I'm concerned, said Mikal.
And so am I.
No doubt. I'm worried because the Captain is not a stupid man, and he has been behaving stupidly. I assume you've been having men follow him ever since he was appointed.
The Chamberlain tried to protest.
If you haven't been following him, you haven't been doing a very good job.
I've been having him followed.
Get the records and correlate them with Ansset's kidnapping. See what you find.
The Chamberlain nodded. Waited a moment, and then, when Mikal seemed to have lost interest in him, got up and left.
When Mikal was alone (except for the guards, but he had learned to dismiss them from his mind, except for the constant watch against an unwary word), he sighed, stretched his arms, heard his joints pop. His joints had never popped until he was over a hundred years old. Where's Ansset? he asked, and one of the guards answered, I'll get him.
Don't get him. Tell me where he is.
And the guard cocked his head, listening to the constant stream of reports coming into his ear implant. In the garden. With three guards. Near the river.
Take me to him.
The guards tried not to betray their surprise. Mikal hadn't gone outside the palace in years. But they moved efficiently, and with five guards and an unseen hundred more patrolling the garden, Mikal left the palace and walked to where Ansset sat on the riverbank. Ansset arose when he saw Mikal coming, and they sat together, the guards many meters off, watching carefully, as imperial flits passed overhead.
I feel like an invader, Mikal said. I have to take two guards with me when I take a shit.
The birds of Earth sing beautiful songs, Ansset answered. Listen.
Mikal listened for a while, but his ear was not so finely tuned as Ansset's, and he grew impatient.
There are plots within plots, Mikal said. Sing to me of the plans and plots of foolish men.
So Ansset sang to him a story he had heard only a few days before from a biochemist working in poison control. It was about an ancient researcher who had finally succeeded in crossing a pig with a chicken, so that the creature could lay ham and eggs together, saving a great deal of time at breakfast. The animals lay plenty of eggs, and they were all the researcher had hoped they'd be. The trouble was, the eggs didn't hatch, so the animal couldn't reproduce. The blunt-snouted pickens (or chigs?) couldn't break the eggs, and so the experiment failed. Mikal was amused, and felt much better. But you know, Ansset, there was a solution. He should have taught them to screw out with their tails.
But Mikal's face soon grew sour again, and he said, My days are numbered, Ansset. Sing to me of numbered days. For all his attempts, Ansset had never understood mortality in the way the old understand it. So he had to sing Mikal's own feelings on the matter back to him. They were no comfort at all. But at least Mikal knew that he was understood, and he felt better as he lay in the grass, watching the Susquehanna rush by.
13
We have to take Ansset along. He's the only one who might recognize anyone.
I won't have any chance of Ansset being taken away from me again.
The Chamberlain was stubborn on this point. I don't want to leave it to chance. There are too many ways evidence can be destroyed.
Mikal was angry. I won't have the boy caught up in any more of this. He came to Earth to sing, dammit!
Then I refuse to try anything more, the Chamberlain said. I can't accomplish the tasks you set for me if you tie my hands!
Take him, then. But you'll have to take me, too.
You?
Me.
But the security arrangements--
Damn the security arrangements. Nobody expects me to be along on something like this. Surprise is the best security of all.
But, my Lord, you'd be risking your life--
Chamberlain! Before you were born I Had risked my life in far more dangerous circumstances than these! I bet my own life that I could build an empire and I damn near lost the bet a hundred times. We're leaving in fifteen minutes.
Yes, my Lord, said the Chamberlain. He left quickly, to get everything ready, but as he walked out of Mikal's room, he was trembling. He had never dared argue with the emperor that way before. What had he been thinking of? And now the emperor was going with him. If anything happened to Mikal while he was in the Chamberlain's care, the Chamberlain was doomed. No one would agree on anything after Mikal's death except that the Chamberlain must die.
