by Ben Bova
Brendan stood solemnly, a rare look of seriousness on his face. "Sire, I… I'd like to request permission to remain aboard until after you've been transported to the Imperial residence."
"Oh?" The Emperor scrutinized the young man's features, looking for some clue to his discomfort. "Why is that?" The aide tensed under his gaze. Accessing his own implanted integrator, he observed that Brendan's pulse and respiration were both elevated. We are linked inextricably, he mused. Patient and caretaker, linked more closely than Siamese twins. He softened his tone. "Brendan, if we cannot speak freely to each other after these many years together, then I know you less than I had believed. Please, do you have a concern of which I should be made aware?"
The change in the Emperor's voice seemed to relax the man, and he continued, more sure of himself this time. "Sire, your medical readouts are already being switched over from the ship to the Imperial computers here, plus I'll continue to monitor you personally, of course. But when you leave the ship in a few minutes, it will mark the first time you've been seen publicly in many years. I understand that the ceremonies are being carried on all the Sol system and Imperial nets, not to mention the thousands who have traveled here for the honor of being on hand for this historic moment…" He stopped, took a deep breath. "Do you really want to be seen with your, uh, nurse standing by your side?"
The words now in the open, Brendan exhaled heavily and gazed steadily into the Emperor's face. The Emperor absently rubbed his white-bearded chin with his thin, frail fingers and nodded silently. The thought had simply not occurred to him. I must truly be getting old, to overlook such an obvious point, he admitted inwardly. He looked at the young man and extended a bony hand.
"You're right, Brendan," he said, feeling the strength in the other's grasp. "Thank you for pointing it out." Disengaging the powerchair from the magnetic landing restraints, he glided quietly to the viewscreen. "Inform Commander Fain that I am ready to leave, at his soonest convenience."
"Yes, Sire." Brendan bowed slightly and turned immediately for the door.
It took nearly fifteen minutes before the room system informed him that Commander Fain was on his way, and another ten before they arrived at the shuttle's elevator. Most of the accompanying members of the Imperial Court were already waiting in formation outside the ship, and the two men, alone on the lift, rode in near silence until the elevator tapped softly down on the platform of the landing bay itself. The Emperor cocked his head to one side, listening intently to a steady vibration that seeped through the walls of the cubicle. Fain caught the motion and offered, "It's the crowd, Sire."
"Well, then," he replied, "we had best not keep them waiting any longer." He nodded once, and Fain touched a small keypad set into the front wall of the lift.
The door slid aside instantly, and both men were hit by what seemed like a solid wall of sound. The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds smoothly powered the chair forward onto the crowded platform, Commander Fain walking steadily at his right. Imperial officers, flagship crew and shuttle crew members, support personnel and numerous other dignitaries parted as he passed, and fell into position behind him. Fain escorted the Emperor to a large circular receiving area that had obviously been set up for the reception, then took two steps back as the Emperor himself glided into its center.
Lights dimmed slightly in the chamber and a spotlight illuminated the circle. He raised a hand in greeting, and the crowd exploded once more into tumultuous applause that continued for several long minutes. He raised both hands now in an effort to quiet them, and waited patiently for the noise to die slowly away. He glanced to Fain, who touched his earpiece once and nodded, indicating that the audio pickups in the landing bay were operative and ready, then turned to face the crowd.
"I thank you deeply for your warm welcome," he said simply, his strong voice reverberating from the curved walls of the immense room. "It is good to be home."
The crowd burst into approving applause, and the Emperor thought better of attempting an address at this time. Instead, he extended a hand to a point just above the nearest gallery, the one reserved for Imperial guests, and motioned directly at the Prince's viewing room. Another spotlight arched across the room, catching the Prince in its center, and all eyes turned to face Javas as he rose, bowed briefly, then turned swiftly and disappeared from view. He reappeared seconds later at a door at the top of the gallery flanked by two color guards and, with a single wave to the crowd, started down the steps to one side of the private section. He walked slowly, purposefully, down the narrow aisle until reaching the fifth row. He stopped, and held out a hand to a formally dressed woman sitting a few seats down the row. The woman hesitated, but at the insistent urging of those around her she rose and edged carefully down the row to stand nervously at the Prince's side.
