Part 3 (1/2)
Governor-General Sidney Harrington, on the comfortably-upholstered bench on the dais of the Audience Hall, didn't look particularly regal. But then, to a Terran, any of the kings of Ullr would have looked like a freak birth in a lizard-house at a zoo; it was hard to guess what impression Harrington would make on the Ullran psychology.
He took the false palate and tongue-clicker, officially designated as an ”enunciator, Ullran” and, colloquially, as a geek-speaker, out of his coat pocket and shoved it into his mouth. Von Schlichten and Blount put in theirs, and Harrington pressed the floor-b.u.t.ton with his toe. After a brief interval, the wide doors at the other end of the hall slid open, and the Konkrookan notables, attended by a dozen Company native-officers and a guard of Kragan Rifles, entered. The honor-guard advanced in two columns; between them marched an unclad and heavily armed native carrying an ornate spear with a three-foot blade upright in front of him with all four hands. It was the Konkrookan Spear of State; it represented the proxy-presence of King Jaikark. Behind it stalked Gurgurk, the Konkrookan equivalent of Prime Minister or Grand Vizier; he wore a gold helmet and a thing like a string-vest made of gold wire, and carried a long sword with a two-hand grip, a pair of Terran automatics built for a hand with six-four-knuckled fingers, and a pair of matched daggers. He was considerably past the Ullran prime of life--seventy or eighty, to judge from the worn appearance of his opal teeth, the color of his skin, and the predominantly reddish tint of his quartz-speckles. The retinue of n.o.bles behind Gurgurk ran through the whole spectrum, from a princeling who was almost oyster-gray to the Keegarkan Amba.s.sador, who was even blacker and more red-speckled than Gurgurk.
Four slaves brought up in the rear, carrying an ornately inlaid box on poles. When the spear-bearer reached the exact middle of the hall, he halted and grounded his regalia-weapon with a thump. Gurgurk came up and halted a couple of paces behind and to the left of the spear, and most of the other n.o.bles drew up in two curved lines some ten paces to the rear; the amba.s.sador and another n.o.ble came up and planted themselves beside Gurgurk.
The Governor-General rose slowly and descended from the dais, advancing to within ten paces of the Spear, von Schlichten and Blount accompanying him.
”Welcome, Gurgurk,” Harrington gibbered through his false palate. ”The Company is honored by this visit.”
”I come in the name of my royal master, His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty, Jaikark the Seventeenth, King of Konkrook and of all the lands of the Konk Isthmus,” Gurgurk squeaked and clicked. ”I have the honor to bring with me the Lord Amba.s.sador of King Orgzild of Keegark to the court of my royal master.”
”And I,” the amba.s.sador said, after being suitably welcomed, ”am honored to be accompanied by Prince Gorkrink, special envoy from my master, His Royal and Imperial Majesty King Orgzild, who is in your city to receive the s.h.i.+pment of power-metal my royal master has been honored to be permitted to purchase from the Company.”
More protocol about welcoming Gorkrink. Then Gurgurk cleared his throat with a series of barking sounds.
”My royal master, His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty, is prostrated with grief,” he stated solemnly. ”Were his sorrow not so overwhelming, he would have come in His Own Sacred Person to express the pain and shame which he feels that people of the Company should be set upon and endangered in the streets of the royal city.”
”The soldiers of His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty came most promptly to the aid of the troops of the Company, did they not, General von Schlichten?” Harrington asked, solemn-faced.
”Within minutes, Your Excellency,” von Schlichten replied gravely.
”Their promptness, valor and efficiency were most exemplary.”
Gurgurk spoke at length, expressing himself as delighted, on behalf of his royal master, at hearing such high praise from so distinguished a soldier. Eric Blount contributed a short speech, beseeching the G.o.ds that the deep and beautiful friends.h.i.+p existing between the Chartered Ullr Company and His Sublime etcetera would continue unimpaired. The Keegarkan Amba.s.sador spoke his piece, expressing on behalf of King Orgzild the deepest regret that the people of the Company should be so molested, and managing to hint that things like that simply didn't happen at Keegark.
The Prince Gorkrink then spoke briefly, in sympathy. Von Schlichten noticed that a few of his more recent quartz-specks were slightly greenish in tinge, a sure sign that he had, not long ago, been exposed to the fluorine-tainted air which men and geeks alike breathed on Niflheim. When a geek prince hired out as a laborer for a year on Niflheim, he did so for only one purpose--to learn Terran technologies.
Gurgurk then announced that so enormous a crime against the friends of His Sublime etcetera had not been allowed to go unpunished, signalling behind him with one of his lower hands for the box to be brought forward. The slaves carried it to the front, set it down, and opened it, taking from it a rug which they spread on the floor. On this, from the box, they placed twenty-four newly severed opal-grinning heads, in four neat rows. They had all been freshly scrubbed and polished, but they still smelled like crushed c.o.c.kroaches.
The three Terrans looked at them gravely. A double-dozen heads was standard payment for an attack in which no Terran had been killed.
Ostensibly, they were the heads of the ringleaders; in practice, they were usually lopped from the first two-dozen prisoners or overage slaves at hand, without regard for whether the victims had ever heard of the crime they were expiating.
There was another long speech from Gurgurk, with the n.o.bles behind him murmuring antiphonal agreement--standard procedure, for which there was a standard pun, geek chorus--and a speech of response from Sid Harrington. Standing stiffly through the whole rigamarole, von Schlichten waited for it to end, as, finally, it did.
They walked back from the door, whence they had escorted the delegation, and stood looking down at the saurian heads on the rug.
Harrington raised his voice and called to a Kragan sergeant whose chevrons were painted on all four arms.
”Take this carrion out and stuff it in the incinerator,” he ordered.
”Wait a minute,” von Schlichten told the sergeant. Then he disgorged and pouched his geek-speaker. ”See that head, there?” he asked, rolling it over with his toe. ”I killed that geek, myself, with my pistol. And Hid O'Leary stuck a knife in that one.” He walked around the rug, turning heads over with his foot. ”This was a cut-rate head-payment; they just slashed off two-dozen heads at the scene of the riot. Six months ago, Gurgurk wouldn't have tried to pull anything like this. Now he's laughing up his non-existent sleeve at us.”
”That's what I've been preaching, all along,” Eric Blount took up after him. ”These geeks need having the fear of Terra thrown into them.”
”Oh, nonsense, Eric; you're just as bad as Carlos, here!” Harrington tut-tuted. ”Next, you'll be saying that we ought to depose Jaikark and take control ourselves.”