by John Dalmas
"There are people who dislike my husband very much, aren't there?"
"I—suppose so, your ladyship. But there are more who love him."
"Are there also some who hate him then? Enough to do him harm? To kill him?"
"There are always such, your ladyship. It's part of being a ruler."
"Is—my husband in danger of his life?"
Her question made him want to assure her. Without lying. "Your ladyship, every man is in danger of his life; simply some more than others. As for the Kalif, I do not think his danger is anything to worry about. No man is better guarded. No one can even enter the Sreegana without a pass." He paused, then spoke in a tone of confidence. "You know, of course, that the Kalif was once a marine colonel."
She nodded. "He's mentioned it."
"The Kalif is still a young man, younger even than his years, and he drills almost daily with the saber. With Sergeant Yalabiin. And he carries a stunner with him at all times. He's strong, his reflexes are quick, and his eyes miss little. Between the guard regiment and his own self, your ladyship, I wouldn't worry for his life."
She nodded absently, as if thinking of something. "Colonel—Do people like him less because he married me? A foreigner? And perhaps not a noblewoman?"
"Your ladyship," he said carefully, "I don't know. But I can tell you his guard doesn't like him less. And his house servants don't: I've heard them say you're courteous and considerate at all times."
Again she sat silent for a moment, then: "I overheard someone mention that the old Kalif was murdered. How did that happen, guarded as he was?"
Inwardly the marshal winced. "Your ladyship—Kalif Gotsu Areknosaamos was a cruel and evil man. Very unlike your husband. He had many people killed, mostly by impaling, and many hated him. Also, he'd become a heretic."
"Was his murderer caught?"
The colonel's stomach tightened. "He wasn't actually murdered, your ladyship. He was executed."
She sat looking thoughtful. Thoughtful and beautiful. At last she got up.
"Thank you, Colonel." She smiled then, a wonderful smile, it seemed to him, though still subdued. "Will you tell me your name? I prefer to know people by name as well as title."
"I am Colonel Vilyamo, your ladyship. Vilyamo Parsavamaatu."
* * *
He watched as she walked away down the corridor, a walk graceful yet strong. He would have a hard time keeping her out of his mind. It seemed to him that the Kalif was a very fortunate man to have such a kalifa, and somehow he liked and respected him more for it.
Thirty-one
At Ananporu it was hard to know just when to expect the major rainy season; sometime after the autumnal equinox. It was never hard to tell when it arrived, though. In any season there were rains, but when the rains came, they arrived with force and bombast. This year they'd been unusually delayed, but when he'd been drilling with Sergeant Yalabiin, clouds had arrived to cut off the sun, and the heavens had rumbled. During breakfast the rain had started, looking like great spears of water shattering on the pavement outside his open door. Afterward the sun came out, and the smell was wonderful.
Jilsomo was waiting for him when he arrived at his office, a Jilsomo more sober than usual. Troubled. "Yes, my friend?" the Kalif said.
"Your Reverence—" Jilsomo began, and stopped. It was as if he didn't know what to say next.
"Yes?"
"One of the staff gave this to me. This morning." He held out a slender book, booklet actually, perhaps a novelet. "A man outside the gate was handing them to staff who live away, when they arrived this morning. Wrapped and taped, to discourage examining them till later."
The Kalif frowned. The cover had a picture of a beautiful woman in an indecently short skirt, a style from the empire's early days, before the imperial kalifate. She had long smooth legs, hair the color of new straw, blue eyes, and a frankly inviting look. Her chest and buttocks were exaggerated, round and firm. The face was not Tain's—it was more triangular, the eyes had a slant, and the mouth was V-shaped—but there was no one else it could have represented.
The title was The Sultan's Bride. He opened it and began reading swiftly.
The print was large, the story short. It was a fantasy, about a sultan who had led his army to conquer a planet. The people there were fierce, and fought to the death, so prisoners were few. Among them was a woman officer who'd been captured unconscious, a wonderfully beautiful woman with blue eyes, yellow hair, and long legs. She wore colonel's insignia, though she seemed to be only about twenty years old.
It was a kind of book the Kalif had seen before, bordering on illegal, though in this case the cover and paper were excellent, and the binding. The story was risque from the start—low comedy. The prisoner almost escaped when the soldiers who found her began fighting and killing one another over her. Then a captain arrived and took her into custody, realizing that, because so few officers had been captured, the sultan would want to question her. She enticed the captain deliberately, asking if he'd like to see her bruises, opening her shirt and pulling up her skirt to show him. His throat so tightened, he could hardly swallow, and hastily he called in some other officers to protect him from himself. All asweat, together they took her to the sultan's headquarters.
The comedy continued. With the sultan she seemed a model of decorum, but even so, in more subtle ways she enticed, and the sultan melted into a parody of a sexually desperate man. He sent his aide away and tried to have her then and there, but she evaded him in a passage funny enough that the Kalif might have laughed, except for its allusions. Finally, out of his mind with desire, the sultan asked the prisoner to marry him, and she accepted.
