The Usurper

by John Norman

  “I spoke, of course, of our foe, Julian,” said Iaachus.

  “I would have them strangled first,” said the empress mother.

  “I see,” said the Arbiter of Protocol.

  “You are valuable in your place,” said the empress mother. “See that you keep it.”

  “Think not ill of me, great lady,” said Iaachus. “Do not misunderstand me. I meant nothing. I do not aspire to heights. My only ambition is to serve you, humbly, and to the best of my poor ability.”

  “Forgive an old woman,” said Atalana. “How suspicious and ungrateful she is! What stouter defense of the throne has she than noble Iaachus?”

  Iaachus bowed.

  “Do you truly think I am beautiful?” she asked. She inadvertently touched her cheek, opening a tiny crack in the powder caked there.

  “From whence, otherwise,” asked Iaachus, “could fair Viviana and Alacida have derived their remarkable beauty, so close to, and yet so far from, yours?”

  “You are a scoundrel, counselor,” smiled Atalana.

  “I but speak the patent truth,” he said.

  “You set plans in motion without my consent,” she said.

  “But to achieve ends congruent with your hopes,” he said.

  “I know only that you feared some alliance of Julian with barbarous forces and hoped, by some secret measures, to preclude their success.”

  “The empire is stable, safe, and eternal,” said Iaachus, “but walls crumble, forces dwindle, fuel grows short, ammunition low, outposts are raided, borders are threatened, worlds with hostile intent loom.”

  “You failed once to foil Julian,” said Atalana, “on Vellmer. Have you failed, again?”

  “Others failed there, not I,” said Iaachus.

  “Have others again failed?” asked the empress mother.

  “No,” said Iaachus. “We have been successful. Julian sent his minion, the barbarian, Ottonius, to Tangara, to recruit dangerous tribesmen by means of which to prosecute his plans. One man might gather ten, and ten a hundred, and a hundred a thousand, and a thousand untold numbers.”

  The empress mother shuddered.

  “Julian intends to either ascend the throne,” said Iaachus, “or destroy the empire.”

  “He must be stopped!” cried the empress mother. “Have him killed!”

  “He is known, and important, and respected,” said Iaachus. “That would be dangerous. Few know him as do we. Most deem him a patriot. Many would hope he would ascend the throne.”

  “Kill him,” said Atalana.

  “We must be careful,” said Iaachus.

  “You tried to kill him on Vellmer,” said the empress mother.

  “Yes,” said Iaachus, “on far Vellmer, in a remote villa, not in the midst of troops.”

  “What is to be done?”

  “Nothing must be obvious,” said Iaachus. “His murder might precipitate riots, an uprising, a revolution on some worlds. It might serve even as a pretext for secession.”

  “Let him be exposed to a lethal infection,” said the empress mother. “Let a contagion be devised, which might rack planets. Let plagues be engineered. He perishes then, one victim amongst countless others, provoking no suspicion.”

  “Plagues might do to punish troublesome worlds,” said Iaachus, “but there is little point in expending an ocean of poison when but a single drop is needed.”

  “But a single drop might provoke suspicion?” said Atalana.

  “I fear so,” said Iaachus.

  “Let an accident be arranged,” said the empress mother.

  “I have arranged things differently,” said the Arbiter of Protocol. “An indirect blow, which does not seem a blow, may strike most deeply. An unarmed man amongst armed men is little to be feared.”

  “I do not understand,” said the empress mother.

  “We remove the means from Julian and Julian is without means.”

  “Dear Iaachus?” said the empress mother.

  “Julian’s plans clearly involve the enlistment of barbarians, preferably in large, expanding numbers, and this enlistment, as he envisions it, begins with, and is contingent on, the services of the barbarian, Ottonius.”

  “I see now,” said the empress mother, “why you have requested this unusual private audience.”

  “To report, of course, great lady,” said Iaachus, “now that the thing is done and the utmost secrecy is no longer required.”

  “You have slain the barbarian captain, Ottonius,” she said.

