Vortex (37 page)

As gibberish to most people, it may have been a little less depressing. But not to the two experienced beings in the sea cave. Finally the last screen blanked.

"Is my reduction approximately correct?" Rykor asked.

"Not approximately. Exactly." Ecu's wings sagged. The situation was as bad as he had thought it was.

"Summarizing your theses verbally," Rykor went on, coldly, clinically, "it's evident that the Empire is in the direst straits. Not cause for total panic, though, since this isn't the first or the fiftieth time that Imperial catastrophe has loomed. However, you have further theorized that this economic, social, and political decline is being accelerated by the Empire itself. Specifically, by the actions the Eternal Emperor has taken since his… return."

Sr. Ecu said, "That was where I feared I was becoming less than competent in my thinking."

"Not at all. Since I've reassured you as to your sanity, would you now care for that refreshment? Because it's now my turn to reason, and to add some interesting data that I have gotten on my own, since your package arrived."

"Thank you. I shall indulge."

"It is in a pressure container, just to your right. Activated—yes, with that rather large lever."

Moisture hissed into the air. Sr. Ecu felt himself lifted and momentarily was reminded of the time, once on Earth, when he had seen simple avians frolicking in a spray of water.

Rykor treated herself to what appeared to be a slab of flame-dried peat. "Piscean leather," she explained. "Hung just beyond the highest reaches of the ocean spray, and wind-dried. It's as close to a narcotic as my sometimes simplistic race has managed. Although research goes on.

"Continuing. I noticed that you included in your data the disaster our young crusader, Sten, is trying to solve. The Altaic Cluster. He's sustaining a madman, as you're aware. A Dr. Iskra. Did you know that this Iskra is a being who's been supported in exile for years by the Emperor? To control on the former ruler.

"I further found that Sten is under direct orders from the Emperor that Iskra must be kept in office, regardless of cost."

Ecu's body rocked in a nonexistent blast of wind. "What is your source on this?" he asked.

"I cannot say. My colleague remains in the system, and therefore in danger."

Rykor stopped and her tail flippers crashed down against the water's surface. "How odd," she mused. "To hear myself say a friend's life is in danger because that friend is close to our respected ruler, and because this friend speaks a bit of the truth."

"I, myself, have felt potentially in physical jeopardy," Ecu confessed.

Rykor did not answer that, but went on. "A second fact. I don't recall when I stumbled upon it. But I assure you it was in the course of some legitimate field of inquiry. As I said, I disremember the circumstances, but I found myself wondering just what the Emperor gained—directly, monetarily—from his rule. Or was the mere exercise of power adequate recompense? So I investigated.

"Obviously I was most careful in my curiosity. But I found that, indeed, the Emperor had rather incredible funds, invested in various arenas where his governing policies would also prove financially rewarding. The investments were made with multiple cutouts that could never be traced back to the Emperor. I found such an action neither moral nor immoral. These investments, I further learned, had been used during times of disaster to support the economy… as well as his policies. Which would suggest these profits would be considered 'moral' by most. I think they're called a slushy fund by humans."

"Slush."

"Is the spray affecting—oh. Yes. Slush would be correct. A few days ago, I very carefully rechecked a couple of those funds.

"The Emperor's personal wealth is increasing at a monstrous rate, second by second. In these times, which most would call depressed, our own ruler is vastly profiting from his own Empire's poverty.''

"That's insane," Ecu said, his normal smoothness broken.

"For the first time, I agree with your application of the word, even though it is clinically without meaning. By the way—some support for what you just said. Have you been watching the Eternal Emperor when he appears on livie casts lately? More and more rarely, of course, and when he does the angles are favorable and remote. But look closely at the way his eyes shift, like a whipped Earth canine waiting for another beating—or else someone who is slipping further and further into what used to be called a manic-depressive psychosis."

Again, Sr. Ecu wished that profanity provided a meaningful form of expression to his race. Rykor was suggesting that the Empire was now ruled by a madman, and the thought was monstrously inconceivable. Yet, his backbrain reminded him how many times had he dealt with insane rulers and felt vague, impersonal sympathy for the poor beings they tyrannized.

