Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  And beyond that, Nataree learned Persian—and Latin from long sessions with Johannes—so fast it surprised even me. However, not even the guards were worried about Johannes. They saw him as a holy man, a man whose life was consumed with learning, one whose pure soul shone from his clear eyes.

  What fools we were, all of us! We could not see Johannes as she saw him.

  Well, with Johannes talking and talking to Nataree and not wanting an interpreter at the moment, I had plenty of time on my own hands. The third group in the caravan was that of the drovers, the men who looked after the horses and the camels. Since I had been raised among drovers, it was natural for me to seek them out. Within a few days I was a dung-boy, an honorary member of the group. We trailed last in the caravan, and carefully collected all the dung and dried it. Each morning we did the same thing within the camp. In the desert it was our main fuel, the difference between raw, unpleasant food and delicious cooked food.

  A dung-boy is like a fly, present everywhere and totally invisible. No one noticed me with my flat pan and shovel. And as we were emerging from the foothills of the Celestial Mountains I saw something I was not supposed to see.

  One of the soldiers sent to guard Nataree was an odd man out. His name was Maseed, and he was a skeletal, long-limbed man with a huge nose and a walleye. But it was his actions, not his appearance, that made him noteworthy. While the others sat around the fires, drinking or dozing, he would be off by himself, wandering the perimeter. He would set a cup on top of a rock, move three or four paces away, and then throw a small round pellet toward it. I say he threw, but actually the pellet was propelled with an almost imperceptible flick of the middle fingertip from the thumb, and flew so fast and so invisibly that I knew of its motion only by the rattle of its arrival in the cup. His accuracy was astonishing. I counted, and he missed only one or two times in a hundred. Even when I looked for it, I could not follow the pellet’s flight.

  He did the same thing over and over, day after day; flicked and flicked, while I watched and wondered. (Pointlessly? Perhaps. M. di Piacenza back in Acre always told me that my nosiness would be the death of me.)

  What was he doing? I was tempted to ask Nataree about it, to see if it was a game or custom of her country, but I never did. I would not accept the idea of her doing me any favors.

  No less odd, late one night I went to watch Maseed…and found Ahmes with him. They were away from the others by their own little campfire, heads close together.

  “One simple act,” Maseed was saying, “and that one with no risk. A moment’s diversion. After that, wealth will be yours.”

  “And the other?” asked Ahmes. “The fair one was promised.”

  “The promise will be kept. Her body will be yours, to do as you like with. But you must make the move exactly when I tell you, precisely as I direct. Then there will be no danger at all.”

  I had often wondered what Ahmes was doing on this journey. I had suspected the oldest motives in the world: blood and gold. Now I had proof of that, and I was ready to add lust to the list. Ahmes was a mercenary, pure and simple, and he could be bought by anyone who could afford him. But as to what he and Maseed were doing…

  I waited and watched, a lesson I had learned almost before I could walk.

  Meanwhile, we steadily drew nearer to the city of Karakorum, the home of the Great Khan. From twenty miles away it was finally visible across the snowy plain, a great rising tower of blue smoke above the horizon. When we camped for the last night, we sent our runners on ahead to make sure that the Great Khan knew we were arriving. An unnecessary gesture, the merchants said, since Kublai Khan’s own intelligence service had made him aware of our approach for at least the past five days; however, notification of arrival was diplomatically necessary.

  On that final cold evening, I sat close to the campfire and listened while Johannes and Nataree talked together. Not on the speculation of any sane person, as to the sights and sounds to be found in the court of the Great Khan. By no means. It was as bad as being back in Acre, listening to Johannes and my master.

  “You do not understand,” he was saying. “Faith is the most important thing in the whole world, since it leads not only to happiness on earth but to life eternal. And faith is what I lost. I have lost it still.”

