by Issac Asimov
Aratap said, “Is he still under?”
At his voice the doctor jumped up. “The effects of the whip have worn off, Commissioner, but the man is not young and has been under a strain. I don’t know if he will recover.”
Biron felt horror fill him. He dropped to his knees, disregarding the wrenching pain, and reached out a hand to touch Gillbret’s shoulder gently.
“Gil,” he whispered. He watched the damp, white face anxiously.
“Out of the way, man.” The medical officer was scowling at him. He removed his black doctor’s wallet from an inner pocket.
“At least the hypodermics aren’t broken,” he grumbled. He leaned over Gillbret, the hypodermic, filled with its colorless fluid, poised. It sank deep, and the plunger pressed inward automatically. The doctor tossed it aside and they waited.
Gillbret’s eyes flickered, then opened. For a while they stared unseeingly. When he spoke finally, his voice was a whisper. “I can’t see, Biron. I can’t see.”
Biron leaned close again. “It’s all right, Gil. Just rest.”
“I don’t want to.” He tried to struggle upright. “Biron, when are they Jumping?”
“Soon, soon!”
“Stay with me, then. I don’t want to die alone.” His fingers clutched feebly, and then relaxed. His head lolled backward.
The doctor stooped, then straightened. “We were too late. He’s dead.”
Tears stung at Biron’s -eyelids. “I’m sorry, Gil,” he said, “but you didn’t know. You didn’t understand.” They didn’t hear him.
They were hard hours for Biron. Aratap had refused to allow him to attend the ceremonies involved in the burial of a body at space. Somewhere in the ship, he knew, Gillbret’s body would be blasted in an atomic furnace and then exhausted into space, where its atoms might mingle forever with the thin wisps of interstellar matter.
Artemisia and Hinrik would be there. Would they understand? Would she understand that he had done only what he had to do?
The doctor had injected the cartilaginous extract that would hasten the healing of Biron’s tom ligaments, and already the pain in his knee was barely noticeable, but then that was only physical pain, anyway. It could be ignored.
He felt the inner disturbance that meant the ship had Jumped and then the worst time came.
Earlier he had felt his own analysis to be correct. It had to be. But what if he were wrong? What if they were now at the very heart of rebellion? The information would go streaking back to Tyrann and the armada would gather. And he himself would die knowing that he might have saved the rebellion, but had risked death to ruin it.
It was during that dark time that he thought of the document again. The document he had once failed to get.
Strange the way the notion of the document came and went. It would be mentioned, and then forgotten. There was a mad, intensive search for the rebellion world and yet no search at all for the mysterious vanished document.
Was the emphasis being misplaced?
It occurred to Biron then that Aratap was willing to come upon the rebellion world with a single ship. What was that confidence he had? Could he dare a planet with a ship?
The Autarch had said the document had vanished years before, but then who had it?
The Tyranni, perhaps. They might have a document the secret of which would allow one ship to destroy a world.
If that were true, what did it matter where the rebellion world was, or if it existed at all?
Time passed and then Aratap entered. Biron rose to his feet.
Aratap said, “We have reached the star in question. There is a star there. The coordinates given us by the Autarch were correct.”
“Well?”
“But there is no need to inspect it for planets. The star, I am told by my astrogators, was a nova less than a million years ago. If it had planets then, they were destroyed. It is a white dwarf now. It can have no planets.”
Biron stared. “Then—”
Aratap said, “So you are right. There is no rebellion world.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
All of Aratap’s philosophy could not completely wipe out the feeling of regret within him. For a while he had not been himself, but his father over again. He, too, these last weeks had been leading a squadron of ships against the enemies of the Khan.
But these were degenerate days, and where there might have been a rebellion world, there was none. There were no enemies of the Khan after all; no worlds to gain. He remained only a Commissioner, still condemned to the soothing of little troubles. No more.
Yet regret was a useless emotion. It accomplished nothing.
He said, “So you are right. There is no rebellion world.”
He sat down and motioned Biron into a seat as well. “I want to talk to you.”
The young man was staring solemnly at him. Aratap found himself gently amazed that they had met first less than a month ago. The boy was older now, far more than a month older, and he had lost his fear. Aratap thought to himself, I am growing completely decadent. How many of us are beginning to like individuals among our subjects? How many of us wish them well?
He said, “I am going to release the Director and his daughter. Naturally, it is the politically intelligent thing to do. In fact, it is politically inevitable. I think, though, that I will release them now and send them back on the Remorseless. Would you care to pilot them?”
Biron said, “Are you freeing me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You saved my ship, and my life as well.”
“I doubt that personal gratitude would influence your actions in matters of state. ’
Aratap was within a hair of laughing outright. He did like the boy. “Then I’ll give you another reason. As long as I was tracking a giant conspiracy against the Khan, you were dangerous. When that giant conspiracy failed to materialize, when all I had was a Linganian cabal of which the leader is dead, you were no longer dangerous. In fact, it would be dangerous to try either you or the Linganian captives.
