He broke off, as the memory of his time in the abandoned room
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blurred the present. "Hahn got me to a hospital. And I sent the order to have you arrested before you could get `>334' back to Foursgate and start blackmailing the
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Hegemony." It all sounds so simple. Like a lie. He watched his brothers' faces tighten and close.
"What did you do with the stardrive?" SB asked, finally.
"Just what I said I'd do. I turned the sample over to the Chief Justice, along with a full report." He could barely even remember the circumstances, anymore. After his coded call to the Chief Inspector, they had come to World's End and taken him back to Foursgate, into a hell of reconstructive surgery and questions, rehabilitative therapy and questions, interviews and interrogations and questions, questions, questions.. . . "My hypothesis has been confirmed."
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Their faces turned as desolate as the wastes of World's
End. "And what did it get you?" SB said bitterly, looking around the room. "Nothing."
"On the contrary." Gundhalinu smiled. "You didn't hear the sergeant--I'm quite a hero. They can't do enough for me. They're about to promote me to commander.
I expect I could have just about anything I asked for, at this point." And maybe I knew it would happen this way all along. He watched their faces, and felt his smile turn to iron. And that was why I could never let you be a part of it.
"Then, why don't you take it?" HK said. "You said there were things you wanted. You're just like we are!"
"No," Gundhalinu said softly, "I'm not. But you're right, there are things I want. I've already gotten one or two of them. But most of the things I want just aren't that simple. They take time."
And planning, and patience.
. . . And the certainty that he could change the web of other people's manipulation that was already tightening around him; that he could make it into a ladder, leading him ever upward toward his goal.
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"What about us?" SB asked.
Gundhalinu looked back at them almost absently. He folded his arms across his aching chest.
"Well, I thought
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about charging you with attempted murder, and maybe treason."
"But we're your bro--!" HK bit his lips, his freckles crimsoning.
" 'Blood is thicker than water'?" Gundhalinu smiled again, a rictus. "I know. I've seen a lot of my own lately."
"You still owe us something." SB sat down in a chair, his eyes glittering. "You'd never have gotten out of
Sanctuary alive without us. ... You never would have gone there in the first place."
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"Maybe not." Gundhalinu shifted his weight against the hard edge of the desk. "It's a question without an answer, SB. Just like the question of what sort of justice you really deserve. I know what the law would say. But I also know . . ." He looked down at the blood drying on his palm.
He raised his head again. "I know that no one comes out of World's End unchanged. The only harm you've really done is to me. And I'm not the one to judge you." He stared through them at the wall.
"I've made some arrangements." He felt more than saw them stiffen. "Our family holdings are being returned
--to me." "Little enough to ask," they had told him; not knowing. . . . "By the time you get back to Kharemough you'll have a home to go back to. You'll have a sufficient annual allowance to let you live very comfortably.
It will be supervised by someone else, of course."
"Thank you, BZ. It's more than we deserve. . . . We'll
. . . we'll . . ." HK fumbled with the fastening of his coveralls. SB said nothing. Gundhalinu pushed away from the desk. "Get up, SB. I never said you could sit down." He watched his brother rise from the chair. SB
stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded, imperceptibly; his mouth pulled back in a sardonic smile.
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"I guess you have changed."
"I'll take that as a compliment." Gundhalinu folded
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his arms, holding his side. "If either of you ever attempts to alter the arrangements I've set up, you'll both be stripped of all class rights and completely disinherited.
If either of you ever attempts to profit further from the discovery of the stardrive--if either of Page 180
you ever makes public any claim at all--I'll have you on trial for charges you never even dreamed of." He pointed toward the desk terminal. "I'll be following you to Kharemough, soon enough.
Your records will always be on file, wherever
I go. Don't ever think I won't be able to find you.
Or that I'll ever forget what you did to me."
SB glared. "That's blackmail."
"I prefer to think of it as the spirit of the law, as
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opposed to the letter." Gundhalinu shrugged. He turned, reaching across his desk to summon the guard. The door to the office opened, and a patrolman entered. "You have your orders?"
The patrolman nodded.
"And you have yours." He looked at his brothers for the last time. And then he turned his back on them, staring out at the rain until they were gone.
When he turned back again, he was almost disappointed that he did not find the ghost of his father waiting.
Fire Lake had only made his ghosts visible; they had been real, and he had been living with them, all of his life.
He sat down in his seat again, propping his head in his hands. "Well, there, Father, it's done.
Have I laid you to rest at last?" The silvery music of the antique watch filled his ears. He looked up; he shook his head slowly, leaning back in the chair.
He held the watch in his hand. The past is always with us; even if it's in ruins. He sighed. He had obeyed his father's
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final wish, and the taste in his mouth was gall. His father had been weak, rigid . . . human. Not any kind of a god.
The act itself was as meaningless to him now as the value 224
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system that made it necessary. He looked down at his wrists. The smooth brown skin still bore a faint pinkish cast left by the cosmetic surgery. He touched his forehead, another scar smoothed over, and pushed restlessly to his feet.
The window was waiting for him, covered with tears. He went to it, and pressed his throbbing hand against its cold comfort. Looking out, he saw the Pantheon illuminated by a rare shaft of late-afternoon sun.
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He wondered whether the crowds would take it for an omen.
Meaningless--the ceremony tonight, all the rest of it;
only the ornaments of vanity disguising the naked body of the truth: An overeducated madman with a death
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wish had stumbled on the secret of Fire Lake. They say it takes one to know one. He shook his head.
He had changed everything by unraveling the secret of the Lake, by giving the stardrive back to the
Hegemony. In the weeks since it had happened he had barely had time to realize how much.