The Shasht War (26 page)

"No, really, do not be afraid. I am a friend. Listen."

It was astonishing. Nuza had her hands over her mouth. A friend? What could this mean?

The woman came closer.

"Listen to me please, I speak some of your language. You understand me, yes?"

Nuza could not immediately formulate a response to this. She still wondered if she was hallucinating, or dreaming, and might soon wake up. Since that dread moment when she'd first been taken captive, all she had known was the harsh terror of men. And now this wo-man spoke the sweet language of the Land. The accent was strange, but the meanings could be heard clearly. "You understand me? I think you understand. I know I speak the right words. I know because I was taught by a mot who befriended me. His name was Thru Gillo."

Nuza jerked up with a start. "Thru?" she whispered.

"Yes, Thru Gillo. Who has scars on face."

Nuza felt a little scream escape her lips.

"You know Thru?"

Simona's face shook.

"Yes, indeed. Thru Gillo saved my life. He came to rescue me when I first landed."

Nuza's eyes widened again. "Thru told me about you. You are Sim-o-na. I am Nuza."

Simona shook her head in amazement. By some inexplicable twist of fate, she had found Nuza, lost in Shasht, just as Thru had found her, when she was lost in the Land.

"By the Pure Skin of God, this is amazing..." she whispered in Shashti. Nuza's big bushy eyebrows rose up and down.

"You are Nuza?" She went back to the tongue of the Land. It was coming back to her, but there were still lapses and things she'd forgotten.

"Thru told me that he loved you."

"I love Thru. We met before..." Nuza fell silent. How could she tell wo-man what she had seen? How could she describe the horror perpetrated by Man? She hesitated, then said simply, "Thru may be dead. He did not come back from battle. But his body was never found, so it is also possible he was captured. We will probably never know."

Both of them knew the likely fate of prisoners in the hands of men. Simona pressed her hands to her mouth and sobbed.

"They call this war a holy war," she ground out. "They fight for the Great God. But I cannot imagine any true god wanting the death of Thru Gillo."

Nuza's gaze had hardened. "I have seen the works of your Great God."

The piles of skulls left on the dock at Bilauk would never leave her. She still woke up screaming.

Simona could not meet the mor's eyes.

"I hate what my people have done. I feel shame every time I think of it. I hate the Great God, and I give him no worship."

Nuza's gaze softened slightly.

"You are not like Man."

"I belong to them, but I do not think like them."

"Yes, I think I understand. You are wo-man, Thru told me."

Simona tried not to cringe as memories arose. The horrible memory of those platters of meat was hard to dismiss. How could she confess to Nuza, that her first introduction to the folk of the Land was when she ate rib chops cut from their flesh.

"I have been sent by our..." Simona searched her memory, there was no word for Emperor in the language Thru had taught her. "Our Great King," she concluded. "He wants me to speak with you."

"Why is this?"

"Well, let me explain. The Emperor rules by the terror his reputation inspires, do you understand?"

"Everyone fears him."

"But he is more than that. I have spoken many times with him. He is wise, and he wants to end the war in the Land."

Nuza's eyebrows flashed up and down again. "Thanks to the Spirit for this! When?"

"It is not quite as simple as that. The Emperor is not the sole power here. And the colony is far away. It will take time for him to bring it under control. The priests will oppose him when they discover his plans, and the priests have great power still. Indeed I would hardly dare say these words to you in my own tongue in case they were heard by an agent of the priests."

Nuza's quick mind had jumped ahead.

"What do they want of me? How can I help?"

"They want you to learn the language of Men."

Nuza was shocked.

"After killing my people, after burning our cities, after burning my family's home, after killing my love, my Thru. Now one of them wants me to learn their harsh, bullying tongue?"

"Yes."

"I will not."

"The Emperor has fallen in love with your beauty, Nuza. I have seen him. He comes to watch you when you exercise. I think he is obsessed."

"Watched me?" Nuza was angered further. "Ah, in the dark space, where there is a gallery. I thought I saw a face there once."

"It would have been him."

