Shaka II Page 6

  And that afternoon he designed the flag of the Zulu Empire, which displayed images of both Nandi and a Zulu spear and shield.

  I had known Tchaka for most of his life, and Nandi-this bizarre alien animal-was the only living thing toward which he had ever shown affection, quite possibly because she was the only thing that had ever shown him true affection. He had always been alone, yet now Nandi was at every staff meeting, she accompanied him on every excursion to other worlds, she slept in his room, and when he addressed the Empire she was always at his side. It was as if he had stored up a lifetime of affection, afraid to bestow it upon any human, and now he had found a recipient for it. No misbehavior on her part was ever punished, and every accident was forgiven.

  The same could not be said for his subjects.

  A single critical word against Tchaka was the equivalent of a death sentence. And like his predecessor, he didn’t believe in quietly removing his enemies; he wanted potential enemies to know exactly what they could expect.

  His favorite method of execution was to impale the still-living malefactor in the middle of the city square where everyone could see the punishment being carried out. Once-only once-a friend of an impaled man put him out of his agony with a burst from a laser pistol.

  And two hours later, that Samaritan had replaced his friend on the cruel sharpened stake.

  No one kept count-or at least no one made the count public-but in the first year of the Empire more than a thousand men and women were sentenced to very public, very painful deaths. At the same time, our forces continued to increase in size-some thought enlistment increased primarily because able-bodied citizens felt it would get them farther away from their monarch. Yet no leader ever treated his military better than Tchaka did. The newsdisks and holos were filled with stories of Tchaka, often with Nandi tucked under his arm, bestowing medals and honors upon his troops.

  Earth was still fighting its war with the chlorine breathers, who had brought allies into the battle, and neither side had any time to deal with us. We assimilated two or three worlds a month, and Tchaka declared our sector of space off-limits to all life forms, oxygen and chlorine breathers alike. At first neither side believed him; after we blew two or three of their ships away they got the idea.

  It was after a staff meeting one morning that I found myself alone in his office with Tchaka, while Nandi perched on his desk and stared hypnotically at me as if I was her next meal.

  “I have a question,” he said.

  “The King is allowed to ask a question,” I replied.

  “I gave a speech yesterday.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I did not see you in attendance.”

  “You gave it in the square, surrounded by impaled corpses,” I said disgustedly.

  “They were past objecting,” he said with an amused smile. “Why do you object?”

  “Do you know the last monarch to impale his enemies?” I said.

  “The first Tchaka.”

  “Before that.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me?” he said.

  “Vlad Dracul,” I replied. “He was known as Vlad the Impaler, and was such a monster that he served as the model for the fictional Dracula.”

  “What is your point?” he asked.

  “Do you want to be compared to Dracula?” I said.

  “Vlad lived a thousand years ago,” said Tchaka, “and people still know of him. Name a single person from that century-commoner or monarch-who lived within a thousand miles of him.”

  And that was the end of the only discussion we ever had about impalement.

  16.

  One of the colony worlds Tchaka had appropriated was the agricultural world of Lincoln. They had put up some minimal resistance, but he beat it back in less than a day, installed Colonel Khuzwayo as the military governor, informed the citizens that they would be paying their taxes to the Zulu Empire rather than United Earth, and paid no more attention to it-until the day a message from Lincoln got through to Earth, complaining about the treatment the world was receiving at the hands of its governor, and beseeching Earth to come to their aid.

  The government of United Earth shot off a message to Tchaka, demanding that he immediately withdraw his forces and relinquish all claims to Lincoln. There was an unspoken…or else at the end of it.

  I was there when the message arrived. Tchaka read it, then handed it to me and told me to read it aloud, which I did.

  No one knew quite how to react. No one wanted to yield to threats, but on the other hand, we didn’t have the strength to fight United Earth’s fleet. And of course no one dared voice an opinion for fear it would disagree with the only opinion that counted.

  Tchaka waited, idly stroking Nandi, who was curled up on his desk, until he was sure no one was going to say anything.

  “We have two choices,” he said at last.

  “Yield or fight,” said an aide, nodding his head sagely.

  “You are a fool,” said Tchaka, “and I have no use for fools. Get out.”

  The aide promptly walked to the door without a word. He didn’t know if he was fired or merely dismissed from the meeting, but he wasn’t sentenced to death, and that was enough for the moment.

  “As I was saying,” continued Tchaka when the aide had gone, “we have two choices. We can ignore their message, or we can reply to it. If we ignore it, they will almost certainly send an identical message tomorrow. If we ignore it again, and continue to ignore all future messages, they will eventually send a diplomatic envoy to explain their demands. We, of course, will kill him and appropriate his ship.”

  He looked around the room, but no one dared show a reaction until they knew which alternative he favored.

  “If, on the other hand, we choose to reply, it will be to tell them that Lincoln is under our protection, and we will take all measures necessary to protect it from United Earth’s territorial aggrandizement.”

  “They are still preoccupied with their other military actions,” offered an advisor. “They will send a few token ships.”

