“But where will I go? What shall I do?” “I advise you,” he said blandly, “to throw yourself upon the mercy of the Prince of Roum.”
3
Outside, I told that to Gormon, and he doubled with laughter, guffawing so furiously that the striations on his lean cheeks blazed like bloody stripes. “The mercy of the Prince of Roum!” he repeated. “The mercy—of the Prince of Roum—”
“It is customary for the unfortunate to seek the aid of the local ruler,” I said coldly.
“The Prince of Roum knows no mercy,” Gormon told me. “The Prince of Roum will feed you your own limbs to ease your hunger!”
“Perhaps,” Avluela put in, “we should try to find the Fliers’ Lodge. They’ll feed us there.”
“Not Gormon,” I observed. “We have obligations to one another.”
“We could bring food out to him,” she said.
“I prefer to visit the court first,” I insisted. “Let us make sure of our status. Afterward we can improvise living arrangements, if we must.”
She yielded, and we made our way to the palace of the Prince of Roum, a massive building fronted by a colossal column-ringed plaza, on the far side of the river that splits the city. In the plaza we were accosted by mendicants of many sorts, some not even Earthborn; something with ropy tendrils and a corrugated, noseless face thrust itself at me and jabbered for alms until Gormon pushed it away, and moments later a second creature, equally strange, its skin pocked with luminescent craters and its limbs studded with eyes, embraced my knees and pleaded in the name of the Will for my mercy. “I am only a poor Watcher,” I said, indicating my cart, “and am here to gain mercy myself.” But the being persisted, sobbing out its misfortunes in a blurred, feathery voice, and in the end, to Gormon’s immense disgust, I dropped a few food tablets into the shelf-like pouch on its chest. Then we muscled on toward the doors of the palace. At the portico a more horrid sight presented itself: a maimed Flier, fragile limbs bent and twisted, one wing half-unfolded and severely cropped, the other missing altogether. The Flier rushed upon Avluela, called her by a name not hers, moistened her leggings with tears so copious that the fur of them matted and stained. “Sponsor me to the lodge,” he appealed. “They have turned me away because I am crippled, but if you sponsor me—” Avluela explained that she could do nothing, that she was a stranger to this lodge. The broken Flier would not release her, and Gormon with great delicacy lifted him like the bundle of dry bones that he was and set him aside. We stepped up onto the portico and at once were confronted by a trio of soft-faced neuters, who asked our business and admitted us quickly to the next line of barrier, which was manned by a pair of wizened Indexers. Speaking in unison, they queried us.
“We seek audience,” I said. “A matter of mercy.”
“The day of audience is four days hence,” said the Indexer on the right. “We will enter your request on the rolls.”
“We have no place to sleep!” Avluela burst out. “We are hungry! We—”
I hushed her. Gormon, meanwhile, was groping in the mouth of his overpocket. Bright things glimmered in his hand: pieces of gold, the eternal metal, stamped with hawk-nosed, bearded faces. He had found them grubbing in the ruins. He tossed one coin to the Indexer who had refused us. The man snapped it from the air, rubbed his thumb roughly across its shining obverse, and dropped it instantly into a fold of his garment. The second Indexer waited expectantly. Smiling, Gormon gave him his coin.
“Perhaps,” I said, “we can arrange for a special audience within.”
“Perhaps you can,” said one of the Indexers. “Go through.”
And so we passed into the nave of the palace itself and stood in the great, echoing space, looking down the central aisle toward the shielded throne-chamber at the apse. There were more beggars in here—licensed ones holding hereditary concessions—and also throngs of Pilgrims, Communicants, Rememberers, Musicians, Scribes, and Indexers. I heard muttered prayers; I smelled the scent of spicy incense; I felt the vibration of subterranean gongs. In cycles past, this building had been a shrine of one of the old religions—the Christers, Gormon told me, making me suspect once more that he was a Rememberer masquerading as a Changeling—and it still maintained something of its holy character even though it served as Roum’s seat of secular government. But how were we to get to see the Prince? To my left I saw a small ornate chapel which a line of prosperous-looking Merchants and Landholders was slowly entering. Peering past them, I noted three skulls mounted on an interrogation fixture—a memory-tank input—and beside them, a burly Scribe. Telling Gormon and Avluela to wait for me in the aisle, I joined the line.
It moved infrequently, and nearly an hour passed before I reached the interrogation fixture. The skulls glared sightlessly at me; within their sealed crania, nutrient fluids bubbled and gurgled, caring for the dead, yet still functional, brains whose billion billion synaptic units now served as incomparable mnemonic devices. The Scribe seemed aghast to find a Watcher in this line, but before he could challenge me I blurted, “I come as a stranger to claim the Prince’s mercy. I and my companions are without lodging. My own guild has turned me away. What shall I do? How may I gain an audience?”
“Come back in four days.”
“I’ve slept on the road for more days than that. Now I must rest more easily.”
“A public inn—”
“But I am guilded!” I protested. “The public inns would not admit me while my guild maintains an inn here, and my guild refuses me because of some new regulation, and—you see my predicament?”
In a wearied voice the Scribe said, “You may have application for a special audience. It will be denied, but you may apply.”
“Where?”
“Here. State your purpose.”
I identified myself to the skulls by my public designation, listed the names and status of my two companions, and explained my case. All this was absorbed and transmitted to the ranks of brains mounted somewhere in the depths of the city, and when I was done the Scribe said, “If the application is approved, you will be notified.”
“Meanwhile where shall I stay?”
“Close to the palace, I would suggest.”
I understood. I could join that legion of unfortunates packing the plaza. How many of them had requested some special favor of the Prince and were still there, months or years later, waiting to be summoned to the Presence? Sleeping on stone, begging for crusts, living in foolish hope!
But I had exhausted my avenues. I returned to Gormon and Avluela, told them of the situation, and suggested that we now attempt to hunt whatever accommodations we could. Gormon, guildless, was welcome at any of the squalid public inns maintained for his kind; Avluela could probably find residence at her own guild’s lodge; only I would have to sleep in the streets—and not for the first time. But I hoped that we would not have to separate. I had come to think of us as a family, strange thought though that was for a Watcher.
As we moved toward the exit, my timepiece told me softly that the hour of Watching had come round again. It was my obligaton and my privilege to tend to my Watching wherever I might be, regardless of the circumstances, whenever my hour came round; and so I halted, opened the cart, activated the equipment. Gormon and Avluela stood beside me. I saw smirks and open mockery on the faces of those who passed in and out of the palace; Watching was not held in very high repute, for we had Watched so long, and the promised enemy had never come. Yet one has one’s duties, comic though they may seem to others. What is a hollow ritual to some is a life’s work to others. Doggedly I forced myself into a state of Watchfulness. The world melted away from me, and I plunged into the heavens. The familiar joy engulfed me; and I searched the familiar places, and some that were not so familiar, my amplified mind leaping through the galaxies in wild swoops. Was an armada massing? Were troops drilling for the conquest of Earth? Four times a day I Watched, and the other members of my guild did the same, each at slightly different hours, so that no moment went by without some vigilant mind on guard. I do not believe that that was a foolish calling.