One after another, his friends came to remonstrate with him. He in turn introduced them to his sultana to be, and without exception they relented. Her effects on them were actually quite amusing, in a low way. They couldn't speak, or if they could, their tongues got twisted. Seemingly they got erections, and tried to avoid them being noticed. They could hardly get away to privacy quickly enough.
The comedy went from risque to lewdly impossible on their wedding day, though falling short of pornography.
Later, as a sort of epilogue, it was learned that all the women in the enemy army were prostitutes, and received promotions based on how many men they serviced. The new sultana had been the highest ranking woman in the army.
* * *
Carefully the Kalif handed the book back to Jilsomo. "You're excused from council this morning," he said quietly. "Find out who printed this. Who wrote it and who published it. And especially, find who paid to have it done. Find out if it's been put in shops, and if it has, have it removed. If you can learn where it's stored, seize it. Make arrests as appropriate, but not arrests that might jeopardize a full investigation."
* * *
At council meeting, it was apparent that three of the five exarchs had seen the book. They had trouble looking directly at the Kalif, and weren't surprised when, after a very short session, he dismissed them all.
* * *
Afterward the Kalif left the Sreegana, forbidding his bodyguards to follow, and walked the streets nearby. Mostly people stared at him in passing; it was almost unheard of for the Kalif to walk about the city, even escorted. But already there were three or four who looked away, embarrassed. He stopped at a book shop, where the shopkeeper greeted him with astonishment and pleasure. The Kalif bought a book—something about cats.
Another bookshop was locked up; apparently Jilsomo was moving fast.
Finally he went home and had lunch with the kalifa. It was obvious she didn't know. He was poor company, saying little, and that little scarcely more than monosyllables. She let him be, without commenting on his mood. When they'd finished eating though, he reached across the table for her hand.
"I've decided to attend the Diet this afternoon. Will you come with me? You might find it interesting, and if it's not, we'll take advantage of a break, and leave."
The invitation surprised her
, particularly given his mood. "Why yes, I'd like that. Are you going to speak?"
"I have no plans to. We'll sit in the gallery. That way they're unlikely to pepper me with questions."
She got up from the table. "I'd better get ready then. How much time do we have?"
He hadn't thought of that. "Barely an hour," he said.
She left, and when she reappeared, only twenty minutes later, it seemed to him he'd never seen her lovelier.
* * *
They applauded her introduction, most of them. And some of the nobles, after the session, made a point of meeting and talking cordially with her. When finally she left with her husband, she was flushed with pleasure.
"They are very nice men, Coso," she said. "Most of them. It's hard to believe that some of them don't like you."
He grunted. "Which ones weren't nice, would you say?"
"Well, I'm not sure I can tell nice from not nice at a glance. But some of them looked unpleasant. Surly. In a section on the far right."
His laugh held no humor. "I'd say you did very well at a glance," he told her. And said no more about it.
Thirty-two
"It appears there was no publishing firm, Your Reverence," Jilsomo told him. "The publisher listed on the copyright page is fictitious. Apparently there were simply some men, still unknown, who arranged the preparation, printing, and distribution of this one book.
"We've had the book examined by a senior editor in the Imperial Publications Office, for clues as to who might have published it. He says that while it's literate, it's quite unprofessional—lacks niceties of editorial style and format. He insists that even very hurried production by an actual publishing firm wouldn't account for the technical idiosyncracies."
The Kalif grunted. "I assumed it wasn't an established firm," he said. "An established firm would be ruined by something like this, and its executive staff in prison or worse. They'd know that."
Jilsomo nodded. "The shipper had received the book in sealed boxes, delivered at their warehouse by an unmarked truck. With a talkative driver who apparently didn't know what, exactly, he was delivering; that's how we learned who the printer was.
"He's in your waiting room now—the printer, that is—along with Commissioner Somisthanoku and several officers. In case you wish to question the man yourself. He's thoroughly frightened, and been questioned under instrumentation; it seems he doesn't know who paid him to print it. He was paid in cash, not unheard of for a small firm like his. Paid three times his standard price for special handling, no doubt to help him agree to it.
"Normal distribution lines weren't used. The book was printed four days before it appeared on the streets, boxed and held in storage for pickup.
"Varatos Shipping Company delivered it to 327 bookshops over much of the planet. Varatos had never delivered books before. They were paid a large premium to deliver at the hour each store opened, paid by a bank draft on an account set up for that one transaction. If we can determine who set it up, we may well have the publisher."
The Kalif grunted. Whoever it was would have taken great pains to forestall just that.
"All that Varatos Shipping saw were the cartons," Jilsomo went on. "We're satisfied they didn't know what the books were. Just books. Each store was to be given a sizeable discount to open the carton at once and display the books on their counter immediately. Actually, although they didn't know it, the discount was meaningless. The invoices they signed were fakes, and the billing agency fictitious. Actually they were getting the books free!
"Obviously this project cost someone, or some group, a great deal of money, with no means of getting it back regardless of sales. The purpose was entirely political."
The Kalif nodded, his eyes stone-hard.
"The stores have all been raided, the unsold books confiscated, and the store locked up if it had, in fact, displayed the book for sale.
"In a number of cases, local authorities had learned of the book from customers, and had it impounded before we notified them. In some cases the retailer notified the authorities himself. In still others, book sales went on for more than a day.
