Sourly the Emperor said, “I asked you to tell me why you had come here although you knew it meant death to do so. So you told me the story of the Annexation of Earth. I asked about what appeared to have been your rape at the hands of an Ansaar soldier, and you told me that the Ansaar had come to you to ask your help, and that he became your friend and protector. I asked for the details of the conspiracy that cost your Ansaar friend his life, and you gave me an account of your visit to the castle of some rich Earthman who eventually was found guilty of treason against the Empire. Three nights have passed in this storytelling, and I have come to know a great deal now about who you are and what you have experienced, and yet I’ve had no proper answers so far to any of my questions. What am I to do with you, Laylah Walis? What am I to do with you?”
“You are the Guardian of the Law, Majesty. You are free at any time to deliver me up to those who carry out its precepts.”
“I want answers from you first!”
“Even so, even so. Come to me again tonight, and I will try to tell you all that you desire to know. But surely you must not stay here any longer this morning. The duties of the court—”
“Yes, the duties of the court,” said the Emperor. “The duties of the court! Who but me knows what the duties of the court are like? No wonder my father wept for me when I became the heir. The duties of the court!” His voice was rising. “Today, Laylah: the Twelve Despots of Geeziyangiyang arrive to pay their courtesies. Then the trade delegation of Gimmil-Gib-Huish, with a gift for the Imperial Zoological Gardens: poisonous serpents, most likely. Next the League of the Fertile Womb, presenting the winner of the Imperial Order of the Crystal Egg. Then the Guild of Prophets, with the annual predictions; the champion verbish-breeder of Zabor Province, to get her medal; the Imperial Architect, to complain about modifications I want for the Pavilion of the Grand Celestial Viewing; and then—then—ah, it never ends! What’s the point of absolute power, if you fritter it away on a hundred ceremonial audiences a day? Lord of All! Master of the Universe!” The Emperor laughed wildly. Then, his voice quieter again, almost eerily contained, he said, “The duties of the court, as you say, must not be shirked. Ah, but if I could! If I only could! Thraak the duties of the court! Gedoy the duties of the court! I’ll go now, and will return at sundown.” He crossed the room, and studied her a moment at close range. Then his hand reached out—his claws, she noticed, were elegantly trimmed and rounded—and lightly touched the curve of her jaw, running his hand up almost to her ear in a gesture that seemed to be one of tenderness. In a soft voice he said, “How fascinating you are! And how maddening. Until later, then, Laylah.”
Once more he was gone.
10
If I may resume, Majesty—Light of the Cosmos—Supreme Monarch of the Million Suns . . .
I was brought into the presence of the High Procurator for Earth, Antimon Felsert. Never had I beheld an Ansaar even of the middle castes. High Procurator Felsert was different from other Ansaar. I saw it in the color of his skin, the shape and size of his crest, the proportions of his limbs.
He said, in excellent English, “So you’re the girl that Sinon Kreish has sent us for the study program. How old are you, girl?”
“Sixteen,” I said. “Almost seventeen.”
“You speak Universal Imperial, girl? And read it? Here, then. Glance through this.” He tossed me a glossy memorandum cube and told me how to activate it. Jjai Haunt’s report on me materialized in bright red letters in the air.
. . . intelligent, eager to please . . . a fast learner . . . almost suspiciously trustworthy . . . somewhat immature for her age, considering that human females are capable of reproduction by the time they have lived twelve or thirteen years . . .
“What do you think he meant, ‘almost suspiciously trustworthy’?” the High Procurator asked, speaking in Imperial.
“I have no idea, sir,” I replied in the same language.
“And ‘eager to please.’ Why be eager to please an Ansaar?”
“You are our masters,” I said simply.
“Reason enough to hate us, then.”
“I hate no one, sir. It seems a waste of emotional energy.”
He asked me a few questions more. But they were only routine. My fate had already been decided. My long years of exploration and study were about to begin. Eighteen years, from Earth to this holy world of Haraar and the presence of your majestic self.
