She looked up and found Jolle’s dark eyes gazing back. There was something unnatural about this one’s accent. Her next question was not directly related to the events of the day. “Have you any idea where the Rebels got their art’ry in the first place?”
Jolle shrugged. “No. Though he raided the ammunition stockpiles Your Majesty keeps in the provinces. I’ve heard the man is a foreigner.”
“Yes, I’ve, uh, suspected that. But where did you Loyalists get your artillery?”
“Well, the ammunition as Profirio did.”
“And the gun tubes?”
Jolle spread his hands in self-deprecation. “I am a chemist. I beg forgiveness if it displeases the crown, but I designed most of the artillery you see among the Sfierranyii. Without it we would have had no chance to protect Your Majesty’s interests.”
In that instant the silence seemed complete. One dark face filled the sensory universe; time itself slowed as she considered one fantastic possibility and then another.
Svir came awake with the lightlreaded alertness that follows a short, uneasy sleep. He swallowed painfully, trying to remove a nauseous taste from his mouth. “What do you want?” he heard Cor say to the figure silhouetted in the entrance to the tent.
The shape whispered, “Ma’am, I have a message for you.” The courier reached forward, fumbled a parchment into Cor’s hand. Svir hunted about in his pack and came up with matches. The light was almost painfully bright.
The courier blew the flame out. “We’re under light security, sir. You can’t do that,” he said.
Svir’s voice was as close to a scream as a whisper can be. “How the hell can we read this without a light!”
“I didn’t make the rules, you—”
Svir was speechless for a second. Then he remembered that he was a person of authority and pulled rank. The messenger backed out of the tent, cowed. Svir carefully unsealed the flap, then lit another match, shielding it with his hand. The message was cryptic and simple: “Azimuth 30°. Do it now—T.”
“Oh, boy. Tatja wants us to go ahead with the Plan.” He began assembling the tripod and signaling equipment. Meanwhile Cor woke Ancho and fed him. The dorfox was not lively; they could expect trouble with him. Finally Cor convinced the little animal that there was a job to do. Ancho clung to her neck as she crawled out of the tent. Svir followed, dragging tripod and signaler.
For the moment, every sensation seemed intense. But his balance was poor and he still had that awful taste in his mouth. This was actually the middle of the night wake period, as practiced in Bayfast. In fact, for him it was nearly lunchtime. The long daylight march and the different sleeping customs of the Upcoast people had inverted his normal schedule. He felt alert only because his natural time sense told him he should be.
The trees were close set. Insect sounds were loud and there were no signs of human activity. Svir peered up through the branches at the stars. He couldn’t see enough sky to recognize constellations. He and Cor moved cautiously along an indistinct path. The air was cool, but his uniform was still damp with sweat. He couldn’t remember having felt more dirty and chilled.
He guided Cor—northward? Upslope, anyway.
There was a man-sized blotch about fifty feet away. He touched Cor’s shoulder, pointed the fellow out to her. He felt her nod. She reached to caress the dorfox. When she was satisfied that Ancho was alert and radiating, they resumed their walk. Svir breathed a nearly audible sigh of relief as they passed the sentry unchallenged. They were almost thirty yards past the hallucinated soldier when a low, determined voice spoke. “Halt. Who goes there?”
Svir froze. Damn. The first sentry was a decoy. They were lucky the second guy bothered to challenge them at all.
“I said, ‘Who goes there?’ Respond or I shoot.”
Svir gulped and said, “Erl Bonnip, trying to find the latrine.” As he spoke, Cor turned and walked toward the voice in the bush. Now that Ancho had noticed the other fellow, he was radiating I’m-not-here. Since the sentry was already alerted, the signal couldn’t cover Svir’s existence; he must stand exposed.
“Advance and be recognized.”
Svir moved cautiously toward the voice. At best he would be turned back—and that only if the sentry didn’t notice the tripod and signaler he was carrying … .
