The Lantern of God Read online

  Brokols went on to knock at Dixen's door and tell him. Then, after pausing at his own cabin to get his telescope, he went back on deck, Dixen a moment behind with book in hand, a finger holding his place. Moments later, Kryger's aide, a quiet and efficient commoner named Argant, followed, no doubt to keep Kryger informed.

  There was nothing further yet to tell. Brokols considered climbing the rigging to see for himself, then thought better of it. He was only twenty-eight, active for his size, and as a youth had been considered remarkably strong. But it wouldn't do to seem impulsive. Or common. He'd learned both lessons long ago, more than once, and this was no place to forget them. Lord Kryger was not a tolerant man.

  Captain Stedmer ordered the boiler fired; among much else, mission orders said they would approach the coast under steam to impress the droids. The mate who doubled as engineer, and one of the seamen who'd been trained to assist him, went aft to kindle fires in the fireboxes. The Dard had large bunkers in both sides, filled with charcoal, expensive but much more efficient of storage space than wood.

  The headland grew till they could see it from the foredeck—a promontory, the culmination of a ridge. Brokols' telescope clearly showed a tower on the headland's highest point, which surely meant a town nearby. Probably the Dard had been sighted well before now. Across from that was another headland, lower, and between the two no doubt a harbor. By that time, a long thin train of black smoke trailed from the slender stack aft; in the boiler, the water would be hot, perhaps boiling by now. Argant went below to update Kryger, then came back on deck again.

  Far to the south, white clouds were building vertically as if to rain. Soon they saw a sail, then a second and a third, fishing smacks perhaps, or small coastal haulers. According to the first expedition, the people on this continent had no large ships. A fifty-footer with a single thirty-foot mast was regarded here as large. The Dard, by contrast, measured 150 feet, bark-rigged with three tall masts.

  Kryger came on deck, weak and pale, shrunken from his long near-fast, but no one to sneer at even covertly. Try as he had, Brokols could not like the chief of mission. Kryger was invariably cold and unpleasant toward him. The man's eyes had spoken disapproval at their first meeting, just after they'd been selected for this mission.

  Brokols had wondered if perhaps Kryger's dislike was jealousy, a matter of family. The Brokols family was prominent, Kryger's of the lesser nobility. But then, Kryger didn't like Dixen either, and Dixen's family was no higher than Kryger's. Perhaps relative height accounted for some of it; Kryger didn't stand as high as Brokols' chin. Brokols and Dixen both were exceptionally tall, although Dixen's height was gangly. The first expedition had found that droids were considerably larger than humans, thus height had been a factor in appointing ambassadors.

  But clearly not the principal factor. The chief of mission was undoubtedly qualified. He'd been on the army general staff for several years, and his dominating presence more than made up for less than normal height.

  And Kryger's unadapting, unforgiving stomach had actually strengthened his image of indomitability. Brokols remembered how he'd felt himself, those first few hours at sea; Kryger had felt that way and worse for fifty-five days. Worse, because while Brokols had never been quite sick enough to vomit, Kryger could be heard puking and retching whenever the ship's motion worsened even a little. But whenever the chief of mission had appeared briefly, his flinty eyes, his clamped and lipless mouth, his gray, ever-bonier face had been hard and unrelenting. As it was now.

  The three ambassadors—Kryger, Dixen, and Brokols—their aides in tow, gathered with Captain Stedmer. The captain knew the old expedition report as well as they, including the lengthy interviews with the learned slaves the King of Djez Gorrbul had given the first expedition as gifts, fifty-two years earlier.

  Costly gifts it turned out, because of the plague they'd carried. In the three droids it had seemed a light cold, too mild to be the same illness that struck and decimated the crew a few days out. It would reap a terrible harvest across all the islands of Almeon. But the slaves had provided much information about the lands of the new continent, information far beyond what the expedition could ever have gained directly. And of course, the slaves had taught them the droid language, so different from Almaeic.

  Now there was a vaccine. The ambassador's chests, like everyone's in Almeon, bore the scars of it, and of vaccines for older plagues.

  There might, of course, be other droid plagues. The possibility had influenced the emperor's plan. This small mission would spend half a year in the droid lands, likelier a full year, before the army landed. If, during that time, any was infected by some serious disease, word would be wirelessed home, and the invasion postponed. But it seemed to Brokols that the history of his own land included almost every plague imaginable.

  The headland grew bolder. Kryger agreed with the captain that this must be the coast of Hrumma, because of the tall hills. The Djezian coast, where the previous expedition had visited, was low and flat. Which meant that Brokols would be the first ashore, for he was to be the ambassador to Hrumma.

  The captain ordered the electric generator activated, a small hydraulic turbine built against the hull, then ordered the sails furled; steam pressure was fast approaching the requisite 140 pounds per square inch. As seamen scrambled aloft, Kryger went forward to wireless the emperor's office and let him know they'd sighted the continent at last.

  Brokols went to his cabin to secure his gear. It wouldn't take long; much of it had never been unpacked since they'd left Almeon.

