He despised himself, but considered that he was making a great sacrifice.
The Dictator grinned and vanished through the gap in the wall with his robot bodyguards. Overseas technology never failed.
Dm Sat announced an intermission in the work of the Peaceful Space session. He needed to pull himself together and justify himself to himself. Of course, he was still the same roundhead—true, inwardly confused, devastated and now the owner of rights he did not need at all.
But these rights proved particularly necessary to his former pupil and favourite, Ave Mar.
Dobr Mar, Ave’s father, the Ruler of Danjab, felt ill at ease in the round office with the vaulted ceiling. He was the nine-hundred-and-sixty-second ruler who had moved in there.
An angular chin and a bony jaw on the intelligent face spoke of will and energy; the fine mouth, turned down at the corners, testified to worry; the bags under the eyes and the balding head with its remnants of greying hair, to a hard life. He had been given the name Dobr (Kind) for his coming-of-age. Until then he had borne his father’s name. Terrible Mar, with the addition The Second Junior. The Ruler was thinking of his son on the barbarians’ continent, where an explosion could occur at any time…
In spite of himself, there arose in his mind’s eye, in all its details, that accursed day half a cycle ago, when he had decided on an act for which he could now find neither justification nor forgiveness.
The robot secretary reported that Kutsi Merc was in the waiting-room. Since the time when Dobr Mar’s predecessor had been shot in that very office by his own secretary, the Grand Circle had decreed that only robot secretaries should work in the Ruler’s Palace. And now the “intelligent box” had shown Kutsi Merc on the screen. While waiting to be received, Kutsi had not noticed that he was being watched, but he was naturally alert. A typical roundhead, he had a face like the disc of Lua, Faena’s eternal satellite. His narrow eyes were looking sideways at the door.
Relations were complex between Dobr Mar and Kutsi Merc. Only Kutsi knew how the Ruler had come to power. Dobr Mar had formerly been a “friend of the Ruler”, and by law had to occupy the “first chair” in the event of his death.
No one abused the “mentally unstable” assassin more than Dobr Mar. He swore to pursue the same foreign policy as the late Ruler: the eternal hostility with Powermania was to be tempered and everything possible should be done to reconcile the planet’s two continents and deliver the Faetians from the horrors of war.
Not long before the assassination of Dobr Mar’s predecessor, Kutsi Merc had handed him the terrible conditions on which he could become Ruler: he must be the first to start a disintegration war.
Once he had taken his predecessor’s place, Dobr Mar was in no hurry to pursue the lunatic policy of the “mortally unstable” who demanded that the war be won with disintegration weapons.
Dobr Mar ruled Danjab, finding work and living accommodation for the ominously growing population. He tried to reduce the tension in relations between the continents, put through a law making old goods subject to destruction so that new ones would be acquired and managed things so that Yar Jupi, satisfied by the cut in the import of overseas goods, was even forced to agree to joint actions in space.
…Dobr Mar had guessed why Kutsi Merc had come and what he was going to say. After all, the Ruler had not yet met the “special conditions”. And on the eve of the elections, Dobr Mar was afraid of possible denunciations. What if he struck the first blow?
When he went into the office, Kutsi Merc halted. Squat, but well-built and broad-shouldered, almost without a neck, he looked like a wrestler before a match.
The match took place. Dobr Mar went trustingly towards him.
“The councillors of the Grand Circle are troubled by the information obtained by Kutsi Merc to the effect that the barbarians have mastered and even improved on the automatic machines they originally obtained from us, so that they have become dangerous.”
“The Ruler is right. The automatic machines are dangerous. I have a reliable agent in the Lair.”
“What guarantee is there that the automatic machines won’t function by accident?”
“They’re almost the same on Danjab.”
“That’s not enough! The barbarians must not be allowed to keep them. Such is the decision of the Grand Circle.”
“I bow before the will of the first proprietors. But the barbarian automatic machines are under the Lair. Even a snake couldn’t get through there.”
