Flandry groped for the nozzle at his shoulder. His destination gave just enough light for him to see through the driven flakes. Another medusa crowded close, bearing a pressure tank of paint. Somehow, Flandry reached across the air between and made the hose fast.
Now, Arctic intelligence, do you understand what I want to do? Can you guide this horse of mine for me?
The wind yammered in his ears. He heard other noises like blasting, the powerful breaths by which his medusa moved itself. Almost, he was battered against the tablet wall. His carrier wobbled in midair, fighting to maintain position. An inlaid letter, big as a house, loomed before him, black against shining white. He aimed his hose and squirted.
Damn! The green jet was flung aside in a flaw of wind. He corrected his aim and saw the paint strike. It remained liquid even at this temperature… no matter, it was sticky enough… The first tank was quickly used up. Flandry coupled to another. Blue this time. All the Tebtengri had contributed all the squirtable paint they had, every hue in God’s rainbow. Flandry could but hope there would be enough.
There was, though he came near fainting from chill and exhaustion before the end of the job. He could not remember ever having so brutal a task. Even so, when the last huge stroke was done, he could not resist adding an exclamation point at the very bottom-three centimeters high.
“Let’s go,” he whispered. Somehow, the mute Dweller understood and pointed his staff. The medusa flock sprang through the clouds.
Flandry had a moment’s glimpse of a military airboat. It had detached itself from the flock hovering above the spaceport, perhaps going off duty. As the medusae broke from the storm into clear moonlight and ringlight, the craft veered. Flandry saw its guns stab energy bolts into the flock, and reached for his own futile blaster. His fingers were wooden, they didn’t close…
The medusae, all but his and the Dweller’s whipped about. They surrounded the patrol boat, laid tentacles fast and clung. It was nearly buried under them. Electric fires crawled, sparks dripped, these creatures could break hydrogen from water. Flandry recalled in a dull part of his mind that a metallic fuselage was a Faraday cage, immune to lightning. But when concentrated electric discharges burned holes, spotwelded control circuits-the boat staggered in midair. The medusae detached themselves. The boat plummeted.
Flandry relaxed and let his creature bear him northward.
XI
The town seethed. There had been rioting in the Street of Gunsmiths, and blood still dappled the new-fallen snow. Armed men tramped around palace and spaceport; mobs hooted beyond them. From the lake shore encampments came war music, pipes squealed, gongs crashed, the young men rode their varyaks in breakneck circles and cursed.
Oleg Khan looked out the palace window. “It shall be made good to you,” he muttered. “Oh, yes, my people, you shall have satisfaction.”
Turning to the Betelgeusean, who had just been fetched, he glared into the blue face. “You have seen?”
“Yes, your majesty.” Zalat’s Altaian, usually fluent and little accented, grew thick. He was a badly shaken being. Only the quick arrival of the royal guards had saved his ship from destruction by a thousand shrieking fanatics. “I swear, I, my crew, we had nothing to do with… we are innocent as—”
“Of course! Of course!” Oleg Yesukai brought one palm down in an angry slicing motion. “I am not one of those ignorant rodent herders. Every Betelgeusean has been under supervision, every moment since-” He checked himself.
“I have still not understood why,” faltered ] Zalat.
“Was my reason not made clear to you? You know the Terran visitor was killed by Tebtengri, operatives, the very day he arrived. It bears out what I have long suspected, those tribes have become religiously xenophobic. Since they doubtless have other agents in the city, who will try to murder your people in turn, it is best all of you be closely guarded, have contact only with men we know are loyal, until I have full control of the situation.”
His own words calmed Oleg somewhat. He sat down, stroked his beard and watched Zalat from narrowed eyes. “Your difficulties this morning are regrettable,” he continued smoothly. “Because you are outworlders, and the defiling symbols are not in the Altaian alphabet, many people leaped to the conclusion that it was some dirty word in your language. I, of course, know better. I also know from the exact manner in which a patrol craft was lost last night, how this outrage was done: unquestionably by Tebtengri, with the help of the Arctic devil-folk. Such a vile deed would not trouble them in the least; they are not followers of the Prophet. But what puzzles me-I admit this frankly, though confidentially-why? A daring, gruelling task… merely for a wanton insult?”
He glanced back toward the window. From this ” angle, the crimson Tower looked itself. You had to be on the north to see what had been done: the tablet wall disfigured by more than a kilometer of splashed paint. But from that side, the fantastic desecration was visible across entire horizons.
The Kha Khan doubled a fist. “It shall be repaid them,” he said. “This has rallied the orthodox tribes behind me as no other thing imaginable. When their children are boiled before their eyes, the Tebtengri will realize what they have done.”
Zalat hesitated. “Your majesty—”
“Yes?” Oleg snarled, as he must at something.
“Those symbols are letters of the Terran alphabet.”
“What?”
“I know the Anglic language somewhat,” said Zalat. “Many Betelgeuseans do. But how could those Tebtengri ever have learned—”
Oleg, who knew the answer to that, interrupted by seizing the captain’s tunic and shaking him. “What does it say?” he cried.
“That’s the strangest part, your majesty,” stammered Zalat. “It doesn’t mean anything. Not that makes sense.”
“Well, what sound does it spell, then? Speak before I have your teeth pulled!”
“Mayday,” choked Zalat. “Just Mayday, your majesty.”
Oleg let him go. For a while there was silence. At last the Khan said: “Is that a Terran word?”
“Well… it could be. I mean, well, May is the name of a month in the Terran calendar, and Day means ‘diurnal period.’ ” Zalat rubbed his yellow eyes, searching for logic. “I suppose Mayday could mean the first day of May.”
Oleg nodded slowly. “That sounds reasonable. The Altaian calendar, which is modified from the ancient Terran, has a similar name for a month of what is locally springtime. Mayday-spring festival day? Perhaps.”
He returned to the window and brooded across the city. “It’s long until May,” he said. “If that was an incitement to… anything… it’s foredoomed. We are going to break the Tebtengri this very winter. By next spring-” He cleared his throat and finished curtly: “Certain other projects will be well under way.”
“How could it be an incitement, anyhow, your majesty?” argued Zalat, emboldened. “Who in Ulan Baligh could read it?”
“True. I can only conjecture, some wild act of defiance-or superstition, magical ritual-” The Khan turned on his heel. “You are leaving shortly, are you not?”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“You shall convey a message. No other traders are to come here for a standard year. We will have troubles enough, suppressing the Tebtengri and their aboriginal allies.” Oleg shrugged. “In any event, it would be useless for merchants to visit us. War will disrupt the caravans. Afterward-perhaps.”