Megalomania

by Ian Wallace

  He was commenting quietly, suavely (while puzzled and alarmed Croyd mind-felt the heat of his inward arousal): “I am of course exhibiting the jet-spumes out of the galaxy called 3C-449 which is an inconvenient hundred million light-years away from us. Each of those jets is about two hundred thousand light-years in length. Each jet terminates in a hotspot lobe in which the dammed-up energy is equal to that of a quarter of a million suns such as our Sol.

  “Ours is indeed a complex universe. Numerous galaxies eject such jets. They may attain lengths of a million light-years—I said a million light-years, that is, more than three hundred thousand parsecs, many times the diameter of our magnificent galaxy—with hotspot lobes deploying the energy of ten million suns.

  “That much energy. I said, honored board-members—and how fully aware I am that most of you deploy Erth-vital industrial operations which are ravenous for new energy sources—I said: that much energy!”

  The responding board-sigh was like the soughing of a thrilled breeze.

  “They constitute,” Dino asserted, “a natural resource that wastes itself unharvested.

  “As chairman, I will be their harvester. Our galaxy will feast on the harvest.”

  Croyd (but not Kolly) noticed that, while Tannen and two board members were leaning forward, six board members were sitting back relaxed and smug. Four of the six were women; one was a man; the sex of the sixth was ambiguous. An unsavory hypothesis began to form in Croyd’s mind…

  “To help you grasp the practicality of my concept,” Dino pressed, “I’ll remind you that the principle of ultrahigh-efficiency transmittal of a star’s energy to one of its planets was established long ago when satellites were dispatched to collect solar energy while orbiting Sol at a ten-million-kilometer radius, transmitting the energy to Erth via mirrors and lasers. With respect to radiant jet-space, we—I, in fact—have recently improved on such primitive methods. Let me show you an instance.”

  The hologram changed: now it was a single jet rather than a duo, out of a source which Dino lost no time in explaining. “You are looking at a little fellow which does not emanate from a galaxy; instead, it is one of a number of jets within our own galaxy, X-27Q, spewed out by a binary star. We are viewing it from a locus much closer in than in the case of 3C-449, so that in our picture it appears almost equally impressive and chromatic. Now, this jet is only a shade over four hundred light-years from Sol: easily ready to hand. This relative nearness makes X-27Q an ideal subject for experimentation with energy harvesting, even though its relatively small size makes the potential return low when measured against the necessary investment.”

  While Croyd’s ethos blocked him from telepathically examining Dino’s thoughts, it was becoming imperative for the chairman to taste Dino’s emotionality. And it was high, high, fiery high; never in Croyd’s experience of him had Dino been on such a wild roll! Yet the first minister’s delivery demeanor was quietly-persuasively measured. For the first time, Croyd knew an eerie sense of psychic disjuncture between Dino’s cognitively governed behavior and Dino’s connatively ungoverned arousal…

  His protégé-competitor was weaving his expert way into a climax. “Honorable board members, please hear this: we are in fact now reaping energy from the jet-spume of X-27Q, because of an initiative by your first minister.” Croyd was frowning: he had given the nod to Dino’s proposal about this; now why would his dear friend use it against him?

  Dino was pressing on with it. “We are engineering this research with robot ships which fly into the stem of the jet and implant forcefield turbines therein. Largely to ease the conscience-pain visible in the face of my revered mentor Croyd, I will insert that all, or virtually all, of the energy we thus harvest is being banked for the eventual use of the single human-inhabited planet orbiting X-27Q—a planet whose technology has not yet reached a level where it can make use of such energy at present. But my point is, that the technique is working and is indefinitely extensible—and, as my dear friend Croyd will have to admit, was devised and proposed and experimentally implemented by me and not by him.”

  Ignoring Croyd’s massive wince, Dino sizzled into coda. “Should this board accord me the chair of Galactic, 1 would prosecute, as my highest creative priority, the extension of this method to major galactic jets such as the pair out of 3C-449 which you first beheld. And that is an approach which Chairman Croyd does not appear even to have thought of. All of us are aware of his inventively lofty creativity during past decades: this I would never discount, I have revered it, I have learned from it. And if, perchance, age has blunted this creativity, never would I cease to revere it as it spurted and molded our galaxy during its time; and if its time should indeed now be done, I pray that everyone in the galaxy will thank his own god for its existence while it existed.

