Emperor

by William F. Wu

  “I strongly recommend you trigger the belt unit,” said Ishihara.

  “They keep saying something like ‘guei’ or ‘kuai’—something like that,” said Wayne. “Any idea what it means?”

  “No,” said Ishihara. “And I must remind you that the First Law will force me to take the belt unit away from you and trigger it myself if they come much closer to us.”

  “Well, they stopped when I smiled at them just now and said hello. Maybe we can get through to them. Show them that both your hands are empty. And smile.” Wayne felt more frightened than he sounded.

  Ishihara held both his hands out, open, and smiled. “I think this word they keep saying means something negative, from their tone of voice. They fear we are a couple of gueis.”

  “Whatever they are.”

  “Yes.”

  “The word must mean some kind of supernatural creature—you know, a demon or a fairy or something else that can appear magically.”

  “It must mean an evil creature of some type,” said Ishihara. “They would not be as afraid or as hostile toward a good spirit. I surmise that our European appearance has also increased their fear to some degree. Certainly these ancient German tunics and cloak make us look barbaric.”

  “Hey! Maybe we can use this. We’re good spirits. We have to tell them we’re good spirits.”

  “This will be a difficult distinction to make without a language in common,” said Ishihara.

  The peasants had begun approaching them slowly once again.

  “No guei, no guei.” Wayne forced himself to smile even more broadly than before, though he was too scared to feel very friendly. He held his hands up, palms forward.

  The peasants stopped again, still talking among themselves. The word “guei,” was repeated even more than before.

  “They understand guei, at least,” said Wayne quietly, slipping one hand back to the belt unit, just in case. “I’m going to try something else.”

  “Be extremely careful,” said Ishihara.

  Wayne renewed his phony smile and stepped forward, holding one arm high above his head. He knew they would not understand his speech, but he hoped that they would respond to a friendly tone of voice and gestures of greeting. “Hello, whoever you are. Good evening. We are glad to see you.”

  The peasants gazed at him. Their eyes were wide with surprise and puzzlement. One of the men in the front, who held a large hoe, shouted to Wayne suspiciously.

  “Do what I did,” said Wayne. “I think it’s working.”

  “Hello,” Ishihara called out. He also raised one arm in greeting. “Good evening.”

  The peasants watched them without speaking. The man in front lowered his hoe slightly.

  “We have to convince them we’re good spirits,” Wayne said quietly. “Then they’ll actually help us.”

  “If we can prevent them from trying to kill us. I will be satisfied,” said Ishihara.

  The peasants began talking to each other again.

  “It’s working,” said Wayne. “At least, they aren’t as sure as they were a minute ago that we’re enemies.”

  “We have made no aggressive moves,” said Ishihara. “That may have helped. However, I recommend again that we jump forward in time and start over,”

  “Not yet,” said Wayne. “This is a populated area, so we might be seen again.”

  “After dark, that is very unlikely.”

  “We can use their help,” Wayne said eagerly, “We’ll need them. We won’t be able to speak to anyone else here, either. But we could really use some allies. If we can become friends with them, can you start learning their language?”

  “Yes, if we have prolonged interaction with them,” said Ishihara. “But I cannot predict how quickly I will make progress.”

  “I think I remember something from my elementary school days,” said Wayne. “Didn’t the Chinese used to bow to each other as a greeting?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Well, try it. Do what I do.” Wayne caught the eye of the man with the hoe and slowly bowed forward from the waist.

  Next to him, Ishihara did the same.

  The man carrying the hoe bowed in return. Belatedly, so did several of his companions. All of them fell silent again.

  “It’s like offering a handshake in our own time,” said Wayne. “We finally did something they understood.”

  An elderly man stepped forward from the group. The man with the hoe joined him, lowering the hoe to the ground. The older man spoke to Wayne, calmly this time.

  “Any idea what he said?” Wayne asked.

  “No.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that. But he’s asking a question, don’t you think?”

  “From his tone and facial expression, yes.”

  “I’m going to guess he’s asked who we are or where we came from,” said Wayne. He smiled again and pointed to the sky. “I hope that’s what he asked.”

  The peasants began chattering excitedly among themselves again. The two men in the front bowed once more. Everyone in the group looked at Wayne and Ishihara in amazement.

  “I have to keep this going somehow,” said Wayne. “Just follow me.” He walked forward, still smiling, and patted his stomach. “Can you help us, friends?” The only tools of communication he could think of were gestures, facial expressions, and tones of voice.

  For the first time, some of the peasants smiled in surprise. Certainly, they recognized his gesture of hunger. The two men in the front conferred briefly. Then the older man spoke, waving for Wayne and Ishihara to come with them.

  Wayne glanced at Ishihara, relieved. “Well, I got through to them a little. Let’s go.”

  “I would expect the villagers to believe that good spirits who come to visit humans would speak the local human language,” said Ishihara. “The villagers may question this.”

  “Well...if they do, we can’t understand them. And if we did, we still couldn’t explain.” With a helpless shrug, Wayne smiled again at their plight. “Since they don’t seem to want to hurt us, maybe we can get along.”