"Why does he not show himself? Why does he hide in the shadow?"

"He does not want anyone to know what he does. The priests would kill you if they could."

"Why should I entertain him?"

"Because he will help your people."

"Then, I will continue. But were it not for that, I would not."

Across the great city, down near the harbor, Filek Biswas opened the door of the carriage as it came to a halt at the hospital gate. It was cold, the fifth day of Ribrack. He wore his winter cloak and stout boots. Living way out in the imperial city had lengthened his trip to the hospital enormously. His walk from West Court had only been a few blocks; now he had to ride four miles down the long avenue.

He knocked and the doors opened. He was ushered in by Spinx. Removing his cloak in the sudden warmth Filek enjoyed the familiar smells of alcohol spirit, of turpentine and hot brine, the sounds of distant trolleys thundering along stone corridors. It was all like home to him. His spirits rose at once. He who had been cast into exile had returned in triumph to resume his life here.

He hurried up the broad stone staircase, accepting greetings from surgeons and administrators as he passed. On the third floor he entered his own realm. He had taken over one whole end of the building. He nodded to an assistant in the outer office, waved to Balbu, who was overseeing the carpenters working on the project, and slid into his private office then closed the door.

This was not his old office, all cramped and filled with boxes of papers. He'd left that and his old position in the hands of Mushuq Balembo, a young relative of Klegg's. This new office was twice the size and had a desk and a wide table with a built-in drain for autopsies and dissections.

Old Klegg had been overjoyed that Filek had left Mushuq in charge, and Filek had made sure that no corruption was going on with the hospital accounts. Mushuq, it turned out, was a scrupulous young man.

Filek hung his cloak on a hook, put on a jacket he kept for indoor wear, and sat down at the desk to look at the new drawings. New lenses were arriving every day from the grinders. Once polished, they were being tested by Balbu and his crew.

Together they were exploring Filek's first great idea, the micro-scope. Two or even three lenses of just the right focal point and magnifying power were being combined in a tube a foot long. The lenses had to be adjustable, but when tuned correctly and looked at through one end of the tube, they produced an enormous magnification of anything placed under the lens. Already they'd made astonishing progress. They saw things now that were completely invisible to the naked eye. Hints of tiny life-forms could be seen.

Someone knocked on the door.

It was Mushuq.

"Ah, Mushuq, how are things?"

"Very good, Surgeon Biswas. I just wanted to let you know that I have received an imperial drawdown of four thousand silver pieces."

"Excellent news. Come in, come in. I want to show you this."

Filek indicated the drawings.

"See, we are going to use two different lenses to make a superior lens, and with that we will be able to see very small things. Very small."

Mushuq understood. Although he knew the priests opposed the research, he understood that Filek was doing something very important—and with the Emperor's support.

"Have you seen the 'small seed' that you spoke of?"

"Not yet, but we have seen things that are not ordinarily visible. It is a fantastically complicated world, the world of the very small. I think we are on the verge of great discoveries."

Within moments of the ship coming to rest, their peaceful, if tedious, existence came to an end. The doors were flung open, and the men with shaved heads painted red cracked whips and screamed at the top of their lungs.

Thru got to his feet without his coat and had to reach down at the last moment to pick it up. A Red Top seized his arm, jerking him forward.

"Move, animal!" He brandished a short whip.

Thru held his ground and pulled his arm free with a stare into the man's eyes. The Red Top looked down, then screamed again and cracked his whip on the wall. Thru shrugged and turned to follow the others out of the hold.

Blinking against the bright sun, shivering in the cold air he came up on deck.

"What?" muttered Juf Goost, "they're calling us, 'animals'?"

Thru patted Juf on the shoulder. Good old Goost, always seeing the absurd in the presence of the terrifying.

The scene before them both amazed and appalled them. A great cityscape of stone was filled with tens of thousands of people. The docks, the streets behind were jammed solid. Every rooftop, every window, every balcony was packed. Apparently there was enormous curiosity about this ship's cargo.

