In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (10 page)

“While painful, a decline of ten percent—”

It is a crime against your lineage and what remains to us of Sh’u Maz that you have been allowed to reproduce
, Chinta thought.

Aloud, she said, “Since the water will be available
now
, and the added plantations, manufacturing facilities, biomass, and population will take some time to appear, the fall in prices will be extreme. Perhaps as much as a third; at least one quarter within ten years of this date. Because we are not likely to command all the eventual increase in production—it will accrue to the Ruby Throne’s chosen clients, of course—the ripple effects will be similar even when the price of allocations stabilizes with higher net use. Overall equilibrium will not be reestablished for generations and when it is, we and our offspring will be at a relatively lower position in the economic hierarchy.”

Their faces fell as she presented the figures and graphs. Chinta went on, “And you all heard the Tollamune’s will: We must begin a program to copy the
tembst
of the Wet Worlders.”

She pointed at a chart. “Which means increased activity for the Ministry of Savantiere,”—her finger moved—“the Ministry of Tembst Refinement,”—and a third move—“and the Ministry of Mineral Supervision.”

All three Councilors adopted postures of concern, the response as involuntary as willed; she had just pointed out that they would have to finance and oversee the very changes that would threaten their steady incomes and relative status.

“Surely you are not proposing a Dynastic Intervention?” one said, a slight quaver in his voice.

Chinta spread her arms out to either side with fingers spread, and widened her gaze for a moment as she stared upward:
horrified negation
.

“No. It is the tragedy of our age that there is no heir to the King Beneath the Mountain . . .”

Which meant, without any offense that could call for an Apology or the services of the Expediter,
The Emperor will die soon and then all options are open
.

“. . . save Genomic Prince Heltaw . . .”

Who was known to be notably conservative, apart from the matter of
his
relative status.

“. . . and only in this age of declension would one who shares so slightly in the Tollamune Genome be considered at all. Even if he were to use one of the stored ova.”

They all nodded. Considering Heltaw’s own age—which promised a reign of at least a century, given the probable maximum life span of the current Emperor—and then the likely disposition of an heir socialized under that very conservative Genomic Prince’s supervision . . . and there was doubt about the viability of the stored ova. Subtle sabotage had been one of the weapons in the last Dynastic Intervention, and they had been in storage for more than two hundred years of the Real World in any case. Entropy could not be defeated forever. The sperm were viable, yes: the more complex ova, very probably not.

This made Heltaw’s gender a factor, unless he was prepared to merely keep the Ruby Throne warm for his siblings’ potential grandchildren.

Chinta was pleased to see the calculation behind the three pairs of eyes that met hers. She relaxed into an informal Communicative posture. At least they had
that
much survival instinct left intact.

“But why have you called us for this consultation, if all we need do to avoid the unpleasant alternatives you have sketched is to exercise patience?”

And drag our feet in implementing inconvenient decrees
, went unspoken. The bureaucracies they headed had a great deal of practice at that.

“Because the current Tollamune may not be as bereft of offspring as we have assumed,” she said grimly. “And sustained pressure from the Ruby Throne by a young, energetic, and potentially very long-lived Emperor is”—metaphorical mode—“another kettle of
to’a
altogether.”

That
brought them all sitting erect, hands flashing to press palms to either side of their faces: aghast concentration.

When Chinta had finished, she stroked her symbiant. It raised its head and whistled; the ears of the intercom system opened their tympani. “Let the Professional Practitioner of Coercive Violence Faran sa-Yaji enter,” she said.

The door dilated. The other three High Ministers bristled a little when the mercenary adopted an insolently undeferential posture, each hand clasping the opposite elbow and golden eyes level. That he was obviously of pure or nearly pure Thoughtful Grace strain made the hostility stronger, not less; the rivalry between
them and the Imperial Administrator lineages was as ancient as the Mountain.

Chinta ignored it. “We have a contract for you,” she said.

The Thoughtful Grace raised one eyebrow. “One attractive relative to that offered by Genomic Prince Heltaw, Superiors?” he said smoothly.