Twelve men, seven women, were in the first group sent to the Territories: poets, scholars, scientists. We went forth in groups of three or four. I was sent to Bethareth in the Hklplod system: a golden world of a golden sun, where sleek beautiful creatures, limbless as serpents, worship a monster-god dwelling atop a great mountain. I lived there a year, and watched them as they pressed their jewel-studded foreheads against their god’s stone flank. From there I went to Giallo Giallo of the Mirilores, a world of eternal snows and frozen oceans, and traveled with Ansaar explorers into an underground realm of torrid caverns and turbulent lava rivers. It would take me six of these nights to describe that strange world.
Then to Sepulmideine, the World of Chained Moons, where the sky burns with fragrant fires—to Mikkalthrom, where the Emperor Gorn XIX lies buried in a stasis tomb that will not open for fifty thousand Imperial years—to Gambelimeli-dinul, the pleasure world of the Eastern Territories—
Each held more than one could see in a dozen lifetimes; and yet I knew that this was only the edge of the edge of the Empire’s myriad Territories, that I could travel forever and never see the whole of them.
The highest moment—and the darkest—came for me on a world called Vulcri of the red sun Kiteil, as I stood staring at the ruins of Costa Stambool, the capital of an empire that had fallen long before the first Ansaar had ever gone forth from Haraar.
I saw layer upon jumbled layer. The crooked streets of the oldest levels, dating from the dying days of an era called the Second Mandala and contemptuously built upon by the glorious successors of that impoverished civilization: its primitive walls were hidden beneath the accretions of a thousand later centuries, and yet they glowed with a proud scarlet phosphorescence. Above were the chalcedony halls of the Concord of Worlds, and above those the streets of the City of Brass, and sprawling over those the remains of the slopes and slideways of gaudy Glissade, the pleasure suburb of Later Costa Stambool. Over everything else was brutally superimposed the final scars inflicted by the vandals who ushered in the climactic Fourth Mandala of Costa Stambool with fire and the sword.
Here were the palaces of obsolete dynasties, the temples of forgotten gods; here were shops that dealt in treasures already incalculably ancient when the Ansaar were young, taverns peddling vintages long turned to dust, parks green with trees and shrubs of species no longer known to the universe. A great marble slab proclaimed in an undecipherable language the glories of an empire that spanned ten solar systems whose name is lost beyond retrieval.
I stood stock-still, letting the splendors of this ancient civilization flood my soul: the palace of the Triple Queen, and the courtyard of the Emperor of All, and the marble cells where the Tribunal of the People, that fifty-minded entity which had governed here for thirty centuries of grimly imposed harmony, lived chin-deep in pools of luminous nutrients drawn from the dissolved bodies of their citizenry, and the celebrated Library of Old Stambool, where books in the form of many-faceted gems, containing in their rigid lattices every word that had ever been written, spilled from iron-bound chests. I peered into the Gymnasium and it seemed that a howling triple-headed beast in fetters was glaring back at me from the Field of Combat with fiery eyes. I entered the Market of All Wonders, where merchandise of a thousand worlds once was laid out in open arcades, everything free for the taking, gift of They-Who-Provide, loving guardians of this greatest of all cities. I was numb with a surfeit of miracle.
Then a voice by my side said, “Someday, perhaps, the capital of the Ansaar will be a ruin like this, eh?”
I whirled. A
man—a human!—had quietly come upon me while I still stood in that trance of wonder.
“Are you shocked, Laylah?”
“How do you know my name?”
He laughed. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
I looked—looked—the eyes, the shape of the lips. The curve of the smile. “Vann?” I said, hesitantly.
“Your long-lost brother Vann, yes! Who comes up to you at the edge of nowhere and says hello! Can you believe it, Laylah? Two needles we are, in a haystack a million light-years across!”
We fell into each other’s arms, laughing and crying, there beside the ruins of lost Costa Stambool.
I have never known a more wonderful moment, Sire, in my life. But it turned to ashes almost at once. For as we walked back to the visitor lodge, babbling to each other of all that had happened to us since the day of the Darkness and the Sound and the Voice, Vann said something that brought me up short with horror and fright, something so dark and mad that I could scarcely believe he had said it. What my brother said to me—it was utter treason, Majesty.
