Tyrant

by Richard F. Weyand

  “What’s the matter, Amanda?”

  “I have to sneak through the palace back to my apartment in the research building in my clothes from last night.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Dunham called Housekeeping in VR.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Ms. Amanda Peters is having breakfast with me this morning and needs a change of clothes from her apartment. Can someone get that for her?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “I’ll have her call you.”

  Dunham dropped out of VR to talk to Peters.

  “I just let Housekeeping know you need some things from your apartment. I sent you my private link to them. Just let them know. They should have a camera so you can tap into the feed and point out what you want.”

  Peters went into VR for about five minutes. When she dropped back out, he was dressed for the business day.

  “Well, that was amazing. They went around my apartment at my direction and picked out everything I need and it’s on the way.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s kind of weird to see my apartment that way. Sort of through someone else’s eyes.”

  “Housekeeping – at least the staff assigned to me – is very good. So you go take your shower. By the time you’re done, all your things will be here.”

  He caught her, naked, on the way to the shower and kissed her.

  “I’ll get your suit all rumply,” she protested.

  “That’s OK. Naked woman. The ultimate fashion accessory.”

  She punched him in the ribs and he laughed.

  When she got out of the shower, her things had, in fact, been delivered. She found her business suit and blouse hanging in the empty second closet, and her undergarments laid out on the shelf, together with her shoes and her portable makeup and hair kit.

  She put on her undergarments, then made her face and fussed her hair at the dressing table in the closet. She got dressed in her suit and blouse, put on her shoes, and went searching for Dunham.

  She found him next door in the sitting room, reading in VR in the lower half of his vision. He saw her come in.

  “Ready for breakfast?”

  “Yes, I’m famished. After all I ate last night, it’s hard to believe, but –“

  Peters shrugged.

  “Happy exercise will do that,” Dunham said. “Come along, my dear.”

  Dunham held out his hand to her and led her down the hall to the dining room. It was still too chill this morning to have the glass wall open, but the drapes and sheers were pulled back.

  “Oh, now that’s a nice view. Straight down the Palace Mall.”

  He seated her to one side from the door, himself on the other. There were also two Imperial Guardsmen in the dining room corners to either side of the entry door, and a chef with a food cart next to the sideboard, on which a built-in double-burner unit was uncovered. There was also a toaster and various decanters.

  “What would you like for breakfast, Amanda? Eggs, omelet, bacon, sausage?”

  “How about a ham and Swiss omelet, with rye toast, and a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee?”

  The chef nodded as she called things out and began working on the omelet before she was finished.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “I’ll take three eggs scrambled, soft, with four sausage links and wheat toast, and a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  The cook fussed the food and served them both.

  “That’s all for now. I’ll call if we need anything.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  The chef left the room.

  “Where does he go? I mean, if we call him back, where is he?” Peters asked.

  “The chef’s pantry next door. Right through that wall behind you.”

  “Ah.”

  Peters cast a sidelong glance at the two Imperial Guardsmen standing watch in the corners. Dunham turned to them.

  “Leave us.”

  They both nodded and left the room.

  “And where did they go?”

  “Out in the hall, standing watch on the door.”

  “So we’re in private.”

  “More or less. There’s video monitoring, too. But my secrets are safe with the Guard. The Guard discovered the Empress’s secrets were being sold to the Imperial Council by one of their own members about twenty years ago. They beat him to death with their bare hands. The Empress had to pardon them all on murder charges.”

  “Heavens. They take their job seriously, then.”

  “Absolutely. I really was in the Imperial Guard, and I stood watch over the Empress myself. I was an officer, but the first year you have to learn all the different functions of the Guard. Right now we’re as alone as we’re ever likely to get.”

  “So how are you doing, lover? I know I pushed pretty fast, but it just seemed right, somehow.”

  “I’m good. Very good. And you?”

  “I’m happy. I just sort of surprised myself. I mean, I’m not inexperienced. I am twenty-five, after all, but even so, that was fast. I’ve never done that before. Not even close. But you’re just so, so –“

  “Handsome? Debonair? Sophisticated?”

  “Comfortable.”

  “Comfortable. Comfortable is good. I like comfortable.”

  “So do I.”

  She smiled at him.

  “So now what?” Peters asked. “Where do we go from here?”

  “Cindy – my wife – when things got really bad with the Council there toward the end, said ‘Dum vivimus, vivamus.’”

  “’While we live, let us live.’ Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, then, eh? I can do that.”

  “Good. So can I. Life’s too short to hold back.”

  Dunham lifted her hand from the table, kissed it, and put it back.

  “And now we both need to get to work.”

  Moving In

  “Good morning, Mr. Saaret.”

  “Good morning, Your Majesty.”

  “Mr. Saaret, a friend of mine in palace finance had an idea about how to end a possible Catalonian Secession in a week or two. Maybe less.”

