The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  Beyond was a long rectangle of garden and parkland, with many brick pathways benches sheltered by arched iron-and-glass parasols, and statues of various worthies; St. Disraeli, another of Bombay’s spiritual patrons—the city liked to claim he would have taken up residence there, if he’d survived—and others from Sivaji on down through Tennyson and Sassoon. Travelers were strolling about, sitting, admiring the grounds, eating ices from little glass cups, and thronging the pathways in numbers sufficient to conceal a hundred parties such as King’s. He began to feel less conspicuous by the moment; you could be more anonymous in a crowd than in any wilderness.

  The terminal proper stood on the other side, fronted by a colonnade of three-story pillars of pink granite topped with gilded lotus flowers. That supported the huge barrel-vaulted hall, its ceiling coffered and gilded; mosaic murals of the history of Bombay ran around the wall below. A great four-sided clock hung from the top of the arched ceiling, showing Bombay, Adelaide, Cape Town, and Delhi Mean Time . . . but not, he noted with amusement, that of Calcutta, this city’s great rival.

  This isn’t civil pride, this is civic megalomania, King thought; you got a strong ant-on-a-table feeling in buildings like this. And what was that saying—“Bombay is a religion which doesn’t believe in Calcutta”?

  One stretch of mural showed a map of the world, with airship routes webbing it in little lines of rock crystal—including routes to places that were still howling wilderness inhabited by cannibals with bones through their noses, if at all.

  Still, no denying the city magnates dream grandly.

  A substantial crowd milled around within; a fair number of them had big cameras with flashbulb attachments, going pop and lighting the gilt ceiling and the windows of the expensive shops that lined the interior walls. The object of their attention was a corridor marked off by crimson velvet ropes on stands, and more emphatically by Gurkhas with fixed bayonets. The royal party had gone by; King checked his watch and found they were exactly on time. Various dignitaries, hangers-on, and courtiers were following for the send-off, though, and the social pages of the papers would be full of who was with whom, and at what point in the proceedings.

  “Right,” he muttered to himself, and walked up to the gap in the rope.

  “Captain Lord James Conrad, Baron Rhotak,” he drawled to the officer of the detachment. “Agra Dragoon Guards, on extended leave at present.”

  The officer there saluted, and King returned the gesture. The man in charge was in subaltern’s uniform, looking absurdly young but keen enough, with searching blue eyes. He wore a pith helmet instead of a turban, and when he spoke his Imperial English had a strong clotted accent, swallowing the beginnings of his words and stretching the vowels—Australian, doubtless the offspring of some squatter or station-holder family; Australian titles of nobility were as eccentric as the rest of the place.

  “Lieutenant Harold Ickles, sir: holder-scion of Bungaree Station. I must ask for your papers, my lord,” he went on, with a polite nod. “The royal party is still in the port buildings and unauthorized persons may not approach.”

  The Gurkhas he commanded were in tight dress uniforms of green and black, pillbox hats at a jaunty angle on their close-cropped, black-haired heads. The rifles they ported across their chests were loaded, and had a round in the chamber—and if the officer told them the man in Guards uniform was a danger to the King-Emperor’s safety they would shoot him down like a pi-dog. Would do the same to the Archbishop of Delhi, for that matter, and probably their own mothers.

  “Samuel, show the man—there’s a good fellow,” King said, taking out his cigarette case, flicking it open one-handed, and offering it to the young Australian. He shook his head, and Narayan Singh wordlessly came forward with a match for King.

  Warburton bustled up officiously and handed over the documents. The subaltern read through each completely, holding up the pictures of the “captain” and his “daffadar” to compare them with the living men before him. King lounged with his gauntlets in his left hand and the hand resting casually on his sword hilt, smoking the cigarette in an ivory holder. Yasmini was quivering beside him, a fold of her crimson-and-silver sari over her head and her face downcast.

  “My lord, these are for yourself and the daffadar,” the subaltern said. “They authorize you as a member of the Household, but no others.”

  “Oh, really, my dear young fellow: Khoi bat naheen, surely? My valet, the chappie with our gear . . . and my lady sister, of course. I promised you you could see the King-Emperor leave close-up, didn’t I, Indira?”

