"They are citizens," ceded the Concerned One. "We, on the other hand, are leaders of citizens, aren't we?"
"Yes, my lord," said Father.
"Do you not believe," continued the Concerned One, "they will go to a better place after they are dead and will live forever among the clouds and all of those angels and things?"
"I think there is a world after this one, my lord," said Father.
"There you are then," said the Concerned One, and slapped his bare thighs, as he was wont to do when he thought he had made a point. "Eternity in the afterlife has to be a whole lot better than a lifetime in the slums of here and now. We're doing them a favor, really we are. The things you worry about, Black. If you don't want to sully your hands with this, I will take care of the arrangements myself. I know someone specializing in these sorts of things."
The following day there was a confused uprising beyond the produce markets. Teams of armed men threw incendiary grenades through the basement windows of a thousand tenements, causing a massive conflagration that forced millions into the smoke-filled streets. There were of course no fire engines left in the city. The City Guardsmen raced to the stricken area in long lines that were four abreast. To restore order and a sense of safety in the neighborhood, they fired away at everyone they could reach until the blood in the streets ran ankle deep. Back on the palace grounds, the emperor and the muscular Marcie were at the same time crawling into a carriage that transported them to the hacienda of the Anthonys south of the city. Eighteen hundred loyal members of the city's policemen marched alongside the emperor, and were joined at the ranch by fifteen hundred of the sailors from Tampico. Father would not allow me to join the progress. Five hundred more of the sailors remained inside the palace, and some of them were posted outside the door of my room to keep Helen and myself in the city.
Cleander stood at the doorway of his little office and watched the emperor and Father's men march out of town. Before the sun had set, thousands of mounted City Guardsmen had ridden down the highway and had taken up postings around the emperor's new home like kites hovering above a dying horse. In the open countryside the men trapped inside the ranch could behold how much more numerous the full division of City Guardsmen and their auxiliaries were than their numbers. Father would later tell me Cleander's men had such confidence in the new situation they allowed the escaped assassin Nick Street to ride among them when they swarmed upon the hills beyond the edges of the estate. The guards under Father's command mended the stone walls that-along with the rows of gnarled oak trees-marked the hacienda's boundaries. They kept a constant watch on the scores of snipers they could see stalking through the high brown grass, looking for an opportunity to shoot at the emperor, who cowered inside the main house and never went outside for any reason. On the day after their arrival at the country estate, Father's men captured two civilians attempting to smear poison on the garden vegetables the Concerned One would eat. Without knowing the import of their actions, these loyal men had foiled the last attempt on the emperor's life Cleander would ever launch.
The Concerned One might have lingered at his new home for years, doing his exercises in the safety of the ranch house's front rooms and doing whatever else he did at night in Marcie's company, had not the small riot he and the fuel factors had staged three days earlier sown the seeds of a general rebellion among the city's populace. The City Guardsmen had repressed the disturbance with the brutality that was as natural to them as eating and sleeping are to others. They had mown down anyone they suspected, including any they came upon, and had captured a thousand additional victims they had impaled on stakes along the access highways as a warning to other unhappy civilians who might be considering revolution. Similar actions had quieted the people in times past. Now, due to the high food prices, the city was starving. Dying from a bullet wound did not at the time seem nearly as terrifying to the populace as slowly wasting into skeletons. A great rally of a quarter million people was held in the Field of Diversions, where an unknown but brilliant orator (I expect he was an actor in the pay of the fuel factors) incited the massive crowd into such a frenzy they forgot the immediate danger and began marching south toward the emperor's new residence in hopes of gaining an audience with the Concerned One. Cleander misinterpreted the crowd surging down the roadway as a threat to him. In a moment of thoughtless panic he ordered the City Guardsmen to attack. As soon as the mob moved beyond the city limits the cavalry and infantry smashed into the swarm of unarmed people, and swelled over them like a wave breaking over a defenseless beach. In the first minutes of the dreadful clash thousands perished before the Guardsmen's guns or were crushed in the mob's wild retreat back to Garden City. As the huge crowd reentered the city, the City Guardsmen, who at that point had not suffered a