CHAPTER SEVEN

Prometheus (Sigma Draconis II), 4328 C.E.

Roderick Brady-Schiavona had barely appeared on the transposer stage before he strode off it, as though he'd hit the ground running.

Jason Aerenthal didn't waste time with conventional greetings. "You've heard," he stated rather than asked.

"Yes. We got the message on the outskirts of this system." Returning from the newly secured Beta Aquilae Sector, Roderick's flagship had still had its inner field activated as it passed the orbits of Sigma Draconis' outermost planets, and could therefore receive tachyon transmissions from Prometheus as soon as the planet's sensors had the ship pinpointed.

"Then you got the news only a little while after we ourselves did—very fortuitous. And you certainly didn't lose any time getting here. You transposed here from the maximum safe range, or perhaps a bit beyond it." Aerenthal ran his eyes over the space-service coverall that Roderick hadn't bothered to change.

"Never mind that." Roderick strode as he talked, proceeding through corridors and emerging onto an open gallery on the curving underside of the palace, that overlooked the oceanfront below, where surf rolled whitely onto long beaches at the feet of soaring towers. He had no eyes for any of it. "How is Father taking it?"

"He's stunned, of course. Actually, we were all taken by surprise. But it hit him especially hard. The assassination of an Emperor isn't something he takes lightly . . . even a `Retired Emperor.'" Aerenthal's lips gave a self-deprecatory upward twitch.

"Who was responsible?" Roderick didn't bother with the formality of asking if the agent had the information. "Anyone we know?"

"Oh, yes, that's clear enough. It was his chief Fleet attache, Captain Vladimir Liang."

"That slime!"

"Indeed. As I've reconstructed the story, he wiped out the entire family. Oleg lived just long enough to be forced to watch the killing of his son Andrei."

Roderick jarred to a stop, and a low, non-verbal growl containing several emotions escaped him. Then he looked up, and met Aerenthal's cool gaze. No words passed between them, nor were any needed. The existence of fourteen-year-old Andrei had been awkward for them in their elevation of Julian. They'd gotten around the problem by arguing that a Retired Emperor's son held no special status as heir presumptive. Now, the point appeared to have conveniently become moot.

I keep thinking, Roderick reflected, that I've finally learned what true self-disgust feels like. How long, I wonder, before I really learn? 

And, by then, will I still care? 

He spoke in level tones. "So Liang has tried to seize the throne?"

"No. Proclaiming himself Emperor is beyond his courage if not his ambition. He's settled for promoting himself to admiral and appointing a regency council, with himself as chairman, to manage things `until the present regrettable uncertainty concerning the succession is resolved.'" Aerenthal chuckled. "If nothing else, he deserves high marks for what certain of my ancestors used to call chutzpah."

Roderick was in no mood to be amused. "How much does he actually control, outside the Lambda Serpenti system?"

"Unknown. So far, he hasn't tried to force the issue. He's been content to stay at Lambda Serpenti and enjoy a thorough massacre of his political enemies."

For a while there was silence, broken only by the occasional cries of birds hurling defiance at the gargantuan, impossibly motionless intruder in their skies. Aerenthal watched as the youthful commodore leaned on the railing and considered the implications.

"It appears," the agent finally observed, "that our timetable has been moved up for us."

Roderick looked up sharply. Covert telepathy? No. Why should he? He doesn't need it. Shrewdness, vast experience and a total lack of illusions about human nature serve perfectly well. "Yes," he agreed aloud. "It's clear what must be done."

"Clear to everyone but your father," Aerenthal corrected. "That's why your return is so very fortunate. You must persuade him."

"Rod! Thank God you're back!" Maura advanced across the antechamber and gave him a quick hug.

"Congratulations," he said, indicating her newly acquired captain's insignia.

Her expression conveyed both thanks and dismissal of the matter's importance. She looked more like the admiral than any of them, in a feminine sort of way, with her strongly marked features. Her thick hair, somewhat longer than usual for a female Fleet officer, was a darker chestnut than Roderick's. She swept it back impatiently and indicated the inner door.

