When his assistant came in search of him next morning, Bertt was discovered sleeping, his head on the workbench. The assistant smiled sadly. The old man was still playing with his toy.
Chapter Twenty
Argun, President of the Delanian People in Exile, was a virile man in the prime of his life. Although he carried a heavy responsibility, he lived with an elan that kept his outlook youthful and optimistic. As a youth, he had helped to tame a world which had presented more problems than the little ice ball the Artonuee had loved so much before Delanian vitality had made the place liveable. His genes were the finest, and even before leaving the home worlds, he had been allowed four offspring with four different chosen women. Two of his sons were among those selected to live. And Argun had sired a daughter and a son since coming to the Artonuee system. His seed would be preserved and preserved well. He took great
pride in that.
At his headquarters in the Government Quad in Nirrar City, adjacent to the Mother’s building, he maintained two Artonuee mistresses and was not averse to spreading that particular form of Delanian joy to others, casual acquaintances longing for a dose of the Delanian drug.
For his personal staff, he had selected the strongest and wisest, both men and women. He was a man with a purpose, and he worked toward that purpose with untiring vigor. He had seen enough death. Those who had not been on the home worlds at the end could not possibly understand.
Seated with Argun was young Rei, who warmed the Mother’s bed.
"You have completed the assignment?" Argun asked.
"It is confirmed." Rei said. He sipped the Artonuee liquor, for which he had acquired a taste, while Argun drank heartily from a mug of synthetic Delanian grog.
"Quite a dish, no?" Argun asked.
"She was a good specimen," Rei said.
"Indeed," Argun said. "I know. I envy you the fob of knocking her up. Would have done it myself, but I don’t want it said that I take undue advantage of my position."
"Your fairness to our people has never been in doubt." Rei said.
"But not the Artonuee, huh?" Argun said, laughing. "My boy, you’re too soft."
"I was the first to land on an Artonuee world," Rei said softly. "I have worked closely with them for twenty years. They are an admirable people."
"Ah, that Artonuee cunt," Argun said. "Now that is admirable." He drained his mug and set it down with a clank. "But I have six billion people to worry about."
Sir—
"Six billion," Argun said. "And I watched twenty-four billion die. I saw it, damn it. I was there. I heard my own son cry when he was told that he had not been selected. I had to deny his last minute plea. I gave the orders which brought instant death to thousands in the port riots. I saw my men turn their weapons on their own people, brothers, sisters, lovers. Have you ever seen flesh after it’s hit with a burner? It stinks. It’s the color of dirt. And when the ray hits, the flesh crawls and jumps and moves even after the brain is dead. And I had to say, "open fire!" I had to give the order."
"It was a tragedy, sir," Rei said.
"Tragedy? Damn, man, it was horror. Can you comprehend the death of twenty-four billion people? No one can. It staggers the imagination. We can understand the death of a man, or a few men. You helped in the post-mortem of the first expedition, didn’t you? I thought so. You saw the way the limbs were torn from bodies. Did it affect you?"
"It affected me," Rei said.
"Think of two billion more bodies. Think of them dying slowly from radiation and then being seared by flame. Is that a pleasant picture?"
"No, it is not. But neither—"
"There is no alternative," Argun said, standing. "Of course, if you should volunteer to stay—" He grinned as Rei shifted uneasily. "Goodnight, then, my boy. It is not pleasant for any of us. We must do as we think best for all of our people. In the meantime, we drink, no?"
"We drink," Rei said, gulping the jenk.
"And our geneticist wants another chip off the old Rei block," Argun said, showing his teeth suggestively. "Up to another session tonight?"
"I think not, sir."
"Soon, then. She’s a knockout. A farm girl from old Tagour. Knockers out to here. Huh?"
"Yes," Rei said. "Soon."
Later, fanned by Miaree’s ecstatically fluttering wings, hearing her love
Chapter Twenty-One
You read well, my dear. Thank you. We have covered much ground today, and there is little time. I hope that all of you have been thinking ahead toward the paper which I told you I would ask you to write giving your conclusions and your feelings toward the fable. Now. In form, the section of the fable we have covered today is somewhat episodic. By slaps and starts, it covered a period of how many years, Tomax?
Twenty, sir.
Are there any among you who have not been stimulated to the point of being forced to finish the final portion? Ah? Elizabeth? LaConius. But LaConius knows, eh, LaConius?
Sir?
Elizabeth, no curiosity?
Sir, I was dying to finish it, to find out what happens, but the dorm matron forced me to observe lights-out, and the charger in my privacy light has failed, so I could not read under the sheets.
Then we will allow you to read the conclusion tomorrow. Now, in the brief time remaining before we partake of sauteed olix steak, fresh in from Alaxender's home on Trojan, I would like you to consider this passage, or this series of excerpts, from a paper done by our sleepy LaConius. For which, incidentally, he has earned the honors in this particular project. LaConius has handed me the paper, a project undertaken in his astrophysics class, with a request for proofreading. I fear that our LaConius is a rather atrocious speller. Nonetheless, the paper is of some interest. The subject is the Q.S.S. phenomenon. Q.S.S. or Quasi-stellar Radio Sources, are rather puzzling astronomical objects located—as determined by the calculations of the red shift—some one billion light years away from our galaxy in the general direction of the constellation Cygnus.
But let me quote young LaConius: 'Radio generation in the Q.S.S's, broadcast on every frequency known to man, is thought to be the result of acceleration of ultra-high-speed electrons moving in a powerful magnetic field. Although a thorough and lengthy study of the Q.S.S's has failed to provide a range of answers, it is believed by authorities in the field that the electrons were freed in some cataclysmic explosion. The release of energy is not a strange happening in a universe built on the explosive energy of the hydrogen atom, but the amount of energy radiating from a Q.S.S. has led astrophysicists to believe that the energy originated from an entirely new type of energy source. The power generated by a typical Q.S.S. is measured in the area of 4 X10 to the 46th power ergs per second, or ten times the amount of energy radiated by the largest known galaxy.
"The bafflng thing about the Q.S.S. is that a typical diameter measures only fifty light years. When we consider that our own galaxy is eighty thousand light years in diameter, the amount of power emanating from the relatively tiny Q.S.S. becomes even more astounding. Estimating mass from the observed size of a typical Q.S.S., the amount of energy released totals more than the energy in all of the available electrons. If a small galaxy were exploded by thermonuclear processes, the energy released would not equal that of a Q.S.S. Spectrography indicates that the Q.S.S.'s are moving away from our galaxy at a uniform speed. Emission lines in the optical spectrum indicate the presence of hydrogen, magnesium, ionized neon, oxygen, and other gases."
There is more, but I think that much will give you the idea. Questions? Alexender?