leaning the other way… and America came in against us?”
Toryu looked at him strangely. “Ah… no. We did not join the kaiser. We fought against him-with the Americans, before I was born… Sir, if you would: when did you come to this world?”
“Nineteen fourteen,” Becher said, frowning. “Nearly thirty years ago now. My ship, SMS Amerika — that is ironic! — was taken from the passenger service and commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser. We captured the crews of nine British ships-that is why there are so many Britishers here with us! — and scuttled their ships.” His expression grew faraway. “Never did war prisoners enjoy such luxury! Amerika was a gorgeous thing!” Almost forcibly, he returned to the present. “She was badly damaged in battle with the Morrie, we called her. The Mauritania! She was armed too! What a fight! She was faster, of course, with her damned turbines, but so big, we could not miss her! Both of us were damaged, and we broke off the fight in the storm. But you might tell me! Did we sink the Morrie? I actually hope we did not”-he grinned-“but sometimes I hope we did! We were old rivals before the war for the Blue Riband!”
Toryu was confused. “I… I do not think so. There was a Mauritania carrying British troops to Singapore in 1942, but she might have been a newer ship with the same name.”
“Well, but what of the war? You Japs-with battle cruisers no less! — have joined us?”
Toryu’s face heated. “We did not join you! Your kaiser was defeated! Our war, besides our conquest of Asia, began little more than two years ago, and the Imperial Japanese Navy, the most powerful in the world, was in the process of destroying the combined fleets of the Americans and British! Only your submarines were of any use!” He stopped, realizing he’d given offense, but Becher’s expression only looked… odd again.
“The kaiser defeated? Impossible!” he muttered. Then he said something that stunned Toryu Miyata to the bone. “Yet another, different world again, then.” He saw Toryu’s expression and grunted. “You are surprised? Let me try to explain to you, quickly, of our land and our peoples, and you may understand. You may also then pass a… better-informed counsel.”
The Lemurian jabbered suddenly, then, and Becher listened before turning back to Toryu.
“In fact, if you feel able, Inquisitor Choon believes you should meet immediately with the kaiser- our kaiser, or cae-saar, as they say, at the War Palace. The maps there are the best.”
“I am able,” Toryu assured him, a little taken aback but determined. “After all, there is little time to lose.”
They supplied him with boots and a cloak and led him down the corridor to a side entrance facing the cobblestone street, and he stepped outside for the first time in… three weeks? Four? He jerked back when he came almost face-to-face with a huge, drooling, camel-like face that regarded him with disinterest before it swung away-on the end of a long, gray-furred neck, almost as long as a giraffe’s, but not nearly so upright. Becher laughed.
“He likes you! Sometimes those will bite!” He gestured to a long car, like a Pullman, hitched behind the beast and another like it. “We have steam cars,” Becher announced proudly. “We have been busy in our thirty years! But we do not bring them into the city.” He waved around. So many strange creatures! “They unnerve the animals-and the people!”
On either side of the Pullman car sat three guards in their Romanesque costumes, mounted on ordinary horses. One of them waved.
“There you are! Good to see you up and about!” The man paused at Toryu’s confused expression. “Blimey! I’m the other bloke what found you! Saved you, I did!” The man, also wearing a gray-streaked beard, tossed his chin at Becher. “You didn’t think that dastardly Hun’d give a toss if you lived or died?” He was grinning. “I’m Leftenant Doocy Meek, if you care to know!”
“I am appreciative, sir,” Toryu managed as he was hurried into the car.
“Doocy is a funny man,” Becher said gruffly, pulling Toryu into a seat beside him. “We all take our turns riding the frontier-anyone beneath the rank of centurion,” he added, by way of further explanation. “We, most of us from Amerika, are still considered part of the foreign centuries, but we also guard the War Palace and all access to it!”
Toryu started to ask how that could be, when the car shuddered and began to move. After that, his questions about the city came in rapid fire.
