Cleon the Emperor

by Isaac Asimov

  “I want the hard work, First Minister, and it's no chance at all they will let me come out of the office. I have watched the present Chief Gardener. He couldn't leave his office, though he wanted to ever so. There is too much administration, too much bookkeeping. Sure, if he wants to know what is going on, we must go to his office to tell him. He watches things on holovision” (this, with infinite contempt) “as though you can tell anything about growing, living things from images. It is not for me, First Minister.”

  “Come, Gruber, be a man. It's not all that bad. You'll get used to it. You'll work your way in slowly.”

  Gruber shook his head. “First off-at the very first-I will have to deal with the new gardeners. I'll be buried.” Then, with sudden energy, “It is a job I do not want and must not have, First Minister.”

  “Right now, Gruber, perhaps you don't want the job, but you are not alone. I'll tell you that right now I wish I were not First Minister. This job is too much for me. I even have a notion that there are times when the Emperor himself is tired of his Imperial robes. We're all in this galaxy to do our work, and the work isn't always pleasant.”

  “I understand that, First Minister, but the Emperor must be Emperor, for he was born to that. And you must be First Minister for there is no one else who can do the job. But in my case, it is just Chief Gardener we are ruminating upon. There are fifty gardeners in the place who could do it as well as I could and who wouldn't mind the office. You say that you spoke to the Emperor about how I tried to help you. Can't you speak to him again, and explain that if he wants to reward me for what I did, he can leave me as I am?”

  Seldon leaned back in his chair and said solemnly, “Gruber, I would do that for you if I could, but I've got to explain something to you and I can only hope that you will understand it. The Emperor, in theory, is absolute ruler of the Empire. In actual fact, there is very little he can do. I run the Empire. I run the Empire right now much more than he does and there is very little I can do, too. There are millions and billions of people at all levels of government, all making decisions, all making mistakes, some acting wisely and heroically, some acting foolishly and thievishly. There's no controlling them. Do you understand me, Gruber?”

  “I do, but what has this to do with my case?”

  “Because there is only one place where the Emperor is really absolute ruler, and that is over the Imperial grounds themselves. Here his word is law and the layers of officials beneath him are few enough for him to handle. For him to be asked to rescind a decision he has made in connection with the Imperial Palace grounds would be to invade the only area which he would consider inviolate. If I were to say, ‘Take back your decision on Gruber, Your Imperial Majesty’ he would be much more likely to relieve me of my duties than to take back his decision. That might be a good thing for me, but it wouldn't help you any.”

  Gruber said, “Does that mean there's no way things can be changed?”

  “That's exactly what it means. But don't worry, Gruber, I'll help you all I can. I'm sorry. But now I have really spent all the time on you that I am able to spare.”

  Gruber rose to his feet. In his hands he twisted his green gardening cap. There was more than a suspicion of tears in his eyes. “Thank you, First Minister. I know you would like to help. You're-you're a good man, First Minister.”

  He turned and left, sorrowing.

  Seldon looked after him thoughtfully, and shook his head. Multiply Gruber's woes by a quadrillion and you would have the woes of all the people of the twenty-five million worlds of the Empire, and how was he, Seldon, to work out salvation for all of them, when he was helpless to solve the problem of one single man who had come to him for help?

  Psychohistory could not save one man. Could it save a quadrillion?

  He shook his head again, and checked the nature and time of his next appointment, and then, suddenly, he stiffened. He shouted into his communications wire in sudden wild abandon, quite unlike his usually strict control. “Get that gardener back. Get him back right now.”

  20.

  “What's this about new gardeners?” exclaimed Seldon. This time, he did not ask Gruber to sit down.

  Gruber's eyes blinked rapidly. He was in a panic at having been recalled so unexpectedly. “New gardeners?” he stammered.

  “You said ‘all the new gardeners.’ Those were your words. What new gardeners?”

