by John Dalmas
He paused again, as if watching for a reaction, then changed the subject. "My father has instructed me to arrange a reception for you. On Fiveday night."
A reception, Brokols thought, would allow him to meet and evaluate a lot of important people. And Fiveday was only two days off.
Stilfos came in carrying a small tray with three glasses and a decanter. He poured for them and left, and they drank.
"There'll be young women of quality at the reception," Tirros added smirking. "They're all interested in the ambassador from across the ocean. Very interested. Your social life can be highly enjoyable here, if you'd like."
"Indeed?" Brokols wasn't sure what Tirros meant by 'social life'; the smirk had triggered suspicion.
The mirj's eyes gleamed darkly, lizard-like and watchful beneath half-closed lids. "But of course, you needn't wait till Fiveday if you'd like to meet young ladies. As I said, Mr. Ambassador, you're interesting, and I know some who'd like very much to meet you. At your convenience. Some very accomplished young ladies. I know at least one who'd happily meet you this evening; a charming girl."
Brokols felt his loins stir. The pup is deliberately tempting me, he thought. Or testing me. "Indeed!" he answered stiffly. "In The Empire we are cautious about young ladies."
The smile returned, a grin this time. "None of these has committed herself to anyone. They prefer their freedom yet awhile. Is there anything else I can do for you? Any entertainment you'd prefer at the reception? Dancing? Music? Anyone you'd particularly like to have attend? Or not attend? Food or drink you like especially well? That we might have in Hrumma?"
Brokols felt angry annoyance. He could think of one person he'd prefer not to be there, but he wasn't in Hrumma to make enemies gratuitously, certainly not in the amirrial family. "I'm sure that whatever you provide will be satisfactory. After all, the amirr is your father."
The curly head bobbed, a miniature bow. "Indeed, Your Excellency."
"And where is this reception to be held?"
"At the Palace. It is written in the invitation. Eltrienn knows the place. Or I can have someone else bring you, if you'd like a change of companionship."
"Not at all. I consider Eltrienn a friend, as well as guide and tutor." Brokols got to his feet. "Well. I'm sure you have—more interesting things to do this evening than talk with me. While I have things that I must attend to."
For a long moment, Tirros Hanorissio made no move to get up, and Brokols wondered if the youth would have the insolence just to sit there when his host had indicated the conversation was over. Or—perhaps it was inappropriate in this country to send someone on their way on such short notice.
But then the mirj unfolded his long body from the chair and stood. "Thank you, Your Excellency, for your hospitality. I may call on you again before the reception. If I don't, I'll see you there. And don't hesitate to call on me if there is, um, any favor I can do for you."
* * *
After leaving Karrlis Billbis, a grinning Tirros Hanorissio strode alone down a dark street. Except for the amirr himself, male aristocrats seldom had bodyguards in Hrumma, and Tirros would have felt restricted by one.
Karrlis's reading of the foreigner had been more than promising. If there proved to be no profit in him, at least this ambassador could provide amusement; he'd even blushed a little.
* * *
Elver Brokols read till his eyes felt red and tired. Oil lamps were no substitute for electricity. He set aside one of the books Eltrienn had given him, a history of Hrumma. It was interesting, if perhaps a bit imaginative. As he read though, his mind kept slipping off to the impudent mirj and his offer of girls.
He'd have trouble going to sleep tonight, he knew. Since Valda had died in childbirth, almost two years past, he'd had a woman only once, a comely wench in a place of illicit sex. Being there had been risky, a felony, and he'd found no pleasure in it, only brief excitement and subsequent self-disgust.
Somehow he felt sure that Hrummean girls would be far beyond anything he'd known with sweet but proper Valda. Or with the prostitute. He shivered. Pleasure droids! He'd avoid this Tirros at all costs, he decided.
But beneath the surface of his decision, he felt fantasies lurking to distract him from sleep.
Ten
The next day Eltrienn and Brokols drove up the valley in a light shay, visiting farms above the city. In the fields, some of the men wore only a sort of cloth band to contain their genitals, though most of them wore a short skirt as well. The women's skirts were longer, but hardly or not at all below the knees, and Brokols wondered if there was even an undergarment beneath; he hoped so. While above the waist—like the acrobatic dancers, some wore only a sort of supporting harness for their breasts, and a few of the younger none at all. Many children ran completely naked.
Mostly the adults and older children were hoeing. The rains had brought germination indiscriminately to crops and weeds, and there was a lot of field work to do.
In Hrumma, according to Eltrienn, the land was held quite differently than in Almeon. Except for grazing lands in some plateau districts where surface water was infrequent, there were no great ownerships. Each family held its own land, subject to eviction only in the case of land abuse. In the valleys, most of them banded together in cooperatives, paying one or more of their number to market for all the members, arranging transport, dealing with buyers or for space in the markets, collecting money, keeping records.
They bought their midday meal at one of the larger farmsteads and had gone inside to eat when the usual daily shower came, brief but hard. It was over by the time they'd finished, leaving the air steamy but somehow not oppressive.
