The Undesired Princess (9 page)

10

Khurav’s widows served Hobart breakfast when he awoke. They waited on him assiduously, but with reproachful looks that said as plainly as words: “In what way have we displeased you, lord?” Well, they would have to bear their disappointment as best they could. Even if the spirit had been willing . . .

The breakfast comprised a mess of assorted organs and glands from one of the tribal sheep. Probably, thought Hobart, the one whose meat he had eaten the night before. It was no doubt economical, and necessary to keep the barbarians supplied with vitamins. But he’d be damned if anyone would make him like it.

The trouble with him was that he was too easy-going; too readily persuaded into accepting responsibilities, each of which merely led in this crazy world to more responsibilities, so that his goal of return to his own earth and work receded farther the more he pursued it. Well, what else could he have done? Every time he tried to take a firm stand, Theiax came along with his mouthful of teeth, or the barbarians with their swords, and bullied him into further commitments. Perhaps if he began by bumping off Theiax—but no, he couldn’t do that. Treachery was not one of his faults, and besides the social lion was an amusing and likeable companion.

He’d have to go through with or evade his present commitments as best he could. The official positions that had been forced upon him should not be entirely disadvantageous; he might be able to use his prerogatives to locate Hoimon the ascetic . . .

He shooed his “wives” out before dressing, a procedure that utterly mystified them, and went in search of Theiax. The lion was duly found and unchained, but, understandably, chose to be one-hundred-percent sulky. Even when Hobart had explained everything there was to explain, Theiax averted his eyes to the ground, grumbling: “I am treated badly. I am humiliated. I think you are my friend, but you let these ignorant ones tie me up like pig. I lose my dignity!”

“Aw, come on, Theiax,” urged Hobart. “I was practically dead when they finished with me last night. And everything will be okay from now on. Look, would it make you happy if I did a trick for you? Stood on my head, for instance?”

Theiax’s mouth twitched, and he burst out into one of the high-low roars that served him as laughter. “You are funny, Prince! All right, I be good.” And the lion frisked down the path between the tents ahead of Hobart like a puppy.

Shortly after Hobart had returned to the sham’s tent, one of the widows announced:
“Zhizda Sanyesh Veg,”
and sure enough it was the old chief of a hundred families.

Hobart set about, first, methodically questioning Sanyesh about the rights and duties of a sham. He was slightly shocked at the extent to which the former outweighed the latter. Perhaps if he stayed with the Parathai long enough he could teach them something about constitutional government—no, no, no, Rollin! Keep your eye on the ball! It probably wouldn’t work with these illiterates anyway . . .

It transpired that one of his first jobs would be to select a bodyguard of retainers from among the stalwarts of the nation who would accompany him wherever he went. Why must they? Oh, explained Sanyesh haltingly, a sham was always accompanied by retainers; that was one of the ways you knew he was a sham. But Hobart’s counsellor agreed that there was no immediate rush about selecting the guard.

“Well,” said Hobart, “what would you say to an invasion of the country of the Marathai?” Not that he approved of invasions generally or soldiering by Rollin Hobart in particular, but it seemed the only course open to him.

Sanyesh raised his white eyebrows. “Guns?”

Hm, that was a poser. The Marathai had practically all of Logaia’s firearms, and because of distances and poor communications it would take all eternity to collect an equal armament from the other civilized states such as Psythoris. The Parathai had only hand weapons; their prospective foes had these
and
guns
and
probably Laus’ magic. Formidable as the Parathai looked, Hobart had heard them and the other barbarians spoken of in Oroloia as “fickle.” Assuming that the description applied with the usual literalness, that probably meant that the barbarian warriors could be counted upon to make one reckless attack with fearsome whoops, and then to run away at the first check. Unless, of course, their leader were a second Ghenghiz Khan, which Rollin Hobart emphatically was not. But if superiority in firepower were unobtainable, what about superiority in magic? He asked Sanyesh: “Are there any wizards or sorcerers in the tribe?”

“Was,” shrugged the old man.

“What do you mean, ‘was’?”

“Was shaman and two assistant shamans.”

“Where are they now?”

“Dead. They say Khurav should fight Marathai hard, with guns and everything, or make peace. He think they insult him.”

“Are there
any
good magicians in or near Parathaia?”

Sanyesh pondered. “Ikthepeli have medicine-man. Not much good. Ikthepeli just dirty savages, not know anything.”

The Ikthepeli lived quite a distance off, so Hobart decided it was too late in the day to set out. He spent the rest of the day trying to learn from Sanyesh the rudiments of the Parathaian language. Here he encountered a practical example of the fact that a good engineer is seldom a good linguist and vice versa. By the end of the day he had memorized perhaps a score of words, but had not gotten to first base on the formidable Parathai grammar, in which there seemed to be almost as many declensions as there were nouns and almost as many conjugations as there were verbs.

The widows, in an effort to propitiate their new lord and master, had prepared him an extra-special dinner: lamb, barbecued. Hobart hurried through the meal; afterwards he gave Sanyesh, who would have liked to sit and drink and talk all night, a polite bum’s rush. Then he hastened to the sleeping compartment of the tent, wanting to begin his slumber early enough not to mind getting up before dawn—only to find the widows planted before it, wreathed in anticipatory smiles that chilled his blood.

He jerked his thumb. “On your way, girls!”

The widows looked blank. The taller one, Khvarizud, said plaintively:
“Bish er unzen math shaliv gvirsha?”

“I don’t understand you, so no use talking. I’m going to sleep, without benefit of quotes. One side, please.”

“A, buzd unzen Sham Shamzi yala?”

Hobart got enough of this sentence to infer that they were asking whether there was anything wrong with him. He reddened and shouted rudely: “Get out!” They understood the tone, and, scared and perplexed, got.