  Gruber was astonished. “Sure, if there is a new Chief Gardener, there will be new gardeners. It is the custom.”

  “I have never heard of this.”

  “The last time we had a change of Chief Gardeners, you were not First Minister. It is likely you were not even on Trantor.”

  “But what's it all about?”

  “Well, gardeners are never discharged. Some die. Some grow too old and are pensioned off and replaced. Still, by the time a new Chief Gardener is ready for his duties, at least half the staff is aged and beyond their best years. They are all pensioned off, generously, and new gardeners are brought in.”

  “For youth.”

  “Partly, and partly because by that time there are usually new plans for the gardens, and it is new ideas and new schemes we must have. There are almost five hundred square kilometers in the gardens and parklands, and it usually takes some years to reorganize it, and it is myself who will have to supervise it all. Please, First Minister,” Gruber was gasping. “Surely, a clever man like your own self can find a way to change the blessed Emperor's mind.”

  Seldon paid no attention. His forehead was creased in concentration.

  “Where do the new gardeners come from?”

  “There are examinations on all the worlds-there are always people waiting to serve as replacements. They'll be coming in by the hundreds in a dozen batches. It will take me a year, at the least-”

  “From where do they come? From where?”

  “From any of a million worlds. We want a variety of horticultural knowledge. Any citizen of the Empire can qualify.”

  “From Trantor, too?”

  “No, not from Trantor. There is no one from Trantor in the gardens.” His voice grew contemptuous. “You can't get a gardener out of Trantor. The parks they have here under the dome aren't gardens. They are potted plants, and the animals are in cages. Trantorians, poor specimens that they are, know nothing about open air, free water, and the true balance of nature.”

  “All right, Gruber. I will now give you a job. It will be up to you to get me the names of every new gardener scheduled to arrive over the coming weeks. Everything about them. Name. World. Identification number. Education. Experience. Everything. I want it here on my desk just as quickly as possible. I'm going to send people to help you. People with machines. What kind of a computer do you use?”

  “Only a simple one for keeping track of plantings and species and things like that.”

  “All right. The people I send will be able to do anything you can't do. I can't tell you how important this is.”

  “If I should do this-”

  “Gruber, this is not the time to make bargains. Fail me, and you will not be Chief Gardener. Instead, you will be discharged without a pension.”

  Alone again, he barked into his communications wire, “Cancel all appointments for the rest of the afternoon.”

  He then let his body flop in his chair, feeling every bit of his fifty years, and more, feeling his headache worsen. For years, for decades, security had been built about the Imperial Palace grounds, thicker, more solid, more impenetrable, as each new layer and each new device was added.

  – And every once in a while, hordes of strangers were let into the grounds. No questions asked, probably, but one: Can you garden?

  The stupidity involved was too colossal to grasp.

  And he had barely caught it in time. Or had he? Was he, even now, too late?

  21.

  Gleb Andorin gazed at Namarti through half-closed eyes. He had never liked the man, but there were times when he liked him less than he usually did,
and this was one of those times. Why should Andorin, a Wyan of royal birth (that's what it amounted to, after all), have to work with this parvenu, this near-psychotic paranoid?

  Andorin knew why, and he had to endure, even when Namarti was once again in the process of telling the story of how he had built up the Party during a period of ten years to its present pitch of perfection. Did he tell this to everyone, over and over? Or was it just Andorin who was his chosen vessel for the receipt of it?

  Namarti's face seemed to shine with glee as he said in an odd sing-song, as though it were a matter of rote, “-so year after year, I worked on those lines, even through hopelessness and uselessness, building an organization, chipping away at confidence in the government, creating and intensifying dissatisfaction. When there was the banking crisis and the week of the moratorium, I-”

  He paused suddenly. “I've told you this many times, and you're sick of hearing it, aren't you?”

  Andorin's lips twitched in a brief, dry smile. Namarti was not such an idiot as not to know the bore he was; he just couldn't help it. Andorin said, “You've told me this many times.” He allowed the remainder of the question to hang in the air unanswered. The answer, after all, was an obvious affirmative. There was no need to face him with it.