This amazingly exotic capital city of the Republic of Real People, or Volksrepublik, as Becher called it, was named Aalek-saan-draa, and the mixture of architecture and cultures that created it began to make some sense to Toryu as Becher answered his questions, and he saw the evidence with his own eyes.
He finally knew, knew, that whatever had happened to his Amagi — and the Americans-in the Java Sea was not unique. Many peoples had found themselves in this place over the millennia. The southern cape of Afri-kaa formed a bottleneck of sorts, between the land and the not-so-distant ice of Antarctica. The storms that plagued the same passage on Toryu’s world were even more intense here, and the seas more mountainous. And it was cold, if not always on land, then forever at sea. In a way, it was only logical, he decided, that so many people, so many ships throughout the centuries, trying to round the bitter cape, perhaps even unaware of the change they’d endured, should wind up here. They would be exhausted, their ships almost destroyed, but where they would be lost upon some other shore, here they found welcome… and a home.
The oldest inhabitants were Lemurians, who’d wound up there after their ancient exodus to escape the Grik. These were later joined by Chinese explorers, Ptolemaic Egyptians, black Africans, and even Romans (from the tenth century!) who established what had become the republic. That didn’t add up. Toryu knew little of history, but there seemed to be a number of… different… histories represented here. Histories even his limited knowledge told him were not quite right.
He shook his head as his mind flailed in this whirlpool of new, contradictory information, and he wondered briefly why no such place existed elsewhere that he’d been. Then he bitterly remembered the Grik. Any lost explorers, traders, or even small fleets that arrived off their shores were only prey to be conquered and devoured. But why did the Americans and their Lemurian allies not have other… friends as well? Were their outposts too remote and scattered? Was there no choke point in their seas? Becher told him that the castaways most often came from the west, in “modern times.” Examples of those had been Boers, British, Dutch, and Portuguese. Did that mean the… force that took them was more prevalent in the Atlantic? Was it even the same? It was all so confusing! He suddenly felt strangely relieved to learn that Amerika ’s arrival was the most recent, by far, so, though not unheard of, the phenomenon was rare.
The enmity of their old war suppressed, her German crew and mixed allied prisoners had been working together for thirty years to improve republic technology to a level similar to what Toryu knew of the Alliance. Becher didn’t mention aircraft or steamships, which they obviously had the technology to make, but as the car wound through the streets, drawing nearer to the sea, Toryu saw with his own eyes what looked like good artillery. He also inspected the small arms of the escort riding alongside. They were bolt action, probably large-bore single shots, evidenced by the lack of any floor plate in front of the triggerguard. Decent weapons, then. He wondered what else they had, but didn’t press. Despite what they’d already told him, they had no real reason to trust him yet. He’d admitted the rest of his people were in league with the Grik, after all.
“What is that?” he suddenly cried, pointing at a… person? Working alongside others of its kind in what increasingly resembled a seaport district. “I mean… those?” The creatures were as tall as humans, but with fur and tails-and their faces were more human than… Becher followed his gaze, and frowned.
“They are… how should I say… half-bloods, yes?”
“Half-bloods?”
“Crossbreeds, hybrids. Made long ago when only the Chinese and Mi-Anaaka-that is the name for the Lemurians, as you call them-lived in this place.”
Toryu shuddered in spite of himself.
Becher noticed. “You do not like that? Well, neither does anyone else. Interbreeding is strictly verboten- forbidden-in the republic. No one, not humans, not Mi-Anaaka, not even the half-bloods themselves are happy such things once occurred. They cannot blame themselves for what they are, and neither does anyone else-now. They are their own species and intent on remaining so. Such things no longer happen; it is the law, but… women have always been in short supply. Not often are they on the ships that come. We brought a few, and there were African women. Some others came, and there have always been a few, but never enough, even now.” Becher sighed. “Mi- Anaaka remain the most populous citizens by far.
“We and those who came before have built a good country here, a country to be proud of, but it has not been
