Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

Sable said, “You think our guys are trying to sell us?”

“Negotiating a bribe, perhaps. But in this empire everything is owned by the ruling aristocracy—the Golden Family. Scacatai’s people can’t sell us—the Emperor already owns us.”

At last the party was allowed to go ahead. The guard commander attached a detail of soldiers, and Sable, Kolya, and just one of their Mongol companions, along with the cart laden with their gear, were escorted into the city.

They made their way down a broad lane, heading directly for the big tent complex at the center. The ground was just churned-up mud. The yurts were grand, and some were decorated in rich fabrics. But the stench was Kolya’s overwhelming first impression—like Scacatai’s village, but multiplied a thousandfold; it was all he could do to keep from gagging.

Smell or not, the streets were crowded, and not just by Asian peoples. There were Chinese and perhaps even Japanese, Middle Eastern types, maybe Persians or Armenians, Arabs—even round-eyed west Europeans. The people wore finely made tunics, boots and hats, and many had heavy jewelry around their necks, wrists and fingers. The cosmonauts’ gaudy jumpsuits attracted some eyes, as did the spacesuits and other gear piled on their cart, but nobody seemed much interested.

“They are used to strangers,” Kolya said. “If we’re right about our location in time, this is the capital of a continental empire. We must be sure not to underestimate these people.”

“Oh, I won’t,” said Sable grimly.

As they neared the central complex of pavilions, the presence of soldiers became more obvious. Kolya saw archers and swordsmen, armed and ready. Even those off-duty glared at the party as it passed, breaking off from their eating, and gambling over dice. There must have been a thousand troops guarding this one big tent.

They reached an entrance pavilion, big enough to have swallowed Scacatai’s yurt whole. A standard of white yak tails hung over the entrance. There were more negotiations, and a messenger was sent deeper into the complex.

He returned with a taller man, obviously Asiatic but with startling blue eyes, and expensively dressed in an elaborately embroidered waistcoat and pantaloons. This figure brought a team of advisors with him. He studied the cosmonauts and their equipment, running his hands briefly over the fabric of Sable’s jumpsuit, and his eyes narrowed with curiosity. He conversed briefly and unintelligibly with his advisors. Then he snapped his fingers, turned, and made to leave. Servants began to take the cosmonauts’ goods away.

“No,” Sable said loudly. Kolya cringed inwardly, but she was standing her ground. The tall man turned slowly and stared at her, wide-eyed with surprise.

She walked up to the cart, took a handful of parachute fabric, and spread it out before the tall man. “All this is our property. Darughachi Tengri. Comprende? It stays with us. And this material is our gift for the Emperor, a gift from the sky.”

Kolya said nervously, “Sable—”

“We really don’t have a lot to lose, Kolya. Anyhow you started this charade.”

The tall man hesitated. Then his face split briefly into a grin. He snapped orders, and one of his advisors ran off deeper into the complex.

“He knows we’re bluffing,” Sable said. “But he doesn’t know what to make of us. He’s a smart guy.”

“If he’s that smart we should be careful.”

The advisor returned with a European. He was a small, runty man who might have been about thirty, but, under the customary layer of grime, and with his hair and beard raggedly uncut, it was hard to tell. He studied the two of them with fast, calculating eyes. Then he spoke rapidly to Kolya.

“That sounds like French,” Sable said.

And so it turned out to be. His name was Basil, and he had been born in Paris.

In a kind of anteroom they were served with food and drink—bits of spiced meat, and a kind of lemonade—by a serving girl. She was plump, no older than fourteen or fifteen, and wore little but a few veils. She looked vaguely European too to Kolya, and her eyes were empty; he wondered how far she had been brought from home.

The tall grandee’s purpose soon became clear. Basil was proficient in the Mongol tongue, and was to serve as an interpreter. “They assume all Europeans speak the same language,” Basil said, “from the Urals to the Atlantic. But this far from Paris it’s an understandable error …”

Kolya’s French was quite good—better than his English, in fact. Like many Russian schoolchildren he had been taught it as his second language. But Basil’s version of French, dating only a few centuries after the birth of that nation itself, was difficult to grasp. “It’s like meeting Chaucer,” Kolya explained to Sable. “Think how much English has changed since then … save that Basil must have been born a century or more before Chaucer.” Sable had never heard of Chaucer.

Basil was bright, his mind flexible—Kolya supposed he wouldn’t have made it so far if not—and it took them only a couple of hours to build up a reasonable understanding.

Basil said he was a trader, come to the capital of the world to make his fortune. “The traders love the Mongols,” he said. “They’ve opened up the east! China, Korea—” It took a while to identify the place names he used. “Of course most of the traders here are Muslims and Arabs—most people in France don’t know the Mongols even exist! …” Basil had his eye on the main chance, and he began to ask questions—where the cosmonauts had come from, what they wanted, what they had brought with them.

Sable intervened. “Listen, pal, we don’t need an agent. Your job is to speak our words to—uh, the tall man.”

“Yeh-lü,” said Basil. “His name is Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai. He is a Khitan …”

“Take us to him,” Sable said simply.

Though Basil argued, her tone of command was unmistakable, even without translation. Basil clapped his hands, and a chamberlain arrived, to escort them into the presence of Yeh-lü himself.

They walked through corridors of felt, ducking their heads; the roofs were not built for people their height.

In a small chamber in a corner of this palace of tents, Yeh-lü was reclining on a low couch. Servants hovered at his elbow. Before him on the floor he had spread out faded diagrams that looked like maps, a kind of compass, blocks carved into figures that looked vaguely Buddhist, and a pile of small artifacts—bits of jewelry, small coins. It was the stock in trade of an astrologer, Kolya guessed. With an elegant gesture Yeh-lü bade them sit down, on more low couches.

Yeh-lü was patient; forced to speak to them through an uncertain chain of translation via Basil and Kolya, he asked them their names, and where they had come from. At the answer that had become their stock reply—from Tengri, from Heaven—he rolled his eyes. Astrologer he might be, but he was no fool.

“We need a better story,” Kolya said.

“What do these people know of geography? Do they even know what shape the world is?”

“Damned if I know.”

Briskly Sable got to her knees and pulled aside a felt mat, exposing dusty earth. With a fingertip she began to sketch a rough map: Asia, Europe, India, Africa. She stabbed her finger into the heart of it. “We are here …”

Kolya remembered that the Mongols always oriented themselves to the south, while Sable’s map had north at the top; with that simple inversion things became much clearer.

“Now,” said Sable. “Here’s the World Ocean.” She dragged her fingers through the dust beyond the continents, making a ridged circle. “We come from far away—far beyond the World Ocean. We flew over it like birds, on our orange wings …” It wasn’t quite true, but was close to the truth, and Yeh-lü seemed to accept it for now.