“Ah, wait, wait a minute—”
She cut him off.
Presently her door was pealing. She punched the callbox and his voice came through: “Dr. Abrams, please, this is a terrible misunderstanding. Let me in and I’ll explain.”
“Go away.” Despite the steadiness in her voice, her flesh crawled. She was concerned.
“Dr. Abrams, I must insist. The matter involves a very high-ranking person. If you don’t open the door, we’ll have to take measures.”
“Or I will. Like calling the police.”
“I tell you, it’s a top-grade noble who wants to see you. He can have the police break you out of there. He’d rather not, because what he wants is for your benefit too, but—Uh, who are you?” Leighton asked somebody else. “What do you want?”
“Basingstoke,” rippled a baritone voice. A moment later, Banner heard a thud. “You can open up now,” the newcomer continued.
She did. Leighton lay in a huddle on the hall floor. Above him stood a figure in a hooded cloak. He drew the cowl back and she knew Flandry.
He gestured at the fallen shape. “A stun gun shot,” he said. “I’ll drag him in here to sleep it off. He’s not worth killing, just a petty predator hired through an agency that provides reputable people with disreputable services. He’s probably got a companion or two down below, on the qui vive. We’ll spirit you upward. Chives—do you remember Chives?—has an aircar on the roof for us.” He bowed and quickly, deftly kissed her hand. “I’m sorry about this informal reintroduction, my dear. I’ll try to make amends at dinner. We have a reservation a couple of hours hence at Deirdre’s. You wouldn’t believe what they do with seafood there.”
V
His Imperial Majesty, High Emperor Gerhart Siegmund Molitor, graciously agreed to withdraw from the reception for a private talk with its guest of honor. They passed in stateliness through the swirl of molten rainbows which several hundred costumes made of the grand ballroom. Folk bowed, curtsied, or saluted, depending on status, and hoped for a word from the august mouth. A few got one, and promptly became centers of eager attention. There were exceptions to this, of course, mostly older men of reserved demeanor, admirals, ministers of state, members of the Policy Board, the power brokers. Their stares followed the Duke of Hermes. He would be invited later to meet with various of them.
A gravshaft took Gerhart and Cairncross to a suite in the top of the loftiest tower that the Coral Palace boasted. The guards outside were not gorgeously uniformed like those on ground level; they were hard of face and hands, and their weapons had seen use. Gerhart motioned them not to follow, and let the door close behind himself and his companion.
A clear dome overlooked lower roofs, lesser spires, gardens, trianons, pools, bowers, finally beach, sand, surf, nearby residential rafts, and the Pacific Ocean. Sheening and billowing under a full Luna, those waters gave a sense of ancient forces still within this planet that man had so oedipally made his own, still biding their time. That feeling was strengthened by the sparsely furnished chamber. On the floor lay a rug made from the skin of a Germanian dolchzahn, on a desk stood a model of a corvette, things which had belonged to Hans. His picture hung on the wall. It had been taken seven years ago, shortly before his death, and Cairncross saw how wasted the big ugly countenance had become by then; but in caverns of bone, the gaze burned.
“Sit down,” Gerhart said. “Smoke if you wish.”
“I don’t, but your Majesty is most kind.”
Gerhart sighed. “Spare me the unction till we have to go back. When the lord of a fairly significant province arrives unannounced on Terra, I naturally look at whatever file we have on him. You don’t strike me as the sort who would come here for a vacation.”
“No, that was my cover story, … sir.” The Emperor having taken a chair, the Duke did likewise.
“Ye-es,” Gerhart murmured, “it is interesting that you put your head in the lion’s mouth. Why?”
Cairncross regarded him closely. He didn’t seem leonine, being of medium height, with blunt, jowly features and graying sandy hair. The iridescent, carefully draped robe he wore could not quite hide the fact that, in middle age, he was getting pudgy. But he had his father’s eyes, small, dark, searching, the eyes of a wild boar.
He smiled as he opened a box and took out a cigar for himself. “Interesting enough,” he went on, “that I’ve agreed to receive you like this. Ordinarily, you know, any special audiences you got would be with persons such as Intelligence officers.”
“Frankly, sir,” Cairncross answered, emboldened, “I started out that way, but got no satisfaction. Or so it appears. Maybe I’m doing the man an injustice. You can probably tell me—though Admiral Flandry is a devious devil, isn’t he?”
“Flandry, eh? Hm-m.” Gerhart kindled the cigar. Smoke curled blue and pungent. “Proceed.”
“Sir,” Cairncross began, “having seen my file, you know about the accusations and innuendos against me. I’m here partly to declare them false, to offer my body as a token of my loyalty. But you’ll agree that more is needed, solid proof … not only to exonerate me, but to expose any actual plot.”
“This is certainly an age of plots,” Gerhart observed, through the same cold smile as before.
And murders, revolutions, betrayals, upheavals, Cairncross replied silently. Brother against brother—When that spacecraft crashed, Gerhart, and killed Dietrich, was it really an accident? Incredible that safety routines could have slipped so far awry, for a ship which would carry the Emperor. Never mind what the board of inquiry reported afterward; the new Emperor kept tight control of its proceedings.
You are widely believed to be a fratricide, Gerhart. (And a parricide? No; old Hans was too shrewd.) If you are nevertheless tolerated on the throne, it is because you are admittedly more able than dullard Dietrich was. The Empire needs a strong, skilled hand upon it, lest it splinter again in civil war and the Merseians or the barbarians return.
Yet that is your only claim to rulership, Gerhart. It was Hans’ only claim, too. He, however, was coping as best he could, after the Wang dynasty fell apart. There was no truly legitimate heir. When most of the Navy rallied to him, he could offer domestic order and external security, at the cost of establishing a military dictatorship.
But … no blood of the Founder ever ran in his veins. His coronation was a solemn farce, played out under the watch of his Storm Corps, whose oath was not to the Imperium but to him alone. He broke aristocrats and made new ones at his pleasure. He kept no ancient pacts between Terra and her daughter worlds, unless they happened to suit his purposes. Law became nothing more than his solitary will.
He is of honored memory here, because of the peace he restored. That is not the case everywhere else …
“You are suddenly very quiet,” Gerhart said.
Cairncross started. “I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking how to put my case with the least strain on your time and patience.”
He cleared his throat and embarked on much the same discourse as he had given Flandry. The Emperor listened, watching him from behind a cloud of smoke.
Finally Gerhart nodded and said, “Yes, you are right. An investigation is definitely required. And it had better be discreet, or it would embarrass you politically—and therefore, indirectly, the Imperium.” If you are indeed loyal to us, he left understood. “You ought to have instigated it earlier, in fact.” But a single planet is too huge, too diverse and mysterious, for anybody, to rule wisely. As for an empire of planets—“Now why do you insist that Vice Admiral Flandry take charge?”