SIR HAROLD AND HINDU KING

Part 5 of 5

by

Christopher Stasheff

Copyright © 1995

 

So it was, or his exact double.  Shea grabbed Chalmers' shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other.  "Look, Doc!  Our kidnapper!"

"No," Chalmers said, his eyes on the woman, "my wife."

Shea stared at him, then whirled and looked again at the young woman.  It was Florimel—except that she had black hair and a much darker complexion.  But hair could be dyed, and so, for that matter, could skin—not that an enchanter of Malambroso's stature would need to resort to such crude techniques to change a person's appearance.  "You're right, Doc!  That's either Florimel's exact double, or Florimel herself in disguise!  But why would Malambroso..."  His voice trailed off as the answer struck him.

"Yes," Chalmers said grimly.  "How better to hide her from us?  We would be seeking reports of a fair-skinned, brown-haired woman!"

"And, of course, that would be the only way to make her fit in with the local populace."  Shea nodded.  "Good hiding place, now that you think of it—but it seems to have backfired on him."

Malambroso was pleading with Florimel.  "My darling Shobhani, that thief has been pilfering and plundering the whole city, and by his command scores of citizens were killed!  Why, then, at my request, should our most gracious Rajah Randhir release him?"

Almost beside herself, Florimel exclaimed, "If by giving up your whole property, you can induce the Rajah to release him, then instantly do so—for if he does not come to me, I must give up my life!"

She turned away, covering her head with her veil, and sank down weeping, while Malambroso stared down at her, wounded to the core.

So was Chalmers, at seeing Florimel so obviously in love with another man.

"He called her's 'Shobhani,' " Shea said quickly.  "Maybe it's not Florimel after all, just her double!"  Then inspiration struck.  "Maybe each universe has analogs of the people in our universe!  Maybe that old man is just an analog of Malambroso!"

"No," Chalmers said, his face turning wooden.  "That is Malambroso, and the young woman is indeed my Florimel."

"Oh, yeah?"  Shea, in another fit of inspiration, turned him and pointed at the thief, whose face was in profile to them as he stared at the young woman.  "Think of him without the beard and the muscles!  Think of him as a withdrawn young scholar!  Who does he look like?"

Chalmers stared, and turned ashen.  "He is me!"

"A younger analog of you," Shea said quickly.  "The real you is still here!  But this is what you would have looked like if you had been born a Hindu outlaw!  No wonder she fell in love with him!"

Chalmers' face sagged.  "I feel very old, Harold!"

"You feel old!  How do you think Malambroso feels?"

"Very angry."  Chalmers turned back to the window, suddenly afraid for Florimel—or Shobhani, whichever she was.  Sure enough, Malambroso's face was suffused with rage—but even as they watched, all the fight went out of him as anger gave place to misery.  He nodded with resignation and said, "I shall try to give you what you want, my child."  He turned away from the window, and Shobhani looked up in sudden hope.

"He does love her," Chalmers said in surprise.  "Her happiness means more to him than his own!"

"I never would have guessed it of him," Shea agreed.

Malambroso came running out into the midst of the parade and threw himself to his knees in front of Randnir's horse.  The Rajah necessarily reined in—why lose a perfectly good taxpayer?—and Malambroso cried, "O great king, be pleased to receive four lakhs of rupees, and to release this thief!"

But the rajah replied, "He has been robbing the whole city, and by reason of him my guards have been destroyed.  I cannot by any means release him."

"Alas!" Malambroso cried, and scuttled back into his house, his face in his hands.

"I never thought I would feel sorry for the man," Chalmers murmured.

The procession moved on, but Shea turned back in his saddle to watch the end of the domestic crisis.  Malambroso appeared again in the window and explained, "Shobhani, I have said and done all that is possible, but it avails me naught with the Rajah.  Now, then, we die—for I shall not outlive you!"

"Father, you must not!" Shobhani/Florimel cried, taking his hands.

"You are dearer to me than life itself, and I made plans weeks ago for the manner in which I would slay myself if anything brought about your death."

"You must not!" she cried again, "but I must!  I must follow my husband and die when he dies!"  And she darted away from the window.  Malambroso stood a moment in shock, then ran after her, crying, "No, Shobhani!  Stop!"

