The old man shrugged. “Memories sting when they come suddenly. Listen! Judge for yourself! When Siwenna was the provincial capital, I was a patrician and a member of the provincial senate. My family was an old and honored one. One of my great-grandfathers had been—No, never mind that. Past glories are poor feeding.”
“I take it,” said Mallow, “there was a civil war, or a revolution.”
Barr’s face darkened. “Civil wars are chronic in these degenerate days, but Siwenna had kept apart. Under Stannell VI, it had almost achieved its ancient prosperity. But weak emperors followed, and weak emperors mean strong viceroys, and our last viceroy—the same Wiscard, whose remnants still prey on the commerce among the Red Stars—aimed at the Imperial Purple. He wasn’t the first to aim. And if he had succeeded, he wouldn’t have been the first to succeed.
“But he failed. For when the Emperor’s admiral approached the province at the head of a fleet, Siwenna itself rebelled against its rebel viceroy.” He stopped, sadly.
Mallow found himself tense on the edge of his seat, and relaxed slowly. “Please continue, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Barr, wearily. “It’s kind of you to humor an old man. They rebelled; or I should say, we rebelled, for I was one of the minor leaders. Wiscard left Siwenna, barely ahead of us, and the planet, and with it the province, were thrown open to the admiral with every gesture of loyalty to the Emperor. Why we did this, I’m not sure. Maybe we felt loyal to the symbol, if not the person, of the Emperor,—a cruel and vicious child. Maybe we feared the horrors of a siege.”
“Well?” urged Mallow, gently.
“Well,” came the grim retort, “that didn’t suit the admiral. He wanted the glory of conquering a rebellious province and his men wanted the loot such conquest would involve. So while the people were still gathered in every large city, cheering the Emperor and his admiral, he occupied all armed centers, and then ordered the population put to the nuclear blast.”
“On what pretext?”
“On the pretext that they had rebelled against their viceroy, the Emperor’s anointed. And the admiral became the new viceroy, by virtue of one month of massacre, pillage and complete horror. I had six sons. Five died—variously. I had a daughter. I hope she died, eventually. I escaped because I was old. I came here, too old to cause even our viceroy worry.” He bent his gray head. “They left me nothing, because I had helped drive out a rebellious governor and deprived an admiral of his glory.”
Mallow sat silent, and waited. Then, “What of your sixth son?” he asked softly.
“Eh?” Barr smiled acidly. “He is safe, for he has joined the admiral as a common soldier under an assumed name. He is a gunner in the viceroy’s personal fleet. Oh, no, I see your eyes. He is not an unnatural son. He visits me when he can and gives me what he can. He keeps me alive. And some day, our great and glorious viceroy will grovel to his death, and it will be my son who will be his executioner.”
“And you tell this to a stranger? You endanger your son.”
“No. I help him, by introducing a new enemy. And were I a friend of the viceroy, as I am his enemy, I would tell him to string outer space with ships, clear to the rim of the Galaxy.”
“There are no ships there?”
“Did you find any? Did any space-guards question your entry? With ships few enough, and the bordering provinces filled with their share of intrigue and iniquity, none can be spared to guard the barbarian outer suns. No danger ever threatened us from the broken edge of the Galaxy,—until you came.”
“I? I’m no danger.”
“There will be more after you.”
Mallow shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Listen!” There was a feverish edge to the old man’s voice. “I knew you when you entered. You have a force-shield about your body, or had when I first saw you.”
Doubtful silence, then, “Yes,—I had.”
“Good. That was a flaw, but you didn’t know that. There are some things I know. It’s out of fashion in these decaying times to be a scholar. Events race and flash past and who cannot fight the tide with nuclearblast in hand is swept away, as I was. But I was a scholar, and I know that in all the history of nucleics, no portable force-shield was ever invented. We have force-shields—huge, lumbering powerhouses that will protect a city, or even a ship, but not one, single man.”
