To know of the Crab, and to know of the Crab’s crucial role in the affairs of Injiltaprajura, is to know much. The historian believes that the ruling dynamic of those affairs has now been explicated: while Justina’s enemies believed the Crab to be on her side, they would obey her; but, once they realized that she had in fact been deprived of such protection, they would fall upon her and overwhelm her.
Justina’s problem, then, was threefold:
First, to maintain the illusion that she was still supported by the Crab;
Second, to avoid death at the hands of assassins and such until the arrival of the Trade Fleet;
Third, to seize the ships of that Fleet and thus make her escape.
All this is very easily stated.
Bu of course the realities are somewhat more complex, because there did not in fact exist a clear-cut division between ‘Justina Thrug and her allies’ and ‘Justina’s enemies’.
Rather, there were many shades of political affiliation and intention within Injiltaprajura; and to explain fully the political complexities of the last days of the reign of the Empress Justina, it would be necessary for the historian to analyse the thoughts and actions of all 30,000 of the inhabitants of Injiltaprajura. Some mention might also have to be made of the interactions between those individuals and the animals which then inhabited Untun-chilamon’s capital, the said animals consisting of 1,946 monkeys, 3,101 pigs, 6,429 dogs, 10,111 snakes, 17,942 cats, 30,000 people, 246,995 vampire rats, 456,831,887 mosquitoes, and numbers of billipedes, millipedes, centipedes, scorpions and other creatures.
When one considers the difficulties attendant upon the exercise thus suggested, one must surely allow the historian the right to generalize upon occasion. On occasion? It is more reasonable to say that generalization must be the rule, and particularization the exception; else the creation of this account will become impossible for logistic reasons alone, the historian being a mortal creature with strictly limited supplies of ink, pens and fooskin at his disposal.
A generalization, then:
It was a quiet, peaceful day on Untunchilamon, where Frangoni was having intercourse with Dub, and Dub with Janjuladoola, and Janjuladoola with Toxteth, and Toxteth with Ashmarlan, and Ashmarlan with Slando-lin, without any sign of riot or civil disturbance.
Even so, it was not, of course, quiet and peaceful for everyone.
It was not, for example, peaceful for the conjuror Odolo, who was having yet another painfully frank interview with his bank manager. Nor was it quiet and peaceful for Threp Sodakik, a hapless fisherman, who was being torn to pieces by sharks in the lagoon waters just south of Island Scimitar. Others embroiled in turmoil, strife and barrat include Yilda, the mate of the corpse-master Uckermark, for Yilda was busy driving a group of teenaged drummers from her doorstep with the help of a gutting knife and a kraken club.
As for the Princess Sabitha, why, she had been kidnapped — snatched in the streets by a group of adolescent drummers from Marthandorthan — and was being held in a captivity which she bitterly resented.
(Do not worry. The princess will escape, even though this history will not chronicle the event; and we will meet her later in these pages, and find her aristocratic beauty unmarred and her matchless hauteur as imposing as ever.)
Furthermore, if we were to attempt an exhaustive catalogue of those currently unquiet and unpeaceful, we would have to mention the bullman Log Jaris, who was arguing with the drug dealer Firfat Labrat about the question of alleged non-payment of certain beer-buying debts; and Ox No Zan, who was thrashing and screaming in his sleep as he endured nightmares in which Doctor Death the dentist played a prominent role; and Dolglin Chin Xter, who was struggling to stay alive as hepatitis and malaria did their best to overwhelm him; and the market gardener Pa Po Pep who was staring at a chancre on his shaft and wondering if it was syphilis (it was, and in due course he would die of it); and Dunash Labrat, who was berating his son Ham for misplacing his favourite bee-smoking pot.
And other individuals could be mentioned, for the above list is far from complete.
However, if the historian can be allowed a generalization:
It was a quiet, peaceful day on Untunchilamon. It was quietest and most peaceful of all in those parts of Untunchilamon which were uninhabited; but even the most populous region of the island was tranquil and unagitated. That most populous region was of course Injiltaprajura, the city to be found (then and now) on the Laitemata Harbour at the southern end of the island.
It was a quiet, peaceful day on Untunchilamon, and it was also hot.
It was a hot day?
It was a day on Untunchilamon, so what else could it have been if not hot?
