The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  “Why, We’ve lost contact entire with a hundred civilizations for no better reason than that they’d learned how to destroy themselves—and saw no reason not to use what they’d learned!”

  He gazed down at Ayesha, a kindly look upon his face.

  “We’re patient. We could sweep the Mughals and the Saracens aside and rule the earth, Fireclaw. In some respects, We do. Yet We’ve wider ambitions, not just to rule one small planet, but, in due course, each globe within the realm of Our celestial aspect’s attractive influence—and perhaps someday beyond.”

  With a gesture he’d used before, he reached out to stroke the unconscious girl’s hair. Fireclaw pivoted a shoulder, taking her out of the Sun Incarnate’s reach.

  Zhu Yuan-Coyotl shrugged.

  “Futile defiance doesn’t impress Us, friend. Nor do gifts from rival potentates. We brought you to this place, for We’d heard of the girl’s dreams. We realized the question would arise whether her life might be spent to greater profit as one among Our Dreamers in the Spire than as a Bride to the Sun.”

  He turned his head, taking in several of the cubicles and their helpless occupants.

  “True,” he mused as to himself, “were circumstances different, she might well provide us, in her own small way, with further insight. Howe’er, We doubt that she—or you—would regard as much of an improvement upon her lot this grim alternative.”

  He lifted his arms, taking in the entire building they stood within, with all of its occupants.

  “At this moment We’re considering a proposal put forth by the supervisors—and Our physicians—to increase its efficiency or reduce the burdens of its cost.”

  He peered at the Rabbi David Shulieman, addressing the injured scholar in Arabic.

  “We are advised by them to amputate the legs of Dreamers when they are first brought here—they will need their hands for explanatory gestures—perhaps take their reproductive organs as well, since, as you have seen, these are a source of continuous annoyance, and there appears to be no inheritable predisposition to dream.”

  Shulieman shrank backward, as if this offhand proposition had been a physical blow. The Sun Incarnate shifted his gaze to Mochamet al Rotshild.

  “There is some debate about the eyes. The cubicles will be wired for sound and pictures to be monitored in some central place—until We learn to wire the brain and tap the dreams Ourselves. We search every moment for means to keep them sleeping more of the day, to increase the time of useful dreaming within sleep.”

  Shrugging again, he turned back to Sedrich Fireclaw and the Helvetian warrior’s tongue.

  “It’ll eliminate distractions,” he explained, “the need for this vast army of scribes and whatnot, the possible contamination of gratuitous human contact.”

  As they spoke, the building round them began to vibrate in the worst tremor they’d thus far experienced. The floor seemed to jump, slapping at the bottoms of their feet.

  Observing the various expressions this phenomenon provoked upon the faces of his guests, the Sun smiled.

  “The earth is split to the core in this region. A great crack in the surface of the globe travels westward of the city, stretching north into Our tributary domain Kwakiutl, south almost to the original Meshika capital, Tenochtitlán.”

  From somewhere within the depths of mortal resignation, perhaps out of nothing more than pedagogic habit, David Shulieman nodded understanding.

  Fireclaw had never heard of such a thing.

  “It is a scientific curiosity,” the Sun went on, “at most a minor annoyance—save, of course, upon occasions when whole cities are brought down by such trembling. This came to pass within the reign of Our immediate predecessor save one.”

  He shrugged, returning to Helvetian.

  “This little rattle-shaking’s naught to worry o’er—ah, We see the Princess is already coming round. Admirable. Stoutly turned out, don’t you think? Well deserving of the honor We’ll bestow upon her. Shall we be going?”

  Fireclaw set Ayesha back upon her feet, giving her assurances, receiving them from her. Nonetheless, he watched her until he was certain of her steadiness.

  And of his own.

  2

  The party retraced its steps among the living dead.

  They reached at last the spiral stairway, where the Rabbi David Shulieman, with an oath uncharacteristic of the retiring scholar they all expected him to be, rose grimly from the wheeled chair, demanding he be allowed to descend afoot.