  “However, this is 2513—today. And I know my duty to this galaxy. As of today—and until such time as I too will be sliding into honorable desuetude—I urge that you elect me chairman, for service during my own creative prime.”

  Dino sat, not looking at Croyd.

  Kolly was enthralled at Dino’s diabolical audacity. His performance had been distinguished by high virtuosity, and cognitively he was aware of this; his presence had radiated stunning charisma; emotionally (and also rationally, for a certain hidden reason) he knew that he would win. His performance had been intended less to gain new converts than to strengthen and inspire those who were already converted.

  Croyd noticed that the two board members who had been leaning forward now appeared concerned and were glancing furtively at Croyd; while the six smug ones remained smug and had eyes only for Trigg. Now Croyd was able to infer which of the board members were in Dino’s pocket—and the count for Croyd was not good. Inwardly he kicked himself for fond carelessness: caring for Dino, highly esteeming his protégé’s intellectual gifts and energetic self-application and consent-winning charm and (yes!) emotive moderation, Croyd had failed to take account of the molten emotional magma beneath Dino’s upward drive. (Or—was the vulcanism in fact something new? sensitive Croyd hadn’t previously sensed the degree of it…)

  One of the board members whose eyes did not seem glazed raised a six-fingered hand. “Mister President, all of us well know about those Croyd-absences, their galaxy-threatening causes, their results which have added up to our galactic survival not despite but because of Croyd in the course of his absences.”

  “Oh, God, yes!” affirmed the second in a deep bell-contralto (although he was male: the vocal quality was a species characteristic). “Not that we weren’t fortunate to have Doctor Trigg and prior stellar first ministers on the home front; but I believe that Doctor Trigg, for instance, was discovered and elevated by Croyd; and that during Croyd’s more-than-essential absences, Trigg and his predecessors operated in terms of marching orders left behind for them by Croyd.”

  One of the smug ones sniffed: “Except, it seems, in the matter of the jet-spumes. That, my friends, represented Trigg-initiative and Croyd-ignorance. What else has been going on that Croyd has failed to notice?”

  Interrupting, the first nonglazed board member launched himself into a solid and detailed report of the Croyd stewardship. The prolix endorsement extended back to Croyd’s first appearance on the Galactic scene in 2475, moved through two decades of his service in the Internal Security Ministry (internal to the entire galaxy, that is), and proceeded into his years as chairman (2496-2507, then 2509-2513), not failing to mention what he had accomplished for Dari and Moudjinn in remote Djinn Galaxy during his 2507-09 embassy. This board member included scrutiny of Croyd’s longest absences, all on perilous Galactic duty-errands in which Croyd’s unique skills had been uniquely pertinent. (But, Croyd reminded himself, most of those skills are no longer uniquely mine, grace to what 1 have taught my trusted Dino.) This clear-eyed chipvoiced board member talked for more than twenty minutes; whereafter the clear-eyed contralto affirmed: “I thoroughly concur with my colleague in general and in detail; and each other member am
ong us has always agreed on the indispensable value of Croyd as chairman.”

  Dino took note that he had failed to convert anybody, but he still had his six who were more than enough. As for Croyd, he winced: should he be truly indispensable—and in his own a priori he could not be that—never would he be able to shake loose from this executive job and get back to creative roving! But when ultimately he would depart, he preferred that his leavetaking be voluntary.

  President Tannen: “Further discussion?” The suspect six were zombiesque. It was unlike them, and Dino’s charisma alone would never have caused it. Surely Croyd’s dearly trusted Trigg had not…Well, assume for the argument that Dino for some reason was willing to betray Croyd’s trust; still, Dino well knew that projective hypnotism, even should it win him this election, could not hold up permanently; but perhaps he was counting on frequent reinforcement…

  The man who had contralto-echoed support for Croyd called for the question. Tannen ordered a roll call vote.

  Yes, Dino had done! And Croyd, in view of his insistent position against mind-invasion without consent by the invaded, comprehended that he was about to be displaced by Dino Trigg who (as Croyd now distressfully understood) harbored no such ethical inhibition, nor any scruple about unfairly attacking his fostering patron.

