-the only sleeked Rejoicer in the courtyard. He might have been sitting in Marianne’s office discussing different grades of wood, for all the excitement he displayed.
Halemtat, rage quivering in every quill, turned to his guards and said, “Clip Tatep. Hashay.”
“No!” shouted Marianne, starting forward. As she realized she’d spoken Dirtside and opened her mouth to shout it again in Rejoicer, Nick grabbed her and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“No!” shouted Chornian, seeming to translate for her, but speaking his own mind.
Marianne fought Nick’s grip in vain. Furious, she bit the hand he’d clapped over her mouth.
When he yelped and removed it-still not letting her free-she said, “It’ll kill him! He’ll bleed to death! Let me go.” On the last word, she kicked him hard, but he didn’t let go.
A guard produced the ritual scissors and handed them to the official in charge of clipping. She held the instrument aloft and made the ritual display, clipping the air three times. With each snap of the scissors, the crowd chanted, “No. No. No.”
Taken aback, the official paused. Halemtat clicked at her and she abruptly remembered the rest of the ritual. She turned to make the three ritual clips in the air before Halemtat.
This time the voice of the crowd was stronger. “No. No. No,” came the shout with each snap.
Marianne struggled harder as the official stepped toward Tatep....
Then the grand vizier scuttled to intercept. “No,” he told the official. Turning to Halemtat, he said, “The image is mine. I can laugh at the caricature. Why is it, I wonder, that you can’t, Halemtat?
Has some disease softened your spines so that they no longer rattle?”
Marianne was so surprised she stopped struggling against Nick’s hold-and felt the hold ease. He didn’t let go, but held her against him in what was almost an embrace. Marianne held her breath, waiting for Halemtat’s reply.
Halemtat snatched the ritual scissors from the official and threw them at Corten’s feet. “You,”
he said. “You will hashay Tatep.”
“No,” said Corten. “I won’t. My spines are still stiff enough to rattle.”
Chornian chose that moment to shout once more, “Rattle your spines, Halemtat! Let us hear you rattle your spines!”
And without so much as a by-your-leave the entire crowd suddenly took up the chant: “Rattle your spines! Rattle your spines!”
Halemtat looked wildly around. He couldn’t have rattled if he’d wanted to-his spines were too bristled to touch one to another. He turned his glare on the official, as if willing her to pick up the scissors and proceed.
Instead, she said, in perfect cadence with the crowd, “Rattle your spines!”
Halemtat made an imperious gesture to his guard-and the guard said, “Rattle your spines!”
Halemtat turned and galloped full tilt into his palace. Behind him the chant continued-”Rattle your spines! Rattle your spines!”
Then, quite without warning, Tatep rattled his spines. The next thing Marianne knew, the entire
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crowd was laughing and laughing and laughing at their vanished ruler.
Marianne went limp against Nick. He gave her a suggestion of a hug, then let her go. Against the rattle of the crowd, he said, “I thought you were going to get yourself killed, you little idiot.”
“I couldn’t-I couldn’t stand by and do nothing; they might have killed Tatep.”
“I thought doing nothing was a diplomat’s job.”
“You’re right; some diplomat I make. Well, after this little episode, I probably don’t have a job anyhow.”
“My offer’s still open.”
“Tell the truth, Nick. If I’d been a member of your team fifteen minutes ago, would you have let me go?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Of course not,” he said. “But at least I understand why you bit the hell out of my hand.”
“Oh, god, Nick! I’m so sorry! Did I hurt you?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I accept your apology-and next time I won’t give you that option.”
“‘Next time,’ huh?”
Nick, still grinning, nodded.
Well, there was that to be said for Nick: he was realistic.
“Hi, Nick,” said Tatep. “Welcome back.”
“Hi, Tatep. Some show you folks laid on. What happens next?”
He rattled the length of his body. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Corten’s still rattling. In fact, he asked me to make him a grand vizier nutcracker. I think I’ll make him a present of it-for Christmas.”
He turned to Marianne. “Share?” he said. “I was too busy to watch at the time. Were you and Nick mating? If you do it again, may I watch?”
Marianne turned a vivid shade of red, and Nick laughed entirely too much. “You explain it to him,” Marianne told Nick firmly. “Mating habits are not within my diplomatic jurisdiction.
And I’m still in the diplomatic corps-at least, until we get back to the embassy.”
Tatep sat back on his haunches, eagerly awaiting Nick’s explanation. Marianne shivered with relief and said hastily, “No, it wasn’t mating, Tatep. I was so scared for you I was going to charge in and-well, I don’t know what I was going to do after that-but I couldn’t just stand by and let Halemtat hurt you.” She scowled at Nick and finished, “Nick was afraid I’d get hurt myself and wouldn’t let me go.”
Tatep’s eyes widened in surprise. “Marianne, you would have fought for me?”
“Yes. You’re my friend.”
“Thank you,” he said solemnly. Then to Nick, he said, “You were right to hold her back.
Rattling is a better way than fighting.” He turned again to Marianne. “You surprise me,” he said. “You showed us how to rattle at Halemtat.”
He shook from snout to tail-tip, with a sound like a hundred snare drums. “Halemtat turned tail and ran from our rattling!”
“And now?” Nick asked him.
“Now I’m going to go home. It’s almost dinner time and I’m hungry enough to eat an entire tree all by myself.” Still rattling, he added, “Too bad the hardwood I make the nutcrackers from is so bitter-though tonight I could almost make an exception and dine exclusively on bitter wood.”
Tatep got down off his haunches and started for home. Most of the crowd had dispersed as well. It seemed oddly anticlimactic, until Marianne heard and saw the rattles of laughter ripple through the departing Rejoicers.
Beside the supply-transport, Tatep paused. “Nick, at your convenience-I really would like you to share about human mating. For friendship’s sake, I should know when Marianne is fighting
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and when she’s mating. Then I’d know whether she needs help or-or what kind of help she needs. After all, some trees need help to mate....”
Marianne had turned scarlet again. Nick said, “I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I get settled in again.”
“Thank you.” Tatep headed for home, for all the world as if nothing unusual had happened. In fact, the entire crowd, laughing as it was, might have been a crowd of picnickers off for home as the sun began to set.
A squawk from the radio brought Marianne back to business. No use putting it off. Time to bite the bullet and check in with Clarence-if nothing else, the rest of the staff would be worried about both of them.
Marianne climbed into the cab. Without prompting, Nick climbed in beside her. For a long moment, they listened to the diatribe that came over the radio, but Marianne made no move to reply.
Instead, she watched the Rejoicers laughing their way home from the palace courtyard.
“Nick,” she said. “Can you really laugh a dictator into submission?”
He cocked a thumb at the radio. “Give it a try,” he said. “It’s not worth cursing back at Clarence-you haven’t his gift for bureaucratic invective.”
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