Statesman (33 page)

Her strength buoyed me, and we managed the steep path and closed on the summit. It was apparent that soon we would beard the Panchen in his den. I was sure that by this time he knew that he would have to face me, even if he hated me; there would be no further way to avoid it. He would not be able to deny the Tyrant his interview.

The path opened onto a sloping plain leading up to the retreat. We were almost there.

There was a roar. Startled, we looked—and saw a huge white creature charging down the slope toward us. It most resembled an ape, but it was about three meters tall, with massive furry arms and legs, and a horrendous snout.

“Bigfoot!” Spirit exclaimed.

“Impossible,” I said. “That creature never existed, even back on Earth.”

But the thing bore down upon us. I tried to scramble out of its path, but my foot slipped and I fell. Spirit caught my arm and hauled, but too late; the monster bent to sweep at us with its giant paws, and sent us tumbling down the slope of the mountain.

Spirit managed to catch at an outcropping of ice, and braked her slide, and hung on to me and brought me to a halt also. But the white monster was not finished; it pounced on me and swiped at my suit, its sharp claws slicing the cloth apart and gashing my flesh beneath. In a moment it stripped me of the better part of my protection, evidently preparing to consume me.

Spirit drew her laser and fired at the monster's furry ear. The burn evidently stung but did not really damage; the monster whirled around, caught her suit with the claws, and shredded it, too. It brought its toothed snout to bear. She lasered it in the mouth, but still it did not stop, though steam boiled out. It took another bite of her clothing, evidently mistaking it for flesh.

I scrambled across and caught at its leg. I hauled. The monster turned on me again. It seemed that it oriented on whatever attracted its attention at the moment.

Spirit leaped at it, her hands scraping at its back. I knew that this was futile; the thing would only throw her off. But abruptly there was a snap, and the monster reacted as if stabbed through the heart. It convulsed, then straightened, falling to the snow.

But we were near the brink of the falloff of the mountain. The monster slid over, carrying Spirit along with it. I grabbed for her, but was only hauled over myself.

The slope sharpened. I could not find leverage to halt my slide, and Spirit was no better off. Neither, it seemed, was the monster, if it still lived; the three of us were sliding down into the deep crevasse.

For a moment I thought that this was the end of my life. Then I caught a better glimpse of what lay ahead, and I was sure of it. Helpless, I fell into my doom.

But as it turned out, the end was not quite yet. The slope eased at the base, and we tumbled to a bruising halt at the bottom of the chasm.

I became aware of the cold. I had lost much of my outfit, and the temperature here was well below freezing. Spirit was no better off—and in addition, I saw with horror, the fall had broken one of her legs.

But her concern was only for me. “Hope, your loop!” she cried.

I looked—and saw that my loop had been ripped out of my arm. My blood was flowing out, staining the snow. I clapped my other hand on it, but knew that such a crude measure could not properly stanch the flow. I had to have prompt medical attention—and there was no certainty I would get that, here.

Spirit pulled herself over to me, her leg dragging. “I'll help, Hope!” she said.

But she could not help. Already the cold was numbing my limbs, and the loss of blood was weakening my consciousness. “Just hold me, my sister,” I told her.

She put her arms around me, and I rested my head against her bare breast while our lives seeped into the snow. Now it didn't seem cold.

“That monster,” she said, her voice sounding deeper because my ear was against her chest. “It was a robot. I realized when the laser didn't hurt it. I found the switch in its back and turned it off, but—”

“You did well,” I said.

“We'll be rescued,” she said.

“It doesn't matter,” I said.

“Of course it matters!”

“I did not have very much left to do anyway,” I explained. “Not very much longer to live. Perhaps I intended it to be this way.”

“Intended?” she asked, perplexed.

“It must have seemed pretty stupid, marching into enemy territory unprotected. I could so readily have come prepared.”

“I should have thought of what we needed.”

"No. It was my decision. I knew that it would take too long to reverse the veto, going through channels.