  After a prolonged seventeen seconds of indecision, Croyd’s necessary attitude snapped into fix: an unethical man, no matter how ably charismatic he might be, no matter how deeply Croyd might care for him, had no business running a galaxy.

  Uninvited, Croyd refused to invade minds or brains—but he could mind-spray a psychic counteragent into the air and see who would inhale it.

  Croyd sprayed.

  The voting went as follows: “Trigg.”

  “Trigg.” “Croyd.” “Trigg.” “Croyd.” “Trigg.” “Trigg.”

  Thanks to Dino, they had confirmed Croyd’s belief in his own dispensability, six against two. Dino, having straightened in his chair, turned to confront his mentor Croyd in the radiance of his easy and all-forgiving triumph.

  Tannen was querying whether Croyd wished to exercise his voting right; silently, Croyd negated, since his vote apparently would not change the outcome. With reluctance, Tannen prepared to declare Trigg the new Chairman of Galactic, Ltd.

  Only, psychic aerosols, once inhaled, require some seconds to take effect; whereafter…

  A Trigg voter, who had been blinking and headshaking as though she sought to arouse herself from stupor, now blurted: “Mister President, did I vote?”

  “Aye,” said Tannen. “How did I vote?” queried the awakening sleeper. Startled, Dino swiveled toward this member who had been a Trigg-certainty. Deadpanned Tannen: “Madam, you voted for Trigg.” The member, a normally alert, aggressive tycoon from Centauri, now appeared to be requiring her flaccid mouth to slow-form words: “There has been some mistake, I do not understand; if that was my vote, I wish to change it. Strike my vote for Trigg, and enter my vote for Croyd.”

  Well, hell, mindsaid Dino’s mindguest./Ive to three is good enough, you’ve protected yourself by nailing down more votes than you need; so one of them softened… .

  A second Trigg voter semi-returned from far away. “Sir, is it possible that I too voted for Trigg?” Now, wait a minute …

  “You did, sir,” Tannen affirmed.

  “Mister President, I confess confusion, I am not really prepared to vote at all—”

  “Please find and express your vote.”

  “It has to be that I abstain, I feel incompetent for some reason.”

  “Are you changing your vote from Trigg to Abstention?”

  “If you will, please.”

  By now, smile gone, Dino was cold and grim. Although Croyd played bland, inwardly his concentration on the developing situation was acute.

  Tannen asked SECYCOM for the revised count, which was: Trigg four, Croyd three, one abstention. Again Tannen looked at Croyd, and now the incumbent had to act.

  Croyd raised a hand, was recognized, stood, asserted: “Mister President, now I must exercise my right to vote. I vote for Croyd.”

  He sat, and he pitied Trigg’s catatonia while SECYCOM enunciated: “It is tied at four and four with one abstention, and the President is obligated to vote.”

  “I vote for Croyd!” shot Tannen.

  Droned SECYCOM: “Croyd wins, five to four with one abstention.”

  Tannen clinched it: “Chairman Croyd, you will continue in the chair until the year 2518 ITC, absent something ridiculous. First Minister Trigg, we admire you and we regret your defeat, but you know how it is.”

  The ambiguously sexed Trigg voter now injected tremulously: “Is it too late for me to change my vote to Croyd?”

  Uttering an articulacy, Dino wrenched himself away from behind his desk, stood quivering beside it facing an alarmed board; his anger was cosmic but then he chilled and panicked and transmuted panic into defiant flight fury. Pivoting to Croyd, he showed his patron a face whose facile charm had persimmoned into contorted evil. He snarled: “Being waste for all of you, I will waste myself!”

  He levitated himself physically above the floor, hovered, roared, midair-jetted out of the board room into the corridor-labyrinth of Nereid. This remarkable behavior was entirely within the Croyd-taught psychophysical capabilities of Dino alone.

  (On her feet aboard Sterbenräuber, Kolly commanded her telly: “Order Nereid to show you every Trigg pickup!” Nereid could do it, recognizing his emotion-distorted thalamic pattern.)

  Charging through corridors with the maddened purpose of a defeated control-and-power-worship-er, Dino bulled his way into Nereid’s master support-systems control room, dropped all personnel with sweeping projective hypnosis, shut off Nereid’s artificial gravity, deep-breathed during a chancy Fifteen seconds, opened an airlock, ran out to the far edge of a ship-launch platform, leg-thrust himself off the edge in a racing dive, and shot tumbling outward into perpetual night among stars, mechanically certain to die swiftly in airless space and eventually to body-ploop into the ambiguous surface of Neptune.

