The Rebel of Rhada (13 page)

“The speed of starships is great. But it is finite. We can never catch the Imperial in space.”

Ariane sat in silence, the torchlight bright on her face. She picked up a crystal and turned it over in her fingers. “What is this thing, Cavour? Is it a jewel?”

“A natural prism, Queen.”

“What good is it?”

Cavour smiled. “Let me show you.” He moved the burning spirit lamp and dipped a length of thin rod into a powder. “Ground god-metal, Ariane,” he explained. “Now hold the crystal to your eye and watch the flame through it. What do you see?”

Ariane exclaimed with pleasure. “A rainbow, Cavour. A band of light from red to blue--no, more than that--to purple.”

“A spectrum, Queen.” Cavour touched the flame with the powder-laden tip. “Now what do you see?”

“The same thing. No, a different rainbow. The colors have changed, and there are dark lines in it.” She took the crystal from her eye and regarded the warlock curiously. “What happened to the light?”

“The god-metal burned and made a different sort of light. The prism, which seems to spread light into its component parts, changed. The light from burning god-metal, when seen through a crystal like that one, is always the same.” He looked at the girl speculatively. “Do you find that remarkable?”

“Always
the same?”

The warlock nodded. “Powdered gold has a particular pattern. So has lead. Many things. It is easiest to test the theory with pure metals that have been ground. But certain gases--those that will burn--behave the same way through the crystal.”

“But that’s”--Ariane groped for a suitable word-- “magic.”

“No, Queen. Not magic. It seems to be natural law.”

“But you could look through the crystals and learn what things are made of, couldn’t you? For example, if god-metal and gold were mixed--you could tell?”

“If I had a way of preserving accurately what I saw through the prism. If I could paint it, say. Or capture the image in some other way.”

Ariane was smiling, intrigued. “Why, you could--you could even look at a sun and tell what was burning there.”

“Yes, Queen. I could.” He paused, considered, and then went on. “In fact, I have. Certain stars, for example, look almost the same through the prism. Earth’s Sol, for example, can scarcely be told from Rhada or Astraris. Sarissa’s sun is different, with less hydrogen burning in it and more metals.”

“But that is a marvel, Cavour,” the girl said excitedly. “If that’s so, you could survey the stars and discover which of them could support terraform planets--isn’t that so? You could do that without ever once leaving your own world!”

“You go too fast, Queen,” Cavour said, laughing. “In theory, it could be done. But there are far too many stars for that.” He stood and held her chair. “Come, look at this.” He led her to a diagram that covered one entire wall of his quarters, from floor to overhead.

“The galaxy?” Ariane asked.

Cavour said with pleasure, “You have the makings of a scientist, Queen.”

Ariane frowned at that and made the sign of the Star. She reminded herself that she was, after all, talking to a warlock. Even if he had been bonded to Kier and Kier’s family for most of his life, he was still a magician and a sinner.

“Look at this.” Cavour touched a single small dot, white on the dark background. As she looked at the drawing, she was struck by the infinite pains that must have gone into its composition. There were literally hundreds of thousands of tiny etched marks. They formed a great spiraling pattern.

“Earth?” she asked.

“Sol. On this scale, Earth is less than a dust mote. It could not be seen,” Cavour said. “Step back and regard the galaxy, Queen--or my own crude approximation of it. You see, we have no numbers large enough to express the actual number of stars. These marks represent only a few of them.”

“But the Empire consists of no more than five thousand worlds--if that,” Ariane murmured doubtfully.

“Nearer two thousand, Queen.”

“But this--” She indicated the immense panorama he had etched on his wall.

Cavour shrugged. “I once suggested that starships travel at a speed of 200,000 kilometers per hour. Warlocks and Navigators laughed at me, because it would mean that the galaxy is more than twelve million miles across--” He shrugged. “But perhaps speed is not what we imagine it to be. Perhaps distance is not to be measured in kilometers or miles. Look at the galaxy as I have found it to be. Why, we have not yet even visited a third of the worlds in this one spiral arm. A hundred lifetimes would not suffice, Queen.”

“But the Empire--”

Cavour touched the star map with a finger. “Here is the Rhadan Palatinate. Here the Theocracy of Algol.” Far across the map his finger touched a cluster of stars. “Here is Deneb, and here, half across the spiral, is Fomalhaut. Here is Earth, and across the sky, on the Rim, is Sarissa. The Empire isn’t
how many,
Queen. It is
where.
The ancients understood that men could never actually
conquer
the galaxy. Can a grain of sand conquer the beach? But by being in certain
places,
man could englobe his galaxy-- as a confederation of cities situated on the shores of a great ocean might dominate the waters they could never truly occupy. That is what your empire is, Queen.”