Chinta restrained herself from grinding her teeth. She had
hoped
that the news hadn’t spread that far. Still . . .

“One comparable, and easier of accomplishment,” she said. “You have contacts in Zar-tu-Kan?”

“Disreputable ones,” Faran said whimsically.

“Excellent. One does not engage a savant of
Sh’u Maz
for illegal lethality. Then—”

Mars, Approaching The Deep Beyond
Southeast of Zar-tu-Kan
May 2, 2000 AD

“Ahoy, matey! Avast the cross-forgainsails and clew up the lower buttock shrouds!” Jeremy said, holding on to a line of the standing rigging with a foot on the leeward rail.

“Oh, stop being cheerful!” Sally snarled, still looking slightly green.

The
Traveler
was heading out into what the Martians called the Deep Beyond now, spanking along at nearly twenty miles an hour before a following breeze, with each low rise in the undulating plain making the hull heel and then roll back slowly against the suspension system’s muscles. The result wasn’t much like a watercraft’s motion, but it could produce the equivalent of carsickness. The Martians had watched in horrified fascination as Sally gave back breakfast to the ground cover;
they
didn’t throw up unless they’d swallowed poison or were very ill indeed.

“You’re the one who’s traveled all over on these things,” Jeremy pointed out.

“Retching most of the time,” she answered grimly. “There, I think the pill’s finally working, thank the Buddha.”

The
Traveler
had passed the end of the active part of the canal last evening. The mountains that marked the edge of the old continental
shelf had gradually fallen out of sight to the left as they headed northeast. Gritty reddish soil showed through the thinning mat of atmosphere plant, individual specimens growing too far apart for their leaves to overlap, and the air had a haze of fine, dark pink dust. It smelled intensely dry, with less of the sharp medicinal scent of the crushed leaf. Sand of the same reddish color had piled up against the abandoned wall of the canal in a series of long drifts on the western side, sending tendrils out across the glassine of the covering and burying it in places.

They hadn’t seen anything much bigger than the ubiquitous little kangaroo-ratlike things for hours, though just after dawn they’d passed a herd—or flock—of four-footed flightless humpbacked birds that scampered off with black-and-white tails spread, caroling fright with a sound like a mob of terrified bassoons.

“What are those?” he’d asked.

“Wild
zharba
,” Sally had said. “They live off atmosphere plant and anything else that comes along and they manufacture their own water from their food—in fact, they store a couple of gallons in that sack on their backs, and you can tap it without hurting them if you know how and don’t mind the taste: Sort of a cross between cold, salty chicken soup and bird pee; it’s actually a fairly complete diet. The tame variety of
zharba
is what the nomads live off, mainly.”

“
Tembst
?” Jeremy had asked.

“Tembst,”
she’d replied. “Very, very old
tembst
.”

Tembst
meant something like “technology,” but not quite.
Perhaps “matter shaped by intent for utility,”
Jeremy thought.
They use the word for a knife or for something living like these . . . well, you expect another planet to be alien
.

The
Intrepid Traveler
was following the line of the abandoned waterway. The section beyond Zar-tu-Kan was lined with fortified farmhouses and an occasional small town built around a tower for airships, but those had long since dwindled to ruins.

I need to examine the dead canal here as a base for comparison
, Jeremy thought.
The way to Rema-Dza probably wasn’t abandoned all at the same time
.

“Let’s take a look at it,” he said aloud.

“Okay, might as well. It’s not as if we’re in a hurry,” Sally said.

She walked forward to where Teyud stood near the wheel; a landship
was steered from on top of the forecastle. The Martian was standing motionless except for an automatic flexing that kept her upright despite the motion of the
Traveler
. Unlike most of the crew she had pulled back the headdress of her robe. She nodded at Yamashita’s order and called in a voice that cut through the soughing blur of wind in the rigging and the creaking and groaning of the ship’s fabric:

“Strike sail, full rolling stop!”

