"'Appens ev'ry once in a while, it does," Ralf piped in. "The lines o' commerce get blocked, an' nothing gets moved. 'Appened in '21, an' again in '25. This time could be a bad 'un, with the 'appenings on Venus, and the situation on the Four Worlds."
"It's a bad 'un, indeed." Enry sighed, comforting himself by filling his glass with champagne and sipping at it—which made him wince but didn't stop him.
"It's ii' this," Ralf said, holding up the index fingers from his two hands a few centimeters apart. "Things need to go from point A to point B." He folded one index finger. "But when point B ain't there no more, things has t' stay where they is."
"So true." Enry sighed, again sampling his wine.
"So the war is holding you up?" Dalin said innocently.
"Oh, it's great Fr business!" Ralf said. "Wif war you get explosions and such, an' battles, and things get left around for the pickin'. Like the load you came in on, Fr instance. Trouble is, you can't sell it so easy. So you've got to sit on it awhile."
"Yeah, sit on it," Enry said.
"Things'll get better, though," Ralf said with conviction. "They always does. Just Ii' in th' ol' days, afore Wrath-Pei was runnin' things, when Shatz Abel was king o' the pirates."
Enry smiled. "Now, tha' was a pirate, ol' Shatz Abel! Tear y'r 'ead off wif one hand if y'crossed him, 'e would!"
"But 'e was fair, 'e was," Ralf added.
"Yeah, he was fair enough, all ri'. Unless 'e didn't Ii' you, an' all."
"An' 'e kept things runnin' pretty much regular, he did. Point B 'ardly ever shut down wif ol' Shatz Abel at the 'elm. But then Wrath-Pei comes along, an' being Martian and all, 'e drives ol' Shatz Abel off, an' plants 'im on Pluto by 'imself, where it's all cold and such, wif tha' little SunOne giving a teeny bit o' light an' a little teeny bit o' heat, and such—"
"A bad break for ol' Shatz Abel, that was."
The two of them sighed, lost in sad, nostalgic thoughts.
"So you're convinced things will eventually get better?" Dalin asked.
Breaking out of his reverie, Ralf said, "Once Wrath-Pei figures out wha' he's up to, things'll get ri' back to where they was."
"Gravy an' onions!" Enry said hopefully.
"RI' enough. Gravy an' onions. But ri' now, ol' Wrath-Pei hasn't quite settled his score with that bug Cornelian on Mars, so point B is closed down. You follow?"
Ralf gave Dalin a serious look, and Dalin nodded. Ralf nodded with conviction. "I knew you would. You're a smart 'un, you is."
"Smart as a pin," Enry said. "You'll make a dandy pirate, wif us as your teachers."
"Ri' enough," Ralf said. "I could tell ri' off that ol' Nub here has had Screen-book learnin', and such. It won't help much in piratin'—but it can't 'urt."
"Can never 'urt," Enry said, filling his glass again and offering his two companions a fill-up. Though Dalin had not meant to imbibe, he now found that he had emptied his glass while listening to these two talk and was ready to empty it again; the light, airy bubbles were spreading through him like a warm bath from the inside out.
"Yes, sir, Screen-book learnin' is a useful thing t'ave. I been wondering, young Nub," Ralf said, slapping Dalin on the knee good-naturedly, "where did you ge' all that learnin'?"
"On Earth," Dalin said brightly. The smooth warmth of the champagne was spreading through him, and he felt himself smiling wider than usual—his glass had been emptied and filled again, as had those of his companions, whose own smiles had grown in proportion. "I grew up in Afrasia! In a palace!"
"A palace! Oh-ho!" Ralf said. "And wha' was our little Nub, here—some sort of page or courier?"
Enry was laughing now, spilling as much champagne on himself as he managed to get into their three glasses.
"No!" Enry said. "'E's the king 'imseif! Dalin Shar, 'e is!"
"Ha!" Ralf said, slapping his knee before downing his glass. "Imagine tha'! Wouldn't tha' be somethin', if we was entertainin' Dalin bloody Shar!"
"Ho-ho!" Enry said. "Wouldn't tha' be grand as 'eli!"
Dalin, laughing along with them, took another refill, knocked it back in one swallow, and then heard himself say, "It's true!"
His two companions broke into gales of laughter; Enry quickly uncorked another bottle of champagne and said, "This calls for a toast! The king 'imseif!"
