Кристофер Банч - The Return of the Emperor

Lieutenant Skinner fished out her voting card and joined the line.

Clot it! Her vote was going to Walsh.

In the Cairenes—especially on Dusable—there was a puzzling mechanical law that struck every election period. No sooner were the polls closed than the main computer would jam up and crash. There it would sit for half the night while teams of expensive techs were rushed in to tinker at its works and shake their heads over bitter caff.

At the appropriate time, there would be huzzahs of victory from the techs, and the computer would kick in, counting the votes and spitting out the results.

There was never any suspense in this final act. Yelad always won.

The Tyrenne huddled in his yawning office with his top aides. Despite the nightmare that had stalked him all day and night, Yelad's mood was fairly light. It helped that he was drunk. It helped still more that the mechanical law of Dusable elections had cut in right on time. Saved by a crashing computer! He chortled, took a slug from the bottle, and growled for his chief registrar to get to it. The screen lit up on Yelad's desk. Now he would see what he would see.

The way it was supposed to work—clot, the way it always worked—was that now the real count would begin. The broken-down computer would hum into action. Its first task was to tally the enemy wards. That would let Yelad know his opponent's strength. Then he would have his own vote counted, and the margin of victory adjusted by the millions of grave votes he had at his command.

He had to be careful. If he cheated too blatantly, the shrill questioning could wreck the first year of his new term. This time, however, Yelad was throwing caution off the roof. Walsh's tactics had him aching for revenge. He would bury the little clot in a landslide of historic proportions.

Yelad jumped when he heard his registrar groan. What the clot?

Walsh's vote was coming in. "Flooding in" was a better description. In ward after ward he was sweeping to victory!

A half hour later Yelad was suddenly sober. He was in deep drakh. Walsh's margin was so great that Yelad would have to vote every dead being in his files. He steeled himself and chugged down half the bottle. Fine! He'd do what was necessary. Hang what happened next. He would still be Tyrenne.

Impatiently he ordered his registrar to start the tally of wards. He settled back for a long night of counting.

The night proved short. One hour later the awful truth began to sink in.

Yelad's vote was nearly nonexistent.

Later, he would figure it out. Somebody had mickied the computer. All across Dusable, every time a committed voter hit the button, it would be recorded instead for Walsh. The official total gave him less than half-a-million votes.

Dusable's dead rested easy in their grave vaults that night.

Yelad had lost.

From that time forward he would be mocked as "Landslide Yelad."

Raschid did not attend Walsh and Kenna's victory party. Instead, he had a very private meeting with Solon Kenna in his offices. It was time to set his price.

The thought came to him as he was watching the election feed on the livie box. It was followed by an overwhelming feeling of urgency. He had to act. Fast.

As he rushed to his hastily arranged meeting with Kenna, the dense clouds that had boiled in his brain for all this time began to thin out, then lift away.

He had passed the Final Test.

Kenna was relieved when Raschid told him what he required: a fast ship, loaded with all the AM2 it could hold, ready for lift within six hours. Kenna thought that no price at all. He figured Raschid would beggar the mordida coffers. Not that it wasn't well worth it. In fact, from his viewpoint, Raschid's payment was so little that even Kenna's crooked soul stung a bit.

"Are you sure," Solon Kenna pressed, "that we can't do anything more?"

"Maybe you can," came the answer. "I'm not sure. But right now, why don't you just stick tight. Enjoy yourself. I'll get back to you."

The Eternal Emperor shook the hand of one singularly happy politician.

The Key to the Kingdom looked unimpressive—deliberately so. It was a small moonlet, one of dozens larger and smaller, orbiting around a Jovian planet. The system was notable for only two reasons: it was completely without commercial value, and it was two steps beyond nowhere.

The moonlet had been constructed several centuries before. An asteroid was chosen for its size and worthlessness. Deep space crews were paid to excavate patterns across the asteroid and to install cables in those patterns. The excavations were filled in. The first crew was paid off and informed that their work had been part of a classified Imperial project. Then a second crew was brought in to construct a small underground shelter and, a few klicks away, an underground dock, hidden from line-of-sight to the shelter by a high ridge. Into the shelter went generators, supplies, and several elaborate and undescribed coms. The second crew was paid off. Somehow, as time passed, the beings who had worked on either crew got the idea that the classified project had been a failure, just another unspectacular research pan-out.

Drone tugs moved the asteroid to its chosen location around the gaseous giant and nudged it into orbit. Later Mantis teams, who were not told of the asteroid's existence, were sent in to provide security monitors in the system.

There were four other "keys" scattered around the universe, their location known only to the Eternal Emperor. They all had the same purpose.

The coms were set to accept only the Eternal Emperor and contained every screening device conceivable, from DNA pattern to pore prints, even to include the specious Bertillon classification. If anyone else entered the shelter, the coms would melt down into incomprehensible slag.

The coms were linked to a ship, somewhere in… another space… and to the roboticized mining/factory ships around it. On signal, the recommendation from the ship would be changed. Transshipment of AM2 would begin.

The long trains of robot "tankers" could also be controlled from the moonlet. Under "normal" circumstances, such as The Eternal Emperor having died accidentally, they might be routed to the conventional depot worlds. Or, under differing circumstances elsewhere. To reward the faithful and punish the heathens—or vice versa, depending on what the Emperor decided was the quickest, most expeditious way to regain control.

The Eternal Emperor crept into the system. He was in no hurry whatsoever. He repeatedly consulted the elaborate pickups he had requested be installed in the ship donated by the grateful Kenna. If any of the sensors showed any intrusion into the system—a lost mining ship, a drone, or even a wandering yacht—there was only one choice. Instantly abort and move to whichever moonlet was convenient for a secondary command site.

There was nothing reported by any of the out-system sensors. The Emperor chanced an arcing sweep over the system itself. Nothing. Emboldened, he reentered the system and closed on the gaseous giant. All pickups were clean.

He came in on the moonlet on the hemisphere opposite the shelter and nap-of-the-earthed to the dock. Its ports yawned—again, pickups clean—and he landed.

The Emperor suited up, made sure the suit's support mechanisms were loaded, and started for the shelter.

Halfway up that ridge, he muttered under his breath about being too paranoid. It was not easy staying low on a nearly zero-gee world. He had no desire to "pop up" into range if anyone was waiting at the dome, or to punt himself into orbit. Not only would jetting back be embarrassing, but he would be too easy to pick up if he was walking into a trap.