  2. Enter the Devil

  “Follow Trigg!” Kolly stentored; and since anyhow the cameras in the ship-launch platform on Nereid routinely were following him, Sterbenräuber’s Kolly-directed sensors were picking him up (thanks to UHF floodlights) while, smallening, he receded into outer darkness.

  Into that darkness he vanished. But Kolly, an on-the-ball captain, had computers on the angle-and-thrust vectors of his departure, measuring his consequent directional velocity against time, taking into account the almost-negligible slowing introduced by occasional subatomic particles in the not-quite-total vacuum of deep space.

  She hurried to the operational bridge (about five seconds transit), fastened her attention on the computer display, and directed the command robot: “Depart formation and go to the vicinity of where-when he must be. Not too close, we mustn’t alarm him, but we may decide to scoop him up.”

  Sterbenräuber moved out. Properly, Kolly should have checked with Astrofleet authority, but she didn’t; and later she would rationalize that First Minister Trigg was the big boss of Astrofleet along with a number of other governmental sectors. As a result of her Trigg-pursuit, she missed immediately subsequent Tannen/Croyd action on Nereid.

  *

  While, thanks to Dino’s enraged button pushing, all personnel aboard Nereid floated in wall-to-wall freefall breathlessness, alarmed Croyd rocketed through the Trigg-traversed corridors to the same control room, saw on its telly-monitor Dino pushing off from the launch platform into space, restored all Nereid systems, ran to the launch platform, consulted instruments to obtain the vectors of Dino’s thrust and consequent freefall trajectory, pushed off with exactly the same space coordinates but with measurably more leg thrust: natural, unaided, head-naked pursuit of a man by a man in unbreathable space.

  Neither Dino nor Croyd had bothered with a life-support suit; the reasons were the same, but the motives were different. Both of them had, pr
ior to push-off, stored oxygen in their muscular tissues: Trigg had been taught the psychophysical trick by Croyd; they could draw upon these stores internally, in the spatial absence of oxygen, during hours; neither would explode although suitless, even though their internal body-pressures were pushing outward against the nonpressure of space, because of an internal-gravity mode which Croyd had thought through and adopted and taught to Trigg. But for Dino, the motive was prolongation of his dying; whereas for Croyd, the motive was immediate rescue.

  Traumatically defeated Dino Trigg weltered suitless and semiconscious in a decaying Neptune-orbit closer to Neptune than Nereid’s orbit and gradually drifting inward-downward. Wanting to die, he was unable to summon death decisively; nevertheless, he knew that when his oxygen store would be exhausted, he would die in space long before Neptune could haul him in; and then, perhaps, Croyd and his board members would comprehend the tragedy of their collective loss…

  An ultrasonic beam shocked him alert. It was an iradar beam, they were searching for him; they would probably find him, too, because his orbit was calculable with small error from the probable thrust of his legs; the searchers would pull him in, he would live…NO! Teleporting in panic, Dino inserted himself into stationary Neptune-orbit more distant from Nereid, at the same time departing present germinality for an uptime locus three days into the past. Croyd had developed both tricks and had taught Dino both tricks, and therefore Dino resented having to deploy them; but they left him spacetime-floating in safety from Croyd and therefore sure to die—whereafter it wouldn’t matter, would it?

  Closing eyes, he imagined that his body was undulating in space-fluid. He would die when the Sen would be gone. Nobly he had tried, and he had failed; therefore, this was a species of noble hara-kiri without the traditional gut-mess and unaided by anybody with a samurai sword: suicide all his own, the ultimate nobility although it was beginning to fret Dino that his handsome terminal gesture was taking so very long to bring off. Should he perhaps expedite it? How could he try? Expel all the oxygen from his butt? fart lethally? ha! only, he didn’t have a method for doing this, other than letting his metabolism prolongedly absorb the oxygen. That accursed-benevolent Croyd had developed gambits only for survival, none for self-destruction—nor, now Dino thought about it, for destruction of others either: only for their neutralization, if they were evil as perhaps Dino was evil but if he was evil, then evil was good, for he was good, surely he was good—was he not?