The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  Chapter 47

  Against Two Navies

  We emerged into the upper air, fully expecting to find ourselves in the middle of a war zone, but we were alone.

  “There are no other ships in our sensor range,” the Librarian reported before I could give the order to search.

  “None?” Maire echoed. “Not even a picket ship?”

  “There seem to be some gaps in their strategic training, my lady.”

  Maire rolled her eyes. With me the Librarian loved to wax pedantic, with her he was servile. I doubted either was sincere.

  “They must really have decided to take the fight to the Nuum,” I said. “At least the absence of sentry ships means they still have no idea what has happened. Librarian, how high can you take us?”

  His beloved image gave me that professorial smile that warned me I was not going to like the answer.

  “Theoretically, this ship could reach the mesosphere, but that wouldn’t suit what you have in mind. Realistically, the klurath are not the best armorers in the world; I would put the outer range of effective fire for this ship at a little under five miles.”

  “And with you at the firing controls?”

  “That is with me at the firing controls. They have a fire control computer already; I can’t really improve on it without more time than we likely have.” He cocked his head. “Now I’m sure of it. You will be knee-deep in klurath in three minutes. Eighteen ships are approaching, and they are making haste.”

  “Altitude?”

  “Averaging 15,000 feet.”

  “Take us to 20,000 feet,” I ordered. “Directly over the opening, and stay there.” I took Maire in my arms. I might very well not have another chance.

  “You think they’ll believe we’re one of their own?”

  “Why not? Who else has an airship like this?”

  I bent my face to hers, and we spent the next three minutes desperately not talking.

  The flagship’s hail broke our mood. “This is the Monyk Am calling klurath vessel. We have Fale Teevat aboard. Identify yourself and your mission.”

  “Librarian, I need some interference on that radio.”

  At this range, telepathic conversation was impossible, so we had to depend on old-fashioned methods, voice only. The Librarian cut in the speaker so that we could hear his scratchy transmission. All the time the klurath were closing in.

  “Klurath ship, return to base at once,” we were told. “All operations are cancelled.”

  That sounded hopeful. I signaled the Librarian to cut the static and leaned into the microphone.

  “Fale Teevat, this is Keryl Clee of—of the Free Republic of Jhal,” I looked at Maire and shrugged. She shrugged back. Nomenclature was not our greatest concern at the moment. “Bring your ships to a halt at 10,000 feet altitude and await further instructions.”

  “Who in the name of Hell is this?” came roaring over the speaker, and I knew I was talking to Fale Teevat. “Identify yourself properly or I will have you shot down!”

  “Fale Teevat, this is Keryl Clee. You knew me as Gaz Bronn’s bodyguard.”

  There was no response, and our ship bucked as the Librarian slid us sideways an instant before the Monyk Am’s shot reached our position. I managed to hold the microphone.

  “Fale Teevat! If you do not stand down, I will destroy the opening!”

  “Keryl,” the Librarian interrupted that same unshaken voice. “Two new ships have entered my scan range. Very large. They appear to be in pursuit.”

  “I never thought I would be glad to see the Nuum,” I said, as Maire and I exchanged a hopeful look. We might just escape this with a whole skin.

  “My lady, the two Nuum ship are pulling within weapons range. There is an auxiliary communications panel should you choose to use it.”

  While Maire ran to the second radio, I stayed on with Fale Teevat. I could see for myself on our screen that his ships were hovering near the opening, but had not entered it.

  “You wouldn’t dare destroy the opening! Gaz Bronn would never allow it!”

  “Gaz Bronn knows nothing about it. He is not here. I am, and I assure you I have no compunctions about doing so. You can defy me, Fale Teevat; you might even be able to shoot us down, but if you do we will crash into the opening, and your base is right below it.”

  The seconds passed like years. Dimly I heard Maire make contact with the Nuum ships. On the screen, the pair of them slowed and assumed a watching pose. Below us, eighteen klurath cruisers hovered, caught between their enemies and someone they had thought a friend but who held a hand grenade without a pin. How desperate was Fale Teevat, how invested in his own cause? Would he sacrifice his entire fleet to go down in glorious flames? Or would he simply destroy us and take his chances with the Nuum?

  “This is Fale Teevat. What terms do you offer?”

  I sagged onto the control panel. The war was over.

  Chapter 48

  An Unwelcome Visitor

  I was beginning to become quite familiar with the audience hall in Crystalle, and more than a bit regretting that I had not brought a book. For one who had been treated with such a celebration upon his return from Jhal, I was now given roughly the same treatment as a hobo at a cotillion. I was half-surprised that they had not asked me to come in through the servants’ entrance. Perhaps all the cheers had been meant for Maire and I just happened to be standing next to her.

  And perhaps the Powers That Be simply were unsure how to proceed. The last time I had been here, I had been on trial, accused of treason by my old nemesis, Lord Farren. Only the Librarian’s intervention—and the imminent war with Jhal—had saved me. Yet even with Farren’s arrest for sedition, the old charges still hung above my head. Compounding that, while under suspicion of having murdered my noble wife, I had broken my parole, stolen an airship, and disappeared for weeks. Not to mention that I was a “ghost,” completely untraceable in the datasphere, and an inherent threat to all that they held dear.

