The Emperor Read online

  THE EMPEROR

  THE TELNARIAN HISTORIES

  VOLUME V

  John Norman

  Initial Notes, in the Way of a Preface

  The orthodoxy is clear.

  It is comforting to know the orthodoxy. That makes it easier to dissemble, to pretend, and lie.

  I am regarded as harmless. At least I suppose so. I hope so. That is my protection. An eccentric scholar, puttering in libraries, carefully turning the brittle, yellow pages of old manuscripts, copies of copies of copies, and yet already ancient in their own right, is not to be feared.

  And yet spies are about.

  They are not so hard to recognize.

  What is it they fear, the learned ones, the holy ones, that spies must be about?

  It is now said that the empire never existed.

  That is the orthodoxy, the new orthodoxy.

  One must learn it. One must pretend to believe it. Or, at least, it would be wise to do so. Few wish to be found missing.

  One wonders where they are, or if they are.

  There are always alternative explanations, of course, one supposes, for anything, and certainly for ruins, medals, and coins, for artifacts and carved stones, for unusual words in a language, seemingly of alien origin, for unusual place names, for surprising names of days and months, and holidays. And what of certain practices, sayings, and melodies?

  It is hard to change all those things.

  There are always explanations.

  But the peasants remain fond of old melodies.

  I, too, like them. They are seemingly very old.

  I am puzzled about time and space.

  Time, I am told, has been tamed by clocks and space by the three-knot cord and the marked wheel.

  But I am still puzzled how time could begin or space end. How long was it before time began? Why did it begin then and not at another time? If it stops, how long will it be stopped? Would it start again? Is there something before the start of space, or something beyond its end, and if so, what? Is space in a space, and that space in another space, and so on? Is the straight line the clue to space and time? I do not think so. Perhaps time and space are circles and do not need beginnings or ends. But from whence the circle, then, and from whence its source, and from whence the source of that source, and so on? These questions do not seem satisfactorily answered by the clock and the three-knot cord, even the marked wheel.

  Far off, better than twenty sleeps by cart, is the city, our great and populous center of culture and learning. The city, as is well-known, is the cup in which is found the wine of civilization. In it are many wise men. That is not surprising, of course, given the population of the city, which numbers more than two thousand inhabitants. Once, in the benighted and wicked times, before the sanctified petrification of the orthodoxy, following several votes in some four councils, I am told it was not unknown for scholars to entertain the hypothesis that the Telnarian Empire once existed, though, of course, long ago and far-away. I, personally, do not think it was far away, not if it encompassed worlds, and countless systems. Too, I have seen the traces of walls and roads. Indeed, such things are within walking distance of the village. Once its ships, I suspect, crossed our skies. I wonder what it would be, to see such a ship, now, one whose ports of call would be the satellites of stars. Several times, in the past year, I have given lodging to travelers. Those who ask me, in passing, of Telnaria, and the empire, so casually, over a cup of wine, I reprove with politeness, but firmness, reiterating the orthodoxy, as I assume they are spies. Scholars are, after all, suspect, as are any inquiring minds. When all is known, there is no need for inquiry. It could but lead one astray.

  What is most fascinating to me, of course, is difficult to put into words, perhaps because words, in their origins and utilities, for the most part, deal with familiar things in familiar ways. They have their localities and neighborhoods. Things precede words, and when one comes upon a certain thing, a new thing, really new, or a new thought, really new, it may not yet have its word. No word has yet noticed it.

  I shall begin, tentatively, timidly, hoping for much, expecting little.

  The world is ours, designed for our comfort and happiness. The kindly orthodoxy assures us of this. The newly discovered, inverted bowl of the sky, now graced with its lamp of the day and its lamps of the night, supplied for our convenience, protects and shelters us. The sea gives us fish and the land its fruits. Further, we are at the center of the universe, visible proof of our importance. Can one not see the universe, all about one? How tiny, how small, how fragile, how alone, how vulnerable we would feel, if these things were not so! What if our sturdy platform were to spin, and what if our house were hurled into the sky, harnessed to a ball of fire? What if our world were a little world and our sun a little sun, a world and a sun amongst countless worlds and suns, a world and sun scarcely numbered amongst the countless grains on the beaches of space? Are you diminished? Are you afraid?