  A slight flush crossed Namarti's sallow face. He said, “But it could have gone on forever, the building, the chipping, without ever coming to a point, if I hadn't had the proper tool in my hands. And without any effort on my part, the tool came to me.”

  “The gods brought you Planchet,” said Andorin neutrally.

  “You're right. There will be a group of gardeners entering the Imperial Palace grounds soon.” He paused and seemed to savor the thought. “Men and women. Enough to serve as a mask for the handful of our operatives who will accompany them. Among them will be you-and Planchet. And what will make you and Planchet unusual is that you will be carrying blasters.”

  “Surely,” said Andorin, with deliberate malice behind a polite expression, “we'll be stopped at the gates and held for questioning. Bringing an illicit blaster onto the Palace grounds-”

  “You won't be stopped,” said Namarti, missing the malice. “You won't be searched. That's been arranged. You will all be greeted as a matter of course by some Palace official. I don't know who would ordinarily be in charge of that task-the Third Assistant Chamberlain in Charge of Grass and Leaves, for all I know, but in this case, it will be Seldon himself. The great mathematician will hurry out to greet the new gardeners and welcome them to the grounds.”

  “You're sure of that, I suppose.”

  “Of course I am. It's all been arranged. He will learn, at more or less the last minute, that his son is among those listed as new gardeners, and it will be impossible for him to refrain from coming out to see him. And when Seldon appears, Planchet will raise his blaster. Our people will raise the cry of ‘Treason.’ In the confusion and hurly-burly, Planchet will kill Seldon, and you will kill Planchet. You will then drop your blaster and leave. There are those who will help you leave. It's been arranged.”

  “Is it absolutely necessary to kill Planchet?”

  Namarti frowned. “Why? Do you object to one killing and not to another? When Planchet recovers, do you wish him to tell the authorities all he knows about us? Besides, this is a family feud we are arranging. Don't forget that Planchet is, in actual fact, Raych Seldon. It will look as though the two had fired simultaneously at each other, or as though Seldon had given orders that if his son made any hostile move, he was to be shot down. We will see to it that the family angle will be given full publicity. It will be reminiscent of the bad old days of the Bloody Emperor Manowell. The people of Trantor will surely be repelled by the sheer wickedness of the deed. That, piled on top of all the inefficiencies and breakdowns they've been witnessing and living through, will raise the cry for a new government, and no one will be able to refuse them, least of all the Emperor. And then we'll step in.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that. I don't live in a dream world. There is likely to be some interim government, but it will fail. We'll see to it that it fails, and we'll come out in the open and revive the old Joranumite arguments that the Trantorians have never forgotten. And in time, in not too much time, I will be First Minister.”

  “And I?”

  “Will eventually be the Emperor.”

  Andorin said, “The chance of all this working is small. -This is arranged. That is arranged. The other thing is arranged. All of it has to come together and mesh perfectly, or it will fail. Somewhere, someone is bound to mess up. It's an unacceptable risk.”

  “Unacceptable? For whom? For you?”

  “Certainly. You expect me to make certain that Planchet will kill his father and you expect me then to kill Planchet. Why me? Aren't there tools worth less than I who might more easily be risked?”

  “Yes, but to choose anyone else would make failure certain. Who but you has so much riding on this mission that there is no chance you will turn back in a fit of vapors at the last minute?”

  “The risk is enormous.”

  “Isn't it worth it to you? You're playing for the Imperial throne.”

  “And what risk are you taking, Chief? You will remain here, quite comfortable, and wait to hear the news.”

  Namarti's lip curled. “What a fool you are, Andorin! What an Emperor you will make! Do you suppose I take no risk because I will be here? If the gambit fails, if the plot miscarries, if some of our people are taken, do you think they won't tell everything they know? If you were somehow caught, would you face the tender treatment of the Imperial Guard without ever telling them about me?