Another round was taken, and then another; Dalin felt himself buoyed on champagne and goodwill. Suddenly he was grabbing the two pirates by the arm and proclaiming, "No, it's really true! I am Dalin Shar, King of Afrasia and Ruler of Free Earth!"
The two men gave a gulp of laughter.
And then suddenly Ralf caught Enry's eye and the two men stopped laughing.
"Say tha' again?" Ralf asked Dalin soberly.
But Dalin was smiling now, boastful and full of himself, and he proclaimed with pride, "You do have the king himself on board your modest ship! I am Dalin Shar!" Dalin took the bottle from Enry's hand, poured himself and the others a round, and drank off his own.
He saw that his companions hadn't joined him. Abruptly, they looked very serious and sober.
"Say, Nub," Ralf said slowly, "is all this true about you being King Dalin Shar and all?"
"Certainly!" Dalin said, lost in champagne. And then he told them the story of his escape, exaggerating his own exploits, finishing with his arrival in their cargo hold on the verge of death.
"Well, I'll be a Martian monkey," Enry said in wonder.
"Yeah, me, too," Ralf concurred. "And 'ere I thought we was lucky just findin' all tha' champagne. Turns out we 'ad a treasure ri' under our noses and didn't know it."
"We know it now," Enry said, all business.
,
'' .Ri,,, said Ralf.
Dalin heard all this through a haze of alcohol and laughter. The laughter was his own, and he barely felt it when the bottle and glass were lifted from his hands, and when he himself was lifted bodily and carried from the foredeck to the cargo hold.
"Time to work?" he asked, his grin creasing his face, and he began to giggle so hard that his two companions had to stop and lay him on the ground until the fit passed.
"Not work. Not for you, exactly, Nub," Ralf said.
The two pirates once again lifted him and bore him to the hexagonal cargo holder which had borne Dalin into their midst.
It was only when he woke up with a headache eight hours later, sealed within what had so recently almost been his coffin, that he realized perhaps he was not to be a pirate after all.
He lost track of time. He was not treated badly; but neither was he treated with the comradeship he had so recently enjoyed with Enry and Ralf.
Enry brought him his meals twice a day; but there was no more champagne, and Enry would not meet his eyes and only grunted when Dalin tried to talk to him.
Dalin knew they had gone into phase drive, because he felt the emblematic shiver and rush—but where they were heading he could only guess at—which began to fill him with a growing fear.
He spent his time thinking of Tabrel Kris.
When, on the fifth or sixth day, Enry brought him his first meal of the day, Dalin finally said, "Is this a matter of money, Enry? Because if it is, I can work something out. Whatever you're being paid for my capture, my people on Earth will double, when the time comes."
Enry grunted.
"They'll murder me, you know, if you turn me over to Cornelian or to his Afrasian traitors. I won't live for ten minutes after you hand me over."
Again, Enry grunted.
"Don't you have any feeling at all? Any pride, or patriotism?"
"I wouldn't know abou' tha', Nub," Enry grumbled, before closing the door.
But on the other side, Dalin heard Enry say, "An' it ain't like we 'ave a choice, Nub. Sorry and all." The days passed. And passed.
And then suddenly they pulled out of phase drive. There followed nearly a whole day of inactivity; and then Ralf was there at mealtime, only he did not bear a meal but rather a grim visage.
"Time to shove off, N
ub."
Dalin said, "You'll pay dearly for what you're doing."
Ralf said, "You don't qui' understand, Nub. We got 'earts, and all. Truly we do. We ain't turning you over to no Martian or Earth scum. Almost as bad and all—but not anything we could do anything abou'." Earnestly he went on, "We could 'ave 'id you, but in the long run 'e would 'ave found out and cut us up like fresh meat. He's quite a pirate, 'e is, and 'e knows everything." He put his index fingers up, wiggled one, then the other. "Our choice was an easy one, Nub. Either get kilt or turn you over from point A to point B. You was one o' the only moveable commodities on the market these days."
He lowered his eyes. "Sorry and all, Nub. Truly I am."
Two strangers had appeared behind Ralf and waited for the pirate to move out of the way before pulling Dalin out of the capsule. They were dressed in black, including boots and gloves, though they appeared fingerless and wore visors which covered most of their faces. Between them, though, they had enough strength to hold Dalin between them and propel him forward, out of the ship's lock and into another, docked vessel, where other black-suited strangers waited.
