He lay back again.
He tried to think, but his mind would not track. It kept wandering off like the mind of someone just on the verge of sleep. And so, vaguely bemused at what had happened to him, but only vaguely, because the problem was too much for his mind to grapple with in its present state, he did indeed fall asleep.
He woke with a guilty start. But a look at the dormitory clock, large and round in the wall above the entrance door, showed that he had only been asleep two hours at most. Hastily, he got up, went to the latrine to splash cold water on his face, then hurried to the Library.
To his intense relief, no one seemed to have noticed that he had not been there earlier, and Pier was not using his office at the moment, so that Bart’s small alcove was doubly private. Seated in his chair, there, before his small desk surface, he tried to make sense out of what had happened to him earlier.
The question of what the Clinic visits were really intended to accomplish could wait for the moment. Bart’s guess was that they were in some way for the purpose of reinforcing the illusion that the slaves had died before being brought here and returned to life by the Lords. Perhaps also, the loyalty of the Steeds was reinforced at the same time, creating reasons in the false memories the Steed was given, so that he would feel that he had no choice but to live and die to protect the Lordly class—and in particular, its commanders.
But that was a question the answer to which he could track down later. The immediate mystery was why Bart’s name had not been on that list and why he had been let go without the treatment the others had been given.
He had an odd feeling in the back of his head that he had been through something like this before. The memory would not crystallize in his mind, however. All that came back clearly when he tried to remember such a thing was the brief moment in which he had awakened to see Pier and the two others—whom he now recognized as having been the Regent and the Emperor—standing over him. Now that he had called the scene up again out of the warehouse of his memory, he was all but convinced that at that time, also, the surface he had been lying on had been a cloth-padded smooth tabletop like the one they had ordered him onto this morning.
Somehow, all these questions, like the answers to all the other questions that concerned him and the possibility of his escape with Emma, must eventually tie together. He had a feeling in his bones that this would be so—at that moment there came the sound of the door to the office opening. It had to be Pier, he thought; and he came to his feet and out of his alcove, so that he was respectfully standing in the alcove doorway when the door swung closed behind the Librarian.
“Ah, Bart, there you are!” the little old man said; and Bart thought there was a definite overtone of relief in the slightly scratchy voice.
The older man moved forward and deposited some papers on his own desk, then looked over at Bart once more. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Very well, Lord,” Bart answered quietly; then he smiled. “But it was a close thing.”
“So I understand,” Pier said. “My apologies. Someone misunderstood his instructions. Do you know what almost happened?”
“I have an idea, Lord.”
“I thought you might,” Pier answered. “Someday I’ll explain in detail, if you like. For now I must not.”
“I understand, Lord,” Bart said. “For the same reason you cannot explain some other things, as you said before.”
Pier nodded,, looked away, and moved to sit behind his desk, facing the door through which he had entered. He busied himself for a moment straightening the papers he had just put down on the desk, then looked back up at Bart.
“I didn’t expect to see you here at all today, Bart,” he said, “with Court scheduled for this afternoon. In fact, I half expected that by this time Chandt would have you all in formation and marching to the courtroom.”
He spoke in French, the language generally reserved for use only under home surroundings, which gave the conversation an air of intimacy that was usually missing from the work place where all talk was in English. “You want to get back into your alcove, do you?”
“Not just at the moment, Lord,” said Bart. “As you say, I’ll have to get back to the dormitory quickly. But I had a request to make of you, if I might. I thought I’d come to the Library and see if you had time to let me speak to you.”
“There will be times,” said Pier, smiling benignly, “when affairs will keep me too concerned to give you time, but not often. What is it you wanted to request?”
“I was just going to ask, Lord—,” said Bart. He tried to think back to the way Paolo had phrased it. “—is it permissible that I make acquaintances and meet with them privately as well as publicly?”
“Strange,” said Pier thoughtfully. “I’d completely forgotten that I’d never specifically given you that privilege. Of course you can, Bart. There’s only a couple of people who might object to my granting it to you—”
His face suddenly developed a stem look that Bart had never seen on it before. The kindly old Librarian was abruptly replaced by an individual of authority.
“—and I’m under no obligation to take their views into consideration in this case.”
He smiled at Bart, and the stem look was gone.
“I assume you have someone in mind you wish to meet?” he asked.
There was no point in hiding the fact.
“Yes, Lord,” answered Bart. “It’s a female slave that I used to know in the upper world.”
Pier’s eyebrows raised slightly.
“Indeed,” he said. “You know, it occurs to me, Bart, that you might come to my home tomorrow evening, after Marta and I have had dinner.”
“I—I would be honored, Lord,” said Bart; the invitation— albeit in the form of a command—was, as far as Bart had been given to understand, completely unprecedented to come from a Lord to one of his slaves; that much Bart had already learned about Inner World society.
“Do you know where this female slave works?” Pier asked.
