12

“You understand my requirements?” Horatius asked. The melody was not really a question.

“Yes, Hindmost,” Achilles sang. The title stuck in his throats.

“Very well,” the response finally came. The light-speed delay between Hearth and Nature Preserve One accounted for a few seconds of the gap. Most was just another of the Hindmost’s habitual, aggravating pauses. “I shall await your report on the matter.”

Protocol demanded that the Hindmost terminate the link. Jaws clenched, Achilles waited. And waited.

“Thank you,” Horatius offered at last. The status light blinked off and his image froze.

“I shall await your report on the matter,” Achilles mimicked. He had far more important matters with which to concern himself than minutiae of agricultural production. The Hindmost should, too.

Hindmost! Achilles grimaced at the static image still projected nearby. Tawny of hide (with unfortunate white markings more stripelike than proper patches), broad through the withers, and strikingly tall, Horatius had the potential to look worthy of the office. But that straggly, too lustrous mane? It needed to be toned down and tamed. The abundance of dark green jade among the curls and braids was acceptable as Conservative Party colors, but could not Horatius have found a green sash that better matched the gemstones?

“Image off.” Achilles rose from his nest of soft cushions, brushed his hide, straightened his own sash of office, and adjusted several circlets of orange garnets in his coiffure. He knew how to present himself.

Guards waited outside his private chambers; when Achilles threw open the doors they came stiffly to attention. Aides, assistants, adjutants, and their various flunkies stopped whatever they were doing to tend to his needs.

His chief deputy cantered over to him: loyal, trustworthy, none-to-bright Vesta. “Excellency, the farm administrator is here for his appointment.”

Subtle harmonics reinterpreted the verb’s explicit tense. The administrator had, it would seem, been kept waiting for a considerable time.

Too bad. He still waited to reclaim the position that was rightfully his. That a pretentious simpleton like Horatius should be Hindmost was almost too much to bear. Someday, Achilles promised himself, he would make Ol’t’ro realize that a change was necessary. A restoration.

Until that happy day, he had Nature Preserve One to rule.

“Very well,” Achilles announced. “You may notify the visitor that I am coming.”

He set out for the door, letting Vesta, a secretary, and his guards scamper to form ranks around him. Together, hooves clattering on the marble tiles, Vesta crooning into his communicator, they filed from the room. The remaining assistants, factotums, and minions went back to work.

A stepping disc would have been quicker, but not as satisfying as the stroll across the palace. Achilles had had it built grander than the Hindmost’s own residence on Hearth.

Grander or not—oh, how he wished he were back in the Hindmost’s residence.

Down spacious halls his retinue marched, across the domed grand rotunda, then outside along a majestic colonnaded promenade. Hints of a breeze penetrated the weather force field. The residence sat high atop a mountain crag, and the view into the valley was stunning. Take that, Horatius. At the end of the promenade, they came to the foyer to Achilles’ audience chamber.

Looking anxious, his visitor extended a head in greeting. “Excellency.”

“Welcome.” Achilles ignored the too-familiar gesture. “Vesta, if you will.”

With a wave of his pocket computer, Vesta unlocked the door, then closed it behind Achilles and his petitioner.

Achilles settled astraddle a tall, well-padded bench. His visitor, looking ill at ease, took one of the much shorter guest benches. In proper Experimentalist fashion, this one had assumed a name from human mythology. Some apt rustic deity. Achilles summoned the name from memory. “What brings you today, Eunomia?”

“Excellency, thank you for seeing me. A … technical issue brings me.”

“You are dissatisfied about something?” Dissatisfaction was but a short step from criticism. Would this one take that dangerous path?

“Concerned, Excellency. I would ask to review the allocation of fertilizer.”

“What about the allocation?” Achilles sang.

Eunomia shrank back. “So far this growing season, my farm has received less fertilizer than we had requisitioned.”

“Anything else?”

“There are matters of expedient access to the grain ships…”

Achilles lifted both heads high, and gave this impertinent … supplicant a hard stare. “You do not feel your little enterprise is getting fair treatment?”

“Doubtless fair, Excellency, but…” Eunomia trailed off, unsure how else to couch his complaint.

“Yet you are ‘concerned’ with the outcome. Perhaps you think me and my staff ill-informed?” Achilles prompted. “Or incapable of reaching proper conclusions from what is reported to us?”

“No. No. Of course not, Excellency.”

“Then…?”

“If I may begin again,” Eunomia bleated.

Achilles waited.

“There is some risk, Excellency, that our upcoming harvest will fall short of its quota.” Pause. “If it were possible to get…” Eunomia sang on, more anxious and uncertain by the moment.

