But now, as Bart watched, Chandt finished speaking to the dormitory Leaders. They went back to the heads of the formations and Chandt moved over to stand facing all the waiting men. He was dressed in what would have seemed a slave’s simple, short tunic if it had not been made of glittering, gold cloth, trimmed with black fur around the edges of the skirt and armholes; and he waited with an almost ominous patience until the Leaders were back in position. When, at last, all was still and silent in the room he spoke.
“All right!” he said. He faced them all, legs spread apart, hands locked together behind him. The muscles stood out on his brown arms. Under the remarkable acoustics of the room, he did not seem to raise his voice, but it came strongly and clearly to the ears of all of them.
“Listen to me now, all of you; and listen closely! There will I be no mistakes by any one of you today. None. You will all do I what I’m now going to tell you to do, nothing more, nothing less.
“You understand?”
Apparently, Bart concluded, there was no answer expected to this; for no one among the Steeds made any.
“Shortly,” went on Chandt, “this room—” His extended arm swept right and left at shoulder height before him, to indicate its expanse. “—will be filled with Lords and Ladies. Later on, for a short while, a few Hybrids will be allowed in, but that’s unimportant. As far as you’re concerned, there will be only Lords and Ladies here. Understand me? Answer me!”
This time, everybody around Bart muttered “yes,” so Bart muttered along with them.
“Those of you who’ve never been to a Court before are going to see the Lords—not the Ladies and the Lords, but the Lords alone—doing some things that may seem strange to you. Remember, no matter what they do, you’re not to show you’re seeing anything out of the ordinary. You’ll be given small whips. If a Lord comes within reasonable reach of you, swing your whip at him. I don’t have to tell anyone here, I think—”
Chandt’s eyes raked back and forth across the mass of them.
“—not to let the lash of the whip actually touch a Lord, unless you’ve been actually told or signaled by a Lord to do that. Even then, remember it should be as light a touch as possible. Some of you may find yourselves faced by Lords who want you to strike them harder than that. In that case, I leave the matter up to your judgment, how hard the Lord actually wishes you to hit him; and you’d better pray your judgment is right.”
He paused. “Now, the slaves will pass out the whips and you’ll spread yourself around the walls of this room as if you were soldiers standing on guard—ceremonial guard at a Court. Dormitory Leaders, place your Steeds!”
Bart found himself positioned beside a blue curtain flanking one of the false windows. He felt ridiculous with the small, toylike whip that a slave placed in his hand; and the began to feel more ridiculous as the room began to fill with members of the Lordly class. But the embarrassment he felt was lost in wonder at what he saw. The Lord Ladies were dressed in ornate, frilly gowns, their faces painted—no, overpainted was the only proper word for the makeup they wore. The Lords, on the other hand, were either in rags or wore clothing that was expensive but cut to grotesquely exaggerate their shortness of body and limbs. Some had artificial hunchbacks built into their garb, or other deformities created in them by padding in their clothing.
About twenty minutes or so after the room had started to fill with these members of the Lordly class, there was a final arrival. Three figures wearing identical, floor-length black gowns, but with differing, heavy neckchains in which cloth, gold, silver and jewels were all wound together, swept into the room. One of them was Pier. The other two were the Emperor and the Regent.
They walked together rapidly to the dais, ignoring all of those around them. Moving almost in unison, they mounted the dais. Each took off his neckchain and laid it on the seat of one of the chairs. Then they returned to the edge of the dais, stepped down, and moved apart, out among the crowd on the main floor of the room.
Immediately, things began to happen. The small men and women who had been scattered thickly about the floor of the room, talking with each other, split into two groups. The Ladies went to and mounted the dais, looking out over the room. The Lords themselves became active. They began to—cavort, was the only word that Bart could feel literally fitted their actions.”
It was as if they had all become clowns and tumblers. They pretended to knock each other down; and the one knocked down flipped end-over-end backward as if he had been struck by a giant’s blow. They leap-frogged over each other and walked about on their hands. A small group made a living pyramid, four individuals on the bottom, three standing on their shoulders, and one on the shoulders of these. A bronze tray, a gracefully long-necked glass container with what looked like red wine in it, and three wine glasses, were handed up to the man on top. He arranged the vessels on the tray, filled the glasses from the container, then did a flip off the pyramid downward to the floor, landing with the vessels in place and the wine, even in the open glasses, unspilled.
There were none of the Lords there, old or young, who did not busy themselves with some contortion or exercise; and the Ladies up on the dais pointed and giggled, some of them waving fans they had produced from pockets in their gowns.
The whole scene would have been utterly ridiculous if it had not been for the actual, remarkable physical skill with which all of the Lords performed, which lent an air of grim purpose to the whole procedure. Acts such as Bart saw being performed now were not done, he knew, so skillfully and correctly without long and arduous training. The very perfection of them pointed to a higher purpose than a simple showing off by the performers.