It was a hot day, and Master Ek was in a bad mood.
But it was not the sweating humidity which had put Master Ek in a bad mood, nor the restless night occasioned by the repeated onslaughts of vampiric insects which had taken advantage of a tear in his mosquito net.
Nor was it the drumming, the relentless drumming of the discontented adolescents of Injiltaprajura.
Ah, the drums! The drums!
Tok-tok-thuk! Tok-tok-thuk…!
The drums!
Tok-tok-thuk! Tok-tok-thuk…!
Mesmeric pulse of monomania and menace.
Tok-tok-thuk! Tok-tok-thuk…!
The horror! The horror!
Dui Tin Char, head of the Inland Revenue, felt the pulse of those infernal instruments in the marrow of his bones as he tried to sleep by day after a sleepless night. The bullman Log Jaris heard those drums as he (having finished his argument with the drug dealer Firfat Labrat) quit the Xtokobrokotok and stumped away through the streets of Marthandorthan. The inimitable Yilda heard those drums as she looked for blood on the kraken club she had used to such good effect; for, though she had driven a pack of drummers from her doorstep, they had not gone far, and were drumming again just around the corner.
Tok-tok-thuk! Tok-tok-thuk…!
Tok — tok — toketa — toketa — toketa — tok!
Will they not stop that infernal noise? Will they not But enough of this atmospheric backgrounding! It is totally irrelevant to our present purpose, which is to introduce Master Ek into this history; and the reason it is irrelevant is that Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek heard those drums not at all.
Not because he was deaf.
But because the drums were not there to be heard.
Not where he was.
And where was he?
Why, he was exactly where we would expect to find him; which is to say, he was in his house on Hojo Street, that road which follows the line of Pokra Ridge. That thoroughfare was the site of Injiltaprajura’s prime real estate. Naturally the pink palace is there. Also, Aquitaine Varazchavardan had a villa there. And a great many temples were there located. And adolescent drummers were not to be found anywhere along that road, for temples and villa-keepers alike had servants with sticks who were quite prepared to sally forth to assault any drummer should a single ‘tok — tok — tuk’ or ‘tok — tok — thuk’ be heard.
So, while it is disappointing to have to abandon the attractively melodramatic line which we began to develop so nicely above, the historian must favour truth over drama; and the fact is that Master Ek was singularly untroubled by drums or by drummers. First, because there was none to be heard anywhere near his house. And second because, if the truth be told, Ek rather liked drums; and, when they were to be heard, Ek found their rhythms comforting rather than disturbing.
So we must seek elsewhere for the source of Ek’s discomfort.
After seeking elsewhere, the historian presents the world with the following datum: the proximate cause of the discontent experienced by Nadalastabstala Ban-raithanchumun Ek was the Empress Justina’s undisturbed enjoyment of life, health and liberty.
‘The female Thrug is a witch.’
So said Master Ek, whose audience consisted of selected members of Injiltaprajura’s Cabal House. These individuals listened with every appearance of attentive respect; and in this case appearances were not at all deceptive. Ek was not a prepossessing figure, for he was a gnarled and diminutive man with age-twisted features and hunched shoulders; nevertheless, he was one of the most dangerous power brokers on Untunchilamon, and hence was comfortably seated while the sorcerers stood before him like supplicants or penitents.
‘Not only is she a witch,’ continued Ek, ‘she is monstrous in her habits and her appetites.’
While Ek did not specify the object of his displeasure, all knew that he referred to Justina Thrug, and not to her libidinous twin sister Theodora.
‘She must,’ continued Ek, ‘be killed.’
The assembled sorcerers received this in silence. Their apparent apathy was encouraged by the stifling heat of the day. The end of the Long Dry had been marked by the advent of strenuous winds, which on some days had reached gale force; but today there was no wind but for a shuffling waffling breeze which merely served to shunt the air from one corner of the room to the next.
The room in question was large and high-gabled; it occupied the entire upper storey of Master Ek’s mansion atop Pokra Ridge, and afforded outlookers with the most marvellous views. Today nobody had any appetite for those views.
‘If no action is taken against the female Thrug,’ said Ek, ‘then Aldarch the Third will no doubt display his displeasure in due course. It is known that inertia annoys him. This is but one of the reasons why the Thrug must be killed.’
