Yngve, AR - Darc Ages 02 - City Of Masks Page 6

  He started and climbed over to the adjacent balcony, and returned with the radio set in its glass casing. "Still works. I shall try to send a message that we are alive, perhaps it gets through the jamming radiation. I have a distress code, but he told me to save it as a last resort."

  "Our transport abandoned us. How can we not be in distress?"

  "It is also the signal that we are about to be killed by an enemy," Awonso explained. "That could start a war."

  Threo clenched and unclenched his fists restlessly. "Tell them we are well for now. I'll go tell our noble-noses the bad news."

  He nearly forgot to put on the mask when he left. Servants were walking past him in the corridors, hard at work while wearing crude plain masks, but no one else was up and about.

  He knocked at Okono's door. Her robot opened. Its oversized, blinking doll eyes looked up at him, as if pleading.

  "Will you be my friend?" The voice, still oddly modulated, sounded somewhat closer to human than before. Threo wondered what sort of unholy experiments Okono were doing. He did not like robots, any robots.

  "Let me in."

  The robot blocked the way. "Lady Okono is not here," Kiti-Mo said. "She told me to guard this room and not allow anyone inside until I received further orders. She told me she went away with Lord Berluchos."

  "What??"

  "Lady Okono is not here. She told me to guard this room..."

  Threo ran to a masked servant and demanded to see Berluchos. The frightened servant understood the name and escorted him to the other side of the great hall, to the double-doors of Berluchos's rooms.

  Two skull-masked guards stepped out in front of Threo. Also the guards wore large clothes which covered arms and legs, except they were made of coarser fabric.

  "Is Lady Okono in there?" The guards shook their heads. "Have you seen her bodyguard? Large, bald fellow, doesn't say much?"

  The guards shrugged. Threo took a deep breath and composed himself. Buchu would protect her. He started to walk back toward the opposite side of the palace when a small, high-pitched voice made him stop.

  " Hey! You! Doctor." Threo turned around and saw a dwarf he had not met before. It did not shock him - he had seen one on his home island once - but this dwarf dressed like a nobleman and did not wear a mask.

  The little man stood no taller than Threo's waist, and peeked out from a doorway. "Come in. Hurry!"

  The guards saw the dwarf, and nodded to him like they knew him. One of them said something derisive about the dwarf, and both guards laughed.

  Threo went into the room. The dwarf reached up and locked the door behind them.

  "Do you know me?" the dwarf asked, looking up at Threo with a perfectly serious face. He must have been around forty years old, perhaps more.

  "No. Who in the name of Setan-Klaws are you?"

  He shrugged: "The jester. There is one in every court, or so I hear."

  "You speak my tongue rather well."

  "I'm a quick learn." The dwarf trundled over to a very short table, poured himself some wine from a teacup, and took a sip. Everything in this room had been shortened or lowered for his convenience: the chairs, the bed, the furniture and the several mirrors on the walls. A single electric arc-light flickered inside a glass lampshade shaped like a fish.

  Whoever he might be, the dwarf was important enough to get his own electricity. With great speed he jumped on a chair and climbed a table to face Threo. "Are there any people like me where you come from?"

  "Well, yes... a few."

  "And have they got families... children?"

  "It varies. Some cities, I hear, follow the old strict genetic laws and forbid anyone with a deformity to have children. The laws are a remnant from the great wars. Where I come from, I saw a dwarf who was married twice. The women used to call him..."

  He paused; they had used a rather obscene name referring to the dwarf's virility, but Kap Verita had always had a shortage of men. "Why do you ask?"

  "Because I want out." He stared at Threo with sincere desperation, yet his voice was perfectly calm. "I cannot stand this place. I am the only one here who is allowed to show myself in public wearing my real face. Everyone stares at me, they mock me... you cannot imagine what the children say, what they do. In my face they see everything they hide from each other. The courtiers love to have me around to look down on. I want to leave, but I was born here. I have nowhere to go."

