The academician lapsed into silence.
«And I see you, Fain,» the Emperor said, «trying to calculate in your head how much of your Fleet strength is going to be wasted on this old man’s dream.»
«Sire, I had no—»
The Emperor waved him into silence. «No matter. Moving the Capital won’t put much of a strain on the Fleet, will it?»
«No, Sire. But this project to save Earth …»
«We will have to construct new ships for that, Fain. And we will have to turn to the frontier worlds for those ships.» He glanced at Adela. «I believe that the frontier worlds will gladly join the effort to save Earth’s Sun. And their treasuries will be enriched by our purchase of thousands of new ships.»
«While the Imperial treasury is depleted.»
«It’s a rich Empire, Fain, it’s time we shared some of our wealth with the frontier worlds. A large shipbuilding program will do more to reconcile them with the Empire than anything else we can imagine.»
«Sire,» said Fain bluntly, «I still think it’s madness.»
«Yes, I know. Perhaps it is. I only hope that I live long enough to find out, one way or the other.»
«Sire,» Adela said breathlessly, «you will be reuniting all the worlds of the Empire into a closely knit human community such as we haven’t seen in centuries!»
«Perhaps. It would be pleasant to believe so. But for the moment, all I have done is to implement a decision to try to save Earth’s Sun. It may succeed; it may fail. But we are sons and daughters of planet Earth, and we will not allow our original homeworld to be destroyed without struggling to our uttermost to save it.»
He looked at their faces again. They were all waiting for him to continue. You grow pompous, old man.
«Very well. You each have several lifetimes of work to accomplish. Get busy, all of you.»
Bomeer’s and Fain’s images winked off immediately. Javas’ remained.
«Yes, my son? What is it?»
Javas’ ever-present smile was gone. He looked serious, even troubled. «Father … I am not going to bring Rihana with me to Earth. She wouldn’t want to come, I know—at least, not until all the comforts of the court were established there for her.»
The Emperor nodded.
«If I’m to be master of my own house,» Javas went on, «it’s time we ended this farce of a marriage.»
«Very well, son. That is your decision to make. But, for what it’s worth, I agree with you.»
«Thank you, Father.» Javas’ image disappeared. For a long moment the Emperor sat gazing thoughtfully at the wall where the holographic images had appeared.
«I believe that I will send you to Earth on Javas’ ship. I think he likes you, and it is important that the two of you get along well together.»
Adela looked almost shocked. «What do you mean by ‘get along well together’?»
The Emperor grinned at her. «That’s for the two of you to decide.»
«You’re scandalous!» she said, but she was smiling too.
He shrugged. «Call it part of the price of victory. You’ll like Javas; he’s a good man. And I doubt that he’s ever met a woman quite like you.»
«I don’t know what to say.»
«You’ll need Javas’ protection and support, you know. You have defeated all my closest advisors, and that means that they will become your enemies. Powerful enemies. That is also part of the price of your triumph.»
«Triumph? I don’t feel very triumphant.»
«I know,» the Emperor said. «Perhaps that’s what triumph really is: Not so much glorying in the defeat of your enemies as weariness that they couldn’t see what seemed so obvious to you.»
Abruptly, Adela moved to him and put her lips to his cheek. «Thank you, Sire.»
«Why, thank you, child.»
For a moment she stood there, holding his old hands in her tiny young ones.
Then, «I … have lots of work to do.»
«Of course. We will probably never see each other again. Go and do your work. Do it well.»
«I will,» she said. «And you?»
He leaned back into the bed. «I’ve finished my work. I believe that now I can go to sleep, at last.» And with a smile he closed his eyes.
FITTING SUITS
Science fiction is a marvelous vehicle for social commentary. Trouble is, most of the decision-makers in our society don’t read science fiction. We are constantly falling into predicaments and facing crises that could have been avoided if people paid attention to science-fiction stories written decades earlier.
In a sense, science fiction—at its best—serves as a kind of simulations laboratory for society. Like a scientist setting up a controlled experiment, a writer can set up a social situation, stress one particular facet of that society, and see where the extrapolation leads. The classic example of this is Cyril M. Kornbluth’s 1951 novelette «The Marching Morons.» Based on the simple notion that ignoramuses have more children than geniuses, Kornbluth’s tale chillingly foretold the global population problems that the rest of the world began to notice only a generation later.
«Fitting Suits» is a short-short story that was triggered by a news story I read: A civil servant resigned her government post because a citizen sued her personally for allegedly not performing her job properly. That led me to thinking. Which led me to writing.
Always think before you write.
History, as we know, is sometimes made by the unlikeliest of persons. Take Carter C. Carter, for example. All he wanted was immortality. Instead he created paradise.
All of you are too young to remember the America of the early twenty-first century, a democracy of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers. It was impossible to sneeze in the privacy of your own home without someone suing you as a health menace. Inevitably the lawyers would also sue the home builder for failure to make the structure virus-proof. And the corporations that manufactured your air-conditioning system, wallpaper, carpeting, and facial tissues. To say nothing of the people who sold you your pet dog, cat, and/or goldfish.
It got so bad that eventually a public servant resigned her sinecure because of a lawsuit. A social worker employed by a moderate-sized midwestern city was slapped with a personal liability suit for alleged failure to do her job properly. She had advised an unemployed teenaged mother to try to find a job to support herself, since her welfare benefits were running out. Instead, the teenager went to a lawyer and sued the social worker for failure to find her more money.
Rather than face a lawsuit that would have ruined her financially, whether she lost or won, the social worker resigned her position, left the state, and took up a new career. She entered law school. The teenager lived for years off the generous verdict awarded her by a jury of equally unemployed men and women.
This was the America in which Carter C. Carter lived. We have much to thank him for.
He was, of course, totally unaware that he would change the course of history. He had no interest even in the juridical malaise of his time. All he wanted to do was to avoid dying.
Carter C. Carter had an inoperable case of cancer. «The Big C,» it was called in those days. So he turned to another «C,» cryonics, as a way to avoid permanent death. When declared clinically dead by a complaisant doctor (a close friend since childhood), Carter C. Carter had himself immersed in a canister of liquid nitrogen to await the happy day when medical science could revive him, cure him, and set him out in society once more, healthily alive.
He left his life savings, a meager $100,000 (it was worth more in those days) in a trust fund to provide for his maintenance while frozen. It would also provide a nest egg once he was awakened. He was banking heavily on compound interest.