The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid (11 page)

THE TOWER OF ZANID

I

Dr. Julian Fredro got up from the cot, swayed, and steadied himself. The nurse in the dispensary of Novorecife had removed the attachments from him. The lights had stopped flashing and things had stopped going round. Still, he felt a little dizzy. The door opened and Herculeu Castanhoso, the squirrel-like little security officer of the Terran spaceport, came in with a fistful of papers.

“Here you are, Senhor Julian,” he said in the Brazilo-Portuguese of the spaceways. “You will find these all in order, but you had better check them to make sure. You have permission to visit Gozashtand, Mikardand, the Free City of Majbur, Qirib, Balhib, Zamba, and all the other friendly Krishnan countries with which we have diplomatic relations.”

“Is good,” said Fredro.

“I need not caution you about Regulation 368, which forbids you to impart knowledge of Terran science and inventions to natives of H-type planets. The pseudo-hypnosis to which you have just been subjected will effectively prevent your doing so.”

“Excuse,” said Fredro, speaking Portuguese with a thick Polish accent, “but it seems to me like—what is English expression?—like locking a stable door after cat is out of bag.”

Castanhoso shrugged. “What can I do? The leakage occurred before we got artificial pseudo-hypnosis, which was not known until Saint-Rémy’s work on Osirian telepathic powers a few decades ago. When my predecessor, Abreu, was security officer, I once went out with him to destroy with our own hands a steamship that an Earthman had built for Ferrian, the Pandr of Sotaspé.”

“That must have been exciting.”

“Exciting is not the word, Senhor Doctor Julian,” said Castanhoso with a vigorous gesture. “But the wonder is that the Krishnans did not learn more: guns, for instance, or engines. Of course some claim that they lack the native originality . . . Speaking of Prince Ferrian, are you going to Sotaspé? He still rules that island—a very vivid personality.”

“No,” said Fredro. “I go in opposite direction, to Balhib.”

“So—yes? I wish you a pleasant journey. It is not bad, now that you can go by bishtar-train all the way to Zanid. What do you hope to accomplish in Balhib, if I may ask?”

Fredro’s eyes took on a faraway gleam, as of one who after a hard day’s struggle sights a distant bottle of whiskey. “I shall solve the mystery of the Safq.”

“You mean that colossal artificial snail shell?”

“Certainly. To solve the Safq would be a fitting climax to my career. After that I shall retire—I am nearly two hundred—and spend my closing years playing with my great-great-great-great-grandchildren and sneering at work of my younger colleagues.
Obrigado
for your many kindnesses, Senhor Herculeu. I go sightseeing—you stand here like Dutch boy with a thumb in the mouth.”

“You mean with his finger in the dyke. It is discouraging,” said Castanhoso, “when one sees that the dyke has already broken through in many other places. The technological blockade might have been successful if it had been applied resolutely right at the start, and if we had had the Saint-Rémy treatment then. But you, senhor, will see Krishna in flux. It should be interesting.”

“That is why I am here.
Até a vista,
senhor.”

###

It was the festival of ’Anerik, and the fun-loving folk of Zanid were enjoying their holiday on the dusty plain west of the city.

Across the shallow, muddy Eshqa, a space of more than a square hoda had been marked off. In one section, lusty young Krishnans were racing shomals and ayas—either riding the beasts or driving them from chariots, sulkies, buggies, and other vehicles. In another, platoons of pikemen paraded to the shout of trumpets and the smash of cymbals while Roqir—the star Tau Ceti—blazed upon their polished helms. Elsewhere, armored jousters nudged each other off their mounts with pronged lances, striking the ground with the clang of a stove dropped from a roof.

On the ball field, the crowd screamed as Zanid’s team of minasht players beat the diapers off the visiting team from Lussar. King Kir’s private band played from a temporary stand that rose amid a sea of booths where you could have your shoes patched, your clothes cleaned, or your hair cut, or buy food, drink, tobacco, jewelry, hats, clothes, walking sticks, swords, tools, archery equipment, brassware, pottery, medicines (mostly worthless), books pictures, gods, amulets, potions, seeds, bulbs, lanterns, rugs, furniture, and many other things. Jugglers juggled; acrobats balanced; dancers bounded; actors strutted, and stilt-walkers staggered. Musicians twanged and tootled; singers squalled; poets rhapsodized; storytellers lied, and fanatics orated. Mountebanks cried up their nostrums; exorcists pursued evil spirits with fireworks; and mothers rushed shrieking after their children.

