Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  Absurdly, it sat on a wheeled carriage with large truck tires. A tractor stood ready to tow it out of the hangar.

  “I ought to be a great deal more astonished than I am,” Saxon said. “Did you put something in the coffee?”

  “No. That would be illegal.” Saxon looked at him in puzzlement, but Lee said nothing else, and his expression was serious. Then he gestured with a backhanded wave. An opening appeared in the featureless side of the gray ship, a brightly lit rectangle just in front of them.

  “Shall we go aboard?”

  “I’m not getting in there!” Haskins protested.

  “I am afraid you are,” Lee said. He gestured towards the door they had just come through. The two uniformed guards had drawn their weapons and were watching them closely. “The only question is what condition you’ll be in when you board. You had your chance to say no. Now it’s a bit late.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?” Haskins asked. “’Cause we seen this ship? Ain’t nobody gonna believe me. Or Bart neither.”

  “They might well believe Ms. Sandori,” Lee said carefully.

  “So—” Haskins stopped himself. “Bart, what the flaming crap do we do?”

  “We get aboard. At least I think I will.” Saxon turned to Lee. “I take it this assignment is farther away than you intimated?” he said, and Lee smiled.

  “You could say that.”

  “But it’s the same job? Science education?”

  “Very much so. You know what equipment you bought.”

  “Where’s our gear?” Saxon demanded.

  “Already aboard. If you hadn’t come we’d at least have that much done. Your weapons and equipment are also aboard, including some you didn’t think to get. We had—other consultants—in choosing them. With luck you won’t need weapons, but you can’t always be lucky.”

  “And me?” Sandori said. “What’s my job, then?”

  “The same as before. Security. Protect and assist Mr. Saxon. Try to include women in the education process. I did not exaggerate the primitive nature of the place you are going.”

  “Now just a damn minute,” Sandori said. She looked at Haskins and Saxon. “You’re talking about going to another goddam planet—”

  Lee nodded.

  “Which makes me the only woman in the world. For them. Thanks, but—”

  Lee chuckled again. “Wrong. Ms. Sandori, you don’t have any choices here, but you won’t be the only woman in the world, nor are these the only men. Tran is settled with humans. The culture is primitive, but I assure you quite human.”

  “What kind of humans?” Haskins demanded. “Black people?”

  “I frankly don’t know. I believe there may be Moors. Does it matter?” Lee said. “They’re certainly human beings. As am I, as you may have noticed.”

  “You come from there?” Haskins asked.

  “Not from where you’re going, no. But I was neither born nor raised on Earth. Now. Please get aboard. You’ll be no use to us if you’re dead, but if that’s what it takes—”

  “I don’t think he’s kidding,” Sandori said.

  “I’m not, although in fact the necessity will not arise. We have the means to stun you. You won’t appreciate the headaches.”

  Saxon ignored that.

  “So how did these humans get to—Tran, you said?”

  “Tran, and no more conversation. You’ll be well briefed. I guarantee that before you get there, you will know more about Tran’s history than anyone at present on the planet. Now get aboard. We’re running out of time.”

  * * *

  They were in a windowless compartment about the size of the San Jose living room office. The walls were plain and featureless except for several large squares that looked as if they might be coverings for something else. Otherwise there was nothing to look at. Saxon felt stirrings of claustrophobia, enough to keep him from talking, or paying attention to Haskins who was saying something Saxon didn’t care about. The steel walls seemed to be closing in. Saxon shuddered.

  Seven steel airline seats were bolted to the floor. At least they looked like airline seats, but Saxon noticed they’d been modified. They reclined further and there were heavy-duty head rests.

  Lee took one of the seats and gestured them into others. The straps were simple, similar to the full restraints airline crews use, and Saxon busied himself fastening them. George Lee settled into his chair, fixed his straps, and promptly went to sleep. A few moments later they felt the ship move as it was towed out of the hangar.

