"Tabrel, you must speak with me!"
From behind the door to Tabrel Kris's room came silence.
Jamal Clan struck the door with the flat of his palm.
"The wedding is three days away, and you must begin to act like the princess you will be!"
Still: silence.
"Tabrel—listen to me!"
Angrily, Jamal unlocked the door and strode into the room toward Tabrel, who sat calmly regarding him from a straight-backed chair. Suddenly he drew his fist back—but, unable to strike her, stood frozen, tears welling in his eyes.
"Tabrel, please, you must do as I say!"
Her eyes, copper-brown, filled with depths of so much else, looked unblinking at Jamal.
"I have told you a hundred times, Jamal Clan: I am Tabrel Kris, member of the Martian diplomatic legation, and I demand to be treated in accordance with all laws and tenets of the Four Worlds Diplomatic Treaty of 2448; such laws forbid the unlawful detaining or improper treatment of a member of any diplomatic legation of any of the Four Worlds. My treatment is in clear violation of this treaty."
"But if you would just listen to me!" Jamal stood helpless before her, tears streaming down his face.
"That is not the way a prince of the house of Clan acts," a calm, chilly voice said from the doorway.
Jamal, startled, sought to compose himself before turning to face the figure in the doorway.
"As usual you are right, Mother," he said.
Kamath Clan gave a slight, imperious bow. Her girth was dwarfed by her height, which made her appear not stout but imposing. There were those on Titan who, speaking in corner whispers, called her Black Widow—and claimed that she had eaten her husband—or that he had at the lease died from fright at that expectation.
"Did anyone see you act this way?" Kamath Clan asked.
"No, Mother. At least I don't think so."
Kamath entered the room and closed the door.
"What I have just done, a simple act of closing a door, can do wonders toward avoiding such problems." She stopped to look down at Tabrel, who stared impassively ahead.
"It can turn a foolish act into a necessary one," Kamath continued. Her face was as impassive as Tabrel's. "How many times has she tried to leave this house?"
In frustration, Jamal said, "Every time I've left the door unlocked. Once she nearly made it to a shuttle at the freight depot. Another ten minutes and she would have been offworld. She will not believe me when I tell her that we have no news of her father. When she is not trying to escape, she sits reciting that diplomacy nonsense."
"Have you tried striking her?"
Flustered by his mother's presence, Jamal said, "No! I cannot hurt her! I only want to make her listen!"
"There are other ways to accomplish that," Ka-math said. "Soon she will have lost enough weight that it will be necessary to treat her. It is then that certain . . . medicines can be administered."
"I don't want you to hurt her!" Jamal said, his melodious voice rising in frustration. "I don't want anyone to hurt her! She is . . . beautiful!"
Kamath studied the young girl's face.
"That she is," Kamath said. "But she is also an embarrassment. The betrothal is valid as long as I refuse to dissolve it. But we obviously cannot count on Tabrel Kris's cooperation."
Jabal balled his fists. "I will not let you at her! I will make her see that this marriage must be accomplished and will be a good one!"
At this last remark his mother raised an eyebrow. "A good one? That doesn't matter."
"It matters to me!"
His mother studied Jamal impassively for a moment. "You have fallen in love with her?"
"Yes! And I want her to love me!"
"There are potions for that, too. . . ."
Jamal's face filled with fear. "No!"
His mother shrugged. "For now, you may try your own methods, Jamal." She turned to leave. "When I have closed the door behind me, you may hit her."
The door closed, and Jamal was left alone with Tabrel Kris, who sat staring straight through him.
"Why can't you just love me?" Jamal sobbed out, reaching out a trembling hand, daring to touch her face. Another, longer sob escaped him, sounding like incongruous music. "Why?"
Kamath Clan had other stops to make. In the Ruz Balib section of the Sacred Grounds, after passing down the central walkway of the tree-lined quadrangle bordered by dominion buildings, pedestrians moving aside at her approach, she mounted two flights of stairs in one particular building, disdaining the lift, and traversed a short hallway colored drab green. There were two'-doors at the end of the hall, to left and right, and without knocking she entered the right door, closing it behind her.
