Кристофер Банч - The Return of the Emperor

Venloe got himself another tumbler of punch and waved the ladle in Mahoney's direction. Mahoney shook his head, no. Venloe went back to his chair.

"Impasse, is it not? You can kill me… try to kill me. But you certainly cannot get out alive. You said you were after bigger bastards—I assume you want to see them gotten."

"Not quite an impasse," Mahoney said. "You are going to pack, and you are going to return with me to Newton. You may be telling the truth, you may be lying. We will find out, for certain."

"Brainscan? Never. People have been known to die—or to be scrambled—under the cap. If that's the choice, I'd rather fight and conceivably die here."

"You won't get dead. Or brainburnt. The scan will be done by Rykor. She is—"

"I know of her. The best. But, I confess, somebody wading through my soul gives me shudders."

"The poor clot who'll do the wading through what you call a soul is the one who'll get the collywobbles."

"Let me consider," Venloe mused. "If I say no, and somehow both of us survive the ensuing … discussion, what will happen next? Certainly you will somehow leak the word of my existence to the privy council, expecting them to clean up tracks that are not even there.

"Exactly what they would do. Imbeciles. I do not like this option.

"On the other hand, I go with you. Accept brainscan. Testify. Perhaps your Tribunal will succeed and somehow the forces of"—Venloe's voice oozed sarcasm—"truth, justice, and the Imperial Way magically triumph, and the council falls. Or, what is more likely, their own ineptitude will destroy them.

"In either event, I am quite safe. Protected, in fact. I might not be able to follow my own trade, but I would certainly be kept in the style to which, off and on, I have become accustomed."

Venloe was telling the truth. A political assassin, unless he was killed in the first moments after the assassination or was proven absolutely to be a lone maniac, would be coddled until his death by the state. Whether he talked or not—the hope was that sooner or later he would choose to tell all, even if at that point in time the only beings interested were historians.

Venloe thought, in the hot dry silence. "Very well. I shall assemble my security beings and disarm them. Call for your escort to come in now. They can help carry my luggage to your ship. We have a bargain."

He held out his hand, palm forward.

Mahoney just stared at it. After a moment, Venloe got up and left the room.

Solon Kenna had been in an observatory exactly once before in his life, and that time he had been young, drunk, and lost. Now he found them fascinating—or at least this particular one, on this particular night, looking at this particular projection.

He looked once more at the screen, reassuring himself that delirium tremens had not finally set in.

They were still there, hanging in a parking orbit around Dusable.

Alarms had cacophonied when the fleet was reported. Kenna turned pale and Tyrenne-elect Walsh even paler when told what it probably was and meant. Ships. Many, many ships. Somehow the privy council must have decided that the defeat of Tyrenne Yelad was injurious, and sent the guard.

Dusable's handful of customs patrol ships launched and swept toward the waiting fleet, loudly proclaiming peaceful intent on every band com-able. In the lead ship was Walsh, representing his system.

Kenna had immediately scuttled for shelter. Deep, deep shelter that would rapidly involve plastic surgery and departure.

There was no response.

And no one had ever seen ships like them—although they were clearly of Imperial design.

A ship was boarded.

And then the celebration began.

The ships were robots—robot freighters. Each of them—and the fleet reached out to forever—held enough Anti-Matter Two for one world's full consumption for one year, at maximum peacetime use.

Dusable, in ten years, or fifteen, had never seen that much AM2. And where the clot had it come from?

Kenna crept out of hiding and went to the observatory to verify that Walsh and his crews had not suddenly discovered hallucinogens—and then he realized.

Christ, Christ, Christ, he thought.

That Raschid was connected, he certainly knew. That he was—somewhere—a being of clout was also a given. But that he was—no.

Kenna stood and turned around. He looked up at an old portrait on the wall, part of the dedication plaque of Imperial Observatory Ryan/Berlow/T'lak. The picture was a standard royalty pose of The Eternal Emperor.

It was also, of course, a perfect image of Raschid.

Kenna had heard and even used the old political phrase: "Who was with me before Chicago?"

"I was," he muttered. "I was. We all were."

Times were going to be very, very good for Dusable and Solon Kenna. He guessed that the son of a bitch was immortal.

He considered the suddenly changing future and what it might portend, especially for the recently elected Walsh. Next election… the hell with it. For now. The next election was not for some years.

He then considered finding a church and praying to any god in particular for giving him, Kenna, the brains to realize what was going on before it went on.

But he brought himself back to reality—and treated himself to a bottle.

Mahoney knew he was in serious trouble.

Rykor came to him in her gravchair, rather than wanting to see him in her chambers or, if matters were very cheery, around the huge, deep saltwater tub that stood in for the frigid arctic waters, crashing storms, and looming icebergs of her home world.

Rykor, from her whiskers to her vast blubber to her flippers, resembled, at least to Mahoney who had so dubbed her, a walrus.

When Sten had come up with the idea of the Tribunal, Mahoney had immediately started finding the tools. One of them was Rykor, formerly one of the Empire's chief psychologists. He found her in bored semiretirement. Liking Sten, having vast if a minority appreciation for Kilgour's sense of humor, liking Mahoney, and—not to be admitted—something beyond the boring sanity of her own race, she had agreed to join in the hunt.

"Well?" Mahoney asked without preliminaries after Rykor's huge gravchair hove into his quarters.

"Quite interesting, this Venloe," Rykor began. "Quite beyond the pale. A truly amoral being. I have read of such but never experienced one. My empathy glands remained inactive throughout the entire scan."

Rykor's empathy glands, located near where humans have tear ducts, automatically responded to the plight or pain of any being under her care. So she seemed to weep while possibly suggesting the most dire fate for a patient.

"What do we have?"

"First, Venloe's health—"

"Hopin' he's dying in convulsions and realizing he'd best stay healthy as a horse, I don't want to hear about his health. I assume excellent. GA."

"I think we—that is, you and I—should prepare an 'Eyes Only' fiche from this scan. His profile is a textbook one and, properly censored and edited, is a valuable contribution to psychology. For you… some of the operations he was involved with in the past, you might find interesting and instructive." She whuffled through her whiskers thoughtfully.

"What about the big one?"

"Oh, he is guilty, just as he says. Interesting how precisely he analyzed, with no formal training, Chapelle, and was able to pull his strings without ever an error.

"And Sullamora was Venloe's employer and paymaster. But that is all."

"Nothing? Not one goddamned memo he happened to see over Sullamora's shoulder from the others? Come on, Rykor. Just one thing. The council all got drunk and sang 'We'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you.' Anything."

"Nothing. Of course, Ian, realize that this is a Tribunal. His testimony might not be allowed in an exact trial. But I suspect it will be admissible for the Tribunal at least."