  “No,” she said. “It is you, Johannes, who understands nothing.” She was speaking Latin, and it jolted me to realize that her knowledge of that language now seemed to match my own. “You say you have lost faith. All that you lost is simpleminded certainty. There are many faiths in this world, dozens of them, hundreds of them. Who is to say that your church’s Trinity is truer than this man’s demons, or that man’s different beliefs? Your prophet, Christ, you say he is the son of God, and he was taken to the top of a high mountain and tempted with all the treasures of the world. Very well. I am the daughter of God, or at least one of God’s daughters. If you would allow me, I could take you to another peak, just as real, and tempt you with a whole other world, just as sacred.”

  It sounded as though she was offering her body—and yet just as clearly that was not what she meant at all, for she went on, “You tell me yourself, your geometry and your calculations are eternal, pure logic that will exist forever. The proof of the parabola theorem that you showed me today, what could ever be more beautiful than that? Surely these, and not some fixed group of wordy ideas, are your veritates aeternae, your eternal verities.”

  “You don’t understand me,” said Johannes. He sounded anguished, and yet at the same time enthralled. He loved this sort of pointless talk. “What I mean is this…”

  And off he went, on another camel ride across a desert of theories and proofs. He was the most handsome and wonderful man I had ever known, and he was never anything but patient and thoughtful. But he was also the world’s most obstinate and persistent man when it came to his ideas, and the hardest man to understand when he talked about them. But perhaps she did understand him, very well. For although they had talked like this many times, endlessly, hour after hour, neither ever seemed to tire of it.

  I left, and became a dung-boy again. No one saw me, wandering along with my flat pan and shovel. And near the end of the camp, where few people went because the food and water was far off at the front, I again saw Ahmes and Maseed. They were saying little, but Ahmes was holding a beautiful little shield of polished brass. Maseed had placed a metal cup on a rock, and was standing four paces from it. In the twilight, I saw him lift his left hand to touch his ear, and at that moment Ahmes dropped the shield. It fell clanging to the ground, and a second later Maseed flicked his finger. There was a rattle of a round pellet into the cup.

  “Very good,” he said, and he laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. “One more time, and that will be the last time.”

  It was something bad. Maseed was a bad man. I knew that, as surely as I knew that Johannes of Magdeburg was a good man. But what were they doing? I sought Johannes, to ask his advice, but he was no longer by the fire, nor was he with Nataree. She was with her guards, settled in for the night.

  I wandered around the whole camp, and finally went into the beasts’ circle and lay down for comfort next to the dappled pony. Tomorrow that pony would carry Nataree into Karakorum itself. And then perhaps Johannes would stop talking and begin his search for the knowledge that we came for. It would be nice to know we had succeeded, and could begin to think whenever we chose about the journey home.

  Karakorum certainly had walls, but they were not of gold, nor were its towers of diamond. According to Johannes, it was less of a city than other places he had been, Paris and Rome and Athens. However, it was a wonderland by my standards, and it was undeniably the home of the Great Khan, ruler over an empire that stretched across more than half the world.

  We came to it across a long, cleared plain, and from miles away we could see the great palace within the walls. It was huge, a hundred paces long and seventy wide, towering up on its sixty-four wooden columns on their granite bases.
Inside the city itself most of the buildings were of brick, including Shamanist shrines, mosques, and temples to Buddha.

  “And perhaps one day,” said Johannes, “a Church of Christ.” But he did not sound very confident.

  I had finally found out where he went the previous evening. He had wandered off by himself, alone into the night, something he was apt to do when he wanted to work hard on his beloved calculations. No one else in the world had his power of concentration on a single problem. I had known him stay in one place for twenty-four hours, totally lost in thought.

  Today he was pale and moody, rubbing the palm of his hand along his forehead and his unshaven chin. I told him what had happened last night with Ahmes and Maseed, and asked him what he thought was going on. He heard me all right, I know he did, but instead of replying he stared at me as though I were a passing cloud. Then he reached out, and touched me gently on the shoulder.

  I said he was never anything but loving and patient, and that is true. But when the philosophical fit was on him, he could be unreachable.