But Chalmers was trembling.  "Husband?  How can Florimel have another husband?  Even if Shobhani is only Florimel's analog, how can she be married to a thief?"

Shobhani darted from the house to take up her place by the side of Charya's camel.

"Away!" snapped a guard, riding up beside her.

"I cannot," she replied.  "I fell in love with him at first sight."

The guard drew back, aghast, and Randhir moaned faintly.  "The poor child!"

Malambroso burst from the house to fall on his knees in front of Shobhani.  "No, my child!  Come back inside!"

"Away, old man!"  The soldier raised his spear-butt, threatening.  "How dare you dissuade her from her pious duty!"

"Pious duty?  What is he talking about?" Chalmers demanded, white showing all around his eyes; but Shea, more practical and less involved, leaned down to catch Malambroso by the arm and haul him up to his saddle.  "Okay, Malambroso!  Explain—and it better be good!"

The enchanter looked up at him, then stared in shock.  "Harold Shea!"

"And Reed Chalmers."  There was a note of incipient mayhem in Chalmers' voice, and Shea realized with a shock that even the gentle Reed might be capable of a crime of passion.  "Explain what we have seen!  Is that Florimel, or not?"

"She is, she is!" Malambroso yammered.  "I enchanted her body into the coloring of the local people, I enchanted her mind into forgetting that she was Florimel, to believe instead that she was the maiden Shobhani, reared out of sight of men, never being allowed outside the high walls of the garden, because her old nurse, who died when she was only five, gave me, her father, a solemn warning—that Shobhani should be the admiration of the city, but should die a sati-widow before becoming a wife.  A harmless piece of nonsense, surely—but reason enough for her father, who kept her as a pearl in a casket."

Chalmers stared in horror.  "Ritual suicide when her husband dies?  Letting herself be burned alive on his funeral pyre?"

Malambroso shuddered.  "That is one of the ways, yes."

"You mean she's following that scoundrel to his execution because she's planning to die when he does?" Shea cried, aghast.  "But how can she think he's her husband if you've got her hypnotized into believing she isn't even married?"

"It is this confounded belief in reincarnation," Malambroso groaned, "and in the events of one life affecting the next life!  Having begun life anew in this universe, she is reincarnated in its terms—but the only previous life she has had was the one we all know, in which Reed Chalmers was her husband!"

"Is her husband," Reed said in an iron tone.

"Not in this universe!  By its rules, this is a new life!"

"But she's been in half a dozen universes!" Shea protested.  "Was each of them a previous life?"

"Yes, as far as this universe is concerned," Malambroso moaned, "and in each of them, Chalmers was her husband!  But here in Chandrodoya, Chalmers' analog is the robber chieftain, so she fell in love the moment she set eyes upon him."

Shea stared.  "You mean that, in Hindu terms, the robber chieftain was her predestined husband?"

"Yes, unless she had seen Chalmers first!  Oh, how I wish I had not kept her so well hidden!"

"But why does she have to commit sati?" Shea demanded.  "Nobody would have known if she had just kept quiet!  She could even fly in the face of convention and stay alive even now!  They weren't married—no one would blame her!"

"She would," Malambroso told him.  "As a good Hindu maiden, sati is part of her dharma, the obligation of the role in life to which she was born; to refuse to commit sati would load her soul with bad karma—the wages of sin, in our terms—so when she did die, she would be reborn in a lower caste.  But if she does commit sati, her soul will gain a great deal of good karma—I suppose the closest equivalent we have is grace—and she will be reborn in a higher caste.  She even had the gall to recite Hindu proverbs at me—that there are thirty-five millions of hairs on the human body, and the woman who ascends the pyre with her husband will remain so many years in heaven before she's reborn—and that, as the snake-catcher draws the serpent from his hole, the wife who commits sati will rescue her husband from hell and will rejoice with him; though he may have sunk to a region of torment, be restrained in dreadful bonds, have reached the place of anguish, be exhausted and afflicted and tortured for his crimes, her act of self-sacrifice will save him."

Chalmers stared in horror.  "And she really believes this?"

