have happened? “Goddamn,” said Oleary. “I still can’t believe he managed it, all alone like that.”
The Secret Committee had assembled to hear Yama’s final report on Stef’s mission to the past. Xian, Ugaitish, Hrka, Oleary-they were all there but Kathmann. Except for Xian-who already knew the story-thefromazhi were leaning breathlessly over the gilt Martian table, listening to the story of how their world had been saved.
“Well, here’s the evidence,” said Yama. “First, we recover Stef’s body, dead, obviously shot by a modern weapon,oke? His own gun has been fired once. The world we live in does not vanish, but on the contrary looks as solid as ever, at least to me. Just to eliminate any doubts about what happened, we use the wormholer one more time. We pull back from Moscow, 360th day of 2091, an air sample which is full of intensely radioactive dust and ice particles.
“Now I ask you, Honored Grandees. What can we conclude, except that Stef and Dyeva killed each other, that with his last gasp, so to speak, he signaled us to recover him because his job was done, and that the Time of Troubles proceeded to happen on schedule?”
Xian turned to Yang, standing in the shadows, deference in every line of his big, weak body. “What do you think, Honored Professor?”
“I agree. The evidence is absolutely irrefutable, and I have spent my whole life evaluating evidence.”
“Well, I guess we have to accept it,” fretted Oleary. He still hoped to take back Stef’s million, but he could see that it would be difficult now.
“I am obliged to add,” Yama continued, “that a sealed envelope was found on Steffen’s body containing a note to Solar System Controller Xian.”
He glanced at her and she nodded.
“It reads as follows,” said Yama, spreading a copy on the arm of theshozit.
Facing death, Dyeva states that Kathmann cooperated in the theft of the wormholer. He expected to win promotion by crushing the conspiracy afterward, but Crux was too clever for him. Ever since, he has been desperately trying to wipe out those few who know of his treason.
Steffens Aleksandr Thefromazhi drew a deep collective breath.
“Is it possible?” demanded Ugaitish. “The head of Earth Security? What could he hope to gain from assisting a conspiracy, then destroying it?”
“He told me once,” said Yama, who had been waiting for this moment for many years, “that he dreamed of being Solar System Controller.”
“Honored grandees,” said Xian, “you must know that at first I, too, found this accusation hard to believe.
But the evidence is great. The paper, ink and handwriting prove that Steffens wrote this note. In his own defense, Kathmann made the claim that Steffens was seeking revenge because he had been tortured. But Kathmann’s own record of Steffens’s interrogation certifies that the questioning was ‘exceptionally gentle.’ This was a troubling contradiction.
“We all know that Kathmann, in spite of his many virtues, was too zealous, too ambitious. I ordered him to bring me the scientist who stole the wormholer for questioning. The man had been beheaded. That seemed an extremely suspicious circumstance to me. Was Kathmann trying to ensure his silence? All the builders of the wormholer were also dead. I questioned the only two Crux prisoners who were still alive, but they were mere children and knew nothing-which was probably why they had kept their heads.
“In the end, to resolve the matter I ordered Kathmann into the White Chamber. With the needles in his spine, he made a full confession. Every statement made by Steffens in this note is true. Kathmann knew too many state secrets to be permitted to live, and so I had him beheaded.”
She looked around at the others, as if waiting for a challenge. Yama smiled a little. Admiral Hrka remarked that he had never liked the fellow. Aside from that, Kathmann’s harsh fate produced no comment whatever.
“Is there any other business, then?” asked Xian, preparing to end the meeting.
Yang had been waiting for this moment to step forward from the shadows. “Now that Crux is finished, Honored Grandees,” he said smoothly, “I would suggest going public with the story and making Steffens a hero.
“The heroes we honor all lived a long time ago; they are almost mythic figures-indeed, some of them, like the Yellow Emperor, are entirely myths. But here we have a hero of today, one that people can identify with, one who brings the glory and splendor of the present world order home to the common man. It’s true, of course,” he added, “that certain aspects of Steffens’s life will have to be edited for public consumption. But the same could be said of any other hero of history.”
“Superb,” cried Xian at once, ending any argument before it began. Raising a tiny, thin hand that looked with its many rings like a jeweled spider, she declared: “Steffens will be buried with full honors. Someone with talent will write his biography and Yang will sign it. Scenes from his life will be enacted on every mashina. A great tomb will be built-”
“Honored Solar System Controller,” muttered Yama, “we’ve already cremated the body and disposed of the ashes.”
“What difference does that make? Do you suppose Genghis Khan sleeps in what we call his grave?
Now,bistra, bistra! -quick, quick! Get a move on. Remember that heroes are made, not born.”
Professor Yang, smiling over the adoption of his idea, left the cabinet room with Yama.
“In some ways,” he remarked, “the most intriguing supposition is that the world we live in hasalways been the consequence of the Crux conspiracy and its outcome. Wouldn’t it be interesting, Honored Colonel, if time is, so to speak, absolutely relative-if this episode has been embedded in the past ever since 2091, and all our world is the long-term result of what, from our point of view, has only just happened?”
Yama, hurrying to carry out Xian’s order, paused long enough to stare at Yang.
“What complete nonsense,” he growled.
Pending appointment of a replacement for Kathmann, Yama was combining Earth Central duties with his own. Most of his day was taken up with Stef in one way or another. Yama launched the process of glