The naive counter-revolution, though pro-Empire, was viciously suppressed, its goals not being in the self-interest of an Admiral who, like his vain predecessor, had unnatural ambitions. Again the Sewinnese populace suffered horribly. (The hero fights a valiant retrenchment in the thick of this setback and, finally, at the height of the bloodshed, bungles his desperate attempt to assassinate the new viceroy. The hero’s honor, honed by failure, demands revenge, if not upon the Admiral, at least upon the youthful tyrant who sent forth this bloody fleet of retribution. In a breathless climactic action sequence the avenger smuggles himself into Splendid Wisdom, there to succeed in assassinating the Boy Emperor. The author’s final tragic scene, pure fictional melodrama, sets both hero-assassin and dying Boy Emperor in an embrace where they tearfully confess their sins to each other before the Imperial Guards belatedly reduce the hero to cinders.)
Eron was lured into the role of director, his fam on overdrive creating sets, costumes, special minor characters, fantastically immense Imperial machinery, and even changing some of the clunky dialog, especially the words to the music. That was a sleepless night! He missed breakfast with his sailor-tormentors.
In the next few watches, as Eron delved into other sources to research the real-life Boy Emperor Tien-the-Young, 12,216-12,222 GE, he found that all of the information about Tien’s real assassin had been lost in the violent Sack of Splendid Wisdom 116 years later. The historical record did mention that his agent, the Admiral who so cruelly punished the Sewinnese people for Wisard’s sins, died at the hands of the only surviving son of a family he had imprisoned and tortured.
The story intrigued Eron’s budding curiosity about history because it had been written only a century before the Sack and the author, though clearly troubled by the politics of his time, was among the vast majority of that age who could not conceive of an Empire at the end of its tether— troubles came and went but the Empire was forever—which was amazing because the whole novel was about the rot that would destroy the Empire within the century! The Founder had already told the Galaxy what would be happening and was himself centuries dead—but the Imperial Court and humanity just weren’t listening! Even authors who wrote about the find decay—who lived it!—couldn’t see the extent of the coming disaster!
He began to wonder if there wasn’t something as preposterously obvious about his own age standing so hugely in front of his face that he couldn’t see it. Was the real world invisible to the dulled perceptions of a boy trained to view the Galaxy from the cliched axioms of a Ganderian? Was he living in a renaissance? Or was he standing at the top of a landslide that was set to sweep them down into a Vortex of Death? Was he looking out over a plateau of stability that would last a million years? Or was there a snark out there, hidden even from psychohistorians become complacent? He didn’t know. He felt blind. He felt ignorant. He felt, above all, curious.
When the hypership reached Sewinna and popped into orbit while Glatim’s men rounded up supplies needed at Tre-fia, Eron ran away. It was just another revolt to establish his independence, another notch in his history of rebellion— though this time it was driven by his passionate need to wander through the stones stronghold from which the whole
Sewinnese Archipelago had once been ruled. The story’s intrigues began inside that redoubt; the author had actually been one of the irregulars who had attacked it, and Eron had to touch the ancient stones with his own feet and the pillars with his own hands. It was a real place. (How would it compare with his vividly imagined version?) He fully intended to be back at the ship in the nick of time, the thrill of his own revolt being tempered by a growing common sense. But let his pompous tutor sweat a little.
Once there in the valley, and seeing the fortress high on that gentle mountain slope, its awesome historicity sobered him. Lovingly rebuilt out of its ruins to serve as Sewinna’s historical library, it commanded a green landscape of forest and industrial farm. His personal revolt against his tutor began to shrink in stature as he climbed the hundred stone stairs of the grand processional way—broad enough to have allowed ten score Imperial troopers to climb abreast! He pretended to be a trooper but gave it up because his fam couldn’t virtually duplicate himself two hundred times as a line formation of goose-stepping battle-scarred soldiers marching up the stone stairs, eyes front.
Reverent footfalls took him through the portal and into the cathedral light of the haughty basilica, where his petty defiance shriveled further, finally dying of humiliation when he reached the offices of the Imperial proxy. He stood silently in awe: here had begun, in this room of polished stone, a revolt against a Stellar Empire then twelve thousand years mature, an Empire that had commanded more of the night sky than eyes could see!
The chamber of the viceroy had been refurnished to match the decor of the study it had once been, complete with antique ivroid book-modules and reader, master screens, a huge desk, throne, maps, pacing rugs. A realm of daring! A pathologically cautious Ganderian would have allowed himself only to dream the defiance of such a man—for action has its own double-edged karma, glory or tragedy at the throw of the dice. Eron saw it all and it was all tragedy... the disgraced viceroy Wisard driven into exile among the Archipelago’s minor red stars with the piratical remnant of his Imperial units, his ambition in tatters... his arrogant replacement taking measures against the people of Sewinna in salutary a sepsis, ordering, from his safe viceroy’s throne, the death of millions to teach his vain lesson—a lesson repaid, in time, with assassination, right here, as he ran abjectly to drop behind a desk he never reached.
While Eron stood frozen by his thoughts, ancient time rolled by, the tragic drama unfolding its variations on a theme. The rule of immature Tien-the-Young, murdered before his prime, gave way to the strongest Emperor seen in a century of decline. Sewinna’s next viceroy, under the auspices of this more imposing emperor, marshaled the last great fleet before the Fall, again headquartered in this very room. The viceroy, a brilliant commanding general too dangerous to leave at court, led the resurgent Empire’s successful attack against the growing might of Faraway, defeating them decisively—but his formidable Emperor’s strength, in the end, manifested itself as a “first-strike” ability to execute the more successful generals of his reign. Soldiers, battleships, fleets—all devoured by the onrushing Interregnum!
Power to the Founder! Two and a half millennia later only this stone fortress remained of that turbulent era, its ghosts and their moans of woe talking to a child of psychohistory among the shadows of a forgotten past dimly resurrected by the effete enthusiasm of scholars.
A sobered Eron Osa called in to tell the Glatim boys where he was and when he would be back, earlier than he had intended. He mentioned in passing, deadpan, that he was researching the central Sewinnese library for the latest on left-handed nanowrenches. They laughed. A relieved tutor took the comm and reminded Eron sternly that they would have to leave without him if he didn’t turn up on time. Eron promised, and even promised to call again to reconfirm his return.
He got back early, but a full watch later than he’d planned—and he did call in to confirm the delay. On his way to the spaceport a monster bookstore found him and trapped him in its history section. Two books on pre-imperial economics cost him almost all of the rest of die money he had on him, but the third, a treasure, he found thrown on a table rack with the unwanteds from an estate clearance, mostly cheap media for prefam kids.