"Ten thousand came out of the press. Deducting spoilage and ten copies kept for the printer's records, 9,573 books were boxed and shipped, and 200 others were held for a man with a letter of authorization, presumably the copies distributed free to people in the vicinity of the Sreegana. All told, 6,943 were confiscated. That means about 2,600 were sold or given away."
Jilsomo paused, as if gathering himself for something worse. "Also, from something said in front of the printer, print-control cubes were apparently podded to the other planets when the book was printed here. We don't know to whom. I've had orders sent in your name to the planetary ministries of justice to take care of it, but I presume the planetary governments will take action to get them out of the stores before they get the order, when the book is brought to their attention by local persons."
Action whose effectiveness will depend on planetary politics, the Kalif told himself. "Earlier you said 'selected booksellers.' Selected how?"
"Apparently if a bookseller had any connections with the Land Rights Party, it was sent to him. With some exceptions; apparently people they thought wouldn't use it. Some others got them who are known to have anti-government or anti-kalifate sympathies.
"Quite a few shops didn't display the books, though. They opened the carton, saw what they had, and left them in the storeroom."
"Um. Those who displayed them for sale—you had their doors locked, you say. What were the charges?"
"Insulting the throne. The solicitor imperial is preparing a list of alternative charges, to be used should you prefer one of them."
The Kalif sat frowning. "Tell me, Jilsomo: How is it that people insult me who would not have dared insult Gorsu, or any number of other Kalifs in their time?"
"Your Reverence, you'd have to ask them to know with any certainty. Assuming they'd tell you the truth. Most have said they didn't realize that the—the fictional sultan was a parody of yourself, with intent to defame. Probably most of them dislike the government and yourself enough that their judgment was seriously hampered when they thought they could hurt you badly.
"As to why you more than Gorsu and so many others: I suspect there are those who consider you weak and unwilling because you've ruled by law. And impaled no one."
The Kalif's brows arched at that. "Indeed! Well. Bring the printer in here and let me question him."
The printer was literally pale with fear, and the Kalif's expression did not reassure him.
"Your name!" the Kalif snapped.
"Sir, Your Reverence, it is Namsu Pasarijiios."
"How would you like the name Dead Meat?"
The printer's mouth opened, closed, opened again. Finally he husked an answer: "I would not like that, Your Reverence."
"Perhaps Live Meat On A Stake would suit you better. Tell me, Meat, who hired you to print this criminally insulting book?"
The man seemed to shrivel, and would have fallen if the constables hadn't held him upright. It took several seconds before he could speak. "Your Reverence, truly I do not know! I would tell you without hesitation if I knew! Truly I would! Truly!"
"I trust you realize you'll be questioned further under instruments. If you lie to me now, we'll find out, and you'll have lost whatever chance you have for a painless death.
"Now, who delivered the money?"
The printer seemed almost in tears, his manacled hands twisting together in front of him as if he were trying to wash them. "Your Reverence, I don't know! It's a face I'd seen before, but not one I know. They must have picked someone they thought would be a stranger to me."
The Kalif looked long and hard at the man. Finally he said, "Jilsomo, have this man questioned closely again. By someone competent; I've already picked up something they missed. He says the face was familiar to him; find out whose it is. Use hypnotism first, drugs if necessary. I know hypnotism's illegal, but get a hypnotist. T
here must be some on the police records, supposedly reformed. Do whatever you have to, but learn the identity of the man who paid this—" The Kalif gestured. "Meat."
"And you—" He glowered at the printer. "Pray to Kargh that you remember."
The man nodded, quick little head jerks. He looked as if he might faint at any moment. Then they took him away, and the Kalif sat alone.
It could have been worse, he told himself. At least the kalifa hadn't seen the book.
Thirty-three
The investigation took only three more days, and was confidential. But those behind the book suspected that some of their secrecy precautions had broken down, because a certain man had disappeared.
Still, there was no sign that they'd been implicated, and they'd purposely built in several layers of secrecy. The missing man might simply have gone into hiding. Thus, though a bit uneasy, they didn't feel seriously threatened.
When they entered the Chamber of the Estates among their peers and saw the Kalif there ahead of them, in his place on one side of the Rostrum, the twinge of anxiety was only momentary, replaced by interest in what he might have to say: Would he mention The Sultan's Bride or not?
When the delegates and exarchs all were seated, Alb Jilsomo, as chairman, gaveled for quiet. Following the opening ritual, certain old business of the Diet was brought up and discussed. Reports were read. Motions were made, and there were votes. The Kalif took no part in any of it—one might almost forget he was there—and whatever unease they'd felt, dissipated.
Finally Jilsomo looked them over and said, "Now we'll address new business." He turned to the Kalif. "Your Reverence has something to say."
The Kalif stood. "Thank you, Mister Chairman, I do indeed." He spoke in something of a monotone, almost a drawl, his eyes running over the House of Nobles. "Some of you, I believe, are aware of a recent criminal insult to the throne, to myself, and to the kalifa, a small book, lewd and cowardly, entitled The Sultan's Bride. Who here is not aware of it? Raise your hand."
