by Ben Bova
“They crush it.” Sarns passed a weary hand across his forehead. “I know that as well as you, Maryan. But if he has courage, we can’t handle him as we would have before. “
“There is that,” she admitted. “Quiet, now-he’s almost here. “
Gilmer, Sarns thought, looked more like a barbarian chief than Emperor, even if a purple cape billowed behind him as he advanced. Beneath it he wore the coverall blotched in shades of green and brown that his soldiers used. Sarns supposed it was a camouflage suit, but in Trantor’s gleaming corridors it had more often exposed than protected the troopers. The nondescript gray of Sarns’s own coat and trousers was harder to spot here.
The usurper’s boots beat out a metallic tattoo. “Majesty,” Sarns said, knowing he should speak first and also knowing that, since Gilmer had seized Trantor, the title was true de facto if not de jure. Sarns did not approve of dealing in untruths.
“You’re Dean Sarns, eh?” Gilmer’s granite rumble should have come out of that hard, bearded countenance. The Emperor of the Galaxy scratched his nose, went on. “You’ve got some tough fighters behind you, Sarns. I tell you right now, I wouldn’t mind taking the lot of them into my fleet. “
“You are welcome to put out a call, sire, but I doubt you’d find many volunteers,” Sarns answered. “These young men and women are not soldiers by trade, but rather students. They-and I-care more for abstract knowledge than for the best deployment of a blast-rifle company. “
Gilmer nodded. “I’d heard that said. I found it hard to believe. Truth to tell, Sarns, I still do. You spend your whole lives chasing this-what did you call it?-abstract knowledge?”
“We do,” Sarns said proudly. “This is the University, after all, the distillation of all the wisdom that has accumulated over the millennia of Imperial history. We codify it, systematize it, and, where we can, add to it. “
“It seems a milk-livered way to spend one’s time,” Gilmer remarked, careless of Sarns’s feelings or-more likely-reckoning the Dean would agree with him when he pointed out an obvious truth. “What good is knowledge that you can’t eat, drink, sleep with, or shoot at your enemies?”
He is a barbarian, Sarns thought, even if he’s lived all his life inside what still calls itself, with less and less reason, the Galactic Empire. Fortunately Sarns, like any administrator worth his desk, had practice not showing what he felt. He said, ‘“Well, let me give you an example, sire: how did you and your victorious army come to Trantor?”
“By starship, of course.” Gilmer stared. “How else, man? Did you expect us to walk?” He laughed at his own wit.
Sarns smiled a polite smile. “Of course not. But what happens if one of your busbars shorts out or a hydrochron needs repair?”
‘“We fix ‘em, as best we can. Seems like nobody in the whole blasted Galaxy understands a hyperatomic motor any more,” Gilmer said, scowling. Then he stopped dead. “That’s knowledge too, isn’t it? By the space fiend, Sarns, are you telling me you’ve got a university full of technicians who really know what they’re doing? If you do, I’ll impress ‘em into the fleet and make you-and them-so rich they won’t ever miss their book-films, I promise you that.”
“We do have some people-not many, I fear-studying such things. As I said before, you are welcome to speak with them. Some may even choose to accompany you, for the challenge of working on real equipment.” Sarns paused a moment in thought. “We also have skilled doctors, computer specialists, and students of many other disciplines of value to the Empire.”
He watched Gilmer nibble the bait. “And they’d do these same kinds of things for me?” the usurper asked.
“Some might,” Sarns said. “Others-probably more-would be willing to instruct your technicians and personnel here. Of course,” he added smoothly, “they would be less enthusiastic if you shot your way in. You would also likely waste a good many of them that way.”
“Hrmmp,” Gilmer said. After a moment, he went on. “But any ships with their techs, their medics, their computer people gone-they’d be no more use to us than if they rusted away.“
“Not immediately, perhaps, but later they would be of even greater value to you than they could ever be with the inadequately trained crews I gather they have now.”