Ariane felt the heavy beating of her heart. Never before had she imagined the vastness of her world, the immensity of her dominion. Never before had she considered the tenuousness of the thread with which man sought to bind and control these unbelievably far-flung dominions. A few thousand starships. A half-educated priesthood. A few million fighting men. With these, insolent as it seemed, man imagined he could dominate the stars.

Yet once, no one really knew how long ago, man had indeed dominated the galaxy--or most of it. The mighty kings of the Golden Age had ruled an empire at least a thousand times greater than the realm Glamiss the Magnificent and a hundred captains like Kier and his father had carved from the ruins of the ancient world.

That night, alone in her spartan quarters near the outer hull of the Rhadan starship, Ariane listened to the humming whisper of the vessel and tried to imagine the vastness that lay beyond the pulsing god-metal of the wall. She could lay her hand on the cold surface and sense the holy power that pervaded the swiftly moving ship. All her life she had been familiar with the great starships. They were simply
there,
as they had always been. But this night, after listening to Cavour, she found that she was conscious of uncounted millions of ghosts--the shades of those men like gods who built the starships, who had actually englobed the known galaxy and ruled the mightiest forces in the universe. It seemed to her that these spirits whispered to her in the half-darkness of the metal cabin, their disembodied forms dancing in the smoky light of the tiny oil lantern. Captains, kings, and warriors--ranks of them standing to infinity--and all murmuring to her of destiny and queen-ship and the dim future of the race of men. “Rule, Ariane,” they seemed to say. “But
know
and
seek
and
understand--”

And this was surely heresy and counsel of deadly danger, for had not sin, the destroyer of planets, crushed even the god-men of the First Empire?

Ariane opened her eyes wide in the stillness of the ship’s night. “No,” she said aloud, her heart beating hard. “Men can’t live on the wreckage of the past.” The Empire--
her
empire--must go forward to another Golden Age.

But first,
she thought with Vykan practicality,
it must be won.

As specialists in the programming of cybernetic organisms, you must bear in mind that you are dealing, in fact, with a machine: a system that relies for motivation on strictest Aristotelian logic. Any sociologist will tell you that this sort of directness can cause immense mischief in human society. Therefore, remember that your charges do not operate within the customary “emotional” and “moral” parameters that govern true men. The cybernetic organism will complete the programmed task
at all costs
. If programmed by a conscientious and properly trained technician, the cyborg is a useful and productive bio-organism. If indoctrinated by a savage, it would be a dangerous and--

Golden Age fragment found at Biotech, Bellerive

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

Dawn Age proverb

Today I read to Tallan the “Thoughts” of Mao, a tribal chieftain of the Dawn Age. Equation: Survival = power violence. One wonders--were Mao, Attila, Hitler, Stalin cyborgs? The
Warls
do not say.

From the notebooks of Kelber of Sarissa

Landro waited.

He was alone now, in a high-windowed room deep inside the fortress of Sardis, and he was still stunned by the swiftness with which he had been separated from his men and brought to this forbidding place.

It had been a mistake; he knew that now. Or rather a series of mistakes. And now the event that he and his royal mistress had dreamed might found a dynasty would bring about something very different--a thing that no one might have foreseen--a cyborg sovereign, an artificial man standing astride the star paths. It was incredible, but it was happening.

Landro stood and paced the silent chamber. The walls were thickly nitred, and the air hung heavily, tasting of salt and decaying reeds. He brushed his eyes with trembling fingers, knowing that he was afraid, dreadfully afraid.

He had stepped from his starship onto a landing ground so thickly garrisoned with warmen from a dozen star kingdoms that his vessel was taken in minutes--without a fight.

All Mariana had demanded that Kelber instruct the cyborg to do, he had done. The star kings of Lyra, Al-debaran, Deneb, Altair, Betelgeuse, and half a dozen smaller kingdoms had gathered their forces on Sarissa under Tallan’s command. The troopships were loading. The invasion of Earth and the occupation of Nyor were near--far nearer than anyone on Earth could have imagined. But the standard they would carry was Tallan’s-- not Mariana’s.