The Steeds about the room flourished their little whips in the air at any Lord who came close to them, the lashes whistling through the air at a safe distance from the potential target—except in a few rare cases, when the Lord in question moved in close and evidently gave some order. Even then, the Steed with the whip seemed careful to strike very lightly indeed.
But there were some rare exceptions, who evidently wanted the real thing. One of these was the Emperor, who stopped, not once, but several times in front of Steeds—and in each instance, Bart noticed two things. One was that the Steeds he stopped in front of were older than the average, which might have indicated that they had complied at earlier Courts with the Emperor’s desires. The second was that, far from holding back, they were striking with as much force as they could produce without moving their body from its position.
Bart was puzzling over this and continuing to follow the Emperor with his gaze—as were a great many in the room—when the sight of another Lord drew Bart’s attention away. The one he had just caught sight of was Pier; and, to his astonishment, the aged Librarian had just done two back-somersaults in midair; a very good trick for a much younger man.
Too good. Bart was still astonished not merely at the skill these members of the Lordly class were all showing, but the actual physical strength many of them were revealing, when the maneuvers they executed obviously required more than ordinary power of leg, arm, or body. These people might be small, but they were also deceptively strong, for all that they did not ordinarily let that fact show in everyday life.
But at the moment he was not concerned with this. His attention was all following Pier. The Librarian had walked away from his two somersaults with brisk and competent steps, as if removing himself for others’ way by moving to the wall. But now that he had finished his demonstration, Bart noticed that when the old man reached the wall he leaned against it with one shoulder. It could be merely a casual pose; but if so, it was one much more suited to a younger man. Bart suspected that the two violent physical executions had taken more out of Pier than Pier wished to have known. Pier was clear across the wide room from him, too far for Bart to make out such a small detail, but Bart could almost believe he could see Pier’s chest heaving under his robe.
A sudden, powerful impulse stirred in Bart, to go to the old man; but leaving
the place where he had been stationed was clearly impossible. He could only hope that Pier had known what he was doing; and that his body was able to stand the strain he had just put on it.
Bart woke suddenly to the fact that he might be staring too openly at Pier. His fixed concentration of gaze could bring attention on the Librarian that the old man might not want. A Steed was supposed to be concentrating on waving his whip at any of the Lords who came close enough. He brought his awareness back to that part of the room directly in front of him; and, as he did, he realized something that he was suddenly angry with himself for not noticing earlier.
Alone among the Steeds around the room, he had not had a single Lord come close enough to him to invite even the pretense of his using his whip.
It could be sheer chance, of course; but Bart had learned to distrust chance as a reason. However, if it was not chance that had caused him to be left alone this way—he could think of no possible other cause. It was preposterous to suppose that all the Lords, from the Emperor on down, had gotten together and agreed to avoid him. Even if he could entertain such a wild possibility, what would the reason for such avoidance be? No, it had to be chance.
Luckily, he did not have to worry about this at any length, because already the actions on the floor were coming to a close; and very shortly there were no Lords who were doing anything but standing, as if waiting. They had all turned toward the dais; and the Ladies were now descending from it.
As soon as it was clear, Pier, the Emperor and the Regent mounted the large half-disk of scarlet space.
Solemnly, they picked up and put on their neckchains; then turned and seated themselves each in one of the chairs, the Emperor in the middle with Pier on his right hand, the Regent on his left. They stared at the crowd on the floor before them with expressionless faces.
“Come closer!”
The voice of the Emperor echoed through the silence of the room. The Lords and Ladies crowded together, close to the dais. The emotional tension in the room had been growing steadily all through the Lords’ performances, even among the ring of Steeds surrounding, for all that they could not understand the shouts and comments in Latin. Now it sang even higher around them. It seemed to Bart they were all enclosed by a feeling like that of people locked in some small place and knowing that an explosion there was imminent.
The smell of male sweat was thick in the room.
chapter
eighteen
WHEN THEY WERE all as close as they could get, the Emperor abruptly stood up.
“Look!” he said, speaking in Latin.
He turned his back on the audience. Pier and the Regent rose also. Each seized a handful of cloth at the side of the Emperor’s robe and pulled. The back of the robe split down the middle as they pulled it apart, revealing the Emperor’s surprisingly muscled, naked back. A small mutter ran through the crowd; and even Bart felt the emotional reaction that moved them. The little whips might be toylike in appearance; but they were evidently effective enough when used seriously. The red lines of lash-marks could be clearly seen, crisscrossing the exposed back.
The Emperor stood for a moment, then turned again to face them. Pier and the Regent had already reseated themselves; and now the Emperor did so as well. His eyes glared at the audience.
“You see!” he said. “This—this and worse—our forefathers endured daily at the hands of those animals that call themselves humans! What you all have just done for a little while, a few moments since, they did daily, and all day long; making a show and parody of themselves in order to stay alive and in the good graces of these humans!”
The last word came out with such fury, saliva flew from the comers of his mouth. He was up on his feet again, suddenly; and he came forward in two long strides, half the way from his chair to the front edge of the dais.
