We had to bring in executives from other planets to establish the new government, as the people did not trust the former officials, and this was complicated and time-consuming. But in a few months we had a viable administration that extended around the entire planet; it was amazing how cooperative the other nations of Mercury became when they appreciated the reforms we were instituting at the south, and the eagerness of the Saturn warships to test their formidable weapons. I don’t want to pretend, that this was not a military conquest, but it was as bloodless a takeover as was feasible. We now had access to the mineral resources of the planet, and the majority of the people were better off than they had been. In due course I was able to appoint a President of Mercury to run the government; he was a popular Black native we had freed from prison, educated but unversed in government. That didn’t matter; we equipped him with a competent staff of advisers and administrators, so that he could operate as I did: being a popular figurehead who nevertheless got the job done. Programs were instituted to eliminate the hunger and homelessness that were rampant across much of the planet, and to improve the lot of the common workers. Human rights had come to Mercury.
Meanwhile, I had Forta. She had played the role of Spirit beautifully, while Doppie had stayed out of sight. Without Forta’s ability to emulate not only the aspect of my sister but her mode of operation, we could never have brought this off. My respect for her was enhanced, and when I made love to her now it was never with a mask. Beauty is as beauty does, and she was beautiful. A significant part of my motivation to help the ordinary folk of the planet was that I knew how much that would please her.
CHAPTER 17
RUE
I think I was sixty-five years old when we went to Jupiter. I dislike supposing that my powers of memory are fading with my age and health, but perhaps it is true. When I review the events of my recent life, there seem to be gaps of days or weeks that I cannot account for. Probably they were spent in routine travel, dialyses, and pauses between significant events, and my mind has simply telescoped the material to leave only the salient matters.
Yes, now I remember one important matter I was about to overlook. While we were consolidating Mercury, fresh news came from the Triton Project: One of our bright young engineers had worked out a way to make the projection self-receiving. That is, to fashion a receiving tube into a ship, which of course it was, and to project that ship in the normal manner. But instead of requiring an established receiving tube for its arrival, this one could retranslate itself, and solidify at the destination. The mechanics of it were complicated, really beyond my understanding, but the essence as I understand it is that this modified tube projects its receiver field outward rather than inward, so affects itself rather than whatever passes through its interior. The fact that it is made of light at the time of operation doesn’t seem to matter; it applies the rematerialization field to itself, and converts instantly, exactly as it would if it encountered that field in the tube of a physical receiver. I am sure I am overlooking some critical stages, but I hope this suffices. The point is, it meant that we no longer faced the prospect of having to send tubes out to the stars at tedious sublight velocity to establish receiving stations; we could do it at light speed. This would accelerate our program immeasurably.
But of course this was still in the prototype stage; years of testing would be required before we were sure of it. It would also require new facilities to develop, as the present ones were already operating at capacity. So one unit was all there was. It worked, but it wasn’t enough.
I pondered briefly, and realized that I could facilitate a couple of things if I had the nerve. Since my time was limited, I decided to take the plunge. “Ship it here immediately,” I told them.
Of course it wasn’t immediately, but they did expedite it. They shipped it via the regular tube, so that its self-manifestation would not arouse curiosity, and it appeared as a regular ship. We inspected it and outfitted it for occupancy and travel, for of course it had a regular drive. This was not so much for space travel as to provide the considerable power required for translation.
At any rate, this was one of the things that took my attention and time during this period. Odd that it should have slipped my mind until I looked for it, for it was certainly significant.
One thing was coming clear: Though my powers may have been failing, and my status was that of an exile dependent on the largess of an alien planet, the larger situation made my political power greater than ever before. I was now known as a statesman, an envoy of good will, laboring to secure a project that would benefit mankind as a whole. But in the name of statesmanship I had come into considerable executive influence. The Triton Project was conducted in my name; the treaties with Mars, Earth, and Venus were in the name of the Tyrant, and Mercury was entirely under my control. Saturn backed me absolutely, and Uranus to a considerable extent. They had a great deal invested in the Triton Project, and I was the unifying symbol of it. Now that power was to have its major challenge.
Jupiter did not intend to join the Triton Project. The case was similar to that of Mercury; illicit elements had recovered power, and knew that this would be eroded if the planet became a contributory to the effort to colonize the galaxy. Jupiter had warned me not to attempt to return, and Jupiter held my daughter Hopie hostage. Former President Tocsin had taken over again, covertly, and I knew that he was absolutely unscrupulous. That was why Spirit had gone ahead to prepare the way; this was to be our greatest challenge.
For the Tyrant was going to have to take over Jupiter again. I had been exiled, but I honored that only as long as my wife Megan required it; now she was out of power and her worst enemy was in charge. If Megan still barred me, I might stay clear; but when Tocsin had seen fit to make our daughter a hostage, I knew he had alienated Megan. She would not help me, but neither would she hinder me.
