L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 03]

by Their Majesties' Bucketeers (epub)

  I climbed into the cab to discover, with some pleasure, that we were quite alone. “Is Vyssu given to fashionable lateness as well, or is she stamping an impatient hand for us in front of the Museum?”

  “Neither, I’m afraid—as she was able to explain upon the telephone a while ago. She had a social obligation which she couldn’t break, after all: a musicale for the Lord, Lady, and Lurrie Kassafiin at your fathers’s house this evening.”

  By the time we arrived at the Museum, our driver was hard-pressed to convey us through an angry-sounding crowd of demonstrators who had gathered all around the ancient edifice. The streets were overflowing with lamviin-ity, and Mav, after several vain attempts on the part of our conductor to make a path for us, at last decided we should walk, despite the cablan’s earnest protestations of our safety.

  Through annoying oversight I had left my bag in the carriage while Mav waited outside my modest lodgings, staring at his watch upon its chain. I might, in perfect propriety, have asked him in, but I knew full well this would be transmitted to my mother immediately upon her weekly visit tomorrow afternoon. My maidservant occupied her position far less for my convenience than for my family’s regular edification. That she had a reliable weakness for places like the Bucket & Truncheon and was to be found on such premises more frequently than at her duties suited me perfectly. But it would avail me nothing in the instance of so recent an “indiscretion” as permitting Mav to see my rooms—she had, after all, to have something to report every nine days.

  Accordingly, rather than entrust my instruments (a cherished present from my surfather) to be returned to my apartments by a driver I did not know, I elected to carry them to the lecture, winning, on this rare occasion, an argument against Mav’s archaic insistence that he shoulder the burden. Given the long and arduous day behind me, perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to be quite so persuasive.

  The crowds made quite as much commotion as the earlier fire had. I found myself astonished that the object of their protest was the very lecture we were looking forward to. Of course, the subject of Ascensionism was controversial; but what was there about this esoteric topic to incite what promised soon (were it not for the doughty Bucke-teers who formed an inner barrier around the place) to become a riot?

  Many in the throng were carrying torches, while others brandished large sheets of resinboard fastened to sticks after the manner of Continental radicals and labor insurrectionists. I fear that proper conduct precludes me from recording here some of these pronouncements (which in any case were echoed loudly by those who bore the placards), but the import was that they disagreed with Professor Srafen’s ideas and desired that rhe refrain from public discussion of them.

  Either that, or conduct rher next seminar at the bottom of the River Dybod.

  On the bed of a waggon whose shabby watun were tied to a hitching bar before the massive doors of the Museum, a figure pranced in soiled robes that might, a long, long time ago, have originally been white. Atop his jaws he wore a cone of parchment on which was crudely described a iidless eye.

  This I recognized from recent newspaper accounts and from history lectures at College, was an ancient religious insignia lately resurrected by an unauthorized sect of fundamentalists in distorted mockery of the Church of the Martyred Trine, which is the official State religion of the Empire of Great Foddu. The ragged form upon the waggon harangued the gathering, and I began to be amused, imagining what my parents’ friend the Archsacerdot of Mathas might make of the fellow’s rude theology:

  “Lamviin was instantaneously and miraculously created at the ordination and in the image of Our Maker, Pah!” Thus far the cant was orthodox, though I am given to understand certain sophisticated scholars high in the Church will entertain without prejudice the notion that this is more a matter of poetic metaphor than philosophical necessity.

  “And yet this vile blasphemer is allowed to teach that we ‘ascended’—through uncountable and monstrous accidents of birth—from creatures such as eat the bugs off arms of desert cactus! Will we permit this evil and indecent slander against the written word of Pah Himself?"

  “NO!” the crowd roared back at him, affrighting me far more than had the volumes of inanimate slime raised from the river earlier this evening. At least that foul substance had extinguished a blaze.

