The Search for Zei

CHAPTER XIV

Barnevelt worked hard on his crew, molding them into an effective unit. Knowing that his own shyness sometimes made him seem aloof and cold to those who did not know him well, he made a point of being chummy with the sailors, who seemed delighted that one of his rank should admit them to such unwonted familiarity.

After a day of training the crew in the harbor, the Earth-men's next visit to the palace found only Zei and Zakkomir visible, though the queen looked in once to bid a curt good-evening. The king appeared not at all.

"He's drunk, poor abject," said Zakkomir. "So should I be in his buskins. Of late he spends all his time in his chambers swilling and pottering with his collection of cigar cases. A rare assortment has he, too—marvels of jeweling and fine inlay work, and trick ensamples like one that plays a tune when you open it."

"Could I see them?" said Tangaloa.

"Certes, Master Tagde. 'Twould pleasure the old fellow greatly. Showing off this accumulation is nearly his only joy in life, and few chances he gets. The queen scoffs at his enthusiasm and visitors, to flatter her, cloak themselves in similar agreement with her attitude. You'll excuse us, sir and madam, unless you also with to come?"

"Let's not and say we did," said Barnevelt. The other two males strolled out.

"How soon do you sail?" asked Zei.

Barnevelt, feeling oddly breathless, replied: "We could be off day after tomorrow."

"You must not leave ere the kashyo festival be over! We have reserved for you a pair of choicest seats, next in honor after our royal kin."

Barnevelt answered: "It may seem uncouth of me, but watching your poor old stepfather butchered is a sight I could bear to miss."

She hesitated, then said: "Is it true we're criticized in other lands because of it, as says Zakkomir?"

"Matter of fact, some folks are horrified."

"So he says, but I doubted because he's a secret sympathizer with the Reform Party."

"The people who don't want to kill the king any more?"

"The same. Breathe nothing to my lady mother, lest in her rage poor Zakkomir suffer. They sent word to her through intermediaries that for the nonce they'd settle on elimination of the ceremonial devourment of the late consort. But she'd have none of it, and so beneath its fair-seeming surface our land does boil with treasonous plots and coils."

"What'll you do when you're queen?"

"That I know not. Though sensible am I of the causes urged against our custom, yet will my mother always retain much influence on the affairs of Qirib, so long as she does live. And, as she says, aside from considerations of true religion, there's nothing like slaying the topmost man yearly to keep the sex in its proper place."

"Depends on what you call proper place," said Barnevelt, thinking that Qirib needed a—what would be the opposite of "feminist"? "masculist"?—a Masculist Party.

"Nay," said Zei, "argue not like Zakkomir. Our realm's prosperity is proof positive of the rightful superiority of the female."

"But I can cite you prosperous realms where the men ruled the women, and others where they were equal."

"A disturbing fellow, are you not? As I said when you so rudely smote me upon the posterior, no Qiribu you!"

"Well, my disturbing presence will soon be gone. Actually, you can give me some useful advice. What's the connection between the Banjao pirates, the janru traffic, and Qirib?"

She stared at her cigar. "Methinks we'd best change subjects, lest we get into perilous grounds where one's safety can only be assured by another's sacrifice…"

On the way home, Barnevelt said: "Let's shove off day after tomorrow, George."

"Are you mad? I wouldn't miss this ceremony for anything. Think of all the dinkum film we shall get!"

"Ayuh, but I'm sqeamish about watching them kill and cook poor Kaj in front of my eyes. To say nothing of having to eat a piece of him later."

"How do you know what he will taste like? Among my ancestors it was a regular custom for the winner of a sporting contest to eat the loser."

"But I am no South Sea Islander! In my culture-pattern it's considered rude to eat people you know socially."

"Come, come," said Tangaloa. "Kaj is not really human. Millions of Krishnans die all the time, and what difference does one more make?"

"Yes, but…"

"And we can't walk out on the queen. She expects us."