Spirit had gone to reconnoiter the situation in detail, and to reestablish connections with the Jupiter Navy. Of course Tocsin had by now replaced my top personnel with his own henchmen, so I could not simply march in and have the support of my old units. But I had had forty-five years of association with the Jupiter Navy, and had known it intimately, and my personnel existed within it from top to bottom. It would have taken more than five years to remake it even had Tocsin had full power all that time and spent his full effort there. He had not. So I knew that the Jupiter Navy was a fine organization whose superficial loyalty had changed, but not its nature. Spirit, of course, was even more conversant with it than I was, and in the months she had had, I knew she had done what needed to be done. Perhaps Tocsin had some notion of repelling my incursion by force; I doubted it would occur if the Jupiter Navy were involved.
As it turned out, Tocsin did indeed have his sinister eye on me. Our scouts reported that Jupiter subs were intercepting ships from Mercury, inspecting them nominally for contraband or drugs, but actually checking the identities of all travelers carefully. hardly needed to guess for whom they were looking.
We set up a diversion. We arranged for our small ship to set off for Jupiter on a diplomatic mission: Mercury wished to have its new government recognized by Jupiter. Of course this was a futile mission.; if Jupiter had been cold to Mercury before, it was frigid now. But we sent our ship on an easy voyage, scheduled to arrive in two weeks.
Sure enough, our ship was intercepted. It submitted to inspection readily enough, and of course I was not aboard. Instead, while Jupiter attention was on my ship, I boarded the new vessel with Doppie and Forta. We set course for Ganymede, whose primary loyalty remained to Saturn despite its heavy sugar trade with Jupiter. Notwithstanding that sugar, relations between Gany and Jup had soured after my departure. But I now represented Saturn, and the Premier of Gany was glad to have me visit.
I will not say that I made this trip without concern. This was, after all, new technology, not yet properly tested; I was well aware of the prospects for oblivion in transit. I did not require Forta to accompany me on this venture, b
ut she insisted. To my surprise, so did Doppie; she pointed out that until I rejoined forces with my sister, I needed someone to stand in for her, and Forta could not always do that. I do inspire such loyalty in women, but still it touches me.
As it happened, the jump was successful. It required something like thirty minutes, perhaps forty, objective time, even at light speed, but to us it seemed like an instant. We had made such trips before, but this was the first without an established receiver. The alignment was not quite perfect; we overshot our target a smidgen and found ourselves within the mine field surrounding the planet. So we had to wait for a Gany tug to come haul us out, for only the locals could navigate the mine field with certainty. But we had arrived intact. That, after all, was what counted. We breathed some shuddering sighs of relief; I think we had been more nervous about this than we had admitted, prior to the jump.
Had Jupiter’s spies observed us? It really didn’t matter if they had; Jupiter could do nothing now. What would a technician think if his instruments indicated that something the size of a ship had appeared near Ganymede, seeming to come from nowhere? He probably would assume there was a glitch in the record.
So we came to the surface of Ganymede: Forta, Doppie, and I. The Premier was an old friend, if that is the proper term; we had understood each other for over twenty years. He was waiting to greet me personally as the tug brought us in to port.
I was tired, more from the nervous energy of the chancy trip than from any heavy duty, but I did not stand on ceremony. I felt safe here, both as an acquaintance and as the representative of Saturn. The Premier knew that I had come to tackle Jupiter, and that could only be to his advantage. The last time there had been such business afoot, Jupiter had been invading Gany; this was a reversal. He ushered us into a private office.
He looked at Doppie. “And here I thought your sister was elsewhere,” he said in Spanish.
I was alarmed. “Who has news she is not with me?” I replied in the same language. If Doppie had ever had to speak in that language, she would have been lost.
He smiled. “There was no leak, Tyrant! She came to me herself.”
I relaxed. “So long as Jupiter doesn’t know.”
“Only those she chose to advise. Your sister is circumspect. But if I may inquire now: Why was this subterfuge required?”
“To nullify the Jupiter Navy,” I said.
He nodded wisely. “So it is true: you mean to recover power.”
“In the name of the Triton Project,” I said. “I serve at the will of Chairman Khukov of Saturn, whom I will not betray.”
“The same for me,” he agreed.
We returned to English and exchanged pleasantries. Then my party was ushered to decent accommodations so we could relax.
In a few days two visitors arrived: one male, one female. recognized both the moment I saw them, and embraced both in turn. The male was actually my sister Spirit, who had her own talent of emulation; no one suspected her identity this way. The female was my former Navy wife, Roulette. She was also in disguise, as an enlisted person, serving as an aide. Now fifty-four, she remained a stunning woman, having retained her outline and her bright red hair. Oh, perhaps her figure was no longer classically hourglass, for she was more solid in the waist than in her youth, but what woman exists who can retain the contours of eighteen into her fifties? My memory clothed her with the firm flesh of her youth, and she remained beautiful to me.
We settled down to business. Spirit updated me on her activities for the past months while Roulette took Forta aside and acquainted her with relevant details. Forta was an excellent secretary, and had a firm grasp of the essentials; I was glad I had prepared her as I had, when she emulated my sister and rescued me at Mercury. She might have to do something similar again one day, so whatever she learned from Rue was good.
