Lord of Janissaries Read online

  “This is ridiculous,” Rick said. “It makes no sense at all.”

  There was no reply. Agzaral continued to stare out from the screen.

  At least, Rick thought, he doesn’t look bored. Is that a good sign? It seems pretty frightening, actually.

  “I cannot say I care for this,” André Parsons said. “But I think of few alternatives.” He turned to the screen. “Why should we trust you?”

  “You would be surprised at how little that matters to me,” Agzaral said. “But you will regret not having boarded the ship.”

  Parsons shrugged, then looked to Rick. “I think we should do it.”

  “Agreed,” Rick said. “Load it up. Elliot, get them moving. We board ship.”

  “Move your equipment to the upper corridor,” Agzaral said. “The ship will be ready to board shortly, and you should have all your possessions at the airlock.”

  They sweated the weapons and other equipment up the corridor. “Now get that other stuff,” Rick ordered. “Clean out the cavern.”

  “Why?” Warner demanded. “What do we do with a gasoline lawnmower?”

  “I don’t know,” Rick said. “But we’ll never get another one. Now carry it up, Professor.”

  “Yes, sir,” Warner said. “And the toaster, too?”

  “Everything,” Rick said. He picked up a coffee urn.

  When they had all left the cavern, the entrance to it closed off.

  * * *

  The ship stank. Although they couldn’t see very much of the ship, it was obvious that it wasn’t the same one they had come up in. The paint was stained and chipped in places. There were stains on the deck.

  When they got the last of the equipment aboard, the entryway closed. There was no warning at all. Their weight increased. It was obvious that the ship was in motion. Rick estimated the acceleration at about twice the Moon’s gravity.

  After two hours, he began shouting. “What the hell’s going on,” he demanded. There was no one to talk to. The only TV screen was blank. It seemed silly to be shouting at empty air, but it was sillier not to do something.

  Nothing happened. Some of the troops prowled the areas they could reach. They found doorways that would open, and beyond them were latrines, storage compartments, another empty area. They found food in two other compartments.

  The rest of the system was closed. There was no way into the rest of the ship.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Rick muttered.

  André Parsons shrugged. “There is wine and whiskey in the storerooms. I suggest we have a drink.”

  “Is that all you think of?”

  “No, but I think of nothing better to do at the moment.”

  More than fifty hours went by. They still had no word from anyone. They had been under acceleration the entire time. Rick worked out the distance, assuming two Lunar gravities. The answer seemed so unreasonable that he worked it again. Thirty-two million miles. A third of the distance from Earth to the Sun.

  There was nothing on the TV. Warner began to complain that their employers had violated their contract. Rick privately agreed, but he saw no point in talking about it. If the Shalnuksis were listening, he didn’t want them thinking in those terms. Finally Elliot shut Warner up.

  A couple of troopers got roaring drunk, and Rick had to post guards at the door to the liquor compartment. The problem was—whom did he trust? Discipline was going to hell, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  Another forty hours went by.

  * * *

  “TEN MINUTES.” The voice sounded through their compartment. “You have ten minutes to prepare for no gravity. Ten minutes.”

  There was netting in the storerooms, and they put the loose equipment under that, but they kept their weapons. No one wanted ship’s doors between them and their rifles.

  The acceleration stopped, and they were in free fall, but not for long. The ship moved in short jerks. Then there was a deep tone—nothing like the warning tones they had heard from the speakers. This was a deep thrum that sounded through the whole ship, as if the ship itself were vibrating to the noise.

  Rick’s vision blurred. He could see, but not well, as if he were looking through heavy astigmatic lenses. The thrumming note got louder and increased in pitch. Then, gradually, the note died away and his vision returned. They began to feel weight again, more than before—almost a full Earth gravity.

  The TV set came on. It showed Karreeel seated in his highchair. He looked almost comical, and some of the troops laughed nervously.

  Then they crowded around shouting obscenities. There was no response. Instead, Karreeel began to speak in a flat monotone.

  “I regret that this is a recorded message,” the alien said. “Please listen carefully.”

  “Shut up,” Rick ordered. The babble died, but he missed the first words.

  “. . . was unavoidable. You are now on your way to Tran, and you cannot regret your lack of proper equipment more than we do. Your success is important to us, and only great need forces us to send you with so little preparation.” The alien spoke in a calm and detached manner, but Rick noticed that the mouth and nose slits flared more than they had during the interview in Agzaral’s office.

  “We will provide you with as much information as possible. The pilot of this vessel is of your species, and he has tapes of what we know of local conditions. He will translate the information and provide you with copies of the planetary surveys.

  “You will be aboard the transport ship for approximately forty of your days. During that time the acceleration will be increased to that of Paradise to accustom you to the gravity you will find there.

  “I regret that most of the information on local languages is very old, but doubtless you will learn those currently in use. You may need only one. We are interested in only a small area of the planet. You will also be given all the information required to plant and harvest the crops. The cultivation of the surinomaz is complex, and it is important that you follow instructions exactly. The harvest will be valuable to us, and thus to you. When next we visit Paradise, we will bring luxuries and necessities. You need have no concern, provided that you have grown what we require and are prepared to furnish it to us.

