The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

by Isaac Asimov

  She smiled at something over my shoulder. “I could take your compliments all night, Imperiality, but I think you’re about to be dragged away.”

  I turned to find two grave, gray-haired old men approaching: Vance Alderman and Teren al mar Axtant, two Grand Counsellors who had made it their duty to try to mold a poor young academic like me into their ideal High Emperor. I sighed.

  Beramis scowled at them. “Four Emperors gone mad in just fifty tennights? I’d be careful, Imperiality—Jad, those men are doing their job too well.”

  “Only three went mad,” I said. “Emperor Tolan resigned, after all.” I shook my head. “This is no time for gloom. Let’s—let’s dance!”

  Rina looked around vaguely. “Do you… does Your Imperiality think the music will begin soon?”

  “There are certain advantages in being High Emperor,” I said. I knew there were monitors in the ceiling picking up my every word, every Imperial command. I raised my hand, motioned, and the music started on cue, an ancient quadrille from pre-spaceflight Vienna.

  Too soon, the dance ended and the music played out. The hundred or so people who had gathered to watch gave a brief spatter of applause. I beckoned to Mara; together, we swept around in one last whirl.

  “Wonderful!” she said. “Scarcely a missed step throughout.”

  “It’s not as though we were unprepared,” I said. Servants brought champaigne; I took a glass for each of us and we sipped gently. “The University holds dances every Saturday night, and all.”

  “You still couldn’t have planned it better. I’m sure you impressed everyone.”

  I laughed. “Not the Grand Counsellors, surely. But you’re right, I couldn’t have planned it better. I knew you’d all dance as well as ever. In fact, you’re all quite predictable.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Certainly. Rina is going to hang on Quent’s every word for the rest of the evening, like she always does. And in a minute Beramis will join us and start telling those funny stories of his, and after that—”

  “Shh! He’s coming now!”

  I grinned. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Beramis and the others joined us. “Have you heard the story about the archaeologist, the historian, and the paleontogist, Imperiality?” Beramis said, then he launched into the first of a series of deftly-told jokes. As always, I tried to keep a straight face; as always, I was soon grinning, then chuckling, then roaring. I laughed as much at the wildly improbable stories as Beramis’s own struggle to hold a straight face throughout them.

  “Enough, enough!” I said, breathless. I wiped my eyes.

  Still chuckling, I turned away, waving a hand behind me.

  “Enough,” I said, following the familiar ritual of oh-so-many gathering, back at the little University on a rather out-of-the-way planet, back when I’d been just plain Jad to everyone. “Somebody stop him; he’s too far!”

  “But you haven’t heard what happened next,” said Beramis, behind me now. “Then the Macedonian—Hey!”

  A disruptor hissed close by. I whirled, instantly alert, as Rina’s scream broke a sudden deathly silence. I heard a roaring in my ears; the world seemed to be moving too slowly, unnaturally slowly. Beramis was crumpling to the floor.

  “No!” I shouted. I leaped forward, but it was too late and I knew it. He was dead, his face grossly distorted, blotches of red and blue and yellow replacing the tan of his skin.

  I closed his eyes—I knew I couldn’t do anything else for him now. Then, hearing sounds of a scuffle, I jerked my head up.

  Jon and Quent were struggling with a man, one of the onlookers, while Ganion scrambled to help. The powerfully built stranger wore intricately embroidered clothing, a bright gold shirt and wine-red pants such as any high official might own. And he still held a disruptor pistol in his hand.

  “Kill—” I started, then caught myself. “No! Wait! I said wait!” The struggle froze, disruptor pistol pointed up at the distant ceiling. “That’s better.”

  Slowly I stood. My mind seemed to be whirling along at an astounding rate, and all sorts of mental alarms shrilled at me. Something was very, very wrong here. Why would an assassin kill Beramis rather than me? And how had he managed to smuggle a disruptor into the Coronation Ballroom? A thousand safety devices should have prevented it. It didn’t make sense… unless it were part of some larger plot.

  I looked across the crowd that had gathered. Which one of you is playing Livia to my Augustus?