  “In a way most natural, and most unlikely to provoke suspicion, in a venue far from civilization, and by means of an instrument most subtle and suitable, a poisoned blade in the privacy of a chamber, wielded by an agent most unlikely to be suspected, a free woman posing as a mere female slave.”

  “He reaches out, the lusting brute, and discovers that he has in his arms not a warm, quivering, yielding, moaning, meaningless vessel of pleasure, but death.”

  “Yes,” said Iaachus.

  “Where could a free woman be found to risk this?” she asked.

  “One was found,” he said.

  “Some baggage of the humiliori?” she said.

  “No,” he said, “a fallen patrician, even of the senatorial class.”

  “Interesting,” said the empress mother.

  “Doubtless she expected to be extracted safely and richly rewarded,” she said.

  “Certainly,” said Iaachus.

  “You must beware,” she said. “Such a woman would know much. Under fearsome interrogation, she might incriminate others. She might, too, for greater treasure, threaten betrayal, threaten exposure.”

  “Fear not,” said Iaachus. “It was never intended that she be extracted safely, nor intended that she be rewarded, in the least.”

  “You left her to her fate?”

  “Of course.”

  “You are a cunning rascal,” she said. “But I am troubled.”

  “How so, great lady?” asked the Arbiter of Protocol.

  “It seems a shame to use a free woman where a slave would do.”

  “She thought herself free, to be sure,” said the Arbiter of Protocol, “but, unbeknownst to herself, she had been enslaved.”

  “Excellent,” said the empress mother, “the stupid little fool, a slave and not knowing it!”

  “Many women,” said Iaachus, “for example, by imperial listings, enslavement proscriptions, personal edicts, and such, have been made slaves without their knowledge. They go about their lives as usual, suspecting nothing, until they are seized, and find the collar on their necks.”

  “You are sure this delicate matter has been accomplished successfully?” asked the empress mother.

  “Yes,” said Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol. “Captain Phidias, captain of the Narcona, which bore the barbarian to Tangara, and his two colleagues, two of his officers, officers Lysis and Corelius, have assured me on the matter.”

  “Excellent,” said the empress mother.

  Chapter Eleven

  In order to clarify certain events, soon to be recounted, it seems to me germane to deal briefly with certain issues, scientific, historical, and institutional.

  There is no doubt that the Telnarian empire existed, or exists. Which is not clear. Is it still with us, somewhere? Much depends on the rooms of space and the mansions of time. Surely evidence abounds in its many dimensions, archaic words, place names, linguistic affinities, customs, day names and month names, holidays, folk tales, legends, a thousand annals, and chronicles, coins, artifacts, the remains of fountains, now run dry for centuries, fallen statues, perhaps of unknown heroes or gods, half-effaced inscriptions, perhaps recounting glories, scraped into unintelligibility by zealots, the watchers or guardians, crumbled walls, damp, worn, overgrown with moss, the ruins of aqueducts, such things. O
ne does not know if the Telnarian empire was founded here, or if it intersected with our world for a time, perhaps in some form of transit. Perhaps it was here, while it passed through. It is hard to know about these things. Are there worlds, and tangled histories of worlds, diverse lines of reality, which might, for a time, touch one another, and intertwine, however briefly? Could it disappear, and reemerge? Is there a circuit in such things, as some believe, as in the routes of comets?

  Sometimes one fears the sky, dark with ships.

  The orthodoxy on this point is clear, an orthodoxy which I, of course, celebrate and unhesitantly affirm. Make no mistake in this. I, as all good and wise men, subscribe to the correct view. Who would be so unwise as to do otherwise? The countless forms of evidence, so abundant, so seemingly incontrovertible, of so many kinds, scattered over its thousands of latimeasures, is fraudulent, primarily contrived, however inexplicably, or pointlessly, by heretics. Perhaps there was, for a time, a Telnarian empire, but it was a small, untoward sort of thing, a matter of villages, or isolated towns, at best a temporary step, soon left behind, on the path to our contemporary world of simplicity and pastoral perfection. One need only go to the casement, to see the peasants contentedly toiling with their hoes in the field, see the smoke emerging from the chimneys of the tiny, happy cottages in the distance, hear the hourly, monitory chimes of the bells in the watch tower.

