The Man Without a Planet

SIX

SHORTLY BEFORE the ninth hour, the Chahuna came to fetch him to the audience-hall of the Kahani. Raul had bathed and rested, awakening to find a suit of Rilké gar­ments awaiting him, which Gundorm Varl said had been brought by a servant during his sleep. As his own fatigues were unsuited to a royal audience, and somewhat travel-stained, he gritted his teeth and donned them, feeling vaguely ridiculous in such exotic finery.

There were tight trousers of forest-green, which tucked smoothly into calf-high boots of tan suede. Then there was a loose, sleeveless blouse of fine silk, darker green, and a wide plain girdle of brown leather, set with heavy cubes of dull silver. This was topped off with a large, swirling cape of the same supple suede as his boots, but lined with green, silver-shot silk, with a great flopping collar. Thick wristlets of beaten silver went on each arm, and his hair was bound back with a narrow suede strap whose loose ends hung down to his left shoulder. About the edges of the cloak and on the two ends of the brow-band were affixed small copper bells which made faint clashing music when he moved.

He assumed the clothing of a Rilké War-Chief without protest, adding one thing only of his own: he hooked the scabbard of the golden sword onto the rings set in the leathern girdle. Regarding himself in the mirror when finished, he thought he looked absurd. Utterly. But, when in Rome . . . whatever “Rome” was!

“I do wish y’d let me come with y’, sir,” Gundorm Varl grumbled as he set to leave. But the invitation was clearly only for Raul alone, so he sternly bade Gundorm to stay in their suite and out of mischief—and left.

The Chahuna guided him through a maze of corridors up to a great, double-leaved door of heavy black chingti wood, bound with copper and set with flat studs of copper as huge as a jralley-tray. Before this imposing portal stood a guard: a Faftol, black as oiled ebony, thewed like a titan, a head taller even than Raul’s six-foot-four, and naked ex­cept for a red cloth about his loins. He held across his thighs a mighty hammer, as he stood spread-legged before the door: a terrible, blunt ugly weapon—a huge thing of solid iron that must have weighed thirty or forty pounds, and could smash a man aside as easily as one swats a fly. From the amazing ropes of muscle that stood out on his naked arms, and writhed like serpents of living jet across the width of his chest and shoulders, it looked as if the Faftol could use it with ease.

“The Shakar Lin-ton, at the bidding of the Kahani,” his guide announced.

“So this is he, eh? A real man at last! Salute, kazarl” the giant Faftol rumbled in a deep-chested voice, grinning with a flash of white teeth.

Raul returned the greeting, eying the nude giant with respect, from his shaven black skull and the enormous rubies that flashed in his earlobes, he seemed to be a privileged member of the Royal Suite.

“You may go in: she is expecting you.”

Linton noted the peculiar emphasis on the personal pro­noun; he filed it for later reference. He was to discover that those closest to the Kahani worshiped her with a de­gree of love and awe usually reserved for a deity.

He started to pass, and stopped as if he had run into a wall of stone. The giant Faftol had blocked his way with an outstretched arm.

“The sword, Shakar. None pass Zambar with a weapon. I will hold it safe for thee!”

Raul flushed, and felt his face tighten. Since Sharl had given him Asloth, the golden sword had not left his thigh. He did not intend to part with it now.

He considered the black giant with cold, flaring eyes. In the mood he had been in ever since his “interview” with Dykon Mather yesterday, the least hint of restraint or control over his thoughts or actions infuriated him like a whiplash.

“Very well.”

He turned on his heel, and spoke briefly to the Chahuna.

“Bar-Kusac, you may tell the Kahani for me that if she wishes to speak to me, she must come to my quarters. I keep my sword by me.”

He started to stride back down the corridor along the way he had come. The Chahuna came pattering after him.

“Kazarl Kazar! What do you do—where do you go? The lady has commanded your presence!”

“I am neither the Kahani’s subject, nor her servant, nor her slave. If she desires to meet with me, it shall be on my terms—or not at all. I am her guest, and on my world a host trusts his guests and allows them to retain their weap­ons, if so they desire. Tell that to the Kahani!”

“It shall not be necessary.”