"Oh, foof! Once we're at sea…"

"You forget we're leaving a bond here, and Panagopoulos won't stand for our forfeiting it unnecessarily. Also our sailors will insist on being brought back home when we finish."

Unaccustomed as he had become to having George make a definite decision, Barnevelt gave in. He told himself he did so because of the weight of Tangaloa's arguments—not because he would thus be enabled to go on seeing Zei. Nevertheless he felt elated at the prospect of so doing.

The night of the festival, Zakkomir checked the costumes of Barnevelt and Tangaloa and found them adequate. "Though," he said, "they be not those customary, yet will the other practisants excuse you as foreigners who know no better."

"Thank Zeus they won't make us wear one of those toga effects," muttered Barnevelt. "I can just see myself trying to manage one in a gale."

Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like Zakkomir, in a sort of cloth-of-gold sarong, with jeweled armlets, gilt sandal-boots reaching halfway up his bare calves, a golden wreath on his green hair, and his face as bedizened with paint as that of a Russian ballerina.

He led them into the reception hall where royal aunts and uncles thronged. At last the trumpets blew and the king and queen marched through, the rest falling into place behind them. Kaj wobbled as he walked and looked glummer than ever, despite the efforts of the royal makeup artist to paint a lusty look upon his visage.

Zakkomir showed Barnevelt and Tangaloa where to fall in, then went forward to take Zei's arm behind the royal couple.

As the amphitheater, where the kashyo festival took place, lay just outside the palace grounds, the procession went afoot. Two of the three moons showed alternately as the clouds uncovered them, and a warm brisk wind flapped robes and cloaks and made the gaslights flutter. Outside the wall of the palace grounds, many of the common people of Ghulinde stood massed, and a wedge of whifflers pushed a path through them.

The amphitheater was fast filling. On one side stood the royal box. The flat space in the middle of the structure was occupied by a stove and a new red-painted chopping block. The people ranged about these accessories included old Sehri, the high priestess of the Mother Goddess; several assistants, some with musical instruments; the palace chef and a couple of assistant cooks; and a man wearing over his head a black bag with eyeholes and leaning on the handle of a chopper with a blade like a butcher's cleaver but twice as big. The cooks were sharpening other culinary implements. Amazon guards stood around the topmost tier of the theater, the wavering gaslights sparkling on their brazen armor.

Barnevelt found himself sitting in the second row a little to the right of the royal box, which was full of royal cousins besides the queen and the princess. The benches included a narrow table-like structure in front of each. Kaj himself was down in the central plaza, sitting hunched on the chopping block with hands on knees.

Barnevelt said to Tangaloa: "I don't see how Kaj can be stretched enough to give everybody a piece, unless they make hamburger of him and dilute it with more conventional meat. What else happens?"

"It's quite elaborate. They have ballet dancers acting out the return of the sun from the south, and the growing crops and all that sort of rot. You will like it."

Barnevelt doubted that; but, as the amphitheater was now full and the crowd quieting down, he did not care to argue the point. The high priestess raised her arms and called out:

"We shall first sing the hymn to the Mother Goddess: 'Hail to Thee, Divine Progenitrix of Gods and Men.' Are you ready?"

She swept her arms in the motions of an orchestra conductor. The musical instruments tweetled and plunked, and the audience broke into song. They sang lustily for the first few lines, then petered out. Barnevelt noticed that many were peering about as though trying to read their neighbors' lips, and guessed that, as in the case of "The Star Spangled Banner" and the "World Federation Anthem," a lot of people knew the words of the opening lines only. Tangaloa was unobtrusively filming the scene with his ring camera.

As the volume of singing diminished, Barnevelt heard another sound that swelled to take its place: the surf like noise of a distant human uproar. At the end of the first stanza, the priestess paused with her arms up. In the resulting silence the noise came nearer, resolving itself into individual roars and shrieks and the clang of metal. Heads turned; in the topmost tier, some stood up to stare outward. Amazons bustled about and conferred.

Barnevelt exchanged a blank look with Tangaloa. The sound grew louder.

Then a bloody man dashed into the theater through a tunnel entrance, shouting: "Morya Sunqaruma!"

