“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.
The empire grew. We added four more new worlds in the next half year, and Earth remained preoccupied with more immediate threats. Tchaka kept building the military against the day that Earth was finally able to concentrate on the upstart Zulu Empire, but that day seemed to keep receding into the future.
The colony worlds thrived under his firm rule. There were no jobless, no homeless; if a man couldn’t find gainful employment elsewhere, he was transferred to the nearest farm on the nearest world. We tried to establish a market for our goods among Earth’s enemies, but being aliens—and some were very alien indeed—they had scant use for most of the items we wished to sell or trade. This caused Tchaka to send us further afield, spreading our population to still more uninhabited worlds that would need our goods.
The alien races did want something a few of our mining worlds possessed: fissionable materials. But that was the one thing Tchaka wouldn’t trade or sell them, on the reasonable assumption that the alien worlds were not trading for a planetary power source. That meant they wanted the materials for weapons or to power their ships, and those were two advantages he had no intention of giving them.
He began taking walks around the centers of whatever cities he was visiting on his worlds, always accompanied by half a dozen bodyguards, and of course by Nandi. If one did not know better he almost looked like a man taking his pet out for a walk—except that Nandi had never worn a leash in her life, looked like no other pet in the whole of human history, and far from being merely a pet she was officially the Queen of the Epsilon Indi and the Delta Pavonis systems. Tchaka always had a small lizard or two in his pocket or the folds of his ceremonial robes, and delighted in tossing them in the air and seeing her tongue shoot out and wrap itself around them on the way down.
I still remember the first time she missed. We were inspecting a new barracks just outside the town of Bhebhe on the new colony world of Dingiswayo. As we reached the end of the building, Tchaka produced a small lizard, no more than six inches in length except for the tail, and flipped it in the air. Nandi’s tongue shot out—and she missed it by a good two inches.
I laughed, but cut my laughter short when Tchaka glared furiously at me. He picked Nandi up and cradled her body in his arms, a worried expression on his face.
“She must be ill,” he said.
“Everyone’s allowed to miss once in a while,” I said. “Even her. Even you.”
“No,” he said. “She is perfection. If she missed, something has to be wrong with her.”
“I suppose we can take her to a veterinarian,” I suggested.
“Our veterinarians can only treat mutated cattle,” he said. “None of them has ever examined a member of Nandi’s species. I do not think it even has a name.” He put her down on the ground and walked a few feet away. She followed him, but she didn’t have the usual spring to her step. “This inspection is ended. We’re going back to Cetshwayo.”
And twenty minutes later our ship took off.
I didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong with Nandi. I thought that she may have had a mild stomach ache, or perhaps the atmosphere or gravity on Dingiswayo was not quite what she was used to, but I assumed she’d be fine again in another day or two.
Once we landed, Tchaka took her back to his office, where she spent most of her time, in the hope that familiar surroundings would somehow cure whatever ailed her. She didn’t get any worse, but she didn’t get any better. He sent half a dozen men out to find the tastiest lizards and bring them back, he collected piles of silks and made beds in every corner of the office, but she preferred sleeping on his desk, as she always had.
The next day he tossed a couple of lizards in her direction, and she totally ignored them.
He turned to his assembled aides. “Out!” he commanded. “She needs rest, not distractions.”
“But Tchaka, we have an empire to run, business to transact,” said one of them.
I thought he might kill the man on the spot, but he was so concerned with Nandi that he merely pointed to the door, and one by one we filed out.
I had been with him longer than anyone. I had never seen him show sympathy or concern for a friend, for a sibling, for anyone or anything—until now. I was the last to leave the office, and as I turned back I saw him holding this alien creature more tenderly, more lovingly, than any human parent has ever held a baby.
“It is sick,” an aide whispered to me as we walked down the long hallway. “An entire empire’s business is on hold because a totally worthless pet may or may not have a stomach ache.”
