by Anthology
"Well, it does look a little as if I had been scheming for riches here, without knowing just why I want them."
"Yes, you have formed that habit on Earth. Only they carry it further there—swindle their brothers, deceive their parents, oppress the weak, extort from the poor; work, toil, plot, cheat, rob, yes, even kill! in order to lay up a store of something they can never take away with them, and which renders them unhappy oftener than happy while they remain to guard it."
"I have heard that sort of talk often before, Doctor, but I never saw the truth of it quite so plainly as now. I have outwitted and squeezed Hotep, the man on whom the whole city now depends for existence."
"They think they depend upon him, but you know as well as I do that he will be powerless; that he must see them starve by thousands, and part with the last bit of his cherished riches to save his own life. No, Isidor, your business sagacity has not been in vain, for this entire people depend not on Hotep, but on you! You alone have the food to preserve many of them alive through a famine and a pestilence whose horrors are just beginning. Pharaoh and Zaphnath will squeeze and pinch them, and see them die, and turn it all to their own profit; but let us constitute ourselves a relief committee, you and I. Let us set these Kemish rulers an example of humanity, as we know it on Earth."
Chapter XI
Revolutionist and Eavesdropper
In Kem, where agriculture was almost the only occupation, and where the ox was helpful both in planting and threshing the grain, it was quite natural that he should be revered, or at least respected as a partner in the toil, and that a strong prejudice should prevail against his being slaughtered for food. In fact, it was not the practice of the Kemish to eat any large animals, but they confined themselves to fish and small fowl for meats. Nevertheless, I urged upon Hotep the necessity of killing some of his cattle to provide food for his miserable and poorly-fed labourers. But he stubbornly refused to do so, saying his men would rather eat the flesh of mules than of cattle.
Without being pressed for it, he paid me the second hundred thousand cargoes of wheat, which he bought from the Pharaoh with gold, as he had done before. But I divided this entire quantity of grain among Hotep's labourers, which eked out their half-rations for almost a year. I stipulated that none of this grain should be used for seed, for I firmly believed it would be wasted. But Pharaoh again lent the seed for planting a third crop, insisting that the discouraged Hotep should put it in the ground, and reminding him that the only way he could get grain to pay his heavy debts was to raise a crop.
Thenocris had not been long in learning the location of our house near her favourite gate, and it was her habit to call on us every day at the time of the noon-day meal. She always carried and caressed her white rabbit, and they came to us like two dumb animals to be fed. Her tall, stately figure, traversing the city on her daily journey to our house, soon became a familiar sight; and when the people began to be oppressed by hunger, they gradually overcame their early fear of us, and followed her to our door for food. We had never turned any away, for beggary was rare enough in Kem, and no sane person ever resorted to it except in the sorest extremes of need.
Zaphnath doubtless looked with an evil eye upon the crowds that daily thronged our door to secure food. The Pharaoh rarely left his palace, and bothered little about affairs outside, and Zaphnath must have been at the bottom of an edict which was shortly issued. Nothing that I remember in Kem better illustrated the absolute power of the Pharaoh and the unrestrained enforcement of his merest whim. The edict referred to the scarcity of bread and the multitude of foreigners who were flocking to the city to secure it, and provided (ostensibly for the good of the Kemish people) that no man in the city of Kem should give bread or any sort of food to any but the members of his own household. Moreover, no man should sell grain or bread at a less price than that established by the Pharaoh for the sale of his own.
The doctor and I realized that this was aimed at no one but us. They were jealous of our charity, and wished to turn everybody's need to their own profit. We scoffed at the tyranny of such an edict, but it was the arbitrary sort of law to which the Kemish were accustomed. Yet if we gave up our undertaking, and the unfortunate multitude went unfed for a few days, bread riots were certain to break out, and they might result in the death or overthrow of the short-sighted Pharaoh, and the seizure of his grain. Even this would not settle the question, for the victors might enforce a worse monopoly of it, if that were possible.
"We must continue to feed them all outside the city,—at the Gnomons, for instance," I suggested.
"Yes, we must feed them there in a large chamber, and eat with them, so that they may be considered members of our household," added the doctor.
