And thus it was by order of the Regent that Oberon’s coronation and surgery proceeded simultaneously. It could hardly be otherwise. Extraordinary measures were necessary to preserve old friendships and to avoid offense to potential new allies. Oberon might be dying, but the coronation had to proceed. The ceremonies and invitations had been scheduled months in advance, and kings and chancellors from all the League suns, not to mention ambassadors from the outer galaxies, were in attendance. Even the intergalactic arbiters were there in their splendid robes, unanimous at least in their decision that so historic an occasion required their review.
The Regent’s brows knitted. This is no fitting end, he thought. It was the Delfieri who brought Terror low. But for the stiffening of our purpose, and rallying the weaklings of the League, the devil-planet would not now lie a-burning. Perhaps no particular Delfieri is essential but the blood is essential. And this wastrel Oberon is the last of us. Wild, inconsiderate brat! Always, we are out getting ourselves killed when we should be taking wives and establishing something for posterity.
But his barbaric black eyes softened as he considered his nephew. A complete Delfieri. And so this must be your miserable coronation. No, not like in the old days. As his grandfather had told him, these things in centuries past were a thirty-day riot. Before his ancient forebears found blatant piracy uneconomical and before they entered (with vast reluctance) into a more socially acceptable culture, a coronation was a thing to be remembered. Every wine vat in Goris-Kard was emptied. Unransomed captives were sacrificed, and the temple floors were awash in blood. And those were real temples, to proper gods, long before the philosophies of Alea and Ritornel began their insidious seduction of the flowering minds of the lusty League planets. And now, all was gone, all. Here and now, at this pallid proceeding, the only wine was in the sterilizing autoclaves in the operating room, and the only blood visible was that on the white gown of the Master Surgeon.
And thus for hours the procession of subdued celebrants circled the glass bubble of the improvised surgery. They moved in a living stream, on deep blue carpets, handwoven with threads of gold and noble metals, through a great room finished in hand-carved opulent wood-paneling (in strange contrast to the tiled sterility of the operating chamber in its center). The air was heavy with incense. A choir chanted in the background, amid the muffled clangor of great bronze bells in neighboring Alean and Ritornellian chapels. It could hardly be known whether the bells rejoiced or sorrowed, or indeed whether it made any difference one way or the other.
All the participants were exhausted, and yet the stream of potentates did not abate.
During these proceedings the Regent, and Galactic Laureate, and the musicians and chanters occupied a podium at the side of the operating room. Huntyr, functioning as the Regent’s temporary aide, stood quietly behind the group, his face just beginning to heal under plastic skin. Only the golden patch glinting forebodingly over his left eye gave hint of his recent brush with death.
When Omere had understood what was expected of him in the modified ceremony, he was surprised only that he had not been shocked: but the whole affair was completely consistent with the bizarre tradition of the Delfieri. During the endless hours he had recited his epic three times over; his voice was cracking, and he was beginning to feel giddy. He wondered what they would do to him if he simply fainted. He noticed then that the Regent was frowning at him, but Omere pondered the barbaric mixture of surgery and ceremony, and decided he couldn’t care less.
The Regent’s right hand was raw and swollen from hundreds of handshakes, but he hardly felt it. From his place in the receiving line, he could see the operating table, the bevy of white-clad nurses, and the sure, delicate motions of the Master Surgeon. The Regent knew that crushed sections of ribs were being cut away and stored carefully in frozen containers; these were samples being saved for the cell cultures. Since Oberon was probably going to die, a number of single viable cells selected from the jetsam of fragments would be cultured, by techniques known only to the Master Surgeon, in the hope that a new identical Oberon could eventually be grown, and the imperial lineage thereby preserved.
At this moment the sono under the Regent’s left ear peeped gently. It was the prearranged signal from the Master Surgeon. The old man walked over to a nearby microphone. He could see the Master Surgeon watching him through the glass walls of the surgery. “You want me, Surgeon?”
“Yes. I must bring Oberon into consciousness for a short time. I want the Laureate here inside. You know how Oberon feels about Omere. Selections from the epic may well soothe and reassure Oberon during the period of consciousness.”
The old man had always regarded Oberon’s fascination with poetry and the arts as a serious frailty in a Delfieri, a weakness that could only bring harm. And yet he was realistic enough to seize upon his nephew’s strange interest, and to make use of it in an attempt to work on the youth’s will to live. He looked over at the poet. “They want you inside, to sing a few selections from the epic while the Master Surgeon brings Oberon into temporary consciousness.”
“I will try. But my voice is nearly gone.” (And so am I, Omere wanted to add.) He pulled a tiny aspirator from his pocket, sprayed his throat, and was immediately struck by a coughing spasm. He wiped blood from his lips.
The Regent watched this with distaste. “I will ask the Master Surgeon to give you something to hold you together for the necessary time.”
“I am grateful,” rasped Omere sardonically.
Inside, a nurse gave him a hypodermic. His larynx had immediate trouble with the bite of ozone and the odor of barely dry bacteriostatic paint. And the sub-audio sterilizers set up interference patterns with his voice. It was going to be a fiasco, but perhaps Oberon would be too far gone to know. He selected the stanza beginning with the spread of Terror’s warships throughout the Home Galaxy. He sang softly and didn’t try for the high notes.