He extended his arm and escorted her forward to the bottom of the gallery. The Prince's color guard separated and quickly took position on either side of a short set of steps leading to the landing grid itself. A section of the air shield at the top of the steps quivered visibly and changed color momentarily, allowing Javas and Adela to pass through, then solidified when they continued on to the reviewing area where the Emperor now waited.
They were nearly on the platform itself before the Emperor recognized the woman being escorted by his son as the tiny girl who, in his bed chamber one night that seemed a thousand years ago, convinced him of her plan to save Earth's Sun. The years have aged her, he thought as she curtsied formally before him. He studied her face and realized that behind her eyes was a subtle look of surprised shock, a look that reflected her own concern at how much he had deteriorated.
Prince Javas bowed deeply and moved to stand at the front of the receiving circle, where he looked out over the crowd and raised an arm to silence them. When he was satisfied that the noise level had subsided to his liking, he carefully removed the Imperial sash and held it above him in both hands, turning slowly so as many people as possible could see what he was about to do. Ceremoniously he knelt at the side of his father's powerchair and placed the sash over the older man's head, smoothing the glistening, satiny material across his shoulder. He leaned close and whispered in his father's ear, "Things are going well." He nodded to the empty row in the reserved gallery and enjoyed the look of understanding in the old man's eyes as he realized that Bomeer had been sidestepped. He stood upright again and faced the crowd.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Prince said forcefully, proudly, in a voice more powerful and commanding than the Emperor had remembered. "I give you Nicholas, Emperor of the Hundred Worlds!"
There was no restraining the people now as they erupted into applause and shouts of approval that seemed to shake the very walls of the landing bay. Javas stepped briskly to a smiling Commander Fain, offering a hand that the other grasped and shook vigorously. As the Prince turned formally and stood on his father's right, Fain immediately crossed behind the Emperor and took position on his left, completing the ceremonial transfer of power. As the threesome remained in formation for the audience review, the Emperor noticed that Adela, unfamiliar with Imperial protocol, stood awkwardly at the edge of the receiving circle. He looked up and caught his son's eye, nodding in her direction. Javas raised an eyebrow in silent request and, when the Emperor nodded approval, slowly extended his arm, indicating that she should join him at his side.
The noise was so loud that it took several moments before anyone noticed the commotion off to the right side of the reviewing platform. Dozens of security personnel had surrounded one of the public galleries, and the people in the gallery itself seemed to be scrambling in an effort to escape.
There was a sudden flash in one of the backmost rows of the gallery and the entire wedge-shaped area suddenly turned crimson as the explosion was contained by the shielding. The flash subsided immediately, leaving only a smoke-filled cube behind.
A sudden crackling filled the air as the shield surrounding the landing area—until now at a normal setting—snapped to maximum, a
dding a translucent haze around the perimeter of the platform that made it difficult to observe what was happening in the gallery. Javas lunged for his father's powerchair in an instinctive attempt to cover the Emperor with his own body, but a dozen members of the Imperial security staff had immediately surrounded him, separating him from the Emperor for safety's sake, just as Fain and Adela were being hustled under equally heavy guard to different secure areas. The Emperor tried desperately to make out what was happening in the landing chamber, but he was already being placed into the protective custody of the shuttle crew.
If what he suspected was true, the entire gallery—effectively contained by the air shield—had been turned into an oven, guaranteeing the death of everyone in the section. The Emperor shook his head, realizing that his greatest fear had come true.
So, he thought. It begins.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Dead. All dead."
The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds hadn't realized he'd spoken the words aloud, although softly, and was startled momentarily by the confused beeping of the info system built into the walls of his study. The system had mistaken the words as an incomplete command.
