The audience sat frozen as the animals and their riders in steel plate clattered down the central aisle to where Queen Alvandi, Zei, Zakkomir, and some priestesses of Varzai stood in a group.
"Saved!" cried Zakkomir.
Alvandi spoke: "Never shall you carry through this antic enterprise, detestable Earthman! My people will tear you to pieces!"
"Yes? Come and see what your people are doing, madam." He grinned down at her, then turned his aya and led the group back up the aisle, crowding past the column of his own men who had followed him in. At the portal he said, "See?"
His own men had formed a square around the portal, and beyond it the plaza was packed with male Qiribuma. Gizil was harranguing them, and from the way they yelled and waved their cudgels they seemed to like it.
"What mean you to do?" said Alvandi. "Frighten me with threats you cannot, for my superior social order is dearer to me than life itself."
Barnevelt said, "Madam, I admire your courage even if I can't approve your principles. First, you're a usurper yourself, because you've never laid a fertile egg and therefore should have been executed long ago." (The queen quailed.) "Instead, you bought a kidnaped Earth girl, a small child, and reared her as your own. Will you demonstrate, Zei? Like this."
He reached up to his forehead and wrenched off the false antennae. Zei did likewise.
"Now," he continued, "I won't kill you merely because you should have been sent to the chopper by your own silly law. Since the present regime is proved illegitimate and unlawful, it's time the old order changed, yielding place to new. I'll help them draw up a constitution…"
"With yourself as ruler?" sneered Alvandi.
"By no means. I won't have the job. I'll just give advice— for instance to exile you. Then I'll take Zei, some ships, and some volunteers, and take over the Sunqar."
"But that's mine by treaty with the admirals…"
"Was, you mean. It's state property, and my followers, who being both Qiribuma and Sunqaruma are qualified to decide its fate, have given it to me."
The queen turned to Zei. "At least, daughter, you'll not willingly yield to the wicked importunities of this crapulous vaporer?"
"And why not? No daughter of yours am I, but one of another race whom you've sought to use as a puppet to prop your own power, even to forcing me into an alliance mis-cegenetic. I prefer my own."
"Zakkomir?" said Alvandi.
"The same for me."
"You're all against me," said the queen, drooping. She turned to Barnevelt with a last flicker of defiance. "What have you done with my warrior girls you carried off? Deflowered them and fed them to the fish?"
"Not at all, Queen. They're all married to my ex-pirates."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After doing what had to be done to secure order in Ghu-linde—such as hanging a couple of liberated males who tried to celebrate their freedom by robbing shops—Barnevelt visited with Zei in her apartment.
When she could talk she said, "My lord and love, if indeed you love me, why, knowing I was of Earthly origin, did you hold off until Zakkomir's letter reached you? Another instant and the link had been forged."
"How was I supposed to know you were human? You couldn't expect me to yank your antennae to see if they'd come off!"
"By the same means I knew you for such."
"What was that? Did my ear points come loose or something?"
"Nay, but when we dried our apparel on the raft in the Sunqar, and again when we washed the soot of the fire from our bodies, I saw that you possessed a navel!"
Barnevelt clapped a hand to his forehead. "Of course! Now that you mention it, I can see how a person hatched from an egg would have no use for one."
"Nay further, knowing that you knew I had one, I recked that you knew all and could conceive no reason for your strange evasive diffidence. Perhaps, methought, he's been reared in Nyamadze, even as I was in Qirib, and thinks himself more Krishnan than Terran. Perhaps he's a cogwheel in some vast plot; or perhaps he does but find me ugly."
"Ugly! Oh, darling…"
"In any case, 'twas plain as the peaks of Darya that, whereas you and I each knew the other's true race, you wished natheless to maintain this pretense of deeming us Krishnans still. Albeit curiosity consumed me, I durst do no more than hint. Thus it was that I said we were of the same kind, and neither was quite what he seemed."
"I remember you did, but I didn't catch on. My mind was on—other things." His eyes devoured her until she colored.
"Well, when you let these hints fall as dead as an aqebat struck by the fowler's bolt, I acceded to what I took to be your wish. For I loved you so that—despite my noble resolution to guard my chastity, as a princess must needs do—had you pressed me to yield a maiden's ultimate gift, I should not have known how to gainsay you."
Barnevelt drew a long breath. "I understand now. Put it down to sheer stupidity on my part—though perhaps in the long run it was a fortunate mistake. But how'd you hide your navel when you went swimming or pretended to be a statue in the park?"
"I wore a patch of false skin, but for the kashyo I'd left off my little patch, seeing no need for it under that formal gown."
"I see. While we're confessing impostures, that wasn't a real yeki that growled on the road to Shaf, when you started to leave me. It was I doing imitations."
"Why, I knew that!" she said.
Presently, Barnevelt said, "Now we have to figure out how we can get married—we are going to get married, aren't we?"
"I wondered when you'd bethink you of that," she said in a marked manner. "Well, sirrah, since you at last had the wit to ask me, the answer's aye, and aye again. But what's the obstacle?"
"We're Terrans, and I've read somewhere that only Terrans can legally carry other Terrans. The only people of Krishna who could splice us—with any legal effect under Earthly law, that is—are Commandante Kennedy and Judge Keshava-chandra at Novorecife. And we hardly want to go all that distance in the wrong direction, when we're bound for the Sunqar."
"How about Qvansel the astrologer, or one of the priestesses?"
"No good. Your marriage with Zakkomir wouldn't have been legal, either. Let me think… There are some jurisdictions on Earth where a man and a woman can become legally married by standing up in front of witnesses and saying so. It's called common-law marriage. The Quakers have a similar system, and they're highly respectable. So that would have as much legal effect as anything our Qiribo friends could do. Wait here."
A few minutes later, he fetched Gizil, Zakkomir, and the court astrologer back to Zei's apartment.
When they were lined up, he said, "Now stand up and give me your hand, darling—the left. Do you, Zei bab-Alvandi, take me, Dirk Cornelius Barnevelt, to be your husband?"
"Aye. Do you, Dirk, take me to be your wife?"
"I do. With this ring…" (he slipped the Hayashi camera off his finger and onto hers) "… I thee wed." And he swept her close.
Another ten-day, and the freshly painted Douri Dejanai, at its dock in Damovang Harbor, prepared to cast off its lines. In the stern, Barnevelt bid farewell to his Krishnan friends.
Gizil said, "We all deem you a man of super-human self-restraint, elevating me to the presidency in lieu of taking it yourself."
"I'm not a Qiribu, remember," said Barnevelt. "They'd have gotten tired of being ruled by a damned Earthman and thrown me out. Besides, they chose you."
"Thanks to that constitution you prescribed for us."
"Well, you asked for the latest model of republican constitution, so I obliged. I hope it works. Drink up, pals— we're shoving off."