Authors: Andreas Eschbach
Stribat just shrugged his shoulders.
Wasra raised his head, stared into the darkening sky, where the first stars were appearing at its zenith. The Emperor’s stars. It never ended. Was the Emperor dead? Or had it reached the point, where they were making his vanquisher into the next emperor?
“We’re returning to the ship,” he finally blurted out. He suddenly had the feeling he could not stay here one moment longer, especially not here at the gate to the Counting Court. “Immediately.”
Stribat gave the escort soldiers a hasty signal, and the rumbling, bone-rattling motors of the two tanks started at once. The draft animals, already unharnessed and bedded down together for the night, raised their startled heads and stared vacantly toward the sound.
Everyone on the square moved obligingly aside when they headed off. They followed the tracks of the third tank, which had gone ahead with the man they had freed.
The flutemaster
—for a while Wasra pondered this word and tried to imagine what it meant. Then, as the vibration of the seat spread through his body, he recalled his feelings during the drive toward the Guild Hall: he had felt powerful and superior and had enjoyed it. The seductiveness of power—even after 250,000 years of the Empire, it seemed no one would ever learn!
He bent down, grasped the microphone of the communication unit. When he reached the broadcast operator on duty, he ordered: “Send a multiformat message to the Trikood, to Gen. Jerom Karswant. Text: Confirm with almost total certainty that Nillian Jegetar Cuain is dead. All indications are that he was the victim of lynch-mob justice by religious zealots. I wish you a good flight home and send my best regards to the Central World. Signed, Captain Wasra … and so on.”
“Immediately?” the operator asked.
“Yes, immediately.”
When he leaned back, he felt defiant and headstrong, and it felt good, like cold fire in his veins. Tomorrow he would send the Reeducation Team swarming throughout the city to tell everyone they could find what was going on in the galaxy. And that the Emperor was dead. Heavens, he could hardly wait to land on the next one of these hair-carpet planets to hurl the truth into the people’s faces.
He noticed Stribat watching him from the corner of his eye with a smile that slowly spread across his lips. Maybe this Nillian really would show up someday, who could know for sure? But what counted right now was that Karswant would finally head back to the Central World to make his report to the Council—and that would finally get things moving. If someday they demoted him from the rank of captain, that would not change the fact that he had done what he thought was right.
Wasra smiled; it was the smile of a free man.
XVII
Vengeance Is Eternal
THERE WERE SEVEN MOONS
in the sky. The night was clear and cloudless, and looking like a deep blue crystal, the heavens arched above a surreal landscape.
It was hard to imagine that this entire world once had served no other purpose than to provide for the pleasure and entertainment of one single man! With the exception, of course, of the vast underground dungeons and defenses. Lamita often stood here on the small balcony of her room in the evening and tried to comprehend it.
Beyond the palace walls stretched the sea, calm and silvery in the moonlight. On the horizon rose gentle, forested hills, so distant that the line separating water and land was impossible to see at night. The entire planet was a single, artfully designed park. She knew that there were countless smaller castles and other country estates, in addition to the Palace, where the Emperor had indulged his pleasures.
All that was long in the past, of course. Now, the Council of Rebels met in the great throne room, and innumerable aides to the Provisional Government inhabited the gigantic Star Palace. Having the government located here on the former Central World of the Empire was not without controversy. In these paradisiacal surroundings, it was argued, the members would be too distant from the real problems of people on other worlds to make sensible decisions. However, basing the Provisional Council here for the time being had come about for practical reasons: all communications systems intersected here in an incomparable way.
A pleasant bell-tone sounded. That was the long-distance connection she was expecting. Lamita hurried in from the balcony and went to the multipurpose unit by her bed. The intergalactic network glyph was illuminated on the visual monitor.
“Speech connection established to Itkatan,” a mellifluous but obviously artificial voice informed her. “Your communication partner is Pheera Dor Terget.”
She pressed the appropriate button. “Hello, Mother. It’s your daughter Lamita.”