“Somewhere in bookkeeping, I understand, Lord,” said Bart. “I’m sorry I—”
“Never mind.” Pier fished a piece of blank paper toward himself across the desk top and wrote on it with one of those pens used in the Inner World that carried its own supply of ink. “My Lordmark is on the paper, here, and I’ve just written a short note saying that I’d appreciate anyone in charge where the slave—what’s her name?”
“Emma Robeson, Lord.”
“Emma . . . the last name? Spell it for me.”
Bart spelled it.
“Good,” said Pier, finishing his penmanship. “I’ve written that— ‘. . . where the slave Emma Robeson is kept, that they give her over for the moment to the slave carrying this, who is my Steed; and under my authority as Librarian I order anyone so in charge of Emma Robeson to acquiesce and aid my Steed in anything he wishes to do with Emma Robeson. Which is by my command,’ ” wound up Pier.
He handed the note to Bart.
“Oh,” said Pier, as Bart backed toward the door, “and you might bring this friend of yours along, too, so that Marta and I can get a look at her.”
He smiled at Bart again—very nearly an impish smile.
“Yes, Lord. Thank you, Lord. It will be an honor for her, too,” was all Bart could think of to say.
He went out, and the door to Pier’s office closed behind him. His head was whirling. Among the thoughts jostling about it was that it might be of great use to the future plans of Emma and himself, if Pier and Marta took a liking to her. On the other hand, perhaps it was dangerous to draw her to the attention of any of the Lordly class, even ones as apparently kindly as Pier and Marta.
He had not failed to remember that concubines were a prerogative of both sexes of the Lordly class, and of Hybrids, as well—this Inner World seemed to have strong Near East social elements. If a Lord should look at Emma and want her for his own sexual use, there would be little Bart could do about it down here, even at the cost of
his life.
On the other hand, as far as he knew, Pier and Marta were unusual among their fellow Lords and Lord Ladies for never having had any concubines; and his advanced age should suggest that the possibility of Pier’s wanting Emma for himself was not too likely.
Then Bart remembered how briskly he had seen the old man move on occasion, and his fear of a possible personal interest by Pier in Emma rose again.
chapter
sixteen
BART WENT FORWARD enough in the stacks to see the large clock on the wall by the main desk of the Library. It showed only eleven minutes after eleven. Pier had been anticipating when he had imagined that Chandt would already be getting the Steeds into order for attendance at the Court—whatever sort of occasion it might be. Bart estimated that with a fourteen hundred hours— 2:00 P.M.—assembly time on the schedule, he had at least two hours of free time before he was due back at the dormitory, even leaving him time to make whatever changes in clothing were required.
He glanced at the open outer area of the Library. It was all but deserted. There was one Hybrid seated there, reading in one of the chairs, and within the circle of the desk sat Mordaunt and a single stack slave. Possibly because of this afternoon’s affair, visitors to the Library seemed to be few; and that meant the stacks should be all but deserted.
It would be an ideal time for him to get his hands on a copy of the Book of al-Kebir again and finish reading it. Moreover, if the Court ran late, he would have no chance to finish reading it later in the day before he would be due to take Emma to the Guettrigs’, where they should probably be by about 7:00 P.M., that being when his Lord and Lady usually finished their dinner. That lack of time would be crucial, since he had decided that this should be the night in which he tried the scheme that had been in his mind for some time, and which a full knowledge of the Book would help support him in the story which he hoped to make Pier and Marta believe.
He turned, went back through the stacks to the small room where the copies of the Book were shelved, and took one. As he had suspected, he saw no sign of anyone else in the stacks, in the process—not Lord, Hybrid or slave.
With the copy of the Book, he returned to Pier’s office, on the chance that the Lord might already have left it. If Pier was to be at the Court, he would undoubtedly need to change robes and pick up Marta, in which case he might already have left, so as to get these things done and also have some time for lunch before they set out.
Bart’s estimate was correct. The little light above the scratching panel on the door that signaled that Pier was within and whether he was available to visitors or not was dark. Taking from his tunic pocket the key Pier had given him, Bart unlocked the door, let himself in and relocked the door behind him. The automatic lighting had evidently been turned down, and only a dim nightlight burned in the room.
By this illumination he went to his own private alcove, turned on the working light there, and sat down, opening the book before him. The clean Latin script of the first page looked up at him, once again.
“O, Fratres mei—it began.
“De origine et via qua adhunc mundum advenimus nihil dicabo . . .”
Automatically, his mind translated the words in Latin script before him into English.
“Of our origin and the means by which we came to this world, as well as the fate of many of us in the moment of our arrival, I will say nothing, lest the information turn out to be of use to those who should not know such things.
“Suffice it to say that a number of us were left scattered and helpless upon a part of this earth called Sicily, where we one and all fell into the hands of various local inhabitants of the lowest origin, brutish by nature and lacking in all but the simplest intelligence. Inhabitants; moreover, who were incapable of recognizing in us the superior beings we were, but instead took us under their control and treated each of us as if we were little better than the beasts they fed on or forced to work their fields, for without exception they were peasants of the lowest order . . .”
