Beyond the Gate of Worlds Read online

  Beyond the gate of Worlds:

  ...lies a land where history has run on a different track than our own. A world where the Black Death killed, not one quarter of Europe's population, but more than half. A world where the Ottomans became the most powerful empire on the planet, and a great playwright named Shakespeare wrote in Turkish; where no Spanish came to the lands of Moctezuma,- where Africa took the hand of Islam and Timbuctoo still flourishes.

  It is Lion Time in Timbuctoo—the Emir of the Songhay lies dying in the cruel summer heat. The imminent funeral of the ruler of the greatest empire in Africa has drawn ambassadors from every corner of the earth, from China to Peru...and where politicians gather, political power will be at stake.

  Meanwhile, in the city of Krakow, the enemies of Russia are plotting also. The Czar is coming to his vassal states in Eastern Europe. He intends to reassure the people of his benevolence, but in looking west, he has taken his eyes off the Orient. Should Czar Nicholas have an...accident..all Asia will go up in flames.

  At the same time, the True Inca of Peru has learned that his rebellious cousin has gained the aid of the Turks in his war for the throne. The True Inca, too, must find allies from across the seas; and if the rumors of upheaval in Russia are true, then perhaps the leaders of Japan and Maori would be interested in making new friends. But it will require courage such as has never been seen for any ship of the Inca's to cross the great Western Sea.

  Le Scrob

  Contents

  Introduction

  by Robert Silverberg

  Lion Time in Timbuctoo by Robert Silverberg

  At the Sign of the Rose by John Brunner

  An Exaltation of Spiders

  by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  INTRODUCTION

  The three novellas in this book trace their ancestry to my novel The Gate of Worlds, which I wrote in 1966: an exuberant alternate-universe story which I intended, originally, as the first volume of a trilogy. Science-fiction trilogies weren’t as fashionable then as they later became, but the theme of The Gate of Worlds seemed to me to be worthy of extended exploration.

  For one reason and another, though, I never got around to writing Volume Two (which would have taken place in the vastly different Africa of my alternate universe) or Volume Three (which would have been set in South America). Eventually the whole project faded from my mind, until one morning in a hotel room in Barcelona in the spring of 1988, when I suddenly found myself thinking that it might be a good idea to call in a couple of my colleagues and get together to finish this unfinished business out of 1966. Which has now been done, in the volume you’re holding at this moment.

  Every alternate-universe story has its jumping-off point—the place at which the alternate universe diverges from the world we actually inhabit. For this one, the point of divergence lies in the year 1348, when the Black Death ravaged Europe, killing some 25 percent

  of the population. In my original novel I simply made the plague a little worse, so that three-quarters of the people of Europe perished and the survivors, shocked and dazed, were left in no condition to defend themselves against the powerful Ottoman Tirks, who had survived the Black Death nicely and were about to launch a war of imperialist conquest against Europe.

  The Gate of Worlds takes place, therefore, in a vastly altered twentieth century. Because of the depopulation of Europe in medieval times and the Turkish conquest that followed, the Renaissance and the European maritime expansion had never taken place. The great Meso-american cultures of the New World had been left undisturbed, so that Incas still ruled in most of South America and Aztecs held Mexico and Central America, with most of North America inhabited only by scattered American Indian tribes. In Africa it was the same story: the indigenous black Islamic empires of medieval times, Mali and Songhay and Ghana and the rest, had survived into the modern era as independent states. Europe was a sorry land, a Tirkish-speaking backwater (even Shakespeare had written his plays in Turkish!) in which the Tirks, now decadent, still held sway after a fashion over Spain, Italy, and France; England had lately won its independence, but was in poor shape economically; in Central Europe an entity called the Teutonic States was gradually taking form. Russia, still under the rule of the Czar, was a major imperial nation, but (with the llirks in command of Europe) the Russians had looked the other way, toward the Orient, and had established protectorates over Japan and China.