  But what is loneliness, and horror and fear, to one, to another is a thing welcome, a prospect, an excitement, an invitation, a provocation, the opening of a door, a challenge, a liberation. One leaves the room, and puts one’s foot upon the porch of tomorrow. In a world perhaps vast would there not be much to do, many places to go, many ways to be? Might not that first step be the first step of a species into forever?

  We have our world, small and orderly. It is a pleasant, comfortable world, particularly if one does as one is told, and thinks what one is told to think. We are told it is the one world, the only world. But if there is one world, why might there not be others? Indeed, would it not be more likely, all things considered, that there would be no world at all? But there is clearly at least one world. It would be strange, would it not, were there only one thing of a kind, one flower, one stone, one beast. But worlds, of course, are not flowers, stones, or beasts. A world is in a place, say, this place. But where is this place? Is it in another place? Perhaps there are places we do not understand as places. Could our places be the only places? What if there are many places, other places, unaware of one another, perhaps sometimes closer to one another than they understand, places which might be their own threads in some large tapestry, perhaps one tapestry amongst others. Are the strands interwoven? Do they sometimes cross and touch one another? And what of the twistings of time, so strange, time, so patient, so unconcerned with beginnings and ends?

  What is “now,” and what is “then”?

  Could it be that “then” is sometimes “now”?

  Could we ourselves be the ancients, and know nothing of it?

  Suppose the wheel of time turns.

  Would that not make today yesterday, and yesterday tomorrow?

  I would dismiss such fancies, were it not for something that happened long ago. I was young. I still wore the youth’s brimless cap and the youth’s striped jacket. It was a dark, cold day. It was windy, and raining. I was returning home. I paused amongst the ruins. In such a time, and on such day, none would be likely to see me. I did not wish to be again punished. The men avoided the ruins, except for occasionally carrying off stone. I wandered about, curious. I would not be noticed, not today. I turned, at last, wet and shivering, but enough contented, to leave, but suddenly cried out in fear, and stood half blinded by a burst of sunlight. I raised my arm wildly, as though to fend a blow. I tried to see in the brightness. I stepped back, frightened, and my sleeve, ever so briefly, brushed a tall, stately, golden column. Then again it was dark and rainy, and I stood alone, in the soaked moss and grass, in the wind and cold, amongst crumbled stone and fallen, broken columns.

  I have never forgotten that moment.

  I had seen Telnaria
.

  The rumors, fleet through the guarded passes, where dimensions touch dimensions, coursed even the most obscure geodesics, the most remote paths between stars, to the most distant outposts of the limitanei. Thousands of species on thousands of worlds attended to disputed whispers, whispers of an empire, one crumbling, one stable and eternal, one dying, one living, one fallen, one risen, one older than suns, one newer than spring.

  The roads between worlds can be long, certainly where the passes are not used, or are closed. It is well known that the light one sees, streaming from a star, may have taken millennia to reach the observing eye, the ready eye which notes it, seeing it this night, anew, afresh. Indeed, the star may have perished long before the announcement of its birth is received. So, too, in parts of the empire, the latest news may be fresh, and scanned with anxious intent, but the events of which it speaks may be ancient.

  But let us return to our account, an account of the dark and troubled times.

