The Carpet Makers

by Andreas Eschbach

  By the time he sent the message, he was wet with perspiration. Now everything would take its course. Reduced to information particles in an incomprehensible dimension, the message raced toward its goal, and no one could hold it back. Nargant lowered the microphone and settled in for a long wait. He was tired, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  In the hours that followed, he called Nillian’s name into the electromagnetic radio again and again. His nerves seemed to glow, and he was plagued with a premonition of approaching disaster.

  Suddenly, the orange-red signal for incoming messages lit up on the transmission unit, and the recorder switched on automatically. Nargant started from his fitful half-sleep. The flagship of the Gheera Fleet was calling!

  “This is Heavy Cruiser Trikood. Kalyt 9, we confirm your message, sent standard time 15-3-178002. The expedition headquarters is issuing you a directive to interrupt your research and to return as quickly as possible. Out.”

  Time seemed to stand still. Suddenly, Nargant heard nothing but the wild pounding of his heart and the rushing of hot blood in his ears. He thought he could hear “Error! Error! Error!” in the rhythmic meter of the beating of his pulse. He had made an error. He had allowed an error to be made. He had been disobedient, and he would be punished without leniency. The only thing he could do, for the sake of his honor, was to return as quickly and as humbly as possible to accept his punishment.

  Nargant’s hands flew over the armatures. The whispering and murmuring of the instruments in the control panel died out as the colossal engines in the depths of the spaceship came to life and made the outer shell vibrate. Fear had swept away every thought, even the thoughts of Nillian. A needle crept up from the red into the green zone while massive power units boomed as they pumped energy into the ship’s drive. Then Nargant accelerated and sent the ship tearing toward the dark fabric of stars. Each of his movements bespoke a lifelong routine; even half-dead, he could still have flown the ship. Without a single wasted movement, he made preparations for trans-light-speed flight, and soon after that Kalyt 9 slipped into that dimension that is governed by other laws … where there is no limitation on movement through space, but where everyone is alone. No message can reach a spacecraft under way within this incomprehensible superspatial dimension.

  That was the reason that Nargant missed the arrival of the real answer to his emergency message by several minutes.

  “Kalyt 9, this is Capt. Jerom Karswant on board the Trikood. Attention. This countermands the previous order you received. That order was a standard directive to all expedition boats. Nargant, stay in orbit around G-101/2 and continue your attempts to make radio contact with Nillian. I am sending the Light Cruiser Salkantar. Calculate the closest entry point for a ship of that size, and send the exact coordinates, so that the Salkantar can reach you as quickly as possible. Repeat: Do not return to base. Maintain your position, and facilitate the arrival of the Salkantar. Help is on the way.”

  Much later, after the arrival of the expedition ship Kalyt 9 at the Gheera Expedition Base, and after repeated conversations with the Salkantar, which tried without success to locate the star G-101 using imprecise and error-filled star maps, it became clear to Nargant: in his panic, he had not noticed that the message he assumed to be an answer to his emergency call had arrived much sooner than the laws of physics would have allowed; it was a routine message to all expedition boats. It also became clear, that with his rash return, he had abandoned his comrade Nillian and had probably condemned him to death.

  He had an unpleasant interview with the bullish captain of the expedition fleet, but the rebel general didn’t punish him. And that was perhaps the severest punishment.

  From then on, Nargant said every morning aloud to himself in the mirror: “There is no Emperor anymore.” And every time he spoke these words, he felt within himself the profound fear that was still crippling him, and he recalled the man who had given him trust and friendship. He had wanted so much to return both those gifts, but it had been beyond his ability.

  VII

  The Tax Collector

  HE HAD BEEN FOLLOWING the trade route markers for days, and he really had no cause for worry. The rough-hewn waystones were set at regular intervals and were easy to recognize, and only in a few places had dunes drifted over the firmly trampled road. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief when Yahannochia finally appeared on the horizon.

  His jibarat was indifferent. The mount didn’t change its steady, rolling gait, not even when he tried, against his better judgment, to urge it ahead by striking it with the flat of his hand. In regard to the proper tempo for long, overland trips, jibarats had more sense than people.

  Now he could see the estates of the hair-carpet makers scattered among the hills. Depending on the age and style of the houses, some were showy and colorful, others gray brown and inconspicuously hugging the cliffs. There were houses with pitched roofs and walls of red-fired clay. Others were flat and constructed of cut stone. He even saw a house that was completely black and, from a distance, appeared to have been gutted by fire.

  No one paid him any attention as he rode through the city gate. Children ran about quarrelling loudly, and a few women stood chatting at the corner of a house. Only once or twice did he see unmistakable fright in the eyes of those whose glance fell on the insignia on his saddlebags: the insignia of the Imperial Tax Collector.

  He still knew his way around. Not much had changed since his last visit, which was now a good three years ago. He still found his way through the narrow alleys past wretched, dusty workshops and dark pubs, past stained walls and moldy piles of wood to the City Elders Hall.