"Another piece of the puzzle," Rykor continued. "The Emperor has ordered large increases in military development. The Cairenes, for instance, were desolated when the Tahn war ended. Military shipbuilding was no longer necessary, and their patron, Sullamora, was killed.

"Then, and I do not understand this, the Cairenes somehow became AM2-fat during the course of the Imperial return. You'll recall that the Emperor's physical return was on a ship from the Cairenes's central system of Dusable. Very well, somehow the Emperor was helped, and the beings of Dusable were rewarded.

"That is the way politics has worked. So ignore the original Golden Calf and his Eggs, or whatever creature it was.

"But their prosperity has continued. Within the last E-year, I've learned, nearly a hundred contracts have been placed with the shipyards of the Cairenes. None of them were put out for open bids. In these times, when there is peace, why build warships? There are more than enough left from the wars. In fact, the scrap yards are full of never-commissioned hulks."

"Could it be," Ecu theorized, deliberately playing devil's advocate, "what I have heard the Emperor call pork-barreling?"

"It could. But I dislike using anything nonsentient to reason from. It's my discipline's prejudice, of course.

"But here is another part of that same puzzle piece. A colleague of mine—actually she was one of the humans I attempted to train into logical paths—had an interesting assignment. She's an expert at the psychology of military recruiting. She prepared a campaign, under very exact orders, for the Tahn worlds."

"What?"

"Yes. Our former enemy, now even further depressed than the Empire. Nothing is being done to improve their economic lot, by the way. But recruiting officers are blanketing these worlds and signing up recruits."

"It's evil," Ecu said, "but it happens that the military, historically, offers its shilling most loudly where poverty is the worst."

"Correct. But if you remember, the Emperor was determined, at war's end, that the old military ravings that the Tahn called their homicidal/suicidal 'culture' would be destroyed. But today these Imperial recruiters are using a campaign that rings every change on the idea that it's time for the warrior Tahn to rise up and redeem themselves. Prove they still have the thews of their elders, even though those elders fought in an evil cause. Now it is time for you to help defend the Empire. And so on and so forth."

Ecu drifted high up, near the cave's apex, while he thought on this. "It might make sense, to an economic babe, to spend your way out of a depression by purchasing unneeded weaponry," he said. "But you do not hire soldiers or sailors. They are simply too expensive and too troublesome in time of peace. Simple welfare and breadlines are more cost efficient, if you are one who can think that cold-bloodedly. Why look for soldiers," he finished, "if there is no enemy?"

"Possibly the Emperor
does
see an enemy," Rykor said softly.

"Consider the nature of kings," she said in a near-whisper. "Consider what they become."

"But the Emperor is Eternal," Ecu said, his normal equanimity shattered. "This has never happened before."

"No. It has not. Something has changed. But that is not my concern." She tapped keys again. "It's deceptive, and very easy, for each generation, as it ages, to whine about Armageddon. But computers do not become irascible and curmudgeonly.

"I ran progs. Predictions.

"We'll go through this later, after we have both rested, to make sure that there is no error. But the conclusions I've ended with are these: The Empire is finally proving that it is no genetic sport. Like all Empires before it, it is following the path of hardening, corruption, decay, and is now doomed to destruction. Not from any historical process, or from any external enemy. But because of one being: The Eternal Emperor."

That had been Sr. Ecu's final judgment exactly.

"I assume," Rykor said, after some time and thought had passed, "that you came here for more than confirmation of your sanity. You are far too rational a being to travel this far, at this risk to your race and person, just to want reinforcement."

"Yes," Ecu said. And suddenly the thought flashed through him: Here he was, master diplomat. Consultant. Expert adviser. Gray eminence for half a thousand rulers, and a being who had even proffered advice to the Eternal Emperor himself, and whose advice had been accepted. Here he was, needing Rykor's advice, as if he were an emotionally troubled spratling.

He understood just why Rykor was held in the respect she was.

"You want to know,'' Rykor said, "what we must do to prevent this."

