"Matter of fact, some folks are horrified."
"So he says, but I doubted because he's a secret sympathizer with the Reform Party."
"The people who don't want to kill the king any more?"
"The same. Breathe nothing to my lady mother, lest in her rage poor Zakkomir suffer. They sent word to her through intermediaries that for the nonce they'd settle on elimination of the ceremonial devourment of the late consort. But she'd have none of it, and so beneath its fair-seeming surface our land does boil with treasonous plots and coils."
"What'll you do when you're queen?"
"That I know not. Though sensible am I of the causes urged against our custom, yet will my mother always retain much influence on the affairs of Qirib, so long as she does live. And, as she says, aside from considerations of true religion, there's nothing like slaying the topmost man yearly to keep the sex in its proper place."
"Depends on what you call proper place," said Barnevelt, thinking that Qirib needed a—what would be the opposite of "feminist"? "masculist"?—a Masculist Party.
"Nay," said Zei, "argue not like Zakkomir. Our realm's prosperity is proof positive of the rightful superiority of the female."
"But I can cite you prosperous realms where the men ruled the women, and others where they were equal."
"A disturbing fellow, are you not? As I said when you so rudely smote me upon the posterior, no Qiribu you!"
"Well, my disturbing presence will soon be gone. Actually, you can give me some useful advice. What's the connection between the Banjao pirates, the janru traffic, and Qirib?"
She stared at her cigar. "Methinks we'd best change subjects, lest we get into perilous grounds where one's safety can only be assured by another's sacrifice…"
On the way home, Barnevelt said: "Let's shove off day after tomorrow, George."
"Are you mad? I wouldn't miss this ceremony for anything. Think of all the dinkum film we shall get!"
"Ayuh, but I'm sqeamish about watching them kill and cook poor Kaj in front of my eyes. To say nothing of having to eat a piece of him later."
"How do you know what he will taste like? Among my ancestors it was a regular custom for the winner of a sporting contest to eat the loser."
"But I am no South Sea Islander! In my culture-pattern it's considered rude to eat people you know socially."
"Come, come," said Tangaloa. "Kaj is not really human. Millions of Krishnans die all the time, and what difference does one more make?"
"Yes, but…"
"And we can't walk out on the queen. She expects us."
"Oh, foof! Once we're at sea…"
"You forget we're leaving a bond here, and Panagopoulos won't stand for our forfeiting it unnecessarily. Also our sailors will insist on being brought back home when we finish."
Unaccustomed as he had become to having George make a definite decision, Barnevelt gave in. He told himself he did so because of the weight of Tangaloa's arguments—not because he would thus be enabled to go on seeing Zei. Nevertheless he felt elated at the prospect of so doing.
The night of the festival, Zakkomir checked the costumes of Barnevelt and Tangaloa and found them adequate. "Though," he said, "they be not those customary, yet will the other practisants excuse you as foreigners who know no better."
"Thank Zeus they won't make us wear one of those toga effects," muttered Barnevelt. "I can just see myself trying to manage one in a gale."
Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like Zakkomir, in a sort of cloth-of-gold sarong, with jeweled armlets, gilt sandal-boots reaching halfway up his bare calves, a golden wreath on his green hair, and his face as bedizened with paint as that of a Russian ballerina.
He led them into the reception hall where royal aunts and uncles thronged. At last the trumpets blew and the king and queen marched through, the rest falling into place behind them. Kaj wobbled as he walked and looked glummer than ever, despite the efforts of the royal makeup artist to paint a lusty look upon his visage.
Zakkomir showed Barnevelt and Tangaloa where to fall in, then went forward to take Zei's arm behind the royal couple.
As the amphitheater, where the kashyo festival took place, lay just outside the palace grounds, the procession went afoot. Two of the three moons showed alternately as the clouds uncovered them, and a warm brisk wind flapped robes and cloaks and made the gaslights flutter. Outside the wall of the palace grounds, many of the common people of Ghulinde stood massed, and a wedge of whifflers pushed a path through them.
The amphitheater was fast filling. On one side stood the royal box. The flat space in the middle of the structure was occupied by a stove and a new red-painted chopping block. The people ranged about these accessories included old Sehri, the high priestess of the Mother Goddess; several assistants, some with musical instruments; the palace chef and a couple of assistant cooks; and a man wearing over his head a black bag with eyeholes and leaning on the handle of a chopper with a blade like a butcher's cleaver but twice as big. The cooks were sharpening other culinary implements. Amazon guards stood around the topmost tier of the theater, the wavering gaslights sparkling on their brazen armor.
Barnevelt found himself sitting in the second row a little to the right of the royal box, which was full of royal cousins besides the queen and the princess. The benches included a narrow table-like structure in front of each. Kaj himself was down in the central plaza, sitting hunched on the chopping block with hands on knees.
Barnevelt said to Tangaloa: "I don't see how Kaj can be stretched enough to give everybody a piece, unless they make hamburger of him and dilute it with more conventional meat. What else happens?"
"It's quite elaborate. They have ballet dancers acting out the return of the sun from the south, and the growing crops and all that sort of rot. You will like it."
Barnevelt doubted that; but, as the amphitheater was now full and the crowd quieting down, he did not care to argue the point. The high priestess raised her arms and called out:
"We shall first sing the hymn to the Mother Goddess: 'Hail to Thee, Divine Progenitrix of Gods and Men.' Are you ready?"
She swept her arms in the motions of an orchestra conductor. The musical instruments tweetled and plunked, and the audience broke into song. They sang lustily for the first few lines, then petered out. Barnevelt noticed that many were peering about as though trying to read their neighbors' lips, and guessed that, as in the case of "The Star Spangled Banner" and the "World Federation Anthem," a lot of people knew the words of the opening lines only. Tangaloa was unobtrusively filming the scene with his ring camera.
As the volume of singing diminished, Barnevelt heard another sound that swelled to take its place: the surf like noise of a distant human uproar. At the end of the first stanza, the priestess paused with her arms up. In the resulting silence the noise came nearer, resolving itself into individual roars and shrieks and the clang of metal. Heads turned; in the topmost tier, some stood up to stare outward. Amazons bustled about and conferred.
Barnevelt exchanged a blank look with Tangaloa. The sound grew louder.
Then a bloody man dashed into the theater through a tunnel entrance, shouting: "Morya Sunqaruma!"
Barnevelt understood, then, that the noise was caused by an attack of the pirates of the Sunqar.
The next minute he was pitched off his feet by a panic-push of the crowd. He fought his way upright again. In front of him Tangaloa gripped a corner of the royal box to keep from being swept away.
A renewed racket around one of the entrances, and a party of pirates pushed in against the opposition of the Amazons. Barnevelt saw some woman warriors go down before the weapons of the intruders, and others brushed aside. More pirates erupted through other entrances. Barnevelt felt for his sword, then remembered that he had been made to leave it at home. The Qiribo men were all unarmed; and, while some of the women wore swords, neither they nor the men seemed inclined to make use of them.