Requiem for the Conqueror

  parents? Were they sent to Rega as programmed biological machines? Blessed Gods, what sort of monsters are these Seddi?

  Ily tilted her head, eyes glistening as she looked pensively at Sinklar. "Do I detect a wavering Lord Fist? Once, you simply wanted her to suffer eternally."

  Sinklar opened his eyes, glaring acidly at the spot on the map which marked Makarta. He glanced over at Mac where he sat in the corner, pale, eyes pinned on Arta as he shook his head slowly.

  "She's not responsible. She's a damned pawn! She's a Seddi victim . . . just like me. Just like all of us." Sink smacked a fist into his palm and looked at the map. "They started this whole mess? Why? All they've done is brought everyone misery."

  "They've got to be stopped," Mac agreed, propping his elbows on his knees and staring down between his boots.

  Ily pulled the shining black wealth of hair over her shoulder, observing Sinklar thoughtfully. "And this woman?"

  Sinklar turned his attention to the assassin. "What do I do with her? I guess my anger is blunted, gone. She's a tool! Do I destroy a blaster because a man used it against me or the ones I loved? The Seddi are the responsible ones . .

  . this Bruen character."

  He could hear Gretta's voice in his memories. Now you're thinking, Sink.

  Making a decision, Ily suggested, "I could order her shipped to Rega."

  "Why?" Sink, asked, suspicion flooding him. "What would you do with her Lord Minister?"

  Ily stepped over to stare into Arta's slack face. "Send her to Rega. We have some of the best psychological technicians in Free Space. Perhaps we can counter some of the Seddi teachings." She looked up, a reserved light in her eyes. "Perhaps we could learn something about Seddi techniques."

  "All right," Sinklar agreed wearily. Then he straightened. "I want her under the authority of Anatolia Daviura. She's not to be killed, not to be probed.

  Are we agreed?"

  "Very well," Ily told him with a firm nod. "I'll see that the Emperor himself knows of her . . . and your wish for her disposition."

  Sink locked eyes with Ily, seeing only cool appraisal. "I wouldn't want to learn later that anything had happened to

  Fera." , The corners of Ily's lips tightened. "I give you my word, 1 won't lay a finger on her. We can keep her in the detention center. I'd suggest, however, that you put female guards in charge of her."

  Sink started to object, then bit it off. "Mac, contact Rysta. Tell her we need every LC that's available. I want us mobile and ready to move by tomorrow morning. Have Commander Braktov drop us new armor, and anything else the Section Armorers deem in need of repair or replacement. She's gonna buck and snort and hate it, but tell her to contact Ily if she has any questions."

  Mac bounced to his feet, slapping an arm in salute. "What about the captured Divisions?" He shot a sidelong glance at Ily. "We taking them, too?"

  Sink pursed his lips, staring at the map. "I don't think so. From Fera's admission, Makarta is lightly defended at best. The Seddi depend on secrecy and their tunnels for security. Too many soldiers, and we'd be tripping all over each other in those tunnels.

  "And I want people I can trust for this one." He looked at Ily. "You'll back me on this?" She nodded. "I will Lord Siklar." "Get on it, Mac," Sinklar motioned his friend out and started to follow, stopping at the ramp and looking back as MacRuder trotted out into the sunlight. Sink turned, hanging to the hatch lip with one hand.

  "Why do you call me Lord? I'm no such thing." She walked up to him, close enough that he could look up into her eyes and marvel at their cunning intelligence. He could smell the delicate scent of her body.

  "We both know the answer to that," she said simply. "Can you think of anyone better suited to command the Regan military given the desperate days ahead?

  Does it serve any purpose to await Tybalt's decree?"

  Sinkiar took a deep breath. "No, I suppose not. I presume you'll attend to laying the political groundwork? It would save having to take Rega with my Divisions." "I shall do so Lord." "Lord?" Sinklar murmured to himself as he ducked

  through the hatch and started for the ramp. Even his own people didn't treat him the same anymore. They watched him with awe in their eyes. The old camaraderie had vanished like mist in the sun. Worse, when he became the commander of the Regan forces and stood at Tybalt's side, even Mac would grow distant. It's lonely," Sinklar whispered. "So very, very lonely."