"Come on. Father's been waiting ever since you arrived. Ted's with him . . . as usual." Her face darkened with the last two words. "It's too bad he couldn't have gone with you, or done something to get him off Prometheus. Here, with constant access to Father, he's been . . . well, never mind. At least he's on the right side for now."

"You mean he's been advising Father to—?"

"Yes. We both have. But we need your help."

She led the way into the study. Teodor—who hadn't seen his brother since they'd parted in this same study the previous year—turned from where he stood by the sideboard, his features a mask of cautious neutrality. The Grand Admiral looked up from his armchair with a smile that was as economical as all his smiles but as warm as they ever got. He stood up and extended his hand. "Welcome back, Rod! We've all been waiting to congratulate you in person for all you've done, out toward Perseus and Aquila. But now . . . you've heard the news, of course."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, the ceremony we'd planned will have to be delayed. Oh, don't worry; your promotion to rear admiral will go through on schedule—"

"I wasn't worried, sir."

"—but the public formalities will have to be delayed. First, we have to decide how we're going to respond to this development."

Roderick looked into the eyes of his father—which were also the eyes of the Grand Admiral—until he'd held them, and knew he could hold them. Aerenthal hadn't accompanied him, for the agent had deemed it best that he be alone with his father, or at least have only family members present, when he said what must be said. When he spoke, his voice held as steady as his eyes.

"Sir, you always taught me that the really important decisions of life are seldom simple ones. In the main, that's true. But for once our choice is clear-cut and unambiguous. The Duschanes have been wiped out—"

"No! Julian still lives! The murder of the rest of the Imperial family makes even clearer his status as the legitimate Emperor."

"With respect, sir, people accepted him as Emperor only because you made him so. The fact that your choice had a certain dynastic legitimacy undoubtedly helped. But that's meaningless now; he represents a dynasty which no longer exists. And we all know he's out of the question as Emperor. His lack of an heir alone would disqualify him."

"But as long as he lives, he's the Emperor." The admiral's eyes slid away, unable to meet his son's any longer. "If I don't support him, I'll be declaring my entire life meaningless."

"Forgive me, sir, but putting off facing a problem is unworthy of you." For an instant, Roderick wondered if he'd gone too far, for his siblings gasped and his father's eyes snapped back into contact with his, glaring. But he had to go on. "You know it's true, sir. And it's not just his childlessness. He could reign only as a cardboard figure representing a dead dynastic principle, with you as the real ruler—just as Yoshi Medina ruled in his day."

For the first time in Roderick's memory, his father's granite features trembled in a gale of anger. "You dare to compare me to that—"

"Yes, sir, I do—because you yourself spoke a moment ago of meaninglessness. What could render your loyalty to the Duschanes more meaningless than to use the last of them as a puppet? And it wouldn't work in the long run, because such a farce would lack the moral authority that the Empire has always existed to provide." Roderick shook his head slowly. "No, if you really want to preserve the Empire there's only one way to do it. You must proclaim yourself Emperor."

All at once, something seemed to go out of Ivar Brady-Schiavona. He slumped back down into his armchair, and his craggy face wore the look of a man who wanted to collapse under his burdens but didn't know how. "You, too?" he asked in a voice barely above a whisper. "Everyone's been telling me that. But . . . I have no legitimate claim to the throne. Where would that leave your `moral authority'? I'd be ruling by no right except that of the biggest guns."

"That's not altogether true, sir. Remember, we're distant relatives of the Duschanes."

" `Distant' is precisely the word! By that reckoning, there must be dozens, no, hundreds of people who could make as good a claim as I."

"That's just the problem, Father," Maura declared, entering the conversation. "There'll be no lack of pretenders with some kind of claim, as well as freebooters who really do have nothing behind them but force. We'll have constant civil war unless a new dynasty—legitimized by links with the old one, but nevertheless new, a fresh start—is firmly established. And you're the only one who can do that."