  We see an empire beleaguered and diminished. A million years, perhaps millions, have expended or reduced resources once thought limitless. Reality consists of polarities and contrasts. Ships exist which can voyage amongst stars. Sometimes they are noted, as roaring streaks of light, by the vacant, lifted eyes of simple men, tilling fields with pointed sticks. Power is nursed and hoarded. It is still possible to explode the core of a planet, but, on many worlds, imperial troops, occasionally contacted, if at all, are armed with little more than bows and blades. The empire is vast. Some worlds fade from imperial view, forgotten, worlds whose records are missing, mislaid, removed or destroyed. Some worlds repudiate the empire, boldly declaring their independence, and the empire may not notice, or feel it worthwhile to expend resources in their recovery. There are worlds which do not know they are claimed. Other worlds, exposed and vulnerable, are well taxed, in coin or munera, forced labor, imposed by agents, licensed tax farmers. Populations may be relocated, transported to sites convenient to vast projects, the irrigation of deserts, the working of quarries and mines, the manning of heavy manufactories, thought inappropriate to, if not inimical to, more salubrious worlds. Inhospitable worlds are rendered congenial by canals and seed. Men plant flowers they will never see bloom, carry stone to build cities they will never enjoy. Riches reign, adjacent to destitution. Palaces soar, ringed by hovels; temples loom, scorning juxtaposed squalor. Urbanized proletariats are restless, idle, and dangerous. They must be amused and fed. The tiniest of incidents may be seized upon, in eagerness, affording an excuse for destruction, looting, and arson. How stimulating is carnage, under the cloak of anonymity! Consider, too, the contrast between preferred worlds, to which resources are drained, and less-prized worlds, remote and neglected, exploited, or once-exploited, many now denuded of arable soil, minerals, and game. Where authority is lax, bandits thrive. Strong men defend themselves, and mete out justice, compatible with their interests. Enclaves flourish. Private armies abound. Crowns are forged. Rogues become monarchs. Technology is coveted. A pistol can create a king. A cartridge can purchase a woman.

  And beyond perimeters, baleful eyes, gleaming and envious, regard an empire and its wealth, both conceived as spoils. There, beyond the perimeters, lurking, ever more bold, prowl the hungry wolves of space, hundreds of barbarian nations, some armed with ships and weaponry equal to the empire’s own, supplied by recalcitrant, ambitious worlds. Rude folk, violent and angry, like storms, gathering strength, see in palaces little more than torches with which to illuminate the night, and little more in temples than hangars for their machines and stables for their horses.

  What follows may be easier to understand, much easier, I think, if one keeps clearly in mind the weight of an institutional inertia, accumulated over thousands of years, vested in an enormous civil service, distributed throughout thousands of imperial worlds, and the doings, sometimes dark and alarming, which may occur in a small locality, for example, in the aisles of a senate or the chambers of a court. Over centuries and generations, despite the comings and goings of emperors, the empire has endured, almost as if by habit. Clerks have kept their records, officials have discharged their duties, soldiers have manned their posts. Indeed, even as the hand of the empire might be extended or withdrawn, be present or absent, whether in the shadow of silver standards or beneath the rudely inscribed, snapping pennon of a bandit king, merchants have bought and sold, herdsmen have tended their flocks, fishermen have cast their nets, peasants have sown their fields and reaped their crops. For thousands of years, in the lives of millions, in thousands of rational species, it made little difference who graced the high throne in Telnar, seat of the imperial palace. Did Telnar even exist? Perhaps you knew one whose grandfather had once been there. And what was an Emperor, but a far-off name? In the lives of the great majority of the far-flung populations of the empire, far removed from the corridors of power, from those of ambition and intrigue, little depended on the success or failure of an assassin’s knife or a draught of poisoned wine; little depended on the success or failure of one plot or coup, or another. Even dynastic squabbles, as in the time of the four emperors, fierce, hard-fought, and ruthless as they might have been, seldom afflicted more than a dozen worlds. Now, however, in the times of which I shall speak, all this was to change.

