Foundation and Empire. Айзек Азимов

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СКАЧАТЬ his foot to cut off the cracked voice which rattled out of the battered pocket-transmitter with bright liveliness.

      ‘More books?’ asked Lathan Devers.

      The sergeant held out the tightly-wound cylinder of film and scratched his neck. ‘It belongs to Engineer Orre, but he’ll have to have it back. He’s going to send it to his kids, you know, like what you might call a souvenir, you know.’

      Ducem Barr turned the cylinder in his hands with interest. ‘And where did the engineer get it? He hasn’t a transmitter also, has he?’

      The sergeant shook his head emphatically. He pointed to the knocked-about remnant at the foot of the bed. ‘That’s the only one in the place. This fellow, Orre, now, he got that book from one of these pig-pen worlds out here we captured. They had it in a big building by itself and he had to kill a few of the natives that tried to stop him from taking it.’

      He looked at it appraisingly. ‘It makes a good souvenir – for kids.’

      He paused, then said stealthily, ‘There’s big news floating about, by the way. It’s only scuttlebutt, but even so, it’s too good to keep. The general did it again.’ And he nodded slowly, gravely.

      ‘That so?’ said Devers. ‘And what did he do?’

      ‘Finished the Inclosure, that’s all.’ The sergeant chuckled with a fatherly pride. ‘Isn’t he the corker, though? Didn’t he work it fine? One of the fellows who’s strong on fancy talk, says it went as smooth and even as the music of the spheres, whatever they are.’

      ‘The big offensive starts now?’ asked Barr, mildly.

      ‘Hope so,’ was the boisterous response. ‘I want to get back on my ship now that my arm is in one piece again. I’m tired of sitting on my scupper out here.’

      ‘So am I,’ muttered Devers, suddenly and savagely. There was a bit of underlip caught in his teeth, and he worried it.

      The sergeant looked at him doubtfully, and said, ‘I’d better go now. The captain’s round is due and I’d just as soon he didn’t catch me in here.’

      He paused at the door. ‘By the way, sir,’ he said with sudden awkward shyness to the trader, ‘I heard from my wife. She says that little freezer you gave me to send her works fine. It doesn’t cost her anything, and she just about keeps a month’s supply of food froze up complete. I appreciate it.’

      ‘It’s all right. Forget it.’

      The great door moved noiselessly shut behind the grinning sergeant.

      Ducem Barr got out of his chair. ‘Well, he gives us a fair return for the freezer. Let’s take a look at this new book. Ahh, the title is gone.’

      He unrolled a yard or so of the film and looked through at the light. Then he murmured, ‘Well, skewer me through the scupper, as the sergeant says. This is “The Garden of Summa”, Devers.’

      ‘That so?’ said the trader, without interest. He shoved aside what was left of his dinner. ‘Sit down, Barr. Listening to this old-time literature isn’t doing me any good. You heard what the sergeant said?’

      ‘Yes, I did. What of it?’

      ‘The offensive will start. And we sit here!’

      ‘Where do you want to sit?’

      ‘You know what I mean. There’s no use just waiting.’

      ‘Isn’t there?’ Barr was carefully removing the old film from the transmitter and installing the new. ‘You told me a good deal of Foundation history in the last month, and it seems that the great leaders of past crises did precious little more than sit – and wait.’

      ‘Ah, Barr, but they knew where they were going.’

      ‘Did they? I suppose they said they did when it was over, and for all I know maybe they did. But there’s no proof that things would not have worked out as well or better if they had not known where they were going. The deeper economic and sociological forces aren’t directed by individual men.’

      Devers sneered. ‘No way of telling that things wouldn’t have worked out worse, either. You’re arguing tail-end backwards.’ His eyes were brooding. ‘You know, suppose I blasted him?’

      ‘Whom? Riose?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Barr sighed. His aging eyes were troubled with a reflection of the long past. ‘Assassination isn’t the way out, Devers. I once tried it, under provocation, when I was twenty – but it solved nothing. I removed a villain from Siwenna, but not the Imperial yoke; and it was the Imperial yoke and not the villain that mattered.’

      ‘But Riose is not just a villain, doc. He’s the whole blamed army. It would fall apart without him. They hang on him like babies. The sergeant out there slobbers every time he mentions him.’

      ‘Even so. There are other armies and other leaders. You must go deeper. There is this Brodrig, for instance – no one more than he has the ear of the Emperor. He could demand hundreds of ships where Riose must struggle with ten. I know him by reputation.’

      ‘That so? What about him?’ The trader’s eyes lost in frustration what they gained in sharp interest.

      ‘You want a pocket outline? He’s a low-born rascal who has by unfailing flattery tickled the whims of the Emperor. He’s well-hated by the court aristocracy, vermin themselves, because he can lay claim to neither family nor humility. He is the Emperor’s adviser in all things, and the Emperor’s tool in the worst things. He is faithless by choice but loyal by necessity. There is not a man in the Empire as subtle in villainy or as crude in his pleasures. And they say there is no way to the Emperor’s favour but through him; and no way to his, but through infamy.’

      ‘Wow!’ Devers pulled thoughtfully at his neatly trimmed beard. ‘And he’s the old boy the Emperor sent out here to keep an eye on Riose. Do you know I have an idea?’

      ‘I do now.’

      ‘Suppose this Brodrig takes a dislike to our young Army’s Delight?’

      ‘He probably has already. He’s not noted for a capacity for liking.’

      ‘Suppose it gets really bad. The Emperor might hear about it, and Riose might be in trouble.’

      ‘Uh-huh. Quite likely. But how do you propose to get that to happen?’

      ‘I don’t know. I suppose he could be bribed?’

      The patrician laughed gently. ‘Yes, in a way, but not in the manner you bribed the sergeant – not with a pocket freezer. And even if you reach his scale, it wouldn’t be worth it. There’s probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn’t stay bribed; not for any sum. Think of something else.’

      Devers swung a leg over his knee and his toe nodded quickly and restlessly. ‘It’s the first hint, though—’

      He stopped; the door signal was flashing once again, and the sergeant was on the threshold once СКАЧАТЬ