  “NO!” they shouted once again. I began to be afraid that here was more than some small collection of benighted crackshells. I grasped Mav’s arm all the closer, taking comfort in the hard-edged outline of the pistol beneath his cloak. He signed to one of the Bucketeers at the door who recognized us and immediately detached himself from the cordon to escort us the few remaining yards. We passed through many a muffled threat, which discreet cuffs from the officer silenced only momentarily.

  “You’re the last,” announced an elderly lam at the top of the steps as he carefully ticked our admissions off against a roster of invited guests he carried with him. His uniform differed somewhat from those of our protectors in the street and I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that he was with the Museum. “We’ll lock the doors now and bar them for good measure. Any more as is late’ll hafta read about it in th’ momin’ papers!” With this the guard secured the entrance and guided us across the dim, enormous front display hall toward our destination.

  Srafen Rotdu Rizmou, Professor and Curator of the Imperial Museum of Natural Philosophy, proved to be a sur-male of sufficient age to make the elderly Museum guard who led us to our seats seem sprightly by comparison. Mav advised that I should not be deceived altogether by appearances, that Srafen had been ill in recent months but was now recovering and in fact complained of gaining weight. Here and there a patch of the professor’s carapace and limbs showed through rher thinning pelt and rhe moved upon the speaker’s platform with a gingerly stiffness that betrayed the ravages of a lifetime spent in moister climates than perhaps our bodies are ideally suited for. This, by interesting coincidence, seemed the very topic that rhe was addressing as we found our places toward the rear of the chamber:

  “Everywhere you look in Sodde Lydfe, everywhere I collected specimens during my youthful service to Their Majesties’ Navy, everywhere from which today’s youths with a similar penchant send me samples, everywhere but in our planet’s deserts, which I’ll be turning to in due course”— rhe leaned upon the lectern and held a finger aloft—“everywhere, you will discover a single, common, highly educative circumstance!”

  Whether they agreed or not with Srafen, rher illustrious audience seemed captivated by rher unusually persuasive voice and assertive gesticulations. I cannot recall more than a teacher or three from my own school days who displayed this talent for making even dull things interesting, and none of them a third so good at it as rhe.

  “Predators! Colossal, frightening, efficacious monsters, many of them ninefold and more the size of any lam who ever walked, most of them far faster, more ferocious, and better-endowed by a vindictive nature to live a life of mayhem, murder, and mastication!” Here rhe struck a comically menacing pose as though about to leap upon those seated in the front row and devour them.

  In contrast to the public’s usual disinterest in the wonders of natural philosophy, the room was filled to bursting with a gratifying variety of individuals—such characters as one might properly expect: academics, students, officials of the Museum and their staff (some of whom assisted the fragile old erudite in manipulating rher often bulky specimens). In addition, naturally, the press—I spied Mav’s friend Niitood, recovered from his earlier excess and seated toward the front among his colleagues. Thereafter I assiduously avoided meeting his rearmost eye. Bucketeers were present inside, too, apparently in case some hypothetical infiltrator tried duplicating the chaos out of doors.

  “It can be no coincidence, then,” continued Srafen, “that our humble ancestors prospered only where no predator of any size could threaten them—where there was no easily obtained supply of, you will pardon my expression, water.”

  There pas
sed among the listeners a small, uncomfortable shudder.

  “It is equally no mere happenstance that every major prehistoric and contemporary carnivore lives in some damp and moldering environment, dependent on that vile fluid for sustenance. Even we—”

  Rhe paused, for here there was a whimpering echo of the “No!” outside from some more tender-stomached soul among rher auditors.

  “Yes, even we, by which I mean our remotest forebears, were once of similar unsavory persuasion. Yet the fossil record clearly demonstrates that, as we discovered safety in the sand, little by little we eschewed all but the slimmest remnants of our foul ancestral addiction to . . . well, let us pronounce it with scientific dispassion: dihydrogen monoxide. It is only now, through dint of our technological achievements, that we may return—however unwillingly at times—to moister climates for purposes of war and commerce . . . which in the Empire amount at times to much the same thing.” There were a few embarrassed chuckles.

