Down they went again, down and down. “You are specially privileged, to see what we are about to show you,” Yokim Sarns said. “Few people ever will, few even from the University. We thought it would help you to understand us better.”
The elevator stopped. Gilmer stepped out, stared around. “By the space fiend,” he whispered in soft wonder.
The chamber extended for what had to be kilometers. From floor to ceiling, every shelf was packed full of book-films. “The computer can access them and project them to the appropriate reading room on request,” Maryan Drabel said.
Gilmer walked toward the nearest case. His boots thumped instead of clanging. He glanced down. “This is a rock floor,” he said. “Why isn’t it metal like everything else?”
“The book-film depositories are below the built-up part of Trantor,” Yokim Sarns explained. “There wouldn’t be room for them up there-that space is needed for people. Having them down here also gives them a certain amount of extra protection from catastrophe. Even the blast of a radiation weapon set off overhead probably wouldn’t reach down here.”
“You also have to understand that this is just one book-film chamber among many,” Maryan Drabel added. “We’ve used both dispersed storage and a lot of redundancy to do our best to ensure the collection’s safety. “
Gilmer had a sudden vision of the University folk tunneling like moles for years, for centuries, for millennia, honeycombing the very bedrock of Trantor as they dug storehouses for the knowledge they hoarded. Even worse, in his mind’s eye he imagined all the weight of rock and metal over his head. He’d grown up on a farming world full of wide open spaces, and had spent most of his life in space itself. To imagine everything above collapsing, crushing him so he would leave not even a red smear, made cold sweat start on his brow.
“Shall we go back up?” he said hoarsely.
“Certainly, sire.” Yokim Sarns’s voice was bland. “I hope you do see-now-that we are solely dedicated to the pursuit of learning, and will not interfere in the political life of the Empire so long as it does not invade our campus. On those terms, I think, we can arrange an armistice satisfactory to both sides. “
All Gilmer wanted to do-now-was get away from this catacomb, return to his own men. He noticed that Sarns hadn’t thumbed the elevator button. Maybe Sarns wouldn’t, until Gilmer agreed. “Yes, yes, of course.” He could hear how quickly he spoke, but could not help it. “You have your men put down their arms, and mine will stay away from the University.”
“Good enough,” Sarns said. As if he had been absentminded before-and perhaps that was all he had been-he pushed the button that summoned the elevator. Gilmer rode up in relieved silence; every second the elevator climbed seemed to lift a myria-ton from his shoulders.
When he and his guides returned to the level from which they had begun, a man came briskly toward them with two sheets of parchmentoid. “This is Egril Joons,” Sarns said. “What do you have for us, Egril?”
“Copies of the armistice agreement, for your signature and the Emperor Gilmer’s,” Joons replied. He held out a stylus.
Gilmer took it. He skimmed through one copy of the document, signed it, and was reaching for the other from Yokim Sarns when he suddenly thought to wonder how the armistice terms could be ready now when he’d only agreed to them moments before. “You were snooping,” he growled to Egril Joons.
“My apologies, but yes,” Joons said. “Voice monitoring is part of the security system for the book-films. This time I just made use of it to prepare copies as quickly as possible. I expected that your majesty would have other concerns that would soon need his attention.”
Gilmer recalled how badly he’d wanted to get back to his own troops. “Oh, very well, put that way,” he said. He signed the second copy of the armistice accord. This Joons fellow was righter than he knew, righter than he could know. Trantor had to be made ready to defend itself from space attack, and quickly, or Gilmer the Emperor of the Galaxy would soon be Gilmer the vaporized usurper.
Gilmer the Emperor of the Galaxy rolled up his copy of the agreement, absentmindedly stuck Egril Joons’s stylus in a tunic pocket, and said, sounding quite imperial indeed, “Now if you will be so good as to escort me back to my lines”
“Certainly.” Yokim Sarns handed the other copy of the armistice to Maryan Drabel. “Come this way, if you please.”
From behind, Maryan Drabel thought, Gilmer looked much more like an emperor than from the front. The shining purple cape lent him an air of splendor that did not match the camouflage suit he wore under it. Seen from the front, the cape only seemed a sad bit of stolen booty.
