Orson Card - Songmaster

I'm all right.

You're still afraid of them.

Not of them, Ansset said. Of me.

Mikal sighed and turned away. I've let myself need you, and now the worst thing anyone can do to me is take you away. I've grown weak.

And so Ansset sang to him of weakness, but in his song that weakness was the greatest strength of all.

Late in the night, when Ansset had thought Mikal was drifting off to sleep, the old emperor flung out his hand and cried in fury, I'm losing it!

What? asked Ansset.

My empire. Did I build it to fall? Did I burn over a dozen worlds and ravage a hundred others just to have the whole thing fall in chaos when I die? He leaned close to Ansset and whispered to him, their eyes only centimeters apart, They call me Mikal the Terrible, but I built it all so it would stand like an umbrella over the galaxy. They have it now: peace and prosperity and as much freedom as their little minds can cope with. But when I die they'll throw it all away.

Ansset tried to sing to him of hope.

There's no hope. I have fifty sons, three of them legitimate, all of them fools who try to flatter me. They couldn't keep the empire for a week, not all of them, not any of them. There's not a man I've met in all my life who could control what I've built in my lifetime. When I die, it all dies with me. And Mikal sank to the floor wearily.

For once Ansset did not sing. He reached out to touch Mikal, rested his hand on the old man's knee, said, For you, Father Mikal, I'll grow up to be strong. Your empire will not fall! He spoke so intensely that both he and Mikal, after a moment's surprise, had to laugh.

It's true, though, Mikal said, tousling Ansset's hair. For you I'd do it, I'd give you the empire, except they'd kill you. And even if I lived long enough to train you to be a ruler of men, to put you on the throne and force them to accept you, I wouldn't do it. The man who will be my heir must be cruel and vicious and sly and wise, completely selfish and ambitious, contemptuous of all other people, brilliant in battle, able to outguess and out-maneuver every enemy, and strong enough inside himself to live utterly alone all his life. Mikal smiled. Even I don't fit my list of qualifications, because now I'm not alone.

Neither, said Ansset, am I. And he sang Father Mikal to sleep.

And as he lay in the darkness, Ansset wondered what it would be like to be emperor, to speak and have his words obeyed, not just by those close enough to hear, but by billions of people all over the universe. He imagined great crowds of people moving to his song, and worlds moving in their paths around their suns according to his word, and the very stars moving left or right, near or far as he wished it. His imaginings became dreams as he drifted off to sleep, and he felt the exhilaration of power as if he were flying, the whole of Susquehanna spread below him, but at night, with the lights shining like stars.

Beside him someone else was flying. The face was familiar, but he did not remember why. The man was tall, and in a sergeant's uniform. He looked at Ansset placidly, but then reached out and touched Ansset, and suddenly Ansset was naked and alone and afraid, and the man was fondling his crotch, and Ansset didn't like it and struck out at the man, struck out with all the power of an emperor, and the sergeant fell from the air with a look of terror, fell and was smashed on one of the towers of the palace. Ansset stared at the broken body, the crumpled, bleeding body, and he suddenly felt the terrible weight of responsibility. He looked up, and all the stars were falling, all the worlds were plunging into their suns, all the crowds were marching over a huge and terrible cliff, and however much he wept and cried out for them to stop, they would not listen; until his own screaming woke him up, and he saw Mikal's kind face looking at him with concern.

A dream, Ansset said, not really awake. I don't want to be emperor.

Don't be, Mikal answered, Don't ever be. It was dark, and Ansset slept again quickly.

12

If the Freemen of Eire had not been guilty, would they have fired on the first imperial troops to come questioning them at their supposedly secret base in Antrim? Some said not. But the Chamberlain said, It's too stupid to believe.

The Captain of the guard held his temper. It all fit. The accent pinpointed them to Antrim. Seventeen members of the group had been in Eastamerica for one reason or another during most or all of the time Ansset was kidnapped. And they opened fire the moment they saw the troops.

'There isn't a nationalist group that wouldn't have opened fire.

There are many nationalist groups that haven't.

Too convenient, I think, the Chamberlain insisted, not looking at Mikal because he had long since learned that looking at Mikal did not help at all to persuade him. Every damn one of the Freemen of Eire were killed. Every one!

They started killing themselves, when they saw they would lose.

And I think that Ansset is still a danger to Mikal!

I've found the conspiracy and destroyed it!

And then silence, as Mikal considered. Has Ansset been able to recognize any of the men you killed?

The Captain turned a little red in the face. There was a fire. Few of the bodies were recognizable. I showed him pictures, and he thinks that two or three might have been--

Might have been, scoffed the Chamberlain.

Might very well have been members of the crew on the ship. I did the best I could. I command fleets, dammit, not small mop-up crews!

Mikal looked at him coldly. Then, Captain, you should have let someone command who knew what he was doing.

I wanted to make-to make sure there weren't any mistakes.

Neither Mikal nor the Chamberlain needed to say anything to that. What's done is done, said the Chamberlain. But I don't think we ought to get complacent. The enemy was clever enough to get Ansset in the first place and keep him for five months where we couldn't find him. I suspect that even if some or all of the crew were Freemen of Eire, the conspiracy didn't originate with them. They were too easy to find. From the accent. Remember, the kidnapper was able to hide every single day from Ansset's memory and our best probing. If he hadn't wanted us to find the Freemen, he would have blocked those memories, too.

The Captain was not one to cling to defeated arguments. You're exactly right. I was taken in.

So were we all, at one time or another, Mikal said, which did much to ease the Captain's discomfort. You may leave, Mikal told him, and the Captain bowed his head and got up and left. The Chamberlain was alone with Mikal in the meeting room, except for the three trusted guards who watched every movement.

I'm concerned, said Mikal.

And so am I.

No doubt. I'm worried because the Captain is not a stupid man, and he has been behaving stupidly. I assume you've been having men follow him ever since he was appointed.

The Chamberlain tried to protest.

If you haven't been following him, you haven't been doing a very good job.

I've been having him followed.

Get the records and correlate them with Ansset's kidnapping. See what you find.

The Chamberlain nodded. Waited a moment, and then, when Mikal seemed to have lost interest in him, got up and left.

When Mikal was alone (except for the guards, but he had learned to dismiss them from his mind, except for the constant watch against an unwary word), he sighed, stretched his arms, heard his joints pop. His joints had never popped until he was over a hundred years old. Where's Ansset? he asked, and one of the guards answered, I'll get him.

Don't get him. Tell me where he is.

And the guard cocked his head, listening to the constant stream of reports coming into his ear implant. In the garden. With three guards. Near the river.