“Ah?” Mallow’s underlip thrust out. “And what do you deduce from that?”
“There have been stories percolating through space. They travel strange paths and become distorted with every parsec,—but when I was young there was a small ship of strange men, who did not know our customs and could not tell where they came from. They talked of magicians at the edge of the Galaxy; magicians who glowed in the darkness, who flew unaided through the air, and whom weapons would not touch.
“We laughed. I laughed, too. I forgot it till today. But you glow in the darkness, and I don’t think my blaster, if I had one, would hurt you. Tell me, can you fly through air as you sit there now?”
Mallow said calmly, “I can make nothing of all this.”
Barr smiled. “I’m content with the answer. I do not examine my guests. But if there are magicians; if you are one of them; there may some day be a great influx of them, or you. Perhaps that would be well. Maybe we need new blood.” He muttered soundlessly to himself, then, slowly, “But it works the other way, too. Our new viceroy also dreams, as did our old Wiscard.”
“Also after the Emperor’s crown?”
Barr nodded. “My son hears tales. In the viceroy’s personal entourage, one could scarcely help it. And he tells me of them. Our new viceroy would not refuse the Crown if offered, but he guards his line of retreat. There are stories that, failing Imperial heights, he plans to carve out a new Empire in the Barbarian hinterland. It is said, but I don’t vouch for this, that he has already given one of his daughters as wife to a Kinglet somewhere in the uncharted Periphery.”
“If one listened to every story—”
“I know. There are many more. I’m old and I babble nonsense. But what do you say?” And those sharp, old eyes peered deep.
The trader considered. “I say nothing. But I’d like to ask something. Does Siwenna have nuclear power? Now, wait, I know that it possesses the knowledge of nucleics. I mean, do they have power generators intact, or did the recent sack destroy them?”
“Destroy them? Oh, no. Half a planet would be wiped out before the smallest power station would be touched. They are irreplaceable and the suppliers of the strength of the fleet.” Almost proudly, “We have the largest and best on this side of Trantor itself.”
“Then what would I do first if I wanted to see these generators?”
“Nothing!” replied Barr, decisively. “You couldn’t approach any military center without being shot down instantly. Neither could anyone. Siwenna is still deprived of civic rights.”
“You mean all the power stations are under the military?”
“No. There are the small city stations, the ones supplying power for heating and lighting homes, powering vehicles and so forth. Those are almost as bad. They’re controlled by the tech-men.”
“Who are they?”
“A specialized group which supervises the power plants. The honor is hereditary, the young ones being brought up in the profession as apprentices. Strict sense of duty, honor, and all that. No one but a tech-man could enter a station.”
“I see.”
“I don’t say, though,” added Barr, “that there aren’t cases where tech-men haven’t been bribed. In days when we have nine emperors in fifty years and seven of these are assassinated,—when every space-captain aspires to the usurpation of a viceroyship, and every viceroy to the Imperium, I suppose even a tech-man can fall prey to money. But it would require a good deal, and I have none. Have you?”
“Money? No. But does one always bribe with money?”
“What else, when money buys all else.”
“There is quite enough
that money won’t buy. And now if you’ll tell me the nearest city with one of the stations, and how best to get there, I’ll thank you.”
“Wait!” Barr held out his thin hands. “Where do you rush? You come here, but I ask no questions. In the city, where the inhabitants are still called rebels, you would be challenged by the first soldier or guard who heard your accent and saw your clothes.”
He rose and from an obscure corner of an old chest brought out a booklet. “My passport,—forged. I escaped with it.”
He placed it in Mallow’s hand and folded the fingers over it. “The description doesn’t fit, but if you flourish it, the chances are many to one they will not look closely.”
“But you. You’ll be left without one.”
The old exile shrugged cynically. “What of it? And a further caution. Curb your tongue! Your accent is barbarous, your idioms peculiar, and every once in a while you deliver yourself of the most astounding archaisms. The less you speak, the less suspicion you will draw upon yourself. Now I’ll tell you how to get to the city—”
Five minutes later, Mallow was gone.