  We know the stories told of the Telnarian empire, of its galactic tentacles, its thousands of worlds, and such, must then, at least for the most part, be mythical. What a strange way they had of thinking about the pleasant lamps in the sky! It is quite possible they did not even grasp the fact that the universe was created for us, a fact which becomes clear when it is recognized that our world is the single, only world, and that it lies at the exact center of the universe, where there is room for only one world, of course, just one, ours, this indisputably demonstrating our special and privileged position in the cosmos.

  How fortunate for our vanity!

  How humble we must be, finding ourselves so situated, despite our unworthiness, our lacks and faults, at the very pinnacle and center of all time, truth, and reality!

  So reads the orthodoxy.

  Who can believe such nonsense?

  Almost all who have been so instructed.

  Fruitful and abundant are the comforting joys of abject ignorance!

  Why bleed on the blade of truth?

  I shall pause for a time.

  The watcher has been announced.

  I do not think I need fear him, at least overmuch.

  He is a good man, and, happily, cannot read. I shall reiterate the declarations which he requires, and share some kana with him. He looks forward to that. I must not disappoint him. There is some protection, of course, in being a recluse, an eccentric inquirer into obscure things, presumably innocent, antique things. Too, my needs are simple, and I have little to do with others. I have little to fear. I am harmless. I threaten no one. I am safe.

  What is an empire, what is an institution?

  An empire, clearly, though it may extend in space and endure through time, is not a thing in any usual sense; for example, it is not like a tree or rock. Some empires may perish before a tree might bear its fruit and others might challenge the longevity of a rock. But they are not rocks and trees. One can see soldiers and ships, and walls and roads, but one cannot see an empire. Standards and flags, perhaps, but not empires. Yet not all empires wear the garments of power openly; as did, or does, the Telnarian empire; not all march with legions, and ship with fleets. Institutions, in their various sorts, are invisible, but sometimes real with a terribleness which would trivialize the splittings of worlds and the explosions of stars. Institutions differ. Some redeem and profit a species; others sink poisoned fangs into the mind; some transform and ennoble lives; others sicken quadrants, infecting them with the most virulent of plagues, those which prey on the innocence and vulnerability of the soul, particularly that of the young. How cunningly, cruelly, and arrogantly they groom the young to do their bidding and carry their burdens!

  Science has become a secret thing, a thing of stealth and sorcerers. I have known men who believed that light was not simply there or not there, but that it moved, even as a horse or dog, and very rapidly. I suspect this is true. I have known men, too, who believed that the lights in the sky were not lamps, but distant orbs of flaming gas, some far away. Others, you see, besides myself, have read old books, sometimes hidden books, sometimes encoded long ago. Our science is the last word in all science, and the correct word, of course, for science is ended in our time, as we know all there is to know, or, at least, all that is worth knowing, but I know, too, there are a thousand sciences which differ from ours, doubtless therefore being incorrect, but I wonder sometimes if our science is correct, and I wonder, too, sometimes, if all these thousand sciences might not be incorrect. The world, even a small world, may be a difficult thing to understand. Fixed worlds, like tables, and borne lamps, are easier to fathom. We know about tables, and lamps, and candles. The annals hint at untold worlds, separated by almost inconceivable distances, of systems, and a galaxy, and of galaxies beyond galaxies. They suggest, too, routes, openings, crevices, passages, foldings, involutions, tunnels, and such, which, in some cases, would make far worlds neighbors. Two points on a map might be a yard from one another, but, if the map were folded in a certain manner, the yard might prove an illusion, and the width of a ribbon, two juxtaposed surfaces of the same map, pressed together, might bespeak reality.