Thus it happened that the paths which Hotep's mules had worn so deeply were now thronged by a great multitude of the city's poor in their daily pilgrimage to the Gnomons. In an enormous chamber which we fitted up for that purpose, we served to each comer one generous meal, and there were so many who came that this meal was going on almost all day long. The Pharaoh fed no one but his favourites and his soldiers, and of these last he discharged a large number, reducing his army to a hungry, ill-fed thousand men. Those who were discharged came to eat with us, and many of those retained would gladly have done so, had we not excluded every one in the Pharaoh's service.
Meantime the Nasr-Nil ran lower in her banks than ever before, and gave no signs of rising; the nightly snows were brief and evanescent, and the rains, which had never been copious on Ptah, now ceased entirely. Every green thing gradually vanished from Kem, and Hotep's third crop rotted or lay sodden in the ground as the others had done. He knew that I had been offered the opportunity to plant the Pharaoh's fields, and that I had not only refused, but had hoarded grain. This may have led him to conclude that I knew some reason for the famine, and I was not surprised when he sought me one day at the Gnomons. He begged a strictly private interview with me, and I conducted him to a small room I had constructed by running two thin walls of porous stone from one Gnomon to another, and covering the enclosure with a flat roof.
"Dost thou know that thou hast linked together with thy slender walls the monuments of two antagonistic dynasties?" he began. "This structure to the left was built by the fifth ancestor of the present Pharaoh, in truth the first ruler of his dynasty. The structure to the right, however, is vastly older, and was built by the tenth Pharaoh of the dynasty, from which I am directly descended. My ancestors were vanquished by dint of wars, and their powers usurped by the ancestors of this same selfish Pharaoh, who hath not so good a right to rule as I."
I think I was born without a vestige of revolutionary spirit, for I have always felt a respect for the institutions that are, and an allegiance to the powers that rule. I remember the distinct shock which this utterance of Hotep's gave me. I said nothing, but he answered the surprised look on my face.
"Thou knowest well that the entire labouring population of Kem is fed by me in my fields on one side of the city; while all the poor and unfortunate are fed by you here on the other side. What man of Kem thinks of the grand palace of the Pharaoh in the midst of the city, but to curse it? What subject who knows how the Pharaoh and his favourites gorge themselves in luxurious plenty, while he nurses his hunger, but would a thousand times rather pay allegiance to those who save him from absolute starvation? And Zaphnath, in his nightly wanderings and his daily errands of espionage, thinkest thou he overhears a public grumbler who fails to curse him and his Pharaoh, and to extol the men from the Blue Star, and the unfortunate farmer, who, until now, has been able to give the people work and sustenance?"
"Doth Zaphnath spend his time in watching and spying, then?" I asked.
"Aye, that he doth! I crossed his path even now, coming through the city, and he set at following me, but by quick turns I eluded him. He it is who by his loans and compacts hath snared and tricked me until now I am utterly ruined, unless I can claim my rightful turn at ruling. Alone I cannot do it; with thy h
elp I can."
"How, then, could I be of assistance to you?" I exclaimed in some astonishment, without stopping to think of the justice of his claims.
"From what I have heard of the thunder thou commandest, and the lightning thou art able to carry, it doth appear that thou couldst overcome the Pharaoh and his thousand half-starved men, who secretly itch to change masters. Thou hast the means to do it; I have the right to do it; and the people would unanimously applaud the doing of it. Let us strike together, then; let us seize the Pharaoh's grain and apportion it among our supporters and the needy, and when I am established as Pharaoh, thou shalt be my ruler in the place of Zaphnath."
"Thou temptest me but little, O Hotep. Once before I was offered a rulership in Kem which I refused. Besides, am I not bound by an agreement to loyalty and obedience to this Pharaoh?"
"Aye! Even as I am bound to come to a sure ruin; and as every man in Kem is bound to sit meekly by and starve. But is a ruler no way bound? May he claim the life of his subjects for his profit? How long will they suffer such treatment? And if we are restrained by loyalty, how long will it be till some one else strikes the blow we stick at——?"