  Two

  From The Captain's Book

  You need to remember that droids are not human beings. Not that any of us were experts, but we'd all seen droids, and I'd read articles and watched study cubes on them in Genetic Engineering 415. Droids are close to human. They look human. But if you'd ever been around droids, you'd know the difference.

  Droids have no parents. They don't grow from the fertilization of an ovum by a sperm. They are, or were, manufactured under imperial license, and develop in vats from raw, synthesized genetic material engineered to the legal specifications of the purchaser.

  And a droid learns differently. It doesn't grow up over a period of years, learning in life and in child academies. Like a real person, the droid starts out with basic biological parameters programmed into their DNA. But that's just a small start. Then, in little more than two years, with exact electro-chemical stimulation, it develops to adult size still unconscious in the vats, and gets "primary nurture programming" imprinted into its unconscious mind during the last days before its removal. This imprinting includes basic Interspeak. So when it's taken from the vat, it is physically mature, but mentally it's more like a small child.

  With one big difference. Unlike little children, droids have no personality; they are not persons. And under usual procedures they are still unconscious at that stage. Normally they get shipped to the purchaser in stasis. The purchaser gives them their function programming after delivery and immediately before removal from their stasis cocoons. Then, when wakened from their cocoons, they're already trained adults. Ordinarily.

  Aboard the Larvest we had 600 of them in stasis, pleasure droids engineered to amuse: 500 females and 100 males designed and built to order for Hedone, a resort world. They looked very much like beautiful human beings, very aesthetic and guaranteed very healthy. But the ones we had only had primary nurture programming; in most respects they were mentally like sleeping three-year-olds who could understand basic speech. And we didn't have the equipment to give them function programming. If we had, it would have been an entirely different situation. But as it was, fifteen crew members would have had to bring up and educate what would amount to 600 less-than-human three-year-olds with fully-grown adult bodies and little social sense.

  It would have been impossible. And it would have left us no time or energy to produce a livable environment on a raw new world. There wasn't even any way we could feed them for longer than a day or so.


  So we offloaded them on the lesser continent. We wanted them to survive if they could, though that wasn't a high-priority consideration. The climate there was livable, and there seemed to be no life forms at all comparable in danger to the savage packs of predatory sauroids on the major continent. The AG dollies still worked then, the antigravity cargo handlers, and with them we unloaded the droids onto a large grassy meadow. Then we set the cocoon controls on wake.

  One of the crew, a biotech named Lori Maloi, had asked to stay with them awhile and try to teach them enough to survive. Sweet, impractical Lori. And Captain Terlenter let her; I suppose he felt uncomfortable about dumping them. I helped her put together a survival chest, with a side arm for protection, and the captain said he'd send someone in a week to see how things were, and to pick her up if she wanted. He couldn't know that, within three hours, we'd lose our flight capacity, including the ability to launch small craft.

  None of us, perhaps not even Lori, expected her to accomplish much with the droids. What we did expect was that they'd gobble up their emergency wafers the first day and then sit around, or maybe have an orgy, until they got hungry. After that they'd probably wander off and starve, Or get killed by predators. And that's almost certainly what did happen. After all, they were pleasure droids, pleasure droids with the minds of little children.

  And if some of them did survive for long, which is conceivable, the chances are they had no viable offspring. They were designed to perform sex, but engineering fertility into droids is somewhat tricky and very expensive; otherwise lethal flaws during the embryogenesis of prospective offspring are usual. And assuming these droids didn't come from a bootleg plant, or maybe even if they did, they were probably engineered to be sterile, to avoid the mental trauma of miscarriages, still-births, and defective infants. Most design approvals require it. After all, droids may not be human, but they are living, feeling creatures.

  * * *

  It was Festival in Hrumma, the Festival of the Serpents Returning, and the weather was beautiful, as always in that season. The city of Theedalit was ready, and lovely in the sun. The white walls of its buildings had been scrubbed, many whitewashed anew, their trim fresh-painted in gold or orange-red, blue or green or scarlet. The red and maroon tiles of cisterns, roof skirts and parapets gleamed in the sun. Fruit trees on roof tops glinted glossy green. Above windows and balconies, the colorful awnings had been scrubbed and often re-dyed, while below them, bunting draped white and red and blue. Above it all, vivid banners and pennants waved and fluttered proudly in the usual onshore wind of day, while around the perimeters, tall windmills, pride of the city, whirled long and colorful vanes in the same brisk breeze that made the pennants snap.

  Country people, flocking to Theedalit afoot and on saddle kaabors, in shays and carriages, stopped where the road overlooked the city, to absorb the vista, eyes watering at the glare from distant walls and windows.

  The sidewalks too had been scrubbed, like most of the townspeople who walked them that day. Those who could afford it wore new clothes; most of the rest wore clean. Even the kaabors drawing ordinary carts wore collars of flowers, while those that drew the hansoms, carriages, and shays of the well-to-do most often wore embroidered caparisons, and feathers on their short-cropped horns. The rikksha men, glistening with sweat, wore their most vivid loincloths, and long plumes of the riiki thrust into bright, knitted bands that kept the sweat from their eyes. At stands and racks in every alcove and on the very streets and sidewalks, artisans hawked jewelry, sometimes of silver, now and then of gold, though more often of simple copper or bronze, hammered, twisted, etched and polished, inset with semi-precious stones. People, mostly young to elderly couples, strolled and looked, dickered in good humor, and occasionally bought.

