The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  “It is the unanimous decision of the High Council that Keryl Clee shall be put to death. As for his fellow defendants, it is our determination that if he provides credible evidence of the fate or whereabouts of Lady Maire Por Foret, they will be pardoned. Otherwise, all three shall be executed on the morrow. The choice is yours.”

  Chapter 33

  Reversal of Fortune

  I was frozen in my place. Bad enough that I had been sentenced to die, but now my friends would die with me, for no reason other than the Nuum High Council could not see past its own self-centered pride and fear to entertain even the notion that someone, somewhere, could bring down their self-assured empire. And I, I could not see past my own pride, so certain that I was the only one who could protect those I loved!

  And that my failure should be delivered to me in the form of my greatest enemy! A sudden rage burned away the cold dread that paralyzed me, and I strained against my ethereal bonds. Sitting on the table not ten feet in front of me were the weapons I could use to wipe the smirk off of Farren’s face and send him to the Nuum version of hell, but even now the guards were taking hold of my arms in preparation to taking me away to await my doom. Only ten feet away lay my pistol, my swordstaff, my—

  “My lords!” I shook off the guards’ grasping hands as a terrier shakes off water. “I have a witness!”

  “Take him away,” Farren ordered contemptuously. He was already moving to mingle with Duke Osa and his peers. “If he persists, gag him.”

  “My lords!” I shouted again to the dismissive councilors. “I call the Library as my witness!”

  “Stop!” The entire room turned as one to see Lady Darenna Por Tanz standing with one shaking hand outstretched in command. But it was not age that caused her tremors; in her eyes I saw white-hot rage, and her voice was low and hollow. “I was a librarian before I ascended to the council. The Library has been the keeper and symbol of humanity’s progress for over five hundred thousand years. It is in this Council’s charter that we must protect it at all costs. If you are invoking the Library to further your criminal purposes, I shall request the honor of executing you myself.”

  The other councilors had drawn back from her. Farren was poised uncertainly between us. I knew he was about to order me removed, but in the face of her pronouncement he dared not. I would be damned, if damned I was to be, out of my own mouth. So be it then.

  “I call the Librarian.” Instantly my old friend stood before the crowd, wearing the same gentle professorial smile he always assumed when he was preparing to lecture me.

  “Noble Councilors.” He bowed his head respectfully—and to a man they went down on one knee before him.

  At his gesture, they rose. The Librarian looked over at me. “I thought you had forgotten all about me.”

  Despite my situation, I had to grin. Holographic program or not, his unflappable nature never ceased to amaze me. Yet to the Council, he represented the greatest aggregation of knowledge in the known universe, and his recollections and judgment were considered so infallible that he could serve as judge and jury.

  “Librarian,” said Lady Darenna. “Can you shed light on the defendant’s testimony?”

  “I can, my lady. Keryl Clee is telling you the truth.”

  It was as if all of the air had abruptly left the room. The councilors collapsed in on themselves and limped back to their chairs, whence they fell like stringless puppets. Relentlessly, the Librarian continued.

  “In the weeks that he was enslaved in Jhal, I took every possible opportunity to scan and collate such information as I could gather. My capabilities were limited by Keryl’s lack of mobility and access, but I was able to draw many conclusions—and fortunately, through Keryl’s resourcefulness, I attended many meetings of the kluraths’ highest officials.

  “They possess hundreds of ships; the exact number was classified, and it seems, deliberately concealed from Gaz Bronn, Keryl’s master. I would suggest, while I am on the subject, that you release Gaz Bronn as soon as possible, since he holds a very high position in Jhal and his cooperation may be critical if war should come.

  “Based on the events which precipitated our flight from Jhal, war is imminent. Keryl and Gaz Bronn were the subject of assassination attempts, and there was fighting in the streets. The leader of the war party is Jhal’s president, and with Gaz Bronn exiled, there is likely no one to stop him.”