There was a dull thunk and a ruffled groan. Then Cor emerged from the thicket.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I didn’t hit him hard, but Ancho gave him a good dose.”
They continued along the trail. The night no longer seemed particularly tranquil. He knew this job was not the trivial errand Tatja had made it sound. If they weren’t shot by Sfierranyil or Crownesse sentries, there was always the possibility that Rebel infiltrators might get them. The ground sloped down now. Technically they were in the Picchiu River valley. A darkness at the bottom of the sky was the far side of the valley, seven miles away. Svir thought he could see the river itself, glinting here and there between trees. A fatbat cooed somewhere near. How many human eyes watched this scene?
The forest thinned, and they moved quietly into the open. Their first objective was to get far enough from the camp so its position wouldn’t be given away. He swore silently. If Tatja were sure of her theory, why bother? She’d gone over the plan in mind-numbing detail during the voyage from Bayfast. She thought an alien was marooned here, was using native materials and native armies to attain its incomprehensible goals. Now the presumed alien must be contracted, and since this was an operation at cross purposes with the crown’s official goal, he and Cor must do it on their own. They could get killed, all for an unsupported speculation.
He led Cor into a thicket; they settled down. He looked into the sky, found the Hourglass, and extended its base to intersect the long bar of the Northern Cross. Now that he had north fixed, he could find the azimuth in Tatja’s message: the azimuth of the Rebel camp.
As he set the tripod on the ground and screwed the signaler on it, Cor took out paper and pen, ready to record any answer. He pulled the starting strip and felt the box warm. He grasped the shutter trip and recalled the exact words Tatja wanted sent. The message was in Savoy Mercantile Code, the most common signaling code of Crownesse: AS THE ISLAND APE SAID TO THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR: MAY I AID YOU? Since island apes are brainless, only a very peculiar person would get the point.
He began tripping out the message. The lamp’s shutter flew open and shut with barely audible clicks. The air was clear, and the box was well shielded. He saw no sign of the beam he was casting across the valley. He had barely finished the third word when he saw a light flicker down by the river. He ignored it, concentrated on his own message. Behind him, Cor whispered the letters she was recording from the other signal lamp: “KZTPQ MPAPF RPTOZ DZRNR.”
He finished the message and folded the tripod. “Let’s go. I’ll bet you iron that was one of our own spies reporting that someone was signaling the enemy from here. If Profirio doesn’t land a shell on us, we’ll be shot by our own people.”
They scrambled out of the brush and trotted across open ground. Svir dropped the signaler; they were no longer redhanded. He guided Cor by the waist. She paid little attention to the ground, but kept her face turned toward the river valley. On her shoulder, Ancho made whimpering noises.
Cor stopped, and Svir followed her gaze. Across the valley, at the top of the far crest, a signal lamp winked on and off. Cor took her book out and recorded every letter. The message was short: just two words, and the first was nonsense. More military signals? He felt Cor shrug. “I think the friend yonder plays Tatja’s game; maybe she can translate.” They watched for nearly half a minute, but there was nothing more. Further up the hill they were stopped by a party of guards. Ancho was either asleep or afraid, because he didn’t radiate anything effective. Svir identified himself as the astronomer royal and demanded to be taken to the command area to report a “disgraceful breach of security.”
Fifteen minutes later they walked through the li
ght trap of the command tent. Though large and well appointed, the interior had a crudeness that labeled it provincial. A single oil lamp hung from the center pole. Svir and Cor walked past the officers and guards who sat bleary-eyed behind the queen. Tatja’s face was strangely slack. She glanced up and didn’t seem to recognize them. What had happened? Svir looked at the provincials. Nothing strange there. Apparently she had been talking to the young underofficer who faced her across the camp table.
Cor handed her the notebook. She stared at the message for a long moment: JOLLE JESTS. Her slack expression was replaced by a faint smile. She looked up at them, then at the fellow standing on the other side of the table. She spoke very softly. “We were wrong, Cor. There are two of them.”