  I insist on my orthodoxy. What sane man would not? But in the inside, in the secret place, where there are no frames and ropes, and burning irons, one wonders. I do not fear thought, secret thought. It does not frighten me. It neither threatens nor jeopardizes my prestige, my position in society, my wealth, my power, or my livelihood.

  So what is one to make of the Telnarian empire?

  I think it existed, or exists.

  Once my sleeve, long ago, briefly, brushed a golden column.

  The watcher is gone.

  I shall return to the accounts.

  Chapter Twelve

  “They learn quickly,” said Julian.

  “They are intelligent, highly so,” said Otto.

  “Barbarians are to be feared,” said Julian.

  “I am a barbarian,” said Otto.

  “I fear you,” said Julian.

  “Abrogate the project,” suggested Otto.

  “It is the only hope for the empire,” said Julian. “The common citizens care only for their ease and comfort, their pleasures and entertainments, and will have others feed them, support them, and defend them.”

  “Not all, surely,” said Otto.

  “No,” said Julian, “but many are beaten down, and disheartened, crippled by prolonged labor, particularly by the forced labor of munera, in lieu of taxation. Many are mired, too, in the legal bindings, now widely spread, where one must follow one’s father’s calling, craft, or profession, this intelligently instituted to stabilize the tax base, and others are landless tenants, coloni, and others are serfs who, as with the legal bindings, are bound to the soil, who must live and die on the same plot of land. Such folk have little in common but their misery and want, and their hatred for any better off than themselves, for landowners, clerks, officials, overseers, even for the empire itself, which they see as their foe and oppressor. And, too, there are the ambitious, who seek gain, and power, and would pursue their own fortune at the expense of the empire.”

  “Such, of course,” said Otto, “are useful to predators, in equipping and funding incursions.”

  “True,” said Julian.

  “My people,” said Otto, “lack the skills, the expertise, the tools, the resources, the industrial base to design and build fearsome weaponry and ships.”

  “Others will do so,” said Julian, “others who remain unnoted, on fa
r worlds, who fear to press a trigger, or grasp a helm, who wait to creep forward and feed on the kills of lions.”

  “I am dismayed,” said Otto.

  “Be not so, my friend,” said Julian.

  “I know something of the forging of a blade of steel,” said Otto. “I know nothing of the forging of a blade of fire.”

  “You need not,” said Julian. “It is one thing to manufacture a rifle or pistol, and another to use it effectively.”

  “I do not care for such weapons,” said Otto.

  “You like to be close to your kills,” said Julian.

  “One knows then what one is doing,” said Otto. “One sees the blood, and may consider how far to go.”

  “Uneasy restless worlds, several with diminishing, but yet-unexhausted resources, back invaders,” said Julian.

  “And you would arm such men to resist such men?” said Otto.

  “Yes,” said Julian.

  “It is an unwise shepherd who brings in wolves to guard sheep,” said Otto.

  “Sheep cannot guard themselves,” said Julian.

  “Or will not do so,” said Otto.

  “The perimeter is penetrated,” said Julian. “Worlds are lost, or fall away.”

  “Permit them to do so,” said Otto.

  “Never!” said Julian.

  “The palace will have them abandoned,” said Otto.

  “It must not!” said Julian.

  “Perhaps the empire has grasped beyond its reach,” said Otto.

  “Never!” said Julian.

  “Perhaps it will draw back,” said Otto.

  “To what?” asked Julian.

  “To the inner worlds,” said Otto.

  “The least retreat,” said Julian, “will be understood as a sign of weakness; it will arm enemies, and inspirit defiance. The first rock removed from a wall makes the second easier to dislodge.”

  “Surely the inner worlds are more secure,” said Otto. “Will the palace not have it so?”

  “The emperor is a boy, with the mind of a child, coveting toys and fearing insects,” said Julian. “He counts for nothing. His sisters are scarce worth a collar. Power is vested in the empress mother, a vain, timid old woman under the baleful influence of a courtier, one who fears me, and a new order in the palace, one intent to keep things as they are, one intent to protect himself, his position, and his power at all costs, though the empire crumbles.”