A.R.Yngve
DARC AGES:
City Of Masks
______________
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."
"But -"
"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.
"You let robots guard the tunnels?" she asked the city lord, her voice loud and sharp with suppressed fury.
Berluchos shrugged. "Why not? We cannot let our citizens risk the taint of the unclean touch..."
Threo shook Awonso's hand. "Where have you two been all night? We were starting to worry..."
Awonso's handshake felt limp, and his eyes looked dull underneath the mask. He seemed sluggish somehow, but his breath did not smell of strong drink. Kensaburé also seemed dazed, but the mask made it impossible to see for certain.
"It is them," Threo whispered in Okono's ear, "but I think they have been drugged."
"Now, dear doctor," said the city lord, "you can prove to me that your medicine works. If it cures him, I shall let all the city be treated. Unmask him!" The guard with the robot face-masks removed the prisoner's noose. "This one tried to spit on the guards, see, and wanted to spread the disease, so I had to order my robots to cut out his tongue. Of course we burned the tongue, just to teach him a lesson and keep our city clean..."
The sack came off, and Threo gasped. He recognized immediately the grotesquely oversized nose of the man he had seen beneath the palace, who had been dressed exactly like the city lord was dressed now. Blood leaked from the man's lips, and he seemed too despondent to raise his head.
The masked city lord shook his head reproachfully. "Not a pretty sight, I know. Stand back now... he can still breathe on you! Let the robots hold his head away from you, doctor, and you just... put your needle in his neck or whatever it is you do. You may want to look away, my lady."
Threo's hands closed into fists. It was dawning on him now, that he and his friends were being coerced into playing a part in a power struggle, between two men who had shared the role of city lord. And of all the citizens of Vanitia, who would recognize the deformed man on the floor without his mask? If the man who wore the mask said this man was a complete stranger, then the man was a stranger.
"It takes time for the vaccine to have its effect," Threo said, torn between his anger and his urge to help. The masked city lord nodded. "We have all time in the world to wait for this wretched Leper's reaction to your cure. Of course you must stay with us as my guest, until all my citizens are cured."
"And where will you keep - this person?"
"He stays right here, where he belongs, guarded by my robots! You can look after him all day. But we cannot let him have any sharp objects at hand, of course..."
Such as pen and paper, thought Threo. The others did not know, and Awonso still acted drugged.
Well, he thought, he had to play his part.
The robotic guards held the prisoner down, while Threo put on a pair of gloves. He prepared a syringe and cleaned the man's shoulder. And when he gently pushed in the handle of the syringe, and thick yellowish liquid shot into the prisoner's bloodstream, it was the genuine Plague vaccine.
While the others watched he carefully cleaned and sealed the tiny wound, sterilized the syringe with a special medical candle, and threw away his gloves - and mask. The Vanitians started visibly.
"Burn those, and the man's clothes. Bring him clean ones. The guards must also burn their clothes if they have touched him. You too, my lord, if you have touched him or stepped on his blood."
He put on his eyeglasses and regarded the masked city lord, impassive and professional.
"Give him another face!" the man called Berluchos said, turning away from the naked face of the doctor. "He is breaking the law. The punishment is banishment or death!"
"Then banish me if you like," Threo said, his face as rigid as a mask. "And try to make more vaccine on your own."
The robotic guards froze still, hesitating. Berluchos was shaken and the human guards stepped away from Threo, as if he had been tainted by the very fear of plague.
"Damn you, doctor!" Berluchos whimpered pathetically. "Is it money you want? I can make you a very rich man, if you provide the cure... but do not challenge our customs!"
"Does the sight of my flesh offend you, Your Eminence? Is it the wrong color? Too dark, perhaps? The nose too flat?"
Berluchos made a frantic, dismissive gesture, as if chasing off imaginary demons. "Put on a face, damn you!"
Threo blinked. Berluchos meant it. Now there was no doubt: this must be the same man who had tried to rape Okono. He had recoiled in horror when she had cut off his mask, because to him the mask was his face, a face. The sight of anyone without a face-mask was as obscene to him as a person strutting around naked - or worse, to people like Berluchos.
But somehow Lepers, dwarves and other outcasts seemed excluded from the custom; they did not count. How utterly strange. Threo knew, then, that he must first root out the disease in the Vanitians' minds.
He fished out a handkerchief from one of his many pockets, and tied it over his nose. "Is that enough for the law?"
"Until the mask-makers can make you another one. Now let us leave this place. It is too cold down here."
They made to leave, and Okono clutched Threo's arm with both hands; only when she came to the staircase did she notice that Kiti-Mo was not with her. She turned and saw the big-eyed robot facing the prisoner, leaning its large head forward as if listening.
"Kiti-Mo! Come here! Did you touch that man?"
The robot tiptoed over to its owner, fluttering its eyelids with a click-click noise. "No. I was only -"
"Quiet! Not a word from you until I say so!"
On the top of the stairs, Threo cast one last glance at the lone figure down in the vast corridor, in the circle of light from the robotic guards' torches. One day ruler of the city, the next day a pariah and guinea-pig... Threo wanted to cry, something he rarely did.
The robot stayed quiet on the journey back to the palace. The skies above the city rumbled, and another rain fell; Okono covered Kiti-Mo with her cloak.
Buy the DARC AGES Illustrated Edition from CafePress - over 400 pages, 35 illustrations.
DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004, 2006. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
bravenet.com