  A friend in palace finance? Saaret wondered who that could be. Maybe it was the young woman Suzanne said he had mentioned.

  “Indeed, Sire.”

  “Yes, Mr. Saaret. Shut off the VR. All of it. The VR hubs. The QE radios. The whole sector. Just shut it all down.”

  Saaret sat stunned.

  “We never thought of that, Sire. That really would throw a wrench in the works, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Saaret. No funds transfers. No access to funds. No withdrawals. Not even any way to get the word out to the population on what is happening or what the prospects of fixing it are.”

  “It also means the sector governor and her pet admiral won’t be able to command the Navy forces in-system, Sire. The Navy has its own systems independent of planetary ones, but the orders have to get from the planet to the Navy.”

  “Which makes purloining the hypergates much less risky, Mr. Saaret.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. If we even need to do that. This is a very good idea, Sire.”

  “Let’s get people looking at it from two points of view, Mr. Saaret. One, will it work to turn the population against her with minimal loss of life and property, and two, can the technical guys pull it off without crashing the VR across the whole Empire.”

  “Yes, Sire. We’ll get right on it.”

  The QE network operations working group convened to discuss the request from the nascent Projects organization within the Imperial Palace. The department heads had once all reported up through the Communications organization to the Councilor for Communications.

  “The real issue is, can we tear down communications in one sector without unraveling the whole QE fabric,” Jason Biggs said.

  “Agreed. The node addressing helps us there, because it is hierarchically structured into sector, provin
cial, and planetary levels,” Debby Norton said.

  “It’s the redundancy that’s going to be the problem,” Kiran Gupta said. “There are all sorts of links into the sector that aren’t hierarchical. What’s to keep traffic from rerouting out of the sector, around the other side, and back in?”

  “There’s five thousand or so hierarchical links, right?” Biggs asked. “And we know we can shut those down. That’s straightforward. How many redundant, non-hierarchical links are there?”

  “Every planet has at least three, but they’re double-ended so another seventy-five hundred, maybe?” Gupta asked.

  “OK, but most of those are in-sector,” Norton said. “How many actually leave the sector without passing through Catalonia?”

  “We normally plan that for about one every three planets,” Erich Bosch said. “Figure maybe seventeen hundred.”

  “So what do we do about those?” Biggs asked. “Those are self-healing. If we try to shut those down, they’re going to squirm out somewhere else.”

  “I don’t think we can do that at the link level,” Norton said. “We could probably do it at the addressing level. If we have the nodes in neighboring sectors claim multiple adjacencies, then they’ll attract the traffic, and they can dump it all.”

  “OK, let’s talk about how we do that without getting all the traffic in the system heading for those nodes,” Biggs said.

  The VR network operations working group was facing similar problems, but for them it was primarily an issue of permissions, rather than routing. The big issue there wouldn’t be breaking it, but turning it all back on afterwards.

  It was Friday morning, and Dunham had not yet received any information on the feasibility of shutting down the communications of the Catalonia Sector. He expected it would take several days to a week to get any real feedback, as it was not a problem they had considered before. Preventing outages was their milieu and their mindset. This problem took a different perspective, and they would have to work their heads around it.

  He did get a message from Amanda Peters, though.

  Peters to Dunham: Well THAT was disappointing.

  Dunham to Peters: What was?

  Peters to Dunham: Waking up alone.

  Dunham to Peters: Agreed.

  Peters to Dunham: Why did we do that? I thought we were full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.

  Dunham to Peters: You can move in with me if you want. We can try it out. See if it works.

  Peters to Dunham: YES!!!

  Dunham to Peters: I’ll have Housekeeping move you today. When you leave work, come home to me.

  Peters to Dunham: Ooooo. I’m so excited!

  Dunham to Peters: Me, too. See you then.

  Dunham called Housekeeping in VR.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Ms. Amanda Peters is moving into the Imperial Residence. Move her things from her apartment in the Imperial Research building into the second closet in the Imperial bedroom today. Keep her apartment in the Imperial Research building listed as occupied in her name for the time being.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Also, plan all meals in the Imperial Apartment for two until further notice.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Dunham thought for a moment.

  “Actually, she may prefer to eat lunch during the business week at her work location. I’ll have to let you know.”

  “We can plan for two, Sire, and if she’s not there, there won’t be any harm done.”

  “Let’s do that, then.”

  “Very good, Sire.”

  He dropped the call and placed a call to General Daggert.

  “General Daggert here, Your Majesty.”

  “General Daggert, Ms. Amanda Peters is moving into the Imperial Residence today, into the Imperial Apartment. Place her on the access list for the Imperial Residence floors. I would also request the Imperial Guard watch postings be modified for privacy reasons, particularly in the Imperial bedroom.”