The celebrants included not only Krishnans but also a sprinkling of folk of other worlds: A pair of Osirians, like small bipedal dinosaurs with their scaly bodies painted in intricate patterns, dashing excitedly from one sight to another; a trio of furry, beady-eyed Thothians, half the height of the Krishnans, trimming the natives at the gambling-games of a dozen worlds; a centaurlike Vishnuvan morosely munching greens from a big leather bag. There was a sober Ormazdian couple, near-human and crested, their carmine skins bare but for sandals and skimpy mantles hanging down their backs; and, of course, a group of trousered Terran tourists with their women, and their cameras in little leather cases.

Here and there you could see an Earthman who had gone Krishnan, swathed from waist to knee in the dhotilike loin garment of the land, and wearing a native stocking-cap with its end wound turbanwise about his head. A few decades before, they would all have disguised themselves by dyeing their hair blue-green, wearing large pointed artificial ears, and gluing to their foreheads a pair of feathery antennae, in imitation of the Krishnans’ external organs of smell. These organs were something like extra eyebrows rising from the inner ends of the true eyebrows.

One particular Earthman sauntered about the grounds near the bandstand as if he had nothing on his mind. He wore the usual oversized diaper and a loose striped shirt or tunic wherein several holes had been neatly mended; a plain Krishnan rapier swung at his hip. He was tall for an Earthman—about the average height of a Krishnan, who, through Earthly eyes, seemed a tallish, lean race of humanoids with olive-greenish complexions and flat features like those of the Terran Mongoloid race.

This man, however, was of the white race, with the fair coloring of the Northwestern European, though his uncovered hair, worn nape-length in Balhibou style, was graying at the sides. In his younger days, he had been outstandingly handsome with an aggressively aqualine nose; now the bags under the bloodshot eyes and the network of little red veins spoiled the initial impression. If he had never taken the longevity doses with which Terrans tripled their life span, one would have guessed him to be in his early forties. Actually he was ninety-four Terran years of age.

This man was Anthony Fallon, of London, Great Britain, Earth. For a little while, he had been king of the isle of Zamba in Krishna’s Sadabao Sea. Unfortunately, in an excess of ambition, he had attacked the mighty Empire of Gozashtand with a trainload of followers and two dozen smuggled machine guns. In so doing he had brought down upon his head the wrath of the Interplanetary Council. The I.C. sought to enforce a technological blockade on Krishna, to keep the warlike but pre-industrial natives of that charming planet from learning the more destructive methods of scientific warfare until they had advanced far enough in politics and culture to make such a revelation safe. Under these circumstances, of course, a crate of machine guns was strictly tabu.

As a result Fallon had been snatched from his throne and imprisoned in Gozashtand under a cataleptic trance. This continued for many years, until his second wife, Julnar—who had been forced to return to Earth—came back to Krishna and effected his release. Fallon, free, had tried to regain his throne, failed, had lost Julnar, and now lived in Zanid, the capital of Balhib.

###

Fallon wandered past the prefect’s pavilion, from the central pole of which flowed the green-and-black flag of Kir, the Dour of Balhib, straining stiffly in the brisk breeze from the steppes. Below it flapped the special flag of this festival, bearing the dragonlike shan from the equatorial forests of Mutabwk, on which the demigod ’Anerik was supposed to have ridden into Balhib to spread enlightenment thousands of years ago. Then Fallon headed through the tangle of booths toward the bandstand, whence wafted faintly the strains of a march which a Terran named Schubert had composed over three centuries before.

Schubert was hard put to it to make himself heard over a loud voice with a strange Terran accent. Fallon tracked the orator down and found another Earthman speaking wretched Balhibou with impassioned gestures from atop a box:

“. . . beware the wrath of the one God! For this God hates iniquity—especially the sins of idolatry, frivolity, and immodesty, to all of which you Balhibuma are subject. Let me save you from the wrath to come! Repent before it is too late! Destroy the temples of the false gods! . . .”

Fallon listened briefly. The speaker was a burly fellow in a black Terran suit, his nondescript face taut with the tensions of fanaticism, and long black hair escaping from under a snowy turban. He seemed particularly wrought up over the female national dress of Balhib, consisting of a pleated skirt and a shawl pinned about the shoulders. Fallon recognized the doctrines of the Ecumenical Monotheists, a widespread syncretic sect of Brazilian origin that had gotten its start after World War III on Earth. The Krishnan audience seemed more amused than impressed.