At the sight of the captive monkeys on the deck, the huge crowd broke into a roar that broke over them like surf. Fanatic groups began chanting short slogans over and over. For the small group of captives, the prospect was dismal.

"By the Spirit, they make a lot of noise," said Juf.

"And I'm cold," muttered Ter-Saab.

No one else could even speak. The dense hatred roared unceasingly. Thru heard a group to their left chanting simply "Kill them, kill them, kill them, kill them," over and over.

And above it all loomed the immense buildings of white stone. Thru had never seen structures so huge. Pillars as tall as trees held up vast pediments. Walls of white stone rose on every side. Every window was crammed with black gesticulating figures.

Then the whips cracked over them again, and the Red Tops screamed threats and insults. Thru heard the words clearly. The mots were the damned, the condemned, the abomination, the thing that could not be allowed to exist. The Great God would eat them. On the morrow he would eat their hearts!

Thru shivered inside. It was hard to be the focus of such hate. He stared at the huge throngs and realized that the population of all Dronned would be lost in this great mass like a drop in a barrel.

The Red Tops drove them onto the ramp leading down to the dockside. Now the noise reached a new crescendo.

The hordes surged forward and had to be held back by the Black Tops, enormous men who usually guarded the high priests. The movement forward of thousands of men with hate in their eyes was terrifying. The mots quailed, hesitant to move. Red Tops cursed and struck them with whips. Still they stood there, frozen.

And then Thru broke the spell by walking down the lane opened in the mob by the bullnecked Red Tops. A squad of drummers fell in behind them and began to hammer out a steady roar of noise. The crowds redoubled their screaming. Only men, nothing but men; no females existed in the world of Shasht, or so it seemed.

They walked beneath the giant buildings while the crowds chanted phrases about blood and hate over and over. Again and again Thru heard the phrase "He will eat your heart!"

They turned past a ten-story building and entered a wider space. At the far end it opened onto an avenue that ran straight out to a vast shape, a hulking pyramid that loomed above the city like a great spider of stone.

Step by step they walked closer to the pyramid, a line of small figures bent before a frenzied gale of insults. Thundering drummers followed and behind them a wedge of Red Tops lead the huge crowd from the dockside.

As they drew closer, the sheer bulk of the pyramid weakened their spirits. It was enormous, dominating even the great buildings of the city itself. Every step forward was a step toward certain death, for the pyramid held the altar where their hearts would be torn from their bodies.

As they approached the steps leading up to the pyramid the pressure became too much for Jev Turn and Jev Ummim, who both suddenly dropped to their hands and knees and rolled over on the stone, weeping.

The line was forced to halt. The Red Tops shrieked invective and cracked their whips.

The roaring crowds worked to unman the victims, to lead them to beg for life as castrates, anything but death on the altar. By the time they were killed, the captives were supposed to have lost their own will. By becoming unmanned they would thus leave their very souls behind in the hands of the priests of Shasht.

The two Jevs were pulled back to their feet and beaten some more. They were lost to the terror, their brains fogged by the overpowering fear, their eyes rolling up into their heads. Thru pushed aside the Red Tops and leaned forward to embrace them.

For this he was struck with the whips, too. Juf Goost looked around with defiance in his eyes.

"Now would be a good time to sing, I think," said Thru.

Juf was quick to try a note. It could barely be heard above the snarl of the mob. Ter-Saab came in, then Thru and the rest of them.

"Who'd be a jolly beekeeper
and always suffer stings?
When you could be a slee-ee-per
and never mind those things.
A jo-o-o-o-olly beekeeper
whose always getting stung...
That's me and we and you and he,
and we are all just one..."

The silly, cheerful lines of the old song came up from their hearts and the strange sound made the crowd fall silent. Suddenly the mots felt the strength in those faltering phrases and were heartened and they sang the next verse with everything they had.

"A jo-o-o-o-lly beekeeper..."

And it resounded from the awe-inspiring mass of the great pyramid of Shasht.

The crowd erupted and a great howl of anger echoed off the walls of stone. But the ten mots standing before the monstrous pyramid continued singing, though they could barely hear themselves at all.