  Should they decide in the end to prosecute me, I did not envy the poor devil who had to prioritize the charges. And that was before I had my say, because I was bound and determined that I would have my say, regardless of the circumstances.

  So I found myself at long last back in Crystalle and awaiting the pleasure of the Council of Nobles, which had convened here so often of late I had recommended to Maire we might want to buy an apartment. With nothing else to do while I cooled my heels, I let my mind drift back over the events of the past two months. Regardless of what they decided, no judge could take from me the glow of a job well done.

  Upon Fale Teevat’s surrender, I informed him that any terms must come from the Nuum, not me. To my surprise, and to the greater surprise of Captain Lobok, who was leading the Nuum task force, Fale Teevat adamantly refused to accept terms from anyone except me. I had no idea what to propose, the only terms I was familiar with being those that followed the Great War, and by the time I left the Twentieth Century it was becoming increasingly clear that those had been an unmitigated disaster. I settled for ordering the klurath fleet to ground, and to power down. For the rest, my only condition was that the rebels would submit to the judgment of their peers, to which they agreed. Eventually we had managed to ferry the inlama back to Jhal, where Gaz Bronn had him thrown in irons, and one by one the ships were allowed to return under supervision, whereupon they were immediately, albeit temporarily, decommissioned.

  Assuming the role of inlama in his own right, Gaz Bronn had lost no time setting the tone for his administration, with a city-wide broadcast “immediately and permanently” outlawing the keeping of Thoran slaves. Called at my insistence the “Emancipation Proclamation,” it included full citizenship of the new “nation of Jhal” for all former slaves, including the crew of The Dark Lady and me. The transition was hardly so quick or facile, of course, and I am sure the repercussions will continue for years, if not decades, but tens of thousands of human beings were suddenly free for the first time in eons, and I was a
t least partly responsible.

  Once freed, it was natural that a certain number of them would make for the surface world that they had never seen, joined by a goodly number of klurath, for whom the surface had always been the Promised Land. Just as naturally, most of them were frightened back underground within hours. Since then, at my suggestion and with Maire’s help, Gaz Bronn had broadcast a simple message to all lizard-men everywhere: “Join us.” How many would give up their lives for a fresh start among their own kind remained to be seen, but the influx of new blood should be good for both parties.

  Nor were the newcomers resigned to a subterranean existence. There was an entire city, empty and awaiting whoever wished to take it—as soon, anyway, as someone could decipher the controls for the dampening fields that made every single building uninhabitable.

  And for that, there were the Nuum. Once word of the incredible nature of the city (which I began to call, ironically, Forestville) became known and the war zone label removed, scientists rushed to it from all corners of the world, eager to rediscover this ancient technology. They found klurath physicists and engineers already in place, and when the details of the klurath magnetic repulsion drive began to trickle out, those who found Forestville too crowded were soon streaming into Jhal itself, followed by the anthropologists, social scientists, journalists, and the merely curious: the Nuum had not seen anything truly new in a hundred years. Jhal became such an attraction so quickly that the government was forced to establish visa quotas.

  All of this was stressful for the new government, and Gaz Bronn was frankly losing control when I introduced him to the Library’s 6,000 centuries of accumulated historical and political knowledge. I voluntarily surrendered possession of the Library for the first time, but my anxiety was entirely smoothed over that night when I realized that for the first time, Maire and I were truly alone. By the time we departed, Gaz Bronn had somehow acquired his own branch library—completely illegal from the Nuum point of view, of course, but I doubted they would be willing to return to a state of war to get it back.

  With the klurath fleet all but grounded, we had no choice but to hike all the way back to the surface in order to reclaim The Dark Lady, since she could not descend into the cavern in any case. Happily, those Nuum and klurath engineers were already researching safe methods of enlarging the existing gap and perhaps establishing new access points so that Jhal could begin trading with its neighbors.

  As soon as matters had stabilized, however, we knew we must return to our own world, Maire to her responsibilities, Timash and the Zilbiri to their homes, and I to an uncertain future. Gaz Bronn bid me farewell with an invitation to return so that we could explore some of the remote tunnels and sub-caves. “Think of the hunting!” he cried. I had rather not, but I smiled encouragingly.

  The Dark Lady had been crowded, but we made a long voyage shorter with our celebrations, tall-tale contests, and in the case of at least two of us, frequent visits to the least-populated corners they could find. It did not hurt the mood that I divided my share of the sandclaw bounty among the Zilbiri. We had left Sanja with her tribe, and if Captain Skull had plans to return to visit her, why, that was their business. I thought, however, that he had better not let the matter rest for long. Sanja was too young, beautiful, and rich to sit idle and unattended.

  As unattended, I now reflected wryly, as I was. I had not seen Maire in hours, closeted as she had been so much lately with the Council. And when she was not in meetings with them, she was in contact with her aides and subordinates in Dure; since Farren had been arrested, there had been a leadership vacuum, and it seemed as though she must return there to fill it.