  Yasmini nodded wordlessly, clinging to his arm; only he could feel the tension in her hands. Her face was childlike enough anyway, and a little artful makeup and the kunwari’s very slightly oversize clothes made her look like a mature twelve-year-old. She turned her huge blue-rimmed green eyes on the young officer.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “Ah—oh, very well, my lord.” With a bow to Yasmini: “Far be it from me to disappoint the little lady.”

  The subaltern snapped the little booklets back together and handed them to Warburton without looking at him—merely a valet, after all.

  “No need for me to get stroppy, as we say at Bungaree Station. Just back from the American colonies, I see? Any trophies, sir?”

  “Haw, yes. Bloody awful wilderness, and bloody awful colonials, but the shikari was top-hole. Haw. Got a bison that may be a record, two good plains lions”—descended from zoo stock gone feral man-eater during the Fall—“and a panther. Recommend it; but be sure to get a first-rate native guide and bearers. Galveston’s the best start; town’s a dreadful little hole, though. Bring your own brandy.”

  “I may take a trip there someday, my lord. Ah, no firearms beyond this point for anyone not on active duty with the Guard, as I’m sure you know.”

  Well, not mentioning it was worth a try. Narayan Singh handed over his pistol. King drew his and automatically flipped it around in his hand with a twirl and a finger in the trigger guard, a motion that left it butt first. Oh, bugger, shouldn’t have done that. Out of character.

  The subaltern did raise an eyebrow, but there was a little more respect beneath the formal politeness as he stepped aside:

  “Enjoy the launch, my lord, my lady.”

  Thank you, Lord Krishna, King thought, taking another casual drag on the cigarette and feeling sweat trickle down his flanks under the uniform jacket. Now what?

  They followed the crowd out toward the final exits, where marble steps gave onto a roped-off enclosure not far from where the Garuda waited, its gondola rails resting on the turf and the ground crew squatting beside them. That wouldn’t do them any good at all—they’d be able to wave good-bye, and no more.

  “Yasmini,” he said quietly. “Yasmini. Now. You must.”

  The seeress leaned against him, panting. Then she straightened, looked about.

  “Left,” she said.

  He swerved casually, crossing the marble-floored, glass-walled corridor. A door stood closed, teak and brass with an Airship Port Personnel and Imperial Indian Airways Personnel Only sign on a stand next to it.

  “Wait,” she said.

  They did, elaborately nonchalant; King flicked the cigarette into a brass cuspidor, where it sizzled in the expectorations of betel-nut chewers.

  “Now. The lock will break. Will break. Would break. Did break—”

  He reached out and turned the knob. It was locked, but the lock was a simple turn-handle type in the knob itself, not a dead bolt. King took a deep breath, and as he let it out twisted and pushed with all the power of his arm and shoulder. His right wrist had swung a saber for several hours a day most days since he turned twelve; the tendons stood out like iron cables, and a seam on his uniform jacket began to yield, giving with a rip of parting thread. Then there was a snap and tinkle from the door. He swung it open, onto a covered walkway that led onto the turf. A dozen large, wheeled dollies of baggage stood there, and their crews were gathered at
a little distance—smoking themselves, he noted, crouched in a circle, and well back of the red line that prohibited open flame closer to the airships. Their eyes were fixed on the bouncing dice one tossed.

  “Here,” Yasmini said in the same sleepwalker’s voice. “Between the trunks.”

  Those were substantial wicker-and-brass affairs, piled up over six feet high on either side of the carts.

  “Won’t they—” he began, then silently motioned the others. No, they won’t. She would have Seen it if they did.

  He took the first cart himself; there was an aisle most of the way down the center between the piled crates, accessible only from the top and large enough for him and Yasmini—just barely. He eased his way in, then crouched. The Russian woman followed, collapsing against him, dangerously limp. He worked his way around until she could rest with her back against his chest. She was still quivering, but seemed only semiconscious in the gloom, and he could see her eyeballs rolling up until only a trace of iris showed at the top.