Mikal and Ansset came to the troop flesket together. The soldiers were petrified about going on an operation with the emperor himself. But the Chamberlain noticed that Mikal was buoyant, excited. Probably remembering the glories of past days, the Chamberlain supposed, when he had conquered everybody. Well, he's not much of a conqueror now, and I wish to hell he had let me handle this. One of the dangers of being so close to the center of power-one had to accept the whims of the powerful.
The child, however, seemed to fee! nothing at all. It wasn't the first time the Chamberlain bad envied Ansset his iron self-control. The ability to hide every feeling from one's enemies and friends-they were often indistinguishable-would be a greater weapon than any number of lasers.
The flesket went down the Susquehanna River at an unusually high speed, which took it over the normal river traffic. They reached Hisper in an hour, then went another hour beyond, left the river, and crossed farmland and marshes until they reached a much broader river. The Delaware, the Chamberlain whispered to Mikal and Ansset. Mikal nodded, but said, Keep your esoterica to yourself. He sounded irritable, which meant he was enjoying himself immensely.
It wasn't long before the Chamberlain had the lieutenant pull the flasket to the shore. There's a path here that leads where we want to go. The ground was soggy and two soldiers led the column along the path, finding firm ground. It was a long walk, but Mikal did not ask them to go slowly. The Chamberlain wanted to stop and rest, but did not dare ask the column to halt. It would be too much of a victory for Mikal. If the old man can keep it up, thought the Chamberlain, so can I.
The path led to a fenced field, and beyond the field was a group of farmhouses. The nearest house was a colonial revival, which made it about a hundred years old. Only a hundred meters off was the river, and moored to a pile there was a flatboat rocking gently with the currents.
That's the house, said the Chamberlain, and that's the boat.
The field between them and the house was not large, and it was overgrown with bushes, so that they were able to reach the house without being too easily noticeable. But the house was empty, and when they rushed the flatboat the only man on board aimed a laser at his own face and blasted it to a cinder. Not before Ansset had recognized him, though.
That was Husk, Ansset said, looking at the body without any sign of feeling. He's the man who fed me.
Then Mikal and the Chamberlain followed Ansset through the boat. It's not the same, Ansset said.
Of course not, said Chamberlain. They've been trying to disguise it. The paint is fresh. And there's a smell of new wood. They've been remodeling. But is there anything familiar?
There was. Ansset found a tiny room that could have been his cell, though now it was painted bright yellow and a new window let sunlight flood into the room. Mikal examined the window frame. New, the emperor pronounced. And by trying to imagine the interior of the flatboat as it might have been unpainted, Ansset was able to find the large room where he had sung on his last evening in captivity. There was no table. But the room seemed the same size, and Ansset agreed that this could very well have been the place he was held.
Down in Ansset's cell they heard the laughter of children and a flesket passing on the river, full of revelers singing. Quite a populated area, Mikal said to the Chamberlain.
That's why I had us come in through the woods. So we wouldn't be noticed.
If you wanted to avoid being noticed, Mikal said, it would have been better to come in on a civilian bus. Nothing's more conspi
cuous than soldiers hiding in the woods.
The Chamberlain felt Mikal's criticism like a blow. I'm not a tactician, he said.
Tactician enough, said Mikal, letting the Chamberlain relax a bit. We'll go back to the palace now. Do you have anyone you can trust to make the arrest?
Yes, the Chamberlain said. They're already warned not to let him leave the palace.
Who? Ansset asked. Who are you arresting?
For a moment they seemed reluctant to answer. Finally Mikal said, The Captain of the guard.
He was behind the kidnapping?
"Apparently so, said the Chamberlain.
I don't believe it, Ansset said, for he had thought he knew the Captain's voice, and hadn't heard any songs except loyalty in it. But the Chamberlain wouldn't understand that. It wasn't evidence. And this was the boat, which seemed to prove something to them. So Ansset said nothing more about the Captain until it was too late.
