"Think you would have gone for me then, my queen?" Quog whispered breathily through his mouth hole.
"I think not," the queen said.
"Nor I you! Ha!" Quog said.
Trying not to show her need, which was a useless thing with this man, Kamath said, "You will provide me."
"Of course! Have I ever denied you, my queen?" He waited for her response; which was, "No."
"But before long, when these soft bones are in
the dust heap, you will be denied, eh?"
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps?" A trace of irritation entered the old man's panting words. "Do you think there are others like me?"
"Not like you. But what you have—"
"Can be duplicated?" Now he was angry. "Do you think so? Do you think I am so foolish as to think you haven't tried? You who have a chemical, a potion, for everything? Have you tried?"
His slitted eyes were as wide as they ever grew; within the vertical, flesh-flapped cavities the queen saw tiny fierce eyes, red with rheum.
"I have tried," she said.
"Of course you have! And failed! Ha!"
The queen waited; as did the old man, who stood panting tiny breaths through his mouth.
"You will apologize to me, Queen," Quog said finally.
There was silence.
"You will apologize immediately or get out of my home."
Kamath Clan turned her towering body away from the twisted old man.
"You will not take a step toward the door," Quog said. "I know your needs too well. What you will do is turn and beg this thing of me; get down on your knees, Queen, and beg me!"
The old man was huffing in agitation—either anger or satisfaction.
Kamath Clan stood still.
"Now!" Quog spat. "Or be forever banished from my house!"
A moment ticked by, and then Kamath Clan turned slowly and lowered herself to the filthy floor; laying her hands flat upon the boards, she crawled forward, eyes downcast, and lay her forehead on the old man's deformed, sandaled feet.
"Kiss them!"
Kamath Clan lifted her head slightly to kiss the feet, one and then the other; his toes were like gnarled knuckles.
"Lick them! As a dog licks!"
The queen did as she was told.
"Very well," Quog breathed, satisfied. "You may rise."
Head still bowed, Queen Kamath Clan slowly brought herself up to her full height and stood impassively.
Chuckling, Quog said, turning to shuffle into the deeper shadows of the room to the shelves on which rested pots and metal containers and some ancient glass carafes of dark colors, green and red, "You know well, my queen, that all power resides with those who have what is desperately wanted. This," he said, still chuckling weakly, "is the only definition of power."
"Yes."
"Ha!" He lingered over various vials, knowing that such action was drawing out her torture.
"Cruelty," he said, the levity gone from his voice, "is something to be learned, though."
Abruptly he chose the canister he sought all along, a nondescript metal tube, one among a few, with one end sealed tightly.
"Two," Queen Clan said.
"No. One now, and one again tomorrow. I want you to return."
His deformed hand held the single slim container out from the shadows to her. Eagerly she took it. "I will return tomorrow."
"Yes, you will."
As she exited, closing the door, this time, behind her, he said, breathing from the shadows, "I was not . . . always cruel. . . ."
Chapter 12
"I'm sorry to report I have no idea where he is," Finance Minister Besh said in an even tone. In this case distance produced boldness, and Besh was well aware that if High Leader Prime Cornelian were standing beside him at this moment instead of sixty million miles away, his unsightly visage a mere image on a wall Screen, Besh's voice would be anything but level.
"I'm sorry to hear your report, Besh," the High Leader said, though he sounded not nearly as interested or upset as the finance minister had thought he would. "I imagine your people are out scurrying about trying to find him?"
"Of course, High Leader," Besh said.
"Good. Let me know if he turns up."
Before Besh could even bow, the Screen went dark, leaving the finance minister with salutations and such dryly stuck in his throat.
Strange, Besh thought, mildly irritated; he was the kind of man who liked praise for a job well done and considered dressing down appropriate otherwise.
Minister Acron, seated at the conference table behind him, was not quite so contemplative.
"The pup will be found, and when he is I will strangle him myself!" the florid-faced defense minister, newly released from incarceration, shouted. He raised his fist to pound the table, but held it frozen at Besh's request.
"Please," the finance minister, stroking his chin, said. "I must think this through."
"What is there to think through? The King must be caught and dispatched with! There is no greater danger to us!"
"That is true," Besh said, lowering his lanky frame into the nearest chair, "but there are other factors to consider. For instance, who has facilitated his escape?"
"Faulkner, of course!"
Besh waved a hand in dismissal. "I mean besides Faulkner. The boy could not do this alone. It is obvious that Faulkner foresaw his ... present circumstances and alerted the king to their possibility. It is reasonable to suppose that the prime minister also provided the king with a plan of escape and a method to effect it. You say he was told when of the prime minister's demise?"
"At one-thirty in the morning," Acron said impatiently. "One of the bloody assistants alerted him."
"It was Faulkner's machine, no doubt?"
"Yes." Acron's ill temper was growing. "The machine was torn to pieces by my men. It saw nothing. Obviously it was programed by Faulkner to check on his well-being every fifteen minutes or so. When it discovered—"
"Yes," Besh said, continuing to stroke his chin. "It then went immediately to young Dalin. It was very clever of the prime minister. But now . . ."