When tired of repetition, Fallon moved along with a more purposeful air. He was halted by a triumphal procession from the minasht field, as the partisans of Zanid bore the captain of the local team past upon their shoulders, with his broken arm in a sling. When the sports enthusiasts had gotten out of the way, Fallon walked past a shooting gallery where Krishnans twanged light crossbows at targets, and stopped before a tent with a sign in Balhibou reading:

TURANJ THE SEER

Astrologer, scryer, necromancer, odontomancer.

Sees all, knows all, tells all.

Futures foretold; opportunities revealed; dooms averted; lost articles found;

courtships planned; enemies exposed.

Let me help you!

Fallon put his head into the door of the tent, a large one divided into compartments. In the vestibule, a wrinkled Krishnan sat on a hassock smoking a long cigar.

Fallon said in fluent Balhibou: “Hello, Qais old man. What have you committed lately?”

“In Balhib I’m Turanj,” replied the Krishnan sharply. “Forget it not, sir!”

“Turanj then. May I enter, O seer?”

The Krishnan flicked an ash. “Indeed you may, my son. Wherefore would you rend the veil?”

Fallon let fall the flap behind him. “You know, sagacious one. If you’ll lead the way . . .”

Turanj grunted, arose, and led Fallon into the main compartment of the tent, where a table stood between two hassocks. Each took a hassock, and Turanj (or Qais of Babaal as he was known in his native Qaath) said: Well, Antané my chick, what’s of interest this time?”

“Let’s see some cash first.”

“Ye are as niggardly with your facts as Dákhaq with his gold.” Qais produced a bag of coins from nowhere and set it down upon the table with a clink. He untied the draw string and fingered out a couple of golden ten-kard pieces.

“Proceed.”

Fallon thought, then said: “Kir’s worse. He took offense at the beard worn by the envoy of the Republic of Katai-Jhogo-rai. Compared to Terran whiskers, you could hardly see this beard—but the king ordered the envoy’s head off. Embarrassing, what? Especially to the poor envoy. It was all Chabarian could do to hustle the fellow out and send him packing, meanwhile assuring the Dour that the victim had been dispatched. Of course, he had been—but in another sense.”

Qais chuckled. “Right glad am I that I’m no minister to a king madder than Gedik, who tried to lasso the moons. Why’s Kir so tetchy on the theme of whiskers?”

“Oh, don’t you know that story? He once grew one himself—twelve or fourteen whole hairs’ worth—and then the Grand Master of the Order of Qarar in Mikardand sent one of his knights on a quest to bag this same beard. It seems that this knight had done in some local bloke, and Kir had been giving Mikardand trouble, so Juvain figured on giving ’em both a lesson. Well, Sir Shurgez got the beard, and that pushed Kir off the deep end. He’d already been acting eccentric—now he went completely balmy, and has remained in that interesting state ever since.”

Qais passed over the two golden coins. “One for the news of Kir’s madness, and the other for the tale wherewith ye embellished it. The Kamuran will relish it. But proceed.”

Fallon thought again. “There’s a plot against Kir.”

“There always is.”

“This looks like the real thing. There’s a chap named Chindor—Chindor er-Qinan, a nephew of one of the rebellious nobles liquidated by Kir when he abolished feudal tenure. He’s out to grab the throne from Kir, as
he
claims, from the highest motives.”

“They always do,” murmured Qais.

Fallon shrugged. “He might have pure motives at that, who knows? I once knew an honest man. Anyway, Chindor’s backed by one of our new middle-class magnates. Liyará the Brass-founder, the story being that Chindor’s promised Liyará a protective tariff against brasswork from Madhiq in return for his support.”

“Another Terran improvement,” said Qais. “If the idea spreads much farther, ’twill utterly ruin this planet’s trade. What details?”

“None beyond what I’ve told you. If you make it worth my while I’ll dig into it. The more worth, the more dig.”

Qais handed over another coin. “Dig, and then shall we decide how much ’tis worth. Aught else?”

“There’s some trouble caused by Terran missionaries—Cosmotheists and Monotheists, and the like. The native medicine men have been stirring up their flocks against them. Chabarian tries to protect ’em because he’s afraid of Novorecife.”