  “I recommend that you keep your hand on your belt unit,” said Ishihara, as he joined Wayne in walking forward.

  The peasants kept a slight distance from them as they took the road, walking away from the city. They still muttered among themselves and glanced at their new guests with a mixture of awe and fascination. Wayne smiled and nodded at anyone he caught looking at him.

  “So how do you feel about this so far?” Wayne asked Ishihara. “Joining them, I mean. They still seem to like us.”

  “I am most concerned about your safety under the First Law. The danger has only decreased slightly. Our inability to communicate effectively means that a misunderstanding could occur very easily.”

  “I understand what you mean,” said Wayne. “I have every intention of being careful. But I reiterate my ongoing instructions to you: you must help me under the First Law to complete my mission of apprehending at least one component robot. My career and my life in general will be harmed if I can’t conduct my own investigation into how MC Governor malfunctioned.”

  “ Acknowledged.”

  Wayne grinned. “I bet they think we’re speaking some sort of fairy language.”

  “I assume so.”

  Before long, the peasants left the main road for a narrow dirt path. Ahead, Wayne saw a cluster of tightly bunched, single-story buildings barely outlined by hanging lanterns over the doors. Small children were playing nearby.

  The grounds around the village were raked clean, but the surrounding crops had been planted almost right up against the small wooden houses clustered in the center. Only the width of a footpath separated the village from the crops, and the buildings from each other.

  The man carrying the hoe called out. The children looked up, and elderly women came out of the houses. All of them stared in wonder at the strangers.

  Hunter spent an uneventful night in the front room of the bungalow, motionless but not shut down.
At the earliest light of dawn, he heard sounds of activity in the city around the bungalow—people talking, carts and wagons creaking, horses and donkeys clopping, and babies crying. A few moments later, Steve came out of his room.

  “I guess nobody sleeps late around here,” Steve muttered. “What a racket.”

  “Marcia and Jane have not stirred yet,” said Hunter. “I expect they will soon.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll go look for the latrine.” Stretching, Steve left the bungalow.

  A moment later, Hunter heard Jane and Marcia talking to each other. He waited patiently while all three humans rose, dressed, used the latrine, and washed at the water pump out in the courtyard. Then he joined them. The early morning sunlight angled across the courtyard. The sky was clear and bright, though the air was still cool at this hour.

  “Good morning,” said Hunter. “You are all ready for breakfast?”

  “I’m starved,” said Steve, tugging his robe here and there. “I just hope I can get used to wearing this thing.”

  “I need a shower,” said Marcia. “But I don’t think they’ve been invented yet. We can arrange baths later in the day, though.”

  “I’m ready to get breakfast,” said Jane. “And if this is the neighborhood where foreign visitors are common, then we can start looking for MC 5 at the same time.”

  “Let’s go back to the same place where I asked for directions,” said Steve. “I kind of promised we’d come back there to eat.”

  “All right.” Hunter turned and led his team out of the courtyard through a gate to one side of the main building. “This is a logical beginning.”

  5

  Out on the street, Hunter found shops already open. The aroma of various foods cooking reached him. People filled the street, walking among pony carts and pushcarts.

  Steve fell into step next to Hunter. “This is a regular city, isn’t it? On an ordinary day. Where would MC 5 go around here to find clothes?”

  “As always, I have only approximated the time when he will return to his full size,” said Hunter. “I believe yesterday was the earliest; he may not appear for another day or two. I suppose, like the other component robots, he will have to steal clothing when he first arrives, either from someone’s trash or maybe from a line of laundry hung up to dry in the sunlight.”

  A line of people waited at the stall where Steve had asked for information the night before. Long wooden tables and benches had been placed out in front. Hunter could see a big pot of rice gruel simmering over an open fire burning in a brick hearth. Customers bought bowls of the gruel and small plates of pork and chicken strips and fresh vegetables to stir into it.

  Hunter and Steve took places in line and bought three breakfasts. At the same time, Marcia and Jane sat down at one of the tables and reserved seats for them. While the humans ate, Hunter patiently observed their surroundings.

  Most of the people Hunter could see were Chinese, either tending small shops, pushing vending carts, or walking briskly. They wore light, pajamalike loose jackets and trousers. A smaller number, dressed in embroidered silk gowns, were clearly more wealthy. A very few people he could see, however, were not Chinese at all, though they were wearing Chinese gowns.

  “Marcia, of what origin are the two men walking toward us on the far side of the street?” Hunter asked. “In our own time, I would guess they were from the Middle East.”

  She looked up from her bowl. “That’s a good guess. In this era, I’d say they are Central Asian Turks. Starting a couple of centuries ago, several waves of migrating Turks moved westward from Central Asia into the Middle East, which is one reason that many people of this appearance live there in our own time. The Mongol conquest of the entire region has facilitated travel in all directions and, as I said, Kublai Khan has hired many foreigners to work in his government. In fact, these Turks probably arrived by the Old Silk Road, just as the Polo family~”

  “That’s interesting,” Steve said quickly. “But what about them?” He pointed to two men of East Asian ancestry whose gowns were similar to their own, but whose hair was tightly drawn up into a knot on top of their heads. “Nobody else has that hairstyle.”