  “Losing me,” she whispered in her own language. “I am losing me. Losing me. Losing me—”

  It trailed off into a breathy whimper as he pulled her face into his shoulder. King felt a lurch as men tailed on to the cart; pressing his eye to a crack between two trunks, he could see six at the pushbar and as many at the puller, wiry near-naked brown men in loincloths and turbans. They set up a wailing chant as the baggage carts moved, trundling across grass and the hard clay beneath. Shadow fell across them, the shadow of the Garuda’s eight hundred fifty feet of hull, looming over them like a mountain, like a whale flying. He craned and saw the great cruciform tailfins go by, the Union Jack proud on their covering of doped cotton cloth, and an engine pod.

  Then the baggage cart lurched again—tilted, as the men shoved it onto the beginning of the ramp that led into the belly of the gondola. Darkness fell, full of rumbling and clicks—and then the trunks around him squeezed slightly as the cart was shoved into a slot between two others. For a moment he thought he would be crushed to death in the darkness, and then he realized something that his eye had slid across when they came through the door: the Imperial family crest on the baggage wagons. The knowledge flowed through him as silence fell, save for the creaking of the airship’s laminate frame and faint sounds from outside the hull.

  “Merciful Krishna,” he whispered to himself, in rising glee. “You did it again—they must carry these carts as part of the yacht’s equipment!”

  And load and unload them as units; filled with gear for a royal visit that was needed only on the ground. They were probably coded somehow, and stored in fixed order so that everything would be there whenever the Garuda landed . . .

  Outside a great hoarse cheer went up. Somewhere a signal gun was firing a salute—twenty-one and then twenty-one again, in quick succession: the King-Emperor’s greeting, alone of all the many rulers within the borders of the Angrezi Raj. Then a band struck up the national anthem, and a thousand voices sang—with one half-stifled, mouthed accompaniment from the baggage hold:“Gods save our Padishah—

  Dillishvaro wa Jagadishavaro wa

  From Delhi rule Universal Lord

  Mulk-i-Padishah, hukum-i-King-Emperor—”

  It was Yasmini who brought him back to himself. She suddenly writhed in his arms, back arching, gasping for air. His belly lurched with terror, and he did his best to pin her arms and legs as she flailed bruisingly against the shapes that contained them, a thin helpless wail breaking out of her mouth. For one moment of horror he thought she would tear her flesh loose from her bones or break her own spine in the violence of the fit. Then she collapsed for an instant into a boneless limp mass, panting like an animal in a trap; a moment later she had writhed around to face him—something he wouldn’t have thought possible in the strait space available.

  “Please!” she said, her mouth almost touching his, the cardamom-and-cloves scent of her breath strong, and the feminine musk of her sweat. “Please—help me . . . you must . . . Pajalsta—pajalsta! I must have!”

  The raw agony in her voice shocked him. “How?” he said. “Tell me how, Yasmini.”

  “Free me—free me. I am losing me—I will be lost forever. Free me!”

  He remembered what she had told him, and almost burst out with an: Impossible. And almost laughed: What, here and now?

  There was another whimper of terror; and no terror would be worse than your very mind drowning in the dark.

  “All right,” he said with infinite gentleness, kissing the trembling mouth. “Don’t worry. Whatever you need.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Henri de Vascogne looked around the bridge of the Garuda with alert curiosity and more than a little envy. France-outre-mer had airships, blimps much like those the Caliphate made, and even so his people had to buy many of the engine parts from Imperial or Nipponese traders under severe restrictions. Those rope-slung, disaster-prone expedients were useful enough, but nothing like this.

  “. . . million cubic feet of hydrogen, giving a useful lift of over sixty tons,” Captain Albert Pienaar finished.

  He spoke the Delhi-style English service language of the Royal and Imperial Navy, but with a harsh accent, clipped and guttural at once, that marked his birth near Simonstown in the Cape Viceroyalty; a big stocky muscular man in his thirties, in a blue uniform with four gold bands on the cuffs and short-cropped blond hair under a peaked cap.

  “Is that inclusive of fuel?” Henri asked.

