“You know why? All of you know why. But, once again your silence asks me to say it again, even though all of you already know the answer. The answer is that the world is still too full of self-reliant societies and individuals. Close to us, on the surface surrounding the entrance to this Inner World, are people who can too easily live off the land about them and endure hardship. There are too many like them, from the vast areas of Asia, Africa and South America, to say nothing of those I mentioned above us here.
“Before the time of cataclysm comes, that self-reliance must be drained out of them. As we preserved our strength for six hundred years, so they must lose theirs in the next hundred and twenty years; and we have the means to make them do it.”
He paused.
“Wealth,” he said, holding up two fingers, “wealth and science—but most of all science! We must prepare the fruit for picking. We must crowd them into cities, soften them with the luxuries science makes possible.
“Then, all will be ready; and the moment will come, the hour will strike! Somewhere, at one of the vulnerable points that have been stable for millions of years, a plate will rupture; and its two new halves be forced apart by the upwelling of the hot, inner material from below. Then the disorder will begin to spread as massive tectonic forces are subtracted from or added to—not just in the area of a few hundred square miles, but all around the world.
“The sea will rush northward from the present Gulf of Mexico as far as Nebraska. To our north—but safely away from our Inner World, here, the volcanoes will explode upward through the Alaskan ice and snowfields. The lower east and west coasts of this continent will be drowned in the sea, as will England, as will Japan. Volcanic ash will darken the sky. Tomadic winds will blow. The world of humans will be destroyed.
“But that destruction must strike a humanity changed from the one we know even now. By the time al-Kebir bears fruit, much of the human race must be gathered together in millions by their own desires, like beasts penned for the slaughter, in great cities where the light, the heat, the food, all such things are brought from great distances—even from other continents.
“Suddenly, then, with the cataclysm, those things will no longer be available. The land and the atmosphere will have destroyed the two great carriers on which the present and future depend—the railways and the steamships. In their millions the humans will die of starvation and disease, those that have survived the land-shocks and the in-flooding seas and the hurricanes.
“Then, finally, they will be ripe for harvesting by our armies, which now exist in embryo throughout the world. These come from tribes and small ethnic groups which we have cultivated through intermediaries. Once al-Kebir has been set to work we will begin the building of the great city-traps, using the bait of what science can offer those who come to live in them. At the same time, we will start the building of a military tradition in our proto-armies, furnishing them with weapons and money, raising in them the dream of conquest and power and loot. In every way we will prepare them for the time of conquest, when we, ourselves will officer them.”
He smiled, almost wildly it seemed to Bart, at the crowd.
“We will lead them, armed and prepared, to swoop down on the humans that are left after the catastrophe, and enslave them. And this will be done until the whole world is in our control; and then, except for a necessary handful of the most faithful of them—with their job done, these soldiers of ours will begin to die. They will die quietly, and individually, of the slowly accumulating poison we will have been mixing with their food over a long period of time. For in spite of their service for us they share the guilt toward us that is in all humans, by the very fact of their humanity. In the end, we alone will be left with a few cowed human creatures at our feet.”
He drew a deep breath and opened his arms wide as if, symbolically, he would embrace the whole crowd beyond the dais.
“So, my brothers and sisters,” he said, on one great exhalation of breath, “we will come at last to the time of our revenge—that holy duty placed upon us by Him of whom I have been speaking. He has written it down for us to read and learn—‘. . . as we have learned to hate them, they must learn to hate us. They must taste that hate in their mouths, and know their helplessness to do anything about it, as we have learned to do something about our hate. For as many centuries as we have waited for revenge, they must wait. Then, when the period of their penance has been covered, we will be free at last to build the ships that will take us homeward, leaving not one of them behind alive.”
He stopped, dropping his hands to his sides.
“And so,” he said, “the will of Him, of al-Kebir, which is our will, will finally be accomplished.”
He stepped back and sat down again in his chair between Pier and the Regent. It was curious, thought Bart. This was a time for applause, when a speech had at last ended. In the world above there would certainly have been applause; if only polite applause, or applause from a few in the audience.
But here there was no such thing. Instead, from the crowd before the dais there was something that was like a sigh—as of tension released, as of a difficult job done. It seemed to him that he saw a relaxation in the grotesquely costumed figures who turned now to each other, spreading out a little as a group.
“And now,” said the Emperor, both his forearms laid out along the arms of his chair, his sinewy hands laxly enclosing the lions’ heads at their ends, “we let in the champions among our nephews, to show us what they can do.”
The crowd began to draw back to the walls, leaving the wide center area of the room open. Apparently some signal had been given which Bart had not seen; for the space had barely been created when four men ran in, wearing black trousers and white shirts, ruffled and open at the neck. Bart recognized only one of them, the brilliantly blue-eyed Hybrid he had encountered at the Library. This man was by far the largest of the four, the three with him being between five feet and five feet four inches in height. As a result, the other stood out from the rest of them like a giant, though he was certainly no taller than Bart, and perhaps slightly shorter.