The details would be tedious, and my patience has eroded with my years; I will simply say that Spirit had contacted all the key officers and enlisted personnel of the Jupiter Navy, and ascertained the exact status of every relevant chain of command. My sister had always been good at organization, and despite the passage of thirty years she had kept in touch.
Tocsin had started his machinations the moment I left Jupiter, but it had taken him a couple of years to gain a foothold, and another two to lever himself into a position of real power. There had been those, even within his own party, who were not eager to have him return politically; their elimination had occupied his attention at first. But for the past year he had been the power behind the scenes at Jupiter, steadily replacing the appointed officials with his own personnel. He had done the same with the Navy, engineering the retirement of those who had been in charge during the Tyrancy, notably my former wife Emerald, and installing officers on the basis of loyalty to him rather than military competence. It was his determination to see that in the next confrontation between himself and the Tyrant, the Jupiter Navy backed him.
But as yet the change was superficial. Top officers had changed, but the massive bureaucracy of the Navy depended on many lines of command, and the middle echelons remained solidly pro-Tyrant. There was a considerable pool of competence here, for my officers had been well trained, and their promotions had been balked by the changes at the top. Spirit had noted which ones were most competent to assume higher commands, and had planned for key changes that could be implemented as opportunity arose.
But mainly, she had arranged a network of interference points, so that when the confrontation came, no significant action could be taken without suffering confusing delays and misconnections. That was what I had known she would do. The Navy would manifest as monstrously inefficient—until the proper officers were elevated to command.
And the powers that existed now on Jupiter didn’t even suspect, for Spirit had nominally been with me on Earth, Venus, and Mercury for this entire period. I have seen subsequent reports that remarked on the sheer luck of my situation, the incredible foul-ups that occurred to my advantage at key points. Chance may have played its part, but the essence of it was Spirit’s quiet and careful preparations. The Navy had been nullified by an expert, before it even saw action.
Now I had the names to name for elevation, when that time came. More important, I had the assurance that the job had been properly done. A smart commander always makes sure he knows the elements of the terrain and the military forces available to each side, before he provokes the action. The stupid one trusts to conventional assessments and assumptions. Tocsin had assumed that he had done what was necessary to rebuff my possible return. He had not.
Of course it took time for me to familiarize myself with the necessary data, both of the Navy and of planetside operations. I was not as quick a study as I had once been, and my need for dialysis, and consequent loss of a day’s working time, reduced my efficiency further. Spirit and Roulette could not stay long enough to prepare me completely, they explained, so after a few days they departed as they had come, as a male Jupiter Navy officer and his aide. All of us were becoming adept at emulations.
Forta had the data—piles of it. Actually—well, let me just present this as I saw it at the time, because not everything was as it seemed.
You see, when I woke from my sleep following dialysis, Roulette was with me. “I thought you had gone!” I said, pleased. The truth was, she had always been the ultimate sexual object to me, and if she was now a bit beyond her prime, well, so was I. She had retained the habit of showing intriguing portions of herself, seemingly innocently, that stirred my passions. I wished I could possess her again, just one more time, but of course I could not.
“Yes and no, Hope,” she said. “I thought it was time for something you liked.”
“Oh—Forta!” I exclaimed, realizing. I shook my head ruefully, no pun. “You had me fooled!”
She touched the side of her face where the mask merged seamlessly with her natural flesh, concealed by the flowing tresses of the wig. “I always had you fooled, Hope,” she said.
I gaze
d at her, fascinated. Of course Forta had perceived my half-buried passion for Rue, and studied her well, so as to make this emulation perfect. Had I realized the obvious, I would not have been fooled. The truth was, she had overdone it a trifle. The hair was too bright, the eyes too gray, the bosom too full; this was more like Rue ten years younger than like her present aspect. I liked it, of course; I suppose I would have liked an emulation of Rue at age eighteen even better. But not immediately after encountering the reality; that would have destroyed the illusion. So she had taken some off the present age, adding to the appeal without voiding my suspension of disbelief. A nice compromise; she still was amazingly realistic.
“So now I can have you, in my fashion,” I said. “You could always have had me in your fashion,” she said. Which was just about what the real Rue would have said.
“No. You’re married.” I was falling willingly into acceptance of the role, treating her as I would have treated the original.
“Gerald died three years ago,” she said. “I am free now.”
I had really been out of touch! “Your husband died? He was a good man!”
“He was the best man,” she agreed. “I didn’t love him, but I respected him, and I was true to him while he lived.”
Three years ago—yet it struck me like a fresh event. “I’m not sure I want to—to—”
“To score with his wife? You know he always felt guilty for taking me, knowing that I loved you.”
How much talking had Forta done with Rue? This was getting uncomfortable. “It was the Navy way,” I said. “He had to take you, to preserve the unit. He did it as duty.”
“So did I,” she reminded me.
Indeed she had. I had won her fiery love, then turned her over to another man. We all had understood, but it had not been easy. “The Navy way,” I repeated softly.