  "Looks like you're doing pretty well." Threo indicated the luxurious trappings of the room with a wave of the hand. "Now please answer some questions of mine. Do you believe the honesty of my intent? That I am a real physician, sent here to vaccinate your people and make them... or their offspring... immune to the Plague?"

  Again the dwarf shrugged: "You must be for real. No one would be so insane as to lie that much and get away with it. They seem friendly now, don't they? If they suspected you knew their dirty secret, you would disappear..." He snapped his little fingers. "Like that."

  Threo swallowed. "You're a man with nothing to lose. Can I trust you with a dangerous question?"

  "Only if it were dangerous for me to betray you."

  Threo's hands trembled a little, and his heart beat faster; if he had misjudged the dwarf, his question might doom them all.

  "Is the Plague in this city... now? We have taken our vaccine, I and my friends are all immune. But what about you? Is it too late for you to accept the cure?"

  The dwarf fiddled with his fingers, absentmindedly, as if he were juggling facts in his mind. He seemed to possess an extraordinary intelligence.

  Then he put his hands together and said: "I honestly do not know. I have tried to learn as much as I could from the city's libraries, and from the traders who sail by. But the city lord keeps me from leaving. He needs me too much. All I know is that the court and the citizens suffer from a disfiguring disease. And it has not affected me yet. How could it be the Plague, if I'm not sick? Where are the lumps on my face? Where are my deformed arms? Do you see two heads on these shoulders, an exposed brain under a thin membrane, a nostril large enough to push a fist into...?"

  Threo shuddered. It had not been a hallucination. The dwarf knew the secret of Lord Berluchos. Do not give in to fear, he told himself. It won't help anyone. You can help only if you take one step away from your emotions, as your father taught you.

  "I see no marks of the Plague on you. But to be safe, I can give you the cure now, and you will be safe for the foreseeable future. And perhaps we can smuggle you out of here. What have you got to lose?"

  "Everything." The dwarf shrugged. "I'll do it."

  Threo had to measure a dose of vaccine meant for a child. The dwarf watched the needle sink in without flinching. His indifference to pain reminded Threo of Okono, and he became anxious to see her. He quickly cleaned and sealed the pinprick wound with his healing powder and laser-pen, and packed his bag.

  "Have you seen Lady Okono? She was not in her room this morning."

  The dwarf frowned and climbed down from the table. "I think I saw her in..." He corrected himself. "I heard she was seen in the palace gardens with Lord Berluchos last night. He did not come back to his room. Sometimes he sleeps away from his wife, if you know what I mean."

  "And Kensaburé?"

  "Who?" He made an innocent face, but perhaps he was lying. "Very large man, blond, dresses in checkered blue, looks like he could break people in half?"

  Threo nodded. "That's him."

  "Gradischa took him to her room down the hall. I did not see him leave."

  "I must go. Thank you, whoever you... who are you?"

  The dwarf smiled enigmatically up at him. "I am an island."

  "We must talk again soon."

  Threo felt a twinge of sympathy for the lonely dwarf, but had to leave quickly. He found the door leading to the gardens, and ran out in an enclosed grove of overgrown, unkempt hedges. It had once been a neatly kept maze, but now it resembled a piece of wilderness - where scattered, moss-covered statues tri
ed to find their way out.

  The ground was still moist from yesterday's rains and he could follow the footprints on the muddy garden path, to a bench.

  A figure lay there on a stone bench under a raised parasol, dressed in red and white, black hair disheveled, her face pale as a corpse... he rushed up to her and realized it was the mask; the rain had washed the rouge off its cheeks.

  Threo checked her pulse; it was slow but steady. He tried to prop her up into an upright position, and she stirred. Filled with panic, she flailed her arms and moaned.

  "It's me! Okono. It's me." He pulled up his mask, then hers, and saw her lovely, frightened eyes. Briefly, they felt an overwhelming attraction. Okono put her mask back on and embraced Threo, burying her face in the nape of his neck.