Barnevelt understood, then, that the noise was caused by an attack of the pirates of the Sunqar.

The next minute he was pitched off his feet by a panic-push of the crowd. He fought his way upright again. In front of him Tangaloa gripped a corner of the royal box to keep from being swept away.

A renewed racket around one of the entrances, and a party of pirates pushed in against the opposition of the Amazons. Barnevelt saw some woman warriors go down before the weapons of the intruders, and others brushed aside. More pirates erupted through other entrances. Barnevelt felt for his sword, then remembered that he had been made to leave it at home. The Qiribo men were all unarmed; and, while some of the women wore swords, neither they nor the men seemed inclined to make use of them.

A pirate with a torch in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other shouted in the Qiribo dialect: "Stand! If you flee not, no harm shall come to you. We wish but two men from among you." He repeated this announcement until the hubbub quieted.

Other shouts came from outside. Barnevelt guessed that the pirates had thrown a cordon around the theater to catch runaways. He also had a horrid premonition of who the two sought by the raiders were.

Queen Alvandi and Princess Zei stood in their box, pale but resolute.

The bulk of the audience were still massed around the exits. In the center of the theater the cook, the executioner, and most of the priestesses had disappeared into the general mob; King Kaj and the high priestess remained.

The pirate leader with the torch shouted: "We wish . . ."

And at that instant the gaslights went out.

The sudden darkening brought a few seconds of silence; then a rising murmur that swelled to a roar.

"Snyol! You there, Snyol of Pleshch!" shouted a voice.

Barnevelt looked around. A few meters away from him stood King Kaj, revealed by the fugitive light from one of the moons. The king bore a triumphant smile on his face and the executioner's chopper in his hands.

"Aye, you!" repeated the king. "Take the queen to the palace, and let your companion Tagde take the princess!"

"How about you?" Barnevelt shouted back.

"I remain here. To me, all loyal Qüibuma! To me! Let's deracinate this ging of rogues!"

"I'm with you!" came Zakkomir's high voice, and the young man jumped down from the front of the box with a lady's sword in his hand. A few of the braver citizens joined them, and the remnant of the Amazon guard. With the king whirling the chopper at their head they bored into the scattered pirates. The clatter of weapons drowned speech.

Barnevelt, looking around, saw Tangaloa swarming up into the royal box, seizing Zei, and starting to hustle her off out through the private royal exit. Although Barnevelt would have preferred that job himself, he saw nothing to do but carry out the king's order. He climbed up after Tangaloa and caught the queen's arm.

"Come along, Your Altitude," he said. "But you—he…"

"Save the talk till later."

"I'll not come until…"

Barnevelt drew the queen's sword, a toylike little sticker, but at least it had a point. "You'll come or I'll spank you with this!"

They trotted down the tunnel through which the royal aunts and cousins had already fled. Outside, the seizure and search that the pirates had so carefully organized was fast breaking down with the extinction of the lights. People were running away in all directions, and here and there men fought with swords and pikes in the gloom. A Qiribo gentleman mistook Barnevelt for a pirate and came at him. Barnevelt parried the first lunge and a yell from the queen enlightened the man in the midst of a second.

Another character with a torch confronted them, saying: "Halt! Ah, 'tis he whom…"

It was the specialist, Gavao er-Gargan. Barnevelt's point got him through the belly.

He doubled over and fell, dropping the torch. Then Barnevelt was engaged with another. The pirate lunged. Barnevelt parried and felt his point go home on the riposte. But the pirate, instead of falling, came back for more. You could never be sure of hitting a vital organ on a Krishnan unless you knew their distinctive physiology.

"Heroun, you devil!" shrieked the queen, apparently at the pirate.

"We'll argue later, you mangy trull!" panted the pirate, coming at Dirk with a coupe.

They were still at it when another Qiribu got the pirate over the head from behind with a small statute. Splush!