The screen remained dark. No video connection again. Recently, video seemed to function only for calls to other galaxies.
“Lamita, darling!” The voice of her mother had an unpleasant metallic overtone. “How are you doing?”
“Well, how would you expect things to be here? I’m doing fine, of course.”
“Oh, yes, you people on your island of happiness. Here we’re just relieved that the water system’s functioning again and that the battles have died down in the North Sector. Maybe they’ve finally done one another in there; nobody would really regret that.”
“Anything new about father?”
“He’s doing fine. We got some medication again, and his condition has stabilized. If he were five years younger, they could operate, the doctor said. But now things just have to run their course.…” She sighed. A sigh from thirty thousand light-years away. “Tell me about yourself, child. What’s new?”
Lamita shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been invited to take part in a general session of the Council tomorrow. As an observer. The commander of the Gheera expedition has returned and will present his report.”
“Gheera? Isn’t that the Imperial province no one even knew existed?”
“Yes. It disappeared for eighty thousand years, and the people there apparently did nothing for that entire time but produce carpets out of women’s hair,” Lamita said, and added sarcastically, “and whatever new oddities the expedition may have discovered, they’ll expect
me
to find out what they mean.”
“Aren’t you still working with Rhuna?”
“Rhuna is being made the new governor of Lukdaria. She flew out yesterday. Now I’m in charge of the Imperial Archive by myself.”
“Governor?” There was an obvious undertone of jealousy in her mother’s voice. “Unbelievable. Back when we stormed the Imperial Palace, she was just learning to walk, I think. And now she’s already made a big career for herself.”
Lamita took a deep breath. “Mother, you could say the same about me. I was only four then.” The old rebels seemed to have a hard time getting used to the idea that a new generation would constantly replace the old one, now that the immortal Emperor’s reign had been ended.
Interstellar silence. Every second cost a small fortune. “Yes, I guess that’s the way things go,” her mother finally sighed. “So now you’re all alone in your museum.”
“It’s not a museum. It’s an archive,” Lamita corrected. She sensed the unstated condescension in her mother’s words and felt annoyed, even though she had promised herself not to be provoked. “But it really is a ridiculous situation. A quarter million years of Imperial history, and I’m all alone in the middle of it … and it would be possible to find answers in the Archive to questions we haven’t even asked yet, if only…”
Why could her mother make her livid by hearing just half of what she said? “And outside work? You’re still alone outside work, too?”
“Mother!” This same old tune again. A million years from now, parents would probably still patronize their children.
“I’m just asking.…”
“And you know my answer. You’ll be told if I have a child someday. Until then, my relationships with men are nobody’s business but mine—okay?”
“Child, of course I don’t want to interfere in your life; it would just make me worry less to know that you aren’t alone.”
“Mother? Can we change the subject?”
* * *
The Provisional Council had invited an unusually large group of observers to this session. That had been expected—after all, it would be the first report of the findings of a sensational mission to a rediscovered province of the Empire. And it presented no real problem, because the Council met in the former throne room, a hall whose size and appointment were breathtaking, as had befitted the ceremonial center of the Empire.
Lamita slipped between two old councilors into the hall in search of her assigned seat. Surely in one of the back rows. Fragments of sentences reached her and gave her a feel for the mood around her.
“… really have more pressing worries at the moment than an obscure cult in a lost galaxy.”
“I think it’s a maneuver by Jubad and Karswant, so that their influence in the Council…”
There was no seat for her in the back rows. She clasped her invitation tightly and was annoyed at her insecurity among all these old heroes of the Rebellion.
To her dismay, she found her nameplate at the very front, directly behind the semicircle of tables for the councilors. Apparently, they really did expect her to form an opinion. She took her seat discreetly and looked around. In the middle of the semicircle stood a large table in front of the projector. Diagonally across from her, she discovered Borlid Ewo Kenneken, with whom she had been working on Gheera matters for some time. He was a member of the Administrative Committee for the Imperial Estate, and therefore, in some matters relating to the Archive, he was her superior. He nodded at her with a smile, and Lamita noticed once again how his gaze lingered on her figure.
