Shaka II

15.

Tchaka often made unannounced visits to the various worlds of his growing empire. I still remember the day he came back from Mpande with a new pet. It was about the size of a small dog, though it didn’t resemble any dog ever whelped. It had six legs—the first animal larger than an insect I had ever seen with more than four legs. Its skin was scaly yet shiny, a brilliant red. It head was absolutely circular, the nostrils mere slits, the ears nothing but holes. I wondered what it ate, until Tchaka fed it a small lizard. A tongue that seemed half the length of its body shot out, wrapped around the lizard, literally squeezed the life out of it in just a second or two—you could hear the tiny bones crunch from across the room—and popped it into its mouth. I guess it continued squeezing, turning everything but the bones, which it spat out a moment later, into pulp.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. “What is it called?” I asked.

“I can’t pronounce it, so I shall have to give it a name unique to itself.”

“What name?”

“I will have to think about it,” he said.

“Is it male or female?” I asked.

“Female.”

“There are many lovely women’s names,” I said.

“This animal shall be our national symbol: small, unafraid, adaptable,” said Tchaka. “It needs a special name.”

By the next morning, he had come up with one.

“Nandi?” I repeated. “But she was the original Shaka’s mother.”

“The mother of the Zulu nation,” he agreed. “What better name for our symbol?”

And that afternoon he designed the flag of the Zulu Empire, which displayed images of both Nandi and a Zulu spear and shield.

I had known Tchaka for most of his life, and Nandi—this bizarre alien animal—was the only living thing toward which he had ever shown affection, quite possibly because she was the only thing that had ever shown him true affection. He had always been alone, yet now Nandi was at every staff meeting, she accompanied him on every excursion to other worlds, she slept in his room, and when he addressed the Empire she was always at his side. It was as if he had stored up a lifetime of affection, afraid to bestow it upon any human, and now he had found a recipient for it. No misbehavior on her part was ever punished, and every accident was forgiven.

The same could not be said for his subjects.

A single critical word against Tchaka was the equivalent of a death sentence. And like his predecessor, he didn’t believe in quietly removing his enemies; he wanted potential enemies to know exactly what they could expect.

His favorite method of execution was to impale the still-living malefactor in the middle of the city square where everyone could see the punishment being carried out. Once—only once—a friend of an impaled man put him out of his agony with a burst from a laser pistol.

And two hours later, that Samaritan had replaced his friend on the cruel sharpened stake.

No one kept count—or at least no one made the count public—but in the first year of the Empire more than a thousand men and women were sentenced to very public, very painful deaths. At the same time, our forces continued to increase in size—some thought enlistment increased primarily because able-bodied citizens felt it would get them farther away from their monarch. Yet no leader ever treated his military better than Tchaka did. The newsdisks and holos were filled with stories of Tchaka, often with Nandi tucked under his arm, bestowing medals and honors upon his troops.

Earth was still fighting its war with the chlorine breathers, who had brought allies into the battle, and neither side had any time to deal with us. We assimilated two or three worlds a month, and Tchaka declared our sector of space off-limits to all life forms, oxygen and chlorine breathers alike. At first neither side believed him; after we blew two or three of their ships away they got the idea.

It was after a staff meeting one morning that I found myself alone in his office with Tchaka, while Nandi perched on his desk and stared hypnotically at me as if I was her next meal.

“I have a question,” he said.

“The King is allowed to ask a question,” I replied.

“I gave a speech yesterday.”

“I know,” I said.

“I did not see you in attendance.”

“You gave it in the square, surrounded by impaled corpses,” I said disgustedly.

“They were past objecting,” he said with an amused smile. “Why do you object?”

“Do you know the last monarch to impale his enemies?” I said.

“The first Tchaka.”

“Before that.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?” he said.

“Vlad Dracul,” I replied. “He was known as Vlad the Impaler, and was such a monster that he served as the model for the fictional Dracula.”

“What is your point?” he asked.

“Do you want to be compared to Dracula?” I said.

“Vlad lived a thousand years ago,” said Tchaka, “and people still know of him. Name a single person from that century—commoner or monarch—who lived within a thousand miles of him.”

And that was the end of the only discussion we ever had about impalement.