The Martian General's Daughter

by Theodore Judson

  For almost a year a large body of water would lie between our household and these happy times in the capital, and every day Father thanked Sophia of the Flowers for placing that expanse of water where she had.

  he news of our victory over Selin in the pass between Nicea and Eribulus moved more rapidly than we did. For sixteen days we marched to the northwest through Turkey and passed villages and towns that were become increasingly unstable after the people heard of Selin's defeat and beheld the small size of Father's force. For much of the journey several of our Boer troopers had to take turns carrying Father on a blanket. After passing dozens of likely resting places, we at last had to stop a while in a cluster of ragged pine trees near the place where the road swings sharply toward the city of Istanbul. The servants and I had to help Father from his blanket and help lay him on the high, cool grass. Medus rubbed the general's legs while Helen and I brought him some water to drink and to splash on his leathery face.

  After we had rested for an hour, watching the birds above fly to where people no longer could, Father took from his tunic a last letter from Mr. Golden; its seal was broken but its contents were unopened. He handed it to me.

  "It came to me at Nicea," he said. "My eyes would not let me read it. I can only read large print anymore."

  "Was our rich `friend' with Selin's army?" I asked as I looked at the missive that had been composed when our triumph had not seemed possible.

  "Maybe he was in a rear area. He was not among the dead or the captives. Read his letter anyway," urged Father. "I am feeling old, Justa. You should humor me."

  I read:

  "`I had a conversation this day with my lord Abdul Selin which I would tell you of. He was this morning full of an account concerning a battle he fought near Lake Cyzicus-"'

  "He means the battle he destroyed poor Brigadier Harriman in," commented Father.

  -in the footsteps of Alexander, he there fought his way into Asia,"' I read. "`My Lord Selin's good fortune has put him in a generous mood, and I am today writing to you of a wonderful offer to you from him, the Turkish sirocco, the new King Arthur, the modern Napoleon whose special deity is the sun. The generous, manly, virtuous Selin has also bestowed upon this unworthy fellow the estates of two recently deceased gentlemen of your acquaintance."'

  "My family," whispered Father.

  "`While he and I were in his tent,"' I read, "`and he was heaping reward upon reward on me, he happened to mention that you and I might know each other. "Why, yes," I said, "I believe my daughters were married to his late sons." "Have you had any recent conversations with General Black?" asked my lord Selin. "You know," I said, "although I have never been interested in politics, I think, if I am not mistaken, Black is somehow involved in this fracas, is he not?" My lord Selin then com menced a long and wondrous narrative describing the campaigns you and he waged together in the Great Plains, when he was the governor and you the stalwart soldier who rid his province of deserters. His eyes filled with tears as he recalled the happy times you and he had together in those days that are no more. "It is a pity," he said. "While he is my rival, I wish we could imitate the military discipline of that man." He was overcome with emotion for a moment. "If only," he said, "we could let the past be the past, and General Black could be with us when we go against the upstart Whiteman. We would just be soldiers again, fighting together as we did in the old days. We could save the Empire, he and I. I suppose that once I defeat the rest of his army he will get across the Euphrates with those scoundrels who led him into this error and will nevermore play a role in our glorious Empire." My love for you, my dear general, made me bold, and I dared to speak my heart in the presence of the great man. "It is carried to me by rumor," I said, "that the noble General Black may not flee to the heart of Asia, but might remain within the boundaries of our Eastern provinces. Rumor would even have it that I may be able to locate him." Would that you had been there to see the smile upon my lord Selin's face-"'

  "I have seen that smile already," said Father. "Selin and the crocodile make pretty much the same expression when they're happy."

  "Mr. Golden still lays the blather on thick," I commented. "I would pay to see his face when he learns his `Lord Selin' has had to run for his life."

  "That bit about my military discipline is from a letter Selin wrote to the Concerned One when I was in the emperor's good graces and Selin did not know where he stood," said Father. "Golden knows Selin likes to hear himself quoted. Selin must have imagined the Concerned One read anything written to him. Luke Anthony sometimes listened to that prostitute of his and that addle-headed giant; most times he followed his personal inclinations."

  I read farther:

  "`He forgot the dignity of his office and leapt forward to clasp my hand. "'

  "Skip ahead beyond any heartfelt scenes," said Father.

  "He goes on," I said. "Selin says he really loves you, wants to make you cospeaker of the Senate."

  Father laughed regardless of the pain in his legs.

  "Selin wants to know if Mr. Golden could contact you," I said, scanning through the letter. "Mr. Golden writes: `Oh, yes, I can!' Oh no," I said as I read the ensuing words.

  "What is it?" asked Father.

  "Mr. Golden writes," I said, "that the late Brigadier Harriman betrayed you at Lake Cyzicus to save his wife and children in Garden City. Selin murdered them all anyway."

  "Poor, poor Harriman," said Father.

