"From preliminary reports, less than three percent."
Bruen waited for several moments before the reply came:
"It appears our assessment of Myklene's strength was grossly overestimated."
"I think not."
"Elaborate, please."
"We believe our assessment of Staffa kar Therma's military genius was grossly underestimated. Even our sources in the Sassan high command were caught by surprise by Staffa's speed. Special tactics teams infiltrated and threw the Myklenian defense into turmoil, sabotaged their computer defense net, and then Staffa hit them. Each strike increased the Myklenians' confusion until the Sassan regulars could arrive and deliver the crushing blow."
"Then we must act swiftly. Any other course is now denied us."
"Events are progressing with greater alacrity than we anticipated. Rega has begun to react, calling up their military reserves. The critical time has come."
"So, your civilization is about to fall." Haunting tones reverberated through Bruen's mind, echoing off the camouflaged was of his blocked thoughts.
"That is correct."
"And you have taken countermeasures?"
"We have. Everything has been done as you instructed. Your plans are ours."
"You followed my instructions exactly? Explain, please."
"Targa is poised for revolt. Given the rapidity of the Lord Commander's victory over Myklene, we can still incite the revolt and proceed as planned.
The revolt will serve to keep Rega off balance. We also expect that the child will be tested to determine if our aspirations will be fulfilled. To date, our agents have been successful in manipulating the child's circumstances. We're dealing with remarkable brilliance, you know. The child may be the foundation for the new order. We have followed your directions, but there is a risk.
Random events cannot be biased. To do so would skew the results of the test.
The child will surviv—or die— depending on instinct and intelligence."
"Or through random chance?"
"Quantum functions cannot be predicted. Survival will depend on many random variables." Bruen agreed, calming himself, stifling his mind, careful of the control he exercised. The mantra rhymed to cover unorthodox thoughts.
"You know I find Seddi preoccupation with uncertainty principles to be a serious flaw. Such obsession left you impotent and too self-absorbed in the past to allow right action."
"Accidents—you must agree—do happen."
Silence!
Shying away from dangerous ground, Bruen let himself drift with the mantra.
"And the clone?"
Bruen winced. "I sometimes wish you exhibited less, sall we say, honesty, Mag Comm. The word 'clone' hardly reflects—"
"Does the taxonomic label not fit?" came a logical response. "Clone: a being created by artificial manipulation of the genetic material to produce a viable—"
"Yes, yes!" Bruen sighed. "Very well. Yes, the clone is progressing most satisfactorily. We are very pleased. The deep training seems to have implanted without the personality disorders we anticipated. We notice a distinct subliminal reaction to stimuli which exceeds our expectations. The clone carries all the survival skills we hoped to impart. In fact ..."
He allowed his unease to eak and moved awkwardly to cover his reserve.
"You are concerned, Bruen?"
"A weapon of such devastating potential should always be viewed with concern.
Only a fool sleeps soundly over a primed explosive."
"We are talking about a human, Bruen. Not a primed explosive."
"And which is more deadly?"
"The human with its imagination and intellect. . . I have no doubts." Mag Comm seemed to hesitate. "To make the point, I would refer you to recent history.
You will recall the shambles the Seddi and all Free Space were in when I reestablished contact?"
"Yes, Lord Mag Comm," Bruen responded automatically, feeling the dogmatic epistemology unrolling in his subconscious mind.
"That was the unleashed, uncontrolled power of the human imagination, Bruen.
Chaos. Wild. Undirected passion. Loose entropic waste! You had lost Right Thought and the ordered development that comes with it."
The violence of the pronouncement cowed Bruen. In defense, he slipped deeper into the mantra, surrendering his resistance, submitting further to the Mag Comm.
"Yes, I see you remember well. Your mind is open to me. I read the following of the Way. Right Thought is yours. That is good, Bruen. You have done well for your kind."
"Through your help Great One," Bruen intoned. "Blessed is your guidance.
Blessed was the day you returned your Grace to mankind to give direction and build the new order. We, your lost children, thank you and worship you."
"You worship through your service, Bruen." A pause. "Is that not so?"
