Foundation and Empire. Айзек Азимов

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СКАЧАТЬ thankful for the freezer, and you have always spoken to me very fine, although I am only the son of a farmer and you are great lords.’

      His Pleiade accent had grown thick, almost too much so for easy comprehension; and with excitement, his lumpish peasant derivation wiped out completely the soldierly bearing so long and so painfully cultivated.

      Barr said softly, ‘What is it, sergeant?’

      ‘Lord Brodrig is coming to see you. Tomorrow! I know, because the captain told me to have my men ready for dress review tomorrow for … for him. I thought … I might warn you.’

      Barr said, ‘Thank you, sergeant, we appreciate that. But it’s all right, man; no need for—.’

      But the look on Sergeant Luk’s face was now unmistakably one of fear. He spoke in a rough whisper, ‘You don’t hear the stories the men tell about him. He has sold himself to the space fiend. No, don’t laugh. There are most terrible tales told about him. They say he has men with blast-guns who follow him everywhere, and when he wants pleasure, he just tells them to blast down anyone they meet. And they do – and he laughs. They say even the Emperor is in terror of him, and that he forces the Emperor to raise taxes and won’t let him listen to the complaints of the people.

      ‘And he hates the general, that’s what they say. They say he would like to kill the general, because the general is so great and wise. But he can’t because our general is a match for anyone and he knows Lord Brodrig is a bad ’un.’

      The sergeant blinked; smiled in a sudden incongruous shyness at his own outburst; and backed toward the door. He nodded his head, jerkily. ‘You mind my words. Watch him.’

      He ducked out.

      And Devers looked up, hard-eyed. ‘This breaks things our way, doesn’t it, doc?’

      ‘It depends,’ said Barr, dryly, ‘on Brodrig, doesn’t it?’

      But Devers was thinking, not listening.

      He was thinking hard.

      Lord Brodrig ducked his head as he stepped into the cramped living quarters of the trading ship, and his two armed guards followed quickly, with bared guns and the professionally hard scowls of the hired bravos.

      The Privy Secretary had little of the look of the lost soul about him just then. If the space fiend had bought him, he had left no visible mark of possession. Rather might Brodrig have been considered a breath of court-fashion come to enliven the hard, bare ugliness of an army base.

      The stiff, tight lines of his sheened and immaculate costume gave him the illusion of height, from the very top of which his cold, emotionless eyes stared down the declivity of a long nose at the trader. The mother-of-pearl ruches at his wrists fluttered filmily as he brought his ivory stick to the ground before him and leaned upon it daintily.

      ‘No,’ he said, with a little gesture, ‘you remain here. Forget your toys; I am not interested in them.’

      He drew forth a chair, dusted it carefully with the iridescent square of fabric attached to the top of his white stick, and seated himself. Devers glanced towards the mate to the chair, but Brodrig said lazily, ‘You will stand in the presence of a Peer of the Realm.’

      He smiled.

      Devers shrugged. ‘If you’re not interested in my stock in trade, what am I here for?’

      The Privy Secretary waited coldly, and Devers added a slow, ‘Sir.’

      ‘For privacy,’ said the secretary. ‘Now is it likely that I would come two hundred parsecs through space to inspect trinkets? It’s you I want to see.’ He extracted a small pink tablet from an engraved box and placed it delicately between his teeth. He sucked it slowly and appreciatively.

      ‘For instance,’ he said, ‘who are you? Are you really a citizen of this barbarian world that is creating all this fury of military frenzy?’

      Devers nodded gravely.

      ‘And you were really captured by him after the beginning of this squabble he calls a war. I am referring to our young general.’

      Devers nodded again.

      ‘So! Very well, my worthy Outlander. I see your fluency of speech is at a minimum. I shall smooth the way for you. It seems that our general here is fighting an apparently meaningless war with frightful transports of energy – and this over a forsaken fleabite of a world at the end of nowhere, which to a logical man would not seem worth a single blast of a single gun. Yet the general is not illogical. On the contrary, I would say he was extremely intelligent. Do you follow me?’

      ‘Can’t say I do, sir.’

      The secretary inspected his fingernails and said, ‘Listen further, then. The general would not waste his men and ships on a sterile feat of glory. I know he talks of glory and of Imperial honour, but it is quite obvious that the affectation of being one of the insufferable old demigods of the Heroic Age won’t wash. There is something more than glory here – and he does take queer, unnecessary care of you. Now if you were my prisoner and told me as little of use as you have our general, I would slit open your abdomen and strangle you with your own intestines.’

      Devers remained wooden. His eyes moved slightly, first to one of the secretary’s bully-boys, and then to the other. They were ready; eagerly ready.

      The secretary smiled. ‘Well, now, you’re a silent devil. According to the general, even a Psychic Probe made no impression, and that was a mistake on his part, by the way, for it convinced me that our young military whizz-bang was lying.’ He seemed in high humour.

      ‘My honest tradesman,’ he said, ‘I have a Psychic Probe of my own, one that ought to suit you peculiarly well. You see this—’

      And between thumb and forefinger, held negligently, were intricately designed, pink-and-yellow rectangles which were most definitely obvious in identity.

      Devers said so. ‘It looks like cash,’ he said.

      ‘Cash it is – and the best cash of the Empire, for it is backed by my estates, which are more extensive than the Emperor’s own. A hundred thousand credits. All here! Between two fingers! Yours!’

      ‘For what, sir? I am a good trader, but all trades go in both directions.’

      ‘For what? For the truth! What is the general after? Why is he fighting this war?’

      Lathan Devers sighed, and smoothed his beard thoughtfully.

      ‘What he’s after?’ His eyes were following the motions of the secretary’s hands as he counted the money slowly, bill by bill. ‘In a word, the Empire.’

      ‘Hmp. How ordinary! It always comes to that in the end. But how? What is the road that leads from the Galaxy’s edge to the peak of Empire so broadly and invitingly?’

      ‘The Foundation,’ said Devers, bitterly, ‘has secrets. They have books, old books – so old that the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in ritual and religion, and none may use them. I tried and now I am here – and there is a death sentence waiting for me, there.’

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