14
As prisons went, there had been worse. It was just a cell without a door-at least on the inside. And while there was no furniture, the floor yielded as comfortably as the floor in Mikal's private room.
It was hard not to be bitter, however. The Captain sat leaning on a wall, naked so that he couldn't harm himself with his clothing. He was more than sixty years old, and for four years had been in charge of all the emperor's fleets, coordinating thousands of ships across the galaxy. And then to get caught up in this silly palace intrigue, to be the scapegoat-
The Chamberlain had plotted it, of course. Always the Chamberlain. But how could he prove his innocence without undergoing hypnosis; and who would conduct that operation, if not the Chamberlain? Besides, the Captain knew what no one else alive did-that while a serious probe into his mind would not prove that he was at all involved in kidnapping Ansset, it would uncover other things, earlier things, any one of which could destroy his reputation, all of which together would result in his death as surely as if he had captured Ansset himself.
Forty years of unshakable loyalty, and now, when I'm innocent, my old crimes stop me from forcing the issue. He ran his hands along his aging thighs as he sat leaning against a wall. The muscles were still there, but his legs felt as if the skin were coming loose, sagging away. A man should live to be a hundred and twenty in this world, he thought. I won't have had much more than half that.
What had prompted them to imprison him? What had he done that was suspicious? Or had there been anything at all?
There must have been something. Mikal was not a tyrant; he ruled by law, even if he was all powerful. Had he talked to the wrong people too often? Had he been in the wrong cities at the wrong time? Whoever the real traitors were, he was sure the case they had set up against him looked plausible.
Abruptly the lights dimmed to half strength. He knew enough about the prison from the other end of things to know that meant darkness in about ten minutes. Night, then, and sleep, if he could sleep.
He lay down, rested his arm across his eyes, and knew that the fluttering in his stomach would be irresistible. He wouldn't sleep tonight. He kept thinking-morbidly let himself think, because he had too much courage to hide from his own imagination-kept thinking about the way he would die. Mikal was a great man, but he was not kind to traitors. They were taken apart, piece by piece, as the holos recorded the death agony to be broadcast on every planet. Or perhaps they would only claim he was peripherally involved, in which case his agony could be more private, and less prolonged. But it wasn't the pain that frightened him-he had lost his left arm twice, not two years apart, and knew that he could bear pain reasonably well. It was knowing that all the men he had ever commanded would think of him from then on as a traitor, dying in utter disgrace.
That was what he could not bear. Mikal's empire had been created by soldiers with fanatic loyalty and love of honor, and that tradition continued. He remembered the first time he had been in command of a ship. It was at the rebellion of Quenzee, and his cruiser had been surprised on the planet. He had had the agonizing choice of lifting the cruiser immediately, before it could be damaged, or waiting to try to save some of his detachment of men. He opted for the cruiser, because if he waited, it would mean nothing at all would be saved for the empire. But the panicked cries of Wait, Wait rang in his ears long after the radio was too far to hear them. He had been commended, though they didn't give him the medal for months because he would have found a way to kill himself with it.
I thought so easily of suicide then, he remembered. Now, when it would really be useful, it is forever out of reach.
I will only be paying for my crimes. They don't realize it, but even though they think they're setting up an innocent man, I deserve exactly the penalty I'm getting.
He remembered-
And the lights went out-
He tried to sleep and dream, but still he remembered. And remembered. And in every dream saw her face. No name; He had never known her name-it was part of their protection, because if a name was never known, it could never be found by the cleverest probe, no matter how hard he tried. But her face-blacker than his own, as if she had pure blood descending from the most isolated part of Africa, and her smile, though rare, so bright that the very memory brought tears to his eyes and made his head swim. She was supposed to be the real assassin. And the night before they had planned to kill the prefect, she had brought him to her house. Her parents, who knew nothing, were asleep in the back; she had given herself to him twice before he finally realized that this was more than just release of tension before a difficult mission. She really loved him, he was sure of it, and so he whispered his name into her ear.