He returned but once, for a moment, to the old patrician’s house, before leaving it entirely, however. And when Onum Barr stepped into his little garden early the next morning, he found a box at his feet. It contained provisions, concentrated provisions such as one would find aboard ship, and alien in taste and preparation.
But they were good, and lasted long.
11
The tech-man was short, and his skin glistened with well-kept plumpness. His hair was a fringe and his skull shone through pinkly. The rings on his fingers were thick and heavy, his clothes were scented, and he was the first man Mallow had met on the planet who hadn’t looked hungry.
The tech-man’s lips pursed peevishly. “Now, my man, quickly. I have things of great importance waiting for me. You seem a stranger—” He seemed to evaluate Mallow’s definitely un-Siwennese costume and his eyelids were heavy with suspicion.
“I am not of the neighborhood,” said Mallow, calmly, “but the matter is irrelevant. I have had the honor to send you a little gift yesterday—”
The tech-man’s nose lifted. “I received it. An interesting gewgaw. I may have use for it on occasion.”
“I have other and more interesting gifts. Quite out of the gewgaw stage.”
“Oh-h?” The tech-man’s voice lingered thoughtfully over the monosyllable. “I think I already see the course of the interview; it has happened before. You are going to give me some trifle or other. A few credits, perhaps a cloak, second-rate jewelry; anything your little soul may think sufficient to corrupt a tech-man.” His lower lip puffed out belligerently. “And I know what you wish in exchange. There have been others and to spare with the same bright idea. You wish to be adopted into our clan. You wish to be taught the mysteries of nucleics and the care of the machines. You think because you dogs of Siwenna—and probably your strangerhood is assumed for safety’s sake—are being daily punished for your rebellion that you can escape what you deserve by throwing over yourselves the privileges and protections of the tech-man’s guild.”
Mallow would have spoken, but the tech-man raised himself into a sudden roar. “And now leave before I report your name to the Protector of the City. Do you think that I would betray the trust? The Siwennese traitors that preceded me would have—perhaps! But you deal with a different breed now. Why, Galaxy, I marvel that I do not kill you myself at this moment with my bare hands.”
Mallow smiled to himself. The entire speech was patently artificial in tone and content, so that all the dignified indignation degenerated into uninspired farce.
The trader glanced humorously at the two flabby hands that had been named as his possible executioners then and there, and said, “Your Wisdom, you are wrong on three counts. First, I am not a creature of the viceroy come to test your loyalty. Second, my gift is something the Emperor himself in all his splendor does not and will never possess. Third, what I wish in return is very little; a nothing; a mere breath.”
“So you say!” He descended into heavy sarcasm. “Come, what is this imperial donation that your god-like power wishes to bestow upon me? Something the Emperor doesn’t have, eh?” He broke into a sharp squawk of derision.
Mallow rose and pushed the chair aside. “I have waited three days to see you, Your Wisdom, but the display will take only three seconds. If you will just draw that blaster whose butt I see very near your hand—”
“Eh?”
“And shoot me, I will be obliged.”
“What?”
“If I am killed, you can tell the police I tried to bribe you into betraying guild secrets. You’ll receive high praise. If I am not killed, you may have my shield.”
For the first time, the tech-man became aware of the dimly-white illumination that hovered closely about his visitor, as though he had been dipped in pearl-dust. His blaster raised to the level and with eyes a-squint in wonder and suspicion, he closed contact.
The molecules of air caught in the sudden surge of atomic disruption, tore into glowing, burning ions, and marked out the blinding thin line that struck at Mallow’s heart—and splashed!
While Mallow’s look of patience never changed, the nuclear forces that tore at him consumed themselves against that fragile, pearly illumination, and crashed back to die in mid-air.
The tech-man’s blaster dropped to the floor with an unnoticed crash.
