Exile (31 page)

Shock replaced both fear and anticipation in Gilgesh Khan. "But Your Grace.—"

"Second, and also important, I am looking for an old friend of yours, Shatz Abel, who I'm sure has come to you for help."

Gilgesh Khan, dumbfounded, and beginning to feel fearagain, sputtered, "I have not seen—"

"I'm sure he has come to you. I know he is on Europa, and there is nowhere else for him to go. He had an impudent pup who fancies himself King of Earth with him."

"Dalin Shar?" Khan said in wonder.

"Yes. When did they come to see you?"

"But they have not been here! They have not—"

In the old days," Wrath-Pei said, "I overlooked your alliance with Shatz Abel because it did not matter. Suddenly it matters."

"But I assure you—!"

"Lawrence," Wrath-Pei said, turning slightly in his seat to confront his ward, "please secure an auto-chute for Khan."

Walking like a man on stilts, the young man went to the credit machine; in a moment there was a loud click, and one of the auto-chutes unsnicked from its mooring and flipped onto the ice, waiting.

Wrath-Pei looked at the chute. "Put it on, Khan." Gilgesh, quaking with fear, said, "Your Grace, I implore you!"

"Don't implore. Just do what I say."

Trembling, Gilgesh retrieved the auto-chute and secured it, pulling the straps tight across his front. It occurred to him that though he had helped countless foolish tourists with this procedure, this was the first time he had ever actually mounted one of the devices himself.

"Now jump," Wrath-Pei said, indicating the titanium plank jutting out into nothingness.

"I cannot!"

"Of course you can, Khan," Wrath-Pei said.

In a moment the tyrant's chair had whirred into motion, and Wrath-Pei hovered beside Khan, at eye level. A gentle hand was once again placed on his shoulder, urging him forward.

"Jump," Wrath-Pei said.

"I canno—!"

The murderously cold look on Wrath-Pei's face spurred Khan into action, and he stumbled forward, moaning, to the plank's beginning, and then, step by edging step, to its end, where all of Europa seemed to hang below him, in dizzying white splendor.

"Ohhhhh..."

"Now jump."

After giving Wrath-Pei the briefest look, Gilgesh Khan did so.

He fell, into splendid nothingness—

And found, to his amazement, that his vertigo was gone!

A thrilling ecstasy filled Gilgesh Khan. Behind him, the vertical face of Carlton Cliff glided slowly past, as if in a dream. The wall was pocked with ridges and icy depressions which resolved themselves into pictures. Gilgesh had sold 3-D Screen views of these anomalies, but had never appreciated their beauty: the Smiling Clown, its face naturally etched in ice; the Rocket, a natural formation in the shape of a Martian cruiser; the Infant; and all the others.

And here now were other marks on the ice—manmade graffiti etched by clever parachutists working vertically in a deft fight against gravity: "Mark Loves Ang-Frei,"

"Choi Lives!" and "Lem-Jarn Was Here."

As mesmerized as he was by his slow-motion fall, Gilgesh turned to face away from the cliff,

He felt suspended in space. There was the Europa Hotel in the distance, its green spires rising like emerald fingers from a blanket of white ice. And beyond it, all of Europa outlined now against the massive limb of Father Jupiter, King of Planets, its red, orange, and creme bands like a dream in the sky!

How could he have missed this wonderful attraction, this marvelous ride, for so long?

Each day, from now on, he would begin with a ride down Carlton Cliff, the "Greatest Attraction in the Solar System," to renew his sense of wonder!

And now Gilgesh looked down, and saw the ground rising slowly up to meet him. How long had it been? Six minutes? Eight? In only a matter of minutes now he would reach bottom, the slow journey down nevertheless having imparted enough velocity to his mass to crush him like an egg but for the opening of his chute

His chute—

It was now that Gilgesh Khan, long-separated descendant of Genhis Khan, who had proof of that blood bond, remembered what he had seen in that last brief glimpse back at Wrath-Pei before he had leaped.

What he had seen?

Wrath-Pei, re-sheathing his razor-sharp snips in their holster next to his chair.

And, in Wrath-Pei's other hand, the severed straps of Gilgesh's auto-chute; while, on the ground, the packed mass of the chute itself lay unrolling.

To confirm his fate, Gilgesh Khan reached around to feel nothing strapped to his back.

The flat shelf strapped at the bottom of Carlton Cliff rose inevitably up.

Gilgesh opened his mouth to scream—but somethin far down and ancient in his genes stayed his terror an steeled him.

He glared at the approaching ground with defiance.

And Gilgesh Khan, ruler of no empire save his approaching death, opened his arms wide to meet it as that other Khan would have.