“They are… how should I say… half-bloods, yes?”
“Half-bloods?”
“Crossbreeds, hybrids. Made long ago when only the Chinese and Mi-Anaaka-that is the name for the Lemurians, as you call them-lived in this place.”
Toryu shuddered in spite of himself.
Becher noticed. “You do not like that? Well, neither does anyone else. Interbreeding is strictly verboten-forbidden-in the republic. No one, not humans, not Mi-Anaaka, not even the half-bloods themselves are happy such things once occurred. They cannot blame themselves for what they are, and neither does anyone else-now. They are their own species and intent on remaining so. Such things no longer happen; it is the law, but… women have always been in short supply. Not often are they on the ships that come. We brought a few, and there were African women. Some others came, and there have always been a few, but never enough, even now.” Becher sighed. “Mi-Anaaka remain the most populous citizens by far.
“We and those who came before have built a good country here, a country to be proud of, but it has not been easy, as you can imagine! There are so many views and so many threats! This is a republic, as I have said, but there is an… authoritarian ruler whose word is absolute, and most often just. You must learn the history of this country, but, in short, there was war here for many generations between the humans, Mi-Anaaka, and the half-bloods. It took the Romans to end that-and tension still simmers! Add to that the Grik! Our society is, of necessity, integrated, but very disciplined. We have a tradition of welcoming new arrivals because of low population levels. You would think things would have equalized by now, but women do remain in short supply. This is a harsh land at times, and though we avoid major clashes with the Grik on the frontier, those clashes do occur. There is also the weather, and many predatory monsters encroach on our lands, perhaps driven by the Grik, that can’t be hunted to their source across the Grik frontiers! And there have been other violent encounters at this geographic bottleneck. Some of the occasional arrivals are NOT friendly.” He paused. “This is… a bad land for women. A bad world. And though we are not now at war, we must always remain prepared. With the news you bring, I hope we are prepared enough.” He stopped, peering southwest.
“Ah! There it is,” he said with some humor. “The War Palace!”
Toryu was still digesting what Becher had said, but when he looked toward the harbor, he was even more stunned. He’d seen the garish ways rickshaws and taxis were sometimes decorated, particularly when Amagi visited the Philippines once, before the war, but what had been done to SMS Amerika was beyond even that, and on a massive scale.
The ship’s elegant lines remained essentially the same as when she arrived, with her straight up-and-down bow and two tall, slender funnels. Toryu later learned the once-great luxury liner was 670 feet long, 74 feet wide, and displaced more than 22,000 tons. She boasted twin screws and two triple-expansion engines that once drove her through the sea at close to 20 knots, and was still fitted to carry 2,500 passengers in reasonable-to-palatial style. All that was likely still true, but the ship’s upper works were now decorated just at sweepingly as the buildings in the city. Her riveted hull was a riot of colors, painted with everything from what looked like eagles to dragons. Colorful awnings fluttered over her broad decks, and a truly wild variety of flags and banners streamed to leeward of her high, thin foremast.
“Can she still move?” Toryu wondered aloud, seeing black smoke wisping above the aft funnel.
“ Ja, if she must,” Becher said with an awkward chuckle. “She is the War Palace, after all. The point is that she can move the kaiser and his staff to other places. We have several port cities, almost as large as this, up the southwest coast.” He paused. “Is it practical to move her?” He shrugged. “Steam is maintained to power her electrics and her pumps, and her engines are tested twice a year. But she has not been out of the water for over thirty years. There is no dry dock large enough to accommodate her. Whether it is advisable to move her is another thing. Her bottom plates have become thin, I think.”
The strange beasts pulling the car grumbled to a stop, and the party stepped out onto a dock and onto a long pier that seemed almost permanently attached to the ship. Doocy climbed down from his horse and joined them.
“The anchorage remains well protected,” he said, pointing at some low mountains to the southeast. “That’s why we keep her here.” There were other ships in the harbor too, sailing schooners mostly, but there were also what looked like iron monitors with low freeboards, tall funnels, and big guns snugged to the pier leading to the big ship. “Those are for harbor defense,” Doocy added, noting Toryu’s gaze. “They cannot survive in the heavy seas beyond-but they serve their function. The schooners trade with our other ports and other places as well, but no sailing ship can hope to round the cape from the east.”
“Even if they could, they would find nothing but Grik along the eastern shore,” Toryu warned.
