Hunter shook his head no. Joxx did, too. He wanted to hear it.
As the six others lowered their heads, the lead man began reading from a missaclass="underline" "So it was, on that Easter morning, by a miracle of God, a vision appeared to three brothers. This vision was that of an angel, the messenger from God. The messenger enlightened our Emperor, and with this enlightenment, the Emperor created our holy Empire. He is responsible for all that is good, for all that is just, for all that is spiritual in our Galaxy. He sits at the right hand of God. He is immortal. We shall praise him every day."
The man closed the prayer book. An uncomfortable silence came over the room.
On cue, Hunter asked, "Why did you want to see us before we saw him? Even the Emperor must salve the need to give his confession. It should be a private moment…."
All seven men lowered their heads another notch. They couldn't even look at Hunter and Joxx now.
"Well, because we must be frank with you," the head man said, staring down at the table. "The Emperor has not been feeling himself lately…."
"He is ill?" Hunter asked.
The men all shook their heads in unison. "He cannot get ill because, as the Emperor, he can live forever. He cannot die. He cannot get sick. But this does not mean that he doesn't have troubles of the mind."
Joxx shifted uneasily from one foot to the other when he heard this.
"We are simply here to listen to his confession," Hunter said. "And with penance, to hopefully relieve him of his sins and ease his mind."
"Yes, that's all very well," the head man said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But there is one more thing we want you to do."
He then lowered his voice so dramatically, Hunter and Joxx had to lean forward to hear him.
"If for some reason, during the Emperor's confession, he imparts to you information that, shall we say, strays a bit from this official history, it is now your obligation to inform us."
No matter how many times Hunter had passed through this part of the mind ring trip, he never failed to be stunned at those words. Joxx, too, was shocked.
"Isn't that breaching a very holy confidence?" Joxx piped up unexpectedly. "It's just a very strange thing to ask—"
Suddenly every eye was on him, including Hunter's. He was shooting Joxx a glance now that was as sharp as a ray gun blast. Its meaning was clear: Shut up.
The seven men in red were plainly angry at his remark.
"We weren't aware that you'd come all this way just to give us your opinion, Father," the head man said, voice thick with contempt.
Joxx got the message. He was here to learn.
"My apologies," he said with a slight bow. "I promise to better hold my tongue in the future…."
Flash!
They were suddenly inside yet another huge chamber. This one was more impressive, more imposing than the first two. Its ceiling and floors were layered with gold and silver, the most precious metals of the time. The walls were covered with huge tapestries depicting the Emperor in a multitude of heroic settings. Incense was burning at many locations along the huge stained-glass windows adorning the far wall. Somber church music was playing from somewhere unseen.
At the far end of the room was a huge, ornate throne. It was surrounded by four columns of splashing water and a thick cloud of bitter incense. A man was sitting in the jewel-encrusted chair at the top, bathed in multicolored light coming through the stained glass.
No one else was around him; he was alone.
"It is him!" Joxx exclaimed in a whisper.
'Took me a while to believe it, too," Hunter admitted.
"But how could this be?" Joxx asked. "How could he possibly make it from that muddy place to be ruler of the Galaxy? I mean, that tale about angels and enlightenment can't be true. We were there—"
"Just keep your ears open," Hunter told him. "We still have a long way to go."
They slowly approached the throne. Reaching a spot about eight feet away from the base of the divan, Hunter jerked Joxx to a halt. They both bowed deeply.
Looking down at them was Emperor Jimmy. His body was still somewhat rigid, somewhat twisted. But he was still smiling, and still, he had a twinkle in his eye. Even though the incident in the hollow had happened almost one thousand years before, Jimmy looked no older than he did that day, probably no more than his midthirties or so.
"I thank you for taking such a long journey just to see me," he told them. "Was your flight a pleasant one?"
"The ocean was very green today," Hunter replied, knowing this was the best thing to say in order to move things along. Then he added, "So we are here. How can we help?"
Emperor Jimmy sighed. "We all get to a point in our lives," he began, twisting his mouth to carefully form each word, "when it seems necessary to reflect on our situation. To question whether our place in the universe is as it should be. My friends, these days, I believe that time has come for me. May I tell you why?"
Hunter nodded. "On the most basic level, a confessor's job is to simply listen," he said.
The Emperor sighed deeply again, then he indicated the elegance and pomp in the room and, by extension, everything else.
"We have done so much," he went on. "We have fulfilled our dream of reaching every corner of our Galaxy. We can fly to either edge and back in less than a year. We've been able to puff nearly eighty percent of the planets. Ordinary people now live to nearly two hundred years of age. Our population is expanding by millions every day.
"We are building the triads to save our land from the oceans. We are designing larger and more powerful star-ships. We are investigating the many wonders that our place here in space holds for us. There are no wars. No conflicts. We are all one with our Galaxy."
"What is the problem then?" Hunter asked him. "Why your distress?"
The Emperor twisted his partially paralyzed body deeper in his chair. The smile left his face for the first time.
"The cardinals — I'm sure they reminded you of the official history of all this? The story of the angel in the hollow?"
Both Hunter and Joxx nodded.
"Well, here is my confession: It was no angel that came to us that day," he said. "Not a typical one, anyway."
"I knew it," Joxx whispered.
Again Emperor Jimmy twisted in his seat. The next words from his mouth would not be easy ones.
"We were hiding from the Paras," he began gravely. "We'd just done a job up north. A car bombing. But they'd been searching for us for years — and we could hear them searching for us now. They were so close, we sent out some of the boys to set up an ambush. We did this only because we knew what would happen if the blokes ever caught us. No arrest. No trial. As the leaders of our cell, we would be executed on the spot. They had made that quite clear to us….
"So we were laying low in the hollow, hoping the ambush would be a success, or even better, that the blokes would just go away. But of course, they didn't.
"Now we were in a very isolated part of the old country, very close to the border, with few other people around. We would always see strange things in the sky, especially at night. Hear strange things, too. This early morning we heard the sounds of an aircraft, sputtering and rumbling as if it were in trouble. We thought for sure it was one of the Para helicopters, falling into the hollow. It was the only explanation.
"We rushed out of the cottage, guns drawn, masks on, my two brothers and me. The noise was so loud by now, we thought a whole Para regiment was crashing down on top of us. But soon enough we knew these were not the blokes coming in for the kill.
"No, this was something else. This craft. It was on fire and smoking heavily and coming out of the sky so fast, there was barely enough time to comprehend it before it went through the holly trees and boom! came down right in front of us.