Кристофер Банч - The Return of the Emperor

Sten plucked Cind away again. She started to protest, but he gently covered her mouth with a hand. He tried to explain to her that this was definitely not a good idea. He was flattered and all, he said, and he was sure she was the most wonderful human-type female in the Empire, but he was in no position to start up any kind of a relationship. So, although he would regret this moment the rest of his life, would Cind please, please, get her clothes on and go?

It took awhile. But Cind did as she was told. When she was gone, Sten punched the drakh out of his pillow. He did not sleep again that night. For once, it had nothing to do with nightmares of a blown mission.

As for Cind, she was hurt, to be sure. She was also more in love than ever. By thinking so much of her that he was willing to forget her attentions, Sten was promoted from hero to godhood.

Cind consoled herself. There would be another time, with a far different result.

S'be't!

Kilgour was not present at the meeting, but he had arranged the entire thing. Otho was primed and almost sober.

The Bhor chieftain had asked Sten to go for a walk with him beside the little lake in a glen not far from his headquarters. It was no accident that the lake he chose was a memorial to the Bhor casualties suffered during the Jann war.

As they strolled around it, Otho pretended to seek Sten's advice on his plans for the Lupus Cluster. It was also no accident that all those plans assumed a future laden with a plenitude of AM2. Otho laid it on thick, just as Alex had coached him to. It was his own idea to mention also—in unsparing detail—the hardships the people of the Wolf Worlds had suffered during the reign of "those privy council clots." Not only had extreme deprivation been caused by the shortages of AM2—which Otho assumed was intentional on the part of the council—but all business involving the mining and export of Imperium X had also ceased. He also did not exaggerate when he said he saw a time, a year or so away but no more, when the Lupus Cluster would cease to exist as an entity. One planetary system at a time would be lost, until all were as alone as they had been in the primitive days, when no being had known for certain that other living things existed beyond the upper atmosphere.

Sten listened and not just politely. All that Otho said was true. Although what he could do about it, he didn't know. At least he could listen. As they strolled around the small lake, he began to notice that its surface shimmered like no other he had seen before. He realized it was because the bottom consisted of an immense black slab, polished to mirror-brightness. There were little imperfections pocking the slab. At first he could not make them out. He thought it might be algae. Then he realized that they were names, the names of the Bhor dead, honored there by their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, lovers, and friends.

He found himself near tears when he understood the meaning of the lake. Otho pretended not to notice.

"I must speak to you frankly, my friend," the Bhor chieftain said. Without waiting for a response, he went on. "It is no secret that you are suffering. To tell you it is only the affliction of an old soldier will not help. This I understand. To say it is no more than the swollen joints a farmer earns from long years behind a plow is equally as useless.

"Another foolish comparison. This one involves a confession. You understand that not all Bhor choose the, ahem, Way of a Warrior."

Sten raised an eyebrow but kept his thoughts to himself.

"I had an uncle—who was a tailor. Do not laugh! By my father's frozen buttocks, there has never been a living thing who loved to work with cloth like this uncle I am speaking to you about. Many years passed. Pleasurable and rewarding years. And then his hands began to ache. His knuckles grew great knots. So thick and painful he could barely manipulate them. You understand what a tragedy this was to my uncle?"

Sten nodded. He did.

"Did he give up? Did he cease the toil that gave him so much pleasure? Or did he damn the eyes of the streggan ghost that afflicted him and drink until he could feel no more pain? And then—and only then—continue his work?"

Sten said he assumed the latter. He believed stregg, named for the ancient nemesis of the Bhor, to be a powerful reliever of pain.

"Then you would be wrong!" Otho bellowed. "He did not. He gave up. He died a bitter and broken being. And this is the shame of my family, which I swear to you I have told no other. Except, perhaps, when I was drunk. But, I swear, I have never revealed it sober. Never!"

Sten was beginning to feel a little stupid. His friends were treating him as if he were some helpless child. Well, perhaps they were right. Maybe he did need a swift, hard kick. Poor Otho was trying so hard.

"What is it you want?" Otho shot at him.

"What?"

"What do you want? These… things, who rule in the place of the Emperor. You owe them a debt. Are they not your enemy? Do they not deserve your hate? Why do you treat them so shabbily? Make them happy. Kill them!"

"I tried," Sten said weakly.

"So try again. Don't be my uncle with the cloth."

Sten wanted to say that killing them would satisfy nothing. At least not in himself. But he didn't know how to explain it to his rude, rough friend.

"You want more than death? Is that it?" his rude, rough friend asked.

Sten thought about it. The deeper his thoughts swam, the angrier he became.

"They are assassins," he hissed. "Worse than that. When they killed the Emperor, they might as well have killed us all. Soon we'll all be living like animals. Sitting in front of caves. Knocking rocks together to get a bit of fire."

"Good. You are mad," Otho boomed. "Now think about how to get even."

"Getting even isn't what I want," Sten said.

"By my mother's beard. We're back to that again. What do you want? Say it. Then we'll board my ships and see all their souls burning in hell."

"I want… justice," Sten finally said. "Dammit. I want every being in the Empire to know the council's crime. Their hands are bloody. Justice, dammit. Justice!"

"I don't believe in justice, myself," Otho said gently. "No true Bhor does. It is a fairy story created by other, weaker species who look for higher truths because their own lot is so miserable.

"But I am a tolerant being. If justice is your meat, load up my plate, my friend. We both shall eat.

"Now. Decide. What form do you wish this justice to take? And by my father's frozen buttocks, if you retreat to that pool of emotional muck again, I shall personally remove your limbs. One by one."

Sten didn't need that kind of coaxing. It suddenly came to him exactly what kind of justice would do.

"Load the ships, my friend," Sten said.

Otho bellowed with delight. "By my mother's great, gnarly beard, there's a Blessing upon us. We'll drink all their souls to hell!"

The computer was a bureaucrat's dream. As a pure storage center, it had few equals on the civilian market. But the key to its beauty was its method of retrieval.

The R&D team leader had come to Kyes with the design proposal ten years before. Kyes had spent four months with the group, firing every thinkable objection and whole flurries of "supposes" to test the theoretical limits. He had not found one hole that could not be plugged with a few symbols added to the design equation.

He had ordered the project launched. It was so costly that in another era Kyes would have automatically sought financial partners to spread the risk. Certainly he had briefly toyed with the idea. But the computer—if it could be brought on-line—would reap such enormous profits that he had dismissed the thought.