‘Do you order as much?’ said one of the wonderworkers from the Cabal House.
A foolish question, which Master Ek did not bother to answer. He was not going to order anyone to murder the Thrug. Not when the Hermit Crab might take exception to such orders. The misfortune which had befallen Dui Tin Char lay some time in the past; Tin Char’s dislocated shoulders were once again functional. Nevertheless, nobody had forgotten what had been done to the head of the Inland Revenue. And tales of people who had in the past been turned inside out were also fresh in the minds of Injiltaprajura’s inhabitants.
‘There is,’ said another of the sorcerers, ‘the matter of the protector who guarantees Justina’s flesh.’
This was of course an oblique reference to the dangers posed by the Crab.
‘Forgive me if I am mistaken,’ said Ek, ‘but I have heard that the Thrug’s protector lives on the island of Jod. Unless my informants are mistaken, its primary interest in life is its belly. Apart from that, it wishes only solitude and silence. Are those modest needs so difficult to guarantee?’
‘If I may venture to say so,’ ventured one of the bolder sorcerers, ‘the Crab is not amenable to bribery.’
‘What I meant,’ said Ek, ‘is that it displays remarkably little curiosity. It has no spies and agents. It receives no reports. It listens to no gossip. It eats. It meditates. One may presume it also defecates. That is the sum of its existence.’
‘So?’
‘Are you familiar,’ said Ek, ‘with the principle of quarantine?’
He smiled, showing black teeth. Then he fumbled with a small and equally black pouch. His gnarled, arthritic fingers opened it with difficulty and extracted a quantity of tobacco, an addictive narcotic herb personally imported by Ek at immense expense. The Janjuladoola grey of his fingers, darkened already by liver spots, was further stained with the yellow-orange of nicotine, one of the minor symptoms of this rare addiction.
‘Do you propose…’
So began one of the wonder-workers, but a look from Master Ek silenced him. Ek wished to propose nothing. He desired the wonder-workers to do their own thinking; he sought to avoid taking explicit responsibility for generating Crab-defeating stratagems, lest the Crab some day call him to account for his misdemeanours.
Ek rolled himself a ‘cigarette’, which is a quantity of tobacco compressed by finger-strength and rolled in a tube of paper. Standing by Ek’s chair was a tri-table, one of the notoriously rickety and unstable pieces of furniture favoured by Janjuladoola culture; this civilization considers the gross bulk of the earth to be unclean, hence scorns any object which is or which appears to be solidly rooted to the earth. Atop the tri-table was a casket of green bamboo. Ek opened this, withdrew a hot coal with a pair of soot-tipped tweezers, blew upon the coal until it glowed cherry-red, then lit his cigarette.
While Master Ek smoked, the wonder-workers considered the possibility of placing the island of Jod under quarantine. It was certainly not impossible. A quarantine would cut off all news to the Crab; and, providing its suspicions were not aroused, those forces loyal to Aldarch Three could do as they wished with the monstrous Thrug.
‘One anticipates,’ said one of the sorcerers carefully, ‘that meticulously planned quarantine regulations could resolve many of our present difficulties.’
‘However,’ said another, ‘there is a danger that a certain person will escape justice before such quarantine measures could be put in place.’
Ek smoked impassively. A casual observer might have thought that the nicotine of his addiction had somehow succeeded in staining his eyes, for these were a pale orange strangely flecked with green. However, this oddity had a genetic foundation. Ek was a mutant, though his divergence from the Janjuladoola norm began and ended with his eyes. He had never passed on this trait, and indeed was doomed to die without progeny; which was unfortunate, since those eyes had proved their superiority by retaining their acuteness right into his old age.
(Ek was seventy. Is this old age? His flesh would answer in the affirmative. And, while many of the old complain that they inwardly feel as fresh as they did at twenty, Ek himself felt worn, weary and infinitely ancient.)
While Ek thus smoked, his audience waited in an uncomfortable silence. Ek’s strategic silence tempted them to take further risks, to propose plots, schemes and conspiracies; but even the boldest spirits amongst the wonder-workers felt they had dared sufficient dangers already.
Ek pursed his lips, as if to speak. The sorcerers waited for revelation. Ek blew a smoke-ring.
‘Thrug,’ said one of the sorcerers, pushed into speech by the tensions generated by silence, ‘may escape.’