###

Sanyesh squinted at the bright sun that had just popped over the horizon, and remarked to Hobart: “Zhav sends hot day.”

The news did not cheer the engineer, for he reasoned that the day would be a hundred-percent hot—practically incandescent. Fortunately he had left his coat and vest behind. His lips tightened into an even thinner line. Damn this world—or was there something wrong with him, a lack of adaptability that prevented his enjoying even five minutes of the time he had spent here, despite the fantastic honors that the natives insisted on heaping on him? Nonsense! He just knew what he wanted, that was all!

“Who,” he asked casually, “is Zhav?” Conversing with Sanyesh was a strain because of the elder’s dialect, but the other two Parathaians, Yezdeg and Fruz, who rode with them as a tentative bodyguard, did not speak any Logaian at all. Sanyesh had recommended them, and, after Hobart had agreed to take them, had casually added that they had been cronies of the late Khurav. Though they had so far shown no inclination to avenge the former sham, their presence made Hobart uneasy, and he kept his musket ready in the crook of his arm.

Sanyesh replied: “Lord of everything.”

“A real person, or does he just live in the sky or something?”

“He real. Not live in sky. But lord of all: you, me, lion, weather, everythings.”

“Sounds like that Nois the Logaians tell about.”

“Same person, different name. Logaians ignorant; not use right name.”

Theiax growled: “It is barbarians who are ig—” Hobart turned quickly in the saddle and frowned the social lion to silence. He asked some more about Nois-Zhav, who appeared to hold a position in this world somewhere between the Japanese Emperor and the primitive Jewish Jehovah. Yes, he lived in a real place, in a wild country fifty-four miles beyond the boundaries of Marathaia. Yes, anybody could see him personally about such matters as drouth and pestilence, though not many people did. When asked why more subjects did not take advantage of the accessibility of their god-emperor, Sanyesh shrugged vaguely and said he supposed that Zhav demanded a price for his favors.

They left the sandy mesa county and crossed a savannah like the one Hobart had hunted the behemoth in, except that this was as flat as a tabletop. Later the party stopped and rested for an hour while the horses cropped and Theiax, wrapping his tail around his nose, snored.

When the scorching sun had started down, they crossed another sharp boundary, whereat the savannah changed into a kind of desert. The footing was red sand, with great numbers of spherical black stones lying upon or embedded in it. This desert had some vegetation, in the form of cylindrical cactuslike plants at fifty-foot intervals in neat rows.

They had to walk the horses to minimize the risk of a stumble on the treacherous round stones. Hobart’s heart leaped when Sanyesh pointed out to him the shimmer of water ahead. He was sure he had been about to expire of thirst—their water supply was low—and boredom.

“Sure it isn’t a mirage?” he asked.

“What is mirage?”

“You know; you see water but it really isn’t there.”

Sanyesh raised his thin shoulders till they almost touched his ears in a mighty shrug. “No such thing in Parathaia,” he said.

He was probably right at that, reflected Hobart. In this world things were always just what they seemed. Sanyesh told him that the body of water ahead was Lake Nithrid. It was a big lake; the far shore was out of sight, or so Hobart thought.

“Can see,” said Sanyesh, when Hobart mentioned this. Naturally a barbarian would have keen eyesight. The elder added: “If not, would be sea, not lake.”

The cavalcade came to the top of a moderate slope leading down to the lake shore. All at once Hobart saw a lot of little yellow figures moving casually about by the marge. The vision must have been mutual, for as the horses started to pick their skidding way down the slope, the small figures suddenly speeded up their movements like a nest of disturbed ants. Tinny little cries came to Hobart’s ears.

The barbarian named Fruz pointed and bellowed something. “He says,” translated Sanyesh, “must hurry; Ikthepeli run away.”

The horses were encouraged as much as was safe considering the incline. But long before the party reached the bottom, the yellow savages had launched a lot of dugout canoes and were paddling swiftly out over the smiling surface of Lake Nithrid. Fruz and Yezdeg shouted epithets after them as they disappeared into the golden river of reflection painted on the lake by the setting sun.

“Don’t seem to trust us, do they?” commented Hobart.

Sanyesh spat his contempt. “Useless ones; no good except to hunt for sport.”

If the barbarians were in the habit of killing Ikthepeli for the fun of it, Hobart could see why their reception was not so cordial as it might have been. Holding fast to his determination not to let himself be sidetracked by considerations of moral reform, he asked wearily: “What’ll we do now?”

“Find place to sleep,” said the hawk-nosed elder. “Sun out soon. Fish-eaters come back.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow maybe, maybe not. Nobody know.” A shrug implied the unimportance of time.

At the base of the slope were a number of gaping holes; entrances to the caves in which the savages evidently dwelt. The unenthusiastic sham investigated a couple. They smelled strongly of their recent tenants, and contained a scattering of crude weapons and implements: wooden spears, fish-bone combs, and the like. The afternoon sun had heated them to ovens.

“Look, Sham,” said Sanyesh. He indicated another cave across whose entrance a leather curtain was hung. When this was pushed aside, the party gave a simultaneous gasp of delight at the cool air that flowed gently out. At right angles to the curtain, a small groove or trench ran from the floor of the cave and out to lose itself in the sands. A small trickle of water flowed out through this ditch.

“Good for sleep, Sham,” said Sanyesh. As he spoke the light dimmed and expired almost as though it had been turned off. The sun had set, and as it was immediately too dark for more exploration, the elder’s suggestion seemed the only practical one.

When Theiax volunteered to stand watch, Fruz and Yezdeg looked at the lion for the first time in truly friendly fashion. The human wing of the party made themselves as comfortable as they could in the cool cave and dropped off to sleep as though stunned.