“I do not know what you mean.”
“Nor do I expect you to know. But you will know. I’ll see to that.”
“Whether or not The Tree is sentient, it grows,” Ulysses said. “It will cover this land in about fifty years at its present rate of growth. And where will you Neshgai go then?”
“The Tree seems to be limited in its growth near the seacoast,” the Grand Vizier said. “Otherwise it would have covered us up long ago. It is growing northward and will eventually shadow all the land to the north. Except near the coast. It is not the growth of The Tree itself that we fear. We fear the peoples of The Tree. The Tree has been sending them against us, and it will not stop until it has exterminated us or forced us to go live with it.”
“You really believe that?” Ulysses said.
“I know that!”
“What about the Dhulhulikh?”
“I did not know, until you told me, that they lived in The Tree. They had always claimed they came from the north. If your story is true, then they are our enemy. They are, you might say, the eyes of The Tree. Just as the other peoples, the Vignoom and so forth, are the hands of The Tree.”
Ulysses said, “If The Tree is an entity with intelligence, then it should have a central brain. And this brain, once located, could be destroyed. If The Tree is just a mindless vegetable entity which the Dhulhulikh control, then the Dhulhulikh can be located and destroyed.”
Shegnif pondered this for a few minutes. Ulysses watched him over the top of his tall glass and took a sip of the strong stuff. How strange, he thought, to be sitting in a Brobdingnagian chair and talking to a being descended from elephants, talking about little winged men and a plant that might have a brain or many brains.
Shegnif curled his trunk up and back and rubbed his forehead with its double-tendriled tip. He said, “How would killing the central brain of The Tree or killing all the Dhulhulikh stop The Tree from growing?”
“If you kill the brain of an animal, you kill the entire animal,” Ulysses said. “This may hold true for a complex vegetable entity, in which case The Tree will die. And the Neshgai will have enough firewood to last them a thousand years,” he added.
Shegnif did not smile. Perhaps the Neshgai sense of humor was not that of humans.
“If the brain is dead but The Tree still lives, The Tree is at least not organizing its people to attack you. They are primitives, relatively few in number, who would be warring against each other if The Tree, or the batpeople, did not prevent it.
“If The Tree is only a means for the Dhulhulikh to control this land, then killing the Dhulhulikh will disorganize the other peoples who live on it. And then we may attack the problem of killing The Tree itself. I would suggest poisoning it.”
“That would take much poison,” Shegnif said.
“I have much knowledge of poisons.”
Shegnif ridged his skin where his eyebrows would have been if he had them. “Indeed? Well, poisons aside, how could you possibly locate the Dhulhulikh? Or attack them? They have all the advantages.”
Ulysses told him how he thought it could be done. He talked for more than an hour. Shegnif finally said that he had heard enough. He would have rejected his ideas at once if anyone else had submitted them. But Ulysses had said that the devices he would build had once been commonplace, and he saw no reason to doubt him. He would have to think about the proposal.
Slightly tipsy, Ulysses left the Grand Vizier. He was optimistic, but he also knew that Shegnif would be talking again to the bat-men, and there was no telling how they might influence him.
The officer who conducted him led him to a suite of rooms instead of the barracks. Ulysses asked him why he was separated from his people.
“I do not know,” the officer said. “I have my orders, and they are to house you here.”
“I would prefer to be with my people.”
“No doubt,” the officer said, looking down at him along his rigid trunk, extended at a forty-five-degree angle to the plane of his face. “But my orders say otherwise. However, I will convey your request to my superiors.”
The suite had been constructed for Neshgai, not for humans. The furniture was enormous and, for him, inconvenient. However, he would not be alone. He had two human women as his attendants.
“I do not need these slaves,” Ulysses said. “I can take care of myself.”
“No doubt,” the officer said. “I will pass on your request to be alone.”
And that will be the end of that, Ulysses thought. The slaves are provided for more than my comfort. They are also spies.