  “From this moment forward,” the scholar hissed between his pain-clenched teeth, “and at whatever cost, I’ll not presume upon our captor’s kindness—” This last word he emphasized, although whether out of sarcasm or wounded agony, Fireclaw could not tell. “—nor let him see me helpless,” Shulieman finished.

  None could gainsay him.

  Leaning upon the polished wall beside the stairs—in his case their odd proportions helped a little, providing space to rest upon—he gave a creditable account of himself for one that recent in his wounding, although Fireclaw saw that his color wasn’t good. Nor could he move about much without trembling afterward at the effort. The Helvetian was certain that the rabbi’s bandages, bulking at his abdomen beneath his clothing, would soon be soaked with blood from his reopened injury.

  Outside, the sky had begun to clear, patches of blue showing through in narrow rifts between the ragged strands of overcast. The brief underwater voyage back to the Palace of the Sun was no more eventful than it had been before, Zhu Yuan-Coyotl continuing to converse, in the main this time with David Shulieman.

  “I wonder what they would say,” the Sun replied to a question about the civilizations revealed by the Dreamers, “did they know there were being ‘scrutinized and studied,’ in the words of the poet, ‘narrowly as a with microscope, by intelligences greater, yet as mortal, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic.’”

  The ruler chuckled.

  Fireclaw paid the conversation scant attention. Keeping a watchful eye upon the failing scholar, he was at the same time thinking about another conversation he’d been summoned to with Zhu Yuan-Coyotl at the subterranean quayside, just before the Saracens had come.

  3

  Zhu Yuan-Coyotl had spoken of his incognito voyage from the eastern coast. There had been, of course, no shipwreck, no deck-hopping trek as he and Crab had described. Instead, he and his late companion had been delivered by night by a vessel of the air, flying across the continent at too high an altitude to be seen, to that place where he knew Mochamet al Rotshild’s surface-ship would make its landfall. In the guise of “Shrimp,” the Sun had wanted, he explained, to find out for himself whether it was time his domain moved against the outside world.

  “Now We’ve decided against it.” He’d nodded, as if to himself. “Instead, We’ll let the Saracens and the Mughals finish one another. But We desire mighty Fireclaw join Us in keeping Our borders closed till such comes to pass.”

  Fireclaw guffawed. He’d hurried to the quayside, for from the talk of palace servants, a surprising lot of it in Arabic, he’d already learned somewhat about the Spire, had believed, as the young ruler later said he might, it was a desirable alternative to the fate two empires had declared for Ayesha.

  Now Zhu Yuan-Coyotl had changed the subject.

  “My son,” asked Fireclaw, knowing the answer beforehand, “he put you up to this, at least in part, did he not?”

  Zhu Yuan-Coyotl nodded.

  “Still, there’s a deal Fireclaw would gain by accepting the post he’s been offered. The land’s rich and enlightened, brimming o’er with opportunity, its ruler generous and, given proper circumstances, inclined to o’erlook much.”

  Fireclaw had concealed His mounting anger, keeping his tone level. Restraint was threatening to become a habit with him.

  “Enlightened? After what you ordered done to the Comanche, to the Utes, to the—”

  “We often do far worse by your lights, Sedrich Fireclaw. A little human sacrifice, to
put the worst foot forward, is sometimes necessary to knit Our two peoples together. This We learned the hard way centuries ago. “’Twas a matter of the immigrant Han respecting the religious customs of the native Meshika.”

  Zhu Yuan-Coyotl turned, placing both hands upon Fireclaw’s broad shoulders.

  “Besides, what’s straightforward slaughter to compare with aught which other cultures do to their folk—Our own Fireclaw, for example—more slowly, more inhumanely. In the main, do We not speak aright, with the pretense of doing them good?”

  Fireclaw, thinking back upon fair Frae, upon his father, his mother, himself, most recently upon Dove Blossom, could offer naught in the way of answer.

  “There’s much to see and enjoy,” Zhu Yuan-Coyotl pointed out. “You’ve experienced the miracle of Our flying ships. You might learn to fly, yourself. Owald’s correct, ’tis possible you can grow a hand to replace that you lost.”

  He stepped back, smiling.

