Ardmore took advantage of a long unbroken passageway to check his communications. “Great Lord Mota,” he said, “dost thou hear thy servant?” The commander glanced at him, but said nothing.
The muffled inner voice answered at once, “Got you, Chief. You are hooked in through the temple in the capitol.” It was Thomas’ voice.
“The Lord Mota speaks, the servant hears. Truly it is written that little pitchers have long ears.’
“You mean the monkeys can overhear you?”
“Yea, verily, now and forever. The Lord Mota will understand igpay atinlay?”
“Sure, Chief — pig latin. Take it slow if you can.”
“At-thay is oodgay. Ore-may aterlay.” Satisfied, he desisted. Perhaps the PanAsians had a mike and a recorder on him even now. He hoped so, for he thought it would give them a useless headache. A man has to grow up in a language to be able to understand it scrambled.
The Prince Royal had been impelled by curiosity as much as by concern when he ordered the apprehension of the High Priest of Mota. It was true that affairs were not entirely to his liking, but he felt that his advisers were hysterical old women. When had a slave religion proved anything but an aid to the conqueror? Slaves needed a wailing wall; they went into their temples, prayed to their gods to deliver them from oppression, and came out to work in the fields and factories, relaxed and made harmless by the emotional catharsis of prayer.
“But,” one of his advisers had pointed out, “it is always assumed that the gods do nothing to answer those prayers.”
That was true; no one expected a god to climb down off his pedestal and actually perform. “What, if anything, has this god Mota done? Has anyone seen him?”
“No, Serene One, but — ”
“Then what has he done?”
“It is difficult to say. It is impossible to enter their temples — ”
“Did I not give orders not to disturb the slaves in their worship?” The Prince’s tones were perilously sweet.
“True. Serene One, true,” he was hastily assured, “nor have they been, but your secret police have been totally unable to enter in order to check up for you, no matter how cleverly they were disguised.”
“So? Perhaps they were clumsy. What stopped them?”
The adviser shook his head. “That is the point, Serene One. None can remember what happened.”
“What is that you say? — but that is ridiculous. Fetch me one to question.”
The adviser spread his hands. “I regret, sire — ”
“So? Of course, of course — peace be to their spirits.” He smoothed an embroidered silken panel that streamed down his chest. While he thought, his eye was caught by ornately and amusingly carved chessmen set up on a table at his elbow. Idly he tried a pawn in a different square. No, that was not the solution; white to move and checkmate in four moves — that took five. He turned back. “It might be well to tax them.”
“We have already tried — ”
“Without my permission?” The Prince’s voice was gentler than before.
Sweat showed on the face of the other.
“If it were an error, Serene One, we wished the error to be ours.”
“You think me capable of error?” The Prince was the author of the standard text on the administration of subject races, written while a young provincial governor in India. “Very well, we will pass it. You taxed them, heavily I presume — what then?”
“They paid it, sire.”
“Triple it.”
“I am sure they would pay it, for — ”
“Make it tenfold. Set it so high they can not pay it. ”
“But Serene One, that is the point. The gold with which they pay is chemically pure. Our doctors of temporal wisdom tell us that this gold is made, transmuted. There is no limit to the tax they can pay. In fact,” he went on hurriedly, “it is our opinion, subject always to the correction of superior wisdom” — he bowed quickly — “that this is not a religion at all, but scientific forces of an unknown sort!”
“You are suggesting that these barbarians have greater scientific attainments than the Chosen Race?”