"But now what? Where is he?"
"There were no obvious clues, I'm afraid, Acron. He seems to have vanished into thin air." Besh continued to rub his chin. "But there are always clues, Acron. Always."
Even in death, Prime Minister Faulkner continued to surprise Dalin Shar with his knowledge. Dalin had spent his entire life sleeping in this particular bedroom—yet he had never had even the faintest knowledge that there was a secret passageway built into the wall next to his bed. It had been put there, Faulkner informed him, by Dalin's father during the same period that the underground rooms had been built in the palace.
Faulkner...
When the door from his bedroom closed behind him, leaving him in a dark corridor with only a slim handlight for guidance, a fear went through him like he had never known before.
For the first time in his life, he felt truly alone.
When his father had been murdered, Dalin had been young, and there had been constant attention and diversions. There had been nursemaids, and there had been ... Faulkner.
It occurred to Dalin now that the prime minister had always been there. Always. From the very beginning, Faulkner had been ever-present, as tutor, adviser, confidant. Never could Dalin recall a time when the prime minister had been unavailable or too busy to listen to whatever petty grievance or problem the king found himself in the middle of. A broken toy, or a nuance in diplomacy—these had been equal things which Faulkner had dealt with in appropriate ways. Though stiff, fussy, punctilious, and often imperious, the prime minister had . always been there.
And now he was gone.
Gone forever.
A pang of something like panic went through Dalin. Even now he could hear the entrance of someone into his bedchambers not twenty inches behind him. Beyond that wall, there were shouts and angry recriminations.
They were looking for him now. No doubt t
o kill him.
But his panic was not a matter of fear for his own life.
It was that he would have to face what came next alone.
Without Faulkner.
As the shouts grew louder in the bedroom, Dalin Shar took one step and then another, the pencil beam of his handlight illuminating the dusty, narrow passage before him—and he resolved in his mind that the men who had taken Gorlin Faulkner away from him, who had murdered the man who until now he had not realized was the most valuable friend he had ever had, would pay for what they had done, and pay dearly.
The remainder of Dalin's night was no better than it had begun.
The passageway, which seemed to go on forever, cut first sharply right and then sharply left, narrowing to a seemingly endless series of steps downward before becoming even narrower and continuing its zigzag course. Dalin passed behind many rooms throughout the palace and was able to identify some of them by the sounds without: the frightened chatter of the cooks in the galley, gathered from sleep with the news of the murder within the palace; similar buzzing from the secretaries and clerks, in their separate offices; and, most telling, the angry cries of the Imperial guard being put under arrest to prevent their presumed dedication to Dalin's well-being.
The passageway finally did end, though, and in the spot that the prime minister had told him it would. Dalin emerged in the cellars they had so recently used for offices; immediately, he sought a second passage, easily found though just as well hidden as the first, and just as dark. This one was also possessed of a rank, wet smell, and the habitation of at least one rat, which scurried, red-eyed, away from the handlight's beam to splash off into the darkness.
This passage was wider than the first and proceeded straight for a good way before ending abruptly at a wall, which was inset with footholds leading up through a kind of well.
At the top of this hole Dalin shouldered up a hatchway, and pushing aside dirt which had covered the opening and which now spilled down on top of him, he climbed up into the world outside the palace grounds.
He was just within a stand of fir trees blocking the view from the palace of the city beyond; through the tree line he could see the palace, lit as if for a ball, the lights of its spires making it appear magical against the night's starry blackness.
But there was nothing magical about the shouts of soldiers or the occasional line of raser fire penciling the night sky like an angry insect's flight—
"You are the one I was sent to meet?"
The voice sounded so close by Dalin's ear that he started violently. But already strong hands were on him, covering his mouth and pulling him deeper into the woods.
"Do not struggle," the voice whispered fiercely. "I will set you free in a moment. But you must be quiet."
Dalin ceased his struggling in time to see a column of armed guards file close by the spot they had just vacated, but still outside the tree line. Their spotlamps brightly lit the ground before them in a precise, mowed swath.
When they had passed, the voice said, straight and clear into Dalin's ear, "We have little time. They will be back within minutes. We have to hide your passing."
The strong hands let him go, and Dalin tried to make out the features of his companion as the two of them scurried back to the site of the tunnel portal; but the light was bad and he dared not shine his handlight.
Impatient with Dalin's attempts at cover, the other finally pushed him away and expertly brushed dirt, pine needles, and leaves over the spot; soon it looked as it must have before.
"They will not see it," the stranger said, nodding in satisfaction. He looked quickly at Dalin, who saw sharp features.
"We must go," the stranger said.
Dalin followed the other deep into the woods, trying to keep up in the near dark. They proceeded for perhaps a kilometer before the stranger stopped, laying his hand on Dalin's chest to check his progress.
"All right," the other said, his whisper a bit louder. "It is time for you to change."
Bending to study the bole of a tree, the stranger produced a bundle of clothing which he thrust into Dalin's hands.
"Do it quickly, and give me what you have on." Seeing the king's hesitation, the other said, "Quickly!"
