Star Winds

Chapter THIRTEEN

Dressed all in purple and black stripe and wearing his insignia of rank, Baron Matello was waiting in the courtyard of his castle when King Lutheron’s golden coach came clattering through the gate, its windows shrouded. The carriage came to rest; a footman hastened down from the rear to open the door, with its elaborate coat of arms.

The monarch stepped to the ground, looking all around him with melancholy gray eyes. Matello fell to his knees, and put his lips to the back of a limply proffered hand.

“What is your will, my liege-lord?” he asked solicitously as he rose. “Rest, or refreshment?”

“I require neither for the present, Sir Goth,” the king said, his tone business-like. “I must talk with you—in private.”

Lutheron the Third was tall and thin, barely older than Matello but seeming much older, his austere face lined and grayish. His visit to Castarpos had come as a sudden surprise to Matello, who had received less than one day’s notice of it, and he was nervous as to what its object could be, especially as he had been instructed to arrange no pomp and to make no public announcement of the king’s presence. He had, however, moved the Bucentaur into orbit so as to make way for the royal barge.

Leaving his majordomo to attend to the rest of the party, he conducted his monarch to his private office and sent for the best of his wines. Dismissing the manservant who arrived with it, he decanted it with his own hand and filled the king a goblet. Lutheron merely sipped the ancient vintage, and waved the standing Matello to be seated.

“Is this an inspection tour, liege-lord?” Matello enquired.

“I am afraid it is somewhat more than that,” King Lutheron said, smiling sadly. “The Kerek threat is developing more swiftly than ever anticipated, making it imperative for me to muster my forces. I have lately received intelligence that a major invasion is imminent.”

Matello suddenly became as stiff as wood and he clenched his hands. “By the gods, I’ve heard nothing of this! Where could the Kerek have built up their forces?”

“In the shoals and reefs bordering your end of the realm, where they have managed to amass unobserved, it seems, by using asteroids for natural cover.”

“Agh!—I should have guessed it!” muttered Matello after a pause, remembering the attack upon the Bucentaur. “That’s too close to home for comfort.”

“It is indeed, and it is essential that a fleet is raised immediately to meet the attack, or to strike first if that is possible. What can you supply by way of men and ships?”

Matello paused, then answered crisply. “I have five thousand men-at-arms. But I haven’t the ships to carry them all at once. Besides the Bucentaur, my personal ship, I have three battle-galleons, third class, and assorted smaller craft which will need to be carried by mother ship. I can manage most of those, I think.”

The king twisted a jeweled ring on his finger. “We will take everything,” he announced. “Get your men on board somehow. Any you can’t take can come aboard my own barge—later we’ll attend to their redistribution.”

“These measures will strip my domain of all troops, liege-lord,” Matello pointed out doubtfully. “I don’t like to leave my people without protection.”

“It is from the Kerek that they need protecting most,” the king answered with a sigh. “If we do not beat back the impending wave, then Maralia will be lost, just as other realms have been lost.”

Matello brooded.

“Luckily we do not stand alone,” the king went on. “The king of Wenchlas is sending help, as are the republics of Capalm and Venichea.”

“Wenchlas?” spluttered Matello. “Our sworn enemy, liege-lord!”

King Lutheron’s smile was weary. “At the present juncture of events we are natural allies. King Causus knows that if we fall, Wenchlas will be next. Indeed, were we able to rally all the human nations in a common defense, perhaps the Kerek could be contained. So far, this has proved beyond any man’s diplomacy. Now: how long before you will be ready to move?”

“To recall my troops from the Marsh worlds will take six days at least.”

“Hmm. Too long. We will leave the day after tomorrow. Your Marsh Worlds forces can make their way later.”

The main business dealt with, the king relaxed and took a deep draught of the baron’s excellent wine. “It is a great trial to me that I am able to count on so little from the dukedom of Koss,” he remarked. “You were the only man to presume to assume responsibility there, I recall. I see that you are not installed in the Aegis, however.”

“I have a plan at work,” Matello rumbled. “But I am still waiting for it to come to fruition.”

“Indeed?” The king leaned forward. “What is this plan?”

