"I had to turn them into gods," he explained to his City Guardsmen the morning he examined his friends' butchered corpses lying within one of his gardens. "They would not have been happy staying here after having gotten a feel for heaven."
Marcie did not have to be reminded she touched parts of the divine person every night.
"Whom will he murder tomorrow, my lady?" General Lamb must have whispered in her ear countless times. "A man who would kill his wife would give no thought to killing his mistress"-for General Lamb and Marcie both knew the emperor had killed his wife Barbara in 2288.
The byword of the Concerned One's rule-"I can, therefore I will"became, in his last year on the throne, "I can do anything." He made noblemen dance naked for him in the palace gardens. Those few who refused to obey him would be thrown to wild beasts so they might amuse him as they perished. His dinner guests were each night forced to eat food mixed with human excrement while he watched and laughed at their dis tress. Among his retainers he kept at his elbow throughout his waking hours was an unspeakable young man he called "the Ass"; on those evenings simple torture did not lift the Concerned One's soul to the heights he wished to scale, he would watch while the Ass abused little boys and girls. The emperor was so pleased with this criminal he made him a priest in the new religion of the Living Hercules. At one dinner party while the Ass was performing for the Concerned One and his horrified guests, the degenerate performed acts of such piety the emperor took a pistol from a City Guardsman and sent his favorite to dwell in heaven with his athlete friends. "Such a great artist is wasted upon this world," said the Concerned One as he kicked the Ass's body to make certain he was completely gone. That summer the emperor declared bulls to be sacred and demanded followers of Invictus to sacrifice humans instead during their baptismal rites. Armed with his Herculean club he sometimes stalked the palace corridors on nights he could not sleep and would on impulse beat to death anyone he happened to meet. He would scream for hours over the dead like a lion roaring over its prey. In celebration of the longest day of the year he dressed a hundred deformed and crippled men in tight linen casings, laid them on the floor of his throne room, and while the City Guardsmen stood around the doomed men in a square the Concerned One shot the wretched men while they struggled against the tight clothing and their emperor screamed, "I'm killing Hera's snakes!" (The doomed men were not scholars and would not have known that the goddess Hera supposedly sent giant serpents to kill the infant Hercules in his cradle, although the young hero slew them first.) One autumn day in the fighters' school behind the Field of Diversions, the Concerned One heard someone in the crowd laugh while the athletes were training. He thought the bemused spectators were laughing at him; therefore he had his City Guardsmen seal the exits, sweep through the stands in formation, and kill everyone present.
Marcie did her best to keep him drunk as often as possible. When he was full of liquor, he became dull and inactive, and would not kill anyone until he slept off his stupor. It was unfortunate for the Empire that his athletic training kept him sober far too often, and there was no safety for any within the reach of his power.
Yet the common citizens continued to love their emperor through these long months of carnage. These were fat times for most of those in the city when compared to the years of famine and disease. While the money lasted and the trade routes within Mexico remained open, the public dole was more generous than it had been only months before. As I have said, the emperor's building projects in the city employed tens of thousands of formerly idle men. I have not yet observed that the standards of these projects were agreeably lax, and much could be built slipshod and more still could be stolen by those owning a construction contract. The new diseases and the emperor's whims had eliminated scads of property owners, and anyone with a little capital to invest in land or ships now had plenty of chances to take the places of the dead. The metal plagues had crippled the foreign powers as much as they had the Pan-Polarian Empire, and thus the remaining lands within the emperor's control remained secure, for the moment. New mines in western Mexico had given the Empire an apparently inexhaustible supply of gold and silver coin with which our merchants could import all the food, drink, clothing, and artisan-made luxury items our people could still consume. The speculators and the moneylenders ruling the Empire's trade from their market stalls in the city's central plaza grew as rich as the kings of most other nations. A man of wealth but of low birth, such as Father's patron Mr. Golden, could afford to buy a place in society his ancestors could not have dreamed of. Such men could now live in villas high in the cool, dry surrounding hills. They brought to their new homes small armies of servants and bodyguards, exactly as the aristocrats had done for centuries. Their wives could wear silk and turquoise like Egyptian princesses and have teams of Mexican servants stand beside them to sweep away the flies with fans made of gigantic feathers. It was almost as good as having airconditioning back. Their children could grow to be as fat and as arrogant as the young aristocrats already were, while their merchant fathers wallowed in the myriad carnal delights of the privileged. In such almost golden times, the commoners were forgiving of the Concerned One's personal excesses. Such things did not harm them.
"Of course he does bad things in the palace," a woman living in the tenement apartment under Helen and me told me, "but he does them to the rich. Who cares what he does to those bastards? They have been robbing the world for a couple hundred years. Let them have a taste of the supper they've been serving to everybody else. Let him take his boot off their necks, and they would start bullying us again. The emperor is our defender. We need him more than ever now that we don't have the things we used to have. The machines, I mean."