  Chapter One

  “By Orak, father of the gods, and Umba, his consort, it is madness,” cried lean Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, turning on his heel, violently, his sable cloak swirling, mirrored in the broad, polished tiles before the dais, on which was now mounted but a single throne, the high throne. Another throne, the throne of the empress mother, once behind and to the right of the high throne, from which she might whisper into the ear of the boy emperor, had been removed. Gone, too, from the wide, lower step to the left, were the princess thrones, hitherto reserved for golden-haired, arrogant Viviana and her younger sister, quiet, dark-haired Alacida. The high throne, now the single throne, massive and large-armed, was not now, in virtue of an unforeseen accident of birth, occupied by a half-slumped, fragile, wretched shape, coiled inward upon itself, sometimes trembling, a shape dull-eyed and slow-speaking, timid Aesilesius, now a youth of some seventeen or eighteen years, but seemingly, in mind, no more than five or six, coached in responses, terrified of insects, saliva at his jaw, sometimes giggling, clutching some toy.

  “The empire is madness,” said Julian, “the vi-cat is madness, all is madness, life is madness.” The speaker was, if casually regarded, a modestly ranked officer, a lieutenant, in the imperial navy; yet, as a scion of the Aureliani, a family high amongst the imperial honestori, he was entitled, in his dress uniform, to the three purple cords. He was a patriot of the empire, according to his lights. Too, he was a cousin of Aesilesius. He was feared by some, including Iaachus, the Arbiter of Protocol, as a pretender to the throne. Most importantly, in our present context, he was a participant in the recent coup.

  “One does what one can,” said Tuvo Ausonius, former civil servant on Miton, by all lights an unlikely party to have found itself implicated in recent, surprising events.

  “What of the empress mother?” inquired Julian.

  “She rages, confined to her quarters,” said Tuvo Ausonius.

  The empress mother, as she had planned, had returned promptly after the nuptials, proceeding through the cheering streets in her own carriage, that she might welcome in person the arrival of the wedding party at the palace.

  She had been immediately taken into custody.

  “Interesting,” said Julian, “how the most powerful woman in Telnaria becomes helpless, behind a locked door.”

  “The power of women,” said Iaachus, “is only the power of men who will do their bidding.”

  “Such a bidding,” said Julian, “may be declined.”

  “And so worlds might change,” said Iaachus.

  “And thousands of new slave markets might be formed,” said Julian.

  “In collars,” said Iaachus, “wo
men are in no doubt as to their sex, their meaning, and purpose.”

  “I shudder,” said Tuvo Ausonius. “I was a same.”

  Certain worlds of the empire, such as Terennia and Miton, were “same worlds,” worlds in which it is pretended, in the light of certain prescribed ends, largely political, that the sexes are identical. As in many other cultural experiments, or inventions, of one sort or another, one must put truth aside and do one’s best to ignore human nature. An example of the lengths to which one might go on the “same worlds,” one might mention the “curtain and frame,” a type of garmenture designed to conceal the delights of the female body, which delights, of course, however deplorably, regrettably, or embarrassingly, would continue, one supposes, even beneath the obscuring armor of the curtain-and-frame ensemble, to exist.

  “Your Sesella,” said Julian, “was not a same.”

  “No,” said Tuvo, “she was a free woman, a stewardess, in the employ of Wings Between Worlds.”

  “She looked well at your feet, stripped, in her collar,” said Julian.

  “It seems she wishes to be there,” said Tuvo.

  “But it does not now matter, one way or the other,” said Julian. “The collar is on her, the rose is burned into her thigh. She will stay there. She is helpless. She is where she belongs.”

  “If you wish, dear Tuvo,” said Iaachus, “you might restore her to the dignity and honor of freedom.”

  “She does not wish to be so restored,” said Tuvo.

  “But if she did?” inquired Iaachus.

  “I would keep her where she is, or sell her,” said Tuvo.

  “The whip might be helpful,” said Julian.

  “Doubtless,” said Tuvo.

  “Could you use the whip on her?” asked Julian.

  “Of course,” said Tuvo. “She is a slave.”

  “Excellent,” said Iaachus.

  “It seems,” said Julian, “our dear Ausonius is no longer a same.”