After a lifetime of looking, Konn had been able to collect only a few mementos of the Horezkor might of the sixth millennium, notably several precious photos of the war-craft’s immense interior by the warrior-mistress of Emperor Daigin-the-Jaw. The relevant design files for the ship had vanished from naval archives somewhen in the last nine millennia, perhaps destroyed during the Great Sack of Splendid Wisdom in the dark years, perhaps the victim of housecleaning.
But now he had everything he needed for a full reconstruction, It had happened suddenly after years of frustration. To the delight of Hahukum Konn, his protoge, Nejirt, had reported back to Splendid Wisdom from his evaluation assignment in the obscure Ulmat Constellation with a grin on his face and (in his diplomatic pouch) working assembly virtuals evidently used to refurbish at least two of the legendary Horezkor dreadnoughts during the warlord period of the Interregnum. Of course it didn’t really matter if they ever got the model put together or not.
What really mattered, and Hahukum knew it, was the stability of the Second Empire in an era of subtle cultural Complexification which made the old equations work slightly differently than they had in the past. The future was always branching, branching, branching—and there were more branches in this golden age than there had ever been before, some of them dangerous. Hahukum’s thoughts of the past bulkheads—still breathing—as if being stripped, exposed,, and flayed had not yet brought defeat, only the readiness to strike out with one last deadly flash at anyone from the stars who dared to attack.
Beyond was the panorama of a mottled planet under siege.
The Horezkor was a major warship of the Middle Empire period, produced in minor quantities, the first one being commissioned in the year 5517 GE. Almost three thousand were built during that century, many serving well beyond normal retirement age.
“The Mad Admiral” had been working with pleasure on this unfinished model of the ancient Imperial dreadnought. The Horezkor dominated the ebony hover-space above the bridge’s workshop table. ,So formidable was this vast war-machine that it cast upon Konn an unreal aura, as if he were a giant placed among the stars. One might hardly notice that both ship and man were embedded in a vast scholarly maze deep inside the Lyceum metropolis where students were apprenticed to the psychohistorians of Splendid Wisdom’s Second Empire, a Lyceum itself embedded in a planetary city that regulated the commerce and life of the Galaxy.
Konn’s imposing title was the awesome one of Second Rank Pscholar in a commanding meritocracy that defined only one higher level. “Second” rankled him, and, from dread of his displeasure, he was more often called “Admiral” than “Second”—even though he had never held a military commission at any time in his long life. Only his enemies called him “Second.” He loved his hobby because it rested him from the deadly game of galactic sleuth. The history of military vehicles was so much simpler than tracking down a coming psychohistorical crisis.
He wore simple naval uniforms—but deliberately chose them from a selection several eons out of date to fend off complaints by backbone-stiff naval regulars who felt in their staid hearts that the impersonation of a naval officer ought to be a capital crime. His skull was shaved in curious planter-rows of tuft and skin-shine, the legendary style of Kambal-the-First whose cabal of renegade ships had first conquered this planet of the central galactic glitter when it had been a minor world of farmers and tradesmen quietly innocent of their strategic location and meritorious climate. The gulfs of space had once been a moat that protected the castle planets of civilization. By Kambal’s time, the central galactic bulge was swarming with shipwise nomadic “barbarians” hungering for a better place to live than the desolate homeworlds settled by their unfortunate ancestors. Kambal was the archetype of an admiral.
After a lifetime of looking, Konn had been able to collect only a few mementos of the Horezkor might of the sixth millennium, notably several precious photos of the war-craft’s immense interior by the warrior-mistress of Emperor Daigin-the-Jaw. The relevant design files for the ship had vanished from naval archives somewhen in the last nine millennia, perhaps destroyed during the Great Sack of Splendid Wisdom in the dark years, perhaps the victim of housecleaning.
But now he had everything he needed for a full reconstruction. It had happened suddenly after years of frustration. To the delight of Hahukum Konn, his protege, Nejirt, had reported back to Splendid Wisdom from his evaluation assignment in the obscure Ulmat Constellation with a grin on his face and (in his diplomatic pouch) working assembly virtuals evidently used to refurbish at least two of the legendary Horezkor dreadnoughts during the warlord period of the Interregnum. Of course it didn’t really matter if they ever got the model put together or not.
What really mattered, and Hahukum knew it, was the stability of the Second Empire in an era of subtle cultural Complexification which made the old equations work slightly differently than they had in the past. The future was always branching, branching, branching—and there were more branches in this golden age than there had ever been before, some of them dangerous. Hahukum’s thoughts of the past mingled with his thoughts of present concerns. He could trust Nejirt to find for him the plans of an old battleship, but how far could he trust Nejirt to pick those futures for mankind that would keep the soul of the race alive?
There was an unfortunate conservatism in this twenty-five-year-old boy. Rigidity? It was a worry. He always had potatoes with whatever he ate. He listened only to music that had a beat. Not that Konn wasn’t a conservative himself. The trick was in what you conserved. All successful radicals built their careers on a very carefully chosen foundation. The mathematical system of the Founder wasn’t a public info-machine that automatically answered questions it already had on file; psychohistory was an instrument that had to be strummed by a musician.
One had to listen for, and pick out, futures as well as predict them.
A good psychohistorian was as much a composer as he was a seer. Rigid musicians made bad music. Could Nejirt tell the difference between the traditions that actually buttressed the foundations of society and the thousands of trivial traditions, mere baroque decorations? Would he listen to beatless music and hear nonmusic?
While the Admiral worked on his battleship model, his mind played with subversive scenarios of galactic politics. About trouble. About longings for action. It wasn’t enough to be intuitively sensitive to the subtle susurrous of dark hints unnoticed by ordinary ears like those of Jars Hanis. It wasn’t enough to be able to hear the rustle of armed malefactors somewhere out there in the jungle of stars. The kind of impalpable sensitivity that Konn was so proud of in himself was certainly the mark of genius—but, as his enemies were quick to point out, it was also the mark of the superstitious fool and the mark of the wacky paranoid. He needed evidence more confrontable than subversion masquerading in the open as background noise.
Damn it, he needed to be on the bridge of a modem Horzekor fighting an enemy he could get his teeth into.
There was much to be said for sitting at a comfortable desk within a handwave of the most powerful simulators in the Galaxy while statistically filtering the data arriving via Splendid Wisdom's pervasive stellar bureaucracy-—but seeing a villain emerge as an unexpected pattern in false color overlays and slashing such a villain in- the flesh were two different things; in the end there would be no escaping the plunge into that tenebrous galactic maelstrom out there and returning with his culprits on a sling.