"What would you say about an empire failing in a week?"
"That it wasn't a well-built empire, then."
"What about yours, Grandfather?"
"Stop calling me that."
"How well have you built?"
Herman glared at Doon. "No one has ever built better."
"Napoleon?"
"His empire didn't outlive him."
"And yours will outlive you?"
"Even a total incompetent could keep it intact."
Doon laughed. "But we're not talking about a total incompetent, Grandfather. We're talking about your own grandson, who has everything you ever had, only more of it."
Herman stood up. "This meeting is pointless. I have no family. I lost custody of my daughter because I didn't want her. I don't know, and I certainly don't want her offspring. I'll be under somec in a few months, and when I wake up I'll take Italy, whatever damage you've done to it, and build it back."
Doon laughed. "But Herman. Once a country has ceased to exist, it can't be brought back into the game. When I'm through with Italy, it'll be a computer standard country, and you won't be able to buy it."
"Look, boy," Herman said coldly, "do you plan to keep me here against my will?"
"Youre the one who asked for a meeting."
"I regret it."
"Seven days, Grandfather, and Italy will be gone."
"Inconceivable."
"I actually plan to do it in four days, but something might go wrong."
"Of all criminals, the worst are those who see beauty only as an opportunity for destruction."
"Good-bye, Grandfather."
But at the door, Herman turned to Doon and pleaded, "Why are you doing this? Why don't you stop?"
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"Can't you wait until next time? Can't you let me have Italy for this waking?"
Doon only smiled. "Grandfather, I know how you play. If you had Italy this waking, you'd take over the world, wouldn't you? And then the game would end."
"Of course."
"That's why I have to destroy Italy now-- while I still can."
"Why Italy? Why not go ruin somebody else's empire?"
"Because, Grandfather, it's no challenge to destroy the weak."
Herman left, and the door slid shut behind him. He went back to the tube, and it took him to his home station. At home, the holo of the globe was still dominated by pink. Herman stopped and looked at it, and even as bg watched, a large section of Siberia changed colors. He no longer raged at Doon's incompetence. The boy was obviously compensating for a miserably religious childhood, which he blamed on his grandfather. But no amount of talent the boy might have could possibly dismember Italy. The computer was too rigidly realistic. Once the computer-simulated populace of Italy realized what Doon's character, the dictator, was doing, the unchanging laws of interaction between government and governed would oust him. He would be compelled to sell, and Herman could buy. And rebuild all the damage.
England rebelled again, and Herman went to bed.
But he woke gasping, and remembered that in his dream he had been crying. Why? But even as he tried to remember, the dream slipped from his mind's grasp, and he could only remember that it had something to do with his former wife.
He went to the computer and cleared it of the game. Birniss Humbol. The computer summoned her picture to the screen, and Herman looked as she went through a sequence of facial expressions. She was beautiful then, and the computer awakened memories.
A courtship that had been oddly chaste-- perhaps religion was already in Birniss's blood, only to surface fully in her daughter. Their wedding night had been their first intercourse, and Herman laughed at how it had been-- Birniss, worldly and wise, so strangely timid as she confessed her unpreparedness to her husband. And Herman, tender and careful, leading her through the mysteries. And at the end, her asking him, "Is that all?"
"It'll be better later," he had said, more than a little hurt.
"It wasn't half as bad as I expected," she answered. "Do it again."
They had done everything together. Everything, that is, but the game. And it was a crucial time for Italy. He began going to bed later and later, talking to her less, and even then talking of nothing but Italy and the affairs of his small but beautiful world.
There was no other man when she divorced him, and to satisfy a whim of curiosity he looked up her name in the vital statistics bank. He wasn't surprised when the computer told him that she had never remarried, though she hadn't kept his name.
Had there been something remarkable about their marriage, so that she'd never marry again? Or was it simply that she had only trusted one man, and then found that marriage wasn't what she'd wanted-- or sex, either, by extension. Her hurt had poisoned their daughter; her hurt had poisoned Doon. Poor boy, Herman thought. The sins of the fathers. But the divorce, however regrettable, had been inevitable. To save the marriage, Herman would have had to sacrifice the game. And never in history, real or feigned, had there been such a thing of beauty as his Italy. Dissertations had been written on it, and he knew that he was acclaimed by the students of alternate histories as the greatest genius ever to have played. "A match for Napolean, Julius, or Augustus." He remembered that one, and likewise the statement of one professor who had pleaded for an interview until Herman's vanity no longer allowed him to resist: "Herman Nuber, not even America, not even England, not even Byzantium compared to your Italy for stability, for grace, for power." High praise, coming from a man who had specialized in real European history, with the chauvinism of the historian for the era he studied.
Doon. Abner Doon, And when the lad had proven himself no match for his grandfather's gifts as a builder, what would happen to him?
Herman found himself, as he dozed at the computer, daydreaming of a reconciliation of some kind. Abner Doon embracing him and saying, Grandfather, you built too well. You built for all time. Forgive my presumption.
Even Herman's dreams, he realized as he awoke, even my dreams require the surrender of everyone around me. Birniss's image was still on the screen. He erased her, and began to scan Italy.
The entire empire was being swept by revolution from one end to the other. Even in the homeland on the Italic Peninsula. Herman stared in disbelief. It had only been overnight, and suddenly all the revolutions had come at once.
It was unprecedented in history. How could the computer have been so mad? It had to be a malfunction. Many empires had faced rebellion, but never, never so general-- never universal revolution. Even the army was in mutiny. And the enemies of Italy were madly plunging over the borders to take advantage of the situation.
"Grey!" Herman shouted over the phone. "Grey, do you know what hes doing?"
"How can I help it?" Grey asked nastily. "All the gamesplayers on my staff have been chattering about it all morning."
"How did he do it?"
"Look, Herman, you're the games expert. I don't even play, all right? And I've got work to do. Did you meet with him?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"He's my grandson."
"I wondered if he'd tell you."
"You knew?"
"Of course," Grey answered. "And I had his psychologicat profile. Do you think I would have let you meet him alone if I hadn't been sure he had no intention of harming you?"
"Not harming me? What about those walking turds he had beat me to a pudding last week?"
"Retaliation, Herman, that's all. He's a good retaliator."
"You're fired!" Herman shouted, slamming the button on the console that disconnected the conversation. And he watched grimly, hour after hour, as the loyal fragments of Italy's army attempted to cope with the mutiny and revolution and invasion all at once. It was impossible, and by late afternoon, the only pink areas on the globe were in Gaul, Iberia, Italy itself, and a small pocket in Poland.