“The trials would be in Linganian courts and therefore not under our full control. They would inevitably involve discussion of the so-called rebellion world. And though there is none, half the subjects of Tyrann would think there might be one after all, that where there was such a deal of drumming, there must be a drum. We would have given them a concept to rally round, a reason for revolt, a hope for the future. The Tyrannian realm would not be free of rebellion this side of a century.”
“Then you free us all?”
“It will not be exactly freedom, since none of you is exactly loyal. We will deal with Lingane in our own way, and the next Autarch will find himself bound by closer ties to the Khanate. It will be no longer an Associated State, and trials involving Linganians will not necessarily be tried in Linganian courts hereafter. Those involved in the conspiracy, including those in our hands now, will be exiled to worlds nearer Tyrann, where they will be fairly harmless. You yourself cannot return to Nephelos and need not expect to be restored to your Ranchy. You will stay on Rhodia, along with Colonel Rizzett.”
“Good enough,” said Biron, “but what of the Lady Artemisia’s marriage?”
“You wish it stopped?”
“You must know that we would like to marry each other. You said once there might be some way of stopping the Tyrannian affair.”
“At the time I said that I was trying to accomplish something. What is the old saying? ’The lies of lovers and diplomats shall be forgiven them.’”
“But there is a way, Commissioner. It need only be pointed out to the Khan that when a powerful courtier would marry into an important subject family, it may be motives of ambition that lead him on. A subject revolt may be led by an ambitious Tyrannian as easily as by an ambitious Linganian.”
Aratap did laugh this time. “You reason like one of us. But it wouldn’t work. Would you want my advice?”
“What would it be?”
“Marry her your
self, quickly. A thing once done would be difficult to undo under the circumstances. We would find another woman for Pohang.”
Biron hesitated. Then he put out a hand. “Thank you, sir.”
Aratap took it. “I don’t like Pohang particularly, anyway. Still, there is one thing further for you to remember. Don’t let ambition mislead you. Though you marry the Director’s daughter, you will never yourself be Director. You are not the type we want.”
Aratap watched the shrinking Remorseless in the visi-plate and was glad the decision had been made. The young man was free; a message was already on its way to Tyrann through the sub-ether. Major Andros would undoubtedly swell into apoplexy, and there would not be wanting men at court to demand his recall as Commissioner.
If necessary, he would travel to Tyrann. Somehow he would see the Khan and make him listen. Given all the facts, the King of Kings would see plainly that no other course of action was possible, and thereafter he could defy any possible combination of enemies.
The Remorseless was only a gleaming dot now, scarcely distinguishable from the stars that were beginning to surround it now that they were emerging from the Nebula.
Rizzett watched the shrinking Tyrannian flagship in the visiplate. He said, “So the man let us go! You know, if the Tyranni were all like him, damned if I wouldn’t join their fleet. It upsets me in a way. I have definite notions of what Tyranni are like, and he doesn’t fit. Do you suppose he can hear what we say?”
Biron set the automatic controls and swiveled in the pilot’s seat. “No. Of course not. He can follow us through hyperspace as he did before, but I don’t think he can put a spy beam on us. You remember that when he first captured us all he knew about us was what he overheard on die fourth planet. No more.”
Artemisia stepped into the pilot room, her finger on her lips. “Not too loudly,” she said. “I think he’s sleeping now. It won’t be long before we reach Rhodia, will it, Biron?”
“We can do it in one jump, Arta. Aratap had it calculated for us.”
Rizzett said, “I’ve got to wash my hands.”
They watched him leave, and then she was in Biron’s arms. He kissed her lightly on forehead and eyes, then found her lips as his arms tensed about her. The kiss came to a lingering and breathless end. She said, “I love you very much,” and he said, “I love you more than I can say.” The conversation that followed was both as unoriginal as that and as satisfying.
Biron said after a while, “Will he marry us before we land?”
Artemisia frowned a little. “I tried to explain that he’s Director and captain of the ship and that there are no Tyranni here. I don’t know though. He’s quite upset. He’s not himself at all, Biron. After he’s rested, I’ll try again.”
Biron laughed softly. “Don’t worry. He’ll be persuaded.”
Rizzett’s footsteps were noisy as he returned. He said, “I wish we still had the trailer. There isn’t room here to take a deep breath.”
Biron said, “Well be on Rhodia in a matter of hours. We’ll be Jumping soon.”
“I know.” Rizzett scowled. “And we’ll stay on Rhodia till we die. Not that I’m complaining overloud; I’m glad to be alive. But it’s a silly end to it all.’
“There hasn’t been any ending,” said Biron softly.
Rizzett looked up. “You mean we can start all over? No, I don’t think so. You can, perhaps, but not I. I’m too old and there’s nothing left for me. Lingane will be dragged into line and I’ll never see it again. That bothers me most of all,
I think. I was bom there and lived there all my life. I won’t be but half a man anywhere else. You’re young; you’ll forget Nephelos.”
“There’s more to life than a home planet, Tedor…It’s been our great shortcoming in the past centuries that we’ve been unable to recognize that fact. All planets are our home planets.”