  My first impulse had been to kill the murderer; my second, to question him. Either might be what was expected of me. I had to break out of the pattern, do something totally unexpected, if I was to get to the bottom of this.

  I said: “Mara!”

  “Jad?”

  “Take his weapon. Hang on to it.” I pointed to the killer. “You there! Put your pistol on ‘safety’. Give it to her. Give her all your weapons. Understand?”

  “Yes, Your Imperiality,” the stranger said.

  Jon and Quent loosened their hold enough for him to hand Mara both his disruptor pistol and a nasty-looking thermo-dagger.

  “But if Your Imperiality will let me—”

  “Explain?” I barked. “No! You will wait until I’m ready.”

  “But if Your Imperiality will let—”

  “Shut up!”

  He did so. I glanced around.

  Ganion stood close, hands still full of purple satin.

  “Vest me,” I said quietly, and waited until the robes were on my shoulder again. Then, cautiously, step by step, I moved toward the killer. He cringed a bit as I neared, then caught himself, squared his shoulders, and tried to look me in the eye.

  “Let me explain, Your—” he started.

  “No!” I said. Pausing, I took a deep breath. “It seems to me that—” I stopped again, glanced around.

  Behind me, Rina crouched over Beramis’s body, sobbing quietly. Ganion stood at my elbow, Deak a few paces behind, and Quent and Jon still held the killer’s arms. Mara stood a few paces behind Quent, holding the disruptor.

  All around us, the crowd was growing larger. I saw, at its front, Grand Counsellor Alderman, Grand Counsellor Axtant, Grand Counsellor—my eyes picked out members of the Grand Council faster than I could recall their names.

  “Fascinating,” I muttered.

  “What, Jad?” asked Ganion. “I mean, Your—”

  I shushed him with a curt gesture, then said quietly, “Deak, Ganion, listen: Somebody’s about to try to kill our assassin. Be ready. Understand?”

  “Kill him?” asked Deak. “But—ah!”

  “That’s right,” I said, still keeping my voice low.

  “Think!” I approached the killer again, and in a voice trained to cope with crowded lecture halls and bad acoustics, I declaimed, “This appears to be very eager to tell us something.”

  “Yes,” said the killer. “Your Imperiality, I—”

  “He is so eager,” I continued, drowning out his voice, “that I have three times—three times—specifically ordered him not to speak, and still he tries.”

  “You slimy ert,” growled Jon, wrenching the killer’s arms behind his back. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “Later,” I said.

  “But he killed—”

  “Trust me. First, how would you describe this—the way he’s acting?”

  “Huh?” asked Jon. “Are you crazy, Jad? I mean—”

  “The Grand Council is in charge of deciding if I’m crazy,” I said. “Oddly enough, the entire Council appears to be gathered here. But we can rest assured there’s an explanation for that. Now, my question?”

  “Imperiality,” said Mara, “he—that murderer—refuses to follow your commands, even your most direct and specific commands.” She gave me a shrewd glance, then demanded of the others, “Does anyone say otherwise? No? All agree, Imperiality.”

  Ganion said, “You called him ‘assassin.’ This would suppose someone sent him to kill Beramis.”

&
nbsp; “Yes,” I said, “I suppose it does. But can you tell me what’s supposed to happen when he has his say? Will he really tell us why? Or is something else planned?”

  I raised my voice. “Quickly, assassin, tell us all you know!”

  Rina’s shout alerted me, sent Deak and Ganion into a headlong dive at another bystander who had suddenly pulled out a disruptor pistol. Deak seized the man’s arm in a vicelike grip, forced it back until he dropped the pistol. It clattered noisily on the floor.

  “You get the wrong signal?” Deak demanded. He scooped up the pistol and brandished it wildly. “Talk!”

  “Give the disruptor to Susa to hold,” I said. “Put the safety on first.”

  “I’ve got that much sense, Jad—uh, damn!—Your Imperiality.” He handed the weapon over. “Now what?”

  I was at a loss. “What do you suggest, Quent?”

  “Hmm. Well, in the first place, we’re starting to run out of assassin-holders.” More loudly, he said, “I should say, Imperiality, that the next time somebody pulls out a weapon, the bystanders had better grab him. If they don’t, Mara and Susa are going to start shooting, and with their aim, a lot of people, including the Grand Council, are going to get hit.”

