Grand Counsellor Alderman recoiled a step. His foot touched Beramis’s body. He jerked away. “Yes, Y-Your Imperiality.”
“So be it,” I said. I pointed to Beramis. “Now, bring him back to life.”
“Im-Imperiality?” said Alderman. “I don’t understand.”
“Your murderer didn’t understand before; did that stop him?”
“But—”
I turned to the two captured assassins. “Bring my friend back to life,” I said. “I order it.”
“But that’s impossible!” the first assassin whispered.
“Am I not omnipotent? Am I not infallible? Show us all how omnipotent and infallible I really am by carrying out my orders.”
I found a guard close at hand and motioned him forward.
“Your Imperiality,” he said, dropping to one knee.
“You will attend to these three,” I said, “making sure they take neither food nor drink nor sleep until they have fulfilled their task.” I waited, eyes on the guard.
“Your Imperiality, have I permission to ask a question?”
“Any order authorizes one to ask for its meaning.”
“Do we… are we to attend in shifts, or…?”
“I leave it up to you.”
My gaze swept over the group of Grand Counsellors. Teren al Axtant dropped to one knee, head bowed. Others, evidently unsure whether to go up or down, half crouched, watching me.
I said to Axtant, to them all, “I think you cannot judge My Imperiality’s sanity unless you also investigate plots against My Imperiality. You may start with this current plot. You will attend these three, as part of your investigation, until they succeed in their task or die.”
“Yes, Imperiality.” Axtant took a deep breath. “How shall we attend them? In the same manner as the guards?”
“Select a suitable system.”
The Grand Counsellor got stiffly to his feet. “As you command, Imperiality. But how did Your Imperiality and Your Imperiality’s friends discover Alderman’s plot?”
“Oh, that.” I made a deprecating gesture. “The Bureaucracy dates only from the Spaceflight Era. The institution of the High Emperor is but a few centuries old, the Grand Council less than that. Neither has any real experience in intrigue and conspiracy and assassination.”
“But you?”
“Us?” Mara swept up to my side. “We have forty-nine centuries of experience to draw on. As for Alderman and his hirelings… ”
“Your Imperiality, please!” It was the second gunman. He was on his knees, begging. “We can’t bring him back. Please, Your—”
“You can die trying,” I said. I turned away, started to walk. “Come,” I said to my friends. “We’ve still got work to do.”
Once clear of the guards, Grand Counsellors, and bystanders, I began to plan aloud: “My every word being taken literally has got to stop. Jon, wasn’t there some old formula kings used when speaking for the record? ‘I have spoken,’ or something like that? And Mara’s going to need some help with the guard for a while; maybe Quent and Rina. Then I think there are going to be some vacancies on the Grand Council. We’re going to get that reorganized, too. For all the mess it’s caused, I still need it.” I walked on, oblivious to those around me, to the vast room that spread in all directions. “It isn’t power that corrupts; it’s being beyond punishment. But there’s no sense worrying, is there, not when—”
“Jad,” said Rina.
“What?” I said. I stopped and the others eddied around me. I saw her then, face haggard but eyes dry now.
“You’re in shock,” she said.
“Nonsense,” I said. “I’m all right. It’s just—just—Oh, Rina, he’s dead. Beramis is—dead!”
And I, My Imperiality, High Emperor Jad the First, wept at last.
PLATO’S BASTARDS, by James C. Stewart
The subject freaked out today.
It happened in a plastic little restaurant tacked onto the back of one of those big box stores, the kind with the faux wood tables and uncomfortable orange-red seats that look as though they’ve been ripped off from some fast food franchise.
At first calmly eating breakfast (the same breakfast he has everyday, what the menu calls The Standard: two eggs, three slices of bacon, potatoes, toast and coffee), he’d been making notes in a small purple book, scribbling lines about politics, disagreeing with this or that on some point of strategy.
The place was Wednesday morning quiet; a couple of blue hairs nattering over tea, the subject, and me. The subject—John, I guess I’ll call him—became increasingly agitated. Eventually his head snapped up, glancing around with panicked eyes, pushing his plate away without finishing. At first I thought maybe he was suffering from some sort of gastric anomaly, but none of the gut-clenching or washroom-fleeing one normally associates with this kind of thing occurred. And John’s behavior became even more erratic. For an instant I thought maybe he’d realized the problem, saw the hole, the bleed…
He slapped a few bucks down on the table, hurriedly making for the exit, scurrying into the store proper.
Seemingly unnoticed I followed, the subtle restaurant dim giving way to the store’s harsh overhead fluorescents. John seemed to be wandering without purpose, without examining the store’s plethora of products, muttering to himself under his breath. I was concerned a passerby might think he was a lunatic and call the police, or at the very least, store security.
Behind me the store’s restaurant construct dammed, linear time ceasing. The waitress and the blue hairs statued, frozen into the moment when the dam hit. John remained blissfully ignorant, unaware of the happenings in his wake.
A voice in my ear urged discretionary speed, listing the resources consumed to maintain the constant construct dam, reminding me John’s ignorance was necessary to the integrity of the experiment.
John, looking like a bum in his ratty overcoat, meandered into a maze of shelves, momentarily lost in stacks packed with plastic toys, a distracting animated promo running on a twelve-inch screen angled overhead.
He stopped in front of a display shelf jammed with the newest action figure, a disturbing toy tagged Occupying Sam. It stood three feet high, replete with M-16 and desert fatigues. Some imaginative stock boy had twisted the moveable plastic parts into a combat stance. A nearby box claimed the thing “really speaks!”
John gave a little chuckle, and felt for the switch. The toy’s voice came surprisingly clear and realistic, commanding; none of the scratchy G.I. Joe sounds from the past, “Do you have your papers? Let me see your papers.”
John stared at it, no longer smiling, shaking his head. He placed the toy back on the shelf, mentally chalking it up as another in a long line of signposts on the declining road of western civilization.
Overhead an echo crackled static, “Good morning, shoppers. There’s a red light special on torsine, torsine derivatives and synthetic torsites in the pharmaceutical section. Please have your insurance cards and government documents ready at the checkout counter. Thank you.”
John continued muttering to himself, but started toward the red light special. I kept far enough back to avoid his wide-eyed, scattered gaze.
We wandered through women’s lingerie and women’s shoes. We drifted into the electronics department. John stopped in front of a vast screen displaying grim scenes from the occupation. He faced it, silhouetted, gesturing at a black hooded form standing over a blindfolded, kneeling man. The dark figure flashed a long knife. John didn’t stick around to see how the scene played out.
We strayed into the Homeland Security section. Above us yet another television prattled on about the various threats to the nation, God and our families, reminding everyone the Threat Level was now at Orange, just a click away from the Dread Red.