  "They have killed the Senators Caleb Coppola and Francis Penn," I said. "This is rich: Mr. Golden wants you to destroy any letters he has sent you. He writes, `I would never, with my own hand, disparage the Empire or my lord Selin.' He claims a coconspirator allied with General Whiteman must have written some of the more malicious letters he sent you."

  "I pity Golden also," said Father. "He thought he was backing the winning side. Selin will kill him too, in time. That greedy little chap will not share his realm with anyone. The fat fool Golden is already afraid."

  "He wanted you to surrender to Selin," I said. "He writes he fears you would flee to the Chinese, perhaps form a government in exile."

  I read aloud the last paragraph in the letter: "`You must go to the station north of Tarsus. Dress in the garb of a commoner, wrap a long coat around you, and get rid of your soldier's armor. A friend of mine will meet you on the road. He will take you to another friend of mine, one Nicholas Street--

  "The assassin," said Father. "Our men found him dead among the fallen in the pass."

  The letter concluded: "`This man's visage is darker than even yours; thus his somewhat forbidding face will be easily recognized. Perhaps you have heard of his exploits in the arena. Trust me, he is exactly the man for this mission. When he approaches you, draw back your coat and tell him your name. "What gives you the right to be here?" he will ask. Draw your sidearm and say to him, "This does." Surrender to him your weapon as a sign of your trust in the gracious Abdul Selin. Be assured that Mr. Street will straightaway give the weapon back to you. You will thereafter be brought to Selin's camp, where he and I will be overjoyed to see you."'

  "He ends there," I said.

  "He couldn't resist mocking me, there at the last part," said Father. "Golden presumed I would surrender myself up to death. Are we fighting to rule subjects such as he?"

  We brought out some bread and a little wine from our knapsacks. Helen spread a cloth on the grass in lieu of a dining table, and we ate our small repast in quiet moments of peace. Father remained lying on his back. With some help from Medus, he did manage to eat some crusts upon which he had asked Sophia's blessings.

  "The news of our victory will soon overtake us," he said, and said nothing more till the servants had picked up the cloth.

  While I went to tell the men we were about to begin marching again, Medus and Helen helped him stand, and he said something to them I did not catch.

  "Come and have another drop of wine, sweetheart," said Helen, and she brought me the wine skin. "Drink up. We will be thirsty long b
efore we get any more."

  Father called me to his side. He had seated himself, after much effort, on a fallen tree trunk, and motioned toward the place he wanted me to sit.

  "So, Justa, what do you think?" he asked me.

  "Of what, sir?"

  "Of everything," he said. "You should, I think, call me Father, and I will call you Daughter."

  He kissed my cheek. The servants and the armed men were immediately at hand and could plainly see this brave gesture of affection he had never before granted me. I could not keep myself from crying as shamelessly as I had done when as a young girl I had witnessed the dying Mathias the Glistening.

  "I think the world is a desolate place," I said, "if evil men like Selin and Golden can escape to prosper and good men like my father can give everything to the Empire, win every battle he fights, and yet gain nothing."

  "I wouldn't know about that," he said. "Those things, as you know, are too deep for me. Right now, Daughter, my one regret is I never kept up my calligraphy. I had a wonderful hand when I was schoolboy. No telling where good calligraphy can take a man. I'll need it now that we no longer can type anything. Anyway, I did not give up everything. I did not give up you, Daughter," he said, and kissed my hand.

  "I will give up myself," I said. "I will stay with you, Father, until the battle is finally and forever won."

  "No, we will go to Amsterdam," I heard Father say. "We will ask for Samuel Van Coons in the marketplace, as I told you to do once before. There you will marry and have children, Daughter. That will be my final revenge upon Selin and his sort. The world will never be completely his as long as you and yours are in it. I will live as long as I can, and perhaps in time you will forgive me for the wrongs I have done you."

  He called for the men to gather around him, and positioned the officers so they could relay his words to those in the seventeen thousand who were beyond the reach of his voice. Medus helped Father climb atop the tree stump, and from there he spoke to his command.

  "My friends," he said, "no general could demand more from his troops than what you have already given me. You have won a great victory that will live on after you are gone, although the Empire you fought for will not.

  "There is no Empire any longer, and no longer any emperor. Abdul Selin has escaped from our reach and is on his way back to Garden City to raise another army. Given his resources and that of his criminal family, he will gather enough men to keep himself in power in North America, but he will not make a force capable of sailing across the Atlantic and retaking the Empire's lands in this hemisphere. His other rival, General Whiteman, is stuck in Britain and Scandinavia. When his money runs out-and it soon will-he will wither away.

  "I too must wither away, my friends, for I am already out of funds and can no longer pay you to fight more battles."

  A murmur rippled through the men, although they were soon again quiet.

  "You have won the battle, and I can only give you your freedom. I cannot give you more. There are no longer any battles left for you to win, not for you and not for me. There are only some angry factions fighting on the other side of the world. Their quarrels are meaningless to us. Whoever reigns in Garden City, he will only increase the suffering of those under him.

