Emperor Nicholas didn’t answer, and instead stared intently at the screen. The first bio was already displayed, and showed a young man with disheveled sandy hair and a beaming smile. James Altann, read the file. Age: 32. Home: Alphonsus, Luna. Occupation: Cargo Driver, Exterior. Marital status: Married, one child.
“Would you prefer an integrator download?” the room system repeated.
“No, audiovisual only. Next file.” The screen display changed instantly, showing a freckle-faced woman with long blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. Miriam Altann. Age: 31. Home: Alphonsus, Luna …
As useful as the integrator was, the Emperor had come to loathe it and used it only when necessary; when alone, he nearly always shunned it. The information his personal link with the Imperial computer provided was extremely valuable—and frequently indispensable—but he had come to believe that it made the information it imparted too unfeeling, too “clean.” The integrator could have provided all the files in a matter of seconds, but the Emperor wanted to observe them with his own senses, individually, one at a time.
“Sire,” the system intoned, accompanied by an insistent chiming. “I have an incoming communication, coded as important.”
“Store all messages for later retrieval. Next.” The Emperor moved the powerchair closer and felt a sudden chill wash over him as he scanned the file. “Five years old,” he whispered.
There was a single beep from the system, indicating confusion once more at what it interpreted as another incomplete command. He ignored it and concentrated instead on the bio file of little Tracy Altann, noting how the child’s freckles and deep blue eyes closely matched her mother’s.
“Next file.” The Emperor went through the files slowly, one after another. There were numerous single entries, with no apparent connection to those who had died in the seats next to them. Some were Armelin City employees, some were tourists. There were members of the Imperial research staff and local shopkeepers. There were other whole families who, like the Altanns, had traveled for the rare privilege of witnessing the Emperor’s arrival.
All dead.
He started cycling through the files again. “This is a code one override.” The room system’s persistent tone broke Emperor Nicholas from his unpleasant task and he turned sharply away from the viewscreen. “This is a code one override,” it repeated. He had no way of knowing how many times the system had paged him since he’d disabled it several minutes earlier, but he did know that the override page would repeat until it was acknowledged. His physicians, rightly concerned for the aging leader’s continually deteriorating health, had ordered the override code installed in his personal page program. The Emperor also knew that if he ignored the code one page too long, Brendan and the medical staff, escorted by a full security team, would cut through the door with torches if necessary to determine why he had not responded. He reluctantly issued a mental command to reopen the communications program in the room.
“I do not wish to be disturbed!”
“Father, are you all right?” It was Javas. “I’ve been trying to reach you for some time and grew concerned. May I come in?” The Emperor did not answer immediately, and Javas’ tone grew more insistent. “Father, I must speak with you about the accident in the landing bay.”
The Emperor sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he had postponed this meeting long enough. Through the integrator, he ordered the system to abandon voice mode and return the room lighting to normal levels before admitting the Prince. “I’m sorry, Javas,” he said as his son entered, “but I was reading the files of those killed in the blast and, well, I’m afraid I got a bit more involved than I had intended.” He studied the Prince for a moment and, knowing that the young man would someday perform similar tasks, smiled briefly before adding, “It never gets any easier.”
Javas nodded politely, staring over his father’s shoulder.
Display off, he commanded silently, but realized Javas must surely have seen Tracy Altann’s file on the screen. Javas quickly returned his attention to him as the display winked out and was replaced with an external view of the lunar surface surrounding Armelin City, simply nodding at his father’s remark rather than pointing out the obvious. Thank you, son, for allowing me a moment of private pain, he thought.
“Please, be seated.”
Javas chose a firm, straight-backed swivel chair in front of the huge desk that dominated the room, and turned it to face the older man. The massive piece of furniture, handmade of the finest woods and inlaid with precious metals from a dozen planets, had been a welcoming gift from Javas. The Prince had arranged for its construction shortly after arriving on the Moon, giving orders that it be installed in the Emperor’s study before his father arrived.
The two men regarded each other silently for several moments, each feeling the awkwardness of this first face-to-face meeting alone in so many years. The Emperor noted that Javas’ manner had changed significantly since entering his study. The anger and frustration of dealing with the tragedy had shown plainly on his face when he’d first arrived, but now he seemed more nervous than the awkwardness of the situation warranted. The young man sat stiffly upright in the chair, not touching the backrest, and fidgeted uneasily. The Prince seemed to have difficulty keeping eye contact with him, but those moments when their eyes did meet, the Emperor saw a glint of something—a mixture of pain and regret?—in his son’s face. He called up a diagnostic readout on the Prince’s personal biomonitors. The information came to him quickly and confirmed what he’d suspected: His son’s heart rate, respiration and brain activity were all at high readings, despite his son’s best efforts to hide his discomfort.
Their eyes met briefly, and the Emperor knew that Javas had guessed what he was doing. My turn to save you a bit of embarrassment, he thought.
“You are shocked at my appearance,” he said simply, bluntly. “But what did you expect? I was an old man before we embarked on this grand adventure thirty years ago. I age. The Emperor always ages.” He leveled his gaze at Javas and looked deeply into his son’s eyes, then added, “As will you, when you become Emperor and are forced to stop rejuvenation.”
“Father, I—”
“No, Javas. It’s all right.” His words carried a tone of understanding as he spoke. All trappings of Emperor and Prince abandoned for the moment, he spoke instead as father to son. “I do not need the integrator to tell me what you’re thinking. The many holoconferences we’ve held in recent months are one thing, but seeing me alone now, here in this room, you’ve been forced to come to terms with your own future. A future that, I fear, may be coming to pass much sooner than either of us would like.”
Javas nodded silently, then looked into his father’s eyes.
“These fifteen years here have not been easy,” he began. “When I first set about my task of relocating the Imperial throne here, I had many questions about the wisdom of this undertaking. In the last year I’m afraid I asked too many of those questions of Bomeer and listened too closely and too often to his answers. But for every reason he expressed that this was but a”—the Prince paused, regarded his father a moment before going on—“a fool’s mission…”
The Emperor gave an amused snort. “Well, there is at least one thing, then, that the years cannot change.”
“Each time he attempted to win me to his side on a particular issue or procedure surrounding our purpose here, Adela—Dr. Montgarde—convinced me of each issue’s validity.”