The hills bordering the valley were mostly in orchards, where they weren't too steep, while occasional heavy-bodied gleebors, their upright horns cut short to stubs, grazed among the fruit trees. The steeper slopes were covered with coppice growth, with horizontal strips cut for fuel.
Most of the dwellings were of unbaked bricks, plastered over with the same kind of dried mud, and whitewashed. Most roofs were sodded or thatched. A few of the larger, finer homes were built of baked bricks, and had tile roofs. Native wood, whether as fuelwood or charcoal, had long been too scarce to fuel brick kilns with, Eltrienn explained. Charcoal for making tile and brick was mostly imported now from a small Hrummean settlement on the wild east coast of the mainland, operating at the sufferance of the barbarians there. Even much lumber came from there.
It was a long haul, Eltrienn said, a thousand-mile round trip by boat.
After he'd said it, he seemed to introvert, falling silent.
Barbarian tribes. The teaching slaves had told about the barbarians who occasionally raided the eastern and northern duchies of the Djezes, duchies that bordered wild and forested mountains. "How is it," Brokols asked, "that the barbarians allow your people to operate there?"
"We trade with them," Eltrienn answered.
"Trade what?"
The Hrummean lagged a moment before answering. "Gem-stones. Silver. Occasionally gold. They're fond of jewelry."
Jewelry? Brokols wondered. "Have you considered selling them steel? Tools? Weapons?" He watched the centurion's face as he asked; it told him nothing.
"They make their own."
"Their own steel?"
"Not steel. Hardly. But their own iron."
"What do they mine with?"
"They don't mine. The use bog iron; they collect the scums in certain ponds and springs."
"Huh! I've never heard of that. How is it done?"
Eltrienn shrugged. "I don't know. It's nothing I've ever seen done. But their trade has eased the pressure on our fuel supplies. And much of our larger timber is brought from there."
* * *
Brokols got home earlier than he'd expected. Stilfos was out of the apartment and didn't get in for another half hour. "Where were you?" Brokols asked when the man returned.
Stilfos colored slightly. "I was downstairs getting a lesson in baking. Bread, with
a flour made of a ground tuber."
"Hmm. Well. I look forward to eating some."
After a bit, Brokols went downstairs to see the landlord, and asked to meet the cook, to thank her for her help. She was perhaps twenty-five years old, handsome and strong-looking.
"Married?" Brokols asked the landlord afterward.
The man chuckled. "She'd like to be. Her husband was a sailor, lost in a storm last winter. I believe she's taken a liking to your man, though he's somewhat smaller than her."
That evening after supper, Stilfos asked if he could leave for a while. Brokols was inclined to deny him, but a contented servant was preferable to a resentful one, and the man was not replaceable here.
"I presume you've tidied the kitchen?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where would you go? And for how long?"
"I'd . . . like to go for a walk with Gerrla. Mr. Bostelli's cook. Not for very long. There's a park near here we can stroll in."
Brokols frowned thoughtfully, then looked at the Hrummean clock on the mantle. They'd somehow come up with a twenty-hour clock here, but he was getting used to it.
"Be back by eighteen hours then," he said. "Meanwhile I'll have used the radio, so when you get in, see to recharging the battery."
* * *
Brokols was not pleased with the situation, but sometimes it was necessary to view these things philosophically: Stilfos was a commoner, and though rather intelligent, more susceptible to biological urges than Brokols would be. Thus Brokols set the matter aside and returned his attention to the history.
At seventeen hours and a quarter, he put aside his book to radio Kryger. There wasn't much to report, but it was important to maintain regular communication. When he was done, it was nearly seventeen and a half—17.46. He wondered what Stilfos was doing just then, with Gerrla. Gerrla. A female descendant of pleasure droids.
He shivered, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, bleakly. He was twenty-eight years old, approaching twenty-nine, and he'd very likely be here for two years or more, perhaps five or ten.
But his father was an earl, and his older brother would be in his time. He himself had been knighted on acceptance into the university. He would spurn Tirros's offer and behave like an Almite noble. Like a Brokols.
He returned to his book, and at 17.96 heard Stilfos come in. A few minutes later he heard him on the roof, putting the generator in gear to recharge the battery. It would kick out after a preset number of revolutions. Shortly afterward, Stilfos knocked and asked if Brokols would like a pot of satta, and Brokols said yes. A few minutes later, Stilfos delivered it steaming hot, with a cup and a small pot of sugar cubes. Then, with Brokols' permission, he went to bed.
Brokols went to bed at 19.00 feeling grim. Damn it but the man had looked happy! He closed his eyes, and within seconds there was an image behind the lids, of Stilfos coupling with Gerrla in a shadowed grove. Double damn! he thought, sitting abruptly up. For a moment he glared in darkness, then lay back down to deliberately start a non-erotic thought chain, a distraction from the erotic.