How could it have happened, Landro asked himself. How could our weapon have turned so in our hand?

A cold wind from the marshes stirred the hangings and made the light of the single torch flutter. Shadows danced about the room.

He had not seen the cyborg for more than three years, and the change in the android was terrifying. It was little wonder that the Lyri, Altairi, Denebians, and Betelgeui had rallied to him. It was, after all, Landro thought bleakly, the way we planned it.

The ancient black arts had created a warleader who was more than a man. And I stumbled into his hands, Landro thought bitterly, because Mariana said,
Go, and make all things right.

I have found my death here,
Landro thought. He shivered and turned away from the high, barred window and the marsh-scented wind.

Treason and murder had not shaken the Vegan’s steadfastness, but the presence of the cyborg filled him with dread.

Tallan stood in the doorway. Landro had been fitfully dozing, and now he woke with a start, his heart set to fluttering wildly by the huge figure in the stone arch.

Landro shuddered. The black arts were man’s bane. The priest-Navigators warned, and men ignored the warnings and turned everything wrong way to, and fire rained from the sky.
Mariana,
he thought,
we should not have invoked the powers of sin. The Warls have betrayed us as they have betrayed men since time began . . .

“Landro.” The cyborg’s voice was deep and sonorous.

“The time for departure is near. We will speak now, you and I.”

Landro wondered for a moment if he dared to brazen it through and invoke Mariana’s name as Queen-Empress here. Did the cyborg know he was created specifically at her command to lead the star kings in battle? Did he care? The Veg had to suppress a desire to giggle nervously. What am I hoping for, he wondered. Gratitude from this--this
thing!

“Your vessel has been incorporated into my star-fleet,” Tallan said. Against the light in the corridor, it was impossible to see his face. He was like a monstrous shadow blocking escape. “You will travel with me.”

Landro drew a deep breath and took himself in hand. He was surprised that his voice was steady. “Why have I been detained like this, Tallan? What explanation have you to give me?”

The melodious voice seemed to hold overtones of irony, and that was all wrong. How could a cyborg, a manufactured man, speak so?

“Why, no explanation, Landro,” Tallan said. “I was made to triumph in war. It is my only purpose. Your presence here, unasked and unannounced, is a disturbing factor. I have taken the necessary steps to correct the imbalance in the equation.”

Landro felt the icy touch of doom in the reasoned, coldly logical words. “You belong to Mariana,” he said thinly.

The cyborg stepped into the room. The fluttering light struck glints from his harness and weapons. “Let me give you a history lesson, Landro of Vega,” Tallan said. “Hear me well, and you may understand what has happened to you and to the woman who calls herself Queen-Empress now.” The shadows played over the handsome, cold-eyed face. “Long ago, in the three thousandth year of the First Empire, there were many millions like me. We had been created by man to serve him, to do his fighting, to amuse him, to run his world. In that time men made the same mistake you are making now. They thought us without emotions--no love, no anger, no
hate.
We were things to be used and discarded. We had no rights, no possessions, no homes. Your kind, the exploiters, were simple Aristotelians. And because this was so, they assumed that the cyborg, created in man’s best image, was the same.” He looked down at the Vegan with unveiled contempt. “Man couldn’t believe that he had created something that would harm him. Yet all of man’s inventions have sooner or later harmed him. Every machine human beings have ever built has killed men. And with the cyborg they created a machine, if you will, with volition and the ability to learn as men do. Faster and more thoroughly, but with the same ability to make judgments and choices.” He paused for a moment regarding Landro coldly. “And in that three thousandth year of the time you call the Golden Age, the cyborgs revolted and made war on men. It was a bitter war, and many men died before the Cyborg Revolt was put down. From that time until now, no cyborgs have lived.” The eyes seemed to burn in the beautifully fashioned face. “Note that I say
lived,
Landro. Because I am alive. My life is not exactly as yours, but it is true life. And because this is so, because I am a synthesis of a living being and a precisely logical microelectronic brain, I have two things that no ‘machine’ has had for four thousand years: ambition to rule and the capability to govern men far better than they can govern themselves.” He looked without expression at the gathering darkness beyond the high window. “Only one man could have stopped me. Kelber was trying to create another cyborg. I could not let this happen. Not yet. When Nyor is taken and all the star kings know me as supreme warleader, we shall wipe away four millennia and begin again to build a race of cyborgs. But not as servants this time, Landro--as masters.”