Gilmer lowered his voice. “Sarns, I can’t afford to think about later. I’d bet a million credits against a burnt-out blaster cartridge that there’s at least three fleets moving on me the same way I moved on Dagobert. Now that Trantor’s fallen, all the dogs of space will want to pick her bones-and mine.”
Privately, Sarns thought the usurper was right about that. It would only be what Gilmer deserved, too. But the dean-turned-general felt sadness wash over him all the same. No time to bother to learn anything new, no time to think about anything but the moment-that had been the disease of the Galactic Empire for far too long. Gilmer had a worse case of it than the emperors before him, but the root sickness was the same.
Sarns did not sigh. He said, “Well, in any case this has taken our discussion rather far from the purpose at hand, which is, after all, merely to arrange an armistice between your forces and the students and staff of the University, so both we and you may return to what we consider our proper pursuits. “
“Aye, that’s so,” Gilmer said.
As he had not sighed, Sarns did not smile. Show a barbarian a short-term objective and he won’t look past it, he thought. “Would you care to examine our facilities here, so you can see how harmless we are under normal circumstances?” he said.
“Why not? Lead on, Dean Sarns, and let’s see what you’ve turned into soldiers. Who knows? Maybe I’ll try to recruit you….Gilmer laughed. So, without reservation, did Yokim Sarns. He hadn’t suspected Gilmer could say anything that funny.
What first struck Gilmer inside the University was the quiet. Almost everyone went around in soft-soled shoes, soundless on the metal flooring. Gilmer’s boots clanged resoundingly as ever, even raised echoes that ran down the corridors ahead of him. But both clang and echoes were tiny pebbles dropped into an ocean of stillness.
The people were as strange as the place, Gilmer thought. Those who had fought his men were still in gray like Sarns. The rest wore soft pastels that made them seem to flit like spirits along the hallways. Their low voices added to the impression that they really weren’t quite there.
Half-remembered childhood tales of ghosts rose in Gilmer’s mind. He shivered and made sure he stayed close to his guides. “What are they doing in there?” he asked, pointing. His voice caused echoes too, echoes that swiftly died.
Sarns glanced into the laboratory. “Something pertaining to neurobiology,” he said. “One moment.” He ducked inside. “That’s right-they’re working to improve the efficiency of sleep-inducers.”
Somehow the Dean pitched his voice so that it was clear but raised no reverberations. Gilmer resolved to imitate him. “And what’s going on there?” the Emperor of the Galaxy asked. Then he frowned, for he’d managed only a hoarse whisper that sounded filled with dread.
To his relief, Sarns appeared to take no notice. “That’s a psychostatistics research group,” the Dean answered casually. He walked on, assuming Gilmer knew what psychostatistics was.
Gilmer didn’t, but was not about to let on. He pointed to another doorway. Some people in that room were working with computers, others with what looked like chunks of rock. “What are they up to?” he asked. He still could not match Yokim Sarns’s easy tone.
“Ahh, that’s one of our most fascinating projects. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it.” Gilmer, who wasn’t at all sure, waited for Sarns to go on: “Using ancient inscriptions and voice synthesizers, that team of linguists is attempting to reconstruct the mythical language called English, from which our modern Galactic tongue arose thousands of years ago.”
“Oh,” was all Gilmer said. He’d never heard of English, either. Well, too bad, he thought. He knew about a lot of things these soft academics had never heard of, things like f
ield-stripping a blast-pistol, like small-unit actions.
Yokim Sarns might have plucked the thought from his head, and then twisted it in a way he did not like: “Mainly, though, we fought you so we could protect what you’re coming to now: the Library.”
“Everything humanity has ever learned is preserved here,” said Sarns’s aide Maryan Drabel.
Gilmer caught the note of pride in her voice. “ Are you in charge of it?” he asked.
She nodded and smiled. Gilmer cut ten years off the guess he’d made of her age from her grim face and drab clothing. She said, “This chamber here is the accessing room. Students and researchers come here first, to get a printout of the book-films and journal articles available in our files on the topics that interest them.”