“Aye. But perhaps there are others beyond?” Doocy pressed, and Toryu wondered what all he may have said while he was delirious, if Doocy already knew.
“There are,” he confirmed simply as they strode along the pier. He’d already determined to be completely honest with these people. He had no more reason to trust them than they did him-yet-but they’d saved him and they weren’t Grik. That’s all that really mattered for now.
They came at last to Amerika ’s garish side and were met by more Romanesque guards, who saluted his companions in the modern way. He didn’t know what he’d expected-a fist to the breastplate? Maybe German traditions prevailed aboard the ship? He was led inside, down several ornate corridors, up a grand staircase, and finally into what had to have once been the first-class dining salon. It was a very large compartment, and, unlike the exterior of the ship, its passenger-era elegance had not been tampered with-with the exception of a raised “throne,” for lack of a better term, built of matching woods and adorned with similar carvings to those decorating the entire chamber. Upon the throne sat a Lemurian, a Mi-Anaaka, dressed in silklike robes of embroidered blue that matched the curtains and valances over the windows, but of a higher, more ornate quality.
Beside the throne stood a tall, thin man of at least eighty, Toryu guessed, wearing a black-blue coat with twin rows of shiny buttons. He wore a wide, white, waxed mustache, but the only hair on his weathered scalp was a thin white wisp. A dark hat similar to Becher’s was clutched against his side by an arm.
Toryu’s companions saluted, and Toryu saluted and jerked a bow. As fascinating as he found the pair, however, his eyes immediately swept to the carefully painted map that dominated the entire wall behind the throne. The detail was astonishing in certain places, almost as if he were viewing the world from the distant sky above. The borders of the republic were clearly marked, encompassing all of southern Africa behind a diagonal frontier that extended some distance up the west coast. Beyond that line, the detail was much less defined, but the coastlines bordering the Atlantic Ocean had been rendered with confidence, even if they didn’t quite match his own memory. Somehow he knew that confidence must have been a result of exploration, because all the coasts east of the cape, coasts he knew, were less exact.
“Ahh! You admire our atlas, eh?” asked the old man in a surprisingly firm, lightly accented English. Toryu was startled for an instant, but the man had apparently once commanded a passenger liner, after all. “We wandered the Atlantic and charted some of the… ah… differences, before we came to this place,” he said. “That was quite an adventurous time,” he reflected with a frown. “And there are some… interesting, and often unpleasant, places beyond our little refuge! Perhaps you can add to our knowledge of points east?” He paused, glancing at the Lemurian. “Excuse me. May I present His Most Excellent Highness, the Emperor Nig-Taak. You may call him Kaiser, Cae-saar, Tszaar-whatever. He does not mind.” He smiled toothlessly. “I am Kapitan Adlar Von Melhausen, commander of this ship and keeper of the War Palace, by the kaiser’s gra
ce. You have already met General Marcus Kim and Inquisitor Choon, as well as your rescuers, Misters Lange and Meek!”
Toryu bowed again. “I am honored, sir. I am Lieutenant Toryu Miyata, formerly Junior Navigating Officer of His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ship Amagi. Please let me express my appreciation for my rescue and the hospitality that has been shown me.”
“You are welcome, of course,” said the kaiser in a soft, strangely accented voice, speaking for the first time. “As Mr. Lange was instructed to inform you, many people have found refuge with us in the past.” He waved a hand. “It is an unsympathetic world beyond our land. It can be harsh even here.” He peered closely at Miyata with intense, almost purple-brown eyes. “I understand you bring word that further… unpleasantness threatens to descend upon us.”
“Yes, your…” he paused. “Yes, Your Majesty. I was ordered to come to you with an offer of a sort of alliance with the, ah, Ghaarrichk’k, as they call themselves, against other people in the east, similar to those who abide here. People both human and Mi-Anaaka, who threaten the Grik for the first time in their history. I stress again that I was commanded to do this, though, in honesty, I cannot recommend it, and I humbly ask you for asylum.”
Nig-Taak leaned back on his throne. “Indeed? Well, fear not. You shall have asylum. But what do the Grik think they can do to us if we do not accept their offer to join their war against others of our kind?”
“They think they will annihilate you,” Toryu answered softly. Nig-Taak laughed.
“Do they, now? They have had long enough to try in the past-we have guarded against each other for over three hundred years! How can they now do-while threatened elsewhere! — what they have never dared attempt in the past?”