The last time Father was summoned to the palace, the defender of the people, the man/god Hercules, the emperor of most of the northern world had let Marcie Angelica get him roaring drunk again. The Concerned One lay undressed on his vast bed, half conscious of everything near him in his candle-illuminated sleeping chamber. Rather than turn Father away another time, Marcie allowed Father to sit in the flickering light on a stool near the side of the bed.
"He has asked for you specifically," the concubine told Father. "Something about wolves."
The emperor heard her say "wolves," and he roused himself and shouted, "Where are they?!"
"They are not here, precious," said Marcie, and stroked the curly hair on his head. "Lie down. We are safe in the palace."
"Who's this?" he asked of Father.
"General Peter Black," she said. "You called for him."
"Old Blackie was a good sort," said the Concerned One, lying fully on his back once more. "I'm pretty certain I killed him years ago. Lined him up against the wall and shot him. This one is an imposter. Have the guards take care of him."
"No, precious," Marcie advised him. "This really is General Black. He has come from the East to visit us."
"Get a lamp in here!" ordered the emperor. "I need to see this with my own eyes. So many damned spies around."
A City Guardsman fetched a blazing oil lamp for him, and the Concerned One had the man hold the light to Father's face while the emperor rolled on his left side to have a clear look at his guest.
"Why, it is the old coot!" he announced. "Didn't Cleander find some way of bumping you off?" he asked.
"Apparently not, my lord," said Father.
"Have you seen any wolves about?" asked the Concerned One.
"Not in Garden City, my lord," said Father. "We have many in Asia."
"Could you get some for me, old boy?" asked the emperor, focused for the moment on this peculiar subject. "I want to shoot some in the Field of Diversions."
"I suppose I could, my lord," said Father. He glanced at Marcie and the soldier holding the lamp; both of them were old hands in the palace and had learned to keep a blank face when the Concerned One got to ranting. Father took his cue from them.
"Remember in Progress, way out there in Siberia, when we still had Siberia, before Daddy went
to heaven," said the Concerned One, "how the wolves used to steal from the forest after sundown. I could see their gray heads moving in the night. Like they were floating in front of the undergrowth. They were terrible, weren't they, Blackie? I watched them from my window for hours before I went to sleep. They would wait and wait for their chance. I have to get rid of them. They've gotten into my dreams, you know. Take the Turkish divisions and go into Siberia and round them up. I will finish them one by one in the pure light of the arena."
Aiming at a target he alone could see, the emperor aimed an invisible rifle in the hushed bedroom air.
"Every wolf in Siberia, my lord?" said Father. "That would be a large project. There are so many...."
"Because the goddamned Chinese protect them!" said the emperor with more feeling than twenty sane men would use in a year. "Round the Chinese up, too! Ha! That would be something! Speaking of China, do you know what they found there?" (He sat upright in his bed to tell Father this in a whisper.) "Merchants coming from that part of the world say they found ... a whole flock of white ravens. Pure white, old man. When they found their nests, they cracked open the eggs and out came lizards! Little wiggling lizards! They say it's the end of the world. I have a woman from Egypt who saw the same thing in the sky. Not lizards; the end of the world, I mean. Even the damned stupid priests of something or other I have here in my capital saw an omen inside some albino calf they found. They cut it open, and there was nothing in there. Nothing."
"The mystics are always telling such tales, my lord," said Father, who believed in Sophia and nothing else.
"They tell tales because of the damned wolves!" said the emperor, and rolled onto his back. "They will tell them until every wolf is gone." (He ordered the City Guardsman away, and put an arm across his face to shield his eyes from the lamplight.) "What would you do, Black, if I let you do anything you wanted? Anything? I mean absolutely anything?"
Father did not have to reflect much upon the question.
"I would like to return to Turkey, my lord," he said. "I have a garden there, and I need to get my flowers in before the rains come."
"If you could do anything you wanted," asked the astonished emperor/god, "you would go back to Turkey and raise flowers?"
"Yes," said Father.
"Wouldn't we all?" whispered the emperor, and he rolled over on his stomach and fell back into a deep sleep.
