The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  “There’s a forest up ahead a few miles,” he informed us. “I’m going to try to land there. Maybe we can escape in the trees.”

  “Isn’t there a danger we’ll hit one of them?” Sanja asked urgently.

  “If we do, it’ll be a faster end than anything the inlama has planned for us!” He threw the ship to one side again. “But we’ll have to stay ahead of those fighters or we won’t get away!”

  At that moment, the proximity alarms squealed, then screamed. Gaz Bronn slapped at his controls but the alarms only continued.

  “What is it?” I cast about to see, but our view was limited.

  “It sounds like the entire klurath navy is after us!” Sanja yelled over the screeching.

  Gaz Bronn managed to get our nose up. “Look!”

  He could have saved his breath. We could all see it.

  Our field of view was filled almost entirely by a floating latticework city. Dozens of translucent tubes formed a spherical pattern, criss-crossed with dozens more until they resembled an enormous globular snowflake. Emerald green light flared at intervals along the outside tubes, and something about it gave me pause. The entire structure dwarfed our craft; it would dwarf The Dark Lady. And it was most emphatically approaching us on an intercept course.

  “Foreign ships! Cease firing and identify yourselves! I repeat, identify yourselves! Failure to comply will result in hostile action!”

  The telepathic announcement buffeted us almost as much as the kluraths’ ray-weapons. Before Gaz Bronn could respond, I placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Let me answer. Those are Nuum. If they knew a klurath was piloting this ship they might start shooting.” He palmed a control and nodded.

  “This is the lead ship,” I announced. “We are unarmed. Do not attack. I repeat, we are unarmed.”

  “Identify yourselves.”

  “I am Keryl Clee, consort to Lady Maire Por Foret, co-regent of Dure. Our ship has been damaged by enemy fire. We request assistance.”

  There was no response. We waited in silence, our lives balanced between the enormous Nuum vessel and our pursuers. At any moment, one or both could decide to damn the consequences and strike us down.

  “My people are leaving,” Gaz Bronn murmured. “What are your people waiting for? They know who you are.”

  I sighed. “I’m afraid, my friend, that it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  And true to my prediction, when we were finally allowed to dock with the Nuum, we were immediately boarded, bound, and placed under arrest.

  “‘A little complicated,’ you said. Your gift for understatement is considerable.”

  Even with three of us, our cell was hardly cramped, but then, it would hardly be considered a cell. The captain had ordered a bunkroom cleared of all personal belongings and for us to be shut inside. He made a point of mentioning that six armed guards would stand outside.

  “And why all the armed guards?” Gaz Bronn continued. “Haven’t they ever seen a klurath before?”

  “Hardly,” I said. I am not given to pacing, but I am also not prone to inaction when matters urgently need my attention. Even while I was acting as Gaz Bronn’s bodyguard, I had told myself I was biding my time, gathering intelligence. Now, there was nothing. I could not even speak to the Librarian, as everything I owned but my clothes had been confiscated. “There are lizard-men on the surface, although as far as I know they do not call themselves klurath. The guards are for me.”

  Sanja raised her eyebrows. “Really? Keryl, I don’t have any doubts that you can be a dangerous man, but six? I think it more likely it’s because there are three of us. Or else they know a Zilbiri when they see one.”

  I thumped down on a bunk. “Gaz Bronn is ignorant, of course, but how much do you know about the Nuum, Sanja?”

  She looked off into space for a few moments. “I know they run everything, but for the most part they leave us alone. We never had anything we wanted, as far as I could tell. Until those two came looking for you, I don’t think I’d ever seen one up close before.” She paused before saying, “Oh, and they fly really big ships.” She spread her hands in explanation.

  “What do you know about the datasphere?”

  “I know we’re not allowed to use it…”

  “What’s the datasphere?” Gaz Bronn interrupted.