Also, because he was wearing a shirt without a jacket, Bart could see that the unusual width of the blue-eyed man’s shoulders was natural and not a product of his tailor’s art.
The four reached the center of the open space, formed a line, and bowed to those on the dais.
The Emperor waved a hand.
The Hybrid on the far right end of the line, as they faced the dais, bowed again. The other three withdrew to the same side of the room on which Bart stood, but a dozen yards farther up toward the dais. Meanwhile, the one who remained in the middle of the floor—he was a short, physically trim man in his early twenties and with straight brown hair worn at shoulder length—had turned about.
Without further warning, he launched himself in a series of flips down the room away from the dais until he had almost reached the doorway by which he and the other three had entered.
Then, equally without warning, he began a series of back-flips that brought him back to his original position before the dais, except that on the last flip he twisted his body about in midair and landed lightly on his feet, facing the dais.
Again, oddly to Bart’s ears, there was no applause, only the sigh of breath among the audience. The man who had done the flips bowed once more to the dais and went to the side of the room, from which the man who had stood next to him advanced to the room’s center.
This Hybrid launched himself into the air and made a double-somersault before landing once more on his feet. He stood a moment, his chest expanding rhythmically and widely, then launched himself upward once more in a spring. This time he made two somersaults—and almost completed a third, but was not quite able to make it. He was off balance backward as he landed and though he struggled to stand upright, he ended by falling backward.
He rose, bowed to the dais and retreated to the side of the room. This time there was no sigh from the audience.
The third
man came out and successfully leaped several times in succession through the hoop made by his arms when the fingers of his two hands were interlaced. He was rewarded with a small sighing.
Last of all came the Hybrid Bart had seen before. There was nothing which could with certainty be called a swagger to his walk as he left the wall for the center of the open floor; but the lightness of his step and the length and certainty of his stride had a sort of inborn arrogance about them.
To Bart’s surprise, all this confident-seeming man did was a simple handstand. He stood there, upside down, head between his arms, arms themselves neatly parallel, legs together and the toes of his shoes extended and touching each other.
A faint sigh came from the crowd.
Baffled as to the reason for any version of applause, Bart stared at the man for a long moment before he suddenly realized that the other was no longer resting on the palms of his hands. Instead he now held himself in the same upside-down position—but supported only on the extended tips of his ten fingers.
Now Bart, for the first time, began to keep his gaze closely on those splayed and rigid fingers with an unusual interest. This much he had once, as a boy, been able to do himself. It was what further the blue-eyed Hybrid might do that fascinated him now. He watched closely; and his watching was rewarded.
Another sigh from the watching crowd signaled the further action of the performing Hybrid. Still keeping his upheld body motionless he had withdrawn the little fingers of both hands from the floor, so that he now upheld himself only on eight digits.
And as Bart watched, the other man withdrew one more finger from supporting each hand, lifting the ones next to the little fingers. He stood upright on six fingers; thumbs, first and second fingers of each hand.
The crowd sighed again. Bart sighed with them. It would be most natural now for the other man to drop to the floor and stand up to receive the Inner World applause he had certainly earned. Apparently the crowd felt the same, for he heard the beginnings of the most recent sigh from the crowd cut off abruptly.
The performer had moved. In fact, he was still moving. Deliberately, finger by finger, he was shifting position. Literally, he was walking across the floor on the six fingertips on which he stood.
Understanding hit Bart in the pit of his stomach. What this man was now doing was something that Bart himself could never do, even if he trained for months or years. It was simply impossible for even someone with his strength to support his full body weight as the other was doing, on the unequal support of three fingers on one hand and only two of the other, during the moment in which his body weight was being shifted forward.
But the blue-eyed Hybrid, having finger-walked perhaps sixteen inches of floor distance, had now dropped back onto the palms of his hands and raised himself to his feet. His face was darkened by the congestion of blood in it, but otherwise he showed no sign of the terrific physical effort he had just made.
He bowed to the dais. The sighing of the crowd around the walls was loud in the room.
“Once again,” said the Emperor, smiling, “Michel Saberut has proved himself most Lordly among our nephews. A reward will be sent to your home, Michel; and we honor the memory of your father.” Michel Saberut bowed once more and all three of those seated on the dais inclined their heads in return.
“And now,” said the Emperor, rising, with Pier and the Regent standing up also on either side of him, “Court is over.”
The Lords and Ladies were already crowding toward the far entrance of the room. Pier, the Emperor and the Regent followed them, caught up with them, and had a way made for them through the mass of bodies. When all were gone, Chandt walked out from the far wall to stand in the center of the floor.