Father would not speak to the Concerned One again. We saw him from afar three weeks later in the Field of Diversions when the emperor once more frolicked as a modern gladiator before the bloodthirsty thousands. These were the traditional Thanksgiving games of November, the occasion the Concerned One chose to stage the largest wild animal show Garden City had witnessed in her long and sanguinary history. Following his custom, the emperor climbed his elevated platform and with his rifle dispatched hundreds and hundreds of exotic animals that had more beauty and grace than he and his dying Empire ever would. The Concerned One spent the equivalent of a year's budget for the entire city on this one grotesque exhibition that took two full days to complete. For this one spectacle, our old acquaintance Mr. Golden and his friends in the market made millions on special importations from independent trading companies in Africa and South America. The frightful waste further proved to the emperor's supporters how much he loved them. To his detractors he proved again he remained the same monster he ever was, only now he was growing somewhat worse in appearance and manners. At the show's long-anticipated finale on the second day, the emperor slew a hippopotamus, a fat river horse from the Nile that could not protect itself from his bullets outside its muddy water; the emperor had to shoot the bewildered creature eleven times, making the entirety of its tough exterior bleed torrents of red before it collapsed. For once the crowd became disgusted with their hero. Some reckless boys sitting high in the cheap section booed loudly at the emperor as he climbed down from his platform to pose over the mutilated beast. The offended ruler glared into the stands. A few boys insulting him was to him the same as if the entire world had. As much as he wanted to, he could not kill 180,000 at one setting as he had massacred the smaller crowd at the fighters' school. To vent his wrath he snatched up the head of an emu he had killed earlier in the show and ran into the portion of the grandstands in which the senators were seated in their crisp, linen suits. He shook the severed bird's head at the prominent men and screamed, "I can do this to you just as easily!" The politicos did not quiet his rage by bowing their faces down to the cement arena steps. The emperor screamed at them and at the crowd as the people ran toward the exits before he could sic his City Guardsmen on them. At the palace that evening the emperor smashed the furniture in his dining hall, threw his golden crowns at the walls, abused his servants with his club, and committed the one crime he had previously avoided: he beat his concubine Marcie Angelica. The City Guardsmen commander, General Lamb, was watching from within the forest of a garden peristyle as the emperor slapped her face and dragged her by her hair about the inlaid marble floors. "Why didn't you stop them?!" Luke Anthony demanded of her each time he brought his fists down upon her. With every blow, Lamb could see the emperor bringing himself a little closer to his grave.
On the third day of December, two weeks after the emperor had threatened the city's leading men in the grandstands, a list of names appeared on certain letters that were passed about in the Senate and later appeared in the wealthiest households of the capital. The lists were said to have been stolen from the emperor's administrators. The capital's rumor mill said it showed those the Concerned One was about to declare offensive to his person. The Senators Pretext and Clement were on the list, as were Einman the chamberlain and Lamb the commander of the City Guardsmen. Marcie Angelica's name was written at the very top. After years of reflection, I have now decided these lists of the damned were forgeries. Before that date the Concerned One had consistently fallen upon those he killed without giving them any warning. No one had ever known him to do any thinking before he acted. Telling people they are soon to die would serve no purpose other than giving them a chance to flee. Agents of Lamb and his master Abdul Selin were, I expect, the true authors of the lists, as no one else would have profited from terrifying the city's wealthy and powerful. In the atmosphere of panic the documents had created, no one questioned their authenticity. Other and still more expansive lists somehow appeared in the city's plazas. Wealthy hostesses made copies and distributed them at dozens of early winter parties along with the candied pigeons and the raw oysters in their shells. By late December, every prominent family thought the emperor was preparing to destroy at least some of its members. Marcie Angelica also had seen her name on the fatal scrolls. In her mind and in the minds of the leading citizens, the only question was what they could do to the emperor before he slaughtered them.
On the last evening of the year, the Concerned One laid himself to sleep on his vast bed in the palace. For the first time in many days, he was feeling healthy and in good spirits. He had trained hard through the past two months. While the rest of the capital lived in constant dread, he was looking forward to the games he would be presiding over on the morrow. On that day, the first day of the new year, he would kill a hundred giant snakes and declare from his elevated seat in the Field of Diversions that the Pan-Polarian people would henceforth be known as "the people of the Expected One." He awoke after less than an hour of repose. Something was outside the window, perched atop the stone balcony and softly murmuring to him. He drew a gun from beneath his pillows and tiptoed across the floor to have a look. To his horror, as he drew near the arched window, he beheld a large, white owl, a bird of ill omen, slowing turning its head and making demon's chatter. The emperor/god dropped his weapon and ran shouting into the adjoining room, seeking the protection of his chief mistress.
"We have to leave here!" he told her and the giant Norman. "This room is cursed! Get a company of men! I have to sleep at the fighters' school!"
The City Guardsmen accompanied the imperial party to t
he fighters' school behind the larger arena known as the Field of Diversions. Marcie prepared for the emperor a little cot from the many the combatants rest upon before they fight on the artificial turf. In spite of her efforts to comfort him, the Concerned One remained unable to sleep.
"That owl has joined forces with the wolves!" he told his companions. "All of nature has turned against me!"
He had the soldiers lock himself, Marcie, and Norman in a foulsmelling concrete locker room in which the athletes wait before they are sent outside to fight and perhaps to perish. He asked for a warrior's meal: a thick steak of lion's meat and a bottle of the reddest and sweetest wine available, for he was not too frightened to lose his appetite. The Concerned One devoured the meat the soldiers grilled on a skewer and did not ask why the meat tasted much like beef, for he expected the Guardsmen would do him the small favor of hunting up a lion when their emperor needed a late-night snack. Ample glasses of the sweet wine followed the meal into his stomach. He accepted these from Marcie's hand, as he had done for the many years they had been together. When he had drunk himself into a stupor, she opened a compartment on a ring General Lamb had given her and dropped some poison into the last wine the Concerned One would ever drink. He drained the deadly glass as eagerly as he had the previous ones. A few moments later he put a hand to his forehead and sat on the cot Marcie had prepared for him.
The Martian General's Daughter Page 24