"Yes!" Teodor stepped forward, sensing that his moment to pipe up had arrived. "So you see, sir, this won't be a usurpation at all. Instead, you will be fulfilling a duty." Roderick and Maura exchanged a glance, and their eyes rolled heavenward in search of refuge from their older brother's smarmy hypocrisy. But they both held their tongues, for they realized that Teodor, in his sycophancy, had hit on the line of argument best calculated to sway their father.

"Furthermore," Teodor continued, hitting his stride, "you have a better claim than any of the other distant Duschane relations. Remember, your lineage goes back to the ruling house of the old Solarian Empire . . . through Basil Castellan himself!"

"Oh, yes." The admiral's thin lips quirked almost imperceptibly upward. "That old family legend."

"More than just a legend, sir! It is beyond dispute that the Sword Clans covertly aided Castellan in his struggle against Yoshi Medina. It is equally undisputed that his Sword Clans contacts, Jan Kleinst-Schiavona and Lauren Demarest-Katana, later married. And that after Castellan's presumed death, they returned to Newhope with an eleven-year-old foster child named Irena, whom they subsequently adopted."

"You've made a study of this, I see." The admiral's face wore the fond look it so often held when addressing Teodor. Roderick could never recall seeing precisely that expression directed at himself. He commanded himself not to feel that which he usually felt when his father looked at Teodor that way. "So you must know that the foster parents never actually claimed that Irena was Basil Castellan's natural child by his friend and lover Sonja Rady."

"Of course they didn't, sir. She had been placed in their care for safekeeping during Castellan's disastrous last campaign, and they were bound to conceal her identity. Castellan's enemies would have gone to any lengths to destroy her. But once they arrived at Newhope—a world unknown to the Empire, which more than half believed the Sword Clans themselves to be legendary—the secrecy to which they were sworn lost its urgency. We're told that they never denied the persistent rumors."

The admiral did not respond at once. Everyone knew the rest of the story. Irena Kleinst-Schiavona had married a Brady, within her own clan. (The Sword Clans' established rule of exogamy had been set aside in her case, for she was unrelated by blood to her adoptive parents.) And her Brady-Schiavona descendants had always carried with them the suspicion that they were descended from that lost prince who had appeared in time for the Solarian Empire's final death-agony, and whose gallant, doomed attempt to save it was the stuff of folklore.

"There's no proof of it," the admiral finally muttered—but in a pro forma way, as though he knew it was expected of him . . . or, perhaps, expected it of himself.

Roderick sensed the moment, and spoke before Teodor could resume. "But it's widely believed, sir. More to the point, people will want to believe it, because it will give your cause a unique legitimacy—even a mythic resonance. It'll make the Duschanes seem like parvenus by comparison!" My God, came the shocking realization, I'm starting to sound like Ted! 

"Propaganda. Public relations. Image." The admiral's eyes held a sad amusement. "I've always held that sort of thing in contempt."

Maura spoke gently. "That contempt is a luxury you can no longer afford, Father."

The admiral looked around at the faces of his children and saw unanimity. His massive head sank, and his voice was barely audible. "What about Julian? Would you have me betray the man I myself put on the throne?"

Roderick spoke in a quiet, unargumentative tone which puzzled both his siblings. "Julian, as we all know, has never had any political ambitions. I'm sure there'll be no occasion for any unpleasantness." Teodor began to open his mouth to add something, but Roderick gave him a surreptitious shushing gesture, and he subsided.

There was, after all, no need to argue further. Roderick knew he'd won. He'd known it the instant his father had said "Julian" rather than "His Imperial Majesty."

"Doesn't this fly in the face of that ancient philosopher you're always quoting?" Roderick spoke carefully; it had been years since he'd gotten this drunk. "What was his name? MacKinder? McLuhan? Mac-something."

"Machiavelli," Aerenthal supplied from across the table.