Matello hesitated, not liking to disclose his scheme. “I have succeeded in getting a man inside the Aegis,” he said.

“And you are hoping he will open it up for you?”

“Yes, liege-lord.”

“Not a perfect plan of operations,” the king commented after a moment’s thought. “Though getting a man inside at all is an achievement of sorts, I suppose.”

“The young man I am using is resourceful. I believe he will find a way eventually.”

“And how long has he been in there now?”

“Several months,” Matello admitted.

The king laughed, to Matello’s discomfiture. “Evidently, then, your plot has come unstuck. Either your conspirator has been discovered or he prefers the Duke of Koss’s service to yours. Tell me: is it true that you have the builder of the Aegis as your guest?”

“It is, liege-lord. You know the story of how he was cheated by the old duke, I suppose?”

“Yes. Quite an amusing tale. I would like to meet this beast.”

“Certainly, liege-lord. We will go to him directly.”

The king nodded, drained his goblet, and stood up. Matello rose after him, and guided him through the castle’s passages to the underground hall where Flammarion rested. “The creature’s life here is rather a dull one,” he said as they walked. “Most of his time he spends in a tank which keeps him fairly comfortable. It must be a peculiar world he comes from… I give him the freedom of the castle, too, and he sometimes roams around it. No amount of tedium or discomfort seems to bother him, I might say. He’ll wait it out for centuries to get what he regards as his due.”

“A most persistent creditor.”

“It’s the nature of his race.”

They entered the underground hall, where Matello ushered his royal guest toward the open iron tank at the far end. “Flammarion!” he called out. “Present yourself to our great king, Lutheron the Third, monarch of all Maralia!”

After a moment or two a shape rose up from the tank, showering fine yellow powder in all directions. The king watched while the alien flowed over the side of the trough and came closer, its flat cape-like body warping over the floor in waving motions. Finally it halted, raised its front end and managed a grotesque bow.

“Your Majesty.”

The king turned to Matello. “What an odd odor he has.”

“That’s mainly from the powder… It’s made up to his own recipe.”

Matello fetched a chair for the king. Lutheron sank into it, spreading his light cloak. He gazed at Flammarion with interest.

“Does that tail of yours have a sting?”

Flammarion flexed the pointed tail a little. “No, Your Majesty, it is vestigial, though the primitive forebear of my species did have a sting.”

“Strange how a life form seems to lose its natural weapons when it acquires a thinking brain. Well, so it was you who built the Duke of Koss his Aegis, eh?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And I understand you did it alone?”

“That is so.”

“It seems a mighty labor for one small individual. How did you manage it, without a work force?”

“I have my methods, Your Majesty. These, of course, are my secrets. I employ one method to create adamant. I use another method to shape it as it forms. For this I use a device which I first build with my own tentacles, and it is this device which makes possible the erection of so large a structure.”

“And how long did this enterprise take you?”

“Building the Aegis for the Duke of Koss entailed three years of continuous effort on my part. Alas, I wait and wait to receive my due reward.”

“No one’s plans can be guaranteed to go right,” said the king absently. He reflected, then said: “I am glad finally to have met you. Maralia could use more of these constructions, provided they remain in the right hands. I will commission you to build one for me.” Flammarion’s tone became doleful. “Oh, I will build no more for humans. Never, never again!”

The king bristled angrily at this. “You dare to refuse me, alien? I can torture cooperation out of you! What do you say now?”

“You cannot torture me,” Flammarion responded, still in his aggrieved voice. “I am incapable of feeling physical pain. I suffer emotionally only. I suffer when I am cheated, gulled, or made to labor in vain. Therefore, never again will I work for humans.”

“Hmph.” The king fell back in his chair, disgruntled but convinced. “This creature interests me, Sir Goth,” he said. “Allow me to take him off your hands. No doubt he will find my own court a more amusing place than this draughty castle.”

“Liege-lord…” Matello frowned and bit his lip, not liking this turn of events at all.

“My single interest is to enter the Aegis!” Flammarion protested. “I must remain near it!”

Matello nodded in agreement. “Quite so, liege-lord. I in turn need his knowledge and talents if I am to succeed in toppling Koss.”