He then observed that Oberon’s eyes were open, and watching him. He smiled wearily at the young Magister, then continued the stanza … then stopped. For Oberon, with no air in his damaged lungs, was trying to whisper something.
“Finish … Rimor…?”
“The poetry computer is mechanically complete, Excellency,” said Omere, “but I have not yet programmed it. This will require several weeks.”
“Program it … now…”
“It shall be done, Excellency.”
Oberon closed his eyes.
“He is unconscious again,” the Master Surgeon said to Omere. “You need not stay.” He looked at the Laureate sharply. “How do you feel?”
“I think I—” Omere collapsed in a slow heap on the floor.
The Master Surgeon jerked his hooded head toward the nurse. “Stretchers.”
As Omere was carried out, the Regent looked after him thoughtfully. He snapped his fingers for Huntyr. “Take him to the hospital wing. And strap him down.”
The coronation continued.
In the final hour, Oberon was given the silver scroll of wisdom (which the priests could only place outside the glass door), the pails full of platinum coins to ensure prosperity for his reign, and finally he was appointed Defender of the Faiths whereby, amid much chanting, a golden ring of Ritornel was placed by the door by a minor Ritornellian priest, and then an Alean abbot forced himself to place the golden Alean die inside the ring.
And then surgery and coronation were complete. The last guest disappeared up the carpeted walkway.
The Master Surgeon had been on his feet with Oberon for nearly twenty hours, and had used up three consecutive sets of assistants. He stepped outside and onto the podium.
“How is it, Surgeon?” said the Regent.
“He might live, if he chooses to live.”
“How long to program the poetry computer?”
“I would like to discuss that with you, sire. Can we go now to the hospital wing? There will be no change in Oberon’s condition for some hours. But meanwhile, if we are to save the Delfier
i line by cell cultures or by persuading Oberon to want to live, much work remains to be done this night.”
“After you, Surgeon.”
“Cell culture is best understood from a historical viewpoint,” said the Master Surgeon. He stood erect at the microscope workbench in the parthenogenetic laboratory, apparently untouched by the long day with Oberon. The Regent had sunk exhausted, in a sparsely upholstered lab chair. The surgeon continued quietly. “In his first instant of existence, the Magister was but a single cell in the womb of his mother. That cell divided, then subdivided, and continued to subdivide. For seven or eight generations, all the thousands of resulting cells in this initial stage of development were identical. During this phase, no cells recognizable as bone cells, or muscle cells, or nerve cells were formed. But—in the next few cell generations, changes did begin. Thus, about ten days after fertilization we find three different kinds of cells, in outer, middle, and inner layers in the incipient embryo, which is now a barely visible hollow ball. The descendants of these layered cells become even more specialized as growth continues. And before the days of parthenogenesis, it was thought that this increasing specialization was irreversible.”
“What do you mean, irreversible?” asked the Regent.
“Before specialization began, any one of the cells could be separated from the cluster and caused to grow into a separate embryo. But after the cells have begun to specialize, they can reproduce only identical specialized cells; they can no longer produce all of the hundreds of different kinds of cells necessary to form a viable human fetus. The changes in the cell structure that cause specialization are thus normally irreversible.”
“I gather then that the parthenogenesis technique is aimed at reversing the irreversibility?”
“Exactly, Excellency.”
“Continue.”
“We have here a microsection of costal bone taken from the chest of the Magister. These bone cells descended from cells in the middle layer of the pinpoint-sized embryo. The same layer was ancestor to heart, muscle, and skin cells.”
“But how can muscle cells and bone cells descend from identical cells?”
“Certain genes within the cell become inactivated after a specified number of subdivisions. It is, in fact, the withdrawal of combinations of specific genes from the coded genetic instructions of the chromosomes that results in the changes in the cells of subsequent generations. All the original genes of the original fertilized single cell are still present in each of the billions of cells of the embryo, but now, cell by cell, many of the genes are dormant, so that the correct daughter cells needed in succeeding stages in the growth of the embryo can be made. The success of parthenogenesis depends on awakening these sleeping genes. If this is done, the cell shall be as it was in the beginning, precisely identical to the first cell from which the Magister grew, and hence, in theory, capable of growing into a second Magister.”
“And how are the sleeping genes awakened?”
“By removing the blocking proteins from the deoxyribonucleic acid chains of the genes—the DNA. These proteins are protamines and histones—mildly basic. They have combined chemically with the mild acid of the DNA, but can be persuaded to relinquish their hold on the DNA if we expose them, very carefully, to a slightly stronger acid. All this has to take place within the cell nucleus, and the microprocedure is rather delicate.”
“Surgery at the molecular level? I did not realize the technique existed. Tell me more.”
The Master Surgeon hesitated. “More, sire, I cannot tell you. It is a secret of the Master Surgeons, passed down, one to the other, from the most distant generations.”
“Then I shall not pry.”
“The Regent is invited to watch.”
“Yes, I would like to.”