  “It is the reason we have been arrested. The datasphere is the Nuum planetary database. They access it telepathically, and it is restricted to their use. It contains every bit of data the Nuum possess, and profiles of every single Nuum and Thoran in the world.”

  Gaz Bronn took a moment to digest this. “Then I’m not in it.”

  “No,” I admitted, “you are not. And when they realize that, they are going to want to know why. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, they have been preoccupied with something else. You see, I am not in it, either.”

  “How is that possible?” he asked.

  “I am what the Nuum call a ‘ghost.’ Never mind how or why. The important thing to remember is that they are enormously frightened of ghosts. They have been part of their mythology for years, but until twenty years ago, they were only a rumor. Then I showed up. They were convinced I was an assassin—and I have to admit it did not help my reputation when I showed up in the Great Hall in Dure and tried to arrest one of their lords.”

  “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I can imagine the scene.”

  “Right afterward, however, I disappeared. Not by choice, but I have been gone for nearly twenty years. Now here I am, and my sudden return has got to have them jumping like men with matches between their toes.”

  “But what about Maire?” Sanja asked. “They must know you married her; you said so. That’s got to count for something.”

  I chewed my lip. “Right now, all it counts for is that I am here, and she is missing.”

  The weight of this realization pressed silence down upon us all.

  It was only a matter of time, of course, before we were brought before the captain. Captain Lobok was classic Nuum, ramrod straight, dark-haired and olive-skinned, burly for his kind with a slightly superior demeanor which I deflated in some small measure by being six inches taller than he was. Although Nuum ran taller than Thorans, I outbulked nearly every Nuum I had ever met. He held the power here, though, and he knew it.

  “Where is the Lady Maire?”

  “She is being held prisoner by a race of lizard-men living in a huge cavern under a dead city.” To me it sounded reasonable, but Captain Lobok had not my breadth of experience.

  “Where did you get the ship we found you in?”

  “In the cavern where Lady Maire—my wife—is being held prisoner.”

  “Who are you, really?” The good captain seemed unable to follow a conversation. He probably had a squad of expert telepaths in the next room waiting for a chance to push past my mental shields while I was distracted. If he thought he was going to goad me into some harmful declaration by keeping me off-guard throughout this interrogation, he was in for a surprise.

  “My name is Keryl Clee. My wife is Lady Maire Por Foret, heir to the throne of Dure. She is being held captive by the lizard-men who call themselves klurath in the city of Jhal, which is located underground. If you disbelieve me, ask Gaz Bronn. He lives there.”

  The captain was seated and I was standing, as befits a prisoner. He stared at me for a few seconds, and I received the faint but definite impression that despite himself, he was beginning to believe me. He placed his feet squarely on the floor as though about to rise, then seemed to think better of it: his usual bullying tactics would hardly work on someone so much bigger than himself.

  “Very well, Keryl Clee, let’s put all of our stacks up front. You’re a ghost. You don’t even appear in the datasphere until twenty years ago, and then there’s so much that I don’t think half of it is real. Then you disappear, and you don’t show up again until a few weeks ago as Lady Maire’s husband. Then you and she go o
ff, and you disappear again—and so does she.

  “Apparently no one cares what happens to you, but a lot of people care what happens to her, which is why I’m out here surveying a hundred thousand square miles of nothing in one of the only three warcruisers Crystalle has, because the last time anyone heard from her, she was in our city. Now Dure is up in arms, and the Council is up in arms, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s missing, or that you’re here. My orders are to return you to Crystalle, and then I’m done with you. If you want to spend your time wasting my time with stories about lizard-men who’ve managed to build a city underground and learn to fly airships, that’s your business. I don’t know what you’ve been up to, or what you’ve done with Lady Maire, or who was in those ships we chased off—and if you don’t want to tell me, you can go back to your room.”

  “I am telling you! That ship! We were being chased! Someone was shooting at us! And have you ever seen that kind of technology? You must have been studying our ship… That is not Nuum technology.”