  Five minutes went by. There was a feeling of acceleration.

  “Whoo,” Haskins said. The floor rotated under them. “Uh—”

  There were brief periods of acceleration, changes of direction, more accelerations, then a long period of high weight, high enough to discourage conversation. In about an hour the high weight stopped, and there was a brief period of weightlessness. Saxon fought the urge to vomit. Then they were heavy again for another hour or more. To distract himself from the closing in walls, Saxon estimated the accelerations.

  Assume we accelerated, and now we’re decelerating, he thought. About an hour at something like two gravities. Now decelerate—he whistled.

  “Moon,” he said. “We’re going to the Moon.”

  “Astute,” George Lee said, and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  A soft tone sounded, and Lee got up.

  “Ah. We’re here.”

  “Low gravity,” Saxon said. “Definitely the Moon.”

  “You’re calm enough about it,” Sandori said.

  “Sure. I have to be,” Saxon said through his teeth. “No point in being anything else.”

  “Maybe you feel that way, but I’m ready to freak,” Haskins said.

  “No you’re not,” Sandori said.

  “Well, maybe not, then.”

  There was a slight pressure change. A door appeared. Saxon wasn’t sure whether it opened or dilated: it was just suddenly there, and Lee led the way through it. Beyond was a rough-walled corridor, then a series of doors that definitely did dilate to open, and finally a carpeted room with tables and chairs, all furniture that had clearly been made on Earth. A Formica-topped counter ran along one wall. It held a Krups cappuccino machine and a Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Cabinets above the counter held cups and other supplies. There was a sink with running water. The fixtures were standard ones you’d see in any home appliance store on Earth. The overhead lights were fluorescent shop lights. Except for the dilating door there was nothing alien in the room.

  “Make yourselves at home,” Lee said. “The bathroom is through there, press the square button on the wall to open the door. Bart, if you’ll come with me—”

  “What about us?” Sandori demanded.

  “Later. Have some coffee,” Lee said. “Don’t worry, Bart will be back soon enough, and you’ll all be on your way. Inspector Agzaral prefers to talk to him alone first.”

  “Inspector Agzaral,” Sandori said. “Inspector? Police?”

  “A policeman, yes,” Lee said. “Unlike in San Francisco, inspector is a very high rank in our service. You’ll all meet Inspector Agzaral later. Bart, we don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  Saxon followed George Lee through a series of corridors and dilating doors. Each door closed behind them, and Saxon couldn’t figure out how Lee got them to open. He certainly wasn’t pressing buttons. Saxon tried getting ahead of him to see if the doors opened automatically, but they didn’t. If Saxon got there first, the door stayed closed until Lee approached, then it opened without his seeming to do anything. Saxon wondered if he should ask, but decided not to. Watch, wait, learn . . .

  Eventually they came to a large office. It held a desk and a large screen that showed Earth from space. There were alien artifacts in plenty, incomprehensible panels with lighted squares, an oddly shaped thing that might have been a clock but had lights blinking in a pattern where there should have been a clock face, strange sculptures of animals that had never lived on
Earth. There were also crystal decanters and sherry glasses, an ordinary General Electric wall clock, and other familiar things. The contrast between prosaic and alien was startling.

  A tall, thin man dressed in what might have been a robe or a gown sat behind the desk. The gown was rust colored, with insignia and decorations, some, like a stylized comet and sunburst, familiar enough, others incomprehensible. The man stood when Lee ushered Saxon into the room. After a moment he held out his hand. Like Lee he seemed vaguely Oriental in appearance but Saxon couldn’t have said why. The head was a bit large for his body, the eyes a bit large for the face, but then the face was elongated rather than round. If he’d said he was an alien, Saxon wouldn’t have believed him.

  “Agzaral,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Saxon.”