"Whatever. Anyway, didn't he say that when you depose a ruling house, you're just asking for trouble if you don't wipe out the entire family?"

"Don't be tasteless." The agent took a sip from his own brandy snifter, of which he'd been partaking with slightly more caution than the newly promoted rear admiral. "I don't think any of the dangers that concerned Machiavelli apply in this case. Do you?" The question was directed to the third man at the table.

"Absolutely not," Julian Duschane assured him. "Of course, under the circumstances I suppose that's what one might expect me to say. . . ."

"One might," Roderick echoed, polishing off his brandy and reaching for the decanter.

"But it's nonetheless true. Even if some adventurer posing as the restorer of the Duschane dynasty were to kidnap me and try to use me as a figurehead, he'd run into the same intractable problems: my lack of an heir, and the fact that no one except the Grand Admiral has ever taken me seriously as Emperor—least of all myself." The elderly man smiled benignly.

They sat in what were, for the moment, still his private apartments in the palace. The nighttime panorama in the window, and the flames in the fireplace that provided almost as much illumination as the dim indirect lighting, were holographic illusions. But the rich furnishings were real, as was the fabulously rare brandy of which Aerenthal had suggested they avail themselves while they could. Roderick had concurred, for he'd needed to tie one on.

"No," Julian continued, "I intend to spend my remaining years in comfortable obscurity, completing what I hope will be the definitive study of the link between loss of political power and declining cultural influence among Old Earth's pre-spaceflight civilizations—Hellenistic Greece, Baroque Italy, twenty-first century Europe, and so forth. I like to think that is what I'll be remembered for. And as a former Emperor of sorts, I shouldn't have any trouble finding a publisher."

"Not that you ever did," Aerenthal put in graciously.

Roderick took another sip of the brandy that had gradually dissolved his discomfort at the sheer unreality of the whole scene. The dethroning had been simply too civilized for words: a quiet interview in which the Grand Admiral had explained the situation, a graceful acquiescence by the completely unsurprised Julian, and now a brief period in limbo, until the time—just two of Prometheus' 37.6-standard-hour days hence—when Ivar would publicly accept Julian's abdication and set the date for his own coronation. Unnoticed in the hoopla, Julian would quietly depart into that which no one was crude enough to call "internal exile." And the curtain would fall on the play whose ending the three of them had known from the start.

Roderick looked quizzically at the play's star—or, at least, its chief comic relief character. He struggled for a moment with curiosity. Curiosity won. "No regrets? No . . . bitterness?"

"None." Julian shook his head emphatically. "If anything—and I say this with all sincerity—I consider it an honor to have contributed to the outcome we're going to see day after tomorrow. You see, I really do admire your father tremendously."

"As who does not?" Aerenthal rhetorically asked.

"Sure," Roderick muttered, staring into his brandy. "Everybody admires him. But . . . but doesn't it bother you that he really has no legitimate claim to the throne?"

"Actually, he does," Aerenthal said quietly.

"Come on! His position—which I argued him out of—was absolutely correct. Our so-called relationship to the Duschanes barely qualifies as a joke."

"That isn't what I meant."

Something in Aerenthal's tone brought Roderick to instant alertness, and he felt the fumes of alcohol seep out of him. "What? You're not talking about that old family legend, are you?" He laughed nervously. "I can't believe this! You're the last person I would ever have expected to fall into the trap of believing his own propaganda."

"Granted, it will make superb propaganda," the agent intoned, eyes focused somewhere far beyond the room. "But it also happens to be the literal truth. That occasionally happens, you know."

As the silence stretched, Roderick glanced at Julian in search of a clue as to how he should react. There was no help there, for the sensitive features were smoothed out into a mask of expressionlessness. So he turned back to Aerenthal. "How do you know that? How can anybody know?"

"I know." The two words dropped into a well of finality. Then the agent blinked, and eyed his brandy snifter ruefully. "Forgive me. I've said far too much."