  “And with a failed assassination attempt at hand, do you suppose they won't comb Trantor to find me? Do you suppose that in the end they will fail to find me? And when they do find me, what do you suppose I will have to face at their hands? -Risk? I run a worse risk than any of you, just sitting here doing nothing. It boils down to this, Andorin. Do you, or do you not, wish to be Emperor?”

  Andorin said in a low voice, “I wish to be Emperor.”

  And so things were set in motion.

  22.

  Raych had no trouble seeing that he was being treated with special care. The whole group of would-be gardeners were now quartered in one of the hotels in the Imperial Sector, although not one of the prime hotels, of course.

  They were an odd lot, from fifty different worlds, but Raych had little chance to speak to any of them. Andorin, without being too obvious about it, kept him apart from the others.

  Raych wondered why. It depressed him. In fact, he had been feeling somewhat depressed since he had left Wye. It interfered with his thinking process and he fought it, but not with entire success.

  Andorin was himself wearing rough clothes and was attempting to look like a workman. He would be playing the part of a gardener as a way of running the show-whatever the show might be.

  Raych felt ashamed that he hadn't even had the chance to warn his father. They might be doing this for every Trantorian who had been pushed into the group, for all he knew, just as an extreme precaution. Raych estimated that there might be a dozen Trantorians among them, all of them Namarti's people, of course, men and women both.

  What puzzled him was that Andorin treated him with what was almost affection. He monopolized him, insisted on having all his meals with him, treated him quite differently from the way in which he treated anyone else.

  Could it be because they had shared Manella? Raych did not know enough about the mores of the Sector of Wye to be able to tell whether there might not be a polyandrish touch to their society. If two men shared a woman, did that make them in a way fraternal? Did it create a bond?

  Raych had never heard of such a thing, but he knew better than to suppose he had a grasp of even a tiny fraction of the infinite subtleties of galactic societies, even of Trantorian societies.

  But now that his mind had brought him back to Manella, he dwelled on her
for a while. He missed her terribly, and it occurred to him that that might be the cause of his depression, though, to tell the truth, what he was feeling now, as he was finishing lunch with Andorin, was almost despair-though he could think of no cause for it.

  Manella!

  She had said she wanted to visit the Imperial Sector and, presumably, she could wheedle Andorin to her liking. He was desperate enough to ask a foolish question. “Mr. Andorin, I keep wondering if maybe you brought Ms. Dubanqua along with you, here to the Imperial Sector.”

  Andorin looked utterly astonished. Then he laughed gently. “Manella? Do you see her doing any gardening? Or even pretending she could? No, no, Manella is one of those women invented for our quiet moments. She has no function at all, otherwise.” Then, “Why do you ask, Planchet?”

  Raych shrugged. “I don't know. It's sort of dull around here. I sort of thought-” His voice trailed away.

  Andorin watched him carefully. Finally, he said, “Surely, you're not of the opinion that it matters much which woman you are involved with? I assure you it doesn't matter to her which man she's involved with. Once this is over, there will be other women. Plenty of them.”

  “When will this be over?”

  “Soon. And you're going to be part of it in a very important way.” Andorin watched Raych narrowly.

  Raych said, “How important? Aren't I gonna be just-a gardener?” His voice sounded hollow, and he found himself unable to put a spark in it.

  “You'll be more than that, Planchet. You'll be going in with a blaster.”

  “With a what?”

  “A blaster.”

  “I never held a blaster. Not in my whole life.”

  “There's nothing to it. You lift it. You point it. You close the contact, and someone dies.”

  “I can't kill anyone.”

  “I thought you were one of us; that you would do anything for the cause.”

  “I didn't mean-kill.” Raych couldn't seem to collect his thoughts. Why must he kill? What did they really have in mind for him? And how would he be able to alert the Palace guards before the killing would be carried out?