Dalin stripped in the darkness, pulling on an uncomfortable ensemble, of whose nature he had not a clue. He could be dressed as a jester or mountaineer, for all he knew of the baggy pantaloons, large blouse, and other strange items he was being forced to don. When finished slipping into a pair of odd boots which nonetheless fit him, he gathered his original clothing and put it into his companion's hands.
"I feel like a circus performer!" Dalin said.
The other laughed. "Worse than that, my friend," he said, pushing something into Dalin's hands that felt like the pelt of an animal. "Put it on."
"Where?"
"Your head!" the other said, laughing, and dropped Dalin's clothing to help him adjust the wig to his cranium. In a moment, the truth had dawned on the king.
"I am dressed as a girl!"
"A woman!" the other said with a laugh. "And though I can't see you very well, I'd say you're a mighty ugly one at that!"
"I will not—" Dalin blustered, moving to remove the wig—but the stranger's hard grip held him fast.
"Listen to me once," the stranger said. "If you do not wear it, you will die. And not by my hand, but by those of your own people. If you do not follow my every instruction, that fate will befall you. And before the sun has risen. Do you understand?" the stranger spoke fiercely, giving a slight twist to Dalin's arm.
Dalin let his breath out slowly. 'Yes," he said. "Good." The stranger nodded. Then, in the darkness, Dalin made out a grin on the other's face.
"My, but you do make an ugly woman." The stranger laughed before gathering Dalin's clothing into a new bundle and dropping it where the other had been.
When they left the small wood, Dalin's real fear began.
Here was a place he did not know. These were his people, and yet he knew little of them and little more of their city. From the palace, Nairobi was a colorful place, steeped in four thousand years of history, a blending of the ancient and the modern, one of the few tourist meccas left on earth. Its zoos, brilliant arboretums, and ancient African ruins made it a must-see place for any visitor; and its financial institutions made it the money capital of the planet. Most of Afrasia's economy was centered in Nairobi; its governors met in session in its Grand Capitol building, a monument of modern architecture which Dalin's father had built only forty years before. Its polished dome, grand colonnades, and sweeping arches recalled an earlier time on Earth and never failed to provoke comment in visitors accustomed to clear tall spires—or, in the case of Martian visitors, the wan pale tones of sandstone and pyrite.
Nairobi's opela was the finest on the planet and rivaled only that of Lowell for dominance on the Four Worlds; its symphony was only bested by those in Cairo and Peking, though the recent signing (some said stealing) of the Cairo Philharmonic's great conductor promised that in the near future the Nairobi Symphony might hold that crown.
But it was a place unknown to Daliri Shar. Though he had visited the opera house and symphony hall, though he had toured the Goodall Zoo and the last animal preserve left on Earth, the Zambire Range—where two lions still roamed free and the last rhinoceros, artificially conceived twenty years ago, splashed its bulk through its own watery grounds—Dalin knew nothing about the streets of the city. He had never been on the streets of Nairobi, traveling always in small shuttles from palace to destination point, then back again.
And here he was, at the edge of it.
What struck him at first was the smell. As his companion led him out of the trees and then quickly over a small stretch of open parkland, past a quaint set of children's outside play toys—including an ancient steel swing set and a contraption with a ladder leading to a smooth corkscrewing slider—and through an entry in a low chromium wall, Dalin was struck by the city's particular smell. It smelled li
ke dirt and life. At the palace, surrounded by roses and fresh trees and, in the colder months, the scent of pine and spruce trees which had been planted hundreds of years before and now grew in a thick ring around the grounds, the odors of the faraway city never penetrated. Dalin's entire life had seemed perfumed; even the human sweat from a game of old rugby or ten shot would be washed away almost instantly in prepared baths of rose petal and jasmine.
But here there was no rose smell, no jasmine—only the raw smell of human sweat and work. Even at this deep hour of the night there was traffic, both human and machine; tens of pedestrians hurried between buildings in walkways or down on the Street; and road walks and the occasional brightly lit closed tram were occupied by scattered passengers.
"Is it always this crowded?" Dalin asked in wonder.
His companion's features now became apparent for the first time. Under the night lights of the city, his face was shadowed and sharp: a nose like a knife blade; slitted, careful eyes; and a thin-lipped mouth that now turned up in a grin.
"In the daytime we would have to wait in line," he said with a laugh.
"I don't believe it."
The other said, "Believe it. And follow me now or we will be stopped. They are confining their search to the palace grounds at the moment, but that will quickly change."
And so Dalin Shar was given a quick night tour of his own capital city: streets like labyrinths, with buildings so close on either side that Dalin felt closed in; modern buildings side by side with ancient structures of brick and even wood; walkways so high they made Dalin dizzy looking up at them; and the constant hum of activity and life, and the smells.
"This is marvelous," Dalin said in wonder.
"Better for you not to speak," his companion said, tensing at a crossroads. He restrained Dalin with a hand; then, to Dalin's amazement, he slipped that hand around the king's shoulder and drew him near, pinching Dalin's neck from behind.
"Put your head down," he hissed.
Dalin did as he was told, briefly catching a glimpse of a caravan of police vehicles, sleek black silent machines, gliding in front of them; inside were vague dark shapes.
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