The Neshgai stopped at the door, his hand on the knob, and said, “If you need anything that the women can’t provide, speak into that box on the table. The guards outside will answer.”
He opened the door, saluted by touching his right index finger to the tip of his upraised proboscis, and closed the door. The bolt shot home loudly.
Ulysses asked the two women for their names. One was Lusha; the other, Thebi. Both were young and attractive, if he overlooked the half-baldness and the too-prominent chins. Lusha was thin and small-breasted but graceful and swaying-hipped. Thebi was full-breasted, just on the verge of being fat. Her eyes were a bright green and she smiled a lot. She reminded him very much of his wife. It was possible, he told himself, that she might even be descended from his wife, and, of course, from him, since he had three children. But the resemblance to Clara could only be coincidental, because she would not be carrying any genes from ancestors that remote.
Lusha and Thebi had thick, dark, almost kinky hair which started halfway on top of their heads. It fell down to their waists and was decorated with little wooden figurines, rings and several tiny brightly colored ribbons. They wore earrings, their everted lips were rouged and their eyes ringed with a bluish kohl. They wore strings of colored stones around their necks, and their stomachs bore painted symbols. These, they explained, were the marks of their owner, Shegnif.
Their kilts were scarlet with green pentangles. A thin black stripe ran down both sides of their legs and ended in circles around the anklebones. Their sandals were painted golden.
They led him to the bathroom, where it was necessary for all three to climb up a portable wooden staircase provided by the majordomo. He sat down in the washbasin which the Neshgai used to wash their hands, and the two women stood on the edge of the basin and gave him a bath.
Later, Thebi ordered food and the dark liquor—amusa in the Ayrata tongue—brought in. He climbed into bed on the portable staircase, and he slept at the top of the bed while they curled together on the floor on a blanket.
In the morning, after breakfast, he opened the box on the table and inspected it. It contained hard vegetable plates that looked like printed circuit boards, but the rest of the equipment was solid-state, though nonmetallic. It seemed to be living, and it fed from a vegetable case with three connections. This might be a vegetable fuel cell. There were no controls. Apparently the organism contained some biological mechanism which operated automatically as receiver or transmitter, probably in response to spoken commands.
He again questioned the two women after his examination of the transceiver. They were undoubtedly spies, but he could also gain information from them. They answered him readily enough. Yes, they were slaves and the descendants of a long line of slavery. Yes, they knew about the capture of the Vroomaw. Or some of the Vroomaw, that is. Part of them had surrendered without a fight because of the attractive offers the Neshgai had made. The others had been forced to surrender after an overwhelming force of Neshgai had invaded. The Vroomaw had then been transported, or marched, to the Neshgai borders where they were stationed as garrison troops with their families. They would protect the Neshgai from the invasions from The Tree. They were freemen but restricted to certain areas. They had little contact with the slaves. Thebi did not say so specifically, but she conveyed the idea that there was more communication between the slaves and the border troops than the Neshgai knew about.
br /> Thebi was not as frank about the mental state of the slaves. At least, Ulysses got the idea that she was being far from honest. This might be because she was afraid that he would report to the masters or, perhaps, the suite might be bugged. He had searched for listening devices and found none, but his unfamiliarity with the living instruments made it possible for him to look at one and not recognize it as such.
Also, Thebi might not be aware of the general state of contentment, or lack thereof, among the slaves. She might be too isolated from those outside the palace. This, however, did not seem likely, since she seemed to know much about what was happening on the border, although she could have picked this up from listening to the Neshgai.
He would have to find out for himself how happy the slaves were. Not that he had any plans for rousing them to a revolt or joining any underground that might exist. He did not believe in slavery, but he was also not going to upset a status quo without good reason. His primary aim, now that he had found human beings, was to fight The Tree.
There was also the problem of finding a suitable permanent mate, one who could father his children and be an enjoyable companion. The genetic constitution of the humans was somewhat different from his, but he hoped that it was not so different that they were a separate species. Even if he did have children by one of them, he would not know whether or not his offspring were mules until they grew up.