Did he detect a note of sarcasm? Bruen allowed his thoughts to flow, following the intricate logic provided by the Mag Comm so long ago. Within moments, he felt the approval of the huge machine, calming him, stroking his thoughts with positive reinforcement.
"Yes, you are acting according to the Teachings of Truth, Bruen." Another pause. "/ have manipulated the data you have provided concerning the Lord Commander and evaluated the conclusions. I find no reliable data to indicate any deviation from the original strategy is necessary at this time. Staffa kar Therma no longer has a useful role. His actions defy prediction, and, therefore, cannot be countenanced. You must neutralie him. To do otherwise will unleash his ultimate control of Free Space. And what will that control bring o humanity?"
"Destruction. Death. Total slavery and chaos," Bruen intoned wordlessly, following the pattern of Mag Comm logic.
"Excellent, Bruen! You have your agents in readiness?"
"We do. The Lord Commander will bring his fleets to Targa, Great One." Bruen swallowed, allowing the plan to unroll in his mind. "When he comes to drown our voices in blood again—then Lord, we will strike."
"My compliments, Bruen. You understand the danger posed by the Lord Commander's continued existence. He is a cancer in your society. Like any threat to health and peace, such a disease must be excised from the flesh and the True Way must heal the wounded body of humanity. I read the intricacies of your planning and intrigue. You, my Magister, are more than I could have hoped for. Blessed is your name, Bruen. You shall be the salvation of the human species. You shall bring to all people the Teachings of Truth."
"I am humbled, Great One!" Bruen cried out, sensing the righteousness of the words.
"The time has come to act. You are to trigger the Targan revolt immediately."
"Yes, Great One. I shall unleash the wrath of the people against the Regan tyrant."
"Blessed is your name, Bruen. I will call for you when I have more information. Continue, Bruen—and thank you for your dedication to the Way. The fate of yor species hinges on your success in this venture."
"So many lives—"
"Your species hangs in the balance. What is it worth to you? The threat must be countered—even if a planet is bait. To fail is to invite extinction."
For a brief instant, Bruen's mind filled with a scene of sterile planets and dead cities: silent, only the ghostly ruins of human habitations remaining, lifeless, eerie in the hollow displays in his mind.
His unbalanced thoughts reeled as the Mag Comm withdrew and left him drained and trembling. Bruen blinked, awed at the emptiness in his mind.
Suffering from the aftereffects of the communication, Bruen lifted the feathery weight of the golden helmet from his sweaty head. Arms shaking, he would have dropped it had Magister Hyde not rushed forward to place the headse on the holder. He became aware of the alcove, of the anxious faces of the Initiates. Vertigo began to recede.
"Is everything all right?" Hyde asked, fleshy face lined with concern.
"Y-yes, it is," he lied. Unnerved, he felt his mind returning to normal. "I—I must get back to Kaspa." He smiled weakly. "You'v
e seen the figures, Magister.
What choice does the machine leave us? What choice do our own projections leave?"
"Then we ..." Hyde shook his head, wagging the layers of fat that hung in long jowls from his cheeks. His faded blue eyes went dull. "It ordered us to . . ."
"Yes, Brother Hyde," Bruen whispered hollowly. "Our lot is to drench our world in blood and misery one more time."
Hyde wrung his hands nervously. "But so many will die. And to what purpose? A trap? For one man?"
"No buts," Bruen added wearily, pulling himself up in the hands of the Initiates. "Or do you have another idea? We've been through this time and again. We have no choice, old friend."
Bruen wobbled on his feet, refusing to look back at the Mag Comm, feeling its insidious presence nonetheless. He was only thankful that, in years past, they had managed to "accidentally" eliminate the Mag Comm's external sensors located within its chamber, leaving it the helmet as its sole means of observing and communicating with them. "We've looked at the risks, attended to the odds. We have only ourselves to rely on."
"And that God-cursed machine," Hyde added.
Bruen closed his eyes, rubbing thumbs into his temples. The subtle beat of a brain-wrenching headache pulsed behind his eyes. It always happened after the Mag Comm withdrew.