“Maybe. Maybe. If there had been a rebellion world, why, then, it might have been so.”
“There is a rebellion world, Tedor.”
Rizzett said sharply, “I’m in no mood for that, Biron.”
“I’m not telling a lie. There is such a world and I know its location. I might have known it weeks ago, and so might anyone in our party. The facts were all there. They were knocking at my mind without being able to get in until that moment on the fourth planet when you and I had beat down Jonti. Do you remember him standing there, saying that we would never find the fifth planet without his help? Do you remember his words?”
“Exactly? No.”
“I think I do. He said, ’There is an average of seventy cubic light-years per star, If you work by trial and error, without me, the odds are two hundred and fifty quadrillion to one against your coming within a billion miles of any star. Any star!’ It was at that moment, I think, that the facts got into my mind. I could feel the click.”
“Nothing clicks in my mind,” said Rizzett. “Suppose you explain a bit.”
Artemisia said, “I don’t see what you can mean, Biron.” Biron said, “Don’t you see that it is exactly those odds which Gillbret is supposed to have defeated? You remember his story. The meteor hit, deflected his ship’s course, and at the end of its Jumps, it was actually within a stellar system. That could have happened only by a coincidence so incredible as to be not worth any belief. ’
“Then it was a madman’s story and there is no rebellion world.”
“Unless there is a condition under which the odds against landing within a stellar system are less incredible, and there is such a condition. In fact, there is one set of circumstances, and only one, under which he must have reached a system. It would have been inevitable.”
“Well?”
“You remember the Autarch’s reasoning. The engines of Gillbret’s ship were not interfered with, so the power of the hyperatomic thrusts, or, in other words, the lengths of the Jumps were not changed. Only their direction was changed in such a way that one of five stars in an incredibly vast area of the Nebula was reached. It was an interpretation which, on the very face of it, was improbable.”
“But the alternative?”
“Why, that neither power nor direction was altered. There is no real reason to suppose the direction of drive to have been interfered with. That was only assumption. What if the ship had simply followed its original course? It had been aimed at a stellar system, therefore it ended in a stellar system. The matter of odds doesn’t enter.”
“But the stellar system it was aimed at—”
“—was that of Rhodia. So he went to Rhodia. Is that so obvious that it’s difficult to grasp?”
Artemisia said, “But then the rebellion world must be at home! That’s impossible.”
“Why impossible? It is somewhere in the Rhodian System. There are two ways of hiding an object. You can put it where no one can find it, as, for instance, within the Horse-head Nebula. Or else you can put it where no one would ever think of looking, right in front of their eyes in plain view.
“Consider what happened to Gillbret after landing on the rebellion world. He was returned to Rhodia alive. His theory was that this was in order to prevent a Tyrannian search for the ship which might come dangerously close to the world itself. But then why was he kept alive? If the ship had been returned with Gillbret dead, the same purpose would have been accomplished and there would have been no chance of Gillbret’s talking, as, eventually, he did.
“Again, that can only be explained by supposing the rebellion world to be within the Rhodian System. Gillbret was a Hinriad, and where else would there be such respect for the life of a Hinriad but in Rhodia?”
Artemisia’s hands clenched spasmodically. “But if what you say is true, Biron, then Father is in terrible danger.”
“Ana has been for twenty years,” agreed Biron, “but perhaps not in the manner you think. Gillbret once told me how difficult it was to pretend to be a dilettante and a good-for-nothing, to pretend so hard that one had to live the part even with friends and even when alone. Of cou
rse, with him, poor fellow, it was largely self-dramatization. He didn’t really live the part. His real self came out easily enough with you, Arta. It showed to the Autarch. He even found it necessary to show it to me on only fairly short acquaintance.
“But it is possible, I suppose, to really live such a life completely, if your reasons are sufficiently important. A man might live a lie even to his daughter, be willing to see her terribly married rather than risk a lifework that depended on complete Tyrannian trust, be willing to seem half a madman—”
Artemisia found her voice. She said huskily, “You can’t mean what you’re saying!”
“There is no other meaning possible, Arta. He has been Director over twenty years. In that time Rhodia has been continually strengthened by territory granted it by the Tyranni, because they felt it would be safe with him. For twenty years he has organized rebellion without interference from them, because he was so obviously harmless.”
“You’re guessing, Biron,” said Rizzett, “and this kind of a guess is as dangerous as the ones we’ve made before.”
Biron said, “This is no guess. I told Jonti in that last discussion of ours that he, not the Director, must have been the traitor who murdered my father, because my father would never have been foolish enough to trust the Director with any incriminating information. But the point is—and I knew it at the time—that this was just what my father did. Gillbret learned of Jonti’s conspiratorial role through what he overheard in the discussions between my father and the Director. There is no other way in which he could have learned it.
“But a stick points both ways. We thought my father was working for Jonti and trying to enlist the support of the Director. Why is it not equally probable, or even more probable, that he was working for the Director and that his role within Jonti’s organization was as an agent of the rebellion world attempting to prevent a premature explosion on Lingane that would ruin two decades of careful planning?