  “How many soldiers can they muster?” Osa asked in a subdued voice, although to his credit it held no hint of fear.

  “Again, such information was unavailable to me, but I believe Keryl’s estimate of one million soldiers is sufficiently accurate for our purposes.”

  Duke Osa and the council appeared to digest this intelligence for approximately ten seconds, then I saw the light of decision in their eyes. I felt the unseen chains fall from my wrists.

  “Keryl Clee,” announced the duke, “in light of this emergency, we are granting you a reprieve. If you can assist us in winning, or avoiding, this war, we will reconsider your case at that time.”

  “If I cannot,” I replied, “your judgment will make little difference either way.”

  He acknowledged me with a sour smile. “Quite. I am calling for a meeting with our top military aides. It will take some time to gather them, but we will want you here to repeat your story. And you, of course, Librarian.” The Librarian nodded. “Lord Farren,” Osa said, “you will represent Dure on the council?”

  Before Farren could reply, the Librarian spoke up.

  “I fear, my lord, that will not be possible. Lord Farren will be under arrest.” Osa blinked. I stared. Farren started to say something, but words, thankfully, failed him. “If you would instruct the guards, my lord duke, I will present evidence against him.”

  Osa waved a hand, and the guards who had been intended to drag me away formed a net around my prosecutor instead. Everyone waited for the Librarian to proceed.

  “My lords,” he began, “as you know, Keryl Clee married Lady Maire Por Foret several weeks ago, here in Crystalle. What you do not know, what has been carefully withheld from general distribution, is that Lady Maire and Keryl and their party were assaulted in their hotel suite before the wedding by several zomon. They were rescued by the Civil Guard, but the man who sent the zomon here escaped.” The Librarian vanished, and in the space before us sprang the tableau from that day when I had just been reunited with Maire.

  “You needn’t worry that anyone will interrupt us,” Farren was saying. “The other guests on this floor were persuaded to leave, and the management understands how business is conducted. Some things are universal.”

  “Aren’t you taking a chance, being here?” Maire asked. “With neither of us in the capital, anything could happen. And you haven’t any authority here; if the Civil Guard find you destroying property and threatening people with a horde of zomon, they could imprison you.”

  Farren’s image shrugged.

  “No one is going to come looking for you; you were careful not to let anyone know where you were going. As for me, I’m haven’t left Dure. You should really keep up with science; dataspheric holography is a much easier way to travel.”

  The image faded and the Librarian returned. Farren, stunned, did not resist as the guards lead him away. I should have been overjoyed, but after that glimpse of my beloved wife, all I felt was empty.

  Chapter 34

  Midnight Inspiration

  Life is never more complicated than when we achieve our goals.

  My wife and my best friend were being held prisoner in an underground city that until very recently no one knew existed. The Earth was about to be invaded from its own depths by an enemy bent on revenge for three thousand years of exile. Even if I were able to help the Nuum defeat the klurath, my own fate was far from assured. And the Nuum High Council was dithering about whether I, as Maire’s husband, was eligible to be named regent of Dure after Farren’s arrest.

  When it was first proposed, I said I wanted nothing
to do with the idea, given that I had no qualifications, no history, and no desire to fill the position. I also had no illusions that the Council suddenly trusted me with the leadership of a major city-state, or that they were any less intent on discovering exactly who I was and how I had evaded official attention for so long. The very concept of a “ghost” was a fairy tale to them—now that it had proven true, they were extremely frightened by it. And frightened people tend to act first and think much later. I did not wish to put myself any more in their crosshairs.

  I have never been a politician. After I had spent another long day of arguing what I thought were more important points, Gaz Bronn was able to give me a greater appreciation the nuances of the situation.

  “You have presented them with a crisis—a series of crises: A possible invasion, the arrest of one of their own, and the idea that their own tightly-controlled society is not as secure as they thought. Not to mention, if they accept your plan they might have give up a large measure of the control they have exerted over the Thorans for three hundred years. You cannot expect they’re going to just throw up their hands and say, ‘You’re right, Keryl, we never should have denied the Thorans the same rights we have. How could we not recruit them all in our army and start a war with people we’ve never seen just because you say so?’