Dalin looked back and saw both Ralf and Enry looking at him dejectedly; Enry managed a tiny, grim wave.
Dalin was pushed roughly forward toward the waiting black figures.
He guessed he was planetside. The gravity was different—substantial, though less than Earth's. He guessed he was either on Mars or, more likely, Titan.
He had been blindfolded with a blank visor a!-most immediately. He was offered neither food, drink, nor conversation, and his own questions had gone unanswered.
But the trip had been short enough. When he felt the bump of either docking or landing, he guessed the latter; his evidence only mounted when he was taken out of the ship and smelled what must be atmosphere, thin and sweet, nothing like the dry canned oxygen of ships.
A short trip in what felt like a ground transport followed, and then a short march into a building, his forced sitting in a chair, quite comfortable, to which he was bound.
And now?
Suddenly the visor came alive, making him gasp. It was like the blind finding sight. The dimensional image registered on his retinas, flowed up to his brain—
He gasped again, cried out.
"Tabrel!"
It was her: Tabrel Kris, whose features over the last months had stayed sharp in his mind: Tabrel, whose very existence had kept him alive, continued to fill him with hope. She was sitting on a chair in a barely furnished room, staring out through a window at a landscape that must be Titanian: a lush hill rolling to a blue lake in the middle distance, under an eerie clutch of lights that brightened the clouds in a blackened sky. It was like staring at a strange photograph.
"Tabrel!"
"She cannot hear you, King Shar," a voice chuckled, very near.
The image blinked out.
Someone pulled the visor from Dalin's face, making him blink and gasp again.
The voice said, "I am Wrath-Pei."
A figure was there, leaning over him from a gyro chair anchored beside Dalin's. He was beautiful and repugnant: a man like a statue, perfectly featured but chilly as white marble. A mane of silver hair flowed back from his high forehead; he was dressed in silver and black. In his hand he held something like an ancient machine: two open blades flowing back to sculpted ebony handles. Dalin smelled the scent of oily lubrication. The man's fingernails were perfectly manicured, polished.
Dalin suddenly realized that he could not move his head, not a millimeter. The man did not blink, but leaned out over Dalin's face, his free hand delicately grasping the edge of one of Dalin's eyelids, pulling it away from Dalin's eye as if he were about to remove a rogue lash.
The clippers rose up into view.
As Dalin began to hear his own screams, the man's gentle voice lied, "Now, this won't hurt a bit."
Blind, once more.
Weakness made Dalin unable to move. There was a band of hot pain across his face, as if he were wearing a visor heated to searing temperature. He felt something soft pressing against his eyes and was able to reach gently up to tap at two bundles of soft, gauzy material held in place with a thin metal strip that encircled his head. He could not remove it and did not wish to; whenever he moved his face in any way, the band of hot pain shot from side to side like a poker laid across the bridge of his nose.
He felt an overwhelming urge to close his eyes—but even when he slept, which was fitfully, he was unable to indulge this compulsion.
Always, he felt the tender touch of those gauze pads against his naked eyes.
By meals, he was able to count two and a half days before he felt, with a shiver that made him want to scream, the knock of Wrath-Pei's chair bumping against his own. He felt the monster's clement touch over his eyes, heard Wrath-Pei's coos of solicitous attention.
"There, there," Wrath-Pei said, patting Dalin's arm. "It won't last more than a day longer. You'll feel much better come tomorrow."
With a chuckle, the monster was gone.
Only to return the next day, while Dalin dozed. Dalin awoke to feel Wrath-Pei's hands on him, peeling back the gauze with care, making those loving sounds.
The world brightened. He saw the monster's grinning face hovering over him, the eyes probing this way and that.
"How do you feel?" Wrath-Pei asked.
Before Dalin could answer, the monster had placed something in front of the king's face: a mirror, with which he could regard himself.
Dalin screamed at what he beheld: a human face with a skeleton's sight: round lidless eyes bulging, always to be open, never able to close.
Laughing, Wrath-Pei drew the mirror away. "Splendid! Thank you! Splendid!"
