It was a scene out of the Inferno; this great, glowing boulevard with a vaulted ceiling dripping green light, jagged corridors leading off left and right, and we had to explore every one until the hover couldn’t squeeze through. I figured that if the turtle couldn’t make it, the capsule couldn’t. That saved a little time. We ate and slept once. We ate and slept twice. We ate and slept thrice. Long Lance gave me a look and I returned it, but we went on through the silence and the glow.
I thought about the Rajah, still not believing the Hebe and the evidence of the katar. How could I? The Rajah had always overwhelmed me with his magnificence. The Rajah had been and still was the supreme ruler and supreme deity of a small mountain state named Mahabharata, now shortened to Bharat. It had a few lush valleys for farming, but the Rajah’s gross national product came from rich mineral resources. Every time technology or luxury invented a need for a new metal, there it was in Bharat. Example: When platinum was first unearthed in the Ural Mountains, it was later discovered that the women of Bharat had been wearing beads of rough platinum nuggets for generations.
The Rajah, when I first met him in the Grossbad Spa, was singularly exquisite; sooty black — unlike M’bantu, who is shiny — handsome aquiline features, great dark eyes, delicate bones. His voice was slightly singsong and lilted with humor. He was always beautifully dressed and beautifully mannered. He was not and still isn’t democratic. Caste. Alas, Ned Curzon inspired instant aversion in him.
I was told that when he first visited Western Europe, back in the days of Napoleon, his conduct was appalling. As a supreme prince and god he could do no wrong in Bharat. On the Continent it was something else. For example, whenever the necessity arose he would relieve himself in public. No floor or potted plant was safe. He soon learned to behave himself and I sometimes wonder what hero had the temerity to teach him. Possibly Napoleon. More likely, his sister, Pauline Buonaparte, who entertained the Rajah as one of her lovers.
And this man of supreme power and wealth, with everything that anyone could possibly want, to turn renegade and attack the Group? Why? In his eyes we were beneath him. Everybody was. Caste. Did he want to become prince and god of the entire world? Nonsense! You only find that motivation in cheap fiction. I never believe anything that doesn’t make sense to me, and this didn’t make sense.
On the fourth day Long Lance stopped the hovercraft and made emphatic Sign to me. I emphatic. He listened hard for a few minutes. Then he got out, pulled a dirk from his belt, and worked it into the rocky floor. He knelt down, fastened his teeth on the handle, and listened through his mouth. Then he came back to me, took the compass, and examined it closely. He showed it to me.
By God, the needle had swung two degrees from the north toward the west and hung there no matter how we jiggled it. Long Lance grunted, retrieved his dirk, climbed back aboard, and began crawling the turtle. The first broad corridor on our left, he turned, went up a hundred yards, stopped, repeated the dirk bit, and came back to me. He made a globe gesture and said, “Si, Capo.”
Like a damned fool I opened my mouth to ask questions which he certainly couldn’t have understood. He said, “No, Capo,” and signed me to listen. I listen. I listen. I listen. Nothing. I look at Long Lance. He nodded. He was hearing what I couldn’t hear. What a tracker! I listen. I listen. I listen. And then I heard it. Music.
12
We pulled the hover back to the main boulevard and turned toward Tchi until we located a side corridor big enough to accommodate the turtle. We backed in deep enough for cover, got out, and went north again on foot. Long Lance had the dirk in his belt. I shoved a meat burner into mine, just in case. No sense taking chances. He was barefoot, feet like iron; I’d sprayed my soles with a half inch of plastic. He was naked, painted, and the green luminescence gave him the appearance of hideous tooled leather. If I looked anything like him we must have made a charming couple.
Suddenly Long Lance gripped my shoulder, stopped me, and turned me around. He pointed to a smallish side corridor we had just passed, and made See-Sign. When I asked him what, he made Animal-Sign. What kind of animal? The answer was complicated but I finally twigged. He was telling me he’d seen a lion. Preposterous, but I had to show him respect. We went back to the corridor and looked in. No lion. We went in. A dark maze. No lion. Not even a snarl. Long Lance was unhappy and confused and wanted to make a thorough inspection. We had more urgent business on hand. I urged him out and we proceeded.
When we reached Capsule Street he took the lead, naturally, signing me to imitate everything he did. I imitate. It was a crash course in the art of sneak attack. As we progressed I became aware of a white glow up ahead, then a low drone, and then the music again — a sort of hum of voices. It went like this:
Not my idea of any tunes ever written by Peter Ilich Korruptsky (b. 1940, d. 2003, greatly regretted). As we went smooch-foot toward the glow, the Rue de la Capsule enlarged, and when we crept up to the source of the light and the drone, I gawked. It was an enormous chamber, lined with the old sodium extraction apparatus, and in the center was the capsule, patched into giant old energy cables and droning away. The Chief had picked the perfect stash. Then we spotted his three humming babies.
They were enormous; nearly seven feet high. They were dead white albino. They were built like men but there was something uncanny about their joint articulations; they moved like insects. Then I saw they were blind. They emitted their tunes as a sonar sound-echo. Naturally I had to look closely at their genitals. Hillel had guessed wrong. Not putz and twibby both; they were white rosebuds, very large, the size of my fist, and the buds kept opening into petals and closing into bud again spasmodically.
Suddenly I had a flash of memory. Once in Africa with M’bantu, the Zulu was showing me the ecosights. He kicked over a rough clay cone and I saw thousands of terrified termites scrambling for cover. They were white, they were blind, and McB told me that they communicated by uttering sounds which the human ear couldn’t hear. Sequoya’s babies were seven-foot termites, but they could be heard.
I made Sign to Long Lance that I was going in alone. He didn’t like the idea, but you can’t argue in Sign, you only make statements. So I went while he stayed. The three things sensed me almost immediately and came at me. I pulled the burner out of my belt, but they intended no harm; they were simply overcome with curiosity and delight. While I looked for Sequoya they explored my body with their hands and jabbered in music:
I answered with Scott Joplin, Gershwin, Korruptsky, Hokubonzai; all the great standards I could remember and hum. They loved the vintage ragtime which I think they thought were funny stories, and kept asking for more. I oblige and they kept falling on each other and me, convulsed with laughter. Very nice termites, you know. Almost lovable once you got over xenophobia, and a damned good house for a stand-up comic. But still no Sequoya. I went and looked into the droning capsule with my three fans crowding around me. Niemand zu house. I yelled, “Guess! Chief! Sequoya!” No answer. The shout scared the three things and they backed away. I reassured them with a few bars of “Melancholy Baby” and they came back to be petted. Really adorable. But human?
A low hiss came from Long Lance and when I looked he beckoned urgently. I disengaged myself from my fans and ran to him; no time for autographs. He made Listen Sign. I listen and listen. Then I heard it; the murmur of an approaching hovercraft. “It’s Hilly from the other end,” I thought, took Long Lance by the shoulder, and we both ran down to the Avenida Las Salt Mine. The Algonquin didn’t like it but I gave him no time for statements. However, he did pull out his dirk. That was statement enough.