"Yes," he added feebly. "And the God-cursed machine, too."
Blessed Gods, let me live long enough to see this through! I must do something, must lay a trail, somehow, to see that insidious machine destroyed should I fail!
The voice sang hollowly in Staffa's head. "How ironic . . . blew her to plasma. ..." The Lod Commander turned and pinched his eyes closed, feeling the weight of the words threading tendrils through his memory.
"I killed her. The only woman I ever loved. I KILLED HER!"
"You have no soul, Staffa. You are a machine ... construct of human flesh ... a machine ... a creation. ..." The Praetor's voice echoed in ghostly waves, forcng Staffa kar Therma to press knotted fists against the sides of his skull and pound mercilessly at his temples to still that reedy voice.
"Damn you! Damn you Praetor!" he howled into the stillness of his private chambers. Around him, the familiar walls glared back in eloquent silence.
Trophies and mementos hung in their usual places—booty from battles fought and won. Monuments to his strategic and tactical brilliance. Now they seemed tawdry, sullied by the memories of blood from which each had been plucked.
His ship, Chrysla, named for her, mocked him in the irony of her death.
Staffa ground his teeth, hearing the grating slide of moar on molar. He ground them harder, trying to drown out the wicked satsfaction in the Praetor's knowing voice. In a sudden burst of energy, Staffa curled and rolled to vault from the sleeping mat. He landed lightly on bare feet, and whirled in a combat stance, nervous, pulse racing at the voice in his memory.
How had it happened that way? How had the old man beaten him so soundly?I did it to myself. Her blood is on Y hands!
He threw his head back, gasping breaths of cool air. "Damn you, Praetor! May the Rotted Gods gag on your pustular corpse! How did you bring me to this?
In anger, he shook his head, enjoying the sensation of his loose hair as it fell about his face in a black aureole. A mind trap, a deeply buried conditioned response that caused him to access improper neural pathways in the brain that would arouse an emotional response—flooding his brain with chemicals that clouded objective, logical analysis of data.
"I can't trust myself to think clearly—and I've only barely touched the surface of what he might have released."
The Praetor mocked, "May God rot your inhuman self. Staffa, you are a man accursed . . . accursed . . . accursed. ..."
"True."
His eye caught the gleam of the dispenser. He stuck a golden Regan chalice under the tap and numbly watched as Myklenian brandy drained amber into the vessel. Could he drown that cackling shade's voice in a haze of alcohol?
"Indeed, Praetor. Accursed from the moment I laid eyes on you." The bitterness in his voice moved him, mocked him, turned in his gut, "Would that my body had joined my parents that day, eh Praetor?"
Idly he sipped the brandy, barely aware of its body, of the rich smoothness of a drink valued all across Free Space.
Unwanted, fleeting glimpses of a younger Praetor—laughing, as he offered his hand during personal combat training—flashed through Staffa's mind. A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds, sensations and memories swept him. He closed his eyes, reliving those days.
"We were ... we meant so much to each other . . . once." He recalled the encouragement, the praise, yes, and even love. "And still we brought ourselves to meet finally like . . . like beasts!" A painful numbness cramped his fingers where they gripped the jeweled handle of the golden chalice. "What have you wrought Praetor?"
The Praetor's voice snapped in Staffa's brain. ". . . A hell of your own devising!" Staffa winced. "You have no soul, Staffa . . . no responsibilities to God." Each burning word engraved itself in letters of fire to brand his soul. ". . . You are reviled as a demon."
Staffa forced himself to swallow, bringing the chalice to his fevered forehead. "... Hell," a choked whisper uttered from Staffa's throat. "And I killed you, Praetor." He shook his head, an image of long ago ghosting among his battered thoughts. As I killed her.
He could feel Chrysla staring at him through those magical eyes. The grief began to well, threatening to engulf him. Instead, he forced himself to think about the Praetor.
"Ah, I remember, Praetor." Staffa's face worked. "You came to me after I won first place in the Myklenian Games." His thumb ran absently over the angular insets o the chalice. "Remember that day Praetor? Remember the pride in your eyes? Remember how I ran to you? Hugged you?