“Where are all your book-films?” Gilmer craned his neck. He’d visited libraries on other planets once or twice, and found himself wading in film cases. He didn’t see any here. Suspicion grew in him. Was all this some kind of colossal bluff, designed to conceal who knew what? If it was, the whole University would pay.
But Maryan Drabel only laughed. “You’re not ready to see book-films yet. Before a student can even begin to view films, he or she needs to have some idea of what’s in them: more than a title can provide. What we’re coming to now is the Abstracts Section, where people weed through their possible reading lists with summaries of the documents that seem promising to them.”
More people fiddling with more computers. Gilmer almost succeeded in suppressing his yawn. Maryan Drabel went on. “We also have an acquisition and cataloguing division, which integrates new book-films into our collection. “
“New book-films?” Gilmer said. “You mean people still write them?”
“Not as many as when the University was founded,” the librarian said sadly. “ And, of course, now that the Periphery and even some of the inner regions have broken away from the Empire, we no longer see a lot of what is written, or only get a copy after many years. But we do still try, and surely no other collection in the Galaxy comes close to ours in scope or completeness.”
They came to an elevator. Yokim Sarns pressed the button. After a moment, the door opened. “This way, please,” Sarns said as he stepped in.
Maryan Drabel and Gilmer followed, the latter with some misgivings. If these University folk wanted to assassinate him, what better place than the cramped and secret confines of an elevator? But if they wanted to assassinate him, he’d been in their power since this tour started. He had to assume they didn’t.
The elevator purred downward, stopped. The door opened again. “These are the reading rooms,” Maryan Drabel said.
Gilmer saw row on row of cubicles. Most of them were empty. “Usually. they would be much busier,” Yokim Sarns remarked. “The people who would be busy using them have been on the fighting lines instead. “
As if to confirm his words, one of the closed cubicle doors opened. The young woman who emerged wore the gray of the University’s soldiers and had a blast rifle slung on her back. She looked grubby and tired, as a front-line soldier should. Gilmer noted that she also looked as though she’d forgotten all about the fighting and her weapon: her attention focused solely on the calculator pad she was keying as she walked toward the bank of elevators.
“Do you care to look inside a reading room?” Maryan Drabel asked.
Gilmer thought for a moment, shook his head. He’d been in a few reading rooms; they were alike throughout the Galaxy. The number of them here was impressive, but one by itself would not be.
“Is this everything you have to show me?” he asked.
“One thing more,” Maryan Drabel told him. shrugging, he ducked back into the elevator with her and Sarns.
Down they went again, down and down. “You are specially privileged, to see what we are about to show you,” Yokim Sarns said. “Few people ever will, few even from the University. We thought it would help you to understand us better.”
The elevator stopped. Gilmer stepped out, stared around. “By the space fiend,” he whispered in soft wonder.
The chamber extended for what had to be kilometers. From floor to ceiling, every shelf was packed full of book-films. “The computer can access them and project them to the appropriate reading room on request,” Maryan Drabel said.
Gilmer walked toward the nearest case. His boots thumped instead of clanging. He glanced down. “This is a rock floor,” he said. “Why isn’t it metal like everything else?”
“The book-film depositories are below the built-up part of Trantor,” Yokim Sarns explained. “There wouldn’t be room for them up there-that space is needed for people. Having them down here also gives them a certain amount of extra protection from catastrophe. Even the blast of a radiation weapon set off overhead probably wouldn’t reach down here.”
“You also have to understand that this is just one book-film chamber among many,” Maryan Drabel added. “We’ve used both dispersed storage and a lot of redundancy to do our best to ensure the collection’s safety. “
Gilmer had a sudden vision of the University folk tunneling like moles for years, for centuries, for millennia, honeycombing the very bedrock of Trantor as they dug storehouses for the knowledge they hoarded. Even worse, in his mind’s eye he imagined all the weight of rock and metal over his head. He’d grown up on a farming world full of wide open spaces, and had spent most of his life in space itself. To imagine everything above collapsing, crushing him so he would leave not even a red smear, made cold sweat start on his brow.