  “They will send a fleet,” said Tchaka. “This is not a matter of our annexing an unpopulated world. They will not ignore an appeal for help from a former colony.”

  “Even if we ignore the message and they send a diplomat and we kill him, they will send a fleet anyway,” said the first aide.

  “And if the diplomat is sufficiently popular with the masses, they may feel compelled to send an even larger fleet,” said Tchaka. “I see no purpose in delaying the inevitable.”

  “They may appropriate our African possessions,” I pointed out.

  “Only the countries we assimilated,” he replied with an unconcerned shrug. “Besides, we are never going back.”

  I could see that at least half the room wanted to suggest that a confrontation was not inevitable, that we could avoid it simply by giving up our claim to Lincoln, but no one dared to be the first to point it out.

  Finally Tchaka spoke again.

  “Have Colonel Khuzwayo contact Earth in his capacity as Governor of Lincoln and tell them that their help is neither needed nor wanted.”

  “Yes, sir,” said a military aide.

  “Earth will ignore that, of course. Then we will contact them and explain that the government of Lincoln has asked for our protection against the unwanted attentions of United Earth, and we have agreed to give it to them.”

  As far as I could see it came to the same thing. Oh, if there’d been such a thing as a galactic court or tribunal, he could have argued that the acting government had indeed asked for his help-but we were centuries, probably millennia from galactic governments and courts. In galactic terms, we’d barely taken two steps out into our front yard.

  Two hours later Colonel Khuzwayo sent the message Tchaka wanted, and that evening we received another message from Earth, threatening to send a massive fleet should the situation remain unchanged.

  Tchaka warned them not to carry through with their threat, that there would b
e serious consequences and he would not take responsibility for them.

  And that’s the way it stood when a nondescript man named Dhanko Shange managed to get past Tchaka’s security and bury his knife in the monarch’s ribcage. It was Nandi who actually saved him, raking Shange’s face with claws I didn’t even know she possessed and emitting a piercing scream that brought help on the run.

  They killed Shange on the spot and rushed Tchaka to the hospital, while he complained all the way, not of his pain, but rather that they hadn’t left Shange alive so he could be impaled and left on public display for his crime. There was no serious internal damage, and Tchaka was released two days later. His first official act was to name Nandi the Governor of Cetshwayo. Everyone thought it was crazy; no one dared say a word in protest.

  Three days later we got word that a massive fleet had taken off from Earth and was headed in the direction of the Zulu Empire.

  “They are fools,” said Tchaka. “They think I am bluffing. They will learn that I never bluff.”

  Ten minutes later he ordered Colonel Khuzwayo to evacuate all military personnel from Lincoln. When Khuzwayo reported two hours later that it had been accomplished, he gave orders to destroy the planet.

  “Do you mean to destroy all human life on it?” came the message from Khuzwayo.

  “Blow it up,” answered Tchaka. “The bigger the explosion, the better.”

  I could see the same thought reflected on every face in the room: Now he’s done it! Earth will have to avenge this. We are all walking dead men.

  And finally a few of them, convinced that their doom was imminent, found their voices.

  “They have to have seen that,” said one aide.

  “I certainly hope so,” said Tchaka.

  “Earth will kill us now.”

  “Earth will leave us alone now,” said Tchaka easily.

  “After what we did?” said another man incredulously.

  “I have sent a private communication to the President of United Earth, with a copy to the commander of the approaching fleet.”

  All eyes turned to him.

  “The gist of it is that we have twenty-four more former colonies,” said Tchaka, “and I will destroy one for every light-year closer they approach. Lincoln was merely a demonstration.”

  And even as the words left his mouth, we received a coded message that Earth had withdrawn its fleet.

  17.

  I had just finished shaving and was preparing to go to bed when there was a knock at my door. I knew it wasn’t Tchaka, for if he wanted to speak with me he would send an underling to bring me to him. I also knew it wasn’t a thief-they don’t announce their presence by knocking-but I couldn’t think of who would want to speak to me an hour after midnight.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door opened, and Peter Zondo and three more of my half-siblings-a man and two women-entered my quarters.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  Peter put his finger to his lips, waited for the door to close, then nodded to the two women-Sarah Khubeka and Bettina Cele-who produced small glowing instruments and began scanning for hidden holo cameras and listening devices, while the man, Joseph Thabethe, trained a laser pistol on the door. Finally they finished and nodded to him.

  “It is safe,” said Sarah, though Joseph kept his weapon out.

  I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next, but I waited for Peter to speak.

  “We must stop him,” he said.

  “How?” I asked. “Professional assassins have tried. They are all either dead and buried, or dying and on public display.”

  “He is out of control,” persisted Peter. “He destroyed an entire planet-a planet filled with human beings.”

  “And he’s killed enough others to populate a colony world,” added Bettina.

  “He is not out of control,” I replied. “He is in complete, total control of his empire.”

  “He is a monster!” said Bettina.

  “I am not denying that,” I said. “If he wasn’t one to begin with, he has become one.”