  “D’you not trouble yourself o’er our customs. The common people believe their life and livelihood come from the Sun. They must, on that account, return a portion of it. In many respects, they’re correct. The pyramid gives much in return for an occasional few lives—including power to light the city at night, and means of defending it. There are also carts you’ve not as yet seen, smaller, more manageable than the Saracens’, requiring neither wind nor steam to propel—”

  “And Ayesha’s dreams?” Fireclaw interrupted.

  “Ayesha’s dreams are familiar to Han-Meshika science, as you’re about to see. She’s sensitive—not uniquely so—to a myriad of other selves in other universes near to this. She therefore dreams their dreams, transmitting her own in turn to them. This is why her premonitions are that poignant—and untrustworthy.”

  At this moment the Saracens had arrived for their underwater ride to the Spire of Dreamers.

  4

  Saying he’d consider the Sun’s offer, Fireclaw returned alone to the quarters he’d been given—which he now recognized were little more than an elegant jail cell.

  He let the door close behind him, hearing the click of its heavy brass lock. Owald had explained this as routine precaution for the Sun Incarnate’s physical safety.

  “Nothing personal,” the boy had told him.

  Fireclaw had nonetheless taken it as personal affront to be told he was a guest and be treated as a prisoner.

  There he found his bear-dog Ursi awaiting him, bathed, groomed, and perfumed. He chuckled at the unaccustomed sight. It occurred to him to wonder how many helpful strangers among the Han-Meshika the great beast had maimed this time.

  The animal had wet the rug.

  Likely he was even more disturbed by the morning’s earth-tremors than his people, although they were no unknown phenomenon where he’d been born. Now Fireclaw knew the reason, a crack in the earth’s surface. No explanation suited to calm Ursi, however.

  Exploring the place about him with his body while his mind conducted searches within itself, he also discovered another token of the Sun’s desire that he commit himself, and soon, to service to the Han-Meshika—or of the similar desire of his own son. He opened a door. Hanging heavy within the room’s wardrobe was a full suit of Bodyguardsman’s armor: copper kilt, black-polished back-and-breast, a commander’s helmet in the shape of a great grizzly’s head.

  Alongside the armor, dangling by its sling, hung one of the black, slab-sided quick-firing magazine weapons he’d tried under nervous supervision following sword-practice. His hand went first to this, to the long, curved magazine—

  —which he found to be empty.

  At the window, a glimmer of light caught Fireclaw’s attention.

  Out upon the bay, a giant airship, not the Sun’s personal craft whose shadow he could even now see being cast upon the ground about the Palace—at whose topmost tower the craft was moored—but one much like it, approached the Ice-Mountain squatting like a monstrous, hungry crystal toad upon its own patch of land.

  As it did so, some large portion of the vessel seemed to swing downward from the underside, rather like the slow-opening jaw of some predatory fish. This likeness was much enhanced by the eye painted upon the bow of the craft. A shift in the wind caused the ship’s pilot to steer his bow a little in Fireclaw’s direction. Now the Helvetian warrior could discern that the portion opening was a gigantic, polished surface—a mirror—which, when another thirty seconds passed, would be above the glassy red “pool” of the pyramid.

  He waited, watching.

  Without warning, a shaft of blinding brilliance, scarlet like the pool, large as the apex of the pyramid itself, sprang with a thunderclap from the roof of the edifice, glanced off the mirror which had been unfolded at the airship’s chin, lanced outward, westward, over the bay’s enclosing mountains to the sea.

  The airship bobbed a little in the heavy winds of the bay. Almost as quick as it had sprung into being, the dazzling light was chopped off. He couldn’t see what the beam had struck far out at sea. Nor had whatever it struck likely ever seen the beam, either. He could see, where the beam had wobbled a little, a fire beginning to rage upon the promontory near the harbor-mouth. E’er long the clangor of bells and sirens indicated the fire was being attended to.

  The edges of the airship’s mirror were smoking.

  Fireclaw shuddered.

  Setting aside his own weapons, he paced the carpeted floor for a long while, his muddled thoughts, whether he willed it or no, his emotions as well, centered upon Ayesha.