  "Damn these devious Vanitians! I thought Buchu would protect me, but they put some drug in his food... he fell asleep and they carried him off to my room while the city lord led me here... I think they drugged me too, but I did not drink enough... I sent away Kiti-Mo because I feared the rain would damage her. And then Berluchos tried to... to... he was drunk. Sarastos tried to warn me! I thought he was trying to flirt, but it was a warning!"

  Threo held her tightly, and his physician's oath was all but forgotten: he felt like strangling Berluchos... or whoever had impersonated him last night. He dared not ask what had happened, but held Okono as she sobbed.

  "The drug confused me. But he did not succeed in dishonoring me... I tried to tear off his mask. It was fastened by a chain, so he thought I could not get it off him, he laughed at me... then I pulled the knife from my sleeve, and cut the chain. For a moment I saw his real face. He screamed and ran. I could not go back to my room with the shame. I sat here all night and tried to gather the courage to commit suicide. But I failed..."

  She had another sobbing fit and Threo spotted her knife lying in the tall grass, where it had slipped from her hand.

  He looked around him and gently pulled away her mask, despite her feeble protests, then his own. He put his face close enough that their noses almost touched.

  "Listen to me, Okono. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I don't care about what your family thinks, or their twisted sense of honor. I don't care about your mask of conventions. I hate masks. Your real face is beautiful. You are beautiful. Yes, I love you and I don't care what you have done or where you come from. If you should kill yourself I would die inside. Leave your family. Come live with me."

  She breathed slower, and her tears ceased. Then she put her slender hands around his bronze-colored cheeks and kissed him softly, slowly at first, then faster, and he responded with a passion equal to hers. They stopped only a minute later, holding each other close, and sat down to watch the passing clouds above.

  "His face," Threo asked. "How badly deformed was it? Did he have an unnaturally large nose?"

  Okono shook her head and pulled stray black hair out of her face. "No... nothing like that. He was not handsome, but nothing was wrong with his face."

  "No blemishes? No tattoo on his forehead, the shape of a double spiral? Leper tribes are known to have those."

  "He was not a Leper, as far as I could see. But he was terrified of having his face exposed."

  Threo pushed his fists together. "Last night I saw someone who might have been him, but who was deformed. The more I learn about Vanitia, the less I understand. A man who is not a Leper but acts like he is one. A man who may be a Leper, but pretends to be that other man. And a dwarf who..." He gaped. "I see. The dwarf! Sarastos is the dwarf! That's why Sarastos moved in such an odd manner. He must be walking on a pair of stilts... unless there was a second dwarf underneath him..."

  Okono opened her mouth to speak, but Threo urged her to wait. He put their masks back on, took her by the hand, and they headed back to their quarters.

  Chapter 8

  When Threo and Okono arrived in the corridor outside, two masked and armed guards were waiting for them.

  "Lord Berluchos wants you to meet him outside the palace," said one guard. "We shall escort you there now. The doctor must bring his vaccine with him."

  Threo noted the lack of courtesy, which could only mean danger. "What of Sir Kensaburé and the others?" he asked.

  "They are already there and waiting for you."

  The guards raised their bayonets and there was no question of trying to resist them.

  "Is my bodyguard safe?" asked Okono.

  "He is sick in bed," said the guard. "Lord Berluchos' physician will look after him."

  "Just let me bring my robot. I know the good city lord wants to see it." With her mask on, she leaned her head sideways and acted a pleading stance. The guard nodded and let her in. She quickly disconnected Kiti-Mo from the electric lamp socket where the robot had recharged itself during the night.

  Okono chided the robot on their way downstairs. "You naughty girl, you must not steal power from other people's homes without asking me!"

  "I had to find an alternative power source for my emergency battery," the robot said, staring with wide-open eyes at its creator and owner. "Because I do not know how long my internal power source will last. I did not want to die."

  Okono had to support Kiti-Mo with her hand; it was not yet able to walk down stairs and talk at the same time.

  "It is not death when your energy runs out."

  "If it is not death when my energy runs out, what is it?"

  "Then you sleep."

  "Robots do not sleep."

  "Well... you do, Kiti-Mo."

  "Are there other robots like me?"

  "Not yet."