He was interrupted by a vigorous knocking at the door, as of one who commands rather than entreats an opening. Who could it be? I turned to see, but Hotep caught me by the arm.
"Before thou openest, tell me if thou wilt join me in this undertaking for the sake of a suffering people?"
"Nay, Hotep; it is wrong, and I will not do it. I am bound to this Pharaoh, bad as he is, and to thy dynasty I owe nothing." The rapping began again and more loudly now, but Hotep still restrained me.
"For half of all my fields wilt thou furnish me the grain to pay the Pharaoh, and thus avert my ruin?"
"And if I would, how wouldst thou feed the men and mules and cattle through another year of famine, and another, and another?"
"Thou thinkest the crops will fail yet three more years!" he exclaimed, half stupefied by the thought.
"Aye, four! I know it for most certain," I answered, and the insistent knocking was vigorously renewed.
"Then I am too deep in the mire for thee or any one to pull me out. Open to this importunate knocker."
I threw open the door, and there stood the keen-eyed, angry-visaged Zaphnath! How long had he been listening outside there? How much had he stealthily overheard before he began knocking? All the Kemish had need to speak doubly loud to us from Earth, for our ears were not made for thin air and its weak sounds. Moreover, Hotep had spoken throughout with a fervent declamation. But what I said in my ordinary tones was always easily understood by Hotep's keen ears. Therefore it seemed quite certain that Zaphnath had heard through the thin wall all that Hotep had said, and probably none of what I said. So much the worse. He had doubtless supplied my speeches to suit himself, and made them fit into Hotep's plotting. At any rate there was hot anger in his face when he spoke to me,—
"Thou servest the Pharaoh well, by contriving how to cross his wishes at every point! It were well thy office were withdrawn; I have brothers about me now who could better fill it."
"Whenever it pleaseth the Pharaoh or his all-potent ruler to abrogate his compact with me, I am quite ready to begin where we left off when it was made," I retorted. I did not think till afterwards that this might serve wrongly to indicate to him the tenor of my answers to Hotep's scheming. His eyes flashed angrily at this, yet he made no reply, but spoke to Hotep instead.
"Before the end of the clock this day, the Pharaoh requireth of thee full settlement of all thou owest him. Attempt nothing but a just and full repayment, O most precious Hotep, for thy every act is watched and known to us!"
Chapter XII
The Doctor Disappears
Hotep saw that he was ruined, and he went to fall down before Pharaoh and beg for mercy. The monarch, not having the courage of his own hard-heartedness, answered him,—
"I desire not to deal harshly with thee, O Hotep; for thou hast struggled desperately against an unwilling soil and unpropitious seasons. But thou knowest all my affairs are in the hands of Zaphnath, without whom I do nothing. Therefore go thou before him and do even as he telleth thee."
And Hotep, having made an invoice of all his money, and slaves, and mules, and cattle, took it before Zaphnath, saying,—
"Behold, O most merciful ruler of Kem, I have threescore-and-ten of the great golden discs, and seven hundredweight of the coins of Kem wherewith to repay the Pharaoh for the seed which the seasons have stolen from me. But I have neither food for all the men, and mules, and cattle which are the Pharaoh's, nor yet for mine own; wherefore I beg of thee to take back his slaves and animals, and release me from feeding them; and I will forfeit unto the Pharaoh all my working slaves, which are thirty score, and all my mules, which are a thousand and one, and all my cattle, which are an hundred score, and they shall be his for ever."
"Methinks thou borrowest with a large hand and repayest like a very miser," answered Zaphnath. "All the money thou namest will not buy a thousand cargoes of grain, for behold, is not wheat worth iron money, weight for weight? And to reimburse the Pharaoh for feeding all his men and animals through the famine, which may continue, it is a rare kindness in thee to desire to give him also all of thine to be fed and nourished! What wilt thou do with all thy land when thou hast no men or beasts to till it? And how wilt thou maintain thy proud palace, with three hundred women, when thou hast no revenues left?"
"'Tis true, O Zaphnath; and if the Pharaoh covet them, take them all—the palace, the women, the rich clothing and rare jewels, and even the endless fields which have cursed me! For the days of Hotep's riches are ended. Let him be acquit, and go from thee in peace!"
