Wielding a Red Sword (10 page)

The hollow eyes seemed to focus more specifically on him. The mouth-orifice opened. “I am Famine.”

“Famine!” Mym exclaimed. “What kind of a name is that?”

“The name of my office.”

“Office?” Mym demanded. He turned to the minister. “What do you know of this?”

The minister looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Prince Heir, certainly there is famine. This is why we are here. I confess I do not understand your reference to an office.”

“The office this man who calls himself Famine refers to!” Mym sang angrily.

The discomfort intensified. “My Lord, I see no man.”

“Th-th-this one h-here!” Mym exclaimed, forgetting to sing. He reached out to touch the gaunt finger, not caring that the man was probably casteless.

His hand passed through the figure, encountering no resistance.

Mym paused, taking stock. “You are an apparition?” he asked Famine.

“I am the Incarnation of Famine, the associate of War, on a temporary mission for Death,” the figure said.

“And no one else can see you?”

“I do not know why
you
can see me,” Famine confessed. “Normally no mortal can perceive an Incarnation, unless he has intimate business with that Incarnation.”

“Well, I am concerned about the starvation occurring here,” Mym sang. “I need to ascertain the extent of the problem and decide how best to alleviate it. Do you have advice on that?”

“Feed your people,” Famine said, with a grisly grin.

“
How
? We have neither food nor sufficient distribution facilities.”

“I do not give advice; I merely invoke the consequence.”

“Well, put me through to your superior, then,” Mym sang, angrily, while the minister backed surreptitiously away, deeming him crazy.

Famine made some kind of magical gesture, “I have summoned Thanatos,” he said. Then he faded, until there was nothing to see.

Mym glanced about and saw the minister retreating. “Hold!” he snapped, and the minister, still greatly ill at ease, paused. “I have just spoken with the Incarnation of Famine and am about to speak with the Incarnation of Death. You will remain.”

“As my lord wishes,” the minister said nervously. It was evident that he would have preferred to be anywhere but here.

There was a flurry in the sky, and a figure appeared. Quickly it approached. It was a beautiful pale horse, galloping through the air without benefit of wings, bearing a cloaked rider. The horse drew to a halt before Mym, snorting vapor, and the rider dismounted.

If Famine had been gaunt, Thanatos was completely skeletal. His bone-fingered hand extended. “Greetings, Prince,” the skullface said.

Mym took the hand. The bones were bare but firm. “Greetings, Thanatos. Um—would it be too much to ask that you make yourself visible to the minister, here? He thinks I’m hallucinating.”

Thanatos turned to the minister. “Greetings, Minister,” he said.

The minister’s mouth sagged open. “G-G-Gre—” he began.

“Try singing it,” Mym suggested in singsong.

Thanatos faced again toward Mym. “My associate asked me to speak with you.”

“I am concerned with the suffering here,” Mym sang. “I want to alleviate it, but am bound about by circumstances I can not adequately control. I thought that, since you have an interest in this matter, you might proffer advice.”

Thanatos lifted his skeletal wrist and touched a heavy watch there. Abruptly the scene froze. The minister’s look of shock remained unchanging on his face; the clouds in the sky stopped moving. Smoke from a distant fire became stationary. Nothing moved, except for Thanatos, Mym, and the great pale horse.

“The fact that you are able to perceive Incarnations suggests that you relate to us,” Thanatos said. “There fore I will explore this matter. Chronos will know.” He touched his watch again—and suddenly a figure cloaked in white stood with them, holding up a large, glowing hourglass.

“Yes, Thanatos,” the new figure said. He appeared to be a normal man. “And Mars. Good to encounter you both again.”

“Mars?” Mym asked.

“Mars?” Thanatos echoed, seeming equally perplexed.

“Oh, hasn’t he taken office yet?” Chronos asked. “I regret my slip. I travel in the opposite direction, you know. I will erase the episode.”

“No!” Mym cried, in his stress not stuttering. “Ignorance has brought enough mischief already! I will keep the secret, if that’s what it is. What has Mars to do with this?”

Chronos exchanged a glance with Thanatos, then
shrugged. “Your problem here is war. War diverts necessary resources wastefully, so that food is destroyed instead of feeding the hungry. To alleviate misery like this, you must first abolish war. Since you are to become Mars, the Incarnation of War, you should be in a position to deal with this.”