"No other effectual duty is known for virtuous women at any time after the death of their lords, except casting themselves into the same fire," Malambroso sighed.  "As long as a woman in her reincarnation after reincarnation shall refuse sati, she shall not escape from being reborn in the body of some female animal.  Her only road to rebirth in a higher caste, and to eventual nirvana, is to commit sati when her husband dies!"

Chalmers gave him a very black look.  "You have a great deal to answer for, Malambroso, you and your in-depth hypnotic spell!  Certainly you have placed entirely too much knowledge of Hindu dogma in her mind.  Whatever possessed you to impose such an asinine scheme of disguise?  Your daughter indeed!  Oh, I will admit it was far easier than to believe that she was your wife, since you're such a relic—but how did you think you were going to be able to marry your own daughter?"

"When I was sure you had come and gone, I was going to remove the enchantment from her mind so that she would know I was not her father, then feed her a love phyltre," Malambroso snapped, "and who are you calling a relic, you antique?"

"Antique!  I'll have you know—"

"I'll have you both know that we only have a few minutes," Shea interrupted.  "We're almost to the city gate!  If you don't nail down a solution to this dilemma before they nail down the robber, we're going to be dealing with a barbecue, not a woman!"

"Yes, quite so!"  With a visible effort, Chalmers throttled his anger and wrenched his mind back into analytical mode.  "So love at first sight was her recognition that the robber was her fated husband," he summarized, "and because he dies, she must die!  Oh, blast and flay you, Malambroso!  You have really made a thorough mess of it this time!"

"I know, I know!" Malambroso groaned, "but curse me later if you must!  For now, only aid me in finding some way to save her!"

By now, they had come out of the gate, and the robber chieftain saw the scaffold standing upright, waiting for him.  His steps faltered, but the guards pricked him with their spears, and he gave them a look of disdain before he marched up proudly and firmly to stand before the giant wooden X.  He lifted his arms, holding them out to his sides, and the executioners stepped up with hammer and nails.

"If you can do anything to prevent this, do it now!" Malambroso pleaded.

"The invisible shield we put over the rajah when they were fighting?" Shea suggested.

"I have no grass," Chalmers answered, watching the scene with narrowed eyes, "and Randhir would know in an instant who had done it.  No, we must concoct an effect that could be mistaken for something valid, within their own religion."

The three men stood silent for a long moment as the executioners threw a rope around the thief's waist and tied him firmly to the middle of the X.

"Iron skin," Shea said suddenly.

"Of course!  From the elbows to the fingers, and from the knees to the toes!  Quickly, Malambroso!  You take the arms!  Harold, take the right leg!  I will take the left!"

Malambroso cast a quick look of confusion at Chalmers, then shrugged and turned to business.  He drew a few odd objects from beneath his robe, began to manipulate them, and muttered a verse in Arabic.  Chalmers took a small knife from his thief's finery and leaned down to rub it against his shin, muttering.  Shea, realizing how his boss was applying the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, drew his own knife and stropped it against his thigh, muttering,

 

"Joe Magarac was born in Iron Mountain,

And therefore as he grew, he turned to steel.

Let our bandit chief bathe in his fountain;

Turn his skin to iron, so he'll no longer steal!"

 

Malambroso and Chalmers finished their verses in a dead heat with his—and just in time.  The executioner placed a huge spike against the bandit's wrist, drew back a hammer, then drove it forward with all his might.

The spike struck the robber's skin and glanced off, burying itself in the wood.  The executioner stared in amazement, then shook himself, obviously thinking he had missed his stroke.  He placed the spike again, struck again—and watched it skid again.

The robber, watching, grinned.  "What is the difficulty?  Is my skin too strong for your weak muscles?"

But the other executioner was having the same problem with the other wrist.  The first firmed his lips into a straight line, placed the spike, and, with great determination, drove his hammer as hard as he could.  The spike skidded again and flew out of his grasp.

The robber chieftain gave a low, mocking laugh.

The executioners each snatched up another nail and hammered at them with fury.  They couldn't even dent the bandit's skin.  His laughter grew louder and louder as their frustration mounted.  Finally, they threw down their spikes, crying, "He is bewitched!"