single casualty, rashly followed the escaping civilians into the narrow streets of the city's slums. The cavalry wedged ahead of the infantry and quickly found they could not maneuver much on the rutted pavement nor turn about in passageways that were often less than a rod wide. Their comrades in the infantry could not get past the mounted men in front of them or smash through the masonry and corrugated steel walls around them. The citizens overturned handcarts in the streets and brought the soldiers' assault to an absolute halt deep within the man-made canyons of Garden City. Thousands of young boys climbed atop the tenement roofs and rained clay tiles and Molotov cocktails upon the trapped soldiers who had not been expecting a battle that day and were for the most part not dressed in full body armor. The five hundred sailors Father had left at the palace and those policemen left on patrol in the city raced to the southern barrios. Buoyed by the cheers of the delighted mob, these armed men climbed atop the barricades and attacked the City Guardsmen cavalry, pushing them backward onto the City Guardsmen infantry. Finding themselves suddenly thrust into a hopeless situation, as Selin's men would be four years later, the City Guardsmen did what defeated Pan-Polarians always do when they face other Pan-Polarians: they threw down their weapons and surrendered, knowing they would be able to strike a deal with their conquerors. The few City Guardsmen left outside the city saw how the action was unfolding and decided they too would rather be on the winning side than among those who were going to be condemned as traitors and possibly put to death. They at once became so dedicated to the emperor's cause they arrested Cleander, the man to whom they had sworn their undying fealty, and brought their former leader in chains to the Anthony ranch. At the first outburst of gunfire on the road, the emperor had run to the ranch house's main sleeping chamber and had hidden behind the bed. It necessarily fell to Father to take charge of the fallen chamberlain at the hacienda's front gate.
"Old friend," said Cleander, clasping the sleeve of Father's tunic with his manacled hands, "I need to speak to the emperor. People are out to overthrow him! Dion and the fuel factors are behind everything! You must help me, General Black."
"I have heard of a plot, sir," agreed Father, and shook Cleander's hands off his sleeve.
Father put Cleander in the care of his sailors and went into the villa's grand house to find the Concerned One. Father went to the door of the emperor's sleeping room and called to him. No one answered. Father had to shout forth his name and position before the emperor would chance a look at him. Everyone else in the royal entourage was hiding in other places inside the huge estate, leaving the emperor alone and terrified. He thought Father was there to kill him when he heard the general's footsteps at the bedroom threshold.
" Blackie!" he exclaimed as he glanced over the top of his bed. "I never would have expected it of you! Didn't I give you everything?!"
"My lord," said Father, "I am not here to harm you. I have come to return you to Garden City. The Mexican police and the populace have seized control of the city. You must, my lord, go to them and tell them you are their friend or they will think you have cast your lot with Cleander, and they will turn the Empire upside down."
"What of Cleander?" asked the Concerned One, who had again ducked his head from view.
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br /> "He is our prisoner, my lord," said Father. "The City Guardsmen have come back over to us."
"Have you killed him yet?" asked the Concerned One.
The emperor's courage-or whatever it was that ruled his heartreturned to him at the thought of dealing with his treacherous chamberlain. He stood fully upright and came from behind the bed.
"I think I should take care of him myself," said the Concerned One. "There would be justice in that."
He rubbed his hands together as he imagined Cleander's execution. Seconds after his great fright, the emperor had recalled that there was still pleasure to be had in the world.
"That is not of great importance at the moment, my lord," said Father. "You need to go to the city immediately and address the mob."
"You mean I'll have to give a speech?" asked the Concerned One, wishing the conversation would return to the subject of Cleander's execution. "I hate giving speeches. Give a speech and anything can happen: people can boo, they can say you are wrong, they can say so-and-so speaks better than you. You just never know."
"I heard you give a great speech once, my lord," said Father. "Your father, the blessed Mathias, had just died, and you were assuming solitary rule. You spoke to the armies on the Amur."
"Oh, that was ordinary politics," said the Concerned One, and sat on the bed. "This is an emergency," he whined. "When the subject is politics, I can say whatever I want. The words pour out of me then. It's nothing. It's theory; that's the word for it. If I learned nothing else from my father, I learned one can talk for hours on end about nothing when the subject is theoretical."