  Much of the gathering this evening consisted of the Empire’s loftier lights, a scattering of nobility, popular intellectuals, and a leavening of the socially elite. I counted several dozen Members of Parliament—all three Houses represented—including a cabinet minister or three. Officials of the Church were here, which must have sorely galled the demagogues outside. It may be this which inspired them to make their protests heard, however faintly, even through the ancient walls that, with many a stoutly barred and bolted door, separated us from them. This arrangement suited me most excellently, were I compelled to tell the craven truth.

  “In the friendly desert, through random alterations to the medium of inheritance—an unknown process which, I am afraid, I shall perforce be leaving to another generation of investigators—and circumscribed, as it were, by the trials and tribulations of an unkind world, the little creatures that were to become, in countless ages, lamviin, changed and multiplied in variety.” Rhe pointed to a chart on the lefthand wall. “Common observation demonstrates those fundamental similarities in structure shared by all advanced species: trilateral symmetry; trinary reproduction of all vital organs; three major limbs extending from the body, which trifurcate again before they reach the ground and terminate in three-fingered paws, or hands.

  “Even birds are constructed on this simple, elegant plan, though Ascension has modified them severely, inverting their carapaces so that the jaws are carried downward, transforming legs into wings that they might whirl about” —here rhe suited action to words, turning several times and circling the lectern—“in a manner that would confuse the eye and confound the sensibilities of any lamviin.”

  Here, someone shouted, “What about the watu, then?”

  The professor stopped rher whirling suddenly and crinkled rher thinning fur with satisfaction. “Had not this kindly inquisitor spontaneously cried out, I should have had to pay someone to do so, for the watu is often raised as an objection to my theories, and on that account is the principal subject I have selected for this evening.”

  At some sign unnoticed by myself, Mav began shifting restlessly upon the cushion he had previously occupied in peace, those well-trained Bucketeer’s reflexes of his poorly suppressed as he glanced, his fur aligned in suspicious expression, about the crowded hall. Perhaps the press of those outside had affected his nervous disposition as it had done mine. Then, too, there was a certain tension palpable within the door of the Museum as well. Presently I ceased chastizing myself for cowardly imagination, and returned my full attention to the lecturer:

  . . their feet. By the time we get around to meso-watu,” continued Srafen, pointing to the diagram again, “this specialization favoring speed and agility is increasingly manifest.”

  At this point Niitood stood, inspired in all likelihood by the Professor’s dramatic caperings, and fumbled with some accessory to his camera. He signaled up at Srafen as if to beg rher please to hold that photogenic attitude for just a moment, in which the elderly scholar assented with a kindly ripple of rher fur.

  “Gone is that flawless symmetry that our own species has preserved. The central branching of the ‘frontal’ leg has atrophied, leaving but two delicate extremities. Both ‘rear’ legs have diminished even further, to a single branch apiece. See how much longer all the limbs have become, proportionate to the—”

  At last Niitood seemed to have persuaded his apparatus to be as cooperative as the Professor. He held the instrument before his eye, tensed both walking legs, and shouted, “Hold it, Doc!”

  And suddenly the entire room exploded!

  III: A Natural Philosophy of Murder

  Srafen had vanished in a blinding, lurid ball of flame, as if smitten by Him whose wrath the angry fanatics outside invoked. The air was filled with smoky vapor, my ears with screams of fear and anguish, my eyes—how can mere words convey the horrifying spectacle revealed to all as the atmosphere began to clear?

  In place of the kindly old Professor stood the fire-blackened framing of rher lectern. Platform, charts, the very walls around them dripped a gory emerald; a mist of greenish hue still hung before our eyes. At such a sight my professional and lamviinitarian instincts took charge. With a strength I was surprised to own, however momentarily, I battered my way through what had dissolved into a frightened mob, oblivious except to those whose suffering called me. It was a startled Mav who followed in my wake, shouting to the crowd for orderly behavior.