At the word "bewitched," Randhir's eyes automatically swiveled to Shea and Chalmers—but Harold only returned a gaze of blank innocence, while Chalmers stood with head bowed.  Of course, his head was bowed to keep the king from seeing his lips move as he chanted a verse while he pulled a thread from his cuff and stretched it between his hands until it snapped.

The rope fell from the robber's waist.  He looked down in surprise, then grinned and stepped forward, holding up unmarked wrists in a gesture of triumph.

"The gods have spoken!" cried a woman in the crowd.  "The God of the Golden Spear protects him!"

"Or perhaps the Goddess of Brides," another woman countered.

"Yes, it would seem that the gods have given their judgment, and that the thief is to live."  Randhir looked as though he had bitten down on a rotten nut, but he managed to force the words out.

"Praise Heaven!" Malambroso cried, going limp—then straightening in alarm as Florimel gave a cry of delight and ran to throw her arms around the thief's neck.  Grinning, he caught her up and whirled her about.  "He cannot marry her!" Malambroso cried.

"I did not say that he would," Rajah Randhir grated, "for though he shall live, he shall not go unpunished.  He shall be a common soldier in my army, and I shall send him to the border, so that when my greedy neighbor invades, this robber chieftain shall be the first whom arrows strike!  If the gods still protect him then, if he comes home from the battle alive and well, I may permit him to pay court to the maiden—or I may find more tasks for him to do, many more, until he has proved his worth and made amends, at least in part, for all the misery he has caused."

The thief put down Shobhani and turned to salaam to the Rajah.  "Whatsoever you wish, O Diamond of Justice, I shall do!  Indeed, if I had known virtue might win me the hand of so beauteous a maiden as this, I would have forsaken my evil ways long ago!"

Shobhani threw her arms around him again, and the people cheered as Malambroso moaned—in harmony with Chalmers.

"Stand away, maiden!" the Rajah commanded.  "He must go forthwith to the border, this very night!  Soldiers!  Take him to your barracks and equip him for the journey!"

The soldiers surrounded the bandit and marched him off, back into the city.

"I wonder how many beatings he will sustain between the city and the border?" Chalmers muttered.

"Accidents will happen," Shea said virtuously.  "Hey, its gotta be better than dying, Doc—and he's proved he can take it."

As the crowd moved off, cheering the same man they had cursed only an hour before, the Rajah turned on Shea and Chalmers.  "Well enough, magicians!  I cannot prove it, and I certainly do not know why you did it—but I could swear his escape was your doing, and not the work of the gods at all!"  He gave Malambroso a narrow glance.  "He is one of you too, is he not?"

"I assure you, O Gem of Insight," said Malambroso, "that I have no wish to see my daughter Shobhani marry a thief!"

"No, but you would rather that than see her commit sati, would you not?  Come, Shea, admit it!"

"Okay, we're guilty," Shea sighed.

"Harold!" Chalmers snapped in alarm.

"Fear not," Randhir said grimly, "I have already spoken, and I shall not reverse my judgment again.  However, it is not my judgment you need fear now, but that of Shiva—for it is with his justice that you have interfered!"

"Perhaps," Shea said slowly, "or perhaps I have been sent here by another god, whether I knew it or not.  Who knows but that I may have been the instrument of Heaven?"

"Oh?  And what god would choose a foreigner for his tool?" Randhir said, not quite sneering.

"Oh... one who likes to see handsome young men sporting with beautiful young women," Shea said slowly.

Randhir frowned.  "Krishna, you mean?"  At that point, Shea was open to all suggestions.  He shrugged.  "He loved playing with the milkmaids himself, didn't he?"

The Rajah's eyes narrowed.  "If you truly believe that," he said, "I challenge you to prove it by coming with me to Krishna's temple and standing before his statue.  If you are not struck down by Krishna's anger, I may begin to believe you are sent by a god, and are not liable to punishment yourself, for interfering with the king's justice."

A look of alarm spread over Chalmers' features, but Shea felt only a wash of relief.  Statues were only sculptures, after all—lumps of wood or rock fashioned into something resembling human form.  He bowed.  "As you wish, O Scale of Justice."