  “They’re Koreans,” said Marcia. “Korea has long been a part of the Mongol empire by this year.”

  “I think I see some Arabs,” said Jane. “They’re right across the street.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Marcia. “The Arabs conquered the Turks some centuries ago and introduced them to Islam. They had some reason to regret it; some of the Turks revolted and overthrew them all the way back to Palestine.”

  “I’m glad no one’s fighting here,” said Jane. “I guess Kublai Khan pacified them all, huh?”

  “For the time being.” Marcia nodded. “But in only a few hundred years—”

  “Hunter,” Steve said earnestly, interrupting her again. “What are we going to do after breakfast? To find MC 5, I mean? What’s our plan of action?”

  “This is a good place to begin,” said Hunter. “We will start today by becoming familiar with the neighborhood and simply looking for MC 5.”

  “No reason to stop with that,” said Steve. “We can also ask around—maybe offer a small reward to people for giving us a lead on him.”

  “Marcia, will that be acceptable in this society?” Hunter asked.

  “Yes, it will.”

  “Good,” said Steve. “And I guess, based on past experience, we have to keep an eye out for Wayne Nystrom and Ishihara, too. Maybe we should offer a reward for them.”

  “I agree,” said Hunter.

  “They haven’t stopped you before,” said Marcia.

  “They have come close,” said Hunter. “We must remain alert for them.”

  The night before, Wayne and Ishihara had shared a modest dinner of white rice and steamed fish in the village. They had slept on pallets in a bedroom in one of the small houses. Though modest, the room was clearly a place of honor; Wayne noticed that the elderly man and his slight, stooped, gray-haired wife vacated it for them and went out to sleep in the main room with seven other people who seemed, by their mutual resemblance, to represent two more generations of the same family. Unable to communicate, Wayne could not protest. In any case, he wanted to maintain the pose that he and Ishihara were good spirits, and he was sure the peasants assumed good spirits would expect hospitality of this sort.

  Wayne had fallen asleep quickly, and had slept soundly. When he finally awoke to the sound of roosters crowing outside and people speaking in the main room of the house, he felt well rested but hungry again.

  He found Ishihara sitting against the closed door of the room, watching him.

  “Morning,” Wayne said quietly. “Did you observe anything interesting during the night?”

  “No. However, I can announce some minimal progress in learning the local language.”

  “Really? How?”

  “During the night, I have repeatedly reviewed my memory of all our contact with the villagers to this point. At the time we first met them, the First Law required that I focus my attention entirely on the potential danger to you. After I was satisfied that you were safe, I began reviewing the gestures and conversation of the villagers; also, of course, I was able to observe more of their conversation and gestures during dinner last night. When they rose early this morning, I was able to hear some of their speech through the door of our room.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m no linguist. What’s the point of studying their gestures?”

  “It was the only way I could begin to pick up vocabulary. For instance, every time someone passed or received a bowl of rice, the word fan was used in conversation.”

  “So you’re sure it means rice? What if it means, hungry, or more of the same?”

  “You have identified the problem exactly,” said Ishihara. “Right now, I am making educated guesses. However, I will begin speaking some of these words and see how our hosts respond. I gave you only one example.”

  “What else?” Wayne got up
and began getting dressed. “More vocabulary?”

  “More than that. The basic sentence structure has some similarities to English. The simple declarative sentence goes, subject, verb, object, in that order. When they ask questions, the tone goes up at the end, the same as in English. But the vocabulary is tonal; the lilt you give to each word separates it from what in English would be homophones.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll take your word for it. But you think you can learn it?”

  “Gradually, I will develop some ability to speak with them, yes.”

  Wayne finished dressing. “Well, I guess it’s time for breakfast. Let’s go out and try it. And let’s see if we can get some local clothes this time.”

  “Yes, I agree we should do that.”

  When they opened the door and entered the main room, Wayne saw that it was crowded with people. Everyone who lived in the house turned to look at them, as did as many of their neighbors who could jam inside. Everyone fell silent.

  The elderly woman spoke up, pointing to the big pot of rice gruel simmering over the fire.

  “Fan,” said Ishihara, with a casual nod.

  One of the younger women picked up a wooden bowl and ladled gruel into it. Another woman spoke quickly to several children, who got up and made room at the hearth. Wayne and Ishihara accepted their bowls and sat down.

  Wayne ate in silence, but occasionally he met someone’s eyes and smiled slightly. Ishihara, however, attempted to make casual conversation. Wayne knew that Ishihara’s ability to learn the language far outstripped his, so he did not try to participate.

  He watched with amusement, however, as Ishihara pointed to different people and objects around the room, apparently learning vocabulary. Their hosts were eager teachers, especially the children. Everyone smiled with approval at Ishihara’s successful efforts to communicate.

  By the time Wayne had finished his second bowl of bland gruel, Ishihara was speaking and gesturing, frequently pointing upward. The villagers nodded with guileless wonder as they looked again at both their guests. Finally the conversation came to a pause.