"Cancel—" he started to say, then thought better of it. He hesitated, knowing how great the pain would be if he acted on the sudden thought. He sighed heavily, feeling the tiredness of the last twenty-four hours wash over him, and glided the powerchair to a position facing the center of the large viewscreen on the far wall of his study.
"Interior lights off." The room's artificial lighting dimmed immediately, but the screen cast a soft, comfortable glow over the room. "Give me a single-screen biographical file on each of the victims of yesterday's explosion in gallery 29, alphabetically."
"Manual or continuous rotation?"
"Manual." The Emperor's reply was a whisper. Although easily picked up by the system, another person in the room would have heard only the slightest mumbling. The mutterings of an aging man, he thought bitterly.
"The specified files will require some time to cycle manually, Sire. Would you prefer an integrator download?"
Emperor Nicholas didn't answer, and instead stared intently at the screen. The first bio was already displayed, and showed a young man with disheveled sandy hair and a beaming smile. James Altann, read the file. Age: 32. Home: Alphonsus, Luna. Occupation: Cargo Driver, Exterior. Marital status: Married, one child.
"Would you prefer an integrator download?" the room system repeated.
"No, audiovisual only. Next file." The screen display changed instantly, showing a freckle-faced woman with long blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. Miriam Altann. Age: 31. Home: Alphonsus, Luna …
As useful as the integrator was, the Emperor had come to loathe it and used it only when necessary; when alone, he nearly always shunned it. The information his personal link with the Imperial computer provided was extremely valuable—and frequently indispensable—but he had come to believe that it made the information it imparted too unfeeling, too "clean." The integrator could have provided all the files in a matter of seconds, but the Emperor wanted to observe them with his own senses, individually, one at a time.
"Sire," the system intoned, accompanied by an insistent chiming. "I have an incoming communication, coded as important."
"Store all messages for later retrieval. Next." The Emperor moved the powerchair closer and felt a sudden chill wash over him as he scanned the file. "Five years old," he whispered.
There was a single beep from the system, indicating confusion once more at what it interpreted as another incomplete command. He ignored it and concentrated instead on the bio file of little Tracy Altann, noting how the child's freckles and deep blue eyes closely matched her mother's.
"Next file." The Emperor went through the files slowly, one after another. There were numerous single entries, with no apparent connection to those who had died in the seats next to them. Some were Armelin City employees, some were tourists. There were members of the Imperial research staff and local shopkeepers. There were other whole families who, like the Altanns, had traveled for the rare privilege of witnessing the Emperor's arrival.
All dead.
He started cycling through the files again. "This is a code one override." The room system's persistent tone broke Emperor Nicholas from his unpleasant task and he turned sharply away from the viewscreen. "This is a code one override," it repeated. He had no way of knowing how many times the system had paged him since he'd disabled it several minutes earlier, but he did know that the override page would repeat until it was acknowledged. His physicians, rightly concerned for the aging leader's continually deteriorating health, had ordered the override code installed in his personal page program. The Emperor also knew that if he ignored the code one page too long, Brendan and the medical staff, escorted by a full security team, would cut through the door with torches if necessary to determine why he had not responded. He reluctantly issued a mental command to reopen the communications program in the room.
"I do not wish to be disturbed!"
"Father, are you all right?" It was Javas. "I've been trying to reach you for some time and grew concerned. May I come in?" The Emperor did not answer immediately, and Javas' tone grew more insistent. "Father, I must speak with you about the accident in the landing bay."
The Emperor sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he had postponed this meeting long enough. Through the integrator, he ordered the system to abandon voice mode and return the room lighting to normal levels before admitting the Prince. "I'm sorry, Javas," he said as his son entered, "but I was reading the files of those killed in the blast and, well, I'm afraid I got a bit more involved than I had intended." He studied the Prince for a moment and, knowing that the young man would someday perform similar tasks, smiled briefly before adding, "It never gets any easier."
Javas nodded politely, staring over his father's shoulder.