  “Especially the Grand Council,” put in Mara. I could see she had all picked up on the strangeness of the Counsellors’ presence. “I wonder, Imperiality,” she continued, “just why the Council is gathered here, why your guards haven’t arrived yet even after a disruptor blast and several loud screams, and who is responsible for arranging this.”

  “And Beramis?” I asked, somehow keeping my voice from breaking.

  “His death must be part of the same plot.”

  I thought a moment, then spoke to the arched ceiling. “Monitoring crew, relay this to my guards. I want them here, now, without weapons, I repeat, without weapons. Mara, the woman with the disruptor pistol and the blond hair, is temporarily their commander. They are to do as she instructs. Understand?”

  A second later, a low-powered laser locked onto my right retina and flashed an acknowledgement: GUARDS ADVISED. It stayed in my line of sight as an after-image for a good minute.

  Now, to get to the heart of this plot.

  I said, “What were you saying, Jon?”

  “I think this goes even deeper than it seems. This ert,” he said, giving the a shake, “was to have been killed by that one.” He bared his teeth in a humorless grin as his captive suddenly paled. “What’s wrong, assassin? Did you just realize you’d been set up? But there’s more than Beramis’s murder… ”

  “I didn’t!” the gasped. “His Imperiality told me—”

  “I told you to shut up,” I said. I saw, then, why so many High Emperors had gone insane of late. The Grand Council had been responsible. Like any bureaucracy, it had been taking on more and more power at every opportunity… and what better way to keep gaining power than to drive Emperors insane? Their final intention, I thought, would be discrediting so many High Emperors that the very institution was destroyed. Then the Council could easily step in to run things.

  I couldn’t be the first to say it, or they’d have reason to throw me out of office: insanity due to paranoia.

  From the expression on Jon’s face, I saw he understood, too.

  I smiled. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Jon.”

  And he did, in short, blunt, angry words. He accused the Grand Council of everything short of murdering me. All the time, I looked on sagely.

  “Preposterous!” snorted Grand Counsellor Alderman. He took a stately step forward. “Madness.” Another. “How can you even think such a—”

  “Grand Counsellor,” Mara said, “I think that if you get any closer, His Imperiality’s temporary commander of his guard is going to blast you.”

  Alderman shut up and took a quick step back.

  In a moment, a small squad of uniformed guards pushed their way though the crowd and saluted me. The holsters for their disruptor pistols were empty.

  “Search the crowd for weapons,” I said quickly. “I want to know if we have any more assassins hiding among us.”

  “Outrageous!” shouted Counsellor Alderman.

  “Start with him,” Mara said.

  “Get your hands off me!” Alderman said, as several guards began going through his pockets. “It’s unheard of to assault a Grand Counsellor!”

  “Sir.” One of the searchers pulled a small weapon from his pocket and held it up for me to see.

  “This is pretty unheard of, too,” I said. “Needle-pistol, isn’t it, Counsellor?”

  “I can explain—”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “Jon?”

  “As for the technique, it appears quite simple: making the High Emperor as word-bound as the Bureaucracy itself, until the Emperor is locked into a fear-pattern regarding his speech. That is, he becomes afraid to speak lest he accidentally get himself or a close friend killed. The pressure simply drives him mad. And, if he does figure out what’s going on—that the plot is turning his every word against him—then the Grand Council can rule him insane due to paranoia.”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “Nonsense!” snapped Alderman. “If that gun-waving woman will permit me?” At Mara’s nod, he went on: “His Imperiality incautiously ordered someone to stop that unfortunate young there. So, in his haste to obey, for the High Emperor’s every word is absolute law, this man pulled out his disruptor—”

  “Which he just happened to be carrying?” said Jon. “And at the Imperial Coronation Ball? And then another of your assassins just happens to be ready to blast him?”

  “Clearly a function such as this, even here, must have some armed men in unobtrusive attendance,” Alderman said.