In the middle of the morning, he was summoned to Shegnif’s office. The Grand Vizier did not waste any time on greetings.
“The two Dhulhulikh have escaped. Like birds, they have flown the coop!”
“They must have decided that you would accept my story,” Ulysses said. “They knew that the truth would out.” He did not really believe this, but he thought that he would impress Shegnif with it.
“The officer in charge of them opened the door to enter their room, and they flew through the doorway before he could try to grab them. They are much quicker than we. They flew on down the hall, which was wide enough for their wings. They were lucky that the hall was empty, and they went on through a window, which, unfortunately, was not barred. And now I must explain to the shauzgrooz the implications of this escape.”
The shauzgrooz meant the ruler, king, sultan or chief potentate. Literally, it meant The Longest Nose. The present shauzgrooz was Zhigbruwzh IV, and he was two years short of being an adult. Shegnif was, in effect, the ruler, though he could be ousted any time Zhigbruwzh wished to get rid of him. The juvenile was, however, very fond of Shegnif. And he had another reason for not wishing to force the Grand Vizier out. According to Thebi, there had been palace revolutions where the viziers had killed off the ruling family and initiated their own dynasty. Not many of these occurred, since the Neshgai seemed to be more stable and less aggressive than humans. But enough had happened for any ruler to think twice before dismissing his vizier. Especially since Shegnif’s nephew was general of the army and also owned many farms, slaves and a number of merchant ships.
“The implications of this escape,” Ulysses said, “are that the Dhulhulikh know what I want to do. And they will take it for granted that you will accept my ideas. Which means that they will be attacking before we can put these plans into effect. They will attack whether or not you initiate my proposals, since they will have to assume you are doing so. And the only way to combat this inevitable attack is to accept my ideas.”
“Don’t be so sure,” the Neshgai said. “You may think you’ve got my nose caught in a crack, but I might decide otherwise. We are an ancient people and the only people with an advanced science and technology. We don’t have to rely on a short-nosed stuntling to defeat our enemies.”
Ulysses did not interrupt. Shegnif was upset, and also probably scared, by the escape of the two batpeople and its consequences. He knew very well that he needed what Ulysses could give him, but he had to talk big to bolster his own courage and to heal the wound given to the image of the Neshgai as all-powerful. He could talk and brag all he wanted, and then he and Ulysses could discuss what they would do. This was what happened after fifteen minutes when Shegnif finally ran out of breath and images.
There was a long silence. Then Shegnif smiled, lifting up his trunk so Ulysses could get the full benefit of the smile, and he said, “However, it won’t hurt to talk about what you could contribute. After all, there is such a thing as being realistic. And you do come from a people far more ancient than the Neshgai, though I wouldn’t want you to be saying so to our slaves. Or to any Neshgai, for that matter.”
It became evident that Shegnif had been reluctant to make gunpowder because he did not want the humans, slaves or freemen, to know about it.
This meant that the slaves were not happy and had, perhaps, revolted in the past. On the other hand, it could be that they were content enough, but Shegnif knew enough about human nature to know that they would try to get the upper hand if the means were available. It did not matter that they might have few grounds for reasonable complaints.
Ulysses discussed his ideas for the control of the gunpowder. Shegnif approved of secret factories, where only Neshgai would manufacture the powder. Ulysses went along with this because it was vitally necessary to get the powder as soon as possible. Also, the so-called secret would not be kept. The Neshgai powder-makers were bound to do some talking, which the sensitive ears of the slaves would pick up. Or, if this did not happen, Ulysses could spread the word easily. All the humans had to know was that charcoal, sulphur and potassium or sodium nitrate was mixed in certain proportions. And once the “secret” was out, it would never be forgotten. Never? That was the incorrect word. A man who had survived ten million years should not be careless with that concept. It would be a long time, relatively speaking, before the humans would forget.
