Sourness lay heavy in Bruen's stomach, a dead thinglike Seddi hopes.
"We should have killed him when he was a baby," Hyde wheezed, hardly able to lift a bird-thin hand from his sleep-
ing pallet. The tubes distorted his voice into something hollow, ghostlike. They ran from his lungs up through both nostrils and then to a suction pump which slowly filled a canister with the fluids inexorably draining into Hyde's lungs. The machine made an imperceptible whine-a reminder of mortality and
the close odor of death that the dark shade breathed upon Magister Hyde's soul.
Just one more small sorrow for all humanity at this last juncture.
Bruen rubbed his belly and scowled at the forbidding stone above. "It was my decision. He was a babe, a tiny defenseless infant at the time. I took one look at his odd eyes and watched him toddle across the room, pudgy hands reaching for this and that, and I spared him. Sent him to Rega to lose himself in the masses, no one the wiser. " He shook his head, "Maudlin of me, don't you think?"
"The quanta, Bruen," Hyde gasped. "An action, any action, changes reality. Who knows what would have been different if we'd simply cut his throat and stuffed him into a disposal chute to bleed."
"At the time, a Sinklar Fist alive had more bargaining power than a dead baby," Bruen reminded himself. "It was insurance to have him-"
"He was a monster! Even then!" Hyde gasped, breaking out in a fit of coughing. "A monster, Bruen. You knew what he was… where he came from! His legacy is… death!"
"Perhaps," Bruen agreed. ','But what a brilliant monster he is, old friend. And what little part we had in his development. Perhaps if we had kept him, trained him?"
"He is killing us!" Hyde rasped, coughing again, drool slipping from the side of his sagging mouth. killing… US.
"At ease, old friend." Bruen smiled, bestirring himself to take a rag and damp at his dying friend's mouth. "All is not lost by any means.9'
Hyde swallowed, pale hairless head rocking on the pillow. "No, maybe not," he whispered, barely audibly. "A reality changed, Bruen. Somewhere, a reality we all thought crucial has changed. Awareness?. Did someone become aware whom we have n d? Whose observations have ot perceive.
made a new reality? It wasn't ours, nor the Regans', nor Sassa's. "
"The machine, perhaps? We don't know the power of the Mag Comm. Could it, too, be a reflection of God Mind? An interesting statement about the nature of the observer, eh? If it is the machine, so much is changed." Bruen added, one hand on Hyde's shoulders. "But it seems that everyone who has planned, calculated a probability future, sees those very probabilities lying in ruin. Why? Where is the reality shaping coming from? I cannot convince myself it is the machine. To observe takes a spark from God."
"Fist!" Hyde gasped. "It is Fist! He has no reality. He just seems to react! He lives in Now. He forges no future! He is the only one predictable… and all that is predictable is that he will win-not where he will turn or how he will act!"
Bruen frowned, running a tired hand over his own sweatshiny bald head. "God mocks us. Fist has become the major player in this sad game, and we have insufficient data to make predictions about his behavior." He smiled fleetingly. "Would it not be puzzling and paradoxical to learn that he is better at our philosophy than we are?"
"Wretched," Hyde gasped. "Our forces?"
Bruen lifted a shoulder, pulling his lips into a reassuring smile. "We are reforming." I can't tell him Butla is dead. I can't tell him we are prostrate, defenseless, ruined. Let him die without knowing the worst. For the old days, I owe him that much. What a cruel joke life has played on dear noble Hyde-to crush a dream in these last failing moments. Perhaps Ican…. Yes.
Hyde's faded blue eyes held his for a brief instant before Bruen pulled his gaze away.
Hyde barely whispered, "Your smile is a lie. You never could lie outright-at least, not to me. One of your failings, eh? I always caught you at it. "
"There is no lie," Bruen continued, wanting to break down and cry. "We are hurt, true, but not defeated." Hyde hacked and coughed, eyes closed against the rub-
bing pain of the tubes in his throat. "Even this close to death, I hear between your words, my friend. Very well, I understand." Translucent eyelids flickered as Hyde asked,
"And the Lord Commander? After so much death and horror and disaster? He is. "
"Coming," Bruen said fervently. "Staffa is coming here to us at last." He hesitated. "Perhaps this time… well, we will see. I am no longer counting on probability." And you, blessed beloved friend of mine, will not live to see our final victory.
"No … can't count on probability," Hyde wheezed. "Staffa… sent to us… by his Wing Commander? Probability is turned upside down, my friend. The machine… wrong……
Bruen's strength crumbled, mind roaming to youngerless painful-times, reliving old arguments-and triumphsseeing the past unfolding. He and Hyde had rebuilt the Seddi, kept the vile machine at bay, countered the growing pains of two selfish empires. They had merely prolonged the respite before this final cataclysm which would sweep pestilence and death before it. The last flickers of light were dimming now. Rega prepared to launch itself on Sassa. The last moments of stillness before the storm were troubled by eddies of the coming sirocco.
"We did well, eh?" Hyde managed, as if sharing his thoughts. "All in all, Bruen, we did the impossible, you and 1. Trained generations of young people, added a little brilliance to an ultimately damned civilization."
"Yes, we did very well," Bruen agreed, voice hollow, remembering Hyde: young, vigorous, black-haired, and athletic. Seeing the young women's gazes following that straight virile figure through the corridors, his blue eyes flashing with spirit, his smile infectious.
"Let me rest now, Bruen," Hyde's voice whispered between wheezing breaths.". Rest… now."
Bruen patted his shoulder and turned to the door, hip hurting again. Outside, an Initiate perched on a stool, watching a monitor set into the stone of the corridor.
"He's dying," Bruen added listlessly, propping his suddenly unsteady bones against the cold unyielding rock. He closed his eyes, aware of what he must do — Weakness bored upward through his soul, hollowing, emptying.
The Initiate nodded her resignation. "I think he only has a few hours left. We could increase the pumping capacity,
but his lungs are already stressed by the suction. A hemorrhage now would…"
"And how are his… his dreams?"
The young woman pointed to a series of lines on the encephalogram. "Pleasant, Magister."
Bruen worked his tongue over worn teeth. "Then it:
would be good now." With faltering resolution, he reached out and moved a switch. He stared at the tiny piece of;
metal, numb at what he had done.
"Magister? That switch. "
"Yes," Bruen whispered as he turned his attention to the encephalogram. "That switch controls the pump. See how happy he is, my girl? See how he's dreaming of good things? Pleasant things? Is there a… better. better way. to. " The monitor went oddly misty in his vision. A hot throbbing knot grew in his throat.
Bruen hardly felt the woman's warm arm go around him. The words she called into the comm echoed meaninglessly in his head. He cried openly as Initiates and a Master carried him through the winding maze of passages on a stretcher he didn't remember being placed on.
He ignored them for the moment. He might never get another chance to live in his memories with Hyde — never get another chance to see his best friend healthy, smiling, strong, and young. Oh, so wondrously young!
"So I tried my best for him, for my Praetor," Staffa explained. Nothing remained but to talk. The featureless gray walls of the box pressed around them like a prison. Time had slipped sideways in this new reality measured only by sleep, talk, and eternal sameness. Nothing else intruded into their world. No sound, no vibrations. Time had ceased to exist in the eternal gray reality of the packing crate.