Ek stared at him through a haze of grey smoke. Slowly, slowly, the curling-coiling smoke dissipated. Ek outbreathed again, once more veiling his face.
‘She may escape,’ continued the sorcerer, ‘because her tame wizard is building her a ship. A special ship. An airship, we believe. It looks like a — a bird’s nest. It is being constructed atop the pink palace.’
The end of Ek’s cigarette glowed red as he drew upon it. A crinkling brown line moved fractionally, eating its way down the cigarette. Ek breathed out, studied the lengthening ash at the end of his cigarette, tapped the ash into a clam shell, coughed harshly, spat, then said: ‘Priests have no powers. No temporal powers. That may change. When Aldarch the Third triumphs in Talonsklavara, it may change with remarkable rapidity. For the moment we priests merely watch. What others do is their business. But what they do and what they do not will be noted. Noted and remembered. In time.’
At the conclusion of this speech, Ek folded his hands in his lap and studied the sorcerers assembled in his presence. Studied them as if he were committing their faces to memory. He had given them a clear message. He had not told them to move against Justina Thrug; fear of the Crab had restrained him, though the letter of the law was his excuse. But he had given them clear warning that he would remember everything they did or did not do.
And, in due course, would give evidence.
‘Go,’ said Ek. ‘You are dismissed.’
The sorcerers made reverence to Master Ek then departed with troubled minds. Ek had made his wishes clear. They were to move against Justina Thrug. Furthermore, he had indicated how it could be done without arousing the wrath of the Crab; a meticulously maintained cordon sanitaire around the island of Jod would suffice to keep the Crab in ignorance. As for the question of the flying ship, that was something for the sorcerers to attend to themselves.
It could be done.
But the prospect of a head-on clash with Justina and her allies was scarcely something the wonder-workers welcomed, for they feared her abilities greatly, and suspected that moves against her might well compromise their own health and happiness.
Not to mention their lives.
As the sorcerers departed, the idling winds strengthened to a purposive breeze which held the promise of better things yet to come; but this good omen failed to lift the spirits of those upon whom Ek had laid such a heavy burden.
While Master Ek had been conducting his lengthy and theatrical audience with certain senior wonder-workers, a much younger and comparatively inexperienced sorcerer, Nixorjapretzel Rat by name, had been waiting for a personal interview with Ek. When Ek dismissed the wonder-workers, Rat heard them depart, their footsteps clunking down the stairs on the southern side of the house, their querulous voices raised in unintelligible conversation which faded out of earshot as they trooped along Hojo Street.
But Rat himself was not called to Ek’s presence.
Instead, he was left to stew.
Nixorjapretzel Rat was sitting on a chair. The chair was on a verandah. This shaded portico was on the northern side of Master Ek’s mansion atop Pokra Ridge, and afforded the outlooker with a view across Master Ek’s back garden, across a steeply descending slope largely given over to market gardens, and then across a great many leagues of the wastelands of Zolabrik.
Nixorjapretzel Rat had scant appetite for the view.
Another desire temporarily dominated his existence.
Nixorjapretzel Rat wished to urinate.
This urge possessed him sixty times a day, though until the present troubles he had scarcely needed to relieve himself more than twice or thrice between the sounding of the sun bells and bat bells. Young Nixorjapretzel had already taken himself off to a quack, who had pronounced him the victim of boblobdidobaltharbi (for which read nervous enuresis). The quack had recommended a long holiday combined with a programme of massage and sunbathing. Unfortunately Rat had no time for a holiday, had suffered a slipped disk on his first and only visit to a professional masseur, and already endured regrettable side effects as a result of his exposure to the sun.
‘Excuse me,’ said Rat to a passing servant, ‘is there a place where I might avail myself of the second minor pleasure?’
The grey-skinned servant expressed incomprehension in the Janjuladoola manner; that is to say, he raised his hands to nipple-height and twiddled his fingers.
‘Have you no ears?’ said Rat, mortally offended.
It happened that Nixorjapretzel Rat was of the Janjuladoola people. Not only was he of that race: he also had the honour of having been bom in Obooloo itself. While he had dwelt in the cold and mountainous realms of Ang, his skin had always displayed the luxuriant grey which was his birthright. But Untunchi-lamon’s harsh and relentless sun had wrought curious changes in his pigmentation, giving his skin a slightly reddish tinge. In consequence, young Nixorjapretzel was sometimes mistaken for an Ebrell Islander, which led members of the Superior Race to pretend that his efforts to speak the Superior Tongue fell short of comprehension.