  We were entering Karakorum, the whole unwieldy procession of us, and soon we learned that our audience with Kublai Khan would not happen for another day. Fortunately, most people in the caravan were not seeking to pay their respects to the Great Khan. The merchants went their way, the drovers another, and a group of about a dozen of us, including Nataree and her guards, were left to hang around near the entrance to the palace, and haggle with the local merchants for an evening meal at inflated prices. I did our haggling. Johannes was not good at that sort of thing, he would believe whatever the storekeepers told him.

  After dinner I once more sought him out. As always, he was talking to Nataree, their incomprehensible babble of circles and lines and squares. I interrupted them. I told Johannes again what I had seen with Maseed, and at last I asked Nataree if she, as Maseed’s countrywoman, knew the meaning of his ritual. She listened closely, and so did Johannes, but then they both shook their heads. They did not disbelieve me, but the mystery remained.

  Our audience with the Great Khan had been set for early the next day. Soon after dawn Nataree’s soldiers were up and busy polishing their brass. They all wore new tunics and their best headgear.

  I wished I could have done the same. I was supposed to be the interpreter for Johannes, and although in the desert a little dirt didn’t show, now I was aware of the whiff of horse and camel dung that came from my clothes. Brushing at the dirt just made it worse.

  All the groups who would be presented to the Khan entered the palace at the same time. Naturally, all weapons, and anything that might conceivably be used as a weapon, were left outside with the palace guards. It would hardly be a necessary precaution, since the person of the Great Khan was always surrounded by his trained guards.

  First into the palace was a group of rich merchant princes from India. They were seeking trade agreements, and to increase their chances they brought lavish gifts of ivory, jade, and sapphires. Next was the Nataree party, with smarmy Maseed in front and Ahmes, bearing the little ornamental shield on a velvet cushion, just behind. It was clear that it was to be a gift for Kublai Khan. Nataree, beautifully dressed in a long gown of purple and white, walked demurely after them. She looked no more impressed by the court of the Great Khan than she did by anything else.

  We came last, after Nataree, with Johannes clutching his copy of the Liber Abaci. It seemed pathetic, and I wondered what sort of reception we were likely to get. Ivory and jewels as gifts, then a beautiful new wife, and then us, a dung-smelling servant and a man carrying one battered book with the world’s most boring information inside it.

  The greeting hall itself was enough to unnerve me. It was over forty paces long, and the floor and walls were covered with the most beautiful tapestries and carpets I ever saw. Each one depicted some aspect of the life of the Great Khan—hunting, hawking, receiving royal guests, bestowing honors, or sitting in judgment on cases of noble wrongdoing. The rugs of the greeting hall were so thick that our advance across them was almost silent.

  At the far end of the hall the Great Khan was already present. He was sitting on a carved wood and ivory throne, painted in gold and brown, and as we all came in he did a surprising thing. He stood up, and then to my amazement he walked past the Indian merchant princes, past Ahmes and Maseed and Nataree, and right up to Johannes. He stared at us without speaking. His robes were fine gold cloth, woven perhaps from the thread of the Auromancers that we had come so far to study, and he carried a long golden staff.

  “Great Emperor,” I said, and my voice cracked on the first word. “It is an honor to be here at this great court. We bring no material gifts, but our respect is not less for that. We hope we bring something more precious than rubies or gold. We bring knowledge.”

  His face was stern and terrible, with a long, straggly mustache across a thin upper lip. But then he smiled, just a little. “A king can have enough gems and jewels,” he said. “But no man can ever have enough knowledge. And I receive wives on many days, but strangers from so far away are a rarity. Welcome.”

  Johannes was smiling also, not understanding a word. My knees were wobbling. All I could say—croak, that’s a better word, for my voice had chosen the worst possible moment to begin breaking to a man’s tones—the one word I could utter was, “Thankyou.”

  Fortunately it did not matter, because the Great Khan had taken the Liber Abaci from Johannes’s hands and was already turning to the other groups. Our audience was not over, but to avoid a slight to anyone, all would be greeted formally before longer discussions began.

