Nogara had come out here to judge for himself if the recently discovered phenomenon might soon present any danger to inhabited planets; ordinary suns would go down like chips of wood into a whirlpool if the hypermass found them in its path. But it seemed that another thousand years would pass before any planets had to be evacuated; and before then the hypermass might have gorged itself on dust until its core imploded, whereupon most of its substance could be expected to reenter the universe in a most spectacular but less dangerous form.
Anyway, in another thousand years it would be someone else’s problem. Right now it might be said to be Nogara’s—for men said that he ran the galaxy, if they said it of anyone.
A communicator sounded, calling him back to the enclosed luxury of his quarters, and he walked down quickly, glad of a reason to get out from under the galaxies.
He touched a plate with one finger. “What is it?”
“My lord, a courier ship has arrived. From the Flamland system. They are bringing . . . ”
“Speak plainly. They are bringing my brother’s body?”
“Yes, my lord. The launch bearing the coffin is already approaching Nirvana.”
“I will meet the courier captain, alone, in the Great Hall. I want no ceremony. Have the robots at the airlock test the escort and the outside of the coffin for infection.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The mention of disease was a bit of misdirection. It was not the Flamland plague that had put Johann Karlsen into a box, though that was the official story. The doctors were supposed to have frozen the hero of the Stone Place as a last resort, to prevent his irreversible death.
An official lie was necessary because not even High Lord Nogara could lightly put out of the way the one man who had made the difference at the Stone Place. Since that battle it seemed that life in the galaxy would survive, though the fighting against the berserkers was still bitter.
The Great Hall was where Nogara met daily for feasting and pleasure with the forty or fifty people who were with him on Nirvana, as aides or crewmen or entertainers. But when he entered the Hall now he found it empty, save for one man who stood at attention beside a coffin.
Johann Karlsen’s body and whatever remained of his life were sealed under the glass top of the heavy casket, which contained its own refrigeration and revival systems, controlled by a fiber-optic key theoretically impossible to duplicate. This key Nogara now demanded, with a gesture, from the courier captain.
The captain had the key hung round his neck, and it took him a moment to pull the golden chain over his head and hand it to Nogara. It was another moment before he remembered to bow; he was a spaceman and not a courtier. Nogara ignored the lapse of courtesy; it was his governors and admirals who were reinstituting ceremonies of rank; he himself cared nothing about how subordinates gestured and postured, so long as they obeyed intelligently.
Only now, with the key in his own hand, did Nogara look down at his frozen half-brother. The plotting doctors had shaved away Johann’s short beard and his hair. His lips were marble pale, and his sightless open eyes were ice. But still the face above the folds of the draped and frozen sheet was undoubtedly Johann’s. There was something that would not freeze.
“Leave me for a time,” Nogara said. He turned to face the end of the Great Hall and waited, looking out through the wide viewport to where the hypermass blurred space like a bad lens.
When he heard the door ease shut behind the courier captain he turned back—and found himself facing the short figure of Oliver Mical, the man he had selected to replace Johann as governor of Flamland. Mical must have entered as the spaceman left, which Nogara thought might be taken as symbolic of something.
Resting his hands familiarly on the coffin, Mical raised one graying eyebrow in his habitual expression of weary amusement. His rather puffy face twitched in an overcivilized smile.
“How does Browning’s line go?” Mical mused, glancing down at Karlsen. “ ‘Doing the king’s work all the dim day long’—and now, this reward of virtue.”
“Leave me,” said Nogara.
Mical was in on the plot, as was hardly anyone else except the Flamland doctors. “I thought it best to appear to share your grief,” he said. Then he looked at Nogara and ceased to argue. He made a bow that was mild mockery when the two of them were alone, and walked briskly to the door. Again it closed.
So, Johann. If you had plotted against me, I would have had you killed outright. But you were never a plotter, it was just that you served me too successfully, my enemies and friends alike began to love you too well. So here you are, my frozen conscience, the last conscience I’ll ever have. Sooner or later you would have become ambitious, so it was either do this to you or kill you.
Now I’ll put you away safely, and maybe someday you’ll have another chance at life. It’s a strange thought that someday you may stand musing over my coffin as I now stand over yours. No doubt you’ll pray for what you think is my soul . . . I can’t do that for you, but I wish you sweet dreams. Dream of your Believers’ heaven, not of your hell.
Nogara imagined a brain at absolute zero, its neurons superconducting, repeating one dream on and on and on. But that was nonsense.
“I cannot risk my power, Johann.” This time he whispered the words aloud. “It was either this or have you killed.” He turned again to the wide viewport.
“I suppose Thirty-three’s gotten the body to Nogara already,” said the Second Officer of Esteeler Courier Thirty-four, looking at the bridge chronometer. “It must be nice to declare yourself an emperor or whatever, and have people hurl themselves all over the galaxy to do everything for you.”
“Can’t be nice to have someone bring you your brother’s corpse,” said Captain Thurman Holt, studying his astrogational sphere. His ship’s C-plus drive was rapidly stretching a lot of timelike interval between itself and the Flamland system. Even if Holt was not enthusiastic about his mission, he was glad to be away from Flamland, where Mical’s political police were taking over.
“I wonder,” said the Second, and chuckled.
“What’s that mean?”
The Second looked over both shoulders, out of habit formed on Flamland. “Have you heard this one?” he asked. “Nogara is God—but half of his spacemen are atheists.”
Holt smiled, but only faintly. “He’s no mad tyrant, you know. Esteel’s not the worst-run government in the galaxy. Nice guys don’t put down rebellions.”
“Karlsen did all right.”
“That’s right, he did.”
The Second grimaced. “Oh, sure, Nogara could be worse, if you want to be serious about it. He’s a politician. But I just can’t stand that crew that’s accumulated around him the last few years. We’ve got an example on board now of what they do. If you want to know the truth I’m a little scared now that Karlsen’s dead.”
“Well, we’ll soon see them.” Holt sighed and stretched. “I’m going to look in on the prisoners. The bridge is yours, Second.”
“I relieve you, sir. Do the man a favor and kill him, Thurm.”
A minute later, looking through the spy-plate into the courier’s small brig, Holt could wish with honest compassion that his male prisoner was dead.
He was an outlaw chieftain named Janda, and his capture had been the last success of Karlsen’s Flamland service, putting a virtual end to the rebellion. Janda had been a tall man, a brave rebel, and a brutal bandit. He had raided and fought against Nogara’s Esteeler empire until there was no hope left, and then he had surrendered to Karlsen.
“My pride commands me to conquer my enemy,” Karlsen had written once, in what he thought was to be a private letter. “My honor forbids me to humble or hate my enemy.” But Mical’s political police operated with a different philosophy.