  “Of course you must understand that if you have nothing to sell us, we will have nothing to sell to you.

  “We wish you great success.”

  The screen went blank. Then a human face appeared.

  The man was not as dark as Agzaral, and his eyes were lighter in color, but there was a faint resemblance to Agzaral even so. His voice had no accent at all. “You can call me ‘Les,’ ” he said. “I’m the pilot. I’ll try to answer questions.”

  “Take us back!” Warner shouted. “You have no right to change our contract! We enlisted under specified conditions and you have changed them. We quit!”

  The pilot laughed. “You’ll do it on Tran, then. I don’t think anybody ever jumped ship in phase drive before, but you’re welcome to try. Unfortunately, there’s no known way you can report to us on what happens. Telepathy? Are you telepathic?”

  “That’s enough, Warner,” Rick said. “Elliot, sit on him if that’s what it takes.”

  “Sir.” Sergeant Elliot grinned. This was the first thing he’d completely understood since they left the Moon, and he was eager to be useful.

  “Equipment,” Rick said. “We don’t have what we need—we don’t even know what we need.”

  “Yeah, that’s too bad,” Les said. “Karreeel is very sorry about that. You see, we got word that a shipload of government people had just come out of phase drive and was about to make a visit. That would have delayed your trip for months, maybe longer. Might have canceled it entirely. This ship is under charter to Karreeel’s trading company, and you wouldn’t believe what it would have cost to have it sit idle all that time.”

  “But—we don’t know what to do when we get there,” Rick protested.

  “You’ll get all the information you need,” L
es said. “Well, all we have, anyway. Look, this has all been done before. You’ll manage.”

  “This is absurd,” André Parsons said. “How do you expect us to establish control of an area and raise crops with almost no equipment and very little ammunition?”

  “Don’t know,” the pilot said. “But you’d better try. Karreeel will keep his part of the bargain, but he won’t trade with you if you’ve got nothing to trade.”

  “But it makes so little sense,” Parsons said. “If they wish this crop, why send us with inadequate gear?”

  “Well, it’s too bad,” Les said. “But his outfit can afford the loss. What they couldn’t afford was the time they’d lose if you were still around when the Commission people arrived. You wouldn’t have liked that much either. Hearings, committee meetings, more hearings, and all the time they’d insist they were interested only in what was best for you.”

  “Can’t you explain some of this?” Rick asked. “Somehow you people don’t act the way we always thought an interstellar civilization would—”

  The pilot laughed. “I’ve read some of your speculations. Why did you think we’d be so different from you? Or that we’d treat Earth any different from the way the English treated India? Excuse me, I’ve got work to do. Among other things, I have to translate all this stuff.”

  “Can’t a computer do that?” Rick asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s not as easy as you think. Have to set up the right programs for it. I’ll be back.” The screen went blank again.

  André Parsons looked thoughtful. “What was it that the East India Company called native soldiers?”

  “Sepoys,” Rick said.

  Parsons nodded. “Sepoys. Well, now we know our status.”

  3

  The computer control system was complex, but eventually Gwen was able to use it for simple tasks, such as calling up pictures and documents. A good thing, too, she told herself. Otherwise she’d be bored to distraction.

  Not with Les, of course. He was attentive and kind. He spent hours preparing dinners to be served in a romantic setting, with exotic music from a dozen worlds, wines and liqueurs from as many more, so that their evenings—and nights!—were more exciting than anything she could imagine.

  But that was a few hours a day. You can spend only so much of your time being charmed. Or in bed, she told herself. Les had his work; he was translating documents for the mercenaries. That left her with mornings and afternoons (ship time, of course; since they had left the solar system there was nothing to be seen outside the ship—no star or sun to mark days or seasons) with nothing to do. Les wouldn’t let her talk to the mercenaries; they weren’t to know she was aboard. He insisted on that.

  Which left her curious. Who were they? Why were they going to a primitive world called Tran?

  When she first learned to use the computer’s information-retrieval system, she could only look at pictures. The languages were a total mystery. The pictures were amazing enough; stars and nebulae, time-lapse photographs of multiple star systems with the stars so close they touched and sent streams of star-stuff spiraling off into the universe; another time-lapse of a black hole devouring its companion, taken from close enough and with long enough time delay that she could actually see the real star diminish in size, torn into gases which spiraled down and down to vanish into a central nothing; and more. There were intriguing pictures of life on a hundred planets. She counted a dozen races. Shalnuksis, of course, and others; Centauroids. Octopoids. A race like humans, but obviously reptilian in ancestry. A world where humans—real humans—kept as seeming pets small winged reptiles looking for all the world like tiny dragons.

  And it was frustrating because Les didn’t want to answer questions. Not that he flatly refused, but he would put her off, ask what she thought of what she had seen, ask what it reminded her of, until the evening was over and once again she had done all the talking. His desire for knowledge about Earth was insatiable. He wanted to know everything, trivial or profound. No detail seemed unimportant.

  An anthropologist studying her. But few anthropologists were so charming about it.