Ah, but it is time to halt for tonight, eh, Majesty? I have taken so many hours in my descriptions of wonders that I will have to tell you tomorrow of my brother’s words, and the effect they had on me, and what happened afterward. So you must spare my life for one more day, if you will. What shall it be, Majesty? The executioner’s block for me, or another day and a night of life? For the decision is yours, O Master of All, O Lord of the Universe.
The Emperor was smiling. “You won’t ever finish the story, will you, Laylah? You’ll go on spinning it out for a hundred years, and then a hundred years more, if I allow it.”
“There is so much to tell, Majesty!”
“Yes, and you’ll insist on telling it all. Whereas all I wanted to know from you was—well, you know what I wanted to find out. And instead you tell me this, you tell me that, you tell me one thing after another—”
“It is all part of the story, Majesty. Everything is linked to everything else. But I do confess that I have been in no hurry to reach the conclusion. If you will grant me one more night, or perhaps two, perhaps then I would be able to—” She glanced sharply at him. “Or if I have begun to bore you, perhaps we should stop for good right here. The executioner’s patience was exhausted long ago; and now, I think, yours is also. Very well. I will prolong the story no longer. My tale is over. I bid you farewell forever, Majesty. May you reign and prosper for seven times seven thousand years.” And she began to make the Ansaar sign of blessing, that is made only by those who are about to die.
The Emperor caught her hand in mid-gesture and brought it back down to her side. “No,” he said.
“No?”
“There’ll be no executions today. And there’ll be more story-telling tonight. But promise me one thing, Laylah!”
“That I finish it this evening?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
She bowed and made the sweeping gesture of submission.
“I will do my best, Majesty. Tonight will see the last of my story. That much I promise you with all my heart, O Light of the Cosmos—O Supreme Monarch of the Million Suns—”
BOGAN 27, 82ND DYNASTIC CYCLE
(AUGUST 15—I THINK—A.D. 3001)
I have him! He’s caught good and proper, that much is certain! And he will sit and listen to me—and sit—and listen—as long as I want him to—as long as I need him to—and, truth to tell, I would gladly go on speaking with him forever—
—From the Diaries of Laylah Walis
11
But this was the night of nights, and she could not bring herself to begin.
“Tonight,” the Emperor prompted at last, “you said you would tell me what your brother said to you at Costa Stambool, and what effect it had on you.”
“Yes.” And still she hesitated, for this was the most difficult moment of all. Everything she meant to say tonight had been arranged properly in her mind, but now, suddenly, for the first time since her arrival, words would not come.
Again he spoke into her silence: “Let me say it for you. What he told you was that he was a key member of the anti-Imperial resistance, that he knew you were expert in Ansaar language and customs, and that he had come to you to ask you to make the journey to Haraar, inveigle yourself into my palace, win my affection with your extraordinary charm . . . and assassinate me.”
He said it quietly, but his words struck her like hammerblows. She sat frozen, stunned, lost in a maelstrom of panic.
“Is this not so, Laylah?” He was smiling. “Speak. Or have you lost your voice?”
Hoarsely she replied, “These are the things I meant to tell you tonight, yes. But how is it you know them already?”
“From your diary, of course.”
“My diary? How could you read my diary? My diary is in English!”
“Which is the main language of Earth. And Earth is a world of the Empire.” His tone remained gentle. He was not speaking as an Emperor might speak. “Do you think we’d annex a world and not learn its language? While you were asleep an expert in your language entered and read your little book. But tell me, Laylah: would you assassinate me?”
“No. Never. Never!” She was trembling. She could barely get the words out.
“I believe you,” he said, and he sounded sincere. “Yet that is what you came to Haraar to do. Is it because you find me so fascinating? Because you have fallen in love with me?” He was playing with her again, the lion toying with his prey. “Or because you have come to see the uselessness of killing me?”
“All of that,” she said. Some strength returned to her voice. “Killing you would have been pointless. The Empire has survived the deaths of hundreds of Emperors, and will go on and on regardless of who is on the throne. But why should we discuss this? The game is over, Majesty. Summon your executioner.”
