In the interest of humor, Eron was about to protest the propriety of using flint technology to chip away at his fam when Rigone abruptly went off on another one of his tangents. He found a mossy log, freed of snow by the wind, its branches long rotten to nubs. He sat down. “Amazing place. They let a tree fall and don’t even use it! We’ll put it to use as a bench. Sit down.” He put up his hand to prevent Eron from interrupting. “Keep your mouth shut. You’re supposed to be listening to me.”
“I am listening.”
‘Two: Kapor thinks he has leads to someone who will train me, to put a modem edge on my skills. I think he does. That’s also suspicious, and you’ll have to think about it. Why isn’t the expert going to do the job himself and bypass a novice like me? That’s a game for which we don’t know the rules. But aside from that, I’m good. First off, I know my limits. Smart men know their limits. They’re going to train me how to upgrade your fam. I’ve done crazy things with fams in my life—even illegal things—but, mark this, I’ve never damaged a single mind, ever. I intend to keep that record. I’m not going to touch your fam until I’m absolutely certain of what I’m doing. I have too much at stake to do otherwise. My life. If you so much as end up cross-eyed, I end up dead. You understand? You can still refuse.”
“Sure. I want you to do it.”
“You want me to do it? You’re a space-crazed young fool in search of an El Dorado star. That’s a star any moth can’t miss—and if you get there it will fry you! I’ll help you if you insist. But remember, two men helping each other don’t always have the same goal. It’s like I’m the man with a ship’s hull and you’re the man with the hyperatomic motor. We need each other—but we may not have the same destination. Such trivia can lead to, ahem, a bit of a major fracas.” “We can ferry each other around.”
“You hope. Don’t look at me. Look at your sainted tutor. I’m just in this because it is a game move for me. I have to make points or I don’t play. But I don’t move blindly. Every move in a game has its consequences. A man not ready for the recoil doesn’t pull the trigger. If I decide I don’t like the consequences, I'm gone. He who doesn’t understand bad consequences gets clobbered just the same. Naive kids who don’t believe in death die anyway. The wide-eyed innocents get fried along with the guilty. Famfeed that. It’s your call. It’s your head.”
“Are you going to transmogrify me into a supergenius?” Rigone rose up off the log like one possessed. He raised his arms and roared to the sky. “No, no, no—a thousand times: No! You won’t even know your brain’s been upgraded! You’ll think like you always have. It is just that in some ways, when you least expect it, you’ll be a little faster, maybe even a little smarter.”
“Will I be able to roar like you?” Eron laughed.
“Space, kid! I can’t tell you how serious this is. Okay, you be the clown; I'll be serious. I’m here to make you a promise. I don’t care what you think of your tutor. If at any time I find out that this little operation is intended to do you harm, I’m jumping out of here. If I have to go back to Splendid Wisdom empty-handed, I’ll just tell my Space-damned Admiral to stuff himself into God’s airlock and hope my friends wear black gloves for my funeral. Why? Because if I harm your mini-microbrain that has consequences for you that 1 don’t want to face.”
Eron was throwing moss at the tripartite lips of a plant that might or might not be moving from the spot where it had rested when he was last awake. The moss was taken by the breeze and rolled along the snow and caught itself in blinds and on barren twigs. Eron already knew that Rigone had too much at stake to pull out. Power felt good.
Rigone watched the boy with increasing exasperation. “If you were my son I’d take a five-stranded leather whip to your moon for eighteen lashes!”
“But I’m not your son. I’m a farman. And I have to make my own destiny.”
“Or die!”
“I don’t think so. Young men are immortal. You know that. It is just old farts like you who die.”
14
AT THE FORTRESS OF THE OVERSEE, 14,791 GE
How orderly seems the majestic procession of the planets around the Galaxy's legion of suns! Each sun has mastered a different juggling act, but the awesome cyclic symmetry is always there as if the Emperor of the Universe had once commanded the dancers at His Coronation Ball to pirouette forever in His honor.
But this order is a seasoned conjurer's illusion. Because our commercial ships avoid the roiling nurseries of the Galaxy, what audience gets to see a youthful sun at practice with his balls? Who gets to gasp when a bungling sun drops a planet while learning to juggle? It is to the major theaters we flock! From our unctuous jumpship purser we demand a ticket to some marvel and expect to be transported to a far off virtuoso artist who has had billions of years to perfect his solar showmanship. His failures are already lost to the dark thicket
Have you not noticed that the surviving balls of these experienced galactic jugglers are pimpled by collisions with lesser balls that didn't make it through the early rehearsal? Are your eyes so mesmerized by the brilliance of these jugglers that you've never noticed the droves of lonely refugees who litter interstellar space because they were flung beyond reach by some inept sun-in-training?
Nothing stays for long in an unstable orbit around a star without being eaten or ejected. Eons pass. Lo! When tardy man arrives in his finery, he finds the last, grand residue of stable orbits and marvels in attestation to the orderly mind of the Emperor of the Universe—whose hidden face is that of the Lord of Chaos!
—From the Dance of the Thousand Suns, stanza 498
For 207 years between 7774 and 7981 GE, the bloody Wars Across the Marche pitted the long-independent Thousand Suns and their allies against the encroaching Splendid Empire. During the war an elite group of Helmarian commanders built secret fallback bases on unfindable planetesimal outcasts deep in the remote darkness. The Thousand Suns Beyond the Helmar Rift eventually lost their war; the Helmarian people were decimated, forced to re-gengineer their children to the galactic hominid standard, dispersed, their thousand planets diluted with immigrants loyal to the Empire—but their war bases were never found, never suspected, never conquered. Long ago these redoubts lost the name of war base and became...
The chamber had wondrous acoustics. While her grandfather was being freeze-dried for the zero-g catacombs—his waters dripping into the flagon from the glass figurines of the ritual condenser—Nemia sang the solo canto of his requiem with a passionate devotion. Some of the words she composed out of memories as she went along, inspiring other singers to weave into the song contrapuntal poetry that complemented her emotion. During the silent interludes between cantos they sipped of his pure water. The elegy could not respectfully be ended until the last drips of condensate from his sublimation had been distributed from catch-pool to goblet to the bloodstreams of those who mourned him.
Later, alone, in private tribute, she gave the desiccated corpse a last farewell, a gentle touch of the hand not to mar his porous fragility, a wet tear, and the gift of a golden rose from the bronze rosepot of her parlor atrium. She had personally carved the lid of his sarcophagus, a pentagon of brilliantly colored petunias shaped from many woods. She closed the familiar lid, feeling a youth’s first pangs of mortality.