At the desk sat a clerk who did not move to stop her from entering the inner sanctum of the office. Again she opened and closed a door and towered now above the desk of Commander Tarn, chief of defensive operations on Titan. The inviolability of Titan's near-space defenses was, in effect, in the - hands of this man, who now gulped. He had once bedded Kamath Clan, to attain position, when her husband had been alive, and had avoided ever since the possibility of a second tryst.
Tarn bowed his head and rose; the Titan greeting. "My queen."
"You may sit, Tarn. No, stand for a moment." Gulping once more, Tarn stood straight.
"Turn for me. Slowly, with your arms out." Praying to any gods who might exist or ever had existed, Tarn did as he was told.
"No, it is not right. You may sit."
"Thank you, my queen."
Inwardly, Tarn cheered, having failed the test. But there would be others to warn: that the queen bee was in search once more for a bedmate,
"How may I help you, my queen?" Tarn asked, recovering some of his official composure now that the crisis had passed.
"I want to know just how impenetrable our defense shields are," Kamath Clan said. In her shadow, Tarn briefly thought himself a small man, though he stood above two meters.
"It is the best system possible," Tarn said, but immediately saw that she did not crave generalities, but specifics.
"It is point eight impervious, which means that no plasma charge yet devised could pass through it."
"Might Wrath-Pei pass through it?"
"He . . ." Tarn suddenly realized that much, including his well-being, might hinge on this question. "He has been allowed to, of course."
"I mean, if he weren't allowed to?"
"We could. . . defend Titan from him, my queen. If necessary."
"Very well. You are sure of this?"
"Of course, my queen."
The mountain looming over Tarn nodded. "Then if we were to decide that Wrath-Pei were . . . let us say, deemed unworthy of our company, he could be prevented."
"Anyone could be prevented, my queen. You are thinking perhaps of the troubles on Mars and Earth at the moment?"
"Beyond that, Tarn. Much beyond that." She had been looking inwardly, but now she turned her gaze on Tarn again.
"And our ground defenses?"
"The best and toughest of all Four Worlds!" Tarn said proudly.
"I hope so. Even so, I would like you to order a state of heightened alert. In the event . . ."
"Yes, my queen?"
"Never mind, Tarn."
Again her gaze sharpened and became more interested in Tarn.
"Stand again, Commander."
Tarn drew a breath, but did as he was told. "Turn for me, arms akimbo."
Tarn turned.
There was an approving sound, which made Tarn's blood freeze—but it was followed by a resigned sigh.
"I was right in my first estimation. You may sit again."
"Thank you, my queen," Tarn said, not able to hide his relief.
"Though I may be back for you," Kamath Clan said, without a trace of humor.
She departed, leaving the door open, and leaving to Tarn's clerk the remarkable sight of the commander himself, wan and trembling, fumbling for his communication console to warn those who should be warned.
There was one other stop for Kamath Clan to make. Up through the bright glare of Titan's day lights, the late afternoon Sun shone like a distant warm coin. Kamath thought briefly of her birthplace, so much nearer to that Sun, and so much warmer. Not in temperature, for the same omnipresent lights that flooded the streets and valleys and even the hills of Titan with light also fed its plants and, along with the core reactor deep in its bosom, gave it warmth. But it was in many ways a bland, clinical warmth, unlike that of So!.
On Earth, Kamath had played once, at the age of three, in a meadow under a bird-blue sky with the warmth of So!, hanging like a ball in the air, on her skin. The toasty feel of that warmth was like nothing else she had felt since, and its loss was the great loss of her life. When her parents fled the consolidation of Sarat Shar's power, they tore their daughter not only from her birth home, which became the
120 Al Sarrantonio
eastern governorship of Shar's empire, but from the rest of her life as well.
The warmth of Sun on skin
In dreamy rumination within her hard shell, Ka-math Clan found that her feet had taken her unheedful to her destination. There were no pedestrians to move out of her way here, for this, the most backward and dangerous of the city's streets, was deserted at any time of day or night. And anyone wondering at her visit here would keep such thoughts to themselves.
A day of doors. She stood before another door, opened and closed it behind her. It always felt damp to her touch, so out of harmony with the thing that brought her here. Inside, it was dark as any midnight.
"You have come again, my queen?" his voice, a little frailer than the last time; as it had been frailer last time and the time before that. "You have come to see old Quog again?"
"I have come," Kamath Clan said.