A cold fluting, silvery voice. They both turned with sur­prise to see the mighty valves of chingti now lay open, and a slim, small figure wrapped in scarlet and green silks closely molding her figure, stood within the entrance.

“Are you—the Kahani?” Linton blurted.

The girl smiled.

“I am the least of her servants. But you may retain your beautiful sword, Commander Linton. Zambar, O naughty one! This is a great lord, a Shakar from beyond the stars. You must not annoy him! Come, Commander—”

Zambar stepped aside to let them pass. And he grinned widely as Linton strode through the mighty door.

“See? What did I say—did I say the vokarthu Shakar was a real man!” he chuckled, to no one in particular.

The valves closed ponderously behind Linton, and he looked around. All was dim light and gauzy veils of silken stuff and eddying clouds of sweet, heavy incense … he felt rather dazed and awkwardly out of place. Turning, he was surprised to find himself alone: the servant-girl had vanished somewhere, and his Chahuna guide had apparently remained outside in the corridor with the black giant. He looked about, irritably, and saw a black opening behind half-drawn silk draperies. He headed for it.

It led him to a long hall, nearly two hundred paces in length and unlit, save that he could see a brilliantly illum­inated chamber at the other end. He followed the dark hall­way, dimly sensing the scrutiny of hidden eyes following his lean, raw-boned height. Female eyes, he suspected. Al­most as he could hear the smothered whisper of womanish giggles; self-consciously he straightened his shoulders, face burning, and wished he did not feel so very much a fool.

The unlit hall opened into a room of such immensity and of such stunning magnificence that he paused, dazzled. The walls were crusted with very ancient mosaic designs in many- colored glass squares. A veil of sheerest, peach-yellow gauze stretched across the room before him, and standing at wide intervals about the mosaic wall and along the partition of gauze were massive candlesticks of pure silver, standing as high as his hip and as large around as small barrels. Towering out of these were truly gigantic candles taller than a man and thicker around than his thigh, of creamy, whitest wax, cast­ing a brilliant and flattering illumination that glowed and sparkled from the gray-and-yellow, highly polished marble tiles upon the floor, and flashed from the glassy, intricate mosaics as if they had been fashioned entirely of precious gems. Here and there about the floor were rugs of cream- white snowcat fur, each worth a year’s salary at the pay-rate of his Naval career.

It was a scene of sumptuous, barbaric splendor, fantastic to his rude, back-country Border eyes: an opium dream … a vision of forgotten opulence, Byzantine in its richness and intensity, almost savoring of Salammbo’s Carthage or Haroun’s Baghdad.

“Commander …”

A woman appeared, from behind the peach-hued gauze curtain. Another girl, different from the one who had met him at the door. This one was gowned in black-and-gold brocade which hugged her slim body. The girl at the door had been very attractive: this one was breathtakingly lovely. She gestured—

The gauze draperies opened and slid aside. Facing him across the huge room, a young girl sat on a throne of jet black marble, veined with irridescence like a peacock’s hues, fiery opal, green, blue and rust.

When he saw her face, he forgot the rest of the room.

Raul Linton knew very little about women. But he knew genuine beauty for the very rare thing it is when he saw it. He saw it now… .

She was young—very young. She looked seventeen or eighteen. (He knew she must be at least in her early twen­ties.) Her face was a calm, pure oval deliciously colored, like her bare arms, a superb creamy-brown, tawny, without flaw. She had a small, round, stubborn chin. And eyes large, clear, wide-spaced beneath level, winging brows … eyes that tilted ever so slightly at their comers … eyes of the blackest black imaginable. Intense. Magnetic. Compelling—almost hypnotic. Her nose was small and straight; her cheeks flushed faintly with natural, healthy rose. Her brow was broad and high, denoting intellect. She held her small, dainty head high, proudly, queenly. Queenly, too, were her straight, exquisite shoulders, and the delicate, soft, sweetly-arched bow of her warm red lips. She wore no cosmetics what­ever.

In violent contrast with the opulence of her chamber, and the intricate, expensive garments of her women, she wore a simple, severely plain white gown closely drawn about her small, breathlessly slim figure. She sat perfectly still, just watching him for a long, long moment, and in that interval he took in every detail of her dress and appearance.