The surgeon turned around and bent over his flasks. “From this section of costal bone, we first isolate about twenty individual cells. This is a simple microsurgical technique, which your Excellency can follow on the microscope projection screen. As you can see, each cell looks like an elongated brick. Each is washed with sterile nutrient medium into its individual culture flask. And now we come to the crucial part, reactivation of the dormant genes.”
There was a sudden flashing movement. The Master Surgeon stripped the glove from his right hand. He seemed then to insert his index finger into the neck of the first flask. And then the glove was on the hand again. The great man turned to the Regent and bowed. “And that is all there is to it.”
The Regent studied the hooded, glowing eyes. “You mean, there is something in your body that awakens the genes?”
“Something like that. Of course, the bone cell must now travel the long road back, reversing some fifty generations of cell differentiation, with more and more genes awakening at each stage, until all are awakened, and the condition of the first cell is reached. The gene-stuff is fragile, and the results are unpredictable. Parthenogenesis is a hazardous process at best. In the days of the wars, the very conditions of high radiation levels that wrought mutations in the genes of sperm and ovum while they were yet in the body endangered the cell cultures in the same way. And so it is now. Ironically, the recent great quake that has called for this specific attempt at parthenogenesis may itself bring all our efforts to nothing. Even as we talk here, the first showers of hyper-drive cosmic rays generated by the quake are reaching us.”
“But these rooms are encased in a meter of lead,” demurred the Regent. “Besides which, the planet itself lies between these rooms and the Node.”
“That may not be enough. Cosmic rays have been detected in mines several thousands of meters deep. We think that the strongest are able to pass entirely through the whole planet of Goris-Kard, right through the nickel-cobalt core. Even since we have been standing here, several cosmic rays have passed through my body.”
“How do you know that?”
“My sensory structure is—different from yours. I can detect electromagnetic radiation in wavelengths considerably below the visible spectrum useful to your retina. There—a ray struck this very jar.”
“Throw it out.”
The Master Surgeon hesitated. “I wonder. The chances that the ray struck the single cell to be cultured seem quite remote.”
“Then do as you like.”
“Thank you. I’d like to keep it for the time being. And now, if your Excellency is satisfied with what has been explained and demonstrated so far, it would be best if I completed the cultures alone. This will take less than an hour, and then I will rejoin you in the room of Omere the poet.”
“Yes. I am satisfied. I will meet you there.”
4. INTO THE MUSIC ROOM
“Hello, Doc.” Omere’s eyes opened blearily, then closed again.
“You will address the Master Surgeon with more respect,” said Huntyr curtly.
Beneath twitching eyelids, Omere tried to focus on the big man. He attempted to rise on one elbow. Only then did he discover he was strapped to the bed. “Must have been quite a party.” His head fell back on the pillow. “I remember, now. The coronation. I passed out. Never mix terza rima and iambic pentameter. What happened after that? Fill me in, blue eyes!”
“My boy,” said the Master Surgeon, “you sang to the Magister for over twelve hours, without rest, and then you collapsed. Huntyr brought you here.”
“… the Magister?”
The surgeon turned questioningly to the Regent, who had shriveled wearily into a bedside chair. The old man nodded, and the surgeon faced the poet again. “The condition of the Magister is a state secret. However, for reasons that you will soon appreciate, there is no danger in entrusting this secret to you. The continued existence of Oberon of the Delfieri trembles in the balance. For the time being, everything that can be done for him medically has been done. He will be under hypno-sedation for three days to give our patchwork a chance. When he awakens, whether he lives or dies may well be his own mental choice. In one hand he will hold life; in the other, death. He has only to choose.
The Regent, of course, desires that Oberon shall choose to live. In persuading him to this choice, you can be of great service to the state.”
“With more ditties and doggerel?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Get to the point.”
“We don’t want you to collapse again.”
“Boorish of me, wasn’t it?” Omere coughed. It was a gurgling hacking thing. He turned his head and spat something red into the tray by his pillow.
“There is no treatment for your lung disease. We think you are going to die. It could happen overnight.”
“So I have been told.”
“If you die, you will not be available to sing to the Magister when he awakens, and in that case, he may elect to die.”
“Fear not,” said Omere. “When he arrives, I’ll be there waiting. I’ll teach him to play the harp.”
Huntyr was outraged. “How can a dying man speak thus?”
The Regent silenced his aide with an irritated hand wave. “Master Surgeon, tell the poet that which he must know.”
“Omere Andrek,” said the Master Surgeon, “we have decided that you will, in a sense, live.”
“‘In a sense?’”
“You have heard of the Rimor computer?”
“Of course. Oberon’s pet project. I promised him I’d help program the poetry and music circuits.”
“True. And you shall, although perhaps not exactly in the way that you had planned.” The surgeon tugged briefly at the beard under his hood, then continued. “The human brain has ten billion neurons, most of which are in the gray matter of the cerebrum. Rimor’s equivalents of these circuits take time to program. Yet, if Rimor were programmed and ready to function in three days, Oberon might listen to it when he regains consciousness; and listening, he might be persuaded to live. But Rimor is far from finished.”
The Ring of Ritornel Page 3