"But . . . see here, tell me what you—"

"No. I'm afraid I must drop the subject. You'll have to be content with the information itself—assuming that you choose to believe it."

Roderick stared at the agent, started to speak, then thought better of it. He knew he'd get nothing more out of Aerenthal. He turned to Julian. "This comes as no surprise to you, I see. He must have already told you."

"He has. Not everything he knows, I'm sure, but enough to overcome my misgivings about lending myself to his—and your—plans. Not, to repeat, that those misgivings were ever very serious. But I'm a traditionalist, so it pleased me to learn the truth about the bloodline of the man I'd be helping to put on the throne. It satisfied my sense of the fitness of things." Julian looked around, and his eyes settled on the simulacrum of what they would have been seeing through a window in the outer rim of the palace. "I wasn't being altogether honest just now. I will regret leaving Prometheus. But it will be worth it. You see, while I'm certainly not the first person to have had to stand aside, out of the way of history, very few have been given the sure knowledge that the onrushing events are such as they would approve of. Leaving the stage quietly and with—I hope—a certain dignity is all I'm able to do to advance what is now going to happen. But I do it willingly."

Roderick set his snifter carefully down and stood up. He looked the last of the Duschanes in the eye, and spoke in a voice whose respectfulness was unsullied by even a hint of irony. "With your permission, I'll take my leave now . . . Your Imperial Majesty."

The office was small compared to the vast, pompous chamber where the Emperor conducted public audiences, or even the smaller but almost equally pompous reception room reserved for private ones. And the elegant traditionalism of its architecture coexisted uneasily with cutting-edge communications and data-retrieval equipment, including the console of a tachyon receiver fit for a command battleship—it took up an entire adjoining room, plus outside components atop the palace. For this was the Emperor's working office. And he now sat at the great desk, clad in the gray tunic and trousers of a Fleet officer's planetside service uniform, adorned only with the little golden dragon that outshone all other bedizenments.

Roderick doubted that he'd ever grow used to the sight of that insignia on his father, even though most people felt those wide shoulders were made for it.

"I hadn't planned to send you off so soon, Roderick," Ivar was saying in his stately, measured voice. "But the developments in the Perseus sectors require immediate attention. And you know the situation out there better than anyone, having been in charge of securing those sectors in the first place."

"I fully understand, sir." They were both in uniform, and speaking in private. It was just as well, since Roderick hadn't adjusted to the more formal modes of address yet—any more than his father had to the Imperial "we."

The shock waves were still spreading outward from Sigma Draconis in concentric circles, as though Julian's abdication and Ivar's investiture had been pebbles hurled into a lake that had thought itself already roiled. In the sectors of the old People's Democratic Union, the news had been the occasion for local uprisings by diehard Duschane loyalists, who had attracted aggrieved elements of all stripes. No one had organized these flareups into a general firestorm, and putting them down should not be difficult. It would, however, take time.

That, clearly, was what was on the new Emperor's mind. "We'll have to consolidate our position in the areas we already hold," he went on, "before we can take any action against our enemies elsewhere."

"We anticipated that would be the case, Your Imperial Majesty," Aerenthal spoke up from off to the side. "It will be two years at least before we can even begin the pacification of the rest of the Empire. However, we were also correct in our other assumption: that none of our rivals would be in any better position to take immediate action. They, too, are still securing their respective positions and evaluating their options." He turned and considered the large holographically projected map that filled one corner of the office.