Ulysses then explained how blimps could be built. This required far more technology and materials than gunpowder. Shegnif frowned and said that he would relax some restrictions. But for Ulysses’ own safety, and for reasons of state, he could not be allowed to go everywhere he pleased.
It became evident that Shegnif had not understood, or did not wish to understand, Ulysses’ basic idea. Shegnif wanted to use the air fleet against the Vignoom first. In fact, he would like to use the fleet only on the perimeter of The Tree. Thus, the fleet would not be subject to attack from a great number of batpeople, and it could control the buildup of the border enemies.
Ulysses was exasperated by this shortsightedness and timidity. However, the Neshgai were not the only people to suffer from lack of vision, he reminded himself. What he must do now was to get his weapons, aircraft and personnel ready and then worry about their ultimate uses.
Before the conference was finished, they ran into another obstacle. Shegnif did not like the idea that most members of the air force would be humans. He wanted many more Neshgai aboard the blimps.
“But it’s a matter of weight,” Ulysses said. “For every Neshgai on a craft, you have so much less fuel and bombs. You cut down on the cruising range and the firepower you can deliver.”
“That won’t matter if the blimps operate near the edge of The Tree. They’ll be close to the bases, and they can make more flights to compensate. There’s no problem there.”
When Ulysses saw Awina the next day, he felt guilty—and also happy. There was no reason why he had to feel guilty. After all, Lusha and Thebi were humans, not furry, cat-eyed, carnivorous-toothed, tailed, crooked-legged creatures. He was free to do as he pleased, and he was becoming very fond of Thebi.
Nevertheless, Awina made him flush with guilt. A moment later, while talking to her, he felt a joy that made his heart beat faster and his breast ache.
It was not what the humans of his time thought of as falling in love. It was not love with any idea of physical mating with her, of course. But he had grown so used to her, so delighted in her companionship, her way of talking and attending to him, that he loved her. Loved her as a sister, he could truthfully say. Well, not exactly a sister. There was more to it t
han that. Actually, his feeling for her was indefinable as yet. Or, perhaps, he told himself in a flash of frankness, the feeling was better left undefined.
Definitions aside, she made him happier than anybody else he had met since he had awakened. Maybe even before he had awakened.
There was no doubt about her feelings. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the two women, and her black lips curled to reveal the sharp teeth. Her tail stiffened out. She slowed her walk, and then she looked at him. She smiled, but she could not keep smiling. And when she got close to him he could read the expression beneath that black mask of velvet fur. She was very angry.
He could understand her reaction, but he did not intend to put up with it for long. She would have to take a realistic attitude. If she did not, she would have to go. He did not want this to happen. He would feel sorrow if he had to send her away. It would be a deep sorrow, but he could endure it, and the sorrow would fade away. More than anyone else, he should know what the passage of time could do.
This did not help him at all.
Awina did not try to conceal her intentions, though she did dampen the tendency to violence that she must have been feeling.
“It is good to be back at your side, my Lord. You will have your handmaid, a free person and a worshiper, at your side.”
She spoke in Ayrata, doubtless to make sure that the two women understood.
“It is good to have you back with me,” he replied gravely.
He winced at the thought of her hurt when he would tell her that she would be sleeping in a separate room from now on. He made a lousy god. A god should be arrogant, above consideration of mere mortals’ feelings.
Knowing that he was being a coward, and hating himself for it, he put off telling her. To dull the reproach, he rationalized that he did have more important matters to attend to just now. But he realized that he was only lying to himself.
She did go with him to the conference and the two women were left behind. She was intelligent, and she could later explain to his people what was going on. They would be restless and resentful for some time because there was no place for them in his plans. They did not have the knowledge and skills needed for the next phase in the war against The Tree and its servants. But he would tell them that and also explain that the time would come when they would be very much needed. Once the attack was launched on the Dhulhulikh, the three feline groups would be much more valuable in The Tree than the pachyderms or the humans. They were more agile and more familiar with The Tree.