“Perhaps you would be happier relieved of the challenge? To trade your burdens for lesser responsibilities?” To toil from sunsup to sunsdown on your farm, while some erstwhile underling enjoys the privileges you forfeited.

Eunomia flinched. “I will find a way, Excellency.”

It was a process Achilles had polished to a high gloss. Citizens were intensely social, so get them alone. Make them doubt themselves. Hint at the privileges they might lose.

And then ease up, just a bit. Offer a reason for hope. Keep them dependent. Make them grateful. Replace the social contract with personal bonds.

Repeat as needed.

“You did well to bring these concerns to my attention,” Achilles sang soothingly. “Might some additional workers alleviate the difficulties?”

Up/down, down/up, up/down: Eunomia’s heads bobbed agreement. “Yes, Excellency.” He would depart with his job, and his perks, and something, at least, to show for his trouble. “Yes, additional workers would be most helpful.”

Very well, Achilles thought. Beyond sheltering Hearth’s ancient biomes and growing luxury foods, Nature Preserve One served as a dumping ground for the herd’s antisocial. A few “rehabilitees” transferred from one of the reeducation camps would secure Eunomia’s gratitude. Hearth’s trillion residents would always have misfits, outcasts, and loners to take their place.

(As I was once banished to this world. That Ol’t’ro had assigned him to rule this world gnawed at Achilles, no matter how useful he found the captive workforce. The reminder was not subtle.)

“Thank you, Excellency,” Eunomia burbled in relief, rising to leave. “I will not disappoint you.”

Achilles rose from his bench and came around the table. Now he extended a neck. As they brushed heads, he felt Eunomia trembling in relief.

Eunomia all but crept from the audience chamber, heads lowered in subservience and respect.

Across the years, and careers, and even worlds, Achilles had conditioned many to follow him. It had worked again today. It worked almost without fail, especially with the impressionable young.

Angry at himself even as he did it, Achilles tugged free one braid of the edifice that was his mane coiffure. Almost without fail, because there had once been a failure. A disaster. A prospect turned acolyte turned traitor. The nemesis who time and again had defied and stymied Achilles’ grand plans.

Curse that Nessus. And curse his paramour …

Earth Date 2828

“You cannot mean it!” Achilles sang.

“Yes, I can,” Chiron responded, voices ringing with the firm harmonics of command. He might never master every nuance of Citizen psychology, but he had become proficient in the subtleties of their speech and body language. The comm delay between Hearth and Nature Preserve Five seemed to underscore his imperturbability.

“You are in the Fleet because I brought you here.” Achilles kept his voices level, desperate not to let his fear show.

“I am here because neither you nor your predecessor had any choice.” Chiron paused. “As you have none now.”

Because the price of disobedience is the shattering of the worlds.

“I have served you well,” Achilles sang.

“As shall the former Hindmost when he reassumes the office.”

Every guard on Penance Island was loyal. For a moment Achilles considered sending the order for his rival to have an unfortunate accident. But only for a moment. No matter their loyalty, Achilles could not be certain his minions had the mental—call it strength—to kill. “So be it. I will declare him rehabilitated.”

“Yes, you will. Then you will resign your office and endorse him.”

The chords slipped out. “But why?”

Once more: delay, and imperturbability, and the firm harmonics of command. “That I must ever seek out and deflect your egregious deceits grows wearisome.”

“You trust him more?”

“I trust no Citizen.” Pause. “After being so long off Hearth and out of power, he will need time before he can hatch new mischief.”

“Who better than I to make sure he does not?” Achilles sang. Without retaining some role in the government, he might end up filling the vacancy soon to open on Penance Island.

The longest pause yet. As the silence dragged on, Achilles worried that he had dared too much. His necks ached to tug at his mane. His legs trembled with the urge to flee. But shorn of power, nowhere within the Fleet would be safe.…

“You shall go to Nature Preserve One,” Chiron declared—and then he looked himself in the eyes. “To govern there. As such, you shall remain among the Hindmost’s ministers.”

“It shall be as you say, Chiron.” Until I find a way to undo this travesty.

Earth Date 2893

Achilles shook off the gloom that had taken him. Steadfast of eye and firm of step, he exited the audience chamber. The entourage formed about him and they returned across the residence. Leaving his guard detail standing at their posts, he reentered his private chambers.

Though he had yet to regain his full power, his enemies had lost theirs. After the disaster that was the Ringworld expedition, the populace had risen—in the polite, orderly, and slow-motion process of a consensualization—to reject the Experimentalist Party altogether.

And after, he had taken consolation in watching Horatius, the latest interloper, chief of the Conservative Party, discover Ol’t’ro ruling from behind the Hindmost.