  Who would have guessed that such an incredible machine existed so far down in the rocky guts of Targa? Staffa stood in the rear of the room, watching the lights flicker on the Mag Comm. Despite his familiarity with the nanotechnological marvels his engineers created in the Itreatic Asteroids, he'd never seen anything as sophisticated as the giant machine that filled one side of the deep cavern under Makarta.

  Seddi Initiates and Masters stood nervously before the machine, tension in the set of their shoulders. Bruen lay on the recliner, the curious golden helmet covering his bald scalp and obscuring most of his face.

  Bruen's body suddenly went limp in the chair. Sweat poured from under the golden helmet to trickle down the Magister's ancient face. Wilm and Kaylla rushed forward to lift the helmet from the old man's head and pull him up from the chair. Staffa considered the machine's effect on Bruen. The Magister sucked in deep breaths, all his energy gone.

  Staffa stepped over to stare up at the Mag Comm's glittering lights, aware on some subliminal level of the machine's power. He'd asked Bruen if he could see the machine, saying that perhaps with his advanced knowledge of computer manufacturing, he could gain some clue as to its origin. Now he shook his head slowly with the realization that nothing of current human manufacture could compare with this. He ran inquisitive fingers over the consoles, unable to fathom the material or the method of manufacture.

  With curious hands, Staffa picked up the helmet and raised it above his head until he felt a faint prickling sensation. Warily, he replaced it on the holder and pulled at his chin, lost in thought.

  "I ... I don't know if I can go on," Bruen gasped and wheezed. "Each time, I

  ... I. ..."

  Kaylla shushed him lovingly and helped settle the old man on an antigrav.

  Staffa squinted at the huge gray banks of the computer. Nonhuman technology?

  Or some relic of a mythological Earth? Is the secret to the Forbidden Borders here? I will come back to this room. In a somber mood, he turned and followed the Seddi up the winding rocky corridor.

  Bruen's room turned out to be just the sort of place Staffa expected it to be: nothing more than a spare cell hewn out of solid rock. A small sleeping pallet without a grav field had been cut into a wall. An illumination panel and a compact comm access for reading or study along with a handmade chair composed the remainder of the room's furnishings. Wilm and Kaylla crowded the room as they lifted Bruen off the antigrav stretcher. Staffa waited outside, his mind still on the Mag Comm—and the implications of its existence.

  "Staffa?" Kaylla called. "Bruen would like to speak with you."

  Wilm hesitated at the door, distrust in his very posture.

  "Go, Wilm." Bruen flipped a hand weakly as if shooing a fly. "For God's sake, he'd have killed me by now were that his purpose." A faint smiled crossed his age-purpled lips. "And besides," his voice dropped. "He and I must talk. So much must be decided."

  Wilm's jaw flared, muscles tensed. He gave a curt nod and backed reluctantly from the room. Staffa ignored the man as he entered and pulled up a heavy chair crafted from thick branches. He settled himself into its seat of interwoven leather straps.

  "The Mag Comm is a most interesting machine, eh?" Bruen asked.

  "I've never seen anything like it. What does it draw power from?"

  "Not sure, really." Bruen wiped his face with a cloth from beside the pallet.

  "We have speculated its power comes from some atomic reaction fed by the planet's core. That, or it may pump water into the magma and use steam to spin turbines. We really don't know. It's so ... a
lien."

  "Has it been here as long as the Seddi?"

  "Longer. But the records don't tell us that it acted the way it does now. You see, it used to be passive, nothing more than a curious machine." Bruen went on to explain the Mag Comm's return to life on that day long ago.

  "And you have been misleading it over the years?" Staffa asked, thinking: Like empires, the machine, too, fears these Seddi. What purpose is served by suppressing their teachings? What can be so dangerous about a philosophy of shared God Mind and ethics?

  "Yes. We've lied to it. Such a delicate game. This time, this time it almost managed to break past my defenses. I think . . . think it knows."

  "Then why do you talk to it?" Staffa propped himself on an elbow. "Why continue this sham? Ignore it! What power does it have?" The helmet's prickle along his scalp remained in his memory.