Svir looked more carefully at the other man. There were enough bars on his sleeve to make him very high ranking. His chair was set ahead of the provincial generals. He returned Svir’s gaze with a puzzled frown. Then he smiled and leaned forward. His voice was low. “How many more are there like you three?”
Tatja replied just as softly, “How many more are there like you two?”
“Just we two. You see, I’m a gendarme, a policeman. The thing called Profirio is—a monster.”
SEVENTEEN
It was said Riverside Road in Picchiu Province passed through the most beautiful country in the world. Svir did not dispute the assertion. The road ran along the Picchiu River, straight through an open forest whose trees often extended their branches to form a roof across the road, a roof that scattered green and gold highlights on the pavement.
They were nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, and though the air was thin, it was wonderfully crisp, and dry. For the first time since they had left Bayfast, Svir felt really clean. That morning, he and Cor had taken a quick swim in the icy waters of the Picchiu. Even now, he could hear the river rolling by just a few feet away. That sound would come louder as they moved upstream, as the valley became a gorge and the riverbed steepened.
It was when the forest roof parted that things got really impressive. Still miles away, the main peaks of the Doomsday Range rose thousands of feet above the road. Except for a cloud band at the fourteen-thousand-foot level, every detail was visible. Much of the flanks were free of snow, and the bare bones of the young mountains stood black and gray and yellow and brown. Svir thought he could see every crystalline striation there. In the nearer distance, rugged hills ranged on either side of the river valley. Downstream those hills were gentle, covered by the same deciduous forest as the valley proper. Here they bore dark-needle looproot trees. And they were fast becoming too rugged for the looproot—great sections of bedrock were visible. The hillsides would soon become cliff faces.
But no matter how formidable the valley walls might seem, Svir knew there were paths there. And somewhere up there, the enemy’s infantry and supply trains made their slow, difficult way. By now those forces must be several miles behind the Crownesse-Sfierranyil army, since the Crown’s Men were using the wide, straight Riverside Road.
Through the trees bordering the road, Svir could see foot soldiers paralleling the cavalry and art‘ry. The Sfierranyil battle groups had been annexed to the crown’s, summing to nearly twenty-four thousand men and five hundred art’ry pieces. From their position in the second group, Svir and Cor couldn’t even see the head of the column—some thousand yards ahead. Before and behind them was the line of creaking supply and art’ry wagons, puffing skoats, and silent infantrymen. The line stretched nearly nine miles. It wasn’t the biggest army in the world, but the crown’s battle groups comprised the best men and equipment from the best military organization in the world.
And of all the people marching along this road, only four knew the real reason they were here. Last night he had witnessed the strangest revelation of his life.
Tatja had adjourned the conference in the tent. This was a relief to most of those present. They had been up all afternoon. Not even Haarm Wechsler had noticed that Tatja and Jolle stayed behind when the others left. Empty, the tent was like a cave. The flickering torch lighted four faces; everything beyond was darkness. Then Jolle revealed the secret behind all recorded history. Humans were not accidental castaways on Tu. The world was a breeding farm. Slaughtering operations would begin as soon as the creature called Profirio regained contact with his superiors.
There had been a long silence. Svir felt himself caught in a nightmare that would disappear if he could only show its implausibility. “For food?” he asked.
The other shook his head. Svir wondered if Jolle were his real name. Profirio was certainly an alias, since it had a distinctive Upcoast flavor. “Well, then what does he want to kill us for?”
Jolle spoke a single word. “Golems.”
Svir looked blank.
Jolle stared at them for a moment. Then he spoke to Tatja. “There’s really only one of you, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, and I’ve looked.”
“Tough,” Jolle commiserated. He waved at Cor and Svir, and Tatja replied, “Fingers.”
“Hmm.,” said Jolle, “perhaps I should have, too.”
“But surrogate pain. Is there?”
“No. Ten trillion. Human too.” He nodded. “You’re it and foxily burnt.”