“But your progress is slow, Sir Goth,” King Lutheron murmured. “At home I have men of great wit and perspicacity, who in conjunction with Flammarion may perhaps hit on the answer. But don’t worry—I won’t forget the part you’ve played in the affair so far. When it comes to choosing a new Duke of Koss, I shall bear you in mind.

“Transfer the creature and his effects to my barge. I shall take him with me when we leave.”

Matello swallowed and fumed inwardly. “Certainly, liege-lord, if it is your will.”

“It is contrary to my will!” Flammarion interjected.

The king shrugged. “We are not all as despicable as Koss, my friend. You will serve your own interests by cooperating with me.”

He paused. “Have you ever seen a space battle, by the way?”

“Hitherto the nature of the primus agens has been the most obscure of all alchemical secrets,” Amschel said as they entered the laboratory one morning. “The text you provided confirmed what I have long suspected, that the first principle is mercury—not common mercury, but azoth, the mercury of the philosophers. Now, at long last, its preparation may be possible.”

While he spoke Amschel was opening the door of an athanor. A blast of heat billowed out; he and Rachad bent to inspect a cucurbit nestling in the ash bath.

“If the subject is to be reduced to prima materia, it must incorporate all five elements in exact and equal balance. This is the chief and unique virtue of azoth: it is the great absorber, receiving all elements in a perfect blend, which may therefore be adjusted accordingly.”

In the cucurbit, there was a continuous seething. Then Amschel frowned. He had discerned a greenish tinge in the pearly fluid.

Suddenly a livid green, shot through with bilious yellow, seized the whole mass. Amschel huffed with exasperation, his face becoming sad.

“We shall have to begin again,” he announced. “The divine water should seethe until it is pure and shining. Green signifies that the operation has misfired.”

He beckoned an assistant, who removed the cucurbit from the ash pan with a pair of tongs, suspending it in a tripod where it was left to cool. The subject, emerald in color now, began to solidify almost immediately, surging slightly as if alive.

“Three months we have spent already on this part of the work, without success,” Amschel muttered. “Still, Nicholas Flamel himself described the preparation of the primus agens as extremely difficult, even when one understands it. It is true that only an experienced and learned adept could divine the process from the book at all, even though its instructions are fairly explicit.”

He turned, a small and stooped figure. Rachad, however, failed to find any real dejection in his face.

“More study is needed,” the artifex decided. “I have misunderstood some small point, perhaps.”

He wandered off. Rachad, guessing that there would be no more work today, also took his leave, back to the living quarters beneath the laboratory. The accommodation, like the laboratory itself, was rambling and many-chambered, but afforded some privacy. Rachad was able to close a door and be alone in his tidy, if spartan, room.

He was glad of this, for the tediousness of lengthy alchemical research bored him to tears, and the laboratory dwellers, Amschel especially, spoke of little else. The Aegis, too, had become depressing to him, with its cloying atmosphere and degenerate way of life. He longed to see the sun—any sun.

Only one aspect of Amschel’s work really fascinated him. On a low table against the wall, opposite Rachad’s bed, were four large glass jars, filled with water.

The homunculi he was growing were now perfectly formed.

Amschel, who it seemed regarded the growing of homunculi as no more than a childish experiment, like growing crystal flowers, had agreed readily to Rachad’s request to do so. He had shown Rachad how to prepare the simple mineral solution required, and had given him leave to take seeds from the drawer where they were kept.

The seeds, he had explained at the same time, contained non-differentiated life—they would grow anything, the end product being determined by the power of thought, by whatever mental image was projected onto the organism by the experimenter.

There was an amusing tradition connected with this, which Amschel had invited Rachad to try. He had given Rachad a group of four playing cards: the King, the Queen, the Priest, and the Knight. One of these placed on top of each jar, he had explained, would automatically focus the mental energy of the experimenter on the growing seed, even if only given a passing glance now and then.

Rachad had followed this procedure, leaning the cards against the wall so that they stood upright over the jars, and he was delighted to see how effective it was. The jars now contained miniature human beings, twelve-inch figures which, though frail-looking, were easily recognizable as corresponding to the crude caricatures painted on the cards above them, mainly because of the regalia which had also grown onto them. The King and Queen were crowned, and wore flowing purple apparel. The Priest, in an orphreyed cope, carried a holy circle, and the Knight, wearing the lightest of armor, was armed with a battle-axe which he held upright before him, after the manner of the playing card overhead.