The huge lugsail came down with a rush and a whine of gearing as the lower yard rolled it up like a sliding blind; the wheel-crews tapped at controls built into the base of each outrigger and great skeins of muscle flexed to close the brake-drums in a gradual surge of power.

Jeremy grabbed a line against the forward pressure as the land-ship glided to a halt with a whine and pant of brakes. It bobbed back and forth with a rolling, sideways motion for a moment, and the top of the yard and mast flexed like bows. Sally swallowed again, then sighed with relief as the motion steadied, though there was still a little, from the wind and from the crew shifting position, but not nearly as much as before.

Like most landships,
Traveler
had a ramp that let down at the bows, leading from the interior of the hull to the surface. Jeremy didn’t bother with it; he sprang from the deck and landed with flexed knees on the ground below. To his surprise, Teyud vaulted over the rail and landed likewise; it was an athletic feat equivalent to a Terran jumping out of a second-story window but she didn’t even grunt as her feet struck the soil of Mars.

Sally and the four crewfolk followed more sedately, down ropes; it wasn’t necessary for the Terran, but she’d told Jeremy she’d never been able to make her gut believe it was safe to drop distances like that.

“Maintain vigilance for
dharz
,” Teyud said to her crew.

The word meant “predators” and usually referred to the huge hunting birds that stood at the top of the food chain here; some of them were flightless, half the size of a cow, and bad.

The flying ones ranged up to twice that size and were much worse.

Several of the Martians set up a watch, standing in a triangle with their backs to each other and their rifles cradled in their arms,
scanning the skies. That left the Terrans free to focus on their work; Jeremy’s minicam whirred as they approached the ancient canal.

Ancient even by Martian standards
, he thought.

The glyphs were slightly different from those on the sections nearer Zar-tu-Kan, less sinuous and more blocky. And worn, worn until sections were smoothed to blank obscurity and he had to use the thermal imaging to trace where they’d been.

His lips moved as he translated the stiff archaic dialect of the repeated message:

“Tollamune Shel-tor-vu, ’am Zho’da nekka mar ha, tol—”

Another voice spoke, reading the glyphs more fluently than he could despite his years of study. Teyud’s voice. “The Emperor Shel-tor-vu, fifty-second of the Tollamune line and the eighth of that name to sit the Ruby Throne, ordered the reconstruction of this canal in the four-thousandth year of the Crimson Dynasty. Look upon my works, all ye who pass by, and know that the Kings Beneath the Mountain shall hold the Real World fast while the Mountain stands.
Sh’u Maz
—Sustained Harmony!”

Astonished, Jeremy looked at Teyud. Her face had the usual hieratic Martian calm, but something flickered in the lion-yellow eyes as she read. The accent he’d noted in her voice grew stronger as well, staccato and clipped, with a harsh tone that made the little hairs along his neck stir and a sound-shift that turned the usual Demotic
z
into an
s
.

“But they did not sustain Harmony,” she went on, almost in a whisper, her voice soft once more. “Though for long and long it seemed to be so. Cycle upon cycle of years passed, and with each, the Deep Beyond grew more and water and life grew less, little by little but steady and very sure. Sibling fought sibling for the Ruby Throne, and canals died, and cities fell, and generals rebelled, and the nomads pressed inward from the deserts and down from the heights, until nothing was left but the shards of a broken world. A world where winter comes, and will not yield again to spring.”

She shook herself very slightly, and resumed that feline alertness; the nicating membranes swept sideways across her lion eyes for an instant.

“You wished to examine?” she asked calmly.

Jeremy looked at Sally.
She
looked surprised as well, and the crewfolk were exchanging glances, too. He cleared his throat.

“Yes,” he said.

It would be easy to jump up onto the top of the canal’s covering, only twenty feet from the surface; easy and dangerous, since glassine was near frictionless as no matter. Instead, he walked until there was a drift of sand up the side, and then went up that with infinite caution.

“Or is it frictionless?” he said aloud, kneeling and touching the surface of the glassine.

Normally it would be so clear you could only see it by the way it refracted light a little more than air did. This was like very fine glass instead, and the surface . . .