Conqueror

with interest. Tzetzas's fingers crooked like talons. The Chancellor usually had a say in what reached the Governor's desk, and he valued that power. Governor Barholm was a hard-working administrator, and an enthusiast for useful public works.

'— a railway to the saltpeter mines alone would increase the total yield of the Territories by fifteen percent'- saltpeter was a Chair monopoly, and the deposits south of Port Murchison were the richest in the known world-'besides making economical the copper and zinc deposits there, closed for three generations. There are also irrigation works to be brought back into operation, road repairs. . Your Supremacy, launching the Expeditionary Force was the most lucrative stroke of policy any Governor has made in two hundred years.'

Klosterman pulled at his muttonchop whiskers. 'Still, even if the Colony is quiet, I'd not like to take too many troops away from the border,' he said. The Master of Soldiers' last regional field command had been of Eastern Forces. 'Ali's no fool, but he's vain, and he's vicious as a starving carnosauroid to boot.'

Barholm shrugged. 'He may have killed his brother Akbar, but they'll take a while to recover from their civil war.'

Good fortune had given the Civil Government four strong Governors in a row, with no usurpations or civil conflicts-the primary reason for its current strength and unprecedented prosperity-but disputed successions were a problem both the Civil Government and the Colony were thoroughly familiar with.

observe, Center said.

* * *

A one-eyed man stood among burned-out ruins. Raj recognized him instantly: Tewfik bin-Jamal, son of the late Settler of the Colony, and commander of all his armies. Raj had lost one minor battle to him, and won a major one by a thin margin; and every day in his prayers the general thanked the Spirit of Man for the Colonist superstition that made Tewfik ineligible for the Settler's throne because he lacked an eye.

The stocky, muscular body filled the regulation crimson djellaba with a solid authority, and the Seal of Solomon marked his eyepatch. Officers of the Colonial regulars and black-robed personal mamelukes followed the Muslim general as he stalked through the shattered building. He kicked at a frame of cindered boards; they slid away in ash that drifted ghostly under the bright sun, revealing the warped brass and iron shape of a lathe. Other machines stood amid the ruins, as did the cast-iron poles that had carried the drive shaft from a steam engine.

Tewfik's face was impassive beneath his spired spike-topped helmet, but the grip of his left hand on the plain wired brass hilt of his scimitar was white-knuckled with the effort of controlling his rage. The Colony armed its forces with lever-operated repeating carbines, and the machine shops that turned them out were a rare and precious asset. Now there was one less.

He turned; the viewpoint turned with him, staying behind his left shoulder. Beyond the fallen door-arch of the factory were more ruins, then intact buildings, and a long slope down to a great river. Flat roofs and minarets, smokestacks, towers glinting with colored tile, narrow twisting streets and irregular plazas around splashing fountains: Al Kebir, the capital of the Colony and the oldest city on Bellevue. Half a dozen huge bridges crossed the river, and the water was thronged with lateen-sailed dhows and sambuks, with barges and rafts and steamboats. Across the river was a burst of greenery, palms and jacaranda trees, and a great interlinked pile of low, ornately carved marble buildings taking up scores of hectares before the sprawl of the city resumed. An endless low rumble carried through the air, the sound of a million human beings and their doings, pierced through with the high wailing call of a muezzin.

The robed men sank to their knees in prayer; Tewfik waited an instant as his attendants spread a prayer rug before he bent his head towards the distant holy city of Sinnar, where the first ships to reach Bellevue had carried a fragment of the Kaaba from burning Mecca.

When he rose he turned to the man in a civilian outfit of baggy pantaloons, sash, turban and curl-toed slippers. At his finger's motion two of the mameluke slave-soldiers-one blond, one black, both huge men moving as lightly as cats-stood behind the civilian. The heavy curved swords in their hands rested lightly on his shoulders.

'Sa'id-' the man began.

Prince. That much Raj would have known, but as always Center somehow provided the knowledge that made the Arabic as understandable as his native Sponglish.

'Prince,' the man went on, 'what could we do? Your brother Akbar's followers came and demanded the finished arms; then the household troops of your brother Ali attacked them. We are not fighting men here.'

Tewfik nodded, his hand stroking his beard. 'Kismet,' he said: fate. 'When the kaphar, the infidels of the Civil Government, slew our father, it was Akbar's fate to reach for power and fail'-and leave his head on a pole before the Grand Mosque-'and yours to repair the damage as quickly as may be. If I thought you truly responsible, I would not threaten.'

The manager nodded unconsciously; if Tewfik thought that the staff were dragging their feet, there would have been another set of heads on a pole some time ago.

'How long?' Tewfik asked, his voice like millstones of patience that would grind results out of time and fate by sheer force of will.

'If the Settler Ali, upon whom may Allah shower His blessings, advances the necessary funds, we will be turning out carbines again in six months,' he said.

Tewfik's right hand rested on the butt of his revolver. One index finger gestured, and the mamelukes pressed the factory manager to his knees with the blunt back edges of their scimitars. The blades crossed before his neck, ready to scissor through it like a gardener's shears through the stem of a tulip.

'Six months!' the man cried; he ripped open his jacket to bare his breast in token of his willingness to die. 'Prince Tewfik, we are adepts of the mechanic arts here, not dervishes or magicians! Machine tools cannot be flogged into obedience-six months and no more, but no less. May I be boiled alive and my children's flesh eaten by wild dogs if I lie!'

'That can be arranged. . if you lie,' Tewfik said somberly. The man met his eyes, ignoring the blades so near his flesh. The Colonist general sighed and signed the swordsmen back. 'There is no God but God, and all things are accomplished according to the will of God. In the name of the Merciful, the Lovingkind, I shall not make you bear the weight of an anger earned elsewhere. Come, my friend; rise, and we will speak of details over sherbert with my staff. Soon the Dar 'as-Salaam will need the weapons. There is a great stirring in the House of War.'

* * *

Raj nodded. 'Ali will wait; a year, maybe two if he has enough sense to listen to Tewfik.

'Still,' he went on, 'the Brigade's a more serious proposition than the Squadron was. They've been in contact with civilization longer, and they do have a standing army of sorts; plus they've some recent combat experience.'

Mostly against the Stalwarts in the north; those were savages, but numerous, vicious and treacherous to a fault.

'Also the Western Territories are bigger-not just in raw area, the population. Not so much desert. I'd say for a really thorough pacification. . forty thousand troops. Fifteen thousand cavalry.'

There were outraged screams around the table. 'Out of the question!' Tzetzas barked, startled out of his usual suavity, and Barholm was looking narrow-eyed.

'That would be a little large,' he said carefully. 'Particularly as we're hoping that General Forker won't fight.'

'Sovereign Mighty Lord, Forker may not fight but I doubt the Brigade will roll over that easily,' Raj said.

'Fifteen thousand is about as much as we could spare,' Barholm said, tapping a knuckle against the table to show that the question was closed. 'That proved ample for the Squadron. Another battalion or two of cavalry, perhaps more guns.'

The ruler leaned back. 'Besides that,' he went on, 'General Forker-' the Brigades ruler kept the ancient title, although in the Western Territories it had come to mean king rather than a military rank '-is by no means necessarily hostile to the Civil Government. He spent better than a year negotiating for help while he was maneuvering to replace the late General Welf.'

'He managed to do that without our aid, though, didn't he, Sovereign Mighty Lord?'

The Minister of Barbarians shuffled through his notes. 'Yes, General Whitehall. In fact, he showed an almost, well, almost civilized subtlety during the negotiations. Then he married Charlotte Welf, the late General's widow. That made his election to the General's position inevitable. We were, I confess,