He'd been offended by the semi-nudity of the teacher, but not by the rikksha runners. Why? The runners' loincloths were skimpier than the teacher's. Something else must underlie his feeling. Aesthetics? The teacher's body hadn't been unsightly, but neither was it handsome. And what was his basis for allowing aesthetics to justify indecent dress?
Brokols got up and went to the pantry, poured himself a glass of wine and walked back to the sitting room, his mind still busy.
As he sipped, it seemed to him that perhaps he'd disliked the teacher at first sight, disliked the look of him sitting in his diaper before his pupils. But he couldn't actually remember feeling like that.
Or had his dislike come later—grown out of their conversation? He had no doubt that the teacher had treated him superciliously—been condescending, almost insulting. He tried to remember just what had been said, but the words refused recall.
So did Master Jerrsio's. But there was no doubt that Jerrsio too had spoken as a superior to an inferior. Or no, that wasn't it. As an expert to the uniformed, appropriate enough to the circumstances. Not as an adult to a dim-witted child though; he hadn't felt demeaned by it.
And the subordinacy he'd felt before Master Jerrsio was different than his subordinacy to Kryger. Kryger was his superior in status and experience, no doubt in toughness, and probably in single-mindedness. But Brokols recognized his own relative strengths—empathy, balance, and quite probably intelligence. By contrast, Master Jerrsio seemed almost a different kind of entity, with different defining parameters.
And what about the scrawny old man who'd ushered them in and out of the monastery? What parameters defined him as a person? How, Brokols asked himself, did he feel about the man? Even without speaking or acting markedly perculiar, he'd seemed—perhaps not bright and surely not quite sane.
Brokols shook his head. He was giving these matters more attention than they deserved. His problem was, he'd been thinking of these people as fully human. So. Should he forbid Stilfos to consort with Gerrla? He shook his head, rejecting the thought, then stood and drank the last swallow of wine. Stilfos was, after all, common, and eight thousand miles from home and any proper woman.
He, on the other hand, was a knight, son of one of the best families, a graduate of the university, reserve army officer, a representative of the emperor. And in a few years, still young, he'd be back in Almeon, would marry a pretty woman of good family, one who played the scintar and sang nicely, who wouldn't die while losing her first child, who'd raise a family he could be proud of.
Elver Brokols went back to bed then and was soon asleep.
Eleven
It was early evening, still daylight, when Elver Brokols and Eltrienn Cadriio arrived by hansom at the amirr's palace. Brokols hadn't been there before. It was large but not huge, not in the sense that the imperial palace was, in Larvis Royal. Slightly smaller than the Brokols family seat in the Falmar Valley.
And different; the architecture and landscaping were much simpler. But the simplicity was elegant, its beauty deriving from a harmony of proportions and relationships, not relying on, or even much using, ornamentation. Like almost all of Theedalit's buildings, it was white, but the white of native marble, not whitewash. There were roundnesses and angles never clashing, many large and awninged windows, mostly open now, and double doors giving onto terraces, promenades, balconies.
The doormen were well covered, uniformed in chalk white hose and tunics, with soft boots and stiff-shouldered vests of golden velvet. Swords in gold-plated scabbards were worn thrust into sashes of scarlet or cobalt blue. The overall purpose was clearly aesthetics, but Brokols felt sure the swords were entirely functional, and no doubt the men who carried them. The amirr and naamir were waiting in a foyer, and to Brokols' brief confusion, both embraced him.
They led him to the reception then, in a spacious suite obviously intended and furnished for galas. Although he'd arrived almost exactly at the time prescribed, there already was a crowd. Apparently the other guests had been assigned an earlier arrival time, to be there when the guest of honor appeared.
And apparently there was to be no banquet in the usual sense, though the assortment of food and drink, still being set out on several long serving tables, seemed equal to a banquet. A sort of casual half cheer, half called-out greeting met Brokols when he walked in—or was it for his host and hostess they cheered?—and as waiters circulated with trays of drinks, people began to drift toward Brokols.
The drinks too were visually aesthetic, and the one he took seemed only weakly, if at all, alcoholic.
There was no formal reception line nor any swarm of greeters. They came up to him singly, for the most part, introduced themselves, said something polite, then gave way to someone else. Brokols was grateful for his gift of remembering faces and the names that went with them—a gift that had already helped his career in government service and may well have been a factor in his select
ion as ambassador.
After ten minutes or so a gong sounded, and a steward announced that food was now being served. There were plates of several sizes and kinds, to suit individual wants, and numerous tall tables, some small, some not, at which one stood to eat. Talk continued, though more slowly.
Some of the conversation was trivial, but he was asked many questions, and given a number of suggestions dealing with his functions as ambassador. Meetings were offered. After a bit, Eltrienn suggested to Brokols that he might wish to circulate, then left him on his own.
Among the affluent, dressing was obviously an art form. Variety was considerable, though white was the basic color. There was no semi-nudity to perturb him except for the almost invariable, though not monotonous decolletage. He couldn't entirely keep his eyes from straying to female breasts exposed halfway to the nipples, and the sight, so close, made him slightly uncomfortable, though not actually unhappy.