I had to force their hand." As I spoke I believed it: that at a nether layer, my competence was manifesting, that I had not acted in idiotic, old-man, has-been fashion, that it was really genius. Yet who can say, now, that it was not?

“But we never made it to the Panchen!”

“He knew we were coming. That was his error.”

“Hope, I don't understand!”

“Yes, you do, Spirit. You have always understood. We have won.”

“We have won,” she echoed faintly, humoring me.

I nuzzled her breast, the only part of her that remained warm. I was bleeding, she freezing; soon we would both sink into shock, and thence into oblivion. “You were always my true love, Spirit,” I said.

“Now I understand what Rue said: I thought I loved two, but only truly loved one.”

“Only one,” she agreed.

“Only you, my sister. I remember when you were twelve, when you lay with me, to ease my pain. You would do anything for me, and I so undeserving.”

“No...”

“And when you had the baby—”

“What?” She sounded genuinely confused.

“And gave it to me, because I was sterile from space—”

“My baby?” she asked, amazed.

I laughed, weakly. “How could you forget, Spirit? But I made her mine.”

“Yes, of course,” she agreed.

“We must sing our songs,” I said.

“Songs?”

I sang the song that had been given me by the members of my migrant labor group, the song that had identified me ever since. I sang not well but with feeling: It takes a worried man to sing a worried song

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song

I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long.

Then Spirit, remembering, sang her song, that had been bestowed on her by the members of our Navy unit:

I know where I'm going, and I know who's going with me.

I know who I love, but the dear knows who I'll marry.

Those Navy folk had had a rare perception! They had known that my sister could never marry the one she truly loved. So they had nicknamed her “The Dear,” and she had ever since allowed others to assume that it was “The Deer” in token of her grace and speed in achieving her objectives. Spirit, the mainstay of my life, throughout her life. The Tyrant never knew a better woman than the Iron Maiden.

I pressed into her breast. “Oh, my sister, I am dying ”

“No, Hope!”

“And so are you.” For the frost was forming on us, or so it seemed, as our skin chilled toward death.

We were rasping rather than speaking clearly, but we understood the words.

She capitulated. “So am I. But we can still be rescued.”

“Perhaps. But to what point? Existence is suffering.”

“And the origin of suffering is desire,” she agreed weakly, repeating the Buddhist truth.

“But we can end that suffering by following the Eightfold Path,” I continued. “Right belief, right resolve—”

“Right speech, right conduct,” she agreed.

“Right living, right effort—”

“Right-mindedness,” she said.

“And right ecstasy,” I concluded. “Oh, Spirit, it is not too late for that!”

“Oh, please, Hope, it must not end here!” she exclaimed.

“But we are about to escape to nirvana, to the blissful annihilation, to nonexistence and the end of suffering.”

“No, we must be rescued!” she insisted. “The common people are with you, Tyrant! They will not let the evil authorities do this! We will survive!”

I saw a figure from the corner of my eye. I twisted my head to look. My vision was blurring as the cold closed on my eyeballs, but I hardly needed much for this. “I think not. Helse has come for me.”

“Helse,” she repeated.

Helse was in her patchwork wedding dress, exactly as she had been when she died. She was sixteen and beautiful. She held out her arms to me.

“Now at last I join you!” I cried, trying to rise. But I was too weak and cold, and could not.

Then Helse merged with Spirit, and it was Helse's breast I lay against. “Now at last,” she agreed.

I kissed her, what I could reach of her, and sighed. I had waited for this moment for over fifty years: to join my love in heaven. Or nirvana. Wherever it was that she awaited me.

Now time seemed to slow, or perhaps my thought accelerated. My understanding expanded to embrace the entire city, planet, System, and galaxy. I knew everything I cared to know, everything there was to know; in fact I was the essence of information. I was able not only to perceive my body and that of the woman with me, but to grasp the complete significance of our being. I grasped the meaning of all my life and all life itself. This brought to me a mighty peace of mind; the brilliance of my unity with the cosmos suffused me. I perceived the universe in its totality, and the local events simultaneously. It was as though I were tuning in on everything that was happening everywhere, and that had happened, and that would happen; all time was one in me. I was the Tyrant, and now at last I had become one with the people I served. Death had no meaning for me; I had transcended it. Thus it became easy for me to summarize the events surrounding my death.