  “I—I guess I’m pleased to meet you,” Saxon said. Agzaral’s hand felt normal enough, strong grip, what Saxon under different circumstances would have called a good handshake. The inspector seemed distracted, as if thinking about things other than Saxon, but at the same time his assured manner gave off a feeling of competence. Saxon thought he might like him.

  “I’m probably more pleased to meet you,” Agzaral said with a thin smile. “Please be seated. We won’t have a great deal of time, and I don’t know you well. If you find something I say incomprehensible, you may ask clarification—”

  “It’s all incomprehensible,” Saxon said.

  “If so, we’ve chosen the wrong hero,” George Lee said.

  “Hero.”

  “Yes. Or perhaps protagonist,” Agzaral said. “You have an epic task, nothing less than saving a civilization. Perhaps a race. I believe hero is none too strong a word, but protagonist will serve if you prefer.”

  Saxon looked from Lee to Agzaral for signs of humor, but saw none.

  “Me?”

  “You are the one chosen.”

  “That’s the first problem,” Saxon said. “Why me?”

  Agzaral made a gesture that might have been a nod of agreement and might have been irritation at a silly question.

  “You were recommended.”

  “By Hector Sanchez,” Lee added.

  “Hector knows about—” Saxon gestured to take in the alien artifacts, including the large screen showing Earth. It was clear that the clouds and the solar terminator were moving, and this was a real time view. It was now night in California, but the lights of San Francisco and Silicon Valley were clearly visible. “—this?”

  “No,” Agzaral said. “Dr. Sanchez works with one of our agents whom he believes to be a supervisor with the Central Intelligence Agency. I offer you the observation that your government’s habits of secrecy in matters that need none have been very helpful to us in the past. It was so this time. Dr. Sanchez was told that the CIA needs a science teacher to work in primitive conditions on a project of great national importance which will benefit a primitive society. He volunteered your name instantly as a person extremely well qualified, then expressed doubt that your wife would let you accept the assignment.”

  “It wasn’t hard to discover that your wife’s views would no longer be a problem,” Lee observed. “Sanchez’s recommendation was so enthusiastic that I thought it worthwhile looking farther.”

  “But still—”

  “There are rules on recruiting Earth humans,” Agzaral said. “For any purpose, but particularly for off-planet work. The rules are complex, but let us say that your legal situation actually made things much easier for us. You don’t need to know more.”

  “Habits of secrecy,” Saxon said.

  “Perhaps, but there’s also the time factor,” Agzaral said. “We’re not trying to be secretive in this case. In essence we are not allowed to tell you what you’re volunteering for, yet we’re supposed to accept only volunteers. This usually translates to ‘was it reasonable for you to be sent?’ In your case it was. You will learn much more on the journey to Tran.”

  “Please listen and save questions for later,” Lee said. He looked at a small box on the desk in front of them. Lights flashed in a pattern that meant nothing to Saxon, but Agzaral and Lee exchanged looks and nodded. “Inspector Agzaral hasn’t a lot of time.”

  “All right.” Saxon settled back in his chair.

  “Begin with your remark about secrecy,” Agzaral said. “It is a habit of long standing. Only a few of your Earth years ago, my revealing to an Earth human what I am about to tell you would have earned me a painful death. It would do so even now if there were the smallest chance that you would return to relay this information to your government.”

  “X-Files,” Saxon said. The new show had been quite a hit among those in the lounge at the Glide. Bart knew many of his fellow street people thought the show was more truth than fiction.

  Agzaral frowned, but Lee laughed.

  “Close,” he said.

  “What you’ve said is that I’ll never go home again,” Saxon said.

  “From what I’ve learned, you have little reason to want to,” Agzaral said, and Saxon nodded.

  “I guess that’s true. I thought about this on the way. It was pretty clear this was a one-way trip. If I could go back, why hasn’t someone already?”

  “Some have claimed to,” Agzaral said.

  “Sure, obvious nut cases—unless you really are into sexual abuses?”

  “Hardly,” Agzaral said. “So you are not astonished.”

