Twelve

I’m telling the story, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it all turned out okay, right?

But don’t expect me to tell you exactly how it happened.

All I can say is that Slovoban and I ran full speed into the aurora. We both did what had to be done, and there was a bright flash of light, and another, and another, and then—a great darkness.

The next thing I remember are the faces of Sandokan Mompracem and Einstein leaning over me. “Good, he seems to be recovering; shouldn’t be any lasting brain damage.” The image I had of them was pretty blurry, and I realized that I was looking at them through a single eye.

It turned out, not only was my other eye missing along with nearly half my head, but also one leg from the hip down, and the foot and part of the calf of the other. All destroyed by a series of blasts from my own maser (my colleagues couldn’t understand that part), still gripped tight by my left hand, which had been welded nearly shut.

I had suffered inexplicably few wounds to my torso, though. My cerebral computer was returning to full capacity. The peculiar blackout I’d suffered—the first time any such thing had happened to a pozzie—had been caused by some sort of temporary sensory overload from my constant adjustments to the shifting realities generated by the two Gaussicals. Or so Einstein theorized—and who was I, barely an eyewitness, to contradict an astrophysics expert?

While my buddies were picking me up with care so that I didn’t fall apart completely, I looked down and saw, to my great satisfaction, that Makrow 34 would never again be a problem for Vasily, for me, for the Galactic Trade Confederation, or for anyone else.

A good twelve inches of dai-katana jutted from his left eye socket like an impossible steel pupil. His right eye was opened ridiculously wide, forever frozen along with the rest of his face in a curious, almost human expression of surprise. As if he couldn’t understand how such a thing had happened.

Good for the Old Man. At last he’d had his revenge.

A couple of Grodo volunteers from Public Health and Hygiene (real volunteers this time, not wolves in sheep’s clothing), also looking like they didn’t understand what had happened, were covering the Cetian’s body with a white blanket, preparing to cart it off on an antigrav stretcher.

Another pair of volunteers, Colossaurs this time, were huffing and puffing under the apparently immense weight of another stretcher, long and with no antigrav system. Bouncing and sticking out from under this white blanket were a pair of feet and a long stretch of leg. On top of the sheet lay a tray, from which a very familiar Japanese war mask jeered at me for the last time.

I turned around to ask Einstein about it, but he cut me off. “Don’t even try. Your thoracic compressor was the only part of your torso that got torn apart. I’m sorry, but that was Old Man Slovoban’s last battle—at least he fought well to the end. His… assistants have already been captured. Actually, most of them turned themselves in, and none offered much resistance. That was how we learned how he managed to escape the attack on the Estrella Rom: he had time to get himself into the suit of armor he was wearing.” He pointed at the long figure that the Colossaurs were just then carrying out the door. “Not only did the suit have enough servomotors to move an army, it was also a fully functioning space suit. He must have hidden out among the debris from the station and evaded the Chimera’s sensors. Later, his flunkies smuggled him aboard here, armor and all, in one of those long, narrow, heavy boxes. There were lots of them around today, didn’t you notice?”

Of course: heavy boxes, ten feet long. That was the detail I’d been missing. How hadn’t I seen it earlier? In front of my eyes the whole time.

Well, it didn’t matter now. All’s well that ends well.

But had it really ended well? What about Vasily?

“Vaaa… ” I managed to half croak and half stammer.

“No worries, your human friend is fine.” This time it was Sandokan Mompracem who cut me off. “Totally exhausted, is all. Confronting Makrow was too much for his powers. He spent all his neural reserves and collapsed from the stress. But what a pity about the old gypsy. A genuine warrior. He’s been the hero of the day. Too bad there’s nothing to see but blurs on the holotapes. I’d love to watch him split that Colossaur in two, see how he did it. What I’ll never understand, though, is why he decided to cut off his own head.”

“I wish I could see how he did it, too,” Einstein added. “It’s incredible how he arranged it so that, when his sword fell, the blade bounced off the floor in the craziest way—imagine, bouncing up and stabbing Makrow straight through the back of the head! So weird. I’d say it was the most bizarre coincidence ever, except that with Gaussicals around there’s no such thing as a coincidence. I suppose Vasily must have called on his last reserves of strength when he saw his father figure die. Never underestimate the power of revenge for living creatures, right, Raymond? No, don’t try to talk.”

I didn’t say anything, didn’t even nod, though I easily could have. I only smiled.

Coincidence? Of course. A well-controlled coincidence.

Slovoban had hit the nail on the head. A future that neither Makrow nor Vasily had foreseen, a chess move that neither of the two great egotists expected.

A sacrifice. But not the queen sacrifice that Makrow had attempted by abandoning the Chimera; a total sacrifice. King sacrifice. A king to be avenged.

It was a matter of reflexes; I went first. One leg, then the other, finally a shot to my own head. I could have ended it all quickly just by shooting myself in the torso, but I didn’t. I’ll never know why. That’s the downside of not being a creature of logic. Was it from fear of ceasing to exist, what humans call the instinct for self-preservation, or was it to give Vasily more time to understand our plan?

Who could say? And who would care?

The main thing was that when Slovoban sacrificed himself, El Afortunado already had gotten the whole picture; he was alert, ready to make maximum use of that unforeseeable, extraordinary, foolish act, which introduced a new variable in the equation of the thousand possible futures that had been at play, the equation in which Makrow 34 had been beating him.

The Cetian, for his part, didn’t expect it at all. Perhaps because suicide is so extreme among living creatures that it’s not the sort of act anyone usually imitates just because they see it done—especially not a mere second later.

Coincidence or symbolism? I guess the almost impossible bounce of a dai-katana forged by the almost mythical Japanese swordsmith Masamune served Vasily’s purposes as well for the occasion as a twin pair of meteors would have if they had sliced through all the shields of the Burroughs and pierced both of the Cetian’s twin hearts at once. The fact that the sword blow was much more symbolic doesn’t count for much when there are so many probabilities at play.

I don’t think he even had time to choose.