  Captain Lobok was already making a show of manipulating the screens on his desk. “There are a lot of empty spaces out here, a lot going on that we don’t know about. I’ll give you this much: my engineers haven’t ever seen a ship like that before. And as soon as we figure out where it came from, we’ll be back with all three of our warcruisers, and every other ship the Council can send us, and we’ll melt whoever we find.” He looked up at me. “If they’re friends of yours, tell me now and maybe we can work something out.”

  I exhaled slowly. I had seen how the Nuum responded to threats to their authority; I had been one of those threats. Even now, after twenty years, they treated me like a war criminal. I had no love for the klurath, but if the Nuum found the crevice that lead to Jhal, would they hesitate to bring the entire cavern down on everyone’s head—including Maire’s?

  “No,” I said aloud. “I know nothing about them.”

  Captain Lobok needed no telepathy to see he would get nothing more from me. I was lead back to my cell.

  With no way of measuring time, I was surprised when our door was unlocked and we were fitted with electronic chains. Each of us was shackled hand and foot; the guards looked puzzled at Gaz Bronn’s tail, but the look they gave him, punctuated with hands firmly gripping rifle-sized blasters, made their message clear.

  We were taken to an antechamber adjoining an outside hatch. Captain Lobok awaited us.

  “You’re not longer my responsibility,” he announced without preamble, “but I wanted to be the one to tell you what was going to happen, since I had to break off my mission to bring you back here.” He pointed at Gaz Bronn. “Lizard-man, I don’t know how you’re mixed up in this, and nobody seems to care. So I’m dropping you off right here in Crystalle. You can go anywhere you want, but I’d advise you just to go.” Then he pointed at me. “You are being called before the Council. It’s coming here to convene a special session just to figure out what to do with you.” He smiled and shook his head, plainly pleased to be rid of me.

  A trickle of worry sidled through my brain. “What about her?” I asked, indicating Sanja.

  “Her?” Captain Lobok paused, as though the fate of a lowly Thoran really meant so little that it had slipped his mind. “Oh, yes. There’s a warrant out for her arrest for assaulting two Nuum officers. As soon as they take her groundside she’ll be shot.”

  Chapter 31

  Trial

  The three of us instinctively lunged at our bonds, but we were all at once brought up short. Captain Lobok regarded us with a mild curiosity, then turned to one of his officers and said:

  “I will be very glad to get rid of them. Proceed, lieutenant.” And he turned on his heel, forgetting us as he walked away.

  My mind was racing, but some small part noticed that Gaz Bronn’s tail was quivering, its tip twitching. I had no idea how his reptilian brain might work in this crisis, but I did know that if he evinced the slightest sign of being a threat, Lobok’s men would shoot him and Sanja down in an instant, and perhaps me as well.

  “Lobok!” I called at the retreating captain.

  Something in my shout made him halt and half-turn toward me. He lifted his eyebrows in query, as if actually answering me would be too much trouble.

  “Sanja is a witness in my trial! I have the right to present her at my trial!”

  He frowned. “Which one is Sanja?”

  I jerked my head in Sanja’s direction. “Her. I need her at my trial as a witness. I was the one who attacked the two officers, not she.”

  His lips twisted in distaste. “What difference would that make? They’re not prosecuting you for assault, they’re prosecuting you for insurrection and treason. And that’s assuming they would allow a Thoran to testify at all. Besides, it has nothing to do with me. Take it up with the Crystalle constabulary.” He smirked. “But I’d advise you to take it up with them quickly.”

  “Captain,” I said in a tone more confident than I felt, “my wife is still alive.”

  “So you say…”

  “Yes. And whether you believe me or not, she is. And I intend to rescue her. Sanja is my wife’s friend. When she finds out you allowed her to be executed, you are going to have the co-regent of Dure asking you questions you really do not want to answer.”