"But," Malambroso said hastily, "since the maiden Shobhani is the cause of this difficulty, should she not also stand by us before the statue?"

"She shall," the Rajah promised.  "Come!"  He turned away, and his soldiers stepped up behind the three enchanters, spears out to prod.

As they followed the King, Chalmers muttered to Malambroso, "You colossal idiot!  Admittedly, a statue is only a statue, but you never know what tricks priests can work, especially in a magical universe!  Do you want Florimel to be struck by lightning, too?"

"Come, Chalmers."  Malambroso had regained his former aplomb.  "You do not truly believe such a thing can happen, do you?"

"Well... no," Chalmers admitted, "and it does keep her from getting lost."  But a gleam had come into his eye, and Shea wondered what he was planning.

He found out when they stood before the image of Krishna—wooden, apparently, for it was painted, and the blue face of the boy-god looked down upon them as Chalmers reached out to stroke Shobhani's black hair, muttering a verse.  Alarmed, Malambroso spun to prevent him—but too late.  The woman looked up, blinking in confusion, then saw Chalmers and cried, "Reed!  Oh, thank Heaven!  But where are we?"

Malambroso groaned, "I shall win her yet, Chalmers!  You shall regret this!"

"Maybe sooner than you think."  Shea eyed the statue nervously.

Chalmers turned to him with a frown.  "Whatever can you mean?"

"Only that this universe has its own rules," Shea reminded him, "and Krishna might be more than a myth, here."

Chalmers stared, and alarm was just beginning to show in his face when a shaft of light burst from the statue, engulfing them all.

Shea flailed, catching Chalmers' hand, then stood, frozen by the glitter that dazzled him and filled all the universe about him.  He could only hope Chalmers had been able to catch hold of Florimel.  Then Shea found room to wonder if this was really what it was like to be hit by lightning, and if it was, it was odd, because he felt no pain.

Then the dazzle died, the ground seemed to push itself up under his feet, and he looked around him, blinking in confusion—Florimel, arms around her husband's neck, cried, "Oh, Reed, praise Heaven!  We are home!"

Belphebe started to struggle up from the chair where she sat watching, but Shea reached her in two steps, dropped to one knee, and enfolded her in an ardent embrace.  The room was very quiet for a few minutes, as the two married couples celebrated the travelers' safe return with a kiss and a promise—of more kisses to come.

Finally, Shea came up for air and turned to Chalmers to ask, "How did you do it, Doc?"

"I did not, really."  Chalmers still looked rather dazed.  "I only reached out for Florimel's hand—I remember thinking that if I were going to die by electrocution, I could at least die holding her.  I reached out for your hand, too, but the hand I touched was quite bony—I am certain it was Malambroso's, and I let go at once.  Even as I did, though, I felt his hand pulling away from mine, but even as I caught yours, I could swear I heard him cry out in fright."  He shuddered.  "I could wish the man many evils, but none so bad as that cry seemed to express."

"You don't think he..."  Shea couldn't finish the question.

"No, I do not."  Chalmers collected himself with a visible effort.  "I think it probable that Krishna—or his priests; they may have been magicians who resented the competition—sent our old adversary back to his home, as he seems to have sent us to ours.  And oh, Harold, I am mightily glad he did!"

"You can say that for me, too."  Shea turned to watch Belphebe and Florimel, chatting as merrily as though they had seen each other only last week.  "So Florimel didn't get herself lost by trying to work a syllogismobile spell on her own?"

"It would seem not.  Certainly Malambroso appeared in my house for the purpose of kidnapping her, but before he did, he no doubt took advantage of the opportunity to update himself on our researches.  Thank Heaven he is so untidy that he did not bother to clean up the evidence, or we should never have been able to track him!"

"But we did, and we won Florimel back, and we're home.  Just to be on the safe side, though, Doc—maybe you'd better give her the full syllogismobile course, so that if somebody kidnaps her again, she has a fair chance of escaping."

"An excellent thought."  Chalmers gazed at his wife, but his face was grim.  "I assure you, Harold, I intend to guard her very closely from now on!  She shall never be stolen from me again!"

Shea glanced uneasily from husband to wife, and hoped Chalmers was right.

 

THE END