The Admiral grinned. “I’m farsighted. It’s what makes me a good psychohistorian. I laid in the mental hooks I’d need sixty years ago—when I was a student.”
“After sixty years of nonuse your wetware hooks will have atrophied.”
“No. I used motor-memory. For instance, I danced the haesila just downtime with a girl younger than Mer. How long has it been since I even thought about the haesila? Motor-memory doesn’t forget. You’re stalling. This isn’t the delicate stuff. You won’t be trying to connect me to a new fam personality—just some algorithms.”
With a long face, Mer disappeared around the comer into Rigone’s study. Rigone just sat there, thinking. “All right. I can do a crib sheet. I haven’t got the latest tech but—”
“Get it. You’ll make more on this one than off a year’s clutch of students.”
Rigone took in a painful breath, but Konn could see the reluctant agreement—and the cunning. If someone was going to subsidize a tech upgrade for him, that would become a remunerative part of his normal business. “I have just the crib sheet for you. Put out by a very enterprising student I know. Give me a decawatch or so to slouch a copy. The up-to-date tech will take longer.” He muttered to himself unhappily. “I hope that’s all you need—but is there anything else?”
Hahukum sipped his Armazin. “No.” But, of course, if a man felt he wasn’t giving all that he might the proper thing to do was to ask him for more. “Let’s just say that if ever you happen upon a clever student who is willing to do a little kidnapping on the side—and who doesn’t believe everything he’s told—send him to me. You can make that a long-term standing order. I’m only looking for the very best.”
“You deal with students watch after watch. More than I do. I’m always looking. Send me a risk-taker who always lands on his feet and there’s a commission in it for you. A big commission.”
“The Lyceum has the best talent screening apparatus in the Galaxy...”
“No it doesn’t. Take my word for it.”
Did he really need a crib sheet just so it would be easier to stay abreast of theoreticians, train more data sifters, and brief more troubleshooters? Was keeping up with hot-waxed kids the best he could do? He already had more analysis capability than he knew what to do with—and what had that given him but strange perturbations in the evolving historical fabric which had led him into his suspicions and his selfdoubts and his tenuous conspiracy theories? Damn, and damn! What he really needed was to muster a posse to go out there to kidnap one of those live flesh-and-blood rogue psychohistorians who didn’t exist! Only then would he know he was right. But he was too old.
Mer came back with one of Rigone’s ivroid modules in her hand and a smug verve. “I have something for you.” If Konn knew his Scavs, it was probably an original and not a template’s reproduction. Scavengers had appeared as a class only after the Sack, and they had a weird collector tradition—it wasn’t enough that an antique be old, it must not be a copy! “It’s our bribe.” She set it on the Admiral’s lap without consulting Rigone.
And Rigone’s hand had raised itself halfway in a gesture to take the module back before restraining itself in midair, his mind’s rationality being slighdy stronger than its possessiveness.
A contrite Mer was delighted by her find. “I’m sure you don’t have it. It’s a hundred million words of eyewitness memoirs of the Marche campaigns collected by the Berogi brothers. Navy war stuff. Ships. The long-drawn-out Wars Across the Marche.” She was more than a little bit frightened by the possible consequences of her earlier outburst. She knew their guest was a naval buff and that such an offering might placate him.
“It won’t be of much use to you,” Rigone suggested with a lame hope. “The reader was never standard, and it went out of production.”
“Do you have a reader?”
Rigone dutifully showed him the compact apparatus in its discreet alcove. Konn slipped the book in place and, with quick finger-code, waved over its eye a random request. The machine chose for him an item.
Hahukum was plunged, via eyefeed, into the ruthless interrogation of some poor Helmarian captive whose mind was being pillaged by psychic probe. The described technique seemed crude beyond belief but its vivid recounting was not what caught Konn’s attention... he was astonished by the diabolical trap that had been used to capture the spy. It was something to add to his file on the trapping and interrogation of enemy agents.
Rigone hovered beside Konn, almost as if he were ready to snatch the module from the slot and restore it to its shelf, but the Admiral was a collector, too, and had no intention of yielding such a welcome gift. He leaned on his hand so that his arm was a bar that guarded the ivroid box. “Our library of templates for old reading machines is very good. I’ll have a reader built by tomorrow. My heartfelt thanks for the gift.” He smiled at Mer and ignored his unhappy host.
All he really needed was a copy of the module. It would take him no more than a few watches to get such a copy made and to generate a compact index of its contents for storage in his fam—but, if he let Rigone grieve for a few endless jiffs before he returned the treasure, then that young man’s gratitude would be enormously greater than if he told him now that he intended only a borrowing.
Konn was intrigued as he stood reading. Here was an appetizer to tease a curiosity which lately had been dwelling on the nature of protracted wars. Even as he scanned through the descriptions of the Marche Campaigns that had spanned many lifetimes, he was prompted to think of the present. Was the Second Empire really involved in a war that had so far been conducted for centuries without the Fellowship’s knowledge? The equations for extended conflict were quite different than those of shorter, more decisive clashes.
Perhaps there lay the trouble. Such prolonged perspectives lacked color, the emotional rush of emergency—they weren’t gut-real—and that led to lazy thinking. Hadn’t Konn himself spent too much time as a child wrapped up in the quick slashing dramas that were designed to fit inside a youth’s attention span? Certainly he had started his career as a man who wanted instant results; his patience was an acquired trait. We think about what assaults our senses and in that way do not notice the glacier overrunning our position. Only the old men remember where the ice used to be.
The book would have other uses. Since the Admiral’s mind was on the necessity of capturing prisoners for purposes of interrogation, it might do to spend time researching how such covert operations had been conducted in the Empire’s barbarian past. Kidnapping was probably an art that could be perfected—the two centuries of the Wars Across the Marche had not been a pleasant time—but perfection starts with what has already been achieved. Konn liked perfection. It was the duty of a modem psychohistorian to make war so pleasant that die parties in conflict hardly noticed it was happening.
11
THE WAY STATION AT RAGMUK, LATE 14,790 GE
The Wars Across the Marche have not gone in our favor. After two centuries of ferocity our defense has collapsed. We lament our defeat. With sorrow we concede that the Thousand Suns Beyond the Helmar Rift have been conquered. Helmarian signatures have been forced upon the Treaty of Sanahadra, giving up all Helmarian rights in exchange for sworn fealty to emperors whose hubris first rules the Galaxy and then claims a universe.