“Shall we go back up?” he said hoarsely.
“Certainly, sire.” Yokim Sarns’s voice was bland. “I hope you do see-now-that we are solely dedicated to the pursuit of learning, and will not interfere in the political life of the Empire so long as it does not invade our campus. On those terms, I think, we can arrange an armistice satisfactory to both sides. “
All Gilmer wanted to do-now-was get away from this catacomb, return to his own men. He noticed that Sarns hadn’t thumbed the elevator button. Maybe Sarns wouldn’t, until Gilmer agreed. “Yes, yes, of course.” He could hear how quickly he spoke, but could not help it. “You have your men put down their arms, and mine will stay away from the University.”
“Good enough,” Sarns said. As if he had been absentminded before-and perhaps that was all he had been-he pushed the button that summoned the elevator. Gilmer rode up in relieved silence; every second the elevator climbed seemed to lift a myria-ton from his shoulders.
When he and his guides returned to the level from which they had begun, a man came briskly toward them with two sheets of parchmentoid. “This is Egril Joons,” Sarns said. “What do you have for us, Egril?”
“Copies of the armistice agreement, for your signature and the Emperor Gilmer’s,” Joons replied. He held out a stylus.
Gilmer took it. He skimmed through one copy of the document, signed it, and was reaching for the other from Yokim Sarns when he suddenly thought to wonder how the armistice terms could be ready now when he’d only agreed to them moments before. “You were snooping,” he growled to Egril Joons.
“My apologies, but yes,” Joons said. “Voice monitoring is part of the security system for the book-films. This time I just made use of it to prepare copies as quickly as possible. I expected that your majesty would have other concerns that would soon need his attention.”
Gilmer recalled how badly he’d wanted to get back to his own troops. “Oh, very well, put that way,” he said. He signed the second copy of the armistice accord. This Joons fellow was righter than he knew, righter than he could know. Trantor had to be made ready to defend itself from space attack, and quickly, or Gilmer the Emperor of the Galaxy would soon be Gilmer the vaporized usurper.
Gilmer the Emperor of the Galaxy rolled up his copy of the agreement, absentmindedly stuck Egril Joons’s stylus in a tunic pocket, and said, sounding quite imperial indeed, “Now if you will be so good as to escort me back to my lines”
“Certainly.” Yok
im Sarns handed the other copy of the armistice to Maryan Drabel. “Come this way, if you please.”
From behind, Maryan Drabel thought, Gilmer looked much more like an emperor than from the front. The shining purple cape lent him an air of splendor that did not match the camouflage suit he wore under it. Seen from the front, the cape only seemed a sad bit of stolen booty.
“An emperor shouldn’t look like a thief, “ she said.
“Why not?” Egril loons was still feeling pangs over his purloined stylus. ”That’s what he is.”
“Wizards!” Billye shouted. “You went into the wizards’ lair, and they enspelled you!”
“There’s no such things as wizards!” Gilmer shouted back.
“No? Then why didn’t you get anything worth having out of the University, when they were at our mercy?” she said.
“I did. We aren’t shooting at them any more, and they aren’t shooting at us. They recognize me as Emperor of the Galaxy. What more could I want?”
“To put the fear of cold space and hot death in them, that’s what. If you are the Emperor of the Galaxy, they should act like subjects, not like equals. Can the Emperor have an equal? And you let them.” Billye’s hair flew around her in a copper cloud as she shook her head in bewilderment. “I can’t believe you let them. You have all your men, the whole fleet-why not just crush them for their insolence?”
“Oh, leave me be,” Gilmer said sullenly. He didn’t need to hear this from Billye; he’d already heard it, more politely but the same tune, from Vergis Fenn. Fenn had asked him why, if the University folk were willing to instruct his personnel, that willingness didn’t show up in the armistice document. He’d been sullen with his fleet commander, too, not wanting to admit he hadn’t had the nerve to ask for the change in writing. Why hadn’t he? All the real power was on his side. But still-he hadn’t.