She wore no jewelry—not even a ring to mar the pure beauty of her small, capable brown hands. Nor so much as an armlet to break the gracious symmetry of her bare arms. Her dark, straight hair—it was as black, and glisten­ing, and full of highlights as a raven’s wing—flowed smooth­ly over her shoulders and down her back. Her only conces­sion to feminine ornament was a small cap, an ashkar, atop her head. It was of small, flawless ice-blue diamonds woven together with stiff threads of gold wire. Still she did not move or change her expression.

Stiffly, feeling his face burn, Linton made a small, jerky bow: inadequate obeisance to a Planetary Prince, he knew, but he did it on impulse, not intention.

He took his eyes off her, and looked about him, self­consciously, seeing the three-step dais upon which she sat enthroned in her black marble chair, and the rich crimson and purple carpet that was laid on the steps. He was conscious of a delicious, hauntingly familiar perfume … ah, yesl … the scent of candlewood he had noticed in the salon of her space yacht.

It suited her well: dry, musky, clean, resinous, yet sweet and heady. The scent of wild, wind-blown high places, open to the sky and tom with great winds.

Then he looked back again and caught her eyes regard­ing him, thoughtfully, and saw the beginnings of a slow, warm, friendly smile.

“… So you are the Raul Linton of which I have heard so very much,” she said in a clear, warm voice. “I welcome you to Ophmar, where neither of us belongs. I am the Kahani of Valadon.”

“I know,” Raul said stiffly, even rudely. He felt a vast and bewildered resentment stirring within him: resentment at her amazing youth, at her astonishing beauty, and (per­haps above all else) at her ease, poise, and air of self-re­liance, which contrasted with his own lack of same—of which he was acutely conscious.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said suddenly—inanely. She laughed.

“I’m glad! Soon the whole Cluster will hear of me—Gods-willing!” Her laughter was like her smile—unforced, not artificial, springing from within.

Raul was surprised that she spoke Imperial Neoanglic so very well—with only the slightest hesitation over polysyllables (a delightful music, her hesitating slight accent gave to his common, workaday name!) and a mere touch of foreign­ness to certain vowels. He felt alert, as if he were all over a mass of eyes, ears and nerve-endings. Both of them (he felt) were very keen and watchful during these first few min­utes of their meeting: trigger-sharp to catch intimations, hints, subtleties. He tried to force himself to relax, to stand easier—there was no other chair visible in the room, save for the one in which she sat—and to speak without awkwardness. It was a lost battle, he knew; cursing himself for a blush­ing schoolboy, he felt as uncomfortable as a youth at his first liaison! And there was nothing he could do about it!

In the next moment he thought perhaps she was a tele­path: for mischief flashed in her huge eyes, and she said softly—

“You seem uncomfortable standing. Shall I have my wo­men fetch you a chair?”

“Uh—no. I prefer to—stand,” he said.

In the next instant—she changed totally, taking him un­awares with a sudden, direct question in High Rilké.

“Of gentility, kazar—what shouldst thou do, were thou suddenly bereft of that which was legally thine, by blood-right, law of inheritance, and kahanal screed? If, without notice or warning, or so much politeness as might be con­tained in a mere ‘if-thou-wilt’—thou wast forced from thy office, from thy rank, from thy home, thy servants, and all of thine possessions?”

Instantly, without a moment’s hesitation or thought, he answered straight and from the heart: “I would fight to have it back.”

“Aha! Thou wouldst fight—even though it was to break the law?”

“Yes—of honor.”

She leaned forward, staring intently into his eyes.

“Then—of honor—thou wouldst kill, to have back that which wast thine, and which others seized from thee? How many wouldst thou kill? A ten? A hundred? More? How many more wouldst thou kill?”

Dazedly: “I don’t know. If there were no other way to force the thief to give up my property, I would kill—yes. How many, I cannot say. But I would fight in every way of which I might think.”

“Even though thou be namedst ‘outlaw’ and ‘criminal’?”

“Why—yes, I guess so. I think a man has the right to fight for his property, as he would defend his woman or his possessions from seizure.” He laughed a little, but neither bitterly nor with any real humor. “Some are very swift to attach such names to others!”