Father weighed asking him if he had not considered the death of Mathias an emergency.
"If it helps you, my lord," said Father, "you may think of this event as being a political meeting. Everyone's political future will depend on what you say to the people."
"You don't understand the pressures I am under," said the Concerned One. "You and your type have been out on the frontier all your careers, living it up among the natives, I imagine. I envy the easy life you have out there. No responsibilities. Only a little bit of warfare now and then to bother your day-to-day affairs. You have no appreciation of what I go through for you." He sighed and lay back on his gilded coverlets. "Are the people in a foul mood? I'll bet they're dangerous after this cold weather we've been having."
Father knew the people were starving and that afternoon the City Guardsmen had butchered thousands of their numbers, meaning they were in a fouler mood than the emperor could imagine. He did not feel he should tell the emperor that or he would never get the Concerned One back into the city. He told me he wished I had been there to tell him something clever he could say to persuade the emperor to do his duty. Father had to improvise on his own as he stood at attention at the foot of the gigantic bed. I must say he did quite well for a man lacking any inkling of how to be cunning.
"Your friends from the theater, my lord," said Father, "they tell me you are brilliant on the stage."
"Yes, yes I am," said the Concerned One, and pulled the coverlets over his eyes. "I am brilliant at everything. I am Luke Anthony, the Concerned One, the Father of His People."
"There, you have said it yourself, my lord," said Father. "You can easily do this. Lesser actors than you do it every day."
"I don't know," said the Concerned One, and sat upright on the edge of the bed. "I can say lines to a crowd. Here I will have to talk and think of things to say at the same time. That's very hard to do, Blackie. Professional actors only say what someone else has written for them."
"You only have to flatter the people, my lord," said Father. "Compliment them on their rioting. Tell them it was really well done. Tell them everything that has happened was Cleander's fault."
"They are his fault," said the Concerned One.
"Say you will get food for them as soon as possible, my lord, and that in the future everything will be better than in the past," continued Father.
"I suppose," huffed the Concerned One, and stood up. "I will do what I have to do. The responsibilities, Black, the responsibilities; they wear on me."
He and Father rode in the emperor's carriage back to the southern outskirts of the city. Squadrons of sailors and Mexican police ran alongside them to provide protection. Cleander was pulled behind their group by a long chain fastened about his neck. The Concerned One ordered one of his athlete chums to beat the chamberlain with a three-tailed whip the entire length of the four-mile journey. The usually immaculate Cleander was a bloody mess of stumbling rags long before he entered Garden City for the last time in his life.
At the city's edge, the still furious, ever-growing rabble met the group from the hacienda and showed the emperor little initial goodwill. Men in the crowd jeered him and shook bits of broken roof tile. The women held up their bleeding children who had been injured in the fight against the City Guardsmen. Father's Guardsmen had to push some civilians away from Cleander or they would have done away with him on the spot.
"Citizens!" exclaimed the Concerned One, and raised his hand to salute the mob.
This had been the single word Pius Anthony had used to quell a rebellion a generation earlier. The Concerned One made the same gesture his grandfather had, and his powerful voice echoed off the metal walls as dramatically as Plus's voice once had, but too much in the world had changed since his ancestor's time. The Concerned One's citizens needed more than appeals to patriotism to console them. Those few among the people who recognized the allusion to past glory moaned in disgust at the pretentious boy wearing the emperor's purple clothes. The unlettered majority asked if they could eat their citizenship. Father climbed from the carriage and demanded they be silent. He ordered the men in his command to call out to the people as he did.
"The emperor has food for you!" they and Father shouted, knowing full well the Concerned One did not. "Food! Enough for everyone!"
The crowd quieted down, giving the Concerned One an opportunity to begin again. He bit his handsome lower lip before he started, a calculated move that had never failed him before. The emperor blinked his eyes and conjured up a tear that trickled down his fair imperial cheek. The women in the mob, who had despised him seconds earlier, remarked how sympathetic he looked.
"My friends," he said, "we have been working day and night these past months, building the future of Pan-Polaria, making an Empire your children will live in, an Empire we have been so preoccupied with we have neglected some of the affairs of today. We had delegated authority to other men while we planned the future. We assumed they would serve the state as we have: with good faith and pure intentions. How bitterly we have been disappointed!