  “Inclusive of our standard load, for a range of five thousand miles at a cruising speed of fifty-eight miles an hour,” Pienaar said with pride. “That’s more than twice the distance from here to the Imperial base at Aden, our first stop. This is the latest design—better engines, better materials for the gas cells, stronger and lighter hull structure—radical improvements in capacity. That’s why I transferred from surface ships; man, the changes I’ve seen in ten years with the Air Service!”

  They stood together near the rear of the bridge. That was built into the nose of the long boat-shaped gondola fared into the bottom of the orca-shaped hull. Most of the forward three-quarters of it was glass, curving in below so that the helmsman at the ship-style wheel in the very front could look down to either side as he controlled the rudders. Behind him were the two vertical helmsmen, their spoked wheels set at ninety degrees to his, governing the ailerons on the fins at the rear. To the rear of them was the map table, the engine-telegraphs that set the speed of the eight Stirling-cycle motors, and banks of brass gauges set in consoles of thin, beautifully varnished wood, levers decorated with filigreework, and turned-rosewood pulls at the ends of tubes that hid control wires running up into the structure of the craft.

  Through it all ran the laminated structure of the hull itself, curving in from above in organic shapes like the ribs of some great sea beast, triangles of slender strands held together with stiffening O-rings.

  “Magnifique,” Henri said sincerely.

  The trip to Aden was a warning, too. Ships like this, based there, could reach Damascus itself and return, as well as reaching Tunis without stopping in Egypt.

  “And the fire hazard?”

  Pienaar snorted impolitely. “What hazard? Ya, hydrogen burns, and it leaks through everything, but it leaks up. Only mixtures of air and hydrogen are dangerous. Provided you flush the gas cells regularly and—but you must excuse me, my lord.”

  Henri nodded, stepping back, as a barrage of technicalities flew between the captain and his bridge crew. Finally:

  “She’s eight hundred pounds heavy, but the ballast looks normal, Captain.”

  Pienaar frowned. Sita spoke, breaking her unaccustomed silence:

  “There won’t be any delay, will there, Captain? That would look very bad.”

  “Nie . . . no, Kunwari.” The captain of the Garuda shook his head, looking a little like a bull testing the air. “Probably those ferdamn baggage people again.” He smiled. “We’ll just give some stinking coolies a better shower.” A ch
ange of tone. “Valve ballast and prepare to cast off!”

  Two hundred men on the ground on either side gripped the landing rails that the airship rested on. They stayed bent in unison, bare brown bodies tense, as cold water from the keel ballast tanks sprayed out over them, rising in unison as the great ship lightened. Then they moved, like one immense caterpillar, backing the ship away from the mooring mast and turning it to face into the light easterly wind.

  “Neutral buoyancy, Captain.”

  “Very well, Number Two. All props feathered.”

  “All props feathered, aye!”

  “Engines to standby.”

  A low humming filled the fabric of the ship—less than a noise, more than a sensation in the soles of the feet.

  “Engines are at full revs, sir.”

  “Signal stand by to release. Release! Valve ballast—establish neutral buoyancy at one thousand feet. All engines ahead one-quarter. Attitude helm neutral. Rudder, left ninety and come to—”

  The ground crew let go and stepped back as more water foamed out over them. Freed of the weight of four hundred hands, the huge silvery torpedo surged upward a hundred feet, then began a stately curve to a course slightly south of west. The figures on the ground turned from humans to doll-sized manikins as they rose, then to waving ants. Sound faded away, save for the almost subliminal murmur of cleft air and the working of the hull. Pienaar nodded once to himself and smiled slightly, turning and bowing to Sita and Henri:

  “Satisfactory, I trust, Kunwari, my lord.”

  Sita nodded regally. “A very smooth lift, Captain Pienaar. As smooth as I’ve ever felt; certainly as good as anything Captain Rahungath ever did.”

  As the Air Service officer straightened, Sita went on: “And Captain Pienaar?”

  “Yes, Kunwari?”

  “As you are new to this vessel, I will overlook the first offense. But you will never, ever, refer to Imperial subjects as ‘stinking coolies’ again.”

  Pienaar’s face flushed brick red; it ran through shock, rage, and an expressionless mask in the course of a second. He straightened to attention.