“This,” he said, “this fool-playing and pain might still be your lot if it had not been for those who went before us; and particularly Him, He who spent his life freeing Himself and others, setting us all on the only conceivable path that honor allows us—the pathway to power and revenge. That is why, at times chosen by your Emperor, we relive what was once our lot—in remembrance of him. What was his name? Tell me!” He paused.
“Al-Kebir!” said the crowd.
“Again!” he commanded.
“Al-Kebir!”
The crowd shouted the name, this time, back at him.
“Al-Kebir!”
“Again!”
The crowd roared.
A quiver ran down Bart’s spine. He glanced at the Steed to his right and saw the man, from some other dormitory, standing rigid. There were large, circular dark areas on the cloth of his tunic under his armpits. He looked left at a Steed from his own dormitory, and that man was also rigid, and also showing large circles of dampness under his arms. They, he, all of them, Lords and Steeds alike, were caught up in the emotion of the moment and the Emperor’s oratory.
“He cut our bonds and shackles from our limbs,” the Emperor went on now. “He, and He alone, first of all, gathered the seeds of the wealth we have grown and tended to its present fruit, that bears His name, the weapon that will end the days of this race that calls itself human. My brothers and sisters—we, His children, have done as He commanded; and all has come to us in time, as He predicted; and that time is now. Now!”
The crowd roared again, and this time it kept roaring for some moments. He waited until the last sound had died away, and then he spoke again, once more in ordinary, almost gentle tones, as if he reasoned with children.
“I know,” he said, “there have been times when some of you’ve doubted. I know that faintness of heart that can come over you when you think of what will be, what we shall all need to do. I know because I’ve felt it myself. I don’t blame you for it. I don’t even blame myself. We—none of us—are forged of that immortal metal which was in al-Kebir. It’s natural for us to wonder at times and hesitate, after six centuries, facing the final result of what’s been that long in the building.”
He paused and deliberately ran his gaze back and forth over all of those standing bunched together below the dais.
“We all have weakness,” he went on, “and from some one of those weaknesses, into the back of our minds, occasionally the thought will come . . . why? Why? We already own this world. We pull the strings of wealth and power, and nations move as we wish. Subtly and invisibly, we move them. So why don’t we simply come forward and claim what’s already ours, and enjoy what an undestroyed world and its full native race for our servants can provide?”
He stopped speaking. This time the pause was a long one. When f he spoke again, a faint, hard edge had crept into his voice.
‘I’ll remind you all why,” he said. “There are two reasons, as al-Kebir warned us. One is that while we may control nations, and societies, and even groups—we can never be completely sure of controlling individuals. And there are, even after these thirty generations, only the few thousand of us to control the millions of individuals who go on two legs as we do, but call themselves human. Only after their numbers have been reduced to a helpless handful from what they are now, is it going to be safe for us to openly take control of those who’re left. Those who’ve survived our just wrath and our revenge—al-Kebir’s revenge!”
The crowd shouted, but less loudly than it had a couple of times so far.
“So we have to take the slow but certain pace such a massive undertaking needs,” he went on. “Soon now, we’ll take the first, irreversible step, from the consequences of which there’ll be no turning back. That first step of activating the device developed here in the Inner World from the work of Morton Cadiz, over a hundred years ago. That weapon with al-Kebir’s spirit in it, that we call by His name.
“Soon now, we’ll be setting that great creation to its work, generating the first of the electromagnetic power input into the magma below us, on which float the tectonic plates which bear the I surface of this world. Slowly, reinforcing itself
, the buildup of that continuous power input during the next eighty to a hundred and twenty years will finally produce wavelike tensions within the magma. Tensions that will eventually destroy the always fragile balance that presently exists in the plates. Those forces will build to the point where eventually the thin shell of this planet can contain them no longer. It will begin to crack and let through the forces held within. With the first breakup of the plates, the balance of inner forces will begin their shifting, increasing the rising and falling of the great plates themselves, as the edges of each of them slide up and over or under the plate adjoining.”
The Emperor paused.
“You all know this,” he said. “But now the time has come to begin it.”
He looked at them and smiled.
“Up until now, the moment of starting that great engine we call by the great name of al-Kebir, our private doubts and wonderings have been tolerated; as were the private doubts and wonderings of those generations who stood between Him and those of us in this room now. But from the moment of starting the engine that is He, there’ll be no more room for anything but a wholehearted devotion to the end we will then have made inevitable.”
He smited again, and, turning, began to pace back and forth before them on the stage, stopping after a moment once more at the lectern. With no smile at all.
“He did His part!” the Emperor cried out suddenly, “long ago! Now the time’s come for us to do ours! It’s time to unleash what we have chosen to call by His name. Unleash it, so it can do its part in the century to come. And there’s still much for us to do. We must make sure that what past generations of our people have worked for succeeds. If al-Kebir, the machine, is to set the plates in action at the moment of its starting, the resultant drowning of continents, and uplifting of seabeds, the volcanoes and the killing weather—even all of these—will be well enough, but not alone enough to produce the ends we want.
The Earth Lords Page 25