  “These are things which you from the more backward corners of the Imperium cannot be expected to understand, of course. But, needless to say, when the first gunman went so far as to try to blame the Emperor himself for—”

  “Shut your lying face,” growled Quent. “You set up this bloody-handed killer to get Beramis, and you set up that one to shut the first murderer up afterwards, and then you had a gun yourself, just in case.”

  “Insanity,” hissed Alderman. He raised his voice, shouted, “Madness.” He turned to the rest of the watching Grand Council. “Colleagues of the Council, it is just as I feared; now we must consider the matter of the fitness of His Imperiality. All this talk of wild plots by the bureaucracy—”

  “Counsellor!” gasped Mara. “Jad, what shall—”

  I moved slowly toward Alderman and the Council, motioning Mara aside. “Now, if a High Emperor from a backward corner of the Imperium may make a small observation?”

  Alderman edged back nervously.

  “Leaving aside the matter of the killer, who appears extraordinarily and literally obedient one moment and quite unable to take orders the next; leaving aside the matter of the second gunman, who wants to defend My Imperiality even before I’ve been blamed for anything—” I continued to advance, step by step, slowly herding Alderman in a broad loop. We moved through the Grand Counsellors, who scrambled aside to give him room. “—and leaving aside the question of whether you were close enough to hear exactly what I said, the observation I would like to make is that I haven’t said a word about any plots by you, the Bureaucracy, the Grand Council, or anyone else.” I paused a heartbeat, just long enough for Alderman to begin to hope. “Yet.”

  I noticed that the guards had finished their search of the immediate crowd: no more weapons. Ahead of me, behind the still-retreating Alderman, I saw Rina mourning over Beramis’s body. Grimly, I maneuvered the Grand Counsellor toward the corpse.

  I said, “I think the captain of the guard should be summoned next, if I want more answers. I’m sure he knows what, or who, kept the guards so long.”

  “Y-Your Imperiality,” said Counsellor Alderman, face grown quite pale, “we, uh, we meant no harm, but Your Imperiality must be made to, uh, must realize the responsibilities of omnipotence and i
nfallibility and—and—”

  “You’d better stop backing up,” I said. “You’re about to step on a dead man.”

  Alderman looked back and saw Beramis lying there, all crumpled, on the floor of the great ballroom. Beyond the corpse, Rina rose to her feet.

  I turned to Mara. “Have our two assassins brought over here.” Then I turned back to Grand Counsellor Alderman and took a deep breath. “So,” I said, shifting to my lecturing voice, “you would have me infallible and omnipotent? You would have one obey my words rather than my meaning, and a second commit murder to protect my infallibility? You would, then, if you do not drive me mad, make me into the image of the Bureaucracy, bound by words and rules instead of meaning and reality? Well?”

  Grand Counsellor Alderman recoiled a step. His foot touched Beramis’s body. He jerked away. “Yes, Y-Your Imperiality.”

  “So be it,” I said. I pointed to Beramis. “Now, bring him back to life.”

  “Im-Imperiality?” said Alderman. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your murderer didn’t understand before; did that stop him?”

  “But—”

  I turned to the two captured assassins. “Bring my friend back to life,” I said. “I order it.”

  “But that’s impossible!” the first assassin whispered.

  “Am I not omnipotent? Am I not infallible? Show us all how omnipotent and infallible I really am by carrying out my orders.”

  I found a guard close at hand and motioned him forward.

  “Your Imperiality,” he said, dropping to one knee.

  “You will attend to these three,” I said, “making sure they take neither food nor drink nor sleep until they have fulfilled their task.” I waited, eyes on the guard.

  “Your Imperiality, have I permission to ask a question?”

  “Any order authorizes one to ask for its meaning.”

  “Do we… are we to attend in shifts, or…?”

  “I leave it up to you.”

  My gaze swept over the group of Grand Counsellors. Teren al Axtant dropped to one knee, head bowed. Others, evidently unsure whether to go up or down, half crouched, watching me.

  I said to Axtant, to them all, “I think you cannot judge My Imperiality’s sanity unless you also investigate plots against My Imperiality. You may start with this current plot. You will attend these three, as part of your investigation, until they succeed in their task or die.”