When one mystery is joined by another mystery in the same place and time, he told himself, the chance the two are connected rises considerable . . . .
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door to Pier’s office opening. He turned his head—he was wary of actually turning about in his chair and being discovered trying to find out who had entered—but the angle of the wall set up to make his alcove blocked his view of the door. He heard voices speaking in the Latin tongue of the Lords and a moment later his curiosity had satisfaction thrust upon it.
“Bart!”
It was Pier’s voice calling him. The Librarian, Bart had learned, was known for his polite and gentle treatment of his slaves; but there was in his voice now a distant, impersonal note that offset the use of Bart’s first name and in which Bart read a warning that now was not the time for him to betray any special relationship with the other.
He rose immediately and stepped into the room. Two other Lords were there, and Bart felt a sudden recognition on seeing them, though he could not remember where he might have seen them before. The two looked at him with a disquietingly penetrating interest, as if they, too, remembered him from some previous meeting.
“Bart,” said Pier again, as Bart made his appearance, “I won’t be needing you to carry me home this evening. You’re free until tomorrow, when I’ll want to see you at my home.”
“Yes, Lord,” said Bart.
The words he had heard were all too obviously a dismissal. He backed away, on his best slave manners, toward the door, which opened behind him to let him out and then closed once more automatically. He took two steps toward the front of the Library and the corridor beyond that would take him out into the public ways of the Inner City again—and stopped.
He had just remembered where he had seen the two before. They had been the two who had been with Pier in that moment of consciousness Bart remembered after his blacking out in the underground river and before he had waked in the Steed dormitory.
They had to be the Emperor and the Regent. He had no proof, but he was sure of that. The Three Who Command were now joined together in conference.
chapter
thirteen
HE WENT ON out of the Library so wound up in his thoughts he almost blundered into a Lord on foot, with a female Hybrid for companion, who were on their way in through the entrance, Bart woke in time and stepped aside. The near collision made him realize that in spite of his determination to remain cool-headed about all this, emotion had crept into the matter. In the office a moment past, he had not been able to avoid thinking of Pier as someone who was to be defended against the other two as attackers. The image of all three Lords was burned in his memory, now, as he went away down the stairs to the main level corridor.
There was a certain unconscious arrogance about all the Lordly class, even those as ordinarily gentle and considerate as Pier and Marta. It had been with something more than that, however, it seemed to him now, that those other two had glanced at Bart.
Both were considerably younger than Pier. Neither, thought Bart, was more than ten years older than himself. In fact their youthfulness, in contrast with the age of Pier, had been striking. These were men in the full vigor of their lives.
Also, they had something additional in common besides their age. They were dressed in the same style, though not in the same colors and fabrics, wearing jacket and skin-tight leg coverings which could have been either stockings or trousers, so that they looked like something out of a Renaissance painting. Though the colors of their clothes differed, all they wore was dark, and the fabrics were adorned and decorated with jewels to the point of ostentation. It seemed to Bart very nearly as if they had deliberately dressed so, to make Pier in his long, unadorned office robe seem drab and insignificant by comparison.
But when Bart had glanced from the newcomers to his Lord, he had seen a surprising thing. For Pier, standing behind his desk, had straightened up. His wisp of white beard barely brushed the high collar of his robe in front instead of having its hairs splayed out by the collar’s upper edge. Far from being dominated by comparison with the other two, Pier in the floor-length robe of earth-brown made the others seem gaudy and juvenile by comparison.
There was one thing more Bart had noticed, and which the shorter of the two incoming Lords had to a greater degree than any of their kind Bart had seen before. It was an attitude Bart recognized, for he had seen it often enough in the years when Louis Riel had been active and Bart’s father close to him.
It was the air of accustomed authority. An authority on the part of the shorter of the two newcomers that was arrogant to the point where it almost—but not quite—seemed ready to dare try commanding Pier. Aside from this, so strong was the similarity in appearance and attitude between the two entering that they could have seemed brothers; and yet, physically they were different enough.
The taller one did not radiate the impression of power that the shorter one had. Which was strange, for physically, the taller one had been impressive, as Lords went. Almost tall enough that, except for his clothing and his small chinbeard—in this place where beards were only allowed on the Lordly class—he could have been taken for a Hybrid. His hair was slightly curly and reddish-gold. Below it his face was handsome, in a fine-boned way, with a straight nose, blue eyes that were almost feverishly bright and two even rows of very white, regular teeth that attracted attention when he smiled.
The shorter and more impressive one was normal height for a Lord—several inches short of five feet, perhaps—but had disproportionately wide shoulders. Other than that, he was slim, almost to the point of being starved-looking, with straight black hair, black eyebrows, and a narrow face, the olive skin of which seemed stretched tight over the bones. He had not smiled at any time while Bart was watching’ him; and did not look as if he was likely to, often. His glance was as aware as the glance of a hunting cat.
The two had already come to a stop in the office when Bart had first seen them, so Bart did not know if they had walked side by side, or in file; although they were together in the room, the dark-haired one was a little in advance of the other. The position may have been as unconscious as the arrogance of the individual; but it was not accidental. This one was the leader, the superior of the two.