  “Well, then?” demanded Peter.

  “Most of the people worship him,” I said. “But each day more and more of them hate and fear him.”

  “You are making our point.”

  I shook my head. “They also hate and fear those who serve him. They hate the military and the police-and most of all, they hate his brothers and sisters, who have been elevated to positions of authority.” I stared at the four of them. “He is all that is keeping us alive.”

  “I am willing to trade my life for his,” said Sarah. “I loathe him! I never wanted to be brought here in the first place. I was literally kidnapped from my home in Durban in the middle of the night.”

  “He knows you hate him,” Peter said to her. “He will never give you the opportunity to kill him.” There was a long, pregnant pause. “It must be you, John,” he continued, turning to me. “You have been with him the longest. He is often alone with you. You have his confidence.” Another pause. “You must be the one to do it.”

  “No one and nothing has his confidence except Nandi,” I said. “He would know the moment I approached him. He knows my mind better than I do. I could not hide it from him.”

  “Nonsense,” said Peter. “All it takes is self-control.”

  “Even if I could get near him without his knowing what I had in mind, he is a force of Nature,” I said. “I cannot defeat him.”

  “You mean you will not,” he said angrily.

  I shook my head. “I mean I cannot.”

  “Then I will,” said Sarah. She turned and stalked out of the room, followed by Joseph and Bettina.

  “She will fail,” I said.

  “Probably,” agreed Peter. “But at least she is not afraid to try.”

  “She will be just as dead.”

  “Is that all you have to say?” demanded Peter.

  “What do you want me to say?” I replied.

  “That it is time to be rid of him.”

  “He is a monster,” I said. “I told you that. I disagree with his methods. You know that too.” I paused uncomfortably. “But we were nothing for half a millennium, and in a tiny handful of years he has given us an empire.”

  “We do not need one,” said Peter firmly.

  “You do not understand,” I said.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You know how many enemies the Zulus made building this empire, how many people we killed, how many governments we threatened and humiliated,” I said. “What will happen to us if we lose it?”

  He seemed about to argue the point, then turned abruptly and walked out.

  Nothing untoward happened the next two days, and I decided Sarah had thought better of it. Tchaka was preoccupied with reports that there were sentient beings on the fourth planet circling Epsilon Indi, and he had decided that it was in the Empire’s best interest to form an alliance with any race that was not yet allied with Earth.

  He spent hours with Hlatshwayo as the astrologer studied the solar alignments (which struck me as ridiculous, since we were no longer within twenty light-years of the Earth’s solar system) and cast a number of horoscopes. Finally he determined that Morgan Raziya, another half-brother, should be the one to make contact with Epsilon Indi IV. Tchaka consented, but he didn’t have much faith in Morgan’s abilities, or anything else about him except his paternal bloodline, and he decided to send four well-armed ships with him, rather than a single, unarmed, non-threatening diplomatic ship.

  “This is our first true step into the galaxy, John,” he said to me after Hlatshwayo had left. He paused to pet Nandi, who had been sitting on his lap for the past half hour. “Perhaps,” he said to her, “I shall make you the Queen of the entire Indi system.” He turned to me. “What would you think of that, my brother?”

  The quickest way to assure a painful death was to tell exactly what I thought of it. “I fear she may have some difficulty communicating with her staff,” I said
carefully.

  Tchaka chuckled in amusement. “It might keep them on their toes, considering the consequences.” He planted a kiss on Nandi’s round face. “She has never had any trouble making her wishes known to me.”

  I must have been feeling exceptionally bold, because I replied: “Perhaps that is because she does not speak to you on matters of policy.”

  He stared at me, and for a moment I thought I had gone too far, but eventually he went back to petting Nandi and discussing his plans for expanding the empire.

  I dined alone, as usual, went back to my quarters, and watched a holo until I fell asleep. I was up at sunrise, as usual, and a few minutes later I began making my way to my office.

  There were three new stakes in front of the Royal Palace. Skewered on one of them was the barely-breathing Sarah Khubeka. The other two were empty.

  I walked by my office and went directly to Tchaka’s, where I found two of his elite security team standing at attention in front of him. Finally he nodded to two more guards, who marched them out at gunpoint.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “My sister-the one from Durban-tried to kill me last night.”

  “I saw her as I arrived,” I said.

  “The two men you saw just now had found out what she planned and warned me.” He smiled a humorless smile. “I made sure I was wearing my ceremonial robes, with my body armor hidden beneath it. She fired two bullets and one laser burst into it before I took her weapons away from her and turned her over to my bodyguards.”

  “If they warned you, why were they being taken out at gunpoint?”

  “They are to be impaled on each side of her,” said Tchaka. “Surely you saw the empty stakes.”

  “But if their information saved your life…” I began, puzzled.

  “It is because of them that I must kill my sister!” he yelled, his face contorted in fury.

  I suddenly found myself looking back on what I had said to Peter Zondo, and thinking that there was very little a hostile galaxy could do to us that Tchaka wouldn’t do first.

  18.