  Somewhere in the background the shrill peal of bells was to be heard, although it is possible there was some transitory effect upon my hearing. Perhaps I am too imaginative as I began attending the victims, it was clear to me they had fallen before a volley of uniquely grisly trajectiles: in addition to the ghastly splinters of the lectern, many sizable particles of carapace and other tissue had not originated with those whose bodies they now penetrated. Upon the bandages of each victim I wrote instructions that the surgeons might gather and preserve these pitiable fragments, lest Srafen’s cruelly violated form be denied decent interment.

  I have learned the virtue of setting aside emotion at such times, although I often afterward collapse in quakes and trembling quite as any laylam would. Thus momentarily detached, my hands and two front eyes pursuing their own ends, I observed Mav as he leapt upon the stage, his wicked foreign-looking reciprocator in one extended hand.

  “Your attention, Bucketeers!” he shouted, and, failing at first of the desired response, whistled discordantly through all six nostrils. “Comrades, allow no person to quit this hall unsupervised I Block the doorways, and— By the twenty -seven legs of God, stand clear, you cretins, you are destroying Queen’s evidence!” This latter was addressed to a sac-erdote, two cabinet ministers, and the Lord Mayor himself, who, like any common curiosity-seekers, had wandered rather nearer the focus of events than suited our Investigator—and narrowly missed upsetting my medical bag in hasty retreat.

  The bells at last stopped ringing, resumed at once, and then fell permanently silent.

  I could not discern whether Mav’s forceful manner stemmed from grief and anger at his old friend’s hideous demise, or from realization (which had not been lost upon me) that here, at long last, was the very sort of circumstance he had sought so long for the sake of proving his theories. However it may be, he rapidly organized affairs so that, regardless of dignity or class, no individual might depart before being clearly identified by some Bucketeer or guard who knew him, or vouched for by another known to the authorities. A list was begun, but Mav apparently had reasoned there was small chance the likes of the Minister of Trade, the Sheriff of Randwod, the Associate Curator of this establishment himself, or any other from this august assemblage, would be fleeing guiltily aboard the next Continental steamer. In this, I must confess, I felt him overly confident.

  He did take the precaution of ordering the speaker’s platform and the first few rows of seats strung off and left as they had now become, a gruesome tableau spattered in rapidly desiccating body fluids.

  My final patient was all too familiar. N
iitood lay in apparent agony, several articles of mechanical debris lodged firmly, albeit superficially, in his carapace. His principal concern, however, appeared to be whether his employer would provide him a new camera or require him to replace that costly instrument out of a salary which, he went to some pains to impress upon me, was criminally penurious. Whatever the outcome, I informed him, he would not be photographing with that eye for many days.

  Not more than half a dozen persons proved seriously enough endangered that they required more attention than

  I was capable of rendering. These few were appropriately seen to and their names duly inscribed upon Mav’s list, as it was not beyond reason that the perpetrator of this terrible deed might inadverently have incurred injury in its commission—or deliberately chanced doing so to divert suspicion. Arrangements were made to transport them by the most efficient means available to various establishments of mercy according to their social class.

  Thus I became free to witness Mav’s first tentative methodologies—indeed, if I may say so, to offer him another set of eyes and ears and hands toward that effort.

  From earliest consciousness, I have sternly disapproved of a lam’s life being forfeit to the State, regardless of the provocation. This predisposition, I suppose, I have from my surfather, who would be terribly distressed to learn that I considered that evening making an elaborate and painfully prolonged exception for the sort of craven canaille who deposit anonymous explosives and skulk away to let their killing be done indiscriminately. By comparison, the common, carapace-to-carapace murderer should be set free, perhaps even awarded the Queen’s Own Order of the Walking Glove, rather than consigned, willy-nilly, to that ignoble fate that, in justice, might be singularly reserved to bombers.