Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

‘Yes, but-’

‘But what?’ said Justina.

‘But Aldarch the Third wouid kill me!’

‘He will kill you anyway if you let Injiltaprajura slip into anarchy,’ said Justina. ‘By selling legal prescriptions to the populace, and by the judicious use of violence to enforce your monopoly, you could have total control of the speakeasy business within ten days. You can do it. You must.’

Then they began to argue out the merits of this proposal in detail.

Let those who have ambitions take note: power is hard work. Often it means dragging yourself out of bed with a hangover to attend to pettifogging bureaucratic detail. Of course, similar discomforts attend a great many other professions, shopkeeping and soldiering among them; but it must be noted that the exercise of power is not a job for the idle.

Of course, this point is never made in those blood-perfumed romances of kingship and empire with which the young entertain themselves. Study for example the fables written by the scandalously over-prolific and overpaid Chulman Puro. Do his heroes ever get dragged out of bed in the morning to discuss cash flow, wage bills, exchange rates and inflation? Does Vorn the Gladiator ever get set upon thus on the morning after a great victory?

No, of course not.

Instead, Vorn the Gladiator stays between the sheets, tupping with the great Queen Avalgapalantaskomilti-dini, or the Princess Nuboltipon, or Yun the Hot, or Osh the Nubile, or Pevalina of the Ivory Bosoms. Her dugs become priapic as his lips close with hers; her knees come up; her legs enfold him as they enter that position known as the Lubricated Clam Embracing The Flagstaff; then ‘their ship rocks upon the seas of the urging blood’, as the poet so nicely puts it; then Pevalina (or it may be Yun the Hot, or, equally, Osh the Nubile — for they are all but aspects of one Eternal Woman) gasps as she yields to the ecstasy which he has forced upon her; and Vorn gasps also; and his serpent spits pearls; ‘silk accepts cream’ (to quote the poet once more); and then (to quote directly from Chulman Puro) ‘she licks the sweat from his great slabs of muscle and begs him to grant her the rapture once again’.

Vorn is not easily commanded by a woman’s tongue, and therefore demands that she first ‘worship the source with the tongue’s poetry’; and this she does, then whimpers with unfeigned ecstasy as he obliges her flesh once more; and so pass the days (and the nights, and, if Chulman Puro were to be believed, the very years themselves) in the halls of victory.

Now all this is very misleading.

Please note that the conquest of kingdoms and empires, while well within the power of any talented person (and here those without talent are advised to busy themselves with the construction of a new religion, for there are any number of undemanding gods who yet await their priests and congregations) is not a path to an idle life of luxurious self-indulgence. Instead, the acquisition of power means the intensification of life’s problems rather than the reverse.

For, if you once win great power, then everyone in the world will want to kill you; with the exception of those souls less savage who merely wish to loot your treasury or suborn some small part of your influence for the service of their own personal ends.

In conclusion, if you do really want to lie in bed all day with women ‘worshipping the source with the tongue’s poetry’ then trust not to the recipe proposed by Chulman Puro — but, instead, take yourself off to some place where the rate of exchange is good and the standard of living low, allowing you to buy whatever you want at prices close to laughable. The probable outcome is that within a month you will be bored beyond endurance with the contortions of the flesh, and will come home none the worse for the experience (but for the venereal diseases you have acquired in the process of making this experiment — but then, contrary to what certain narrowminded moralists would have you believe, we all have to die of something).

Unfortunately for Manthandros Trasilika, he was not living in the land of fable and romance, and was therefore constrained to sit at table with Justina Thrug and the bullman Log Jaris and argue the pros and cons of legalizing the sale of liquor by means of ten-day prescriptions.

At first, Trasilika himself refused to eat anything. But then he got down a little papaya — a food which is fairly close to being water, and hence palatable even to a hungover head — and then consented to allow some tolfrigdalakaptiko to be served to him.

‘A mistake,’ said Trasilika, when the tolfrigdalakaptiko was set before him. ‘It’s too early in the morning for this.’

‘Never mind,’ said Log Jaris. ‘We’ll eat it for you. As my father always said, a meal wasted is a meal wasted, and a meal eaten is a meal wasted not.’

‘Your father sounds like an uncommonly sensible man,’ said Trasilika, watching Log Jaris attack the tolfrigdalakaptiko. ‘For I can find no flaws whatsoever with his wisdom. Perhaps I… yes, a bit of this, perhaps I could manage just a bit…’ So saying, Trasilika dissected a lozenge of dried jellyfish with his knife, popped it into his mouth, chewed, tasted, swallowed, then said: ‘This takes me back.’

‘Where to?’ said Justina.

‘Bolfrigalaskaptiko,’ said Trasilika. ‘A very interesting place. They there have an institution which Injiltaprajura seems to be lacking, that is, the professional childbeater.’

‘My father outlawed that trade,’ said Justina.

‘A mistake,’ said Trasilika.

‘You are not seeking to revive the trade, are you?’ said Justina sharply.

Trasilika looked at her, wondering how best to answer. Then a frantic Jean Froissart intruded upon their conference, and no answer was required.

For Justina Thrug, that morning breakfast was a delicate affair. Jean Froissart had proved himself a true priest of Zoz the Ancestral, therefore Manthandros Trasilika would surely have no trouble in getting himself accepted by one and all as the true wazir, the legitimate wazir appointed by Aldarch the Third to rule over Untunchilamon in the name of the Izdimir Empire.

So…

Really, as far as Justina could see, Trasilika no longer had any pressing need for her services. Such was Trasilika’s confidence that he appeared to have sent away all his guards — Justina’s spies told her those guards were now concentrated in the Temple of Torture. And he had also sent away his ship. All of which suggested he felt very, very secure already. So what was to stop him doing away with her? Nothing. Unless she made herself very, very valuable to him in a great big hurry. Given Trasilika’s manifest confidence in his grasp on power, that might prove difficult — but she had to try.

That was why Justina was there so early in the morning, seeking to entangle Trasilika in drug-dealing schemes which would alienate him from Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek and make him dependent on the services of her friend and ally Log Jaris. All she wanted was Trasilika’s protection, just for a few more days. In that time, she would — she must, otherwise she would surely die — scheme up some way to extricate the organic rectifier from Master Ek’s clutches.

Once Justina had the organic rectifier, she could take it to the Crab and transform that entity into human form. (Always assuming that she could deduce the secret of operating the rectifier, or that the Crab could work it out for itself.)

Once the Crab was made human then it would surely, out of gratitude, solve the rest of her problems.

But staying alive until she could think of some way to win the organic rectifier — why, that might prove very, very difficult indeed. However, the business breakfast seemed to go well enough, for Manthandros Trasilika attended to her schemes with every appearance of interest, even though he was obviously fatigued and hung over.