“Not just yet. The other part, first: have you really fallen in love with me? With the archenemy of your people?”
His gaze grew fierce. She could not meet his eyes.
“I admit being fascinated by you. That’s not quite the same thing as love.”
“Agreed. I feel a fascination too. You know that, don’t you? Why else do I listen to you, night after night, when I have so much else to do? The lovely maula who risks her life to come to Haraar—who talks her way right into the Emperor’s presence—who tells him tales of her world that hold him helpless night after night—”
“I played a dangerous game, and I lost.” The trembling had stopped. She felt very calm. “Shall we end this little session now? I no longer wish to prolong our conversations.”
“But I do, Laylah. What if I were to offer you Earth’s freedom from Ansaar rule?”
She gasped. Once again he had caught her unawares and sent her reeling. “Earth’s—freedom—?”
“As an autonomous member of the Empire. An end to Ansaar occupation, and freedom for its citizens to travel in Imperial Space. Such a thing is within my power to grant. I saw these lines in your diary too, from one of your ancient poets: ‘Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things; the good of subjects is the end of kings.’ So I believe, Laylah: the good of subjects. I am no tyrant, you know. I will set your little world free.”
“This is an ugly joke. It’s cruel of you to trifle with me like this.”
“I’m neither joking nor trifling. The freedom of Earth is yours, Laylah.” And, after a moment: “As a wedding gift, that is.” His Ansaar hand reached for hers. “‘I would gladly go on speaking with him forever,’ you wrote. The opportunity is yours. You fascinate me to the point of love, Laylah. I invite you to become one of my Cherished Major Wives.”
When she could speak again she said, “One of how many, may I ask?”
“You would be the sixth.”
“Ah. The sixth.” She was past the first rush of astonishment, almost calm now. But not the Emperor. His eyes were retracted in tension, the vertical pupil-slits barely in view. “Cherished Wife Number Six! What a
strange fate for a quiet girl from Earth!” She mused on it while he stared tautly, knotting and unknotting his fingers. “Well, we can discuss it, Majesty. Yes. We can discuss it, I suppose, in the days ahead.”
He nodded. “By all means. We can discuss it. I will come to you as before, and you will tell me your tales, and perhaps, by and by—”
“By and by,” she said. “Yes. Perhaps.”
She forced herself to maintain her eerie calmness, for otherwise she would break loose entirely from her moorings.
Sixth Cherished Wife! And Earth an autonomous world! Yes, but could she? Would she? By and by, perhaps. Perhaps. By and by.
“Tell me the next story, Laylah.”
Very well. I must tell you, then, Majesty, that from Costa Stambool I went onward to the forbidden world of Grand Binella, the planet of the Oracle Plain, of which they say that in its shapes and colors are the answers to all the questions that have ever been asked and many that have not yet been framed. Near the Plain are the mountains called the Angelon, where one walks on a carpet of rubies and emeralds. Farther on—almost at the horizon—one sees a body of motionless black water, the Sea of Miaule, with Sapont Island smoldering just offshore, a place of demons and basilisks.
I made my way to this terrifying world, Sire, at my brother’s suggestion, because he felt that among those demons and basilisks I might learn certain useful things, things that would stand me in good stead if ever I found myself in the place where I find myself now. And so, upon my arrival there—
THE WORM TURNS
GREGORY BENFORD
Gregory Benford is one of the modern giants of the field. His 1980 novel Timescape won the Nebula Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the Australian Ditmar Award, and is widely considered to be one of the classic novels of the last two decades. His other novels include Beyond Jupiter, The Stars in Shroud, In the Ocean of Night, Against Infinity, Artifact, and Across the Sea of Suns, Great Sky River, Tides of Light, Furious Gulf, Sailing Bright Eternity, Cosm, Foundation’s Fear, and The Martian Race. His short work has been collected in Matter’s End, Worlds Vast and Various, and Immersion and Other Short Novels; his essays have been assembled in a nonfiction collection, Deep Time. His most recent book is a new novel, Beyond Infinity. Coming up is another new novel, The Sunborn. Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine.
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