"I have sent for a man to whom I am going to entrust your future. You may trust him implicitly. Do you understand?-- implicitly!"
"Thank you," I said. "I don't know why you are doing these things for me, but I want you to know that I appreciate your kindness to a friendless stranger and that if I can serve you at any time--well, you know you have only to command me."
"Oh, it is nothing," she assured me. "You saved me from a very bad evening with myself, and I am really doing very little in return."
Just then a servant opened the door and announced: "Maltu Mephis! Mantar!"
A tall man in the trappings and with the headdress of a
Zani Guardsman entered the room. He came to the foot of the dais, saluted and said, "Maltu Mephis!"
"Maltu Mephis!" replied Zerka. "I am glad to see you, Mantar. This is Vodo," and to me, "This is Mantar."
"Maltu Mephis! I am glad to know you, Vodo," said Mantar.
"And I am glad to know you, Mantar," I replied.
A questioning frown clouded Mantar's brow, and he glanced at Zerka. She smiled.
"Vodo is an utter stranger here," she said. "He does not yet understand our customs. It is you who will have to inform him."
Mantar looked relieved. "I shall start at once," he said. "You will forgive me, then, Vodo, if I correct you often?"
"Certainly. I shall probably need it."
"To begin with, it is obligatory upon all loyal citizens to preface every greeting and introduction with the words Maltu Mephis. Please, never omit them. Never criticize the government or any official or any member of the Zani Party. Never fail to salute and cry Maltu Mephis whenever you see and hear others doing it. In fact, it will be well if you always do what you see everyone else doing, even though you may not understand."
"I shall certainly follow your advice," I told him; but what my mental reservations might be I wisely kept to myself, as he probably did also.
"Now, Mantar," said Zerka, "this ambitious young man is from far Vodaro, and he wishes to take service as a soldier of Amlot. Will you see what you can do for him! And now you must both be going, as I have many things to attend to. I shall expect you to call and report to me occasionally, Vodo."
MANTAR TOOK me immediately to the palace formerly occupied by the jong, Kord, and now by Mephis and his lieutenants. "We shall go directly to Spehon," he said. "No use wasting time on underlings."
To Spehon! To the man whom Muso had advised to destroy me! I felt positive that the message must already be in his hands, as it must have been stolen by Zani spies who would have delivered it to him immediately, was going to my doom.
"Why do we go to Spehon?" I asked.
"Because he is head of the Zani Guard, which also includes our secret police. Zerka suggested that I find you a berth in the Guard. You are fortunate indeed to have such a friend as the Toganja Zerka; otherwise, if you had been given service at all, it would have been at the front, which is not so good since Muso enlisted the services of this fellow called Carson of Venus with his diabolical contrivance that flies through the air and rains bombs on everyone."
"Flies through the air?" I asked, in simulated surprise. "Is there really such a thing? What can it be?"
"We really don't know much about it," Mantar admitted. "Of course everyone at the front has seen it, and we learned a little from some prisoners we took who were members of a Sanaran party making a sortie against our first line. They told us the name of the fellow who flies it and what little they knew of him and of the thing he calls an anotar, but that really was not much. Yes, you will be fortunate if you get into the Guard. If you are an officer, it is something of a sinecure; but you'll have to watch your step. You must hate everything we Zanis hate and applaud everything that we applaud, and under no circumstances must you ever even look critical of anything that is Zani.
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