  “They need time. And they need to assert control. If they can place you in their hierarchy, if they can tell themselves they know who you are, or at least what you are, then they feel more in control. And you have to let them.”

  My first demand once I had been released had been to set my friends free as well. We had all been installed in more comfortable quarters, but Gaz Bronn had little to do until the Council should decide to follow my advice and prepare for war, and Sanja was still jumpy, a Thoran in the custody of Nuum. Her hands had a tendency to clench, searching for the weapons they would not let her have.

  “So you would advise me to go along with his charade? Even though it’s a waste of time, even though my wife is still down there?”

  “I would advise you to allow them to feel they are still in charge. You say they believe the Librarian, that my people are preparing for an invasion?”

  I nodded distractedly. “The Librarian assures me that they would believe him if he said the sun was blue. But that is a long way from doing anything about it!” He tried to make what to him were likely placating gestures; to me it looked as though he were about to disembowel a horse. “If I had the crew of The Dark Lady behind me, I would go back to Jhal today—but if I had the crew of The Dark Lady, I would have no need to return to Jhal.” I slumped into a chair.

  “The problem,” I went on, “is that they do everything by committee. Duke Osa is in charge of the Council, but no one is in charge of the Nuum. They all take care of their own districts with no regard for what the others do. It is like having a Congress without the President.” My companions both coming from societies that ran, if anything, opposite that idea, my complaint earned me only a pair of uncomprehending stares. “If they do decide anything, half of them will decide to go home, throw the gates shut, and hide. The rest might come up with a war plan eventually, but it would take weeks for them to assemble a fleet, let alone figure out who is going to lead it.”

  “You have us,” Sanja offered. “Maybe you could call out your friends the breen?”

  Gaz Bronn looked from her to me as though she had volunteered a helpful suggestion, but he seemed to realize that it was in jest.

  “If you want to ride on a tiny airship with half a hundred breen,” I replied acidly, “I will be glad to go looking for them.”

  Sanja was not to be cowed. “If you put a hundred Zilbiri at my back,” she muttered almost too low to be heard, “I will.”

  Gaz Bronn, sensing our tension, excused himself and went for a walk, a sure sign that he was disgusted with us both, since he preferred to stay inside. Sanja and I studiously ignored each other for the rest of the evening and went to our separate beds still scowling.

  In the middle of the night I sat bolt upright in my bed, victim of an idea that had shaken me from a sound sleep. Sanja stumbled to her door in response to my pounding, a blanket clutched in her hand like a net, ready to be used against an assassin. She woke swiftly when I outlined my plan.

  “That’s insane,” she said. “I’ll get dressed.”

  Chapter 35

  Homecoming

  Notwithstanding my new and improved status vis-à-vis the Council of Nobles, it was my considered opinion—undisputed by either of my companions, for the record—that the Nuum would not bear with sanguinity my borrowing an airship in the middle of the night during a self-proclaimed state of emergency for an abrupt and unannounced journey, or as they would likely term it, a getaway. In light of this anticipated reluctance to allow my plan to proceed, we determined that it was more prudent simply to act now and apologize later. After all, if we did not succeed, there would be no “later,” and if we did, I would have gained an advocate of such potency as to render apologies unnecessary.

  Or, as I explained to Sanja and Gaz Bronn, “If we can find Maire and bring her back, they will not care how we did it, and if we do not, we will not be coming back at all.”

  This, of course, was after Sanja had termed my strategy for liberating my wife as “insane,” an opinion she later ameliorated to merely “completely outrageous.” Gaz Bronn claimed to be “intrigued,” but I could tell his greatest desire was to return to Jhal. Whether his apparent equanimity was due to his being a klurath instead of human, or because he simply did not understand what I was proposing, was not a question upon which I wasted much time.