  He was ready now, he thought, to recognize his feelings for the girl. However inappropriate, considering the time and place—Dove Blossom had been dead a mere matter of days—however inconvenient, they were real. They appeared to be reciprocated by her, despite what he considered the great difference in their ages.

  They were the same feelings, he knew with a heart which sank and took wing in the same moment, as those he’d shared with Frae Hethristochter, that long ago, feelings which no one since then had stirred in him.

  He slapped his prosthetic into his palm.

  The pain brought with it resolution.

  He must at least try to rescue Ayesha from the fate Zhu Yuan-Coyotl intended for her—the Sun had been vague about this, a dire enough warning in itself—even if he himself, and every soul upon the globe, were killed in the doing of it.

  Better this, he thought, than to lose love once again and once again survive the loss.

  The windows rattled with another tremor. Ignoring it, he considered possibilities. Given half a chance, the girl would help herself. That was one thing—he chuckled in remembrance of the rifle-shot she’d taken at him—he loved much about her.

  The rabbi and the Commodore were useless in their present state. Oln Woeck was out of the question—Fireclaw hoped that he was dead. Best leave the loyalty of his son undivided; he’d been serving Zhu Yuan-Coyotl far longer than he’d known his father.

  Just as he’d decided he could count upon no one but himself for assistance, had begun prying with his dagger-point at the locking-panel upon the door to the corridor—he’d search for Ayesha, no matter where she might be in this o’erambitious pile of bricks—he heard a gentle rapping at another door, connecting this chamber to the neighboring quarters of Mochamet al Rotshild.

  “Fireclaw,” he offered in excellent Helvetian, “I’d a word or more with you.”

  The man slid the door aside and entered.

  Fireclaw noticed how the aged, unwell Saracen Commodore seemed to have enjoyed a miraculous recovery from his recent illness. His coloring was back. He walked with a young man’s springy gait.

  Mochamet al Rotshild grinned.

  “’Twould to me appear our esteemed young host prefers his guests to be of the harmless variety, disarmed, safely locked away. You see how I’ve accommodated him: what could be more harmless than an old man? Why, of course, my friend, a sick old man!”

  Fireclaw grunted, went back to prying at the lock.

  The Sara
cen persisted.

  “I see you’re preparing to take your leave. Well, my Helvetian friend, I wish you God’s speed. I’ll not delay you long: I’ve a confession to make, one I’d just as soon avoid, were it not for the fact I require your assistance.”

  Fireclaw turned from the door, set his dagger aside.

  “What is it, Mochamet al Rotshild, you require of me?”

  “Why, my young friend,” the man answered, an ingratiating smile upon his bearded face, “it couldn’t be simpler.”

  Striding across the room without his cane, he placed one hardened hand upon Fireclaw’s arm.

  “I’m a spy, you see—and always have been—for the Mughal Empire.”

  XLV: The Spy

  “Upon the day when heaven shall be as molten copper and the mountains shall be plucked as wool-tufts, no loyal friend shall question loyal friend.”

  —The Koran, Sura LXX

  “I’ve been a spy since I was a green youth,” Mochamet al Rotshild went on, “and have come to be quite an effective one, I might add in all modesty.”

  Fireclaw offered nothing as an answer, but watched Mochamet al Rotshild’s face.

  “My mission, what was expected from me upon this voyage, was to prevent, at all costs, any détente ’tween the Saracens and this so-called Crystal Empire.”

  He laughed, not from good humor but from irony.

  “’Twould appear, upon the other hand, that this has been accomplished for me already, wouldn’t it? My word, the diplomatic repercussions that will arise from the fiery sacrifice of the Caliph’s envoy-in-wedlock—”

  Fireclaw stopped him.

  “Sacrifice, you say?”

  “If I must be the first to say it in the open. Surely, you didn’t—no, I see you, too, have known all along, but wished no more than I to have it spoken and out.”

  A pause.

  “Where was I? Oh, yes: Her sacrifice to a pagan deity’ll not be interpreted as a friendly gesture. Howe’er great an honor ’tis meant to represent by our little friend the Sun. Ah, me, ’twill enhance my reputation—posthumously, I’m afraid—unless you happen to have any better ideas about getting out of here than that.”