Somewhere a trumpet blew a complicated pattern of notes. The crowd had now pretty well thinned out; and the Sun-qaruma, too, seemed to have gone elsewhere. Barnevelt saw a couple in the distance, running back down the colossal stairway that led from Ghulinde down to Damovang and the sea. He stepped over a body lying on the path, then over another that still moved. An occasional groan from the darkness around the shrubbery told of others left wounded.

At the front entrance to the palace, a cluster of Amazons formed a double semicircular rank around the portal, those in front kneeling and those behind standing, their spears jutting out like a porcupine's quills. At a word from the queen they opened to let her through.

"Saw you my daughter?" she asked the guard in charge.

"No, my lady."

Barnevelt said: "I'll go back and look for her, Queen."

"Go, and take a few of these with you. We need not all of them, now the rovers have withdrawn."

Barnevelt led a half-dozen of the girl soldiers back the way he had come. One of them carried a small lamp. He stumbled over a body or two and met only one person, who fled before he could be identified. The accoutrements of the girls clanked behind Barnevelt. He was sure he had gotten lost and was casting about for directions when a small twinkle, as of a fallen star, caught his eye.

He hurried over and found the bodies of the two pirates he had sworded. Beside them lay Gavao's torch, nearly out but putting forth one feeble tongue of flame.

The moonlight also showed Barnevelt a white square on the path. He picked up a piece of paper about a' span long and wide and turned it over. The other side was dark.

"Lend me that lamp, please," he said, and by the weak light of its flame examined the paper.

It was a print of the picture the old photographer had made of him and Tangaloa in Jazmurian.

He tucked the picture inside his jacket, thinking: A good thing the queen hadn't known the Morya Sunqaruma were after George and himself, or she'd have surely turned them over.

"George!" he called into the darkness. "Tagde of Vyutr! George Tangaloa!"

"Be that my lord Snyol?" called a voice, and footsteps and clankings approached. However, it was not George Tangaloa but Zakkomir bad-Gurshmani, limping, with a small party including a couple of Amazons.

"Where's the king?" asked Barnevelt.

"Slain in the garboil. Thus, whilst he evaded not the doom marked out for him in the stars, at least he came to a happier end than that which gallowed him. The queen'll be wroth, howsomever."

"Why?"

"Because, item: it spoils her ceremony. And, item: 'twill strengthen the sentiment of the vulgar for male equality. 'Twas another male, the palace janitor, whose quick wit led him to shut off the gas. Moreover Kaj knew what he was about. After he'd struck down twain of the robbers, he said to me: 'If we win here, we'll next deal with the old she-eshuna,' by which I think he meant the queen and Priestess Sehri. And then a pirate blade did jugulate him as he pivoted. But enough of that—where are your friend and the princess?"

"I'm wondering," said Barnevelt, and called again.

The party spread out to search. After much poking among the bushes an Amazon called: "Here lies one without hair upon his pate!"

Barnevelt hurried over and found that sure enough it was Tangaloa asprawl on his face, his shaven scalp puffed into a bloody lump over one ear. To his infinite relief Barnevelt found that George's pulse was still beating. When an Amazon dashed a helmetful of fountain water into Tangaloa's face, he opened his eyes and groaned. His right arm was also bloody; he had been run through the muscle.

"What happened?" asked Barnevelt. "Where's Zei?" Zakkomir echoed him.

"I don't know. I told you I was a dub at swordplay. I hit one bloke over the head, but the sheila's sword broke on his helmet and I don't remember any more."

"Serves you justly," muttered Zakkomir when this had been translated, "to use a light thrusting blade in such thwart fashion. But where's our princess?"

"Let me think," said Tangaloa, putting his left hand to his head. "Just before that happened, one of 'em grabbed her, and another shouted something about taking 'em both— everybody was yelling at once. That's all I know."

' 'Tis enough," said Zakkomir. "For from this can we infer they've seized her. Mushai, run to the top of the theater and see if all their ships have left their mooring. If not, there might be yet time…"

But Mushai called down in a couple of minutes that the fleet of the Morya Sunqaruma was now all well out to sea.