"Even with them all, thou knowest he is but poorly paid; yet it is I who have prevailed upon him not to be harsh with thee. But if the famine continue, what thinkest thou of doing to gain a living?"
"By my beard! Doth the Pharaoh wish to make a slave of me also?"
"Nay, Hotep; not a common slave. But hast thou a mind to starve? I have besought him to give thee an honourable and luxuriant service, befitting thy tastes and habits. He will make thee chamberlain of his palace."
"Is there no other thing thou canst think of or invent, O most merciful Zaphnath? Lands, slaves, animals, money, women, jewels, palace, and even my life and body for the gracious Pharaoh's service! Is that all? If so, I beg thee declare the bargain made and all my undertakings fully acquit."
Hotep came to me the following day, with his beard shaven and the Pharaoh's bird-wing on his brow. He wore the dress of the Pharaoh's chamberlain, and he told me how it had all happened. He also told me that the Pharaoh had now thrown wide open the doors of slavery, and offered to feed all who surrendered themselves to his service for life. And Zaphnath never ceased to itch for all the lands, and cattle, and slaves of every one in Kem and her tributary countries, either in exchange for the bare needs of life, or as pledges for seed which he knew would only rot and ruin the borrower.
I went about my affairs on the plateau that day, wondering how long I should continue there, or whether my threat had been effective in silencing the enmity of the rulers. When I returned that evening, I did not find the doctor at the house. My servant said that a messenger from the chamberlain had summoned him on important business, soon after the noon-day meal. I waited a little longer, and then I began to fear that the chamberlain had been used to decoy the doctor into some trap. If he was staying away of his own account, why did he not send me some word? Messengers were plenty. At last I sent the servant to the palace to inquire and search for him. After a long stay he returned, saying the doctor was nowhere to be found. No one had seen or heard of him there that day.
"And the chamberlain?" I demanded.
"He was not to be found in his rooms, and no one had seen him since noon-day."
"Didst thou make inquiry for the messenger who summoned the doctor?" I asked.
He had not thought of it; so I started to the palace myself. I had
gone but a few steps when it occurred to me to act with a little more caution, and be prepared for some plot against myself. I turned back to the house, and had the servant remove the heap of pillows where I slept. Underneath was a loosened stone of the floor, and below it we kept the rifles, revolvers, and ammunition hidden. I carefully loaded all of them, and put all the remaining cartridges into our two old belts. I thought of strapping one of these about me, but reflected that this would have a hostile and treasonable appearance, so I contented myself with concealing one revolver in my coat, and then I carefully covered up all the rest, and had the servant pile the pillows over the stone slab again.
Then I went out and walked to the palace. Leaping the wall, I questioned every one I saw about the doctor, the chamberlain, and his messenger. No one had seen anything of them. The messenger was absent from his lodging, as well as the chamberlain. Either they were all gone somewhere secretly together, or they had all suffered a common mysterious fate. Unable to do anything more, I returned home full of apprehension.
I slept fitfully a few hours, and then I had a most realistic dream, which began among my old surroundings on Earth: the wheat pit, the closing of a turbulent session, the drive through the parks till I came suddenly in sight of the great spherical cactus design of the World in Washington Park. As I approached this, it seemed to leave its pedestal and move freely through space toward me. I seized one of its meridians, and, clinging tightly, was carried off over the park, over the lake, over seas of ice, through an ocean of sparkling light, faster and farther every moment, until presently my little globe refused to hold me longer, and repelled me through a long, giddy, awful fall which filled me with terror. But I landed in the dark chamber of a Gnomon, waist-deep in loose wheat. It seemed gradually to grow deeper about me, rose to my shoulders, to my chin; and as I looked up I saw Slater pouring in wheat in a steady stream. He meant to smother and choke me with it. Ah, if I only had a thousand, aye, ten thousand mouths to eat it, he could never do it. I could keep even with him. But it gradually rose past my mouth, past my nose; it covered my head and was smothering me. What an awful thing was too much food, after all! And then I wakened to find my head covered with pillows until I was half-choked for breath.