“I—become Mars?” Mym asked, dumbfounded. “But I have a Kingdom to run, a bride to marry!”

“Well, I suppose you could turn the office down,” Chronos said. “Nothing is fixed, and certainly the reality I remember can become another reality. But if you are serious about alleviating suffering in the world—”

Mym looked out over the pallets, each bearing a starving person—men, women and children. “I must stop this!” he said.

“Then the opportunity will be yours,” Chronos said. “I am glad that the future is not to change in this respect; I have enjoyed working with you and will be sorry to see you depart—though of course that is not the way you perceive it.”

“You—live backwards?” Mym asked, returning to his singsong as the stutter threatened. “From the future to the past?”

“True. You would think that after a decade or two, I would remember that things are opposite for the rest of you—but every so often I slip.” He turned to Thanatos. “Just how long ago was the change in the Mars office made? I have been absorbed by other matters and entirely overlooked the event.”

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Thanatos said.

Chronos grimaced. “There I go again! Of course you have not yet seen the change. I’ve been jumping about so much, including an interaction with Mars, here, that—” He shook his head. “What was the reason you summoned me?”

“I believe you have answered the question already,” Thanatos said. “I was curious why this mortal could perceive Incarnations. Since you advise us that he is to become one, this becomes clear.”

“Glad to have been of help in that case.” The hourglass brightened, and Chronos disappeared.

“If he lives backwards,” Mym asked, “why aren’t his words backwards?”

“He controls time,” Thanatos explained. “He simply reverses it for himself, so as to align with our frame, for a short period. But as you saw, these constant reversals can lead to confusion at times. He’s good man and an effective Incarnation, but Fate is the only one of us who really understands him. Now if your question has been answered—”

“Wait! No! It hasn’t!” Mym sang. “I don’t know anything about becoming the Incarnation of War some time in the future! I only want to alleviate the suffering I see here and now!”

“You are taking the short view,” Thanatos cautioned him. “When you become Mars, as Chronos said, you will be in a position to accomplish the alleviation you seek.”

“But that won’t help these starving folk now!”

Thanatos nodded. “True. In the interest of good relations between Incarnations, I will summon one who may help you now.” He faced into the sky. “Gaea—will you answer?”

“Gaea?” Mym asked. All of this was highly confusing.

The air seemed to be thickening about them. Thin mist formed. It became fog, then a smokelike formation that coalesced into a vaguely human shape. The details clarified into those of a large, solid woman dressed in green. “Thanatos,” she answered.

“This man, at the moment mortal, is to assume the office of Mars at a later date,” Thanatos said. “Chronos mentioned it. But right now, there is a concern about the folk here who are starving.”

Gaea considered Mym. “In that case, it behooves me to oblige him. I can improve the local climate, so that the crops flourish—”

“That would require at least a season,” Mym sang. “These here will all be dead by then.”

She considered. “Then I will provide manna.”

She stretched out her arms, became fog, and dissipated. “Manna?” Mym sang, even more perplexed than he had been.

“Gaea’s ways can be strange,” Thanatos said.

The thinning fog settled to the ground and coalesced. Mym stooped and scooped up a bit of the residue on a finger. He put it to his mouth, tasting it. “Manna?” he repeated.

“Perhaps the concept is not in your legends,” Thanatos said. “In the Judeo-Christian mythos, it is a nutritious substance that appears on the ground. I suspect it is some kind of rapidly reproducing fungus.”

“Food,” Mym breathed, understanding.

“I suspect you owe Gaea a favor,” Thanatos murmured. Then he mounted his pale horse, touched his watch, and rode off into the sky.

The scene returned to life. “Set men to collecting the manna,” Mym sang to the minister. The man did not even try to argue; he got on it, evidently understanding very little of this development.