“Dormitory Leaders,” he said; and his voice seemed to echo strangely in the new emptiness of the large room, “take your Steeds back to their proper places.”
chapter
nineteen
MORE THAN A little out of breath, Bart entered through the double doors of the main entrance to the Library once more. It was just after sixteen hundred hours—4:00 P.M. The whole Court session had taken less than an hour and a half; and less than another half hour was all it had taken to march back to the dormitory and be released. Along the route, Bart had gathered from his fellow Steeds that tonight would be in the nature of a celebratory occasion. After a Court, only those absolutely required to be on duty, were so.
The rest of them—slaves, Hybrids and those Lords who were up to it—would be engaged in revels, parties or social get-togethers of one sort or another; and his fellow Steeds were already planning their fun.
This fact, and the several hours that remained until he would need to pick up Emma—at about seven o’clock, he estimated— were by way of a gift from heaven, in Bart’s view.
The events which had just taken place in front of his eyes in the Court Room had gone a long way toward answering many of the questions he had still been asking himself about the Lords and their Inner World. He had intended to use his invitation to visit Pier and Marta this evening to confront them with his fabricated story of being the son of a lost Lord himself. And while he had been worried about falling victim to holes in that story, he had decided that it was necessary to use it quickly and hope for some luck—or even help from the Guettrigs.
But the Court—not only the words of the Emperor, but what he, Bart, had seen there—.had changed all that; in a way, it had changed his whole world.
It was now necessary to try to locate whatever records he could find on the Hybrid Michel Saberut. He had not yet located any such records in his explorations of the Library, but he had a few hours in which to look.
Entering the Library, he found it as deserted as it had been on any of his late-night visits. A stack slave he did not recognize dozed behind the main desk—either sleeping off the previous night’s entertainment, or resting himself in preparation for tonight’s.
The slave did not wake up as Bart silently passed him and entered the stacks. Three levels down, he turned from the stairs in the direction of the section he hoped to find a way to enter—and checked himself suddenly, aware of faint sounds among the farther stacks.
These were quiet enough so that he could easily have missed them altogether; but now that he paused and gave all his attention to listening, he recognized them for the distant murmur of conversation.
Quietly he moved through the aisles of the stacks on that level, toward the sound—not directly toward it, but in a roundabout way that would not let someone look down an aisle from the place ahead of him, and see him. Still the sounds grew plainer as he approached their source.
Shortly the murmur resolved itself into voices, pitched low, at the very back of the level. What was there, he already knew.
It was an iron-fenced area, with its only entrance a locked door, which held within it the particularly valuable and special books of the Library’s collection. Even Lords did not simply walk in here unsupervised.
Normally, withdrawing one of these special books required summoning Pier, who himself unlocked the door and went through it either alone or with a stack slave to carry whatever was to be brought out, and which the Lord in question had justified his need to see. Hybrids were not allowed to have books from this area at all, and only two others besides the Librarian had keys to the door. These were the Emperor and the Regent.
They two, Pier had told him, could visit the special area when they wished without permission from Pier himself. No one else was so allowed.
So the special collection—the “X” collection, it was called by the Library’s workers—was inviolate.
But before it, and separating it from the ordinary shelves of books in the stacks occupying the rest of this level, was a small open space with half a dozen chairs, interspersed with little side tables, all built to the physical dimensions of Lords alone. In this area, those permitted to have a book brought out by the Librarian might sit and read it—carrying one of the volumes away was not perm
itted even to Lords—before sending a waiting stack slave for Pier; and, when he arrived, handing it back to him to be replaced in security.
Now, however, when Bart moved quietly close enough to not only hear, but see, who was there, he did not see one or more single Lords reading, with waiting slaves at their elbows. Now all the chairs were occupied, rather uncomfortably, by the almost full-sized bodies of adult Hybrids; and in addition there were at least half a dozen other such Hybrids standing amongst the chairs; all of them in earnest discussion.
Bart was about to congratulate himself on his luck in stumbling on such a gathering when he realized they were only doing what he, himself, was doing—taking advantage of the Library’s emptiness after Court. Among them, he recognized now, with a certain sense of shock, was one man who had never been completely out of Bart’s mind since he had seen the other’s act in the Court Room.
It was the Hybrid the Emperor had called Michel Saberut—the one who had walked on the tips of his fingers. Now, wideshouldered, black-haired and piercingly blue-eyed as ever, he lounged in one of the little chairs, listening to the others talk—in conversations that mixed French and English.
Alone among all those there, he seemed to find it possible to drape himself comfortably and casually in the undersized chair in which he sat at an angle. He still wore only the black trousers and ruffled white shirt he had dressed in to perform. The simpleness of his garb and the brilliant glance of his eyes at each individual as he or she spoke gave him a challenging, almost piratical look, sharply in contrast to those around him, who, for the most part, were still dressed in their ordinary working costumes—sober-colored suits on the men and long, elaborate dresses on the women.
The Earth Lords Page 26