  Bruen's laugh sounded harsh in the silence. "Hyde and I tried that once. The machine cut us off. All the lights here, the ventilation, the water and comm are controlled by it. Further, its computational powers are greater by far than anything in the Regan sphere of influence. The boards are unlike anything we make. Alien ... yet so powerful a tool. I've never been sure we could risk its loss.

  "For example, ask it to compute the probability of Rega obtaining military control of Free Space, and it will tell you."

  "I could tell you," Staffa grunted.

  "Not like the Mag Comm," Bruen disagreed wearily. "It will make an instantaneous computation of every imaginable factor down to the military contribution of fishing provinces on Riparious. No human mind can deal with the tons of data the Mag Comm wields. No human could think to program a system to handle the complete societal outputs of an empire like the Mag Comm can."

  Staffa pulled at his black beard. And yet it is a construct, as I am. An artifact, a thing made for a purpose. How different are we?

  Bruen closed his eyes, head nodding on his small pillow. "Believe me, we fear it, Lord Commander. But I suppose it is a weakness among the Seddi that we crave such power of intellect—no matter what the risk. An addiction, if you will."

  "A vile monstrosity, if you will," Staffa countered.

  Silence.

  "Why are you really here, Staffa kar Therma?" Bruen's eyes stayed closed, his expression that of a man in pain.

  Staffa leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers together, legs outstretched on stone polished smooth through eons. "I originally started out to find my son. And on the way I realized that to do so, I had to find myself."

  "Awareness?"

  "Yes . . . awareness."

  Bruen's eyebrows lifted over his still closed eyes. To himself he added, "And there is the reason it all fell apart, Hyde, my old friend. Here is the missing piece. Who would have ever guessed the Lord Commander wasn't aware?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "We worked long and hard to get you, Staffa kar Therma. Oh, we tried so hard.

  You see, you were the key."

  "The key?"

  "To survival." Bruen took a deep breath. "As the Lord Commander of the Companions, you would have broken Rega, correct?"

  "Was it that apparent?"

  "To the Mag Comm, yes. We, of course, spent years checking and cross-checking the data on our own. Oh, we knew your whole plan—possibly before you did. We couldn't allow it. Your steel fist would have crushed the aspirations of the human spirit—provided sufficient resources to support civilization had survived the war."

  "And how could you have stopped me and my Companions?"

  Bruen grinned, the wrinkles on his face shifting. "By throwing a revolution on Targa."

  "I don't. . . . you mean this whole rebellion was. . . . But how? How did you think you could get me by a revolt on Targa?"

  "But that was our brilliance! We had an assassin, a very special assassin, trained from birth just to kill you."

  "And where is this assassin now, Bruen? Should I be looking over my shoulder?

  Perhaps walk with my blaster ready? Fear my food?" Staffa tensed in the chair, eyes suddenly going to the door.

  "Relax, Lord Commander. I'm afraid it all came undone.

  We planned on your running to Targa to pick up a few last Regan credits. The contract would have also provided an opportunity to scout Regan preparedness and allay their fears. You might have finished Targa and gone straight for the Regan capital—a mark of your strategic ability. There were too many opportunities for you to use the Targan campaign to your benefit. Only you didn't come . . . much to our intense mystification."

  Staffa closed his eyes and shook his head. "All that just to get an assassin within range to kill me?"

  Bruen filled his lungs again. "All those people dead. Everything undone because you yourself changed. What happened on Myklene? What did the Praetor tell you? How much?"

  "Enough."

  "Kaylla recounted most of your conversations with her." Bruen worked his mouth. "What of your son, Staffa? Do you think you would know him after all these years? You only saw him once as a baby."

  "I'd know him, Bruen. No matter where he is, I'd know him by sight." He paused. "The Praetor told me he was here, on Targa, left with the Seddi Priests years ago."

  "He was. We sent him elsewhere."

  "Why?" Staffa demanded. "Where is he? How can I find him? Tell me, Bruen. The Seddi wouldn't lose track of so valuable an asset."