"Until yesterday, I was told by ... a certain party"-he pointed to Cleander, and the crowd hissed as if on cue-"that our good citizensyou, my people-were being fed. I was deceived. My chamberlain, your chamberlain, was diverting the people's grain to ..."
The Concerned One stopped because he had forgotten where the speculators said the grain was going. Father had to whisper to him, "Greece."
"... to Greece," said the Concerned One, "the homeland of pirates and traitors!" (The crowd cheered.) "May posterity forgive us for allowing that cursed nation into our Empire. We will punish them for this offense against the mother of the world!" (The cheering grew louder.) "But first we will feed our people, and punish a certain party!"
The Concerned One ordered his guards to turn Cleander over to the people's judgment. The mob rushed forward singing songs of jubilation, and at once chopped the slender chamberlain to bits with weapons they had taken from the City Guardsmen. The roars of delight the populace bellowed forth rattled free rows of loosened tiles over the eaves of several buildings and knocked a dozen of the celebrants dead. At the time no one seemed to notice. Someone stuck Cleander's head on a pole and ran with the bloody trophy through the festive streets. The runner stopped at every prostitute he met and let her kiss the chamberlain's cold lips to show the contempt the least of Garden City's people had for Clea
nder, now that he was powerless and dead. Before midnight the runner had taken the head to every neighborhood in the city. In the early hours of the morning he put the head on display in the Field of Diversions, near the place Cleander had told Father he would one day mount Father's obligation. The body of the chamberlain, which the day before had housed the soul of one of the two grandest men on Earth, was thrown to the packs of half-wild dogs that roam the dry lakebeds that surround the city. The Concerned One had more things to say to the people after they had taken the chamberlain. The people did not let him say them. The joyous mob drew his carriage down the road to the palace gate before he could finish his speech. Each time he attempted to say something during his long, happy procession the cheering overwhelmed his words.
"What idiots I rule," he told Father as their vehicle reentered the palace grounds. "I could say `Hey, hey, hey!' to them, and they would applaud me. I blame the foreign blood we have in the Empire, Blackie. I have noticed a similar decline in our dogs; we used to have good PanPolarian hunting dogs, and look at them now: they couldn't catch a dead rabbit. The new people, I tell you, have bred the brains clean out of our native North American stock. You should look into it. Write me a report. Not a report to me, mind you; send it to someone belonging to me."
"I will make an inquiry, my lord," said Father.
The Concerned One and his companions were roaring drunk for the following three days. When Father saw the emperor again, the Concerned One asked Father why he was still in Garden City.
"Aren't you governor of Turkey?" asked the Concerned One.
"Yes, my lord, I am," confessed Father.
"You should get back there then," said the emperor. "I have enough conspirators hanging about the capital as it is. I hardly need to be importing them in from the provinces."
As Father, the servants, and I returned to Tampico to catch a boat for Asia, we saw fleets of ships unloading grain at the docks. Days later the capital's markets were selling the previous fall's bumper harvest at bargain prices. Because there was soon food enough for everyone, everyone said they thought the Concerned One was the best emperor Pan-Polaria had ever had, in spite of the famine, the metal plagues, the new diseases, the conspiracies, the loss of much of the Empire's territory, and the other disasters that had befallen his reign. As the economy improved and the memories of hunger pangs faded, the people did not care that the Concerned One in the coming months would embark upon the worst murderous rampage of his reign. Everyone-excepting those he killed-said the emperor's little excesses did not bother them. The various plagues and the Concerned One's policies-or lack thereof-had left thousands of businesses in need of new owners and had opened up countless opportunities for those with the money to invest. The state welfare was working better than ever now that there were tens of millions of fewer bellies to fill. Pan-Polaria's enemies were far away and suffering similar disasters, and the all-conquering army still stood between them and what was left of the Empire. Nor were there any new taxes; what with the property the Concerned One was stealing from the people he murdered, the treasury's coffers were filling almost as quickly as the emperor and his friends could find ways to spend the new revenue.
The Martian General's Daughter Page 20
