The Carpet Makers (27 page)

Wasra saw comprehension flash in the other man’s eyes and simply nodded. “We’re supposed to find out what happened to him. Man the armored vehicles; we’re going into the city to the Guild Hall.”

*   *   *

Soon three heavily armored vehicles rattled into the airlock on their caterpillar tread. Their motors emitted a powerful, low thrum, and standing next to them for more than a few moments caused pain in the pit of the stomach.

The side door of the front vehicle opened, and Wasra got in. The guild elders on the landing platform respectfully made room as the three tanks rolled down the ramp, one after the other.

“That’s the difference,” said Wasra. He said it to Stribat, but, in reality, it was directed to nobody in particular. “A life meant nothing to the Emperor, less than nothing. And now? General Karswant is waiting on board the
Trikood
 … everything is already prepared for the return flight to present our expedition report to the Council—but he doesn’t want to leave without knowing what happened to this one man, this Nillian. Knowing that gives me a good feeling. Somehow it makes me…” He fumbled the right word.

“Proud,” Stribat suggested.

“Proud, yes. It makes me proud.”

When they were on the ground, the captain ordered a short stop. “We’ll take one of the elders along; he can direct us to the Guild Hall.” He pushed open the side door and waved to one of the old men who happened to be nearby. The Guild Elder approached without hesitation and willingly got in.

“I am so happy you’ve finally come,” he began to chatter as the column got under way. “It’s very unpleasant for us when the Emperor’s transport ships don’t arrive at the appointed time, because then our warehouses overflow with hair carpets.… Oh, that happened once before, I remember—I was still a child. It was four years before the Imperial Shipsmen returned. That was bad … a real trial for us. And back then, the Guild had bigger warehouses than today, you know. Today, everything’s more difficult than it used to be.…”

Wasra stared at the stooped old man in his torn cloak, who was looking around the interior of the vehicle with his silvery, almost blind eyes and was babbling away like an excited child.

“Tell me,” the captain interrupted him, “what’s your name?”

The old man made a trace of a bow. “My name is Lenteiman, Shipsman.”

“Lenteiman, did you hear what my crew were explaining to you back there?”

The Guild Elder raised his brow, and his eyes sought uncertainly for the direction from which the commander was speaking. His mouth gaped open carelessly, exposing a row of black tooth stumps. It appeared that he didn’t even grasp what Wasra was talking about.

“Lenteiman, we are not the shipsmen of the Emperor. And you don’t need to expect the transport ships anymore, because they will never come again—not in four and not in four hundred years.” Even though I can’t really be sure of that, Wasra thought to himself. “You don’t need to tie any more hair carpets for the Emperor, because the Emperor is dead. The Empire no longer exists.”

The old man was silent for a moment, as though he had to let the sound of the words run through his mind. Then a giggle bubbled up and burst from his throat. He raised his head toward the pallid glow of the sun.

“But the sun is still shining, isn’t it? You shipsmen are a strange bunch and have strange ways. What you’re saying would be heresy here. You’d better tell your men to watch their tongues when they go into town. Even though people will put up with a lot from you, of course, because everybody is so happy that you’ve finally come.” He chuckled again.

Wasra and Stribat exchanged astonished glances.

“Sometimes I have the feeling,” Stribat muttered, “that Denkalsar was an optimist.” Denkalsar was an almost mythical figure; it was said that, several hundred years ago, a man by that name had actually lived and written the book whose title gave the rebel movement its name:
The Silent Wind.
Since the fall of the Emperor, however, reading Denkalsar had fallen out of fashion, and Wasra was surprised that Stribat even knew him.

“Lenteiman,” he asked, “what do you usually do with heretics?”

The old man made a vague, broad gesture with his clawlike hands. “We hang them, of course, as the Law commands.”

“Do you ever just put them in prison?”

“In cases of minor heresy, sure. But seldom.”

“And are records kept of the trials and the hangings?”

“What a question! Naturally, and all the books are kept, just as the Law of the Emperor requires.”

“In the Guild Hall?”

“Yes.”