"I'd been so lonely . . . worked so hard. Trained for months that I might see you smile." Staffa sniffed against the pain. "Did you know what it meant to me? How young and fragile I was then? All that sacrifice, I made for you. The pain, the sweat, the constant aching, I suffered, trying so hard. . . . All for you.
"Young men are. . . . No, I was . . . alone . . . alone that way. An orphan, you see? I had no one but you, Praetor. In you—and you alone—I placed my trust and my faith." The eweled relief cut his flesh. Chrysla's soulless eyes probed through the haze of his memory. Using all of his concentration, he forced her back and reconstructed the Praetor's face instead.
"For youI would have died!" His mouth worked dryly. "After all those years, struggling for you. After all those years when you took care of me! After all that loneliness. After my need to have you notice me ... be proud of me ... you. . . ." Staffa stggled to fill his aching lungs. "Then I won the Games. I saw the triumph in your eyes, Praetor. Triumph. And you placed your hand on my shoulder and called me ... son."
A bittersweet memory. "Yes, your greatest creation, Praetor." He sipped the brandy again, flicking on the holo display over his head. "What made me so different? Isn't my body the same as everyone else's? What makes me a monster, and not the next man?" Chrysla's expression saddened as her ghostly image shifted in the gloom around him.
He stared listlessly at the gleaming chalice. "A monster? How many men have created a monster all their own? Answer me that Praetor?"
An image of Myklene formed over the sleeping platform, spinning slowly, gouts of smoke pooling over the continental land masses, winter spreading beneath the palls, marching across sun-starved lands.
"See, we still share visions, Praetor." He chuckled dryly, aware of the censure in Chrysla's expression. She'd never allowed him to dwell on failure.
But now ... what was left?
Staffa dropped his gaze back to where he clutched the fabulous chalice. "And so I have killed everything I ever loved. With my hands I broke your age-rotten neck, Praetor." He lifted a hand, looking at the intricate dermatoglyphics on the palms, studying the loops and whorls on the finger pads as he moved his digits. "And Chrysla, my Chrysla, I triggered the shot that blew you ap
art. I was so close ... so very close and never knew."
With that, he hurled the chalice across the room and smashed a priceless sixth-century Etarian offering bowl into angular shards. The brandy left a spattered smear of liquid that dripped down the walls.
"I damn you to a hell of your own devising!" the reedy voice repeated in his mind. "You have no soul ... no soul ... no soul . . . " the voice wound on, insinuating itself in Staffa's thoughts, weaving into his very essence.
"Construct. Machine. Creation. No God," the voice hammered at him again and again.
"But perhaps the Seddi have my son? Where?" Dumbly he blinked before dropping his head into his hands and bending double, shoulders shaking at the impact of the words. "Chrysla? Where is he? He's all that I have left of you. I I You're inhuman ... you have no soul.... "What did you do to me, Praetor? Who am I?"
"Seek your son." Chrysla's voice seemed to whisper from the air. "Seek your son."
CHAPTER 4
Even the secretary had ceased to shoot periodic glances at Sinklar Fist. He sat in one of the polished chairs placed along the Judicial Magistrate's waiting room wall. Like all waiting rooms, this one had comm terminals with official programming, news, and entertainment. Hours ago, Sinklar had reprogrammed the unit for library access, called up the text on multidimensional geometry that he'd been studying, and lost himself in the text.
It came as a surprise, therefore, when the secretary called, "Sir? Private Fist?"
Sinklar saved his work on his pocket comm and jumped to his feet. "Yes? Is he ready to see me?"
She gave him one of those glassy smiles employed by receptionists across the universe and said, "I'm sorry, sir. But the office is closing. I'm afraid the Judicial Magistrate won't have time to see you today."
Sinklar stalked over to her desk and leaned down, panic in his breast. "But you don't understand! I'm shipping out tomorrow. Going on active duty. I've got to see him. This might be the only chance I get.
The plastic smile remained in place like a mask. "I'm sorry, sir. That just won't be possible. You've got to understand, the Judicial Magistrate has a very busy schedule and for him to take time to review such an old case is - - - "