Display off, he commanded silently, but realized Javas must surely have seen Tracy Altann's file on the screen. Javas quickly returned his attention to him as the display winked out and was replaced with an external view of the lunar surface surrounding Armelin City, simply nodding at his father's remark rather than pointing out the obvious. Thank you, son, for allowing me a moment of private pain, he thought.
"Please, be seated."
Javas chose a firm, straight-backed swivel chair in front of the huge desk that dominated the room, and turned it to face the older man. The massive piece of furniture, handmade of the finest woods and inlaid with precious metals from a dozen planets, had been a welcoming gift from Javas. The Prince had arranged for its construction shortly after arriving on the Moon, giving orders that it be installed in the Emperor's study before his father arrived.
The two men regarded each other silently for several moments, each feeling the awkwardness of this first face-to-face meeting alone in so many years. The Emperor noted that Javas' manner had changed significantly since entering his study. The anger and frustration of dealing with the tragedy had shown plainly on his face when he'd first arrived, but now he seemed more nervous than the awkwardness of the situation warranted. The young man sat stiffly upright in the chair, not touching the backrest, and fidgeted uneasily. The Prince seemed to have difficulty keeping eye contact with him, but those moments when their eyes did meet, the Emperor saw a glint of something—a mixture of pain and regret?—in his son's face. He called up a diagnostic readout on the Prince's personal biomonitors. The information came to him quickly and confirmed what he'd suspected: His son's heart rate, respiration and brain activity were all at high readings, despite his son's best efforts to hide his discomfort.
Their eyes met briefly, and the Emperor knew that Javas had guessed what he was doing. My turn to save you a bit of embarrassment, he thought.
"You are shocked at my appearance," he said simply, bluntly. "But what did you expect? I was an old man before we embarked on this grand adventure thirty years ago. I age. The Emperor always ages." He leveled his gaze at
Javas and looked deeply into his son's eyes, then added, "As will you, when you become Emperor and are forced to stop rejuvenation."
"Father, I—"
"No, Javas. It's all right." His words carried a tone of understanding as he spoke. All trappings of Emperor and Prince abandoned for the moment, he spoke instead as father to son. "I do not need the integrator to tell me what you're thinking. The many holoconferences we've held in recent months are one thing, but seeing me alone now, here in this room, you've been forced to come to terms with your own future. A future that, I fear, may be coming to pass much sooner than either of us would like."
Javas nodded silently, then looked into his father's eyes.
"These fifteen years here have not been easy," he began. "When I first set about my task of relocating the Imperial throne here, I had many questions about the wisdom of this undertaking. In the last year I'm afraid I asked too many of those questions of Bomeer and listened too closely and too often to his answers. But for every reason he expressed that this was but a"—the Prince paused, regarded his father a moment before going on—"a fool's mission…"
The Emperor gave an amused snort. "Well, there is at least one thing, then, that the years cannot change."
"Each time he attempted to win me to his side on a particular issue or procedure surrounding our purpose here, Adela—Dr. Montgarde—convinced me of each issue's validity."
The Emperor raised an eyebrow. "I see."
"Academician Bomeer has done his best at every turn to convert others to his side of the argument, as well, even as he follows your orders—"
"Son," the Emperor interrupted, feeling his demeanor change. Where before he had been disturbed, even shaken, by the tragedy of the day before, he now summoned up his inner strength and once more spoke as Emperor. "I have seen the reports; those that you have been so thoughtful as to provide as well as my own private intelligence. I am aware of the problems you've faced here and of your many successes. I am quite familiar with the situation, as it stands now." He glided the powerchair to its workstation behind the desk, a silent order opening a cabinet set into the wall behind him as he pivoted around and took a bottle and two glasses from the well-stocked shelves inside. He smiled to himself as he turned back to the desk, amused at what his physicians would think if they knew of this secret cache, installed at Javas' order to match the one in his study on Corinth. He gave another silent order, this time to suppress those particular biomonitors that would relay certain information—specifically, information concerning his intake of alcohol and its effect on his system—to Brendan, who was certainly monitoring his readouts around the clock.