"Yes," Ecu said once more.

"I do not know. I have considered, and will consider again. But I have no answer.

"However, I will offer you one thought, since everything I've said is slightly bleaker than midnight. Consider this. What would have happened if the Emperor had not returned? I mean, returned at all, not returned at a later date."

"We would have had chaos," Ecu said. "A collapse into barbarism."

"I agree. But it would've stemmed from one reason only—the loss of AM2, correct? The presence or absence of the Emperor is not a significant enough factor to bring everything crashing down."

"Yes," Sr. Ecu said cautiously. "I agree with that."

"Thank you. Now, isn't it true that every race, every culture, has had dark ages? Sometimes many of them?''

Sr. Ecu's body ducked—an assenting nod.

"And they are always recovered from?"

"I cannot say always," Ecu said. "Races might well have slipped into total barbarism, and we have not encountered them. Or degenerated into complete anarchy and race-suicide."

"Eliminate the always, then," Rykor went on. "But it is true, generally. Isn't it also true that once the blight of savagery is thrown off, the next stage is a renaissance?"

"Yes. And you cheer me, even if I don't believe that would apply to the Empire. Its presence is too large, too ancient, and too omnipotent."

"Not if AM2 is taken out of the equation."

"But the Emperor is the only being who knows where AM2 exists in its raw state, or how it is synthesized."

"Sr. Ecu," Rykor reprimanded gently, "you're far too educated and sophisticated to allow yourself to think there is but one inventor who can produce a particular invention. One painter who can produce that picture. Or one philosopher who is capable of producing a social system."

Sr. Ecu said, "Again, you have cheered me. But I'm afraid I don't believe that putting together some sort of manhattan project to look for AM2 would be successful. The privy council seemed to have tried hard enough."

"The privy council was, and again I've got to use semantically loaded words, evil. A less charged word would be self-oriented. But I'll use evil. Evil, being the opposite of good—both words are in quotes—is, by definition, shortsighted, self-serving, lazy, and dishonest. Therefore their search could only be limited and doomed to failure."

"Rykor, how can you remain such an optimist, after all your experience?" Ecu wondered, amused. "I have seen evil triumph at least as frequently as good."

"As Kilgour would say in that primitive dialect he believes to be an understandable language, a clean mind, a clean body. Take your pick.

"Now," she said, heaving her bulk out of the water, onto the shelf, and into a gravchair, "shall we move to an upper chamber, where food and more of your spray awaits? We needn't panic tonight. Even entropy moves at a measured, slow pace."

Ecu floated above her gravchair as they moved up, deeper into the crag's depths, still considering their ultimate problem. He realized that somehow both of them had rather casually accepted the fact that the Emperor must be removed, or at least rendered harmless. Putting aside the matter of AM2, the next question would be, Who could conceivably, in the human phrase, bell this colossal cat?

A name passed through his brain once more:

That man who wanted anyone to fly.

Sten.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

T
he echoes of the barracks bombing were still reverberating when Iskra moved to consolidate and extend his power. The Eternal Emperor's news blackout played right into his hands. Iskra hit the airways with a blistering attack on those (unnamed) traitors who had humiliated the Altaic Cluster by their cowardly attack on the Emperor's peacekeeping forces. He declared martial law. Set a one-hour-after-dawn and one-hour-before-dusk curfew. Banned all demonstration, public protests, and strikes. He also hinted darkly at "other measures" that would be "revealed at the appropriate time." He ended with an impassioned plea that all citizens search their "souls and their neighbors' souls" for any sign of disloyalty.

After generations of violent repression, people knew what was going to happen next. Some dug into mattresses and gardens for bribe money. Some made lists of enemies they could nark on. Most cowered in their homes and waited for the crash of bootheels and rifle butts thundering on doors.

But experienced as they were in the politics of fear, the beings of the Altaic Cluster were not braced for what followed.

Milhouz was lean and proud in his new black uniform with its rakish beret and silver "Students for Iskra" badge. He had a captain's tab on one shoulder and a Purity Corps patch on the other.