  Life on this Earth followed a very strict order of precedence: Nuum, Thorans and various alien species, then “lower” forms such as lizard-men and other mutated animals. But there are levels in every society, and levels between those levels. The Nuum were no exception; indeed they were perhaps the most stratified of all. Maire’s father had been head of a large city-state and a member of the Council of Nobles. She would have succeeded to his seat had events—which is to say I—not interfered. Regardless of having abandoned her regency, she was a woman of high standing.

  Lobok may have been no more than a naval officer in a city thousands of miles from Dure, but Nuum kept a jealous watch on events elsewhere through the datasphere, and I did not doubt he was well aware of Maire’s influence. Had I harbored any such doubts, his hesitation would have quelled them.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could see his mind better than his knew, and he was wavering. I mentally blew on my dice and took my last throw.

  “Captain…it has nothing to do with you.”

  Lobok nodded slowly. “As you say. Lieutenant! Escort the prisoners off my ship. Instruct the authorities below that the Thoran has information for the Council. And while you’re at it, send that one with them.” Waving a hand toward Gaz Bronn, he left us without a backward glance.

  Had Captain Lobok the pleasure of seeing for himself the accommodations in which my companions and I were summarily dumped, he might have regretted his allowing me to manipulate his decisions by using Maire’s name as leverage. As far as the constabulary of Crystalle was concerned, I was a criminal and treated as one.

  For some deep-seated psychological reason that escaped me, the Nuum preferred to keep their prisoners underground in what resembled nothing so much as a medieval dungeon. They must have believed that it had a deleterious effect on a prisoner’s mental state, perhaps because they themselves strove to set themselves up in high towers and open airships such as The Dark Lady—which, until I came along, had featured slave quarters. Our new room did appear to have a depressing effect on Sanja, used to living in the vast expanses of her desert home, but as far as I was concerned, it was no worse than any other jail I had visited, and Gaz Bronn, for all the klurath rhetoric about returning to their rightful place on the surface, seemed rather pleased by being incarcerated in what to him seemed just like home.

  Notwithstanding his ease with his surroundings, our outlook was quite depressing, and not simply because Sanja was upset about being underground again so soon after gaining her freedom from Jhal.

  “I’ve hardly seen the sky since we left the caves,” she complained. “And even then people were shooting at us.” She kicked a wall, which obligingly gave way so th
at she could not hurt herself, and emitted a gargling howl of frustration. She kicked the wall again.

  Somewhat to my surprise, Gaz Bronn asked her to stop before I could do so.

  “What’s your problem?” she snapped. “As far as I can tell, you’re the only one here they’re not planning to shoot.”

  “I am the one whose people were crushed under a cave-in,” he shot back. “I was the one betrayed by my friend, chased from my home, and locked in here with no way to get back to see if any of my family are still alive. I’m the one whose people are going to war because I wasn’t able to stop it! I haven’t been on the surface very long, but I’ve already seen that my people aren’t treated any better than they were three thousand years ago. You two are my only chance of returning, and if you die, there’s nothing I can do. That’s my problem.”

  Sanja stopped, her foot poised in mid-air for another futile assault on the wall.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. We’re all in trouble.” She concentrated for a moment, and the wall obliged her by extruded a long bench as though it had taken no offense at her ill-treatment. She sat, defeat written all over her face for the first time since I had met her. “So what do we do now?”

  I stretched and paced the length of our cell to cover the fact that I had no ideas.

  “My father used to say that when you are in a tough spot the best way to start is to list all of positive and negative aspects of your situation. Once you can see your options in front of you, you can choose from the list.” Neither of them spoke, for it would only have been to state the obvious: Our situation leaned very heavily toward the negative. “We can leave out our liabilities for the moment. There is very little we can do about them. What assets do we have?”

  “The Nuum don’t know me. If I can get my hands on a knife, I could kill most of the Council before they knew what hit them…”

  I closed my eyes. One step at a time. “I doubt they will let you near a knife, and murdering the Council will not persuade them to our cause.”