"Sinanju lives," said Uncle Pimsy, desperately clutching Neville's arms. "Run, lad. Save the House of Wissex. They've spared us again."
But Neville was thinking. What Uncle Pimsy had told him was apparently that the Sinanju peo-
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pie, whoever they really were, were still confined to hand-fighting. No weapons. And they might not have faced any sort of modern technology. Really modern.
"What are you thinking, lad?" asked Pimsy.
"Nothing."
"For God's sake, Neville, do not challenge the awesome magnificence of the House of Sinanju. Withdraw from this foolish scheme to fleece this Moombasa creature. Return to the old days. To British steel. To honest labor."
Uncle Pimsy was squeezing Neville's arm a bit hard. This part of the castle had always been uncomfortable and Uncle Pimsy was so close that his drool was reaching the cuff of his afternoon suit. Any closer and Pimsy might be on Neville's tie.
"Go piddle a poodle, Pimsy," said Neville. "I'm running things."
"You always were a perfect rotter," said Pimsy.
Seven
Generalissimo Moombasa waited for the American woman to be delivered. He would interrogate her himself, he decided, and he would use his wiles instead of torture.
He would show her his subtle nature, his romantic side, make her want to help the Hamidian people's struggle against imperialism or whatever.
And if that didn't work, he'd beat the information out of the American bitch.
For the first meeting, he chose the military presence of his armored corps uniform. It was robin's-egg blue with gold epaulettes, tight bands with black Cordoba leather boots, with the Hamidian insignia of a condor embossed in gold and green.
The hat was a high peak supported by the same condor insignia. In tiny zircons, the motto of the armored corps was displayed across the visor. The motto read:
"Crush the world beneath our treads."
It was a very big visor. The armored corps was 300 strong and every man had a uniform. But since the uniforms were so expensive, the People's
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Democratic Republic of Hamidia had to cut back somewhere else.
So the armored corps made do with a 1948 Studebaker with an extra layer of tin on the outside, held in place by zircon studs, naturally spelling out "Crush the world beneath our treads."
A foreign manufacturer had once gotten to the armored corps and convinced its officers that they should have tanks, under the reasoning that other countries' armored corps had tanks. Many tanks. Big tanks. And with treads.
How did it look for Hamidia to have a slogan: "Crush the world beneath our treads" when it didn't even have treads, but four 1949 Firestone Silverrides, three of which were bald?
"You not only don't have treads, you don't even have traction," said the manufacturer.
"That all right, Serior. We don't have much engine either," said one of the officers. But the idea caught on and the armored corps was close to rebellion when Moombasa, being a shrewd Third World politician, recognized the meaning of the revolutionary ferment in the souls of his valiant warriors.
"Great heroes of the Hamidian revolution, I will follow your desires. We can buy a tank that only a few can use at one time, or we can buy new cravats for everyone, beige to offset the robin's-egg blue of your glorious uniforms."
There was instant outrage among the Hamidian officer corps.
"Beige don' go with robin's-egg blue. Navy blue. Black even. Maybe a dark green. But not beige."
"I am a foot soldier," said Generalissimo Moom-
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basa. "What do I know of armored warfare and you brave men who carry it out?" And then he ordered the cravats, one of which he now wore. He realized that he could really trust his tank commanders. He ordered navy-blue cravats and found out that they were right. The navy blue really went well with the robin's-egg blue.
Moombasa was dressed when Neville Lord Wissex arrived, wearing a gray coat, top hat, white gloves. But no woman.
"Where is the woman? Where is my woman? Where is the reader of the ancient tongue of the Hamidian traders?"
"She is with her bodyguards. All the snipers you saw here last week are no more. They are dead," said Lord Wissex.
Moombasa couldn't believe his ears. The man was calm. Wissex was talking without a tremor in his voice and the man was telling him he did not have what Moombasa had paid well for.
"You failed," screamed the generalissimo.
"Yes," said Wissex.
"That's it? Yes? Just yes? Ten million dollars and you are telling me yes?"
"Yes," said Lord Wissex.
"He is telling me yes," said Moombasa to an aide. The aide nodded and offered a suggestion.
"Shoot him."
"Let's find out first why he is not afraid," said Moombasa.
"Then we shoot him," said the aide.
"Sure," said Moombasa.
"Hey, you. Brit. Where is the woman who reads
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Hamidian? Where is the mountain of gold? Where the things I pay for?"
"In stronger hands than ours, your Excellency," said Wissex.
Moombasa liked the way the Briton said "your Excellency." It had class and made him feel kingly. It made him feel that perhaps he could go to Buckingham Palace, possibly even cop a feel there. If not the queen, perhaps a princess or two.
"What stronger hands?" he asked.
"Major nations against whom I would advise you not to compete," said Wissex blandly.
"Why you can't beat them? Those major nations, are they big shots?"
"We could beat them," Wissex said.
"Then why you not do it?"
"Because it would be a strain on your economy. We have to move technologically, sustain losses, advance despite those losses. I wanted to give you what a backward nation could afford."
"Hey, what you say?"
"Your Excellency?" asked Wissex.
"What you say there? That word?"
"What word?"
"Backward," said Moombasa.
"You have no industry. You have no road system or telephone system that works. No hospitals that aren't staffed by Europeans at the higher levels, no air force that works without European direction, and you produce absolutely nothing except more Hamidians."
"We produce oil and cobalt."
"Americans produce it," Wissex said. "You, I am afraid, just lay title to it because you were born
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here, Excellency. That is what you produce. And with the money from materials that Americans mine and drill for, you buy Americans, ambassadors, journalists, and of course the leftists whom you get for nothing. I have not forgotten your trying to pawn off Myra Waxelburg and Dudley Rawlingate III as some sort of Vanguard Revolutionary Suicide squad."
Moombasa looked at his aide. Such insults. No one called backward nations backward anymore. They emerging or developing or Third World. You didn't go to no ugly woman in the street and say you ugly. So you didn't call no Third World nations what they were either. And here was this man who took his money calling the People's Democratic Republic of Hamidia what it was.
Moombasa felt blood come up hot from his toes. He didn't want to shoot the Brit that moment because then he couldn't have the joy of killing him again. He thought of fire. Slow fire under the feet. Burn off his tbenails. Put out his eyes. Peel away his chest. And the generalissimo felt himself chuckling. His aides moved away in fear. Everyone left but Neville Lord Wissex.
"So, being a backward nation, I would advise against your spending another ten million on a technological phase assault that may produce absolutely nothing. That may not even gain for you that mountain of gold which belongs to you and is worth perhaps tens of trillions of dollars."
"How many zeroes that?" asked Moombasa.
"At least twelve in your counting," said Wissex.
"Spend, you British dog," Moombasa said.