It was a sign of the times that the display was color-coded not by sectors but by areas of control. The computer, which was above suspicion of brown-nosing, had colored the power base of the fledgling Brady-Schiavona dynasty the bronze-gold of the dragon which decorated the flanks of Fleet ships. It spread over the right side of the display, as Roderick and his father were viewing it, in a bowllike concavity that included about a third of the total and extended a pseudopod to take in Sigma Draconis. Only two other colors were even remotely comparable in extent: the rose-red on the upper left, showing the Ursa Major frontier where Lauren Romaine and her followers and allies were attempting to translate their not-always-compatible ideals into a workable federal structure; and the lime-green to the lower left in the Serpens/Bootes region, where Liang was surprising them unpleasantly with his success in persuading the local Fleet commanders to acknowledge the authority of his tame regency council. Smaller splotches of color here and there were mostly ignorable. But Ivar's somber eyes focused on two such splotches, strategically nestled in the heart of the display. One—very small indeed, but a source of worry—was the maroon bubble enclosing Epsilon Eridani and its self-promoted General Garth Krona. But the Emperor's gaze zeroed in on the jarringly purple one—Can't we program the computer with taste? Roderick wondered—at the display's geometrical center.

"What's the current assessment of the probable results of Chewning's move?" asked the Emperor. Damiano Chewning, the ministerial official who had made himself master of Old Earth and its environs, had rummaged up an infant distantly related to the Duschanes and had him proclaimed Emperor within days of Julian's abdication.

"Inconclusive. He obviously hopes to cast himself as the defender of the dynasty, and you as a usurper. This will undoubtedly be a short-term propaganda plus for him, by lending a patina of legitimacy to his rule at Sol."

"Then why do you say, `Inconclusive'?"

"Because in the long run it will inevitably bring him into conflict with Liang. Regardless of whether Liang plans to keep the succession in limbo indefinitely or have his `regency council' pick another remote Duschane relation to be his puppet, his position and Chewning's are fundamentally irreconcilable."

"But," Roderick objected, "what if they reach an accommodation by which Liang declares the succession settled in favor of Chewning's `Emperor'?"

"That, Admiral," Aerenthal replied formally, "would merely postpone the clash. A puppet cannot have two puppeteers."

"Hmm . . ." The Emperor ruminated for a moment. "What will Chewning do?"

"He can't hope to stand alone against Liang—the military equation simply doesn't balance. And the hesitancy everyone has traditionally felt—everyone human, anyway—about attacking the homeworld won't protect him forever. The information I've been able to gather suggests he intends to try and forge an alliance with Krona."

Roderick cocked his head to one side. "That way, even if Liang is defeated, won't Chewning find himself in Krona's power?"

Aerenthal permitted himself a brief, appreciative smile at the young rear admiral's correct application of Machiavelli. "He believes he can establish a moral ascendancy over Krona by appealing to the latter's residual loyalty to the Duschane dynasty." The agent's smile returned, subtly different. "The wish is probably father to the thought, as it often is with people as deeply impressed by their own cleverness as is Chewning. And everything I know about Krona suggests that he is easy to underestimate—he seems far less shrewd than he is."

"An impression he doubtless cultivates," Ivar muttered. He shook his head impatiently. "This is all very interesting, and worth keeping in mind as we monitor developments. But at the moment, our first priority must be to stabilize our newly acquired sectors. Roderick, I . . ." Awkwardness overtook him. "I . . . wish we could have had more time together. I wish I didn't have to send you back so soon. But—"

"I understand, sir." As always, Roderick found his father's stiffness contagious. "Thank you for going along with all my requests regarding personnel." Ivar certainly couldn't have been more accommodating. Among other things, Roderick now had Aline Tatsumo back as flag captain, with more rank and a larger flagship. "I . . . I won't fail you, sir. Goodbye." Cursing himself for his inadequacy, he came to attention. Father's and son's eyes met in a shared moment of frustration, gazing over a barrier that neither knew how to tear down. Then Roderick was gone, walking down endless corridors toward the transposer room.

His mood improved as he reflected that the new Emperor had been making a lot of good personnel decisions. Maura, for example, was now a commodore, soon to depart toward Cassiopeia with her own task group. And their father was still resisting Teodor's entreaties for a similar independent command. No, their older brother would be staying here on Prometheus. . . .

Alone with their father.

Roderick found he'd come to a halt at the thought. He chided himself for what he'd been thinking and resumed his stride.