“We have not had such visitors-” He paused, collected himself, and bowed. “Be welcome, all guests who come with honest words,” he said ritually. “This person is named Pyotr Gutchluk, of the Kha Khan’s sworn men.” He turned to Zalat. “You and your crew may proceed directly to the yamen. We can handle the formalities later. I must personally conduct so distinguished a… a guest to the palace.”
He clapped his hands. A couple of servants appeared, men of his own race, similarly dressed and similarly armed. Their eyes glittered, seldom leaving the Terran; the woodenness of their faces must cover an excitement which seethed. Flandry’s luggage was loaded on a small electro-truck of antique design. Pyotr Gutchluk said, half inquiringly, “Of course so great an orluk as yourself would prefer a varyak to a tulyak.”
“Of course,” said Flandry, wishing his education had included those terms.
He discovered that a varyak was a native-made motorcycle. At least, that was the closest Terran word. It was a massive thing on two wheels, smoothly powered from a bank of energy capacitors, a baggage rack aft and a machine-gun mount forward. It was steered with the knees, which touched a crossbar. Other controls were on a manual panel behind the windscreen. An outrigger wheel could be lowered for support when the vehicle was stationary or moving slowly. Pyotr Gutchluk offered a goggled crash helmet from a saddlebag and took off at 200 kilometers an hour.
Flandry, accelerating his own varyak, felt the wind come around the screen, slash his face and nearly drag him from the saddle. He started to slow down. But-Come now, old chap. Imperial prestige, stiff upper lip, and so on drearily. Somehow he managed to stay on Gutchluk’s tail as they roared into the city.
Ulan Baligh formed a crescent, where the waters of Ozero Rurik cut a bay into the flat shore. Overhead was a deep-blue sky, and the rings. Pale by day, they made a frosty halo above the orange sun. in such a light, the steeply upcurving red tile roofs took on the color of fresh blood. Even the ancient gray stone walls beneath were tinged faint crimson. All the buildings were large, residences holding several families each, commercial ones jammed with tiny shops. The streets were wide, clean-swept, full of nomads and the wind. Gutchluk took an overhead road, suspended from pylons cast like dragons holding the cables in their teeth. It seemed an official passageway, nearly empty save for an occasional varyak patrol.
It also gave a clear view of the palace, standing in walled gardens: a giant version of the other houses but gaudily painted and colonnaded with wooden dragons. The royal residence was, however, overshadowed by the Prophet’s Tower. So was everything else.
Flandry understood from vague Betelgeusean descriptions that most of Altai professed a sort of Moslem-Buddhist synthesis, codified centuries ago by the Prophet Subotai. The religion had only this one temple, but that was enough. A sheer two kilometers it reared up into the thin hurried air, as if it would spear a moon. Basically a pagoda, blinding red, it had one blank wall facing north. No, not blank either, but a single flat tablet on which, in a contorted Sino-Cyrillic alphabet, the words of the Prophet stood holy forever. Even Flandry, with scant reverence in his heart, knew a moment’s awe. A stupendous will had raised that spire above these plains.
The elevated road swooped downward again. Gutchluk’s varyak slammed to a halt outside the palace. Flandry, taller than any man of Altai, was having trouble with his steering bar. He almost crashed into the wrought-bronze gate. He untangled his legs and veered in bare time, a swerve that nearly threw him. Up on the wall, a guard leaned on his portable rocket launcher and laughed. Flandry heard him and swore. He continued the curve, steered a ring around Gutchluk so tight that it could easily have killed them both, slapped down the third wheel and let the cycle slow itself to a halt while he leaped from the saddle and took a bow.
“By the Ice People!” exclaimed Gutchluk. Sweat shone on his face. He wiped it off with a shaky hand. ‘They breed reckless men on Terra!”
“Oh, no,” said Flandry, wishing he dared mop his own wet skin. “A bit demonstrative, perhaps, but never reckless.”
Once again he had occasion to thank loathed hours of calisthenics and judo practice for a responsive body. As the gates opened Gutchluk had used his panel radio to call ahead-Flandry jumped back on his varyak and putt-putted through under the guard’s awed gaze.
The garden was rocks, arched bridges, dwarf trees, and mutant lichen. Little that was Terran would grow on Altai. Flandry began to feel the dryness of his own nose and throat. This air snatched moisture from him as greedily as it did heat. He was more grateful for the warmth inside the palace than he wished to admit.
A white-bearded man in a fur-trimmed robe made a deep bow. “The Kha Khan himself bids you welcome, Orluk Flandry,” he said. “He will see you at once.”
“But the gifts I brought—”
“No matter now, my lord.” The chamberlain bowed again, turned and led the way down arched corridors hung with tapestries. It was very silent: servants scurried about whispering, guards with modern blasters stood rigid in dragon-faced leather tunics and goggled helmets, tripods fumed bitter incense. The entire sprawling house seemed to crouch, watchful.
I imagine I have upset them somewhat, thought Flandry. Here they have some cozy little conspiracy-with beings sworn to lay all Terra waste, I suspect-and suddenly a Terran officer drops in, for the first time in five or six hundred years. Yes-s-s.
So what do they do next? It’s their move.
III
Oleg Yesukai, Kha Khan of All the Tribes, was bigger than most Altaians, with a long sharp face and a stiff reddish beard. He wore gold rings, a robe thickly embroidered, silver trim on his fur cap, but all with an air of impatient concession to tedious custom. The hand which Flandry, kneeling, touched to his brow, was hard and muscular; the gun at the royal waist had seen use. This private audience chamber was curtained in red, its furniture inlaid and grotesquely carved; but it also held an ultramodern Betelgeusean graphone and a desk buried under official papers.
“Be seated,” said the Khan. He himself took a low-legged chair and opened a carved-bone cigar box. A smile of sorts bent his mouth. “Now that we’ve gotten rid of all my damned fool courtiers, we need no longer act as if you were a vassal.” He took a crooked purple stogie from the box. “I would offer you one of these, but it might make you ill. In thirty-odd generations, eating Altaian food, we have probably changed our metabolism a bit.”
“Your majesty is most gracious.” Flandry inhaled a cigarette of his own and relaxed as much as the straightbacked furniture permitted.
Oleg Khan spoke a stockbreeder’s pungent obscenity. “Gracious? My father was an outlaw on the tundra at fifteen.” (He meant local years, a third again as long as Terra’s. Altai was about one A.U. distant from Krasna, but the sun was less massive than Sol.) “At thirty he had seized Ulan Baligh with 50,000 warriors and deposited old Tuli Khan naked on the artic snows: so as not to shed royal blood, you understand. But he never would live here, and all his sons grew up in the ordu, the encampment, as he had. done, practiced war against the Tebtengri as he had known war, and mastered reading, writing, and science to boot. Let us not bother with graciousness, Orluk Flandry. I never had time to learn any.”
The Terran waited passive. It seemed to disconcert Oleg, who smoked for a minute in short ferocious drags, then leaned forward and said, “Well, why does your government finally deign to notice us?”
“I had the impression, your majesty,” said Flandry in a mild voice, “that the colonists of Altai came this far from Sol in order to escape notice.”