What was that? she asked.
My name, he answered, and her face looked as if she was in great pain.
Why did you tell me?
Because, he had whispered as she ran her fingers up his back, I trust you. She had groaned under the burden of that trust-or perhaps in the last throes of sexual ecstasy. Whatever. He would never know. As he left, she whispered to him at the door, Meet me at nine o'clock in the morning, meet me by the statue of Horus in Flant Fisway.
And he had waited by the statue for two hours, then went looking for her and found her house surrounded by police. And the houses of two other conspirator and he knew that they had been betrayed. At first he thought, had let himself think that perhaps she had betrayed them, and it was to save his life that she asked him to meet her at the time she knew the police would come. Either way, though, even if she was innocent, he read in the papers that she had killed herself as the police came into her house, had blasted her head off with an old-fashioned bullet pistol right in front of her parents as they sat in the living room wondering why the police were coming to the door. Even if she had betrayed the group, she had refused to betray him-knowing his name, she had preferred death to the possibility of being forced to reveal it.
Scant comfort. He had killed the prefect himself, then left the planet he had been born on and never returned. Spent a few years, until he was twenty, trying to join rebellions or foment rebellions or even uncover some serious discontent somewhere in Mikal's not-very-old empire. But gradually he had come to realize that not that many people longed for independence. Life under Mikal was better than life had ever been before. And as he learned that, he began to understand what it was that Mikal had achieved.
And he enlisted, and used his talents to rise in the military until he was Mikal's most trusted lieutenant, Captain of the guard. All for nothing. All for nothing because of an ambitious civil servant who was having him die, not with honor, as he had dreamed, but in terrible disgrace.
I deserve that, too, he thought. Because I told her my name. All my fault, because I told her my name.
He had been dozing, because the sudden draft of cooler air startled him into wakefulness. Had they come for him? But no-they would have turned on a light. And there was no light, not even in the hall, if his impression was right and the door was open.
Who is it? he asked.
&nb
sp; Shhh, came the answer. Captain?
Yes. The Captain struggled to remember the voice. Who are you?
You don't know me. I'm just a soldier. You don't know me. But I know you, Captain. I brought you something. And the Captain felt a hand grope along his body until it found his arm, his hand, and pressed into it a slap with a syringe mounted on it.
What is it?
Honor, said the soldier. The voice was very young.
Why?
You couldn't have betrayed Mikal. But they'll get you, I know it. And make you die-as a traitor. So if you want it-honor.
And then the touch of wind as the soldier left in the darkness; the gathering heat as the door closed and the breeze stopped. The Captain held death in his hand. But he hadn't much time. The soldier was brave and clever, but the prison security system would soon alert the guards -had probably already alerted them-that someone had broken in. Perhaps they were already coming for him.
What if I actually do prove my innocence, he wondered. Why die now, when I might be exonerated and live the rest of my life?
But he remembered what the Chamberlain's drugs and questions would uncover, and he could see only her black, black face in his mind as he slapped the stick on his stomach, hard, and the impact broke the seal and allowed the chemicals to open his skin to the poison in the syringe. Normally he would have been counting seconds, to take away the drug when the proper dose had been achieved, but this time the only proper dose was everything the syringe might contain.
He was still holding the slap to his stomach when the lights dazzled on and the door opened and guards rushed in, pulled the syringe off his stomach and out of his hand, and started picking him up to rush him out of the cell. Too late, he said weakly, but they carried him just the same, half-dragged him down a corridor. The Captain's limbs were completely dead; he recognized the poison and knew that this was a sign that death could not be delayed, no matter what the treatment. They passed through another door, and there he saw the back of a young soldier being forced by three others into an examination room. Thank you, the Captain tried to say to the boy, but he could not make enough sound to be heard over the footfalls and the rushing of uniforms through the halls.
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