“There shouldn’t be any problem,” I said. “They know I’m doing what’s right.”
“That was an act of genius, taking over Saturn too,” my daughter said. “Now there can’t be war between the major planets.”
I glanced at Rue. “Well, actually it wasn’t my—”
“Of course it was,” Rue said quickly. “It showed that the Tyrant is still the leader he used to be.”
So she wanted me to take credit for her idea. Well, maybe that was best, politically. But I couldn’t help wondering whether I would have done it if Forta had been with me instead of Roulette. This impersonation could have benefited me far more than just romantically. Rue had worked me over, her way, but she had paid her way.
“I’ll join you when I can,” Spirit said.
She did. The consolidation of Jupiter and North Saturn took about a year, and the production of the self-receiving units another two years. I went to Saturn with Forta, but first we dropped Doppie off at Earth. Freed from her need to impersonate my sister, Doppie became herself, and then she really didn’t resemble Spirit much; her hair, clothing, and attitude differed. Before we parted, I took her out for a social evening on Earth, and made it publicly clear that it was the Tyrant who was escorting her. Actually it wasn’t sex she wanted, just appreciation, so I kissed her and let it be understood that she was my woman of the moment, providing her a notoriety that would carry through the rest of her life. I felt I owed it to her, and it really was no chore. I was grateful to her for the service she had done us, and I respected her as a person, and that really was enough. Partial as I have always been to youth and beauty in women, I nevertheless respect personality more. Doppie understood that and was satisfied.
We ran down the assassination plot. As suspected, it was a collaboration between Tocsin and the nomenklatura of Saturn. Tocsin we could not touch; he was in South Saturn, where they still respected him. But the nomenklatura we routed out and tried and executed. It was the justice of the Tyrant, reminiscent of the destruction of Big Iron on Jupiter some years before, and the people of the USR reveled in it. There were indeed hangings and beheadings, done not because of any madness of mine but because it was politically necessary for the Tyrant to keep his word, and to make an example. I suspect the judgment of historians will not be kind to me on this score, but historians do not face the realities of the moment, when blood is a sacrifice required for legitimacy. I, as Tyrant, assumed responsibility for the savage justice the people required.
But there was some vengeance in it too, because Khukov had played straight with me, and had given me power and the Dream. I had really done what he would have done, had he been in charge.
I had thought to turn over the reins to native officials, but discovered again that power can be as difficult to yield as to achieve. I was of course a figurehead, freely delegating the governing duties to those who were competent and trustworthy, but it seemed that they valued that figurehead. I was the symbol about which the governments supporting the Triton Project rallied, and as long as I did not interfere unduly with the details of administration, that was the way they liked it. The people supported me, and assumed that executive orders were mine; that made them more palatable. Since I had arranged to have top quality personnel throughout, the administration tended to be excellent.
It was similar elsewhere in the System. Thus, while my actual power was nominal, my reputed power was greater than ever before. I was hailed as the Tyrant of Space, governing the entire System. Illusion, of course, but if that’s the way the histories choose to record it, I suppose I won’t be in a position to object.
In this period, conscious of the slow approach of my own demise, I wrote this record of my activities, and sent it to QYV of Jupiter. I will of course be updating these notes as convenient, keeping them current, as I can not be certain when the final entry will come. My daughter will inherit all my records at my death, though she does not, at this writing, know it. I trust they will prove to be interesting reading. Hopie does not necessarily approve of all my activities, but she is of my blood and surely understands. Sometimes I think I can share her mind, seeing through her eyes, though she is on another planet. I get the feeling that I could communicate directly with her, without even any lapse of time for the traveling of the mind-waves, if I really tried; that in a sense I am her, our identities merging. Then I laugh and tell myself, “Not in this life!” Sometimes it becomes difficult to separate the sense from the nonsense, as I undergo dialysis and let my thoughts wander. But it is comforting to feel my daughter’s presence on such occasions, in whatever manner that may be.
I should mention also the manner in which my relationship with Forta matured. After the excitement of the rescue of my daughter and the incorporation of Jupiter subsided, and I found myself alone with Forta, I felt awkward. You see, despite the number of women I have known, it is not my practice to relate to them promiscuously. After I had come to terms with Forta on Venus, I had had no intention of dallying with any other, apart from the single episode with Doppie. Roulette had been out of turn, and now it bothered me.
Forta quickly enough fathomed my concern. “But you thought she was me,” she said.
“I should have realized,” I mumbled, the guilt intensifying.
“My emulations are that transparent?”
I smiled, for the ploy was obvious. “I delight in your emulations, but it is important to me now to know that that is what they are. Then I can enjoy the forms of others without separating from you. That is the best of worlds.”
“Would it help if I confessed that I knew she would attempt to carry through the masquerade?”
It was phrased as a question, but it was a statement; I read her clearly enough. “But did you know it would deceive me?”
“Only if you wanted to be deceived.”
I pounded one fist into my other hand. “There’s the key! I should have known, would have known, had I not desired Rue herself! And in that I wronged you.”