This, said Bart’s woods-born instinct, sniffing at the memory of the dark-haired man like a wild animal, was the one to fear. There was only one person he could be. The Emperor. The taller, curly-haired one with him would be the Regent. Bart felt the need to know more about both of them; and not only about them, but about their whole structure of authority.
Somehow, he told himself, he must find some channel of access to more information; not only about the Lords, but also about that room he had been stopped from entering, a short while ago. From what he had encountered so far, the slaves were all about as useless in this respect as Jon Swenson had been. Their stories were wild and the details of them did not confirm each other.
Obviously they were the result of hearsay repeated over and over and embroidered upon until it approached the level of legend.
It was not legend Bart wanted, but facts. Chandt probably could give these to him, but almost certainly would not. The only other possibility was Paolo.
Reaching the slave Recreation Center, Bart went ?n and began to search for his dormitory Leader. The last he had seen of the other, Paolo had been determined to do some serious drinking. The time that had gone by since then was too short for Paolo to have gotten drunk enough for bed, but perhaps long enough for the dormitory Leader to have become a little less cautious in how he answered Bart’s questions. Asking Paolo for the information Bart wanted was not an ideal situation; but there was no one else he could trust to any extent—not that he could trust him that much—and who also might know some of the answers he needed.
Paolo was no longer in the corner booth where Bart had left him with Emma and Lorena. He found the other finally in the innermost room of the Recreation Center.
It was a room constructed to look something like a frontier tavern with trestle tables and benches. Time and the custom of the world aboveground had evidently made it essentially an all-male enclave. Paolo was with half a dozen other men, all of them drunk enough so that their talk made little sense and they roared with laughter at simple-minded jokes they would have sneered at, sober.
Bart tapped Paolo on the shoulder, Paolo ignored the tap until Bart thumped his shoulder with enough force to have roused the other man’s anger if he had not been full of drink.
“Hey!” shouted Paolo, looking up to him. “It’s Bart! Sit down and have a drink, Bart! Hey, server—”
He threw a thick arm around Bart’s waist and pulled him to the edge of the round table around which the party was seated.
“Listen, all of you!” shouted Paolo, jerking Bart against his shoulder in a one-armed bear hug. “I want you all to meet Bart, here! He’s a cetriol, but I like him!”
The talk and laughter died for a moment around the table as all eyes there focused on Bart, then broke out again.
“Hey, cetriol!” called a young, white-blond-haired man at the table. The word, Bart knew—he had a small knowledge of Italian from his father and had also heard that particular word used in this manner by a fellow track-hand during a short period in which he had worked with a railway road gang—meant “cucumber” in English, and implied stupidity, among other things. Paolo, however, had used it jokingly, not the way this man was using it. “Buy us all a drink, cetriol!” It was a verbal sneer, since money was not used in the Inner World.
“Hey!”
Paolo leaned his weight forward on the table with his thick forearms among the glasses. The talk and laughter slowly died as the others stared at the sudden absence of humor from his face.
“I said I like him!” said Paolo slowly. “I like him better than I like anyone at this table.”
His gaze went around, deliberately to each one of them. One by one, they avoided his eye.
“I call my friend cetriol,” said Paolo, still in that slow, distinct voice. “That’s me. Don’t none of you call my friend cetriol.”
The silence around the table was absolute.
“Paolo,” said Bart, speaking quietly into the round ear beside him with the thick, stiff tiny spears of black hair sprouting here and there in it, “I need to talk to you by yourself, for a moment.”
“Sure. Let’s go.” Paolo stood up suddenly and drunkenly, blundering against the edge of the table. Glasses rocked and drink splashed out, here and there; but still none of the others moved or spoke. “I don’t like it so much around here, anymore.”
He let Bart lead him to a small, empty and isolated table across the room. The server Paolo had called had followed them over.
“I’ll have beer,” Bart told the white-aproned male slave, in his late sixties to judge from the lines in his cadaverous face. “Give Paolo whatever he’s drinking.”
“You better have something more than beer, you going to drink with me,” grunted Paolo.
The server had already gone off to fill Bart’s order. “Beer will do,” said Bart. “I have to wait on the Lord Librarian early tomorrow.”
Neither man said anything more until the aproned slave had brought their orders and left. Then Bart spoke again.
“Paolo, I need to know some tilings.”
“You want to know too much, that’s your trouble,” growled Paolo, slurping at his small glass. It was a loud slurp, but Bart noted the level of liquid in the glass had fallen only slightly when Paolo put it down again.
“Go on,” Paolo added, “you’re the one who’s talking.”
“I need to know how to get to people around here,” Bart said. “What I need right now is some Hybrid I can sit down and ask some questions of. Tell me, how do I get in touch with a Hybrid?” “Hybrid?”
Paolo stared at him.
“You’re crazy.” Paolo started to get up, then sank back on his seat again. “All right, maybe you’re not crazy, just ignorant. What do you want to talk to a Hybrid for?”
“Because maybe a Hybrid can tell me some things no slave can,” said Bart. “Somewhere in this Inner World there’s got to be a Hybrid who can tell me what I want to know. If the Hybrid you put me in touch with can’t answer me, maybe he can steer me to another Hybrid who can.”