  "Rather than continue to insert ourselves in their disputes, I propose we cross into Europe and begin the world anew. That land was the home to many of your ancestors. The new diseases have depopulated many areas and left the land open for settlement by new pioneers."

  Most of the soldiers had traveled from Van City with their wives and children trailing behind them. To these families without homes, settling and farming, even in the primitive conditions of a world stricken by the new metal plague, sounded better than fighting more pointless battles.

  "In Europe," said Father, "you will build a new nation and I will grow old. The Empire will pass away, and in a thousand years your descendants will read of it in a language that does not yet exist, and they will wonder if these things really were. And even if they think the story of our age is no more real than the tales of Camelot and Troy, those in ages hence will know who among us were villains and those who were loyal to the things they held dear."

  I whispered to Father he should stop there, because I feared he might tell the story of the crocodile and harm the favorable opinion his men had of him.

  The men voted to go on with us to that portion of Europe called the Low Countries, from whence the ancestors of the Boers had come six centuries before. As we marched through Istanbul the next day, the city that had held out for Father turned out to cheer us across the bridge over the Bosporus. Two days after we were gone, the city went over to the Muslim rebels from the nation's rural districts, and Turkey-as the rest of Asia had already done-left the Pan-Polarian Empire forever.

  e had been in Turkey for another ten months when Father was called to Garden City for the final time. The frontier had been kind to us; it had given us three full seasons of peace in spite of our deteriorating technological abilities, while in the capital city great changes had been taking place. Soon after Cleander's death the Senate had seated itself to hear the Concerned One speak upon a new agenda for the Empire he had told the senators he wished to announce within their hallowed chamber. The Concerned One was yet riding a wave of popular approval in the aftermath of the chamberlain's bloody downfall. The Senate was expecting him to use the moment to propose either a new campaign against the Chinese or to initiate a public rebuilding program. Every one of the distinguished gentlemen and ladies present was dressed in his or her ornate finery of silk and gold and sat on the plush seats hoping against experience that the Concerned One would at last emerge as the second Mathias they had long awaited. Their hopes should have been directed toward something else. The emperor entered that grand room wearing a ragged pair of denim shorts and a tattered straw hat that sat upon his head at a rakish angle; over his shoulder he carried a pole on the end of which was a hobo's kit tied into a red bandana. Into the Senate's sanctuary the Concerned One brought with him his gaggle of athlete friends along with his mistress Marcie Angelica and the huge wrestler Norman. Marcie was dressed in a manner similar to the emperor and had freckles painted on her nut-brown face. The nearly insensate Norman had on a pair of bib overalls, and was painted on his face and body with black greasepaint and bore in one hand a boat oar. None of the senators could bring himself to speak until the emperor had planted himself on the high throne directly in front of them. Those in the front row sat gaping as if under a spell; the ones in the back benches pretended to be looking at an interesting spot on the ceiling high above the emperor's head. Caleb Coppola, an elderly senator from a distinguished family-meaning his ancestors had toadied to generations of the very powerful better than almost anyone else-was the first to rise and speak.

  "Welcome, Emperor Luke Anthony, the Concerned One, the Conqueror of Britain, the Friend of Peace, the-," he said, and was going to list the rest of the emperor's honorary names until the emperor held up a hand to signal him to stop.

  "There is no Concerned One any longer," said the emperor. "Not in my current human form, anyway. He does, I know, live on among you citizens of Pan-Polaria in loving memory."

  Mr. Coppola had served fifty years in the Senate. A man does not prosper in dangerous circumstances for that long without being able to shift his position when the ground beneath him shifts. He made a swift appraisal of the situation and said, "My old eyes have betrayed me. Who is it, my lord, that I am addressing?"

  "Sometimes I am called the One Who Has Come," said the emperor. "Sometimes Mr. Hercules. Today I am appearing before you as Tom Sawyer, one of my preferred earthly guises. Be not afraid, my friends. I may be the king of heaven, but as long as I am in human shape, I am much like any of you. Therefore, you may look upon me, and your eyes will not fall from their sockets, which they would do, I promise you, were I to assume one of my more awesome forms. Of course, even now I could crush all of you just by making a fist."

  He fl
exed the muscles in his forearms to show them this was so.

  "I see," said Senator Coppola, who was in fact doubting everything he was hearing and seeing.

  The emperor explained that Marcie was now Huckleberry Finn, the boon companion of the fun-loving Tom. The giant Norman was, by the emperor's grace, the Negro Jim, but the senators were not to be offended by the presence of a slave; the emperor could, with a nod of his head, also make Norman resemble the king of Persia, if there still was a Persia and it still had a king-the emperor could not remember that morning.

  "I thought it was only right to make him my companion after the cruel trick that was played on him," the emperor said.

  "What trick was that, my lord?" asked Senator Coppola.