"You think she hit the right one?"
Bruen moved to ease an ache in his hip. "Oh, it was. Look at the expression on her face. See the feral delight? No doubt about it, her instincts are fully developed. Now all they need is channeling, direction."
Hyde's voice dripped with distaste. "Spying! Like Imperial Security agents!"
"Now is an odd time to condemn our ancient pastime, Magister," Bruen countered sourly. Damn it, if only he didn't agree in this instance. If it were anyone but Arta, he'd…
I've become a senile idiot! There's no place for sappy sentimentality. She's not your daughter, she's no one, Bruen. A subject, a soldier for the cause. Wars are not won by generals who dote on their personnel!
"But she is one of ours," Hyde protested.
Bruen dropped his sagging chin into a palm and cocked his head, eying his old companion. He kept his voice soft, serious, forced to conform with what he knew was rational. "Is she really? After we placed her with the Etarians for so long, after we brought her so far, can you call her ours?"
Hyde blinked owlishly. "Well… er… she has done remarkably well on the exams. Her training — as you can
see — through subliminal quanta seeding has made her the most incredibly talented…"
"Tool," Bruen finished, his voice a blunt monotone. He shook his head, unwilling to meet Hyde's eyes. Instead he touched a stud and the holo of Arta Fera reloading her pulse pistol vanished.
Disappointed with himself, his eyes searched the pastoral heaven of the small valley that spread below them. Cattle grazed unmolested among coves of rich thick grass. Trees shrouded dark granite outcrops while multicolored flowers carpeted verdant pastures.
"We've done so much, my friend," Hyde reminded, consolingly. "After all these years, after all the sacrifice. "
"What's one more young girl, eh?" Bruen snorted sourly and rubbed his deep-set eyes. "Where does it stop, Hyde? Almost three hundred years, now, I've watched it. In my lifetime perhaps one hundred billion people have died in pain and misery, their planets blasted by war, scoured by radiation, disease, and climatic upheaval." He looked over, blue eyes mild. "I ask you, do you see any improvement in the human condition? At times I get the feeling we're some sort of malignant experiment."
Hyde placed a reedlike hand on Bruen's shoulder. "Remember our creed Brother. Life is knowledge and knowledge is energy. Energy is eternal, it can't be destroyed, only dissipated through entropy." Hyde coughed again, grimacing as he spit phlegm into the bushes behind him. "Death is an inevitability, but it isn't forever. Eventually it all goes back to God."
Bruen granted him a wry smile. "Forever, no. The universe continues to expand in places while other areas are drawn to the gravitational wells of the Great Attractors. So we're either at the crest of the expansion or the beginning of the contraction. Either way, the end won't come for another fifteen billion years or so." He pointed a crooked finger at Hyde. "How much suffering can you fit into fifteen billion years before we are all returned to Godhead?"
"Life is more than suffering, Brother. Life is also warm sunny mornings, birds singing, a comfortable—"
"Bah!"
"You're a bitter old man!" Hyde slapped his knees and
leaned back, his sagging pale face exposed to the warmth of the sun.
"Almost twenty thousand are dead in Kaspa. And here, you and I sit in the
sun and talk of pleasure? Our worlds are about to be plunged into a maelstrom. Within years, Brother, entire planets will be scorched to molten rock. What madness is ours?"
Hyde coughed again, working his mouth uncomfortably. "All the more reason for us to enjoy those few moments the present provides, Magister. Remember your creed. There is nothing beyond the HereNow. The past is simply stored energy in your mind. The future consists of probability horizons — the bouncing of the quanta toward an expected observation. What you fear is only described by those Quantum wave functions inside your mind. That future isn't real."
"Yet." Bruen paused. "So, like all reality, eventually you can trace it down to nothingness. I still fear."
Bruen caught movement in the valley and turned to see three horses emerge from a stand of trees several hundred yards away. They trotted to a small stream and dipped their heads to drink. In silence and appreciation, he watched them, aware of the thick white pillows of cloud that rose far to the north over Kaspa. Prophetic! Even now, according to his instructions, the resistance shoud be blowing up Regan command concentrations. More blood on his hands.
"I suppose it bothers me that we had no choice." Bruen laced his parchment-skinned fingers over a bony knee. "I don't like the feeling of being a pawn Brother. It appalled me when I watched the old Magisters fall under the sway of the machine. Nothing has changed since those days."
"Only now, you must deal with the machine." Hyde dropped his head, bloated features uneasy.
"I wonder who fools who?" Bruen granted with a dry cackle. "Which of us is really the manipulator, Brother?"
In a lower tone, Hyde added, "You're the only one we've got, Bruen. No one else has your strength. No one else is smart enough, strong enough, capable of dancing with such delicate balance."
"Indeed, well, I've fooled it this far — I think. Energy is forever, eh? Well, Brother, if you find me dead on my
pallet one of these days, what are you going to do?" Bruen cocked an eye at Hyde's bulky body.
The Magister coughed and spat again. "Die of my collapsing lungs on the spot so I don't have to place myself under that accursed helmet."
"Not a viable solution."
"Neither is your death." Hyde chuckled and ended up coughing again. "No, I'll kill myself before I sit in the chair and put those terrible wires over my head. The Mag Comm would peel my mind like an onion. and all would be for naught."
They sat in silence, Hyde brooding over his inadequacies. Why did it all seem so damned hopeless?
"We still haven't received word of which way the Star Butcher will jump." Bruen smiled as one of the horses, a dappled gray, dropped its head and lifted its tail, playfully pushing a muscular black to one side. In an instant, they were puffing and bouncing, trotting along in their equine game of tag. Horses had it so good on Targa.
"Predictions tend toward Rega," Hyde tilted his head back and pinched his nose, sniffing at his clogged sinuses. In a nasal voice he continued. "Rega appears to offer Staffa more than the Sassans would. The Lord Commander can't have much empathy with a bat-brained theocracy based on sybaritic sycophancy. That fat Sassan pustulation? A God? Staffa must laugh himself into fits at the idea." Hyde waved his swollen hands. "No. Rega, for all its faults, will at least appeal to Staffa's mutated sense of respect."
"An odd position, Hyde, to be second-guessing that man." Bruen moved to spare the insistent ache in his hip. "Of them all, he's the least predictable."
"Come, Brother," Hyde growled. "Staffa has no secrets. Money and status drive him. So does power. A simple — if brilliant — man. Sassa and Rega know the game is almost up. He who seduces Staffa with the greatest number of baubles and promises gets the whole of Free Space. He who misses the opportunity is lost."
Bruen objected, "You claim Rega has more to offer the Lord Commander than Sassa does. I concur; but consider this permutation. In the end, Staffa will have only one power to deal with. I don't think he'll be happy playing
policeman in the long run. His people can't take that drudgery. Staff a knows that."
"So?"
"So Staffa will prey on the winner." Bruen sighed as the horses raced out of sight.
"And it would be much easier to turn and destroy Sassan God-Emperors whom he has no respect for."