The servant twiddled his fingers some more. Then departed. Rat raised his hands, pointed in the direction of the retreating racist, and muttered:
‘Vo. Vo bigamo. Vo bigamo skoreeth. Japata!’
On an instant, the back of the servant’s shirt disintegrated into a mass of seething colours. The servant cast a startled glance at Rat. Then fled. Leaving a cloud of harlequin butterflies flicker-floating in the air. Nixorjapretzel Rat was somewhat disappointed, for he had meant the servant to be incinerated on the spot. On reflection, though, the sorcerer was inclined to be glad that his magic had gone wrong, for Master Ek might have been annoyed had one of his servants been reduced to a heap of smouldering ashes, and Ek’s annoyance might swiftly have proved lethal for Rat.
The butterflies scattered on the ship-shifting winds now blowing across the city of Injiltaprajura. The same winds stirred through the shrubbery of the gardens of Mansion Ek; but with much reduced force, since walls sheltered those gardens. In those gardens, some thin and stunted sprite bamboo struggled for survival. This cold-climate plant had been imported to Ang from the northern continent of Tameran; it thrived in the cold uplands which surrounded Obooloo, but barely survived in Untunchilamon’s realms of fever heat and sunstroke. Still, Master Ek’s gardeners did their best to make the plant grow, for it was greatly prized for its grey foliage.
The paltry plantings of sprite were overtopped by luxuriant stands of fist-thick green bamboos native to the tropics. The tight-furled spears of fresh upthrusts of green spoke of fervent growth, of prodigal fecundity, of life imbued with a positively copulatory passion. Such brazen spear-thrust lust roused uneasy thoughts in the fidgeting Rat, who had committed himself to celibacy for fear of contracting some of the lethal venereal diseases which ran rife amongst Untunchilamon’s population.
Standing clear of both species of bamboo were plantings of banana trees, their broad leaves shredded to fronds by recent fraughts of bad weather. Like the bamboos, they too yielded to the whims of the light-lilting flirts and quirks of wind which stooped beneath the guardian walls; but the paw-paw trees, on the other hand, seemed to dwell in a different climate, for their close-stacked leaves were reluctant to answer to such cajolery. As for the lone needle-rose, pride and joy of Master Ek’s gardener, that spine-spiked monstrosity remained stubbornly immobile; for no freak of weather could move a needle-rose, not the occasional whisper-winds of Fistavlir nor the massed force of those full-fledged hurricanes which sometimes (once a century on average) descended upon the city of Injiltaprajura.
Nixorjapretzel Rat began to contemplate a quick expedition down to the garden so he could piss upon the needle-rose, or hide himself in among the banana trees and relieve himself in their comparative privacy. While he vacillated, the opportunity was lost, for Master Ek at last put in an appearance.
‘Jan Rat,’ said Ek. ‘How nice that you could put in an appearance.’
At that, Master Ek smiled. His smile was not a pretty one, for his teeth were blackened by the mercury treatment used in Obooloo to cure syphilis. To cure? In a manner of speaking. Statistically, the outcome is that one-third are cured, one-third are killed and one-third are left half-dead from mercury poisoning but with the vibrant life of their affliction unaffected.
‘I came as soon as I could,’ said Rat.
‘I’m sure you did, Jan Rat.’
Young Nixorjapretzel was already intensely irritated by Ek’s use of the slighting ‘Jan’, a Janjuladoola title properly applied only to children. But he durst not complain, for he was in the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous man on Untunchilamon. So he said:
‘My Master knows I am ever at his service.’
‘You claim to read my mind, do you?’ said Ek. ‘Are you always so free in taking liberties with your superiors?’
‘I meant no offence,’ said Rat, taking a backward step.
He bumped against an amphora seated upon a rickety tri-table just behind him. The amphora fell, shattered, scattering a mix of pulped paw-paw and mashed banana across the verandah. With many protestations of innocence and apology, a grovelling Rat began to clean up the soft and slushy mess, or at least to try to.