  Technology, in my imagined alternate world, lagged behind the level of ours. There were no airplanes yet, nor telephones, and electricity was still a novelty. The railroad had come into use, and so had the automobile, but cars were few and far between, and the fuel they burned was coal, not petroleum.

  That was the background against which I sent the young hero of The Gate of Worlds, Dan Beauchamp, out from sleepy twentieth-century England to win fame and fortune in Aztec America. And that too was the background I offered Jim Brunner and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro for their companion stories in this new volume.

  I took twentieth-century Africa for my sector, and wrote “Lion Time in Timbuctoo.” Brunner wanted to examine European geopolitics against the altered world background, and produced “At the Sign of the Rose.” Quinn Yarbro’s concern was the strange and stylized Inca culture of Peru, in “An Exaltation of Spiders.” Collaboration of this sort is fraught with all sorts of perils; but I think most of them have been surmounted here. And I’m grateful to Mr. Brunner and Ms. Yarbro for their willingness to enter into a world of the imagination which, after all, was not originally of their creation .

  —Robert Silverberg

  Lion Time in Timbuctoo By Robert Silverberg

  In the dry stifling days of early summer the Emir lay dying, the king, the imam, Big Father of the Song-hay, in his cool dark mud-walled palace in the Sankore quarter of Old Timbuctoo. The city seemed frozen, strange though it was to think of freezing in this season of killing heat that fell upon you like a wall of hot iron. There was a vast stasis, as though everything were entombed in ice. The river was low and sluggish, moving almost imperceptibly in its bed with scarcely more vigor than a sick weary crocodile. No one went out of doors, no one moved indoors, everyone sat still, waiting for the old man’s death and praying that it would bring the cooling rains.

  In his own very much lesser palace alongside the Emir’s, Little Father sat still like all the rest, watching and waiting. His time was coming now at last. That was a sobering thought. How long had he been the

  prince of the realm? Twenty years? Thirty? He had lost count. And now finally to rule, now to be the one who cast the omens and uttered the decrees and welcomed the caravans and took the high seat in the Great Mosque. So much toil, so much responsibility; but the Emir was not yet dead. Not yet. Not quite.

  “Little Father, the ambassadors are arriving.”

  In the arched doorway stood Ali Pasha, bowing, smiling. The vizier’s face, black as ebony, gleamed with sweat, a dark moon shining against the lighter darkness of the vestibule. Despite his name, Ali Pasha was pure Songhay, black as sorrow, blacker by far than Little Father, whose blood was mixed with that of would-be conquerors of years gone by. The aura of the power that soon would be his was glistening and crackling around Ali Pasha’s head like midwinter lightning: for Ali Pasha was the future Grand Vizier, no question of it. When Little Father became king, the old Emir’s officers would resign and retire. An Emir’s ministers did not hold office beyond his reign. In an earlier time they would have been lucky to survive the old Emir’s death at all.

  Little Father, fanning himself sullenly, looked up to meet his vizier’s insolent grin.

  “Which ambassadors, Ali Pasha?”

  “The special ones, here to attend Big Father’s funeral. A Tur
kish. A Mexican. A Russian. And an English.”

  “An English? Why an English?”

  “They are a very proud people, now. Since their independence. How could they stay away? This is a very important death, Litde Father.”

  “Ah. Ah, of course.” Little Father contemplated the fine wooden Moorish grillwork that bedecked the doorway. “Not a Peruvian?”

  “A Peruvian will very likely come on the next riv-erboat, Little Father. And a Maori one, and they say a Chinese. There will probably be others also. By the end of the week the city will be filled with dignitaries. This is the most important death in some years.”

  ‘ ‘ A Chinese, ’ ’ Little Father repeated softly, as though Ali Pasha had said an ambassador from the Moon was coming. A Chinese! But yes, yes, this was a very important death. The Songhay Empire was no minor nation. Songhay controlled the crossroads of Africa; all caravans journeying between desert north and tropical south must pass through Songhay. The Emir of Songhay was one of the grand kings of the world.