"Why have you done this to me?" Dalin cried. Wrath-Pei chuckled. "I'm afraid your troubles have only just begun, King Shar. To Prime Comehan, you are of no use at all. If he had you, you would be dead now. You are of no use to me now, but you may be later. So I'm afraid you must go to a safe place, an out-of-the-way place."
Wrath-Pei's chair moved back away from Dalin's; the king beheld a black-dressed boy without fingers, who guided it from the room. He felt his own chair move forward, following Wrath-Pei's, through corridors, out into the deep, cool darkness of Titanian night. They entered two transports, and after a short journey, Dalin's chair once more followed, as Wrath-Pei entered a spacious building whose outside dimensions Dalin gauged as huge. They were sped through hallways, and then Dalin was thrust ahead of a waiting Wrath-Pei, whose chair had been pulled to the side of an open entrance, into which Dalin's own was pushed.
And there was Tabrel Kris, in the flesh, sitting quietly in her chair staring sadly out at the night.
Overcome with the sight of her, forgetting his circumstances, Dalin screamed "Tabrel!" while trying to urge his chair forward from where it had been stopped in the center of the room, meters from the window and from Tabrel Kris.
Slowly, Tabrel turned from the window. She stared at Dalin with unfocused eyes. For a long moment she looked confused, as if her mind were traveling back from another place.
Then, slowly, she turned back to the window. "Tabrel, it's me! Dalin Shar!"
Tabrel made no movement.
Dalin covered his face with his hands, tears beginning to flow from the corners of his ruined eyes.
To the sound of Wrath-Pei's laughter, Dalin was taken from the room and returned to the waiting transport.
"I should have told you, King Shar," Wrath-Pei tittered, "that she's married! I can't tell you how amusing it was to me when Queen Kamath Clan discovered through her ... ministrations that our little princess was in love with you instead of poor Prince Jamal. Though by her reaction to your current appearance she may rethink her relationship to her hubby—unless, of course, due to the potions she didn't even recognize you." The titter built to a full-throated laugh as Dalin was pushed into the back of the transport and the door closed on him.
"Off we go!" Wrath-Pei said, and when Dalin's t
ears began to dry he was once more on board a ship in phase drive, on his way to a place he could not imagine.
Chapter 28
"Magnificent!"
Prime Cornelian, High Leader, could not keep the delight and satisfaction from his voice. Though he knew that most, if not all, of what he now beheld had been staged for his benefit (especially since he had given the directions himself), there was nevertheless a part of him that relished the moment in terms beyond the purely theatrical.
There was, after all, a part of all humans that relished spectacle, was there not? Did not the ancients have their victory celebrations?
Bread and circuses—didn't someone once write that that was what the public craved?
And staged and theatrical though it was, the public surely seemed to crave it.
Lowell City—and Mars—had never seen anything like it, of this the High Leader was sure. Even in the early days of the republic, when the first prefects marched on foot to preside over the first Senates, Prime Cornelian knew that there had not been such a turnout as this. For those early parades had been mere celebrations of government, a public display of civics. This was something much grander, and much more conducive to hysteria: a planetwide banquet hailing the subjugation of another planet—and, of course, the man who had accomplished it.
Had any such thing ever occurred anywhere on the Four Worlds? The High Leader doubted it. Even the Earth ancients of Rome—who had, after all, named Mars after their god of war—could not approach this spectacle in elegance and magnitude, never mind sheer length. Here came the High Leader himself at the head of the pageant, riding upon an armored float forty meters high (shielded of course); its lighted bunting pleasantly hurt the eyes, even here in broad daylight, of the thousands who lined the thoroughfare, fifty deep in places. From his perch the High Leader tried to find guile or hidden treachery on their adoring faces, but could find none. Oh, how the people loved a winner! Weeks ago he had been vilified in secret, no doubt plotted against; his only ally had been the iron fist and the absolute will to use it. How long ago had he ordered the annihilation of one of his own towns—and then blamed it on off-planet intervention, not expecting anyone, most of all Martians, to believe it? How recently had they hated his every move; his suppression of liberties, even basic ones; his outright murder of their elected officials; his threat to destroy any of them, at any time, merely because it suited his purposes? But today—they loved him! Pynthas had reported that the Red Police had arrested only ten people in the last three days—and seven of them for plotting victory celebrations in Prime Cornelian's honor that were so grand as to be dangerous! The High Leader had immediately commuted their sentences.
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