She nodded, and the diamond ashkar tinkled like tiny crystal balls.

“I know that thy government has given such names to thee, Lin-ton. Such names have they also fastened to me—for that I seek to have back that which is mine, as the Dais of Valadon is mine by blood, law and marriage, and which they took from me by force, and with lies, treacherously and without lawfulness.”

“So have I heard, Kahani.”

“Then thou wilt understand my plight, and be on my side?” she asked.

“Not—exactly—” he hedged (be careful of committing yourself now; this woman is swift and keen and has a mind like lightning!). “I understand—I sympathize—but as for being on your side—”

Suddenly, she switched again—this time to relaxed, col­loquial Rilké.

“I had heard, kazar, that your government has cast you out—named you traitor—set their spies to watching you and searching through your belongings. I had heard they watched your every step, listened to and copied down your words. I had heard, too, that you revolted against these unwarranted suspicions and untrue accusations. Now, answer me this? Are you, of gentility, a rebel against authority? Are you a revolutionary—a traitor—a criminal?’

Stoutly, he set his jaw.

“No, I am not. My government is full of fools and small- minded, suspicious men, fearful of their position. All I did was to have honest doubts about certain policies, to seek to make up my mind on certain matters, and to speak out my doubts!”

“And for nothing more than this, they chased you out­set the police after you—named you traitor and criminal?”

“Yes!”

“But I have done even less!” she cried, fiercely. “I hold a treaty with the Provincial Government of the Hercules Stars, dating from the Empery of Kermian Imperator, father of the present Arban Fourth and of his late brother and pred­ecessor, Uxorian—swearing peace and mutual recognition, each of the other’s custom and law! I did not even speak of any doubts as to policy—nor flout any authority—but, and only this, upon the death of my husband, the Kahan, I sought to ascend the Dais that was mine by his own, legal decree—and mine by law of inheritance! As, among the Rilké, the wife takes possession of those things which belonged to her husband, even unto land-title and hereditary honors! Yet they have seized from me all that was mine by right and law, and forced me into outlawry. Since your condition, kazar, is so very close to mine—why will you not agree that you are on my side?”

He regarded her for a moment, thoughtfully.

“Lady, because I doubt not you intend to raise arms against Valadon and do battle for it—which will be an act of genuine treason against my government, and an act of violence against the peace of these stars. I, who am named ‘traitor’—am not one. Though I am accused of criminal acts, I am not, in truth, guilty of them. I will not make my­self a criminal in the eyes of my own people!”

She sank back into her chair, regarding him wistfully. “Ai!” she sighed. “I wish I were a man. But I am only a woman! I have none to press suit for me against those who have done me wrong. None to revenge my grievances. I must, therefore, either revenge them myself—with such help as I can raise about my banner—or be content to sit here on this dead ball of rock until I die of old age, wronged, innocent—helpless. Am I so very wrong—of gentility!—to seek redress of my ills, even at cost of ‘an act of violence against the peace of these stars’?”

“The right and wrong of this are beyond my telling, lady. Perhaps you are in the right. Perhaps there were well and good reasons behind the action the government took—I do not say there were, I say ‘perhaps.’ Almost all govern­ments, I think, are filled by incompetents and fools … some mistakes, some injustices are bound to occur… .” She smiled. “This you, yourself, know, eh? Are not you, too, kazar, a fugitive from injustice?”

Before he could muster his wits to compose a suitable answer—she raised one small hand.

The lovely serving-girl in black-and-gold brocade ap­peared magically beside him. (And how cold and unstirring her beauty appeared, now, beside the warmth and vitality of the slim girl in white on the great black marble chair!)

“Enough!” the Kahani said, softly. “You are my guest—I weary you, perhaps, with my talk. … You will be my guest at dinner, and sit beside me, and meet the Chieftains of my host? You will do this much—at least?”

He bowed.

“Kahani… it will be a great honor.”

“Then go, for now, Lin-ton… .”

The girl led him out of the great, high-arched chamber. And as he passed between the thin gauze curtains, he stole a swift glance backwards.

She was sitting still, and looked very small and pitifully young, there in the great black chair. And her small, proud head was bowed a little, as if very, very weary… .