The Specials fanned out and their captain came trotting over. “We can’t cover you well here, Academician sir.”
“These are ordinary people, not assassins. They had no way of predicting that I’d be here.”
“Emperor says cover you, we cover you.”
Dors rapped back smartly, “I’ll handle the close-in threats. I’m able, I assure you.”
The captain’s mouth twisted sourly, but he gave himself a moment before saying, “I heard something about that. Still-”
“Have your men use their range detectors vertically. A shaped charge on the layers below and above could catch us.”
“Uh, yes’m.” He trotted off.
They passed by the jigsaw walls of the Farhahal Quadrant. A wealthy ancient had become obsessed with the notion that as long as his estate was unfinished, he would not himself finish-that is, die. Whenever an addition neared completion, he ordered up more. Eventually the tangle of rooms, runways, vaults, bridges and gardens became an incoherent motley stuck into every cranny of the original, rather simple design. When Farhahal eventually did “finish,” a tower half built, bickering by his heirs and lawyerly plundering of the estate for their fees brought the quadrant low. Now it was a fetid warren, visited only by the predatory and the unwary.
The Specials pulled in tight and the captain urged them to get into a robo. Hari grudgingly agreed. Dors had the concentrated look that meant she was worried. They sped in silence through shadowy tunnels. There were two stops and in the brilliantly lit stations Hari saw rats scurrying for shelter as the pod eased to a halt. He silently pointed them out to Dors.
“Brrrr,” she said. “One would think that at the very center of the Empire we could eliminate pests.”
“Not these days,” Hari said, though he suspected the rats had thrived even at the height of Empire. Rodents cared little for grandeur.
“I suppose they’ve been our eternal companions,” Dors said somberly. “No world is free of them.”
“In these tunnels, the long-distance pods fly so fast that occasionally rats get sucked into the air-breathing engines.”
Dors said uneasily, “That could damage the engines, even crash the pods.”
“No holiday for the rat, either.”
They passed through a Sector whose citizens abhorred sunlight, even the wan splashes which came down through the layers by radiance tubes. Historically, Dors told him, this had arisen from fears of its ultraviolet component, but the phobia seemed to go deeper than a mere health issue.
Their pod slowed and passed along a high ramp above open, swarming vaults. No natural light shafts brought illumination, only artificial phosphor glows. The Sector was officially named Kalanstromonia, but its citizens were known worldwide as Spooks. They seldom traveled, and their bleached faces stood out in crowds. Gazing down at them, they looked to Hari like swarms of grubs feeding on shadowy decay.
The Imperial Zonal Reception was inside a dome in the Julieen Sector. He and Dors entered with the Specials, who then gave way to five men and women wearing utterly inconspicuous business dress. These nodded to Hari and then appeared to forget him, moving down a broad rampway and chatting with each other.
A woman at the grand doorway made too much of his entrance. Music descended around him in a sound cloud, an arrangement of the Streeling Anthem blended subtly with the Helicon Symphony; This attracted attention from the crowds below-exactly what he did not want. A protocol team smoothly took the handoff from the door attendants, escorting him and Dors to a balcony. He was happy for the chance to look at the view.
From the peak of the dome the vistas were startling. Spirals descended to plateaus so distant he could barely make out a forest and paths. The ramparts and gardens there had drawn millennia of spectators, including, a guide told him, 999,987 suicides, all carefully tabulated through many centuries.
Now that the number approached a million, the guide went on with relish, attempts occurred nearly every hour. A man had been stopped just short of leaping that very day, wearing a gaudy holosuit programmed to flash I MADE THE MILLION after he struck.
“They seem so eager,” the guide concluded with what seemed to Hari a kind of pride.
“Well,” Hari remarked, trying to get rid of the man, “suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism.”
The guide nodded wisely, unperturbed, and added, “Also, it does give them something to contribute to. That must be a consolation.”
The protocol team had, all planned out for him, an orbit through the vast reception. Meet X, greet Y, bow to Z.
“Say nothing about the Judena Zone crisis,” an aide insisted. This was easy, since he had never heard of it.
The appetite-enhancers were excellent, the food that followed even better (or seemed so, which was the point of the enhancers), and he took a stim offered by a gorgeous woman.
“You could get through this entire evening just nodding and smiling and agreeing with people,” Dors said after the first half hour.
“It’s tempting to do just that,” Hari whispered as they followed the protocol lieutenant to the next bunch of Zonal figures. The air in the vast, foggy dome was freighted with negotiations advanced and bargains struck.
The Emperor arrived with full pomp. He would pay the traditional hour’s tribute, then by ancient custom leave before anyone else was permitted to. Hari wondered if the Emperor ever wanted to linger in the middle of an interesting conversation. Cleon was well schooled in emperorhood, though, so the issue probably never came up. Cleon greeted Hari effusively, kissed Dors’ hand, and then seemed to lose interest in them within two minutes, moving on with his entourage to another circle of expectant faces.
Hari’s next group proved different. Not the usual mix of diplomats, aristos, and anxious brownclad assistants, his lieutenant told him, but high figures. “People with punch,” the man whispered.
A large, muscular man was holding forth at the center of a circle, a dozen faces raptly following his every word. The protocol lieutenant tried to whisk them past, but Hari stopped her. “That’s…”
“Betan Lamurk, sir.”
“Knows how to hold a crowd.”
“Indeed, sir. Would you like a formal introduction?”
“No, just let me listen.”
It was always a good idea to size up an opponent before he knew he was being watched. Hari’s father had taught him that trick, just before his first matheletic competition. Such techniques had not managed to save his father, but they worked in the milder groves of academe.
Black hair invaded his broad brow like a pincer attack, two pointed wedges reaching down to nearly the end of his eyebrows. His hooded eyes were widely spaced and blazed intently from a rigging of mirth wrinkles. A slender nose seemed to point to his proudest feature, a mouth assembled from varying parts. The lower lip curled in full, impudent humor. The upper, thin and muscular, curled downward in a curve that verged on a sneer. A viewer would know the upper lip could overrule the lower at any moment, shifting mood abruptly-a disquieting effect which could not have been bettered if he had designed it himself.
Hari realized quickly that, of course, Lamurk had.
Lamurk was discussing some detail of interZonal trade in the Orion spiral arm, a hot issue before the High Council at the moment. Hari cared nothing about trade, except as a variable in stochastic equations, so he simply watched the man’s manner.
To underline a point Lamurk would raise his hands over his head, fingers open, voice rising. Then, his point made, his voice evened out and he lowered them to chest height, held precisely side by side. As his well-modulated voice became deeper and more reflective, he moved the hands apart. Then-voice rising again-his hands soared to head level and windmilled one around the other, the subject now complex, the listener thereby commanded to pay close attention.
He kept close eye contact with the whole audience, a piercing gaze sweeping the circle. A last point, a quick touch of humor, grin flashing, sure of himself-a pause for the next question.