Mallow said, “Does the Emperor have a personal force shield? You can have one.”
The tech-man stuttered, “Are you a tech-man?”
“No.”
“Then—then where did you get that?”
“What do you care?” Mallow was coolly contemptuous. “Do you want it?” A thin, knobbed chain fell upon the desk. “There it is.”
The tech-man snatched it up and fingered it nervously.
“Complete.”
“Where’s the power?”
Mallow’s finger fell upon the largest knob, dull in its leaden case.
The tech-man looked up, and his face was congested with blood. “Sir, I am a tech-man, senior grade. I have twenty years behind me as supervisor and I studied under the great Bler at the University of Trantor. If you have the infernal charlatanry to tell me that a small container the size of a—of a walnut, blast it, holds a nuclear generator, I’ll have you before the Protector in three seconds.”
“Explain it yourself then, if you can. I say it’s complete.”
The tech-man’s flush faded slowly as he bound the chain about his waist, and, following Mallow’s gesture, pushed the knob. The radiance that surrounded him shone into dim relief. His blaster lifted, then hesitated. Slowly, he adjusted it to an almost burnless minimum.
And then, convulsively, he closed circuit and the nuclear fire dashed against his hand, harmlessly.
He whirled. “And what if I shoot you now, and keep the shield.”
“Try!” said Mallow. “Do you think I gave you my only sample?” And he, too, was solidly incased in light.
The tech-man giggled nervously. The blaster clattered onto the desk. He said, “And what is this mere nothing, this breath, that you wish in return?”
“I want to see your generators.”
“You realize that that is forbidden. It would mean ejection into space for both of us—”
“I don’t want to touch them or have anything to do with them. I want to see them—from a distance.”
“If not?”
“If not, you have your shield, but I have other things. For one thing, a blaster especially designed to pierce that shield.”
“Hm-m-m.” The tech-man’s eyes shifted. “Come with me.”
12
The tech-man’s home was a small two-story affair on the outskirts of the huge, cubiform, windowless affair that dominated the center of the city. Mallow passed from one to the other through an underground passage, and found himself in the silent, ozone-tinged atmosphere of the powerhouse.
<
br /> For fifteen minutes, he followed his guide and said nothing. His eyes missed nothing. His fingers touched nothing. And then, the tech-man said in strangled tones, “Have you had enough? I couldn’t trust my underlings in this case.”
“Could you ever?” asked Mallow, ironically. “I’ve had enough.”
They were back in the office and Mallow said, thoughtfully, “And all those generators are in your hands?”
“Every one,” said the tech-man, with more than a touch of complacency.
“And you keep them running and in order?”
“Right!”
“And if they break down?”
The tech-man shook his head indignantly. “They don’t break down. They never break down. They were built for eternity.”
“Eternity is a long time. Just suppose—”
“It is unscientific to suppose meaningless cases.”
“All right. Suppose I were to blast a vital part into nothingness? I suppose the machines aren’t immune to nuclear forces? Suppose I fuse a vital connection, or smash a quartz D-tube?”
“Well, then,” shouted the tech-man, furiously, “you would be killed.”
“Yes, I know that,” Mallow was shouting, too, “but what about the generator? Could you repair it?”
“Sir,” the tech-man howled his words, “you have had a fair return. You’ve had what you asked for. Now get out! I owe you nothing more!”
Mallow bowed with a satiric respect and left.
Two days later he was back where the Far Star waited to return with him to the planet Terminus.
And two days later, the tech-man’s shield went dead, and for all his puzzling and cursing never glowed again.
13
Mallow relaxed for almost the first time in six months. He was on his back in the sunroom of his new house, stripped to the skin. His great, brown arms were thrown up and out, and the muscles tautened into a stretch, then faded into repose.
The man beside him placed a cigar between Mallow’s teeth and lit it. He champed on one of his own and said, “You must be overworked. Maybe you need a long rest.”