“But in time the superior intelligence of our people attracted the attention of those who were in authority over our peasant masters, and these—seeing value in us—took us for themselves; and this process was repeated in time by those who were in authority over these others; and so on, with our masters rising in rank until we all became slaves of natives of large power in the land.
“Of all of these, there was only one who was far more powerful than any of the rest, being no less than the ruler of an empire, known as the Holy Roman Empire, and reaching from the north of Europe to this island of Sicily. It was this island, however, that was the favorite seat of this particular emperor, whose name was Frederick, after the name of the Emperor his grandfather, who had been known as Barbarossa by reason of his red beard…
Bart read on, fascinated.
After this preamble, the writer had gone back to relate in greater detail the atrocities committed upon his fellows by the humans they had encountered, in greater detail. According to the writer, he had been only seven years old when, with his parents and their traveling companions, he had arrived on the soil of Sicily. In the breakup of the group that followed, as one by one the adults were parcelled out among the neighborhood natives, his mother’s desparate desire to keep him with her had impressed at least one of the locals. They two were taken as a pair—his father had been killed by one of the first few locals to come investigating them—as the narrator believed they would all have been killed, if it had not been for one peasant, somewhat more intelligent than the rest, who saw that live slaves would be more valuable than dead bodies, and equally harmless if kept apart from each other.
So he and his mother were taken, the writer went on, by a man with no wife or family. A man who lived off among the rocks, who clearly had chosen the writer’s mother to be a servant who could also serve a sexual purpose. For, that night, in the man’s small, windowless hut, with no light but that from the fire under a hole in the thatch overhead, he dragged her into the hut’s one small, odiferous bed with him, shoving the boy away so hard he went sprawling.
The boy’s mother called out to him in their own language not to make their new owner angry, but find someplace else to sleep. Filled with fury toward the man, but, as always, obedient to his mother, the boy had searched around the hut and finally raked together a pile of rags to make himself a bed on the dirt floor. On this, he fell asleep. Later on, when the fire had died down to embers, so that the hut was barely lit, a cry of pain from his mother woke him. He jumped to his feet and rushed over to where she and the man lay, and tried to pull his mother out of the bed. The man leaped up in a rage and seized him.
“. . . I was strong,” Bart read, “as all our people are strong. More than that, I had always been half again as powerful as any of our own people who were my age and size. But still I was only seven; and he was a large, grown man. Though I fought back ferociously, he dragged me across the hut, opened the door, threw me out into the cold night, and closed the door again. When I tried to get back in, I found that he had barred the door from the inside. The night was chill and a strong wind blew icily about me. The only way I could avoid dying of the cold was to keep walking all night long. Once I realized that this was necessary, I faced the rest of the dark hours with determination. I would live at least until morning, if only to pay the man back for what he had done to my mother and myself In that same instant I remembered all our people who were now virtual slaves of these creatures who called themselves humans; and the beginning of my hatred was born—a hatred that will in time see them all swept from the face of this earth of theirs.
“It is because of that hatred that I now write this letter to you whom I have helped into positions of safety and comfort; so that you will never forget what we owe these creatures; and so that you will build and cause your children to keep building toward the day when we can destroy them utterly.
“For to that end I have accumulated wealth and power, here at the court of the Sultan in Fez
. It is for this reason that I have adopted their religion of the man named Mohammed; and learned to play at their way of life, so that they think me only interested in riches and luxuries.
“But it is for no such real reason that I have actually done what I have done. I shall teach you how to grow even wealthier and more powerful; how to band together and build, apart and hidden, a place of our own that humans do not know of. There, you will rediscover the skills and arts of our people and create a weapon that will end the human race. I have pledged myself to this, and now I pledge all of you, whether you will or not. In the absence of any other, and because by strength of mind and body I am best fitted to lead you, I have taken on myself the responsibilities of Commander of us all; and as Commander I order you, your children and your children’s children, now and in the future, to do always as I shall tell you, in this letter and at later times.
“But to return to my own story, which you must learn by heart, for it is the source from which you will draw into yourselves that same strength of my hatred, to sustain you, when necessary . . .”
At this point the writer began, in Bart’s opinion, to come as close as it was possible to foaming at the mouth in words written on paper.
“. . . for I tell you that nothing has the power of a great hatred, particularly when that hatred has been justified over and over again. With a hatred such as mine you can move mountains, you can dry up the sea and cause the very earth to vanish in flame. And this is why you must keep this letter of mine so that you may read and reread it; and make sure your children do likewise . . .”
Bart checked himself. Fascinated by the autobiography of this strange individual, he had started to reread the Book completely, once more from the beginning. But now an inner alarm warned him time was passing. He leaned back in his chair and glanced outside his alcove at the clock in the wall of Pier’s office. It stood at seven minutes past 1200 hours, seven minutes after 12:00 P.M. He had probably another forty minutes to read safely if he wanted to have adequate time to return the Book, get himself to the dormitory and take care of any preparations that would be needed for the Court formation.
The Earth Lords Page 23