  "Easy, Lord Commander. You must remember, at the time we considered you the greatest threat to the continued existence of humankind. We hated you, feared you as much, or more, than that demon machine in the basement."

  "Where's my son?"

  "Don't look at me like that. We did nothing to harm him. In fact, in a moment of weakness, I sent him, tiny thing that he was, to Rega—and safety. I didn't hold his ancestry against him. I believed him innocent." A pained frown cut Bruen's forehead and he sighed miserably.

  "Then he lived through my bombardment?"

  "He lived."

  Staffa's eyes narrowed and he dropped his head into his hands. "Thank the Blessed Gods. I ... I killed Chrysla on Myklene. Damn the Praetor! I never would have suspected he was behind her kidnapping years ago. I. ..."

  "He was a most insidious sort." Bruen reached up to massage his temples.

  "But yes, your son lives. We placed him in a state institution on Rega. He did very well. In fact, he excelled at his chosen field. He was still there when we prodded the Targans into revolt. I imagine he will be safe as long as Rega is."

  "Thank God," Staffa sighed, a light filling his face.

  "No. I think you had better thank the quanta instead."

  "Where do I find him, Bruen?"

  "I can't tell you just were he is at this precise moment. But, assuming that you and I come to a satisfactory agreement concerning Free Space, we'll bring the two of you together."

  "I don't make a good hostage—nor will my son."

  The old man laughed, then winced as if the action pained him. "I wouldn't make a very good Seddi if I instantly succumbed to your every demand either, would I? Suffice it to say that, considering current Regan policy on Targa, your son is safer than you are. If Ily knew you were here, I doubt she'd leave a stone untouched in her search for you. And, Staffa, you and must come to some sort of agreement about Free Space—and the role of the Companions. I'll show you the data if you like, but you've got to believe that war between Rega and Sassa will doom us all."

  "Stopping that war will bedifficult. I've positioned them, groomed them."

  Staffa frowned, steepling his fingers. "The key, of course, is the Companions.

  With instant surgical strikes, I could keep damage to a minimum, avoid destroying planetary resources. If Rega moves in the next couple of months, however, it will be a disaster."

  Bruen wiped his fleshy nose and grunted. "They'll waste each other's planets until nothing is left. The machine . . . wel, it may play a role, too. We can't underestimate it."

  "Bruen, I think the time has come to develop a new epistemolo
gy."

  "What do you want, Staffa? What's your ultimate goal? Domination of Free Space? To be declared Emperor of humanity?"

  "I want to break the Forbidden Borders, Bruen. What's your price for cooperation?"

  "Freedom for the Seddi to preach where they will— including among your Companions."

  "You have my word on it."

  Bruen filled his lungs and exhaled wearily. "Who would have thought?" He paused, chuckled weakly, and added, "Then perhaps it's time to begin tearing down the walls between us. Kaylla said you told her about your parents?" "I did. "

  "Staffa, many years ago, the Seddi and Myklene had strong and friendly ties.

  We shared a great deal of trade with Myklene. At the time, Rega was simply a three-world hegemony-a budding industrial base. Phillipia was attempting to expand into other ... but I stray.

  "Myklene sent numerous vessels to Targa and we traded raw metals for finished products. We also traded something else-information processing through the Mag Comm. Oh, to be sure, it hadn't awakened at the time, it was simply the finest computer in all of Free Space.

  "The point of all this is that a young man from Myklene showed up at our temple in Kaspa. He paid us very well for access to the machine and ran raw data through the Mag Comm. Power doesn't always derive from the right answers-rather, it is born of asking the right questions. Through the years-as a result of his connections with us and the questions he asked-he gained a'

  considerable reputation. All of which carried him to the heights of power on Myklene. Then Rega captured Targa and cut off our services to Myklene-and the rest of Free Space, for that matter. Our order was outlawed, and the rest is now history."

  "This man," Staffa ventured. "You talk of the Praetor?" "I do. Of course, while Tybalt the Imperial Fourth harried us and tried to eliminate the Seddi, we weren't completely without our own means. We adapted well, went underground, and began the long tedious process of infiltrating both Rega and Sassa. Myklene never threatened us since the Praetor went to great lengths to establish communication links to the Mag Comm."