  “Of course, Sire. Outside the door, I think. Would that be acceptable?”

  “Yes, General Daggert. That would be fine. See to it.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  He dropped the call to Daggert then and got back to work.

  It was a good thing it wasn’t a hectic day, because Dunham was distracted for the rest of the day.

  Amanda Peters, too, was distracted, and nervous. She wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do or not, but it felt so right. Was there heartbreak down this road? How could she know?

  Her friend Brenda Connolly came into her office that afternoon.

  “Oh, God. Now what happened? Your boyfriend-face just went from merely epic to completely thermonuclear.”

  Peters got up and closed the door, then went back to her task chair.

  “I’m moving in with him. Today.”

  “Whoa, girl! Do you have any brakes left at all? That’s unlike you.”

  “I know. But he’s just so comfortable.”

  “It sounds like you’re talking about old slippers.”

  “Yes, and you know how good it feels to slip those on when you get home.”

  “But is he handsome? Is he young? Is he fit? Is he rich? What’s the scoop?”

  “Handsome and young and fit. He’s a former soldier, and he has muscles in places a lot of people don’t even have places.”

  “OK, so he’s a pauper, right?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. I’m moving over to the palace.”

  “Oh. He’s Imperial Guard, then?”

  “The top floor of the palace.”

  Connolly was confused.

  “But the only people who live on the top floor of the palace are Mr. and Ms. Saaret and the Emperor.”

  Peters just looked at her.

  “Oh, my God! Your new boyfriend is the Emperor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wouldn’t even know him if I saw him.”

  “I didn’t either. That’s how it happened. I ran into him in the rooftop gardens over the weekend –” My God, was it just last weekend? “– and I didn’t know who he was. We had a picnic in the gardens, and I had to force it out of him. Who he really was.”

  “I bet that was a surprise.”

  “Oh, yeah. I almost ran away. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “But he’s so kind and so sweet and just so – I don’t know. Comfortable is still the best word. It feels so right. When I curl up with him, I just feel so contented and at peace, I want to purr like a kitten.”

  “I wish you luck, Amanda. The breakup could be awful.”

  “Breakups are always awful. At least with this one, I probably wouldn’t see him around much.”

  “That’s true enough. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. It sounds like you have a serious keeper there.”

  “I hope so, Brenda. I really hope so. He’s just so special.”

  Dunham left the office slightly early, about ten to five, to make sure he was there if there were any problems with the access arrangements.

  Peters, by contrast, hung back, not wanting to show up too early. It was ten after five before she left her office in the palace and went over to the elevators.

  When Peters got on the elevators, she noted she had extra buttons in her VR, for the top floor and the floor below it – both labeled Imperial Residence. She wondered what was on the lower of the two floors. She pushed the VR button for the top floor.

  The doors opened and she stepped out into an elevator lobby with a seating arrangement in front of her and double doors on both sides. Imperial Guardsmen stood watch on the set of double doors on her right, to the west. One of the Guardsmen opened the primary door for her as she approached.

  Peters walked down the hallway past the formal living room, the dining room, and the guest apartments to the living room of the Imperial Apartment, outside the door of which two more Guardsmen stood watch. One of them opened the door for her as she approached.
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br />   Dunham was sitting, still dressed from the day, on a sofa facing away from the door, toward the open window wall opposite.

  “Honey, I’m home,” Peters called as she walked in,

  He turned his head to grin at her.

  “Sorry. I always wanted to say that,” she said as she walked up.

  “And I always wanted to hear it.”

  He took her hand and kissed it, at which she bent over and kissed him.

  “Is this real, Bobby?” she asked.

  “Yes, Amanda. It’s real.”

  She hugged him then, over the back of the sofa, laying her head on his shoulder and kissing him on the neck below the ear.

  “I’m going to go dress down.”

  “I as well.”

  They walked through the adjoining door into the bedroom and each to their own closet.

  Peters found all her things there. All her clothes – though they only filled a third of the huge space – all her makeup items laid out as she had left them in her apartment, even the clothes from her laundry hamper, though they had all been laundered or dry-cleaned and hung or folded. She just shook her head in amazement.

  She stripped completely down and dropped everything into the laundry basket. She pulled a simple sundress over her head with nothing at all underneath it. She let her hair down, and brushed it out until it fell naturally below her shoulders.

  Peters assessed herself critically in the mirror. There was a sink next to the makeup table in the closet, and she washed her face, removing her office makeup. She checked herself in the mirror again. Better. More home, less office.

  She went across the bedroom and out into the living room, where he was sprawled full-length on the sofa. The seat cushions on the sofa were deep, and he patted the cushions next to him.

  Dunham watched her walk over. In her sundress, her hair down, and no makeup, she looked like a girl from back home, from back in the hill country around Craigs Notch. Just the sight of her did his heart good.