  And there was much laughter, for though it was too early for the sale of wine and spirits, there was a sense of relaxed anticipation. On the opening evening of Festival, the amirr and the House of Nobles would stage a feast; the fire pits had been burning for a day already, while barrels waited in the deepest, coolest cellars of the Fortress to be brought up when the heat of day was past. And after the feast, there would be parties in gardens and courtyards, on terraces and rooftops. Few would sleep alone except by preference or incapacity.

  * * *

  The crowds could be heard from the balcony where the naamir sat with her son and youngest daughter. The youth, eighteen, lolled against cushions on a shaded couch. He was tall like his father, the amirr, and had his father's curly auburn hair. But he was still slender, and there was a catlike languor about him.

  The girl, on the other hand, was somewhat small for a Hrummean, newly-turned sixteen and only now maturing physically. Standing by an easel, brush in hand, she frowned at an effect. Her subject was the lower reach of town, and the harbor; her treatment was impressionistic, a style she was just learning.

  Her brother eyed it from where he reclined. "Don't ask me what I think of it," he drawled.

  "I won't," she snapped.

  He felt his mother's disapproving glance, and sniggered just short of audibility. Harassing his sister was a sport he'd enjoyed most of his life, not because he particularly disliked her but because she was available and usually reacted. He could no longer reduce her to tears, nor tried. His father's heavy hand had ended that years earlier. But he'd sensitized her enough that he could often anger or introvert her with little more than a word, occasionally a look.

  The naamir laid down her embroidery and went over to examine the painting. "It seems to me you're making progress," she said.

  The girl shook her head. "I can't get the effect I want—the sun sparkling on the water. And Allfon won't be back till after Festival."

  Her brother brayed derisively. "Allfon! At least we don't need to worry that his hands will stray when he's working with you. He's likelier to make a try at me."

  His mother's lips thinned. "Tirros Hanorissio," she said, "one more snide remark and your father will hear of it."

  He lowered his eyes, neither sniggering nor smirking now. He knew his mother well: Normally her tolerance was greater than this, but she left little margin between threat and act. He remembered the last time she'd complained to his father, a year earlier. In angry exasperation, the amirr had grasped Tirros's narrow nose between strong thumb and forefinger and forced him to his knees. The next day, at weapons drill, Master Gorrik's wooden training sword had left the young mirj welted and discolored, and later in his suite, examining the bruises and abrasions in his dressing mirror, Tirros had wept with frustrated anger.

  Remembering it, he lay imagining what he would do, someday, to Gorrik, avoiding for now thoughts of what he'd enjoy doing to his sister. Then faintly he heard a trumpet call from the main tower at the Fortress, seat of government in Hrumma. His immediate thought was that the first serpents had been seen entering the harbor, for this was the date it would happen, invariably did happen. But the Fortress bells did not begin the festive clamor that would proclaim their entry. Nor the measured resonant tolling of impending attack, a sound he'd heard at the biannual drills. This was a signal to alert the harbor defense flotilla, and the battalion of troops domiciled near the Fortress.

  But an alert to what? Tirros got smoothly to his feet and went to the balustrade, his sharp eyes finding the watchtower on the hill above the harbor entrance. Three of its flagstaffs flew large flags, and even at this distance his sharp young eyes made out their colors. The first told him a foreign ship was coming, the second that it was a warship, and the third that only one had been seen. Without excusing himself, he turned and left the balcony. He'd stop for his sword, have a groom saddle his kaabor, then ride to the Fortress. Even now, someone at the watchtower would be fastening a message to the leg of a kiruu, to send it winging. More than one, in case a hawk should spy and catch the first enroute.

  Something exciting, interesting at least, might finally be about to happen here. One could hope. At least it was more promising than the arrival of the
sea serpents. That happened every year.

  * * *

  The great bells exulted in the Fortress's clock tower, bonging and clanging in an orgy of bronze sonority. The serpents had entered the harbor! Now the rains would begin, and the weather turn truly warm; the crops would grow, the orchards flower, and the nation continue to prosper.

  In the great gate house, the Chamber of Ministers had wide, strong doors, hinged to move at a touch, giving onto the broad top of the Fortress wall. The amirr's personal secretary went over and pushed them to, then closed window shutters and drew their weather curtains, somewhat dulling the din. In the resulting semi-dark, conversation became practical again, but no one spoke.

  His expression patient, the amirr waited for the clangor to still. At his back, a bit removed, stood guards, their presence a matter of protocol more than protection. Around the oval table sat the amirr's chief ministers and a few others. Most were dressed in ceremonial togas—all but the guards and the young Tirros—togas for official celebration. They'd gathered unexpectedly because of the strange ship approaching their shore.