Since the day before, the creatures had also awakened to consciousness—or whatever passed for consciousness in homunculi; Rachad was vague in his mind on that score. They gazed sadly from their glass jars, as if pathetically aware of their fleeting hold on life.

Amschel had offered two more fascinating facts. The first was that homunculi were telepathically obedient to the will of their creator (giving Rachad a fresh insight into the deployment of space dragons). The other concerned an intriguing piece of behavior resulting from the playing-card technique. It seemed that the King invariably sought to escape from his jar in a vain attempt to join the Queen—a consequence, it was thought, of the alchemical marriage which the pair weakly symbolized.

The King was already enacting this inborn urge as Rachad came into the room, pressing his hands to the lid of the jar and feebly attempting to push it off. When he became aware of Rachad watching him, however, he left off his efforts as though discovered at something clandestine. He stood stiffly in the jar, his paper-like face staring haughtily ahead, his purple cloak waving in the currents his movements had stirred up in the liquid.

A thought came to Rachad. He reached out and unscrewed the lid, leaving it in place but loose on the top of the jar. Then, crossing the room, he lay on his bed and closed his eyes.

He had intended merely to sleep and to spy on the King surreptitiously, but instead found that he must have dozed off for a few minutes. He awoke with a start, to see that the King had succeeded in climbing out of the jar and, dripping water onto the tabletop, had made his way to where the Queen was imprisoned at the other end of the line, separated from him by the Priest and the Knight. Now the homunculus was frantically trying to shin up the smooth glass surface, while the Queen, her hands pressed against the inside of the jar, watched him intently, her pretty face wide-eyed with alarm and expectancy.

Already the King was beginning to flag. Rachad recalled that an homunculus could not live long once removed from its nurturing solution. He continued to watch for a while, until the King fell to the tabletop in exhaustion, his arms clasped pathetically around the jar.

Then it occurred to Rachad to try a second experiment. In his thoughts, he ordered the King to rise, to return to his own place. At first nothing happened. Propping himself on one elbow, Rachad tried again, imagining his thoughts as a mental force that was reaching out to the dying homunculus, silently commanding his obedience. Now the King responded. He raised his head, clambered slowly to his feet, and with stooped, dragging steps plodded doggedly back the way he had come.

Thrilled, Rachad followed every inch of his progress, never letting up the mental effort. Halfway home, however, the King’s strength gave out, and he collapsed in a bedraggled heap.

Rachad sprang from the bed, not wanting to lose one of his living toys, and picked up the homunculus. It felt cold and soft in his hand, and wriggled feebly. He plopped it back into the empty jar and screwed on the cap.

The King sank to the bottom, where he squatted with his head between his upthrust knees, hiding his face with his arms.

The incident seemed to have disturbed the other homunculi. The Knight was impotently swinging his axe against the wall of his glass prison. The Priest, too, banged indignantly against the inside of his own jar, silently mouthing.

Rachad returned to his bed, much entertained by the entire episode.

He grinned to himself. Next time he would arrange for the King actually to succeed in reaching the Queen. It would be fun to see what the two of them got up to, when ensconced in the same jar together.

But in a way, he thought wryly, his own situation was not unlike theirs. They were encased in their glass jars, he in the Aegis. By now he had all but despaired of ever finding a way to open the gate. He was so wearied of his life here that, were he not afraid of what Matello might do to him, he would have considered abandoning his mission altogether and asking the duke to let him go—if that could have been done without arousing his suspicions.

Refreshed by his immersion in the mineral water, the King was coming to his feet again to adopt the formally upright pose which was characteristic of all the homunculi. At least, Rachad reflected, he could now find some diversion in using his mental power on them, using them as living dolls.

He lay down and was about to drift into sleep again, when he suddenly sat bolt upright. The idea that had come to him had illuminated his thoughts like a flash of lightning.

What fool he had been! How obvious it was!

He stared at the homunculi. The way to open the Aegis was right there in front of his eyes!