“With respect, Lord, they do not like this land; it can be too cold for them. They have never considered it a worthy place to conquer. As for daring… My lord, you must believe me! If you do not join them, they will come-unless they are more sorely pressed elsewhere than they are at present.”
“Let them come!” Von Melhausen snapped. “We can meet them anywhere they strike with fifteen, perhaps twenty thousand, disciplined troops!”
Toryu paled. “Kapitan, Your Majesty, I beg you to hear! I will not counsel you to agree to their demands, but you must know I watched them assemble perhaps half a million warriors for an oversea campaign! That force was hurled back, but it pales to insignificance compared to what they now prepare! They have built a thousand ships in only the past year, and they have learned much from their enemies-and, yes, those of my people who aid them. They have artillery, aircraft… and just imagine what they could bring against you this close to their major population centers! I am sure your troops are excellent, but it is not that they have not dared to come against you. They have not cared to!” He paused.
“Maybe they will not come immediately. The Alliance against them has grown amazingly and assembled powerful forces of its own, qualitatively better than the Grik.” He shook his head. “But, honestly, I fear they are taunting a giant in the dark! They cannot truly know what they face! I have seen their multitudes, how quickly they can breed if they desire. I have seen the scope of their preparations, and it is not a… natural thing. Even now their population nears the maximum they can even feed! I fear they will destroy the Alliance in time, and even if they wait until then to come, they will bring more warriors than they will want to survive!”
Toryu heard Doocy gasp and saw Von Melhausen pale. Nig-Taak did not appear to react beyond a rapid blinking. Toryu knew almost nothing of Lemurians, and had no idea what it meant.
“I cannot believe it!” Von Melhausen snorted when he gathered himself. “And why should we believe it, my kaiser?” He gestured at Toryu. “This man just wanders in out of the wilderness with this wild tale…”
“ I believe it, Kap-i-taan,” Nig-Taak said resignedly. “All at once, it is perfectly clear. We always wondered, but now it makes flawless sense! Do you not see? They never attacked us here in force because they did not want our land, but now they cannot afford a threat to their rear! That is the source of this offer! Then, whether we help them or not, they will merely use us to stabilize their numbers once more!”
He turned back to Toryu. “You say we must not help them and I agree. They are monsters and enemies of my race since before the beginning of time, but… what else can we do?”
To Toryu, it was suddenly obvious. “They will likely think I have perished, with all the others with me. We were sent at a poor time of year. Suspecting my envoy did not survive, they might send another. If it arrives, perhaps under the direction of a more… committed ambassador, you must stall them and prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” Von Melhausen asked grudgingly, almost hopelessly, as the enormity and probable veracity of Toryu’s revelation sank in.
“To fight them!” Toryu insisted. “Build more weapons, grow your armies, and somehow contact your natural allies! The ones who fight them already!”
“We still have the transmitter aboard here, though it is never used,” mused Becher. Then he shrugged at Miyata. “It is a dangerous world, and we never know what we might attract! We do listen…” He paused. “We might send them a message!”
“That you must not do!” Toryu warned. “Though he never told the Grik, my former commander, Captain Kurokawa-he styles himself General of the Sea now-has retained communication devices. He will probably hear any message you send, and warn his masters!”
“Then how can we contact these natural allies you speak of?” Nig-Taak asked, frustrated.
Toryu looked at him. “Your Highness, you must go and meet them.”
“How?” Doocy demanded. “As we’ve told you, no sailing vessel nor the few seagoing steamers we have can round the cape. They are just too small to survive those seas!”
Toryu gazed almost helplessly around. There was only one answer, and it was obvious to him.
“What?” challenged Von Melhausen. “You cannot mean…! But Amerika ’s hull has grown as thin as an egg! I could knock a hole in it with a hammer in the shaft alleys!”
“But an egg is still very strong,” Kaiser Nig-Taak reminded quietly. “And I am sure you will avoid any hostile hammers.”
“It will take months to prepare,” Von Melhausen objected, his mind already shifting to embrace the inevitable. “Some repairs are essential. This ship has not been to sea for twenty years-and neither have I!”
“Then begin your repairs at once, mein Kap-i-taan,” Nig-Taak advised. “You do not have unlimited months. One or two, you may have, if God permits.”
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Iron Gray Sea d-7 Page 46