“A snake couldn’t, but Kutsi Merc could. Besides, he has a reliable agent there.”
Kutsi Merc understood everything. Dobr Mar needed to show the proprietors that he was carrying out their conditions, and at the same time he could get rid of Kutsi Merc by sending him on an impossible assignment.
After his inevitable failure, Kutsi Merc could no longer prevent Dobr Mar from being re-elected.
Not a line moved on Kutsi Merc’s face.
“It is clear,” he said respectfully. “Penetrate into the Lair and destroy it and its automatic machines by using a disintegration charge.” He thought for a moment and added almost casually, “A reliable cover will be needed.”
“Fine,” agreed the Ruler, walking round the horse-shoe table and settling himself in the comfortable armchair. Many of his predecessors had used that chair and he intended to keep his place in it for a long time to come.
“The cover would be Ave Mar.”
“Ave Mar? My son?” Dobr Mar rose abruptly to his feet.
He turned away to hide his wrath. This experienced spy was playing an unworthy game with him, hoping that the father would not risk his son’s life.
Before Dobr Mar had thrice put up his candidature for Ruler and had been defeated for refusing to become the “Ruler’s friend”, he had been the owner of vast fertile fields. His son Ave had been born in those fields, close to nature. He had been given his name Ave (Welcome) when he reached maturity. As a little boy, he had run around with half-naked children of roundheads working in his father’s fields.
He had not only gone fishing with them to help them fill their bellies at least once in a while, he had climbed trees for the nutrient buds, but, like all generations of children, he had played at war.
Dobr Mar was proud of his son, although the boy had inherited his curly hair from his roundhead grandmother and his girlish curved eyelashes and his clear gaze from his mother. The father didn’t particularly like his son looking at the world too ecstatically, naively believing in justice and the ancient laws of honour. Life had punished him many times for this old-fashionedness. But the father was flattered that his son worshipped him for his efficiency and love of peace. However, the son sometimes behaved rashly. On leaving his teacher Um Sat, “not wishing to serve the science of death”, he openly spoke up against the fact that the decisive role on both continents was being played by the proprietors of the fields and big workshops who had profited from the over-populated lands and the labour of those working for the proprietors. Fortunately for him, as his father knew from the secret reports, he never managed to attach himself to the “current under the ice” of young people threatening to break through even here, on Danjab, in a new Uprising of Justice. Ave himself often heard seditious remarks by disciples of the Doctrine of Justice, but he didn’t consider it necessary to report them to his father. Ave knew about the secret meetings, the participants in which as in token of greeting used to touch their right eyebrow with their left hand. But he was not admitted to these assemblies. The toilers apparently did not trust him because he was the Ruler’s son. It never entered his father’s head that Ave Mar’s friends could safeguard him as a capable scientist. After leaving Um Sat, Ave devoted himself to the problem of a possible life for the Faetians on other planets. Dobr Mar knew but did not really understand his arguments that the authorities on astronomy were wrong in affirming that life was impossible anywhere except on Faena, since the other planets were either too far away from their star or, like Merc, Ven and Terr, had been incinerated by its rays. The Faetians had nowhere to go if they fled from their own planet, if you discounted the grim planet Mar, which was hardly capable of supporting life and had been earmarked by the Dictator of the barbarians’ continent as a place of exile for roundheads. It turned out that the only means of purging the planet for future generations might be war and war alone. Ave, however, affirmed that the temperatures there were not as high as might be expected from its proximity to Sol, its star. What was decisive was the carbon dioxide content, which created the greenhouse effect, preventing the excess heat radiation into space. This effect made it possible for life to develop on Faena. On its horizon, the star rose solely as the brightest star, whereas on Terr it must have been a blinding disc to look at. Ave held that if there was less carbon dioxide than on Faena, there would be no greenhouse effect, the superfluous heat could be dissipated and any life forms could develop on its surface.