‘Stop that,’ said Master Ek impatiently. ‘Sit! There, in that chair! Sit, and do nothing.’
Nixorjapretzel Rat immediately precipitated himself into the cane chair indicated by Ek. Who wasted no further time, but flourished a sheet of paper in front of his incontinent victim.
‘What is this?’ said Ek.
‘Ricepaper,’ said Rat. ‘Ricepaper washed with purple.’
‘It’s writing, fool. Is it not? What says this writing?’ ‘Somethin g, something,’ gabbled Rat. ‘Something in, oh, Toxteth maybe. Dub? Ash marlan?’
‘Slandolin,’ said Ek coldly. ‘I am reliably informed that you read that language. Am I in error?’
‘I… I…’
‘I knew your father,’ said Ek. ‘He was a translator, was he not? A man of great scholarship. He was very fond of you, too. It is fortunate that the Great Enfolding claimed him before you grew to the estate of manhood, for surely the sight of your quivering flesh and incompetent tongue would give him the greatest displeasure. The language is Slandolin, and what it says is known to me, for I have had it translated into the Superior Tongue for my own enlightenment. Read!’
Nixorjapretzel Rat obeyed. With every appearance of the greatest care imaginable, he studied the single sheet of ricepaper which Ek had given him, a piece of paper so clogged with miniscule purple-penned letters that at a glance it looked as if it had been washed with ink.
‘Tell me now,’ said Ek, treasuring the words on his tongue as if they were portentous in the extreme, ‘what says this text?’
‘It is a madman’s garbling of a fragment of recent history,’ said Rat.
‘A madman wrote this?’ said Ek. ‘An interesting hypothosis. What brings you to believe as much?’
‘Because none of this is true,’ cried Rat. ‘It’s libels, that’s all. It has me dealing with Varazchavardan, running for him, walking for him, doing his errands, bringing him news. Whereas I repudiate the man.’
Ek looked upon the babbling Rat with disgust.
‘Save your lies for the courts of law,’ said Ek. ‘You’re not on trial yet, least of all for treason. So we’ve no need for pretence. Your association with Varazchavardan is long, and my informants tell me that it continues yet. You’ve no need to dissemble, least of all with me. As yet, the time for punishment lies in the future. Some as yet may hope to avoid their just desserts.’
‘Just desserts?’ said the quivering Rat.
‘Torture,’ said Ek. ‘Torture to the point of death and then to the place beyond. This is the fate which will befall those who have leagued with traitors, with the enemies of the State, the enemies of our dearly beloved Aldarch Three. All such will suffer their doom unless they can earn themselves a pardon.’
‘Oh, earning,’ said Rat. ‘I’ll work, I’ll work, anything, I’ll do anything for pardon.’
‘So you admit it,’ said Ek. ‘You admit yourself a traitor or the associate of traitors, which amounts to the same thing.’
Rat gaped in dismay.
‘But — but you said-’
‘Fool!’ said Ek. ‘No! Stay in the chair. This is no time for grovelling, least of all at my feet.’
In the years of his increasing age, Ek no longer took pleasure in the grovellings of underlings, for his feet had lost the strength to kick them effectively.
‘What is it time for, then?’ said Rat, emboldened by the fact that Ek had spared him a kicking.
‘For work,’ said Ek. ‘Hard work for one who wishes to earn himself a pardon. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to seek ou t the rest of this manuscript.’ ‘The rest?’ said Rat.
‘This piece of ricepaper is but a fraction of what I suspect to be a much greater whole. A Secret History of Untunchilamon. I suspect this Secret History has been written by one whose motives as yet remain a mystery, but who nevertheless appears to have sources of information which have disclosed to him at least something of the extent of the treason which pervades the ranks of high and low alike on Untunchilamon. Your mission, then, is to find the rest of this text and the person who wrote it, and bring both of them to me.’
‘And if I don’t accept?’ said Rat. ‘Don’t accept the mission, I mean?’
‘A treason trial this very day and your. execution on the morrow,’ said Ek.
‘Oh, I accept, I accept!’
‘Then go!’ said Ek.
Rat went.
In his haste, young Nixorjapretzel slipped on the still-spreading ooze of mushed banana and pa\y-paw and sprawled flat on his face. Provoked beyond endurance, Ek kicked him, albeit ineffectually. Rat scuttled away on all fours, found the stairs, precipitated himself down them then fled.