  “Astonished perhaps, but hardly unhappy. I really don’t have anyone left on Earth. And I’d like to teach again. I assume I really am going to teach young humans on an alien planet?”

  “You are.”

  “And my—associates?”

  “Same story,” Lee said. “You need assistants, and what do they have to go back to?”

  “Cal, certainly, but Spirit?”

  “She has better reasons than Cal not to return to Earth,” Lee said, and Agzaral gestured impatiently.

  “What is done is done,” he said. “Depend upon it. Neither you nor your companions will ever return to Earth, but the work we have for you is more important than anything you would ever have done on Earth. Accept that, and allow me to continue.”

  Saxon nodded.

  “You said Earth humans,” he said. “That means you and Dr. Lee aren’t?”

  “I was born on Earth,” Agzaral said. “Long ago. Dr. Lee was not. We are both human.”

  “Not born on Earth. In this solar system?”

  “No.”

  Saxon nodded again.

  “Interstellar travel. Faster than light?”

  “Yes.”

  “An interstellar civilization, then. How far does it extend?”

  Agzaral smiled thinly.

  “The answer depends on your definition of civilization. The galaxy contains many of what you would call civilizations.”

  “The part you run.”

  “Several hundred light-years,” Agzaral said. “The center of the Confederation is more than two hundred light-years from Sol.”

  “Big. All under one government?”

  “It is a Confederation of unequals. Of planets, races, clans, families. Mr. Saxon, I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but the chances that you will ever understand Confederation government and politics are extremely small. I grew up with them, politics is literally my life work, and I understand perhaps a tenth of what I need to know.” He waved that away. “Fortunately, understanding the complex politics of a decadent high-tech civilization is no part of your task.” Then he grinned as if amused.

  “So what’s so damn funny?” Saxon demanded.

  “It is funny,” Agzaral said. “You don’t need to understand a decadent high-tech civilization, but you’ll certainly need to know a great deal about a low-tech civilization as complex and dynamic and incomprehensible as Renaissance Europe.”

  “Very much like Renaissance Europe, in fact,” Lee said.

  “I take it humans run this civilization.”

  “The primitive one? Of course.”
r />   “No, I meant the—galactic civilization. Confederation, you called it. Humans run that?”

  “Not precisely,” Agzaral said. “There is a sense in which that’s true, but not the way you may expect. In your studies of Earth history, did you ever hear of the Janissaries?”

  “Heard of, not sure I remember anything about them,” Saxon said. “Turkish elite soldiers? Something like that.”

  “They served the Ottoman Empire, which was Turkish,” Agzaral agreed. “But they were not Turkish. They were Christian slaves, Slavs mostly, taken as young children as tribute, rounded up by their Bosnian and Albanian neighbors who had chosen to convert to Islam and thus avoid having their own children taken as taxes. They generally came from the Balkans, the area recently called Yugoslavia. The important point is they were taken when very young and impressionable and made slaves, not of individuals, but of the Turkish state. They were forcibly converted to Islam and brought up to serve the Empire, and they became fanatics in its service. Indeed, they soon became the elite troops of the Turkish armies, and were also the chief civil servants, department heads, advisors to the Sultan—so you could in fact say they ran the Turkish civilization. But they were its slaves, not its masters.”

  There was a long silence while Saxon wondered what he was supposed to say. But then, slowly, he began to comprehend.

  “You mean that humans in your Confederation are Janissaries?”

  “We aren’t called that, but yes,” Lee said. “We’ve often wondered where the Turks came up with the idea for the Janissaries. Inspector Agzaral suspects it was from one of his predecessors in the security services.”

  “How long has this been going on?” Saxon demanded.

  “Over five thousand of your years,” Agzaral said. “Let me continue. Over time, the Janissaries on Earth became corrupt. They began to have their own agenda, their own goals which were not the same as those of the empire they served.” He shrugged. “It was inevitable, I suppose.”