  Eventually she found the file on Tran, the place where the mercenaries were going. She could read none of it, of course; but she had learned how to make the computer pronounce the words it displayed on the screen, and from that she learned the phonetic alphabet used by the Confederacy. She made very little progress learning that language. There were too many words referring to places and people and things and ideas that were thoroughly unfamiliar. This didn’t surprise her. The real shock came when the computer showed her the languages of Tran.

  She spent a day being certain. Then, in the evening, when they were together with a glass of amontillado (“One of Earth’s finest products,” Les had said. “Nothing to match it anywhere. Too bad regular trade with Earth isn’t allowed.”), she could stand it no longer.

  “I was listening to Tran languages,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Nothing there to interest you.”

  “But there is! Les, I recognized some of the words! A lot of them. That language is based on an ancient Indo-European tongue! Some of the words are unchanged from Mycenaean Greek!”

  “Astute of you to notice,” he said. “I expect you’re right.”

  “Les, you’re teasing me. You know what this means. It means that there was an exchange of people—a lot of people, enough to bring languages with them—between Tran and Earth as far back as four thousand years.”

  “Other way,” he said. “From Earth to Tran.”

  “I meant that. It’s obvious that humans didn’t evolve on Tran. It’s only a colony. But why is it so primitive? Even relative to Earth. And Earth is primitive by your standards—Les, is Earth a colony?”

  “No.” He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that’s not the right answer. Perhaps you’re right. Earth is a colony—”

  “Les, you’re not making sense. Did humanity evolve on Earth?”

  “What do you think? You’ve read Darwin and Ardrey and Leakey. More sherry?”

  “I don’t want sherry, I want answers!”

  He came over and filled her glass. “Don’t be so serious,” he said. “Now. You obviously think humanity is native to Earth. Tell me why.”

  An hour later, it was time for dinner. He still hadn’t answered her questions.

  * * *

  Dinner was exotic, as usual, but she wasn’t interested in food.

  “Hey. You’re crying,” he said. “What’s the matter? You don’t like nastari?”

  “You treat me like a child.”

  “No. I treat you like an adult,” he said. He was very serious.

  “I—what do you mean?”

  “You are an intelligent woman. You raise fascinating questions. Don’t you want to find answers for yourself?”

  “But you know, and I don’t—”

  “Do I?”

  “You mean you don’t know? You don’t know where humanity evolved?”

  “I don’t even know that it did.”

  “But—” The enormity of what he’d said struck her. “But you—your culture—you’ve had space travel for four thousand years,” she insisted. “If you don’t know the answers, at least you have a lot more data! Give me some.”

  “I’m doing that. How much can you absorb in a few weeks?”

  “Oh.” She was silent for a long time.

  “Gwen.” His voice was very gentle, his expression very serious. “Gwen, accept it. All of it. Believe me, I care for you. And believe me when I say I’m trying to do what’s best for both of us.” He laughed. “My, aren’t we serious. And the dessert will melt.”

  * * *

  Gradually she realized it: he was interested in what she thought. He wanted to know her ideas, and more than that, her reactions to what she was learning. But he was getting her talking to herself.

  “What am I?” she asked her mirror. “Lover or laboratory animal? Anthropologist’s informant, mistress, or—” She
broke off. She’d been about to say “wife” and she didn’t have any right even to think that.

  And he did want to know. When she pointed out that some of the intelligent races she’d seen in pictures were identical to descriptions found in ancient mythology: centaurs, an aquatic race that might be mistaken for mermaids, a saurian race that might or might not have inspired the Minotaur legend—he not only listened, he insisted on having her describe and sketch the legendary creatures.

  He also encouraged her to study Tran. She might think of something useful, something that would aid the mercenaries. “It would help a lot if you could,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “If they succeed, they’ll make a lot of money for the traders. Traders have influence with the Council. Won’t hurt my career.”

  She stared in disbelief. “I—I thought I knew you better than that,” she said. “Don’t you care about the people on Tran? They’re human. Don’t you care?”

  “Oddly enough, I do care,” Les said. “Enough, in fact, to see if I can think of any way to help the mercenaries succeed with a minimum of slaughter. Because, you see, they really have to succeed—”

  “Why?”

  He ignored her question. “Can you think of anything that would help?”

  “I don’t know,” Gwen said. “All the information I’ve seen is very old—”

  “About six hundred years old,” Les said. “No one’s been there since, except for one fairly recent fly-by. We know they’re still pretty primitive down there. No railroads, industries, paved roads. No technological civilization.”

  “But no one has landed for six hundred years?”

  Les nodded.

  “But I thought this crop was valuable—”

  “It is. But there are some powerful reasons for the Shalnuksis to stay far away from Tran.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “It’s best you know. Tran’s not in the Council’s data banks. Except for the Shalnuksis and a few humans who work for them, no one knows the planet exists.”

  He seemed very serious, and she knew he already regretted trusting her with even that much information. She wanted to tell him that he could trust her with anything, that she’d always be loyal to him no matter what he was doing. That thought shocked her because she’d never thought such a thing before. And was it even true? “What would happen if the—the Council found out?”