In this manner a number of starving people were fed. The manna came every day and fed them all, and no one quite understood this phenomenon, except perhaps Mym himself. But he had a number of serious questions about the larger picture. He—to become the Incarnation of War? Not if he could help it! He had business to complete as a mortal. Yet the plight of the starving people had touched him deeply, and if there were some way to eliminate this kind of misery in the future—

Time passed, and no further supernatural manifestations occurred. He began to believe that his encounter with Famine, Death, Time, and Nature had been a hallucination, and the manna a coincidence. Rapture of Malachite remained loving and dependent, and he took hold of the reins of government with increasing competence as his direct experience grew. The Rajah sent him on missions to other nations and to other parts of the world, so that he could work on the broader scale to benefit his Kingdom.

He discovered himself to be surprisingly effective at this type of endeavor. He took Rapture with him to speak for him, literally. She was beautiful, so that none of the old men who ran the other nations objected to her presence, and she was trained in all the graces of royalty, so
that the old men’s wives found her compatible. But mainly, she understood Mym; he could convey his meaning to her by a few gestures and facial expressions and some faintly hummed words, and she would translate these to exquisitely rendered English. Since international dialogues often required the intercession of translators, no one found it remarkable that this handsome young prince of a nation of India used one, and some did not even realize that it was because of his stutter, not his ignorance of the language, that this was so.

But Gujarat’s most pressing need was for modernization, and for that it required money. This meant a loan from Uncle Sugar to the West.

Mym pondered the matter. He realized that even Uncle Sugar expected some minimal quid pro quo. What did a poverty-stricken, backward kingdom like Gujarat have to offer in return for money?

Mym came to a conclusion. He took Rapture and went to brace the Rajah. “My beloved says he can get a loan of one billion dollars from the West,” she announced brightly.

The Rajah almost did a double-take. He had evidently not appreciated just how well Mym and Rapture worked together. Normally women did not speak on matters of government, as they were, in the Rajah’s view, incompetent for such matters. But after all the effort he had gone to gain Mym’s agreement to the betrothal, he was glad to tolerate Rapture in whatever manner she manifested. “And how should this miracle be achieved?” he asked.

She glanced at Mym, who hummed, “Base.”

“There is a military base that—” she began.

“Absolutely not!” the Rajah stormed. “We have never tolerated foreign military equipment on our terrain!”

Mym was already signaling and humming to her. “Oh, honored father-in-law-to-be,” Rapture said dulcetly, flashing a winning smile at him. “My beloved well understands that. But this is the modern day, and the modern world is not a thing we can safely ignore. It would be better to accept the base and let them hire our people at their ludicrously high wages, and we can have our spies
there to report on their secrets. It would represent a simple way to watch them.”

The Rajah paused, considering. It was more than the logic that impressed him, Mym knew; it was the manner that Rapture converted Mym to a brilliant negotiator. Of course most of the words were her own, based on the discussion Mym had had with her beforehand; but because they were nominally from him, he had the credit. Mym’s handicap of speech had been a sore trial to the Rajah’s pride, and this apparent eloquence had to be deeply satisfying to him. “Still, the base would represent an aggravation to Uncle Vinegar to the North—”

Mym hummed and gestured. “Which may be no bad thing, Oh great Rajah,” Rapture said, sending him a smile to melt ice. “It will help establish Gujarat’s independence from the influence of that power.”

“But—”

Mym hummed again. Rapture leaned forward persuasively. The Rajah was an old, old hand at women, but even his eyes glinted a smidgeon as they took in her décolletage. He recognized the finest vintage when he saw it. “And since Uncle Sugar will be obliged to grant us a loan of one billion dollars for the privilege of establishing that base, our independence will be further enhanced,” she said.

The Rajah shook his head. He sighed. “Do it, then,” he grumbled. “A prince must be allowed to make his own mistakes.”

Mym knew that the Rajah would never have agreed, had it not been for Rapture. The old man was not getting soft; he simply realized that the logic was good enough to stand and that if this was the way Mym and Rapture could operate in the West, they would almost certainly get that loan. More than anything else, the Rajah wanted a truly effective leader of his own blood to succeed him, and Mym had just demonstrated how that could be.

They took a royal carpet to the outdated airport and caught one of the few international flights to the West. Magic was fine for local transport, but science prevailed on the global scale. Rapture was a little awed by the huge airplane with its blazing jet engines, but she liked the plush
first-class seats and the petite uniformed stewardesses. “We should have them on the carpets,” she murmured.