Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

Gerer heard the king’s harsh breathing, and came somewhat closer to the bed, though out of sight still behind the red-draped headboard.

“Have I been sick?”

“You are not well yet, sir,” the physician said, bland.

“Where—”

“Your own room, sir, in the Palace in Erhenrang.”

But Gerer, coming forward though not to where Argaven could see his face, said, “You are home now. We do not know where you were.”

Hoge’s smooth face creased with a frown, though he dared not, physician as he was and so in his way master of them all, direct the frown at the Lord Councillor. Gerer’s voice did not seem to trouble the king, who asked another question or two, sane and brief, and then lay still again. Presently Korgry. who had sat with him ever since he had been brought into the Palace (last night, in secret, by side doors, like a shameful suicide of the last reign, but all in reverse), Korgry committed lese-majeste: huddled forward on his high chair he let his head droop on the side of the bed, and slept. The guard at the door yielded his post to a new guard, in whispers. Officials came and received a fresh bulletin for public release on the state of the King’s health, in whispers. Stricken by severe symptoms of horm-fever while hunting in the High Kargav, the king had been rushed by private car to Erhenrang and was now responding satisfactorily to treatment, etc. Mr. Physician Hoge rem ir Hogeremme at the Palace has released the following statement, etc., etc. “God restore him,” men said in small houses as they lit the fire on the altarhearth; old women said, “It comes of him roving around the city in the night and hunting up there in the snowy precipices, fool tricks like that,” but they kept the radio turned on to catch the next bulletin. A very great number of people had come and gone and loitered and chatted this day in the great square before the Palace, watching those who went in and out, watching the vacant balcony; even now there were several hundred people down there, standing around patiently in the snow.

Argaven XVII was loved in his domain. After the dull brutality of his father Emran’s reign that ended in the shadow of madness and the country’s bankruptcy, he had come: sudden, gallant, young, changing everything; sane and shrewd, yet with a brilliance of magnanimity in all his acts. He had the fire, the splendor that suited his people. He was the force and center of a new age, a man born, for once, king of the right kingdom.

“Gerer.”

It was the king’s voice, and Gerer hastened, stiff and quick, through the hot and cold of the great room, the firelight and dark. “My lord?”

Argaven had got himself sitting up. His arms shook and the breath caught in his throat; his eyes burned across the dark air at Gerer. By his left harid, which bore the Sign-Ring of the Harge dynasty, lay the sleeping face of the servant, serene, derelict. “Gerer,” the king said with effort and clarity, “summon the Council. Tell them, Iwill abdicate.”

So crude, so simple? All the drugs, the terrorizing, the hypnosis, parahypnosis, neurone-stimulation, synapsepairing, spotshock that Hoge had described, for this blunt result? All the same, reasoning must wait. They must temporize. “As soon as your strength returns, sir—”

“Now. Call the Council, Gerer!”

Then he broke, like a bowstring breaking, and stammered in a fury of fear that found no sense or strength to flesh itself in; and still his faithful servant slept, deaf, beside his torment.

In the next picture things are going better, it appears: here is King Argaven XVII in good health and clothes, a handsome young man finishing a large breakfast. He talks with the nearer dozen of the forty or fifty people sharing or serving the meal (singularity is a king’s prerogative, but seldom privacy), and includes all the rest in the largesse of his looks and courtesy. He looks, as everyone has said, quite himself again. Perhaps he is not quite himself again, however; something is missing, a certain boyish serenity, replaced by a similar but less reassuring quality, a kind of heedlessness. Out of it he rises in wit and warmth, but always subsides to it again, that darkness that absorbs him and makes him heedless: fear, pain, resolution?

Mr. Mobile Axt, Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Winter from the Ekumen of the Known Worlds, who had spent the last six days on the road trying to drive an electric car faster than 35 m.p.h. from Mishnory in Orgoreyn to Erhenrang in Karhide, overslept breakfast, and so arrived in the Audience Hall prompt, but hungry. The king had not yet come. The old Chief of the Council, the king’s cousin Lord Gerer rem ir Verhen, met the alien at the door of the great hall and greeted him with the polysyllabic politenesses of Karhide. The Plenipotentiary responded as best he could; discerning beneath the eloquence Gerers desire to tell him something.

“I am told the king is perfectly recovered from his illness,” he said, “and I heartily hope this is true.”

“It is not,” the old man said, his voice becoming blunt and toneless. “My Lord Axt, I tell you this trusting your confidence; there are not ten other men in Karhide who know the truth. He is not recovered. He was not sick.”

Axt nodded. There had of course been rumors.

“He will go alone in the city sometimes. He escapes his companions and guards. One night, six weeks ago, he did not come back. Threats and promises came, that same night, to me and the Second Lord of the Council. If we announced his disappearance, he would be murdered; if we waited in silence two weeks he would be returned. We kept silent, lied to the Spouse who was off at Warlever, sent out false news. Thirteen nights later he was found wandering on the waterfront. He had been drugged and mindformed. By what enemy or faction we do not yet know, we must work in utter secrecy, we cannot wreck the people’s confidence in him—it is hard: we have no clue, and he remembers nothing whatever of his absence. But what they did is plain. They broke his will and bent his mind all to one thing. He believes he must abdicate the throne.”

The tone remained low and plain; the eyes betrayed anguish. And the Plenipotentiary turning suddenly saw the echo, the match of that anguish in the eyes of the young king.

“Holding my audience, cousin?”

Argaven smiled but there was a knife in it. The old Councillor excused himself stolidly, bowed, left, an ungainly old man hurrying down a long red corridor.

Argaven stretched out both hands to the Plenipotentiary in the greeting of equals, for in Karhide the Ekumen was recognized as a brother kingdom, though no one had ever seen it. But his words were not the polite discourse that Axt expected. “Thank God you’re here,” he said.

“I left as soon as I received your message. The roads are still icy in East Orgoreyn and in the West Fall for miles after the border; I didn’t make very good time. But I was very glad to come. Glad to leave, too.” Axt smiled saying this, for he and the young king were on what might be called intimate diplomatic terms. What Argaven’s abrupt personal welcome implied, he waited to see.

“Orgoreyn is a land that breeds bigots as a corpse breeds worms, as one of my ancestors remarked. I’m pleased that you find some relief here in Karhide. Though we have some bigots of our own. Gerer told you that I was kidnapped, and so forth? Yes. I’ve wondered if they were some of our own anti-Alien fanatics, who think your Ekumen is planning to enslave the earth. More likely one of the old clan-factions hoping to regain influence through me. Or the Nobles Faction. They came so near to outright control in my father’s last years; I’m not very popular with the Nobles. ... No telling, yet. It’s strange, to know that one has seen these men face to face, and yet can’t recognize them. Who knows but I see those faces daily? Well, no profit in such thoughts. They wiped out all their tracks. I am sure of only one thing. They did not tell me that I must abdicate.”