"And is it the same you seek as before?"
"As always," Kamath said.
"Very well."
He emerged from the darker shadows of the room into mere shadow. He was indeed a man, of sorts. He had told Kamath that first time, the one time when he felt obligated to explain himself, that he had once been a handsome specimen.
"But the Puppet Death," he had said, "changed all that. It twisted and turned me and pulled me every which way. It danced on me, all right! Oh, I was dashing before the disease, my queen. I was straight-backed and black-haired and had good hands and feet; I could dance, and could make things with my delicate fingers. But afterward, my wife left me and my daughter shunned me. But I took a bit of what I was and came here."
It was then that he had shown Kamath Clan what she had come to see. And it was what he again showed her now.
"Soon I will be gone, my queen!" hisfrail voice said. The sideways appearance of his arm-thin face, like a melted substance, plastic or cheese, one layer over the other, never failed to startle even Kamath Clan. In the midst of this visage were his organs of sight and smell, pressed to mere slits, and his mouth, a vertical oval hole.
The rest of his body was sloped sideways, also, though not as severely as his face and head; his walking was of a shuffling kind, baby steps by deformed feet.
"Hard to believe I've been this way since I was eighteen!" Quog said. He moved closer, giving the queen, with her unwavering stare, a good look at him; this was part of a ritual of cruelty and trade they had worked out long ago.
"Think you would have gone for me then, my queen?" Quog whispered breathily through his mouth hole.
"I think not," the queen said.
"Nor I you! Ha!" Quog said.
Trying not to show her need, which was a useless thing with this man, Kamath said, "You will provide me."
"Of course! Have I ever denied you, my queen?" He waited for her response; which was, "No."
"But before long, when these soft bones are in
the dust heap, you will be denied, eh?"
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps?" A trace of irritation entered the old man's panting words. "Do you think there are others like me?"
"Not like you. But what you have—"
"Can be duplicated?" Now he was angry. "Do you think so? Do you think I am so foolish as to think you haven't tried? You who have a chemical, a potion, for everything? Have you tried?"
His slitted eyes were as wide as they ever grew; within the vertical, flesh-flapped cavities the queen saw tiny fierce eyes, red with rheum.
"I have tried," she said.
"Of course you have! And failed! Ha!"
The queen waited; as did the old man, who stood panting tiny breaths through his mouth.
"You will apologize to me, Queen," Quog said finally.
There was silence.
"You will apologize immediately or get out of my home."
Kamath Clan turned her towering body away from the twisted old man.
"You will not take a step toward the door," Quog said. "I know your needs too well. What you will do is turn and beg this thing of me; get down on your knees, Queen, and beg me!"
The old man was huffing in agitation—either anger or satisfaction.
Kamath Clan stood still.
"Now!" Quog spat. "Or be forever banished from my house!"
A moment ticked by, and then Kamath Clan turned slowly and lowered herself to the filthy floor; laying her hands flat upon the boards, she crawled forward, eyes downcast, and lay her forehead on the old man's deformed, sandaled feet.
"Kiss them!"
Kamath Clan lifted her head slightly to kiss the feet, one and then the other; his toes were like gnarled knuckles.
"Lick them! As a dog licks!"
The queen did as she was told.
"Very well," Quog breathed, satisfied. "You may rise."
Head still bowed, Queen Kamath Clan slowly brought herself up to her full height and stood impassively.
Chuckling, Quog said, turning to shuffle into the deeper shadows of the room to the shelves on which rested pots and metal containers and some ancient glass carafes of dark colors, green and red, "You know well, my queen, that all power resides with those who have what is desperately wanted. This," he said, still chuckling weakly, "is the only definition of power."
"Yes."
"Ha!" He lingered over various vials, knowing that such action was drawing out her torture.
"Cruelty," he said, the levity gone from his voice, "is something to be learned, though."
Abruptly he chose the canister he sought all along, a nondescript metal tube, one among a few, with one end sealed tightly.
"Two," Queen Clan said.
"No. One now, and one again tomorrow. I want you to return."
His deformed hand held the single slim container out from the shadows to her. Eagerly she took it. "I will return tomorrow."
"Yes, you will."
As she exited, closing the door, this time, behind her, he said, breathing from the shadows, "I was not . . . always cruel. . . ."