  The group accompanying Nataree presented to the Great Khan a set of gorgeous goblets of finely chased gold, and equally fine plates on which they were seated. He took them, made a little speech of formal thanks, and called at once for wine. A servant hurried forward with a glass flask and filled the cups, passing one each to half a dozen of the surrounding nobles.

  One of Nataree’s party offered a toast, to the long life and prosperity of the Great Khan, and lifted his cup. Kublai smiled, but instead of drinking he passed his own goblet to a dark-skinned servant standing next to him. The black man sniffed cautiously at the wine and poured a few drops into a little beaker that he held. We waited. When nothing happened after a few seconds, the man sipped a little wine and finally nodded. He handed the goblet back to Kublai Khan.

  While this had been happening, the whole assembly was frozen—until the Great Khan moved, no one could move. When he finally took the goblet, and lifted it in front of him, everyone relaxed and lifted his own glass.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maseed reach up to scratch his left ear. Inevitably, I looked across at Ahmes, and at that very moment he dropped the brass shield from its velvet cushion. It made a hollow, brazen boom as it hit the thick carpet. Everyone turned to see what was causing the noise.

  Everyone except me. I knew what would happen next, and already I had turned to look at Maseed. The flick of the finger against the thumb was a tiny movement in the direction of the Great Khan. I waited for the familiar rattle that signified the arrival of a pellet within a cup. When it did not come I thought for a moment that he must have missed his target; and then I realized that a full goblet of wine would silence the sound completely.

  One of Nataree’s guards had bent over to pick up the dropped ornamental shield, while another was giving Ahmes a vicious cut across the shoulders with a whip.

  The Great Khan, after the few moments of distraction, ignored what was happening to Ahmes. He offered a brief and formal statement of thanks and a welcome to Karakorum, and again raised the goblet to his lips. As he did so I leaned close to Johannes and whispered, “He did it, same as I told you. Threw something—into the Great Khan’s cup.”

  I spoke in Latin, probably with some brainless idea that my insolence in speaking in front of the Great Khan would somehow be less in a foreign language.

  Johannes had no such inhibitions, and for once he was not off in his clouds o
f calculation. He looked at me for one split second. Then he jumped forward, pointed at the Khan’s goblet, and cried out what I knew but dared not think: “Don’t drink that cup! It’s poisoned.”

  He was lucky he wasn’t run through on the spot. Not knowing the language, he had shouted in Persian. Half the Khan’s guards had no idea what he was saying. But then Nataree took an instant cue from Johannes, and she shouted out, too, in Turkic: “Don’t drink. Poison!”

  There was a tremendous hubbub. The Khan had the gold goblet at his lips. Now he jerked it away. The soldiers around him drew their swords, but of course they didn’t know what to do next. They had seen nothing, and had no idea who to attack.

  Maseed, standing four paces away, tried to look innocent, but I recovered my voice, pointed at him, and cried, “That one! He threw a pellet into the cup, when you were all looking at the dropped shield.”

  Well, Maseed was too wily to run, but it did him no good. After five minutes questioning of me and, through me, Johannes, Kublai Khan had learned all that we knew and surmised. He ordered that Maseed and Ahmes be taken away and forced to drink from the same goblet. Maseed began to scream and beg for mercy. But as the Great Khan said, if the goblet were not poisoned, then no harm would come to them.

  It showed us that he was a merciful Khan. Whatever happened to Maseed and Ahmes, it would be better than a death by slow torture.

  They were dragged away. Kublai Khan turned again to me and Johannes.

  “Tell your master this,” he said to me, as calmly as though assassination attempts happened every day. “I owe him my life. Tell him to ask any favor, and if it is in my power I swear that it will be granted.”

  Well, this was the moment when I knew that Johannes and I would succeed brilliantly in our mission. The Great Khan was promising it. Auromancers, Templars, Quarry Ants, we would learn all there was to know about every one of them.