  A tight smile played about his lips. They would not fool him. He would assess and tax them without mercy. Of course, they knew that he would come; they always knew. And he had been in the Imperial service for decades; he knew all the tricks. No need for them to imagine that they could deceive him with their wretched housefronts. A closer look would find fat hams hanging in the cellars and fine linens in the cupboards.

  Godless thieves! They were asked to sacrifice nothing from their pitiful lives but a little tax, and they even tried to evade that.

  He stopped his jibarat in front of the City Elders Hall and, without dismounting, rapped on one of the windows. A young man stuck his head out and asked what he desired.

  “I am Kremman, Imperial Tax Collector and Judge. Announce my arrival to the city elders.”

  The boy’s eyes widened when he saw the Imperial seal. He nodded hastily and disappeared.

  They tried all the tricks. At Brepenniki, his last stop, they had burned the General Tax Ledger. Of course, they hadn’t admitted it; they never admitted something like that. They claimed that a blaze broke out in the City Elders Hall, which destroyed the book. As though they could get around paying taxes with a story like that! The only thing they accomplished was a delay in his schedule. A new ledger had to be created, and every city resident had to be assessed anew. There had been weeping and gnashing of teeth, but he had not been swayed and had done his duty. He knew they would be more cautious in the future. They wouldn’t try that again with him.

  The door to the City Elders Hall flew open, and a fat old man came rushing out, still slipping into the sleeves of his well-worn ceremonial robe. Wheezing, he came to a halt before Kremman, finally finished donning his robe, and looked up at the tax collector with tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “Greetings in the name of the Emperor, Kremman!” he called out nervously. “It is good that you have arrived, very good, as a matter of fact, because we’ve had a heretic in the dungeon since yesterday, and we don’t know what to do with him. But now Your Honor can pronounce judgment.”

  Kremman looked disdainfully down on the man. “Don’t waste my time. If he’s a heretic, then hang him as the law requires.”

  Snorting loudly, the city elder nodded so eagerly that it seemed that he might fall over at any moment. “I would never pester Your Honor with the matter if
he were a common heretic, never. But he is not a common heretic; as a matter of fact, he’s an extremely uncommon heretic, and I am absolutely convinced…”

  The things they could dream up! If only they would direct this resourcefulness to their work instead of using it to try to fool him!

  He stemmed the man’s torrent of speech with a motion of his hand. “First I want to deal with the books, which is the reason I have come.”

  “Certainly, of course. Pardon my thoughtlessness. Your Honor must be exhausted from the trip. Do you want to see the books immediately, or may I first show you to your quarters and have some refreshment provided?”

  “First the books,” Kremman insisted, and heaved himself from the saddle.

  “First the books, very good. Follow me.”

  Kremman took the bag with the implements of his profession and followed the old man into the cellar vaults of the City Elders Hall. While he spread out his utensils on a large table with motions practiced hundreds of times, he silently watched the old man fumble with a rusty key and open the large, iron-fitted cabinet in which the General Tax Ledgers were kept.

  “Now bring me the Book of Changes,” Kremman ordered when the city elder had placed the sealed ledger on the table.

  “I will have it brought immediately,” the man mumbled.

  Kremman smiled maliciously as the city elder shambled through the door. He had surely planned to distract Kremman from his work with these tales. And now he was disappointed, because it had not worked.

  He would get them. Sooner or later he got them all.

  Then he set to work. First he had to determine whether the seal of Yahannochia’s tax book was really intact. He carefully felt the bands of the seal that encircled the book; they were undamaged. On to the seal itself. He hefted it thoughtfully and looked it over with a critical eye. In his lifetime, he had broken and attached thousands of seals, but at this point he always paused and did not allow himself to fall into a routine. The seal of the tax ledger was the most sensitive point in the system. If they should ever succeed in faking a seal without his noticing it, then they would have him. If that were to become public, it would cost him his head. And if it did not become known, then they would be able to blackmail him to the end of his days.

  The youth who had opened the window—probably the town page—entered and brought the city’s Book of Changes. Kremman indicated with an ungracious nod of the head that he should lay it on the table, and when he noticed the boy’s curiosity, he stared at him so venomously that the boy decided to disappear as quickly as possible. He needed no spectators for this work.

  Kremman cautiously pressed his signet over the wax seal. To his relief, it fit. Even a careful examination with a strong magnifying glass revealed no irregularities.

  They would not dare. They hadn’t forgotten that it was he, as a young tax collector, who had discovered the counterfeit tax seal in Three River City. They had not forgotten the harshness with which he had reassessed the entire city and had imposed a supplementary tax penalty so severe that the eyes of the townspeople had filled with tears.

  Now the last test. After a short glance at the door to ensure that there was really no one watching, he took a small knife and began to scratch the image on the seal carefully. That was the secret, which no one had discovered by breaking or melting down the seal: under the first image there was a second one, which could be revealed only by dexterous and experienced fingers. Kremman scraped away with infinite care until an unremarkable shift in color in the sealing wax indicated the line of separation. And now with just a small twist of the knife, which had taken him years to learn, the upper layer of the wax split away cleanly. There lay the secret seal, a tiny signet imprint known only to the Imperial tax collectors. Kremman smiled in satisfaction, reached for a candle, and melted the seal completely away. He let the wax drip into a small iron bowl; when his work was finished, he would fashion a new seal from it.