Paolo nodded, sitting back in the booth.
“You’re ignorant, as I say,” he said. “Not crazy, then. Listen to me, Bart. I can’t put you in touch with a Hybrid like that. Nobody can.”
“After all the years you told me you’ve been here?” Bart said. “You seem to get in touch with anyone else you need to.” “There’s one thing I don’t need to be in touch with, and that’s any Hybrid,” said Paolo. “You got to understand, Bart. They’re just like Lords to you and me. What you’re asking is like asking me to find you a Lord you can sit down and talk to. Bart, no Hybrid’s going to sit and talk to a slave!”
“Maybe not where other people can see,” said Bart, “but there’s got to be—wait a minute. How about those Hybrids who take a fancy to some particular slave? There’s got to be talk going on between Hybrid and slave when they’re in bed together!” “Not anything important any of us’d hear tell about. Not the kind of getting answers you’ve got in mind. You want me to point you out some of the men or women Hybrids who’d like to take a ; Steed home with them? I can do it, if that’s the kind of thing you want.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” said Bart. “When I said I wanted to talk, I didn’t mean by being taken up as some kind of bedroom pet. You really mean to tell me that there’s not one Hybrid in the Inner World who’d be willing to talk one-on-one with a slave?”
“If there was, I’d have heard about it by now,” said Paolo. “This here’s a little place, when you get to know it. Nothing goes on everybody doesn’t get to know about, sooner or later. There’s no secrets here.”
He paused a split-second and focused on Bart again, more strongly. “And remember what I told you awhile ago—any slave wanting to ask questions will look suspicious. Slaves shouldn’t be asking about things.”
“That’s so?” said Bart. “Then maybe you can answer all my questions. To start off with, there’s a part of this Inner World that has the doors to it guarded by Steeds. What’s inside those doors?”
“How’d I know?” said Paolo. “Those are Lords’ secrets.”
“I was looking for my own Lord,” Bart went on, ignoring his answer, “when I came across one of those doors. The Steed guarding it wasn’t from our dorm. He said no slave could go in unless a Lord took the slave in. That’s got to mean some slaves have gone in there; and they’re got to’ve seen and know what’s there. So how is it you don’t know?”
“Did that Steed say anything to you about a slave ever coming back out?” retorted Paolo. “You’re right about one thing. If one ever did come out again, by now I’d know what he’d seen. All that means is that any slave that goes in there doesn’t come back— ever.”
Bart stared at the other.
“You don’t believe that!” he said.
“Sure, I believe it. You’re the one doesn’t,” said Paolo, “and you know why? Because you’re so new and ignorant down here, you still think things got to be like they were in the upper world. Well, what I got to tell you is, you’ll learn. You’ll learn the difference. We’re all dead down here to begin with. You think it matters to the Lords that they put one or a lot of us back where they got us from?”
“All right,” said Bart. Inwardly, he began to despair about learning what he needed from Paolo. “But I still think you know more about what’s in the room behind those doors than you’re telling me.”
He stared Paolo in the face.
“And you can’t change my mind on that,” he added.
Paolo’s face contorted. He jerked up one fist as if to slam it down on the tabletop between them. But the fist checked and wavered in midair and then sank quietly down to the wooden su
rface below.
“So you got to know what’s in the room behind those doors?” he said in a fierce, strained whisper, his face leaning close toward Bart’s. “You got to know, do you? All right, I’ll tell you what’s there—the Old Man himself.”
“Old man?” Bart found himself whispering in response.
“The Old Man himself, I tell you,” whispered Paolo. “Old al-Kebir himself, all his thousands of years old, showing the rest of them how to build the thing that’s going to destroy the upper, living world and everything on it! You never heard of anything like that, I suppose? You never heard talk of anything to kill the world and everyone on it, but us down here?”
“The slaves talk,” said Bart, “but they don’t make much sense. Al-Kebir, who’s he?”
“He was the one who brought them all here, thousands of years ago. Some king or other treated them all bad, and al-Kebir swore he’d smash the world, smash all the human people like you and me. He brought himself and the rest out of slavery, one by one. He started the Inner World; and he’s been all these years showing the Lords how to build the thing to destroy the whole Earth with. He and that thing, that’s what’s behind those guards and those doors; and keep your voice down. Because I already told you enough to get you killed.”
Bart stared at him.
“You can’t believe that, Paolo—about someone thousands of years old being still alive and telling people how to build something that can destroy the Earth!”
“I tell you it’s the truth!” whispered Paolo. “Is it any more for you to believe than your being raised from the dead to work down here?”
“I don’t believe I was raised from the dead,” said Bart.
Paolo sat staring at him for a long moment. Then he sighed heavily and straightened up, sitting back a table’s width across from Bart now. He spoke, no longer in whispers, but in a low voice.
“I might’ve known,” he said heavily. “Bart, I’ve done for you more than I ever done for anyone in my life. That’s because you’re a loner, like me. You’re my paisan. I never had one before, in all my life. But—I told you my mother was a witch—I can smell what you are. That’s all I ever had, being able to smell what’s in people. That and these—”
The Earth Lords Page 19