Satisfied, Wasra nodded. He began to enjoy the growling and vibrating of the tank engines that shook every fiber of his body; it seemed to him to be a sensation of superior, unassailable power. He was arriving with three armored tanks, with soldiers and with weapons that were immeasurably superior to anything on this planet. Without opposition, he would enter the building that represented the core of this society, and he would do whatever he wanted there. He liked this idea. His gaze turned to the light brown row of huts and low houses toward which they were headed, and he enjoyed the sensation of being a victor.

*   *   *

They reached the Guild Hall, which stood massive and awe-inspiring before them. Its gray-brown exterior walls sloped out like the walls of a bunker and had no windows, just narrow openings like defensive embrasures. In the shadow of the building was a large square that presented a remarkable sight: it looked as though a fair had been set up and had been waiting in vain for months for visitors, while all the exhibitors had slipped into a state of half-sleep. Carts of all descriptions stood wedged in at every angle—large, small, sumptuously ornamented and dilapidated, ugly armored wagons and open market carts. Large, shaggy draft animals huddled together everywhere and stared stupidly ahead while the drivers dozed on their coach-boxes. These were the caravans of the hair-carpet traders, gathered here to deliver the carpets to the Guild. Naturally, the arrival of the tanks brought movement to the tableau. Heads jerked up, whips were wielded, and bit by bit the wagons that had blocked the portal of the Guild Hall were rolled aside.

The portal doors stood wide open. Nevertheless, Wasra commanded that they stop outside the gate. He and Stribat would enter with the guild elder and a troop of armed men, while the other soldiers stood guard at the vehicles.

“It’s a wise decision to stop here,” croaked Lenteiman, “because there’s no more room in the courtyard—you know … the carpets…”

“Lenteiman, take us to the Guild High Priest,” Wasra demanded.

The old man nodded agreeably. “I am sure he’s eagerly waiting for you, Shipsman.”

Someone shoved open the door of the tank, and an almost unbearable stench of animal excrement assailed them. Wasra waited until the escort troops had taken position before leaving the vehicle. When he stepped onto the dusty ground of the square—the first time he had actually set foot on the planet—he could almost physically sense the eyes of the people on him. He avoided looking around. Stribat stepped up beside him, and then came the old man. With a nod, the captain ordered the escort to move ahead.

They passed through the gate. All around was an unnatural, frightening quiet. Wasra thought he heard someone in the crowd whispering that they didn’t look like Imperial Shipsmen. No matter how slow-witted the old men of the Guild might be and how much they might resist the truth with every fiber of their being, the common people always suspected exactly what was afoot and what their arrival portended.

Behind the gate was a small courtyard. It is probably called the Counting Court here, too, Wasra thought, as he saw an armored transport wagon being unloaded by several men. Reverently, they removed one hair carpet after another and stacked them in front of a man wearing the garb of a guildmaster, who compared each piece to the lading records with a snobbish air of precision. He gave only a cursory, dismissive glance at the approaching soldiers; then he noticed Lenteiman and hastened to bow deeply, along with his assistants. Only the trader, a massive man who was watching the whole procedure with a dull stare, remained unmoved.

The sight of the knee-high stack of hair carpets made Wasra shudder. Seeing a single hair carpet was positively distressing when one understood how it was made: that a carpetmaker had worked on it for his entire lifetime, using exclusively the hair of his wives and daughters; that he had spent his entire youth weaving the carpet backing and designing the pattern whose completion would cost him the rest of his life; that he had first knotted the outlines of the design, whose color was determined by the hair of his headwife, so that later, if he had daughters or subwives, he could fill in the various color fields in the design; and that finally—with bent back, gouty fingers, and nearly blind eyes—he would bind the entire carpet with a border of the curly hair he cut from his wives’ armpits.…

A single hair carpet was an awe-inspiring sight. A whole stack of carpets, on the other hand, was a monstrosity.

Another gate, and behind it a short, dark passageway, so broad that it seemed like a room. The escort soldiers scanned about suspiciously, and Wasra noted their conduct with satisfaction.