Once the Rat had gone, old master Ek stumped away to his favourite smoking chair where he rolled himself a cigarette and endeavoured to relax. But relaxation did not come easily, for Ek was in the grip of a great excitement.
What had roused this old and arthritic man to such a passion? Why, it was the manuscript which he had discussed with Nixorjapretzel Rat. But why should this in itself prove a source of such stimulation? Because of what was written on one fragment of that manuscript, a short and incomplete fragment which Ek had not shown to Rat.
Now that Rat had gone, Nadalastabstala Banraithan-chumun Ek once again pulled that secret fragment of ricepaper from his tobacco pouch. He unfolded it slowly, for his arthritic fingers felt as if splinters of bone were floating loose in the joints, and this condition did not encourage speed.
Ek read it greedily for the thousandth time, his eyes of green-flecked orange deciphering the miniscule script with ease. Ek had once been a translator, and his decreptitude had as yet left him with his mastery of a dozen languages still intact. As a matter of strategy, he kept this mastery secret, which encouraged the unwary to betray themselves in his hearing as they discoursed in foreign tongues; one such language was Slandolin, which Ek could read with ease, though he pretended complete ignorance of this argot.
This was what was written on that piece of paper: *… to become immortal. Immortality is easily achieved if one has possession of an organic rectifier. On Untunchilamon…’
On Untunchilamon what?
Once again, Master Ek cursed the fact that his precious fragment ended where it did. Though Ek was old and wise, his frustration was scarcely different from that experienced by an eager adolescent who has bought the first book of one of those dreadful gladiator yarns peddled by the shameless Chulman Puro.
Our adolescent has reached the final page of this yarn, Vorn the Gladiator is in a dungeon which is lit only by the phosphorescence from the fifty rotting corpses which share his imprisonment. Gouts of dirty water are flooding into this oubliette from a breach in the wall. Vorn is chained to the floor with unbreakable shackles. Already the water has reached his mouth, and And here the story ends, with Chulman Puro grinning like a pirate, for he knows his victims have no alternative but to pay out good gold for the continuation of the story, or suffer the pangs of unsatiated curiosity ever afterwards.
Master Ek, not having any access to the continuation of the text, suffered absolute agonies of curiosity. What did the missing portion of the MS say? That Untunchilamon possessed one of these mysterious organic rectifiers? Or that it lacked such an arcanum?
As a matter of urgency, Master Ek intended to find out.
For Ek was staring mortality in the face.
And Ek did not wish to die.
Death is the common fate of all men. The fisherman Threp Sodakik lies dead in the lagoon with starfish browsing upon the bloody rags of his corpse. The market gardener Pa Po Pep looks at the emblem of death which adorns his shaft, then rubs it first with ice and then with fertilizer, but rightly suspects that neither of these desperate experiments will save him from ultimate extinction. Ox No Zan, moaning as he rubs his aching jaw, knows he will die of pain unless he goes to the dentist, but may quite possibly expire from sheer terror if he actually submits himself to Doctor Death’s probes and pincers.
Death is everywhere; and inevitable; and inescapable.
Or so it had always seemed to Master Ek.
But now, in a passion of hope, he imagined himself uncovering an ‘organic rectifier’, whatever that might be, and using that to make himself immortal.
From the above, it will be seen that Master Ek had seriously misled young Rat. Ek had no need of any mysterious manuscript to tell him who the traitors were; he had already drawn up a comprehensive schedule of tortures and executions which would commence as soon as the Thrug was overthrown. What interested him, what excited him to the point of frenzy, was the question of immortality.
And here the historian must once again call the reader’s attention to the proposition which introduced this chapter: namely, that there did not exist a clear-cut division between ‘Justina Thrug and her allies’ and ‘Justina’s enemies’. In the case of Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek, we have a man divided even within his own mind. On the one hand, he wished to destroy the Thrug because he hated her, and because Aldarch the Third would look favourably on such destruction. On the other hand, the temptations of immortality were such that, if this ‘organic rectifier’ came into his hands, he might wish to keep it from being confiscated by Aldarch the Third. And it was possible, just possible, that such defiance of the Mutilator of Yestron might ultimately force Master Ek into an alliance with the Empress Justina.