  Ali Pasha said acidly, “The Peruvian hopes that Big Father will last until the rains come, I suppose. And so he takes his time getting here. They are people of a high country, these Peruvians. They aren’t accustomed to our heat.”

  “And if he misses the funeral entirely, waiting for the rains to come?”

  Ali Pasha shrugged. “Then he’ll learn what heat really is, eh, Little Father? When he goes home to his mountains and tells the Grand Inca that he didn’t get here soon enough, eh?” He made a sound that was something like a laugh, and Little Father, experienced in his vizier’s sounds, responded with a gloomy smile. “Where are these ambassadors now?”

  “At Kabara, at the port hostelry. Their riverboat has just come in. We’ve sent the royal barges to bring them here.”

  “Ah. And where will they stay?”

  “Each at his country’s embassy, Little Father.”

  “Of course. Of course. So no action is needed from

  me at this time concerning these ambassadors, eh, Ali Pasha?’ ’

  “None, Little Father.” After a pause the vizier said, “The Ibrk has brought his daughter. She is very handsome.” This with a rolling of the eyes, a baring of the teeth. Little Father felt a pang of appetite, as Ali Pasha had surely intended. The vizier knew his prince very well, too, “Very handsome, Little Father! In a white way, you understand.”

  “I understand. The English, did he bring a daughter too? ’ ’

  “Only the Tlirk,” said Ali Pasha.

  “Do you remember the Englishwoman who came here once?” Little Father asked.

  “How could I forget? The hair like strands of fine gold. The breasts like milk. The pale pink nipples. The belly-hair down below, like fine gold also.”

  Little Father frowned. He had spoken often enough to Ali Pasha about the Englishwoman’s milky breasts and pale pink nipples. But he had no recollection of having described to him or to anyone else the golden hair down below. A rare moment of carelessness, then, on Ali Pasha’s part; or else a bit of deliberate malice, perhaps a way of testing Little Father. There were risks in that for Ali Pasha, but surely Ali Pasha knew that. At any rate it was a point Little Father chose not to pursue just now. He sank back into silence, fanning himself more briskly.

  Ali Pasha showed no sign of leaving. So there must be other news.

  The vizier’s glistening eyes narrowed. “I hear they will be starting the dancing in the marketplace very shortly.”

  Little Father blinked. Was there some crisis in the

  king’s condition, then? Which everyone knew about but ' him?

  “The death dance, do you mean?”

  “That would be premature, Little Father,” said Ali Pasha unctuously. “It is the life dance, of course.”

  “Of course. I should go to it, in that case.”

  “In half an hour. They are only now assembling the formations. You should go to your father, first.”

  “Yes. So I should. To the Emir, first, to ask his blessing; and then to the dance.”

  Little Father rose.

  “The Tlirkish girl,” he said. “How old is she, Ali Pasha?’’

  “She might be eighteen. She might be twenty.”

  “And handsome, you say?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, very handsome, Little Father!”

  There was an underground passageway connecting Little Father’s palace to that of Big Father; but suddenly, whimsically, Little Father chose, to go there by the out-of-doors way. He had not been out of doors in two or three days, since the worst of the heat had descended on the city. Now he felt the outside air hit him lxke the blast of a furnace as he crossed the courtyard and stepped into the open. The whole city was like a smithy these days, and would be for weeks and weeks more, until the rains came. He was used to it, of course, but he had never come to like it. No one ever came to like it except the deranged and the very holy, if indeed there was any difference between the one and the other.

  Emerging onto the portico of his palace. Little Father looked out on the skyline of flat mud roofs before him, the labyrinth of alleys and connecting passageways, the towers of the mosques, the walled mansions of the nobility. In the hazy distance rose the huge modern buildings of the New City. It was late afternoon, but that brought no relief from the heat. The air was heavy, stagnant, shimmering. It vibrated like a live thing. All day long the myriad whitewashed walls had been soaking up the heat, and now they were beginning to give it back.