  A door slid open and a man stepped through, a minor functionary by his overly important bearing. He stopped short on seeing me. He looked me up and down in an instant as if trying to decide if I was in turn important enough to interrupt his busy day.

  “Good afternoon. May I help you?”

  It was a bit rude of me to stretch in front of him, but I had been sitting for some time on a surprisingly uncomfortable chair. Not to mention that it allowed me to emphasize how much bigger than he I was. It was far less significant than my advantage over the typical Thoran, but there was something about Nuum that made me want to take them down a peg, and this was a prime specimen.

  “I was asked to wait here for an interview with the Council, but it seems they have found better ways to occupy their time.”

  He blinked and assumed what I would bet was an unaccustomed air of confusion. No doubt it was compounded by his inability to sense whether I was toying with him. He asked for my name and I gave it, whereupon he assumed the briefly vacant look of one using his access to the datasphere.

  “I do not see your name on the list for this afternoon. Could you perhaps be due to return tomorrow?”

  The door opened again and Maire came toward me, a spontaneous smile lighting up her face. I could feel my own smile forming at the sight of her. She was wearing a formal Nuum gown in gold and azure instead of her captain’s togs, and while this brought out her glamour, I preferred the other.

  “My lady councilor!” The functionary gave a quick but deep bow. He was probably one of those who had cheered for her and ignored me altogether.

  Maire dismissed him with the slightest of nods. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said when he had shimmered away. “They’ve decided to drop all remaining charges. We can go home.”

  This was not as joyful news to me as she seemed to believe. “Did they drop the charges because they are so grateful at my heroics, because you threatened to leave again, or because they just want to be rid of me?”

  She appealed to me with her eyes. “Would you believe a little of all three?”

  My smile faded as I realized how much my words were going to disappoint her.

  “I would believe two out of three. But I still have to talk to them.”

  Maire’s gaze dropped to a point on my chin. “You’re still sure you want to do this? We could go home, and continue what we’ve started. We made a good start twenty years ago, we—”

  “And how long did that last after I was gone?”

  “Not long,” she admitted. Then she raised her eyes. “But you’ll be here this time! You and I together, we could do it! It’ll take time, but—but even in Jhal it’s going to take a long time, and that’s with Gaz Bronn leading the way. You’re going to have more obstacles than you know. Three hundred years is a long time and a lot of people won’t want to change.”

  “And when are we going to have a better chance to convince them than right now? I—we—just saved the planet from an invasion. Maybe the klurath bit off more than they could chew, and maybe they would have failed anyway, but it would have gone on a lot longer and many more people would have died. Probably the entire population of Jhal, for a start. Instead we have an entirely new country to explore, new technologies—when was the last time the Nuum saw anything new? In a few months this will all be old hat, history, and outside of Dure you and I will simply be people who used to be important. It has to be now.”

  My wife put her arms around my neck. “Keryl, I love you, and if this is what you need to do, I will be right there beside you.”

  “I know,” I said, and leaned down to kiss her.

  “I’m really sorry to interrupt you folks,” broke in a new voice, “but I’m on a schedule.”

  I looked up and my hand instinctively grabbed for the sidearm I was not wearing.

  Maire felt me tense and twisted around to see what was wrong. “Oh, no.”

  Standing just a few feet away was a member of the Time Police, one of the Silver Men who had pursued me through my entire first visit to this era, and who had taken me away from Maire.

  “He’s not going back,” she hissed. “You can’t have him again!” Had I not still been holding her, she would have assaulted him right there, and I would not have bet on his chances.

  “Oh, no,” he said, holding out his hands. “That’s not why I
’m here, Charles. I’m not here to take you back.

  “This is much worse.”

  Epilogue

  Feeling that the Great Council Hall of Crystalle was not a safe place for the Silver Man, once I was able to persuade Maire not to attack him with anything worse than black looks, we were able to smuggle him into our own apartment. On a whim, I asked the Librarian to materialize. The Time officer had the grace to look impressed.

  “My name is Zachary Kyle,” he began. He was quite tall, with a full head of sandy hair and a lean physique. He had an open face, but not too handsome, which probably helped him fit in whenever and wherever he might find himself. “We’ve been trying to find you since you got here, Charles, but you’ve moved around a lot, and we had to be discreet. We’ve learned a few things about this period since you were last here, and we know that time travelers have to keep a low profile.” As he seemed to have no problem speaking freely in front of Maire, I assumed his studies had included a summary of my previous visit. I kept silent and waited for him to continue. Unfortunately, as a man very near to my own time, my telepathic abilities were of no use where he was concerned. I was not sure if I would even be able to pick up on a lie.

  “To begin at the beginning, we set up the door you used this time specifically so you could come back here.”

  “Why?” I blurted. “I was back where I was supposed to be. When no one came looking for me to give me an amnesia pill, I thought you must have decided to leave well enough alone.”

  He grimaced. “Believe me, there was a lot of discussion about that. But after a few years, we realized that simply taking away your memories wasn’t going to fix the problem.”

  “What problem?” Maire asked.

  “I think I know,” said the Librarian, surprising us all. “I had wondered about it, but after twenty years I thought I must be wrong.”