“Let him be exposed to a lethal infection,” said the empress mother. “Let a contagion be devised, which might rack planets. Let plagues be engineered. He perishes then, one victim amongst countless others, provoking no suspicion.”
“Plagues might do to punish troublesome worlds,” said Iaachus, “but there is little point in expending an ocean of poison when but a single drop is needed.”
“But a single drop might provoke suspicion?” said Atalana.
“I fear so,” said Iaachus.
“Let an accident be arranged,” said the empress mother.
“I have arranged things differently,” said the Arbiter of Protocol. “An indirect blow, which does not seem a blow, may strike most deeply. An unarmed man amongst armed men is little to be feared.”
“I do not understand,” said the empress mother.
“We remove the means from Julian and Julian is without means.”
“Dear Iaachus?” said the empress mother.
“Julian’s plans clearly involve the enlistment of barbarians, preferably in large, expanding numbers, and this enlistment, as he envisions it, begins with, and is contingent on, the services of the barbarian, Ottonius.”
“I see now,” said the empress mother, “why you have requested this unusual private audience.”
“To report, of course, great lady,” said Iaachus, “now that the thing is done and the utmost secrecy is no longer required.”
“You have slain the barbarian captain, Ottonius,” she said.
“In a way most natural, and most unlikely to provoke suspicion, in a venue far from civilization, and by means of an instrument most subtle and suitable, a poisoned blade in the privacy of a chamber, wielded by an agent most unlikely to be suspected, a free woman posing as a mere female slave.”
“He reaches out, the lusting brute, and discovers that he has in his arms not a warm, quivering, yielding, moaning, meaningless vessel of pleasure, but death.”
“Yes,” said Iaachus.
“Where could a free woman be found to risk this?” she asked.
“One was found,” he said.
“Some baggage of the humiliori?” she said.
“No,” he said, “a fallen patrician, even of the senatorial class.”
“Interesting,” said the empress mother.
“Doubtless she expected to be extracted safely and richly rewarded,” she said.
“Certainly,” said Iaachus.
“You must beware,” she said. “Such a woman would know much. Under fearsome interrogation, she might incriminate others. She might, too, for greater treasure, threaten betrayal, threaten exposure.”
“Fear not,” said Iaachus. “It was never intended that she be extracted safely, nor intended that she be rewarded, in the least.”
“You left her to her fate?”
“Of course.”
“You are a cunning rascal,” she said. “But I am troubled.”
“How so, great lady?” asked the Arbiter of Protocol.
“It seems a shame to use a free woman where a slave would do.”
“She thought herself free, to be sure,” said the Arbiter of Protocol, “but, unbeknownst to herself, she had been enslaved.”
“Excellent,” said the empress mother, “the stupid little fool, a slave and not knowing it!”
“Many women,” said Iaachus, “for example, by imperial listings, enslavement proscriptions, personal edicts, and such, have been made slaves without their knowledge. They go about their lives as usual, suspecting nothing, until they are seized, and find the collar on their necks.”
“You are sure this delicate matter has been accomplished successfully?” asked the empress mother.
“Yes,” said Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol. “Captain Phidias, captain of the Narcona, which bore the barbarian to Tangara, and his two colleagues, two of his officers, officers Lysis and Corelius, have assured me on the matter.”
“Excellent,” said the empress mother.
11
In order to clarify certain events, soon to be recounted, it seems to me germane to deal briefly with certain issues, scientific, historical, and institutional.
There is no doubt that the Telnarian empire existed, or exists. Which is not clear. Is it still with us, somewhere? Much depends on the rooms of space and the mansions of time. Surely evidence abounds in its many dimensions, archaic words, place names, linguistic affinities, customs, day names and month names, holidays, folk tales, legends, a thousand annals, and chronicles, coins, artifacts, the remains of fountains, now run dry for centuries, fallen statues, perhaps of unknown heroes or gods, half-effaced inscriptions, perhaps recounting glories, scraped into unintelligibility by zealots, the watchers or guardians, crumbled walls, damp, worn, overgrown with moss, the ruins of aqueducts, such things. One does not know if the Telnarian empire was founded here, or if it intersected with our world for a time, perhaps in some form of transit. Perhaps it was here, while it passed through. It is hard to know about these things. Are there worlds, and tangled histories of worlds, diverse lines of reality, which might, for a time, touch one another, and intertwine, however briefly? Could it disappear, and reemerge? Is there a circuit in such things, as some believe, as in the routes of comets?
Sometimes one fears the sky, dark with ships.
The orthodoxy on this point is clear, an orthodoxy which I, of course, celebrate and unhesitantly affirm. Make no mistake in this. I, as all good and wise men, subscribe to the correct view. Who would be so unwise as to do otherwise? The countless forms of evidence, so abundant, so seemingly incontrovertible, of so many kinds, scattered over its thousands of latimeasures, is fraudulent, primarily contrived, however inexplicably, or pointlessly, by heretics. Perhaps there was, for a time, a Telnarian empire, but it was a small, untoward sort of thing, a matter of villages, or isolated towns, at best a temporary step, soon left behind, on the path to our contemporary world of simplicity and pastoral perfection. One need only go to the casement, to see the peasants contentedly toiling with their hoes in the field, see the smoke emerging from the chimneys of the tiny, happy cottages in the distance, hear the hourly, monitory chimes of the bells in the watch tower.
We know the stories told of the Telnarian empire, of its galactic tentacles, its thousands of worlds, and such, must then, at least for the most part, be mythical. What a strange way they had of thinking about the pleasant lamps in the sky! It is quite possible they did not even grasp the fact that the universe was created for us, a fact which becomes clear when it is recognized that our world is the single, only world, and that it lies at the exact center of the universe, where there is room for only one world, of course, just one, ours, this indisputably demonstrating our special and privileged position in the cosmos.
How fortunate for our vanity!
How humble we must be, finding ourselves so situated, despite our unworthiness, our lacks and faults, at the very pinnacle and center of all time, truth, and reality!
So reads the orthodoxy.
Who can believe such nonsense?
Almost all who have been so instructed.
Fruitful and abundant are the comforting joys of abject ignorance!
Why bleed on the blade of truth?
I shall pause for a time.
The watcher has been announced.
I do not think I need fear him, at least overmuch.
He is a good man, and, happily, cannot read. I shall reiterate the declarations which he requires, and share some kana with him. He looks forward to that. I must not disappoint him. There is some protection, of course, in being a recluse, an eccentric inquirer into obscure things, presumably innocent, antique things. Too, my needs are simple, and I have little to do with others. I have little to fear. I am harmless. I threaten no one. I am safe.