They reached the inner courtyard, and now it was clear why it had been so dark in the passageway. In the courtyard, great mountains of carpets were stacked everywhere. Wasra had expected a sight like this, but it still took his breath away. Neatly piled, layer upon layer, the stacks rose taller than a man. And side by side, these carpet towers filled the courtyard from one corner to the other. The plunder of a planet for the last three years. Pondering the implications could make a man lose his senses.

He stepped up to one of the towers and tried to count. There must have been at least two hundred carpets in every stack. He guessed the area of the courtyard and calculated in his head. Fifty thousand hair carpets. He felt sick inside; a sort of panic welled up and threatened to overwhelm him.

“Where’s the high priest?” he barked at the elder, sounding louder and more threatening than he had intended. “Where can we find him?”

“Come with me, Shipsmen.”

With surprising nimbleness, Lenteiman slipped through the gaps between the piles of rugs and the courtyard wall. Wasra signaled the escort to bring up the rear and followed the old man. He felt an almost overpowering impulse to strike out, to knock over the carpets piled up higher than his head, and to flog the Guild Elder. Insanity—all of it, insanity. They had fought and won, they had destroyed everything that could be destroyed of the Emperor’s realm, and still there was no end.… It just went on and on. For every step he took, a completed hair carpet was cut from its frame somewhere in this galaxy—even now. For every breath he drew, a newborn male child was slaughtered because a carpet maker was allowed to have only one son—maybe on one of the numberless planets they had not yet visited, or even on one of the planets they had visited without being believed. It seemed impossible to stop the flood of carpets.

The farther they went, the more pervasive the odor emanating from the hair carpets was—a heavy, rancid smell reminiscent of spoiled fat and fermenting trash. Wasra knew it was not the hair that stank so, but the impregnating agent, which preserved the rugs for an astonishingly long time.

Finally, they reached another gloomy opening in the wall. A short stairway led upward. Lenteiman gestured for quiet and led the way, reverently, as though he were treading on holy ground.

The room into which he led them was large and dark, lighted only by the red glow of a fire burning in a metal bowl in the center of the room. The low ceiling forced them to stand with humbly bowed heads, but the oppressive heat and acrid smoke brought out pearls of sweat on their foreheads. Wasra reached nervously for the weapon on his belt, just to reassure himself that it was there.

Lenteiman bowed in the direction of the weakly glowing fire. “Venerable Master. It is Lenteiman who offers you greetings. I bring you the captain of the Imperial Shipsmen, who desires to speak with you.”

The response was a rustling and an indistinct movement in the vicinity of the fire. Only now did Wasra perceive next to the metal fire-stand a couch, not unlike a child’s cradle, and among the blankets and furs appeared the skull-like head and the right arm of an ancient man. When he opened his eyes, Wasra saw blind, silvery pupils reflecting the glow of the fire.

“What a rare honor…,” the old man whispered. His voice sounded frail and distant, as though he were addressing them from another world. “Greetings to you, Shipsmen of the Emperor. My name is Ouam. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

Wasra exchanged nervous glances with Stribat. He decided to waste no time explaining to the Guild High Priest that they were by no means shipsmen of the Emperor, but rebels. At least not until they had concluded their mission. He cleared his throat.

“Greetings, Venerable Ouam. My name is Wasra. I asked to speak with you because I have an important question.”

Ouam seemed to be paying more attention to the sound of the foreign voice than to the meaning of the words. “Ask.”

“I seek a man named Nillian. I want to know from you, whether a man by this name was charged with heresy or executed in the past three years.”

“Nillian?” The high priest rocked his desiccated skull back and forth in thought. “I have to consult the books. Dinio?”

Wasra was beginning to wonder how this blind old man could manage to consult any books at all, when another face appeared out of the shadow of the couch. It was the face of a youth, who looked at the visitors with cool disdain before bending down to the old man to hear instructions whispered in his ear. He nodded assiduously, almost like an eager dog, and jumped up, disappearing through a door somewhere at the rear of the room.

He returned right away with a thick tome under his arm and squatted down on the floor next to the firestand to examine the entries. It didn’t take long. Again he bent over the couch to exchange whispers with the old man. Ouam’s smile was the ghostly grin of a death’s-head.