“An emperor shouldn’t look like a thief, “ she said.
“Why not?” Egril loons was still feeling pangs over his purloined stylus. ”That’s what he is.”
“Wizards!” Billye shouted. “You went into the wizards’ lair, and they enspelled you!”
“There’s no such things as wizards!” Gilmer shouted back.
“No? Then why didn’t you get anything worth having out of the University, when they were at our mercy?” she said.
“I did. We aren’t shooting at them any more, and they aren’t shooting at us. They recognize me as Emperor of the Galaxy. What more could I want?”
“To put the fear of cold space and hot death in them, that’s what. If you are the Emperor of the Galaxy, they should act like subjects, not like equals. Can the Emperor have an equal? And you let them.” Billye’s hair flew around her in a copper cloud as she shook her head in bewilderment. “I can’t believe you let them. You have all your men, the whole fleet-why not just crush them for their insolence?”
“Oh, leave me be,” Gilmer said sullenly. He didn’t need to hear this from Billye; he’d already heard it, more politely but the same tune, from Vergis Fenn. Fenn had asked him why, if the University folk were willing to instruct his personnel, that willingness didn’t show up in the armistice document. He’d been sullen with his fleet commander, too, not wanting to admit he hadn’t had the nerve to ask for the change in writing. Why hadn’t he? All the real power was on his side. But still-he hadn’t.
“No, I won’t leave you be,” Billye said now. “Somebody has to put backbone in you, especially since yours looks like it’s fallen out through your-”
“Shut up!” Gilmer roared in a voice that not one of his half-pirate spacemen or troopers dared disobey.
Billye dared. “I won’t either shut up. And there are so wizards. Every other tale that floats in from the Periphery talks about them.”
“Lies about them, you mean. “ Gilmer was just as glad to change the subject, even a little. His head ached. If Billye was going to be this abrasive, maybe he would find himself some pretty little Trantorian chit who’d only open her mouth to say yes.
“They aren’t lies, “ Billye said stubbornly.
“Well, what else could they be?” Gilmer said. “There’s no such thing as a man-sized force screen. There can’t be-the Empire doesn’t have ‘em, and the Empire has everything there is. There’s no way to open a Personal Capsule without having a man’s characteristic on file. So stories that talk about things like that have to be lies. “
“Or else the magicians do those things, and do ‘em by their magic,” Billye said. “ And what else but magic could have made you show the University not just mercy but-but-I don’t know what. Treat them like the place was theirs by right, when the Emperor has charge of everything there is.”
“If he can keep it,” Gilmer muttered. He stalked out of the bedchamber-he’d get no solace here, that was plain. A scoutship message had been waiting for him when he returned from the University grounds: a fleet was gathering not ten parsecs away, a fleet that did not belong to him. If he was going to keep Trantor, he’d have to fight for it allover again. Even a pinprick from the University might hurt him at such a time.
Why couldn’t Billye see that? Rage suddenly filled Gilmer. If she couldn’t, to the space fiend with her! He pointed at the first servant he spotted. “You!”
The man flinched. Unlike Billye, he-all the palace servants-knew Gilmer was no one to trifle with. “Sire?” he asked fearfully.
“Take as many flunkies as you need to, then go toss that big-mouthed wench out of my bedchamber. Find me someone new-I expect you have ways to take care of that. Someone worthy of an Emperor, mind you. But most of all, someone quiet.”
“Yes, sire.” The servant risked a smile. “That, majesty, I think we can handle.”
A room in the Library-not a room Gilmer had seen!
Yokim Sarns, Maryan Drabel, Egril Joons…dean, librarian, dietitian…general, chief of staff, quartermaster…and rather more. They stood before a wall of equations, red symbols on a gray background. Yokim Sarns, whose privilege it was to speak first, said, “I didn’t think it would be that easy.”
“Neither did I,” Maryan Drabel agreed. “I expected-the probabilities predicted-we would have to touch Gilmer’s mind to make sure he would leave us alone here.”
“That courage we saw helped a great deal,” Sarns said. “It let him gain respect for our student-soldiers where a more purely pragmatic man would simply have brushed aside their sacrifice because it conflicted with his own interests. “