The imminent start of the session was announced by the sound of a gong. The luxuriously decorated instrument, taller than a man, fascinated Lamita. Someday, the seat of government would be someplace else, and the old Imperial Palace would be a museum, the most fascinating museum in the universe.
She spotted the thickset figure of a general in full uniform accompanied by several officers, just entering the hall. He gave the appearance of a gruff, bullish man with unshakable self-confidence. That must be Jerom Karswant, who had commanded the Gheera expedition. He placed a handful of data-units on the small table next to the projector, organized them carefully, and took his seat.
The second gong. Lamita noticed that Borlid was looking at her again. Now she regretted wearing a dress that emphasized her breasts. Fortunately, the chairman of the Provisional Council rose to open the session and to give the floor to General Karswant, so Borlid’s gaze shifted to the center of attention in the room.
Karswant stood up. Within the grim set of his face, his eyes sparkled with alertness.
“First I want to show you what we’re talking about,” he began, and signaled to two of his aides. They lifted a roll, as long as a man, from the floor to the table and spread it out carefully.
“Honored councilors, ladies and gentlemen—a hair carpet!”
All heads jerked forward.
“Maybe it’s best if each of you simply comes to the table for a moment for a close look at this astonishing work of art. The whole carpet is knotted entirely of human hair, and the knotwork is so incredibly dense and tight, that producing it requires the labor of an entire human lifetime.”
Hesitantly, a few of the session participants stood up and headed up the aisles to inspect the carpet and, finally, to touch it gently. A general shuffling of chairs followed, as everyone else followed their lead, and in no time at all the session had dissolved into an excited jumble.
Lamita was awestruck when she managed to run her hand across the surface of the hair carpet. At first glance, it appeared to be fur, but a touch revealed that the hair was more closely spaced, far denser. Black, blond, brown, and red hairs were worked in this carpet into a complex geometric pattern. She had seen photos of hair carpets in expedition reports, but having such a carpet right in front of her was an overwhelming experience. One could almost feel the profound devotion and effort expended on this unimaginable work of art.
In the general press of the crowd, Borlid was suddenly standing next to her, as though by chance. He seemed to have little interest in the hair carpet.
“When all this is over,” he whispered to her, “may I invite you to dinner?”
Lamita breathed in once and then out again. “Borlid, I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood to talk with you about that at the moment.”
“And after the session? Will you be in the mood then?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. Besides, I’m sure I would have a guilty conscience if I accepted an invitation from you, because I know it would give you false hopes.”
“Oh?” he responded with mock surprise. “Did I express myself unclearly? I wasn’t proposing marriage, just a simple dinner—”
“Borlid, not now, please!” she admonished him, and returned to her seat.
How could he be so cocksure? She had found him pleasant as a coworker up to now, but when he thought he was being irresistible, he was just silly and boorish. He couldn’t seem to accept the fact that she wasn’t interested in him. His behavior seemed so immature to her that she would have felt like a child molester.
Gradually the auditorium calmed down again. After everyone had again taken a seat, the general continued with his presentation. Lamita was not paying close attention. She already knew most of what he was explaining—how the hair carpets had been discovered, details about the carpet cult on the planets of Gheera, about the trade routes, and about the spaceships that took the carpets on board to transport them to an initially unknown destination.
“We were able to follow the trail of the hair carpets to a large space station orbiting a double star, which consisted of a red giant sun and a black hole. According to our observations—which were later confirmed—the space station was a kind of transfer point for the carpets. When we approached the station, however, we came under such fierce and unexpected attack that we had to withdraw for the time being.”
Of course Borlid was attractive by the usual standards. And the rumors suggested he didn’t pass up many opportunities with the female members of the palace administration. Lamita carefully examined her motives. That was not really the reason she was turning him down, however. It was more … his immaturity. Yes—as a man, she found him shallow, immature, uninteresting.