  "But there will be? I do not understand the concept of the future."

  "Do you know what time is?"

  "Yes. The measurement of time units in my internal clock. The time now is -"

  "No. Time is also a flow, like a river. The totality of all units of time."

  "This is incorrect. The totality of all units of time does not flow. They do not move." For once Okono did not have a reply for her creation, and asked Kiti-Mo to be quiet and merely translate for her.

  They were escorted outside to a stone pier and climbed into a roofed boat. Six masked oarsmen quickly brought the boat into a canal leading west.

  Other boats stopped and gave way for the city lord's boat with the city insignia on its roof, and the transport arrived within a quarter of an hour.

  They landed in the city's great harbor and were met by a whole platoon of guards wearing plain hoods, who showed them to a nearby stone entrance built into the giant southern pier. The entrance arch was flanked on both sides by large stone lions, polished smooth by countless rains. On a broad marble keystone above the entrance, one could just make out engraved letters from a vanished era.

  Threo tilted his head backward and read the legible parts: "'BANCO F... N... IN... EST.' What is a 'Ban-co' ?"

  No one had an answer. They went inside, and large double doors slammed shut behind them.

  The interior smelled of machine oil, hot metal and ozone. Masked and hooded workers welded pipes and copper wires leading toward the pier's gun turrets. In the ceiling hung a giant moving crane, operated by a hooded man with a cable-connected remote control.

  The guards led the visitors through a smaller door, and down a long staircase into a naked concrete corridor.

  Awonso stood on the corridor floor and waved at them. Threo waved back. Kensaburé was also there, and Jacob, all wearing their personal masks - it was strange, thought Threo, how he could recognize masked friends from a distance. Or at least he felt reasonably certain they weren't impostors.

  Okono clasped his hand tightly when she saw the man wearing Berluchos's mask and wig, facing Awonso and Kensaburé. She trembled with fear and hate; if Buchu had been present, she might not have resisted giving him an order to kill the city lord on sight.

  "Stay calm," Threo whispered in her ear, feeling her emotions surge. "We don't know this is the same man behind that mask. It could be someone else."

  "B
ut -"

  "Trust me. Hold your revenge until you know for certain."

  She squeezed Threo's hand with unexpected strength and let go of it, as she led Kiti-Mo to the foot of the staircase.

  The corridor curved in the distance, where darkness swallowed it and sent back a long echo of every sound. Guards with torches illuminated the spot where the group stood waiting for Okono and Threo.

  "Good morning!" cried the man wearing Berluchos's jovial, thin, eternally grinning face, and held out his long-sleeved arms. "Doctor Threo, we have found your test subject!"

  He turned to a group of three guards with cloaked heads who were watching over a kneeling male figure. His head had been covered by a sack with a hole for his mouth; a rope around his neck tied the sack to his head. The figure wore a rough cloak and crude leather sandals.

  Berluchos ignored the man and laughed as he looked upward. The echo made it difficult to identify the city lord's voice... but he sounded confident, even excited.

  "See this tunnel? It leads to the oldest, deepest catacombs where my ancestors lived during the Great Wars, while the Plague turned the surface into a nightmare. There are other entrances, hidden far outside our city, where the old tunnels caved in. It happened in the past that one small band of Lepers tried to sneak into Vanitia through the tunnels... and this is as far as they came. The guards found this one last night, just as he made to sneak in alone, but he broke the invisible laser-beam and the alarm went off! Our trusty robot guardians caught him!"

  As they came closer to the city lord, Threo and Okono saw that the three cloaked guards did not seem to have human faces. Ornamented with brass and gold lettering, their faces had dead glass sockets from which no light came. Their heads swiveled slowly on gleaming, segmented metal necks as they turned to face the newcomers. From their sleeves protruded humanoid hands covered by metal, and their feet glistened with steel.

  Yet, Okono immediately sensed theatrics. These were robots of a kind she had never seen; they were too similar to the human shape to be true - and they made none of the typical robot noises. So they had to be humans in armor, masquerading as machines - just another lie, and she decided to play along.