Meanwhile, my daughter Hopie had projected to Saturn at the first sign of the trouble with Laya. She had understood the threat instinctively. She brought picked men and picked equipment. She met Spirit, and the two joined forces with a contingent of the Middle Kingdom.

The common folk of Laya were rising, too, knowing that there was no welcome for the Tyrant in the hostile capital city. The common folk within the city had spread the news of my presence, and of my devotion at the shrine of Buddha, but the police held them back. They lacked the power to help.

It was hours before a party came to us, and it was no rescue operation. Our bodies were still locked together, my face against her breast. They dumped us unceremoniously in a sled and brought it to a holo unit. “The Tyrant and his evil sister are dead!” they exclaimed for the camera, and broadcast the picture to the System. “They fell down the mountain, and we could not reach them in time.”

“Daddy!” my daughter cried in anguish.

But my sister was of sterner stuff. “Here is the first lie,” she said on the planetary holo. “I am not dead. It is the Tyrant's secretary who died with him, garbed as me.”

Astonished, the men of the city of Hasa went to Forta. Her mask came away. Their chagrin was manifest. They had thought to abolish the power of the Tyrant at one stroke, but they had eliminated only the figurehead. I think they knew at that moment that they were lost. Had Spirit died, the effort to complete the Dream could have fallen apart, but now it would be pursued.

“And the second lie,” Spirit continued resolutely. “It was no accident. The Panchen sent his robot snow monster to throw them down. See, there is the wreckage of the machine in the background.” And, indeed, the guilty robot was there.

“And the third lie,” Spirit said. “The rescue party did not try to come promptly. The Panchen knew what had happened the moment his robot crashed. They waited four hours, until they were quite sure the Tyrant was dead, before sending out the party. They could have reached any point in that park in minutes, had they wanted to. Instead they prevented the common folk of the city from coming.”

Now her face set into hard lines. “Hasa murdered my brother,” she said. “What does Laya say to that?”

Laya's answer was grim.

Hopie came to claim my body. But her ship was barred by police bubbles of Laya. “First there is business we must do,” they informed her.

And while they barred her entry, the people of Laya rose up as one, their car-bubbles massing against the city of Hasa. They covered it with the cannon of a cruiser, forcing entry even as the common folk of the city charged the locks and opened them. Then, armed, the people stormed in, making prisoners of the authorities and all who had supported them. There was little love for the Panchen beyond the city, and now he had given the people the pretext to rebel.

“Now watch what we do,” the rebel leader announced on the holo.

Then an automatic lock was set up, and the first prisoner was fired out into the atmosphere of Saturn.

He had no suit. He had been alive. Now his body was pulped inward by the tremendous pressure of the atmosphere, as it fell toward even greater pressure.

It was followed immediately by the second prisoner, and then a stream of them, at one-second intervals.

Appalled, Hopie watched the holo. “But this is barbaric!” she protested. A line of bodies was forming, streaming steadily down from Hasa: the Panchen's supporters.

“Then come and stop it,” the leader said grimly. “We will admit you to the city after the same delay that occurred for the rescue of the Tyrant.”

And, indeed, it was four hours before she got into the city. “Stop it! Stop it!” she cried.

The leader turned to the man about to be fired out. “Your life is spared by the intercession of the daughter of the Tyrant,” he said. “To whom is your loyalty now?”

But he got no answer, for the man had fainted.

So the carnage was stopped—but almost fifteen thousand had been executed in this fashion. The people of Laya had made known their sentiment and saved face for their province. Face does not come cheap, in the Middle Kingdom.

Hopie hurried to locate Smilo, whom she had never known personally but wanted to rescue. But he was dead. He had passed away naturally at about the time I did unnaturally, as though he retained his rapport to the end. Hopie stroked the beautiful fur and wept, and it was for more than the tiger she cried.