“Did you, Hope?”
“I should have recognized her, and kept my hands off her.
And would have, had I not deceived myself. I did desire her, and I yielded to that desire, and that is the apology I must make to you.”
“Give me a moment,” she said. She went to her bedroom, while I returned to the writing of this manuscript, as mentioned.
In due course she emerged. I looked up—and there was Roulette, exactly as she had been so recently. Her body, her signals—
I got up. “May I?” I asked.
She spread her hands, accepting. I opened her blouse, unfastened her halter, and ran my fingers around her heavy breasts. This was a clinical examination, but my body reacted as I touched those wonders. There was the powder, coming off on my fingers. There were the tiny ridges, marking the juncture of real and pseudoflesh. I caught at a ridge and pulled—and the ridge came off, leaving the breast, as before.
“Damn it!” I swore. “I’m not going this route again!”
She lifted her hands and removed her mask. “But it is me, Hope,” she said.
Indeed, it was Forta. I embraced her and kissed her ardently. “You could have fooled me,” I said after a moment, realizing that the cement that held on the pseudoflesh adhered to her entire breast, and needed no ridges; those had been, as it were, decorations. Probably that flesh would not come off unless a neutralizer was applied and allowed to work its way through. Forta had played a little trick on me.
“And she did fool you,” she agreed. “You might have fathomed it, had you any further reason to suspect. You were guilty of carelessness, not ill intent.” She restored the mask. “And what are you going to do about it, Tyrant?” she said in Rue’s voice.
I did not reply in words. I took her into my bedroom, where Smilo snoozed, and stripped her clothing but not her emulation, and I made love to her in the guise of Roulette, and it was as good as it had been with the real Roulette.
“Which do you prefer,” she asked as we relaxed
, “her emulating me, or me emulating her?”
I considered, and remembered how the real Rue had insisted on violence. Forta had not. “You emulating her,” I said.
“Then make no apology,” she said.
And I realized that I had indeed paid her the ultimate compliment. Roulette had been the most striking (forget the pun!) woman I had known, and I really did prefer Forta now. I also appreciated the compliment Roulette had paid me, seeking me so ardently after all these years.
I lifted myself and removed her mask. “You are the first ugly woman I have loved,” I said. Then I kissed her on her scarred cheek, and ran my tongue across it, savoring her as she was.
“And you are the first philandering man I have loved,” she said.
We started laughing, together, and it was some time before we stopped. We understood each other, and that is a joy of its own type.
Of course she knew that when I used the word “love” I did not mean exactly what she did by it. What I felt for my various women might better be described as crushes. But it was also true that I had developed as solid a respect for Forta as for any woman, and not merely for her ability to emulate others.
Forta had never attempted to proselytize; she had accepted me as I was, and cooperated with me in all things. She had also saved the life of my daughter, a debt I could never adequately repay. But as I came to respect her, I sought to do that which I knew would please her. She wanted no jewelry or clothing or even compliments, so I did not offer these. She wanted to alleviate suffering wherever it existed. As a member and beneficiary of Amnesty Interplanetary she was concerned with man’s inhumanity to man, and she knew a great deal about this, and answered when I queried about it. Thus, as the Tyrant came to have power over various planets, a persistent investigation and alleviation of human-rights abuses of those planets followed. Wherever we went, the life of the common man improved, and the abusers suffered. Because of Forta. In fact, the only period of real strain between us was during the bloodletting of the liquidation of the nomenklatura; she elected to visit Jupiter at that time, and did not return until the killing was done. She never spoke to me about the matter, but I got the message.
“Is this why you came to me?” I asked her once. “Because you knew that through me you could do more good for your cause than you could otherwise?”
“Yes.” She made no attempt to avoid the issue. She was not the type.
“And my wife sent you for the same reason?” I always meant Megan when I referred to my wife, through I had been married several times.
“Yes.”
“May I never disappoint either of you.”
“You have not so far.”
“But you expect me to in the future?”
“When you die.”
Oh. And of course my end was approaching, for the exhaustion of my access sites for dialysis was accelerating as I had increasing trouble with clotting. We had moved from my legs to my arms, no longer needing to conceal the scars. I was at this point sixty-eight years old, and considering it realistically I judged that two more years was all I could expect of mobile, functional existence. Thereafter I would be bedridden, and deprived of the various pleasures of independent existence, sex among them.
I think it was at that point that I decided to die in my own fashion, not waiting for the inevitable degradation to have its way with me. I did not fear death; I feared a helpless, meaningless life.
“What unfinished business do I have?” I asked her.
She ticked items off on her fingers. “Completion of the Triton Project. Incorporation of the Middle Kingdom. Designation of a successor to the Tyrancy.”
“And only a year to do it,” I muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Let’s get on it.” But of course she had heard me the first time.
