Gordon R. Dickson (22 page)

“So,” he said, “I set out to stop and destroy Galyan—and I did.”

He stopped speaking. The Committee members at the table, the Governor, even the people sitting silent in the room behind him, continued to stay noiseless and unmoving for several seconds, as if they expected him to continue talking. Finally a slow stir along the line of the Committee members signaled their recognition of the fact that he was through.

“And so that’s your explanation,” said Heinman, slowly leaning forward and peering directly at Jim. “You did what you did to save Earth from a decadent madman. But, how do you know you were right?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Jim. He smiled a little grimly. “Because I found enough evidence in the records on the Throne World to satisfy me that Earth was, in fact, originally colonized by the Empire—by a party including several Highborn, as they were just beginning to be called. And”—he hesitated, then said the words very slowly but clearly—“I myself am a throwback to those Highborn colonists, just as Ro is a throwback. I am a Highborn. Otherwise I couldn’t have done what I did, in competition with Galyan and the other Highborn. I was a throwback to an earlier, healthier version of their aristocracy, and I’d look it even more than I do now if it hadn’t been for the treatments that were given me here on Earth to stop my growth when I was ten years old!”

In the silence following this remark, Jim turned and looked squarely at the Governor. The Governor sat as if frozen, his mouth a little open, his brown eyes staring fixedly at Jim. In one sweep, Jim felt the audience’s sympathy and belief in himself, that had been building all during his explanation—even among the Committee members, even in Heinman himself—swept away by a cooling reaction of incredulity and distrust.

“Highborn? You?” said Heinman in a low voice, staring at him.

It was almost as if the chairman questioned himself. For a long moment he continued to stare at Jim; then he shook himself back into self-control. Clearly he remembered who he was and where he was.

“That’s hard to believe,” he said, and his voice had the same note of faint underlying sarcasm that had been in it at the beginning of his questioning of Jim. “What kind of proof have you got to back up such a claim?”

Jim nodded quietly at the Governor of Alpha Centauri III.

“The Governor knows the Highborn,” said Jim, his eyes fixed on the small man. “Not only that, but he saw me on the Throne World in the midst of the native Highborn there. He should be able to tell you whether I am one or not… . That is, provided you’ll accept his evidence?”

“Oh,” said Heinman, not only leaning back, but tilting back a little in his chair. “I think we can accept the Governor’s opinion.” He turned to the small figure beside him and asked, loudly enough for the room to hear, “Mr. Keil claims to be one of the Highborn. What do you think, Governor?”

The Governor’s eyes stared fixedly at Jim. He opened his mouth, hesitated, and spoke, thickly accenting the Earth-born words.

“No, no,” he said. “He is not a Highborn. He could never be a Highborn. No … No!”

A sort of low gasp, a groan of reaction, trembled through the audience behind Jim. Jim rose slowly to his feet and folded his arms.

“Sit down, Mr. Keil!” snapped Heinman. But Jim ignored him.

“Adok!” he said, addressing the empty air.

Suddenly Adok was with them, standing in front of Jim’s table, in the little clear space between it and the raised platform on which stood the table of the Committee members. He stood silent, his powerful body darkly gleaming a little under the lights, white power bands stark on his arms, body, and legs.

There was a new, shuddering gasp from the rest of the room. Then silence.

Jim turned and pointed at one long wall of the room.

“Adok,” he said. “That’s an outside wall. I want you to open it up. I don’t want any falling debris or undue heat. I just want it opened.”

Adok turned a little toward the wall Jim indicated. The Starkien did not seem to move, otherwise, but there was a wink of light that seemed brilliant enough to blind them all, if it had not been for the extremely short duration of its existence; and something like an unbearable sound, equally cut short.

Where the wall had been there was an irregular opening ten feet in height, fifty feet in length, and with edges smoothly rounded, as if the stone of the wall had been melted.

Through the opening they could see, over the rooftops of a few adjoining buildings, blue sky in which half a dozen cloud masses floated. Jim pointed at the sky.

“Those clouds, Adok,” he said, softly. “Take them away.”

There were five or six short, whistling noises—again like mighty sounds cut so short that the human ear did not suffer from hearing them.

The sky was clear.

Jim turned back to face the table on the raised platform. Slowly he raised his arm and pointed at the Governor of Alpha Centauri III.

“Adok—” he began. The squat brown figure came hurdling over the table before him, down off the platform, and across the table to Jim himself, reaching out his hands supplicatingly.

“No, no, Highborn!” cried the Governor in the language of the Empire. Then, desperately, he switched to English.

“No!” he shouted, twisting his head sideways to look back over his shoulder at the members of the Committee. His voice in its thickly accented speech rang wildly against the silence of the room. “I was wrong! Wrong! He is Highborn. I tell you, he is!”

The Governor’s voice rose frantically, for Heinman and the other Committee members were staring at him with expressions of mixed horror and disbelief. He twisted around on the tabletop to confront them.

“No, no!” he cried thickly. “I don’t say that because he pointed at me. No! It’s because of the Starkien! You don’t understand! The Starkiens obey nobody but the Emperor and those other Highborn the Emperor tells the Starkiens to obey. The Starkien couldn’t obey like that for anybody but a Highborn! It’s true! He is Highborn, and I was wrong! I was wrong! You have to treat him like a Highborn! Because he is!”

The Governor collapsed into a fit of hysterical weeping, huddled up on the tabletop. Jim felt a hand slide into his own, and looking down, saw that Ro had come from her seat to stand at his side.

“Yes, indeed,” Ro said slowly in careful but unpracticed English, to Heinman. “I am a Highborn, and I tell you that Jim is one too. The Emperor adopted him as one, but even the Emperor said that he was giving Jim nothing Jim did not already have. Jim risked his life for all of you, and he brought me and Adok back to make you a people who will someday inherit the Empire.”

She stopped and turned to point to the sobbing Governor.

“This man,” she said, “must have been one of the colonials in Galyan’s plot. He sent a stone from Earth in Jim’s name. Only it was not a stone, but a device to project a blue, distorting light over Vhotan; and when it did this, the poor Emperor thought he saw the Blue Beast of his nightmares, and was so afraid that he ordered Vhotan killed, just as Galyan had planned. Wasn’t it this man who suggested you should try Jim for treason?”

“I lied. I told them the Princess Afuan would shortly remove the Highborn Slothiel, and then she would seek payment from Earth for what Jim had done,” moaned the Governor, swaying on the table with his face hid in his hands. “But I was wrong—wrong! He is Highborn. Not just by adoption, but by birth. I was wrong, wrong… .”

On Heinman’s face there was a war of expressions, but gradually dominating them all came the look of a man who had just emerged from many miles of dark tunnels to find a daylight so much brighter than he had expected that it was almost too painful to bear.

Jim looked at him, then nodded down at the weeping Governor before returning his eyes grimly to Heinman once more.

“Yes,” Jim said. “So now you understand… . And you can also understand why the Empire was something to be kept from Earth, at any cost.”

THE END