  Atop the vibration of the air lay a second and almost tangible vibration, the tinny quivering sound of the mu-sicians tuning up for the dance in the marketplace. The life dance, Ali Pasha had said. Perhaps so; but Little Father would not be surprised to find some of the people dancing the death dance as well, and still others dancing the dance of the changing of the king. There was little linearity of time in Old Timbuctoo; everything tended to happen at once. The death of the old king and the ascent of the new one were simultaneous affairs, after all: they were one event. In some countries, Little Father knew, they used to kill the king when he grew sick a?d feeble, simply to hurry things along. Not here, though. Here they danced him out, danced the new king in. This was a civilized land. An ancient kingdom, a mighty power in the world. He stood for a time, listening to the music in the marketplace, wondering if his father in his sickbed could hear it, and what he might be thinking, if he could. And he wondered too how it would feel when his own time came to lie abed listening to them tuning up in the market for the death dance. But then Little Father’s face wrinkled in annoyance at his own foolishness. He would rule for many years; and when the time came to do the death dance for him out there he would not care at all. He might even be eager for it.

  Big Father’s palace rose before him like a mountain.

  Level upon level sprang upward, presenting a dazzling white facade broken only by the dark butts of the wooden beams jutting through the plaster and the occasional grill work of a window. His own palace was a hut compared with that of the Emir. Implacable blue-veiled Tuareg guards stood in the main doorway. Their eyes and foreheads, all that was visible of their coffee-colored faces, registered surprise as they saw Little Father approaching, alone and on foot, out of the aching sunblink of the afternoon; but they stepped aside. Within, everything was silent and dark. Elderly officials of the almost-late Emir lined the hallways, grieving soundlessly, huddling into their own self-pity. They looked toward Little Father without warmth, without hope, as he moved past them. In a short while he would be king, and they would be nothing. But he wasted no energy on pitying them. It wasn’t as though they would be fed to the royal lions in the imperial pleasure-ground, after all, when they stepped down from office. Soft retirements awaited them. They had had their greedy years at the public trough; when the time came for them to go, they would move along to villas in Spain, in Greece, in the south of France, in chilly remote Russia, even, and live comfortably on the fortunes they had embezzled during Big Father’s lengthy reign. Whereas he, he,
he, he was doomed to spend all the days in this wretched blazing city of mud, scarcely even daring ever to go abroad for fear they would take his throne from him while he was gone.

  The Grand Vizier, looking twenty years older than he had seemed when Little Father had last seen him a few days before, greeted him formally at the head of the Stairs of Allah and said, “The imam your father is

  resting on the porch, Little Father. Three saints and one of the Tijani are with him.”

  “Three saints? He must be very near the end, then!” “On the contrary. We think he is rallying.”

  “Allah let it be so,” said Little Father.

  Servants and ministers were everywhere. The place reeked of incense. All the lamps were lit, and they were flickering wildly in the conflicting currents of the air within the palace, heat from outside meeting the cool of the interior in gusting wafts. The old Emir had never cared much for electricity.

  Little Father passed through the huge, musty, empty throne room, bedecked with his father’s hunting trophies, the twenty-foot-long crocodile skin, the superb white oryx head with horns like scimitars, the hippo skulls, the vast puzzled-looking giraffe. The rich gifts from foreign monarchs were arrayed here too, the hideous Aztec idol that King Moctezuma had sent a year or two ago, the brilliant feather cloaks from the Inca Capac Yupanqui of Peru, the immense triple-paneled gilded painting of some stiff-jointed Christian holy men with which the Czar Vladimir had paid his respects during a visit of state a decade back, and the great sphere of ivory from China on which some master craftsman had carved a detailed map of the world, and much more, enough to fill half a storehouse. Little Father wondered if he would be able to clear all this stuff out when he became Emir.

  In his lifetime Big Father had always preferred to hold court on his upstairs porch, rather than in this dark, cluttered, and somehow sinister throne room; and now he was doing his dying on the porch as well. It was a broad square platform, open to the skies but hidden from the populace below, for it was at the back of the palace facing toward the distant river and no one in the city could look into it.