Tatja smiled shyly.
Svir’s jaw dropped. What were they talking about? Occasionally Tatja would carelessly address him in this fashion, but his blank look had always forced her to be silent or to make sense. Now she had found someone on her own level, and there was no need for “redundancy.”
He was about to ask for a translation, when Jolle said, “Excuse me Minister Hedrigs, Miss Ascuasenya. If you’re going to be in on this, you should know what’s going on. I just assumed from the way you worked together that you … . Perhaps golem is not the right word, but what shall I say? Have you ever heard this term?” He made a meaningless sound. “No? Well, not much Anglic would survive their processing, especially a term without referent. So I’ll use ‘golem’ to mean thinking machine. If your technology were just fifty years more advanced, you would think you knew exactly what I mean … . As it is, I am constrained to the vocabulary of superstition. Perhaps that’s for the best. A word like ‘golem’ will never give you the false sense of understanding you might have if … The golems I refer to are much more like magic than any science you can imagine. Even you, Marget. Until you have training, I suggest you accept the magical connotation. Then you won’t be fooled by false analogies with the thinking machines that you are capable of inventing … .”
Jolle had little accent, and he ordered his words properly. Nevertheless his speech was strange. He spoke rapidly, running one sentence into another. If a sentence were especially long, his voice would drop and he would mumble the ending, as if the words were a redundant, painful ritual. His hands never stopped moving. The overall effect was impressive. Svir could imagine how the provincials had been overwhelmed by a man who spewed forth ideas faster than he could speak them.
Sometimes Tatja sounded like this, though she was perfectly capable of slow, natural exposition—after all, she had grown up here. Was Jolle’s manner an affectation, or was he unable to slow down? It had never occurred to Svir that it might be difficult to act stupid.
Jolle continued, “Through they are necessary to the function of society, golems are expensive to construct. There is, however, a cheap—and highly immoral—way of improvising golems. That method is to, hmm, destroy the souls of lesser creatures and so reduce them to golems. Profe—Profirio—is in the employ of an … organization that has spent two thousand years preparing this planet as a cheap golem-production plant. First they chose a resource-poor planet far from civilization. Then they seeded it with your ancestors, Minister Hedrigs, people they kidnapped from the backwaters of civilization. They wrecked your minds and bodies, dumped you here, and waited. My type lives a long time and can afford to be patient. Every so often, the organization sent a scout vehicle—crewed by the likes of Profirio—to analyze your p
opulation, technology.”
“Yes,” broke in Tatja. “Even without me, people would soon guess parts of this.”
“Really?”
“We observed one of your vehicles enter our system last year,” said Svir.
“You saw our drive stutter. You’re further along than they planned. But that was one of the reasons for these scouting missions. The want the planet’s population to reach a billion before they start harvesting; but just as important, they want you planet-bound—even an interplanetary flight technology would mean a drastic increase in the cost of operations. In one sense, their motivation is quite understandable: they want the maximum gain for the least effort.”
“What would then happen,” asked Cor, “if Profirio were successful?”
“Once he tells his superiors that you are ready for … harvest, they will set up a slaughterhouse on Thriy—Seraph you call it. One percent of your population will be spirited away every year. There is no escape from such abductions. It will all seem quite supernatural. Technological progress will stop; inventions will disappear, experiments explode. Other than that the organization will have no interest in what you do. As long as your population growth rate remains constant, the operation will show a profit.” He spread his hands in a gesture that seemed to put the prediction in the subjunctive.
“Their plans have come perilously close to success. But no matter how expensive artificial golems, and no matter how necessary golems are to our activities, only a small fraction of my kind are warped enough to buy ones produced by the slaughter of innocents. My friends and I have know for nearly a thousand years that Profirio’s organization was planning something like this, but we didn’t know where they were operating. I have spent four hundred years ingratiating myself to these criminal. Finally my efforts were rewarded. I was hired to accompany Profirio on the present survey of your world.