  The time I had was needfully spent on devising a plot to steal an airship from the midst of an armed camp.

  This was, surprisingly, not nearly so difficult a goal as I had feared. Although we were in the center of a Nuum city, surrounded by soldiers supposedly preparing to repel an imminent invasion, three centuries of enforced peace had rendered security protocols inefficient, where it had not pre-empted them altogether. The Nuum had not truly had to fight since they pacified the Thorans. Occasionally a small uprising occurred—I had seen a riot myself twenty years ago—but they were routinely and savagely suppressed. The prohibition against Thorans’ possession of any kind of advanced technology certainly included training to fly aircraft, so why bother to guard them closely?

  Gaz Bronn’s craft was segregated, of course, so we did not even try to reach it, although it would have simplified matters if he could have acted as pilot. The Nuum had a dozen ships nearby, however, and only two men watching over them. They were expecting nothing, and nothing is what they would know until they awoke with severe headaches. We picked the smallest ship we could find, boarded, and I put the library in a cockpit dataport. The Librarian materialized immediately.

  “You will recall it has been twenty years since I was last able to download the specifications for any airships,” he said pedantically. “It is possible the programs required have been upgraded to the point where I cannot communicate with them.”

  “And this,” I said to my companions, “is exactly why I did not ask him for his opinion of my plan before we got here.”

  “I would have thought it was because your plan was rushed, improvised, and foolhardy,” Gaz Bronn commented.

  I turned on him. “You, too? Bad enough I have to take such abuse from Sanja, but—”

  “Boys,” Sanja interrupted, “you might want to take your seats.” She pointed through the bow windshield. “Because we’re on our way.”

  The Librarian stood quietly, smugly smiling. I took my seat and strapped in. It was quite possible we were in for an exciting ride. Even if we escaped Crystalle without raising any alarm, it would only mean escaping the frying pan to flee into the fire.

  We entered the dead city at the lowest altitude we could manage without scraping the sparse trees that grew crookedly on its perimeter. I could have sworn on several occasions that we were about to perform some fe
at of blunt pruning, but each time we glided silently past, thanks to the Librarian’s precise handling of the auto-pilot. To compound our anxiety, we were also moving at the minimum possible speed that would keep us aloft, which turned out to be agonizingly slow. Indeed, the Librarian assured me that the ship could hover if we wished it to, which meant that the minimal sustainable speed was quite low indeed.

  We had debated simply roaring up to our target in all haste and relying on the element of surprise, but it would have prevented us from embarking on the second, and even more delicate, part of my plan, where summoning sufficient speed to escape a klurath pursuit vessel would not be an option. If we were seen, we must either destroy our foe immediately or flee—and the Librarian had already warned me that using this ship’s weapons systems effectively was beyond his capacity. Stealth was our only tool.

  “There are even more domes than I remember,” Sanja whispered. “Are you sure the Librarian can find our ship?”

  I was never sure exactly how good the Librarian’s audio sensors were, but if he was offended by her question, he refrained from showing it, a courtesy he had rarely extended to me.

  “If the Library has been somewhere, he can retrace his tracks,” I said, perhaps with more certainty than I felt. The Librarian had never failed me before, but there was a first time for everything. If we had to return empty-handed, the Nuum’s gratitude at regaining their ship in one piece was unlikely to outweigh their sense of betrayal. For me, at least, this was a one-way trip. If we could not locate The Dark Lady’s hiding place from the air, I would be spending the rest of my life painstakingly searching each pitch-black dome.

  We were in among them now, creeping through the air at a height just lower than the tallest of them, hoping to avoid the notice of any night-crawling klurath. Gaz Bronn had assured me that, despite their nighttime raids on the nearby community, his people preferred to move about in the day when they could bask in the sun’s warmth. The chances of our stumbling across a klurath on his evening constitutional were, he promised, microscopic. We took him at his word, and still we crept above the deserted streets, a silent black airborne whale.