“I think what we’ve already found out will be more than adequate.” Veswees yawned hugely. “We’ve already found out all we needed for the machines to do their job. And we’ve kept the cargo machines to bring stuff out of the caverns.”
Jeorfy stopped posing and sat down, his face serious. “Right until the last, I doubted we’d find enough citations to cover the whole Tribunal. I can’t understand how they could have let things like that become a matter of record.”
Veswees grinned, showing his teeth. “They had to record it. Their continued lives depended on bookkeeping. So much blood credited to this one, so much blood for that one. The names and dates of each and every woman who had been furnished by this or that member of the Tribunal, every daughter, every wife, every abducted housemaid they sent off to be slaughtered . . .”
“Sickening,” Jeorfy said, making a face.
“It’ll be behind us soon. Then we can go on to something else.”
“Like what?”
Veswees glanced at Jeorfy from the corner of his eye. “The first thing I want to look into is seafaring technology.”
“Seafaring? Why do that?”
“Haven’t you noticed we’re losing a lot of dry land? The seas are rising.
“Not all that much,” said Jeorfy, tilting the crown over his other eye and rising to take another look at himself.
Veswees shook his head reprovingly. “I do hope you’re not considering starting a new monarchy?”
“I’m amusing myself,” said Jeorfy. “And why not!” He bent and turned, trying to get a good view of the rest of himself in the mirror. King Jeorfy, he muttered to himself, enjoying the idea. King Jeorfy the First! “But if you don’t want amusement, then you do whatever you like, partner. Whatever you like.”
“I’ve already done most of that,” Veswees murmured. “These last few days, I’ve had fun enough for anyone.”
In a hamlet near Havenor, the populace — only recently retired for the night — was awakened by a brazen voice calling, “Oyez, oyez, oyez, draw near and hear what it is right you should know, draw near and hear, draw near and hear . . .”
Men rolled out of bed cursing or frightened, as their characters dictated, drawing on their trousers and boots while they urged their women and children into hiding. The more belligerent among them picked up pitchforks or scythes or whatever other sharp or heavy implements were at hand and plunged out of their houses toward the village square. When they arrived, however, they found a device, one more exotic than threatening, occupying the steps of the town hall as it trumpeted its invitation. A few of the men shook their heads and turned back, only to be stopped by a voice like a trumpet.
“Fetch your wives, your children, your aged parents,” the machine blatted. “Hurry up, for I must take this message to twenty other towns by dawn. . . .” Seeing several who shook their heads and seemed determined to return to bed, the machine allowed bolts of lightning to spit from its eyes as it stamped its foot, crushing the stone of the steps.
So encouraged, the populace was hastily assembled, though at first it made little sense of the machine’s message. Only when the words “disappearing women” focused their attention did they begin to understand what was being said. On the third reiteration, as the brazen voice repeated the names of specific women and the names of the men who had taken the women and the reason the women had been taken, even the machine had difficulty outshouting the uproar. During every lull in the tumult, however, it went on repeating the message until every person present understood each and every fact that Jeorfy and Veswees, by use of the Lord Paramount’s code book, had extracted from the files: Such and such a noble had abducted such and such a woman and had provided her to the Mahahmbi for such and such a purpose. Such other noble had taken such other woman, and this daughter had been sent for that father, and this young mother for that grandfather, and these several ones for the Lord Paramount, and that one for the Shah of Mahahm, and so on and so on. The catalog was in mid-repetition when one very large, red-faced farmer (a sometime-malghaste on duty in Haven) lifted his scythe and cried loudly, “Enough. We know enough! To the home of the Duke of Merdune! Follow me!”