“I—I don’t know!” Brendan sputtered. “His readings are… confusing.”
The Emperor saw the sheer terror on Brendan’s face, and knew that only then did his medical aide realize that he’d been hiding his true condition from him all along.
He felt a squeezing in his chest, a line of pain burning down the length of his left arm. The auditorium spun around him and he felt himself weaving as the pain flooded in, but found that he couldn’t fall because the assisters on his legs automatically compensated for the erratic motions.
“Father!”
Everything was happening at once around him, and yet it all seemed to move in slow motion: Javas reaching for him. Brendan on his feet and moving quickly to his side. Fain barking orders into his wrist comm. Adela gasping, a hand over her mouth. Glenney bursting through the curtains. Everyone talking, crying, shouting at once. And through it all, a deathly, stunned silence fell over the auditorium.
Another wave of pain racked him and he pitched forward into Javas’ arms. He stopped repressing his monitoring implants, allowing his bio-readouts to flow freely once more, and heard an immediate, sharp gasp at his shoulder. Brendan stumbled backward as the sudden messages of agony momentarily overloaded his implants before he could regain control.
Javas eased him to the floor and knelt there, cradling his father in his lap. The Emperor felt the pressure of tiny fingers on his hand and became aware that Adela was kneeling at his son’s side, her face a mask of consuming grief.
Free now of the burden of controlling the readings his implants were sending out, he was surprised at how clear his thoughts had become. Despite the tremendous pain, the Emperor understood now why the auditorium had grown oppressively silent and realized that someone—Fain, probably, or maybe Glenney—had cut off the audio pickup carrying the presentation to the auditorium sound system, and then out over the Imperial net. Closing his eyes tightly, he used the last bit of strength he possessed to search the computer circuitry and found the necessary channel to reactivate the system.
“Hear me,” he said, his eyes still closed, in a voice barely more than a whisper. The words echoed in the auditorium and the Emperor smiled weakly as he imagined the signal spreading out. Instantly to Armelin City, then a split second later to Earth, then a few seconds after that to the Orbitals, then a few minutes more to the colonies in Sol system, and finally out across the Hundred Worlds themselves.
“Hear me! This is not… an ending, but… a beginning.” The Emperor coughed violently and struggled for breath before continuing. “Do not allow what has… been done to me to stray you from… from our noble goal.”
He who is willing to die for his cause… Gasping for breath, he opened his eyes and found Brendan leaning over him. It was easy to see in the young man’s ashen face the realization of what his role in this would become. Part of him wanted to apologize, but he turned away instead.
“As I ask you to work together… for understanding in this,” the Emperor wheezed, “can I do less than demand the same… of myself?”
“Father, please. Lie still.” Javas’ face reflected the pain he felt inside.
The Emperor looked into his son’s eyes. “Prince Javas. Son. I—I have made many decisions during my reign. As my last decision, in the spirit… of the task which now falls upon you… I forgive those who did this to me. I pardon them.” His head rolled unceremoniously to the side, and the life went out of him.
Javas eased his father’s body to the stage and grasped Brendan’s shoulder in his strong hands, jerking him unsteadily to his feet.
“Why is my father dead?” he demanded. “Why was his condition not relayed to medical?”
On hearing the Prince’s words, Glenney summoned several of his nearest men with a snap of his fingers.
Javas held the hapless man by both shoulders now, shaking him as he continued. “You were in constant link with him; you are the only one who could have suppressed his readouts!”
He released his grip on the man’s sleeves, allowing him to collapse into a sobbing heap. Javas turned in disgust as Glenney’s men dragged Brendan off the stage.
Chapter Nine
The sun glowed a brilliant red and streamers of red and orange played through the clouds and jet contrails lacing across the evening sky. As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, the red glow in the sky remained well into dusk as stars appeared one by one through the glow. Brendan walked along the narrow, hard-packed dirt road with no particular destination in mind, but hoped he’d find the inn soon. A passing farmer had told him there was an inn on the outskirts of the village up ahead where he could get an excellent meal and a room for the night.
He shook his head in bemused confusion as he remembered his short chat with the farmer. The man had been driving a primitive wooden wagon pulled by two of the most beautiful work horses genetic engineering could produce, but when he’d stopped to give him directions to the village, Brendan had noticed that the back of the rickety wagon was filled with an odd array of farming equipment: There were several wood and metal hoes, rakes and shovels, as might be expected, each covered with hardened mud and manure. But jumbled haphazardly in with the hand tools was an electronic hydro-drill—also mud- and manure-encrusted—and a number of water condenser components that obviously came from a state-of-the-art irrigation system.
What a study in contrasts Earth was, with dirt roads and animal-drawn vehicles coexisting with advanced biotechnology and jet aircraft. The oddest thing about it all was that the Earthers didn’t even seem to notice the contradiction. Best to get used to it, he reminded himself, since I’ll be spending the rest of my life here.
He found the inn just over the next rise. It had grown dark and he was close enough to hear the sounds of revelry coming from inside the tavern even before he managed to get a good look at it. It was large and inviting, two-storied, and except for the metal sheeting of the roof was made entirely of wood. There was a hand-carved sign that swung precariously above an entrance lighted by two lanterns. Several horses were tied to a horizontal post nearby and pawed the ground nervously each time the swinging sign banged against the siding of the house. Looking up in the dimness, he could just make out the dish of a receiving antenna mounted on the roof.
The inside of the tavern was as much a collection of contradictions as anything he’d seen in the three weeks he’d been on Earth. A roaring fire warmed the room and candles provided most of the lighting at the scattered tables, but a public information screen was mounted just inside the entranceway and music, obviously recorded, filled the room. There were maybe ten people inside; some were eating, some sharing drinks. Three men, their clothing soiled from whatever constituted their daily occupation, talked loudly at a table near the fireplace and occasionally burst into fits of laughter. No one paid him much attention when he entered.
He made his way to the massive wooden bar and ordered a hot meal and a tall mug of the local brew—a bitter but not unpleasant-tasting malt beverage served at room temperature—and took it to an unoccupied table to await his dinner.
“Will you be staying the night, then, sir?” asked the innkeeper when he brought his plate, heaped with steaming food. Seeing him closely for the first time, Brendan realized that he was a mere boy, no more than nineteen years old. He was startled for a moment to see someone so young working at a job such as this, but remembered that this was normaclass="underline" Native Earthers didn’t use life extension. It was commonplace to begin a life’s work early here.