  Then he opened the book. This moment had electrified him as long as he could remember, this moment of power. In this book were recorded the belongings of all the townspeople, the riches of the rich and the scanty property of the poor; in this book, he determined with the stroke of a pen the hardship or the well-being of an entire city. Almost tenderly, he turned the pages, which crackled with age, and with his eyes, he caressed the faded sheets filled with ancient entries, numbers, signatures, and stamps. The city elders might wear their beautiful robes for show and fluff up their feathers before the people—but, with this book and his legal authority to write in it, he was the one who held true power in his hands.

  He could hardly tear himself away. With an almost inaudible sigh, he picked up the second book, the city’s Book of Changes. Immediately, this felt much more common, almost ordinary. He could literally feel that everyone was allowed to write here; it was a whore of a book. With some disgust he opened it and looked for his last entry. Then he skimmed the subsequent pages with all the changes, the births and deaths, the marriages, the moves into and out of the city, and the changes in vocation. After such a long time, there were not as many as he had feared. He would soon be finished with the assessments and then enough time would remain for some spot checks. He wanted to find out whether everything in this peaceful city was really on the up and up.

  With a slight wrinkling of his nose, he read the last entry. Recently they had stoned to death their only teacher, apparently on the command of an itinerant preacher. The charge formulated against him after the fact was for doubting God. Kremman did not approve of unknown preachers from who-knew-where taking on the role of judges. And in a city without teachers, sooner or later, the tax revenues decreased; experience had shown that over and over again.

  It was pleasantly quiet in the cellar vault. Kremman heard only his own breathing and the quill scratching across the paper as he drew up his lists. He would give the first list to the city page; it contained the names of all the people who would be summoned to the City Elders Hall for interrogation, people whose property ownership or marital status had changed since the last time. On the second list, he noted the names of those he would visit himself for an on-site assessment. A few of the names came from the Book of Changes—when the situation made a personal assessment imperative. The rest of the names were prompted by his intuition, his feel for corrupt intrigues, and his instinctive understanding of the human desire to keep as much as possible while giving out as little as possible and to cheat one’s way around one’s lawful responsibilities. He trusted this instinct absolutely, and it had so far served him well. He read the registry of the city residents, read their profession, age and position, and their last assessment, and with some names he felt something like an inner alarm. Those were the names he wrote down.

  He could well imagine what was going on the city right now. Already the word of his arrival had surely spread to every last hut, and they were all discussing anxiously whether it was their turn this time. And of course, they were busy hiding all their valuables: jewelry, new clothes, good tools, smoked meat, and crockery filled with salted meat. While he sat here and wrote his lists, they were putting on their oldest clothes—gray, worn-out rags; they were rubbing their hair with fat, their faces with grime, and the walls of their houses and huts with ashes; and they were bringing manure into the houses to attract vermin.

  And he would see through their masquerade. They thought they could trick him with unkempt hair and dirty faces, but he would examine their fingernails and check their hands for calluses and would know the truth. He would find things under the straw of their bedsteads, behind cabinets, under rafters, and in cellars. There were not really so many hiding places, and he knew them all. On days when he was in a good mood, he could enjoy the sport, the challenge of it. However, such days were rare for him.

  When he had finished the two lists, Kremman closed the General Tax Ledger and rang for the town page.

  “Are you familiar with the procedures of a tax levy?” he asked him. “You’re very young, a
nd I don’t know you. That’s why I ask.”

  “Yes. That is, no. It’s been explained to me, but I’ve never personally—”

  “Then do what I tell you. Here’s a list of names of the city residents I will assess here tomorrow. I have divided them into four groups for morning, late morning, afternoon, and early evening. You have to see to it, that they’re all here on time. Do you understand?”

  The young man nodded tentatively. He’s a real greenhorn, Kremman thought disdainfully. “Can you manage that?”

  “Yes, of course!” the page hastened to assure him.

  “How will you proceed?”

  He had him. Kremman saw him swallow and look back and forth around the floor with wide eyes, as though the answer might be found someplace there. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

  “What did you say?” Kremman persisted with cruel satisfaction. “I didn’t understand you.”

  “I said I don’t know yet.”

  Kremman looked him over as he would examine a repulsive insect. “Do you know the people on this list?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about dropping in on each one of them today to inform him?”

  The boy gave a tense nod, but still didn’t dare look him in the eyes. “Yes, yes. I’ll do that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bumug.”

  Kremman handed him the list. “It’s your turn in the afternoon.”

  “Afternoon?” Now he looked at the tax collector again, confused. “My turn? What do you mean?”

  Kremman smiled sardonically. “Naturally, you’re on the list, too, Bumug.”

  * * *

  As always, the Imperial Tax Collector moved into the guest quarters of the City Elders Hall. Every city he visited found itself in a quandary in respect to furnishing this apartment and feeding the guest. On the one hand, everyone was anxious that he not lack any amenity, so as not to rouse his displeasure; on the other hand, nobody wanted to give him the idea that he was dealing with a wealthy city.