• • •
We took the tube to Triton. By this time there were many projection tubes, serving all the planets, and the self-receiving projection units were coming off the Jupiter lines. These actually amounted to the preset conversion of light beams in photon computers, the beams calibrated so accurately that the mergence of the key beams did not occur until the set distance had been traveled. The farther the distance, the more precise the settings had to be. We had used a very crude version to travel from Mercury to Jupiter; the difference between a span of a light-hour or so and that of a thousand light-years or so is manifest. But with the perfection of that technology, we were ready to send colony ships virtually any distance into the galaxy. It was time to officially inaugurate that program, and Forta was right: it had to be done by the Tyrant, the unifying figure for this effort. If I didn’t see it started in my lifetime, it might very well dissolve thereafter into factional fragmentation, and the chance to do it peacefully would be lost.
For though the Triton Project represented the gateway to man’s future, a channel for man’s aggressive energies in lieu of internecine warfare, it also represented danger. In the wrong hands, that technology could be turned to the projection of bombs, and against these there was no reasonable prospect for defense. Mankind had to colonize—or risk destruction. Once the colony ships reached their locations, there would be no incentive for war. The challenges of the local systems would be enough to absorb the full attentions of the expeditions, and what point would there be in projecting a bomb to another system, that would not arrive for many years or decades even at light velocity? In fact, since the colonists would be traveling to widely differing regions of space, one colony would be setting up at a nearby system while others were still on their way, perhaps not materializing for another twenty years. Though transit would seem instant for those aboard each ship, it was not. Never again would man be cramped within a single system, able to attack his neighbors within a span of hours.
As I saw it, interplanetary warfare would be over—and that was the Dream. Chairman Khukov had conceived it, and not lived to see its completion, but I was seeing it through.
That reminded me of Lieutenant Commander Repro, the officer of the Jupiter Navy who had conceived the dream of the perfect unit, and had implemented it through me. He had died when it seemed that unit was finished, but it had survived, and with its assistance I had become the Tyrant. Now I was doing the same for Khukov’s Dream. Khukov himself had been a tough, unscrupulous man, who had used his talent, which was similar to mine, to win his way to his planet’s highest office and position of power, but his Dream had been a great one. Perhaps there is good in the most evil of men, and while Khukov had not been truly evil, his Dream was truly good. Forta was right: I had to see it through while I lived. The fate of my species might well depend on it.
Of course I was nominally in charge of the Triton Project. But once I got it organized, I had hardly been there. So this was an inspection trip. Spirit joined us for it; she was more conversant with the details.
As our ship approached Triton I was amazed. The project had started as a single dome on the planet. Now it was a monstrous complex spreading from crater to crater. Projection tubes orbited it, not one or two, but hundreds. As we drew near, I discovered the size of them: each greater in diameter than any ship I had known in the Navy. What monstrous vessels were they designed to accommodate?
Then, in closer orbit, we spied those vessels: colony ships of a scale hardly imagined before. Even after allowing for necessary supplies for a decade or so, including construction equipment for planetary sites, each ship looked big enough to handle tens of thousands of colonists. Yet these, I knew, were not the major vessels; the big ones were bubbles, to be projected entire, with up to a million residents each. Those were being outfitted in the atmosphere of Neptune. No wonder this project was expensive!
It had been happening all along, and I knew that Spirit had been running it and Forta had been receiving bulletins on progress throughout; I simply had not been paying attention. I plead age and illness; I had been more interested in dialysis and distaff anatomy than in the business of the Solar System. Though my ph
ysical powers were waning, my interest in performance had not; consequently my romantic life had taken more attention, not less. Perhaps this would not have been the case, had Forta been less versatile. She had provided me, in her fashion, with every type of woman from Helen of Troy to the barely nubile. She had given me another affair with my teenage lover Amber, who in real life was now in her early thirties. But I really should have kept up on what was happening around Triton.
I had already decided to complete my business in life expeditiously, but this was a forceful reminder. The project I was nominally running had outstripped my awareness while I dallied; I was allowing age to narrow my compass, and I regretted it. Yet I also felt pride, for, however circuitously, I had wrought this thing. I had only to see the first great colony ship projected, and then I would know that even if I died that instant, mankind was on its way to the stars at the velocity of light, and my work in life was done.
Spirit squeezed my scarred arm, signaling her understanding. Her life, too, was merged in this project. She had done the actual organizational work to make it come to pass. It was really hers more than mine.
I glanced at her. She had been apart from me much of the time in recent years, traveling to Jupiter and the inner planets, handling the myriad executive details of the organization of man’s effort of colonization. She was sixty-five now, and looked it. She had not bothered with the treatments and cosmetics that retarded the semblance of aging, and the faint pattern of scars on her face had become more pronounced. The scars of the burns received when she handled a drive-rocket with her bare hands, saving our lives. She had been twelve then. Now her face changed, in my view, and I saw again that sweet, tough child who had supported me so well. From that time until this, Spirit had been my true strength.
I found myself kissing her. I had not known I was going to do it, or that I was doing it; it was as if my consciousness formed in the middle. She was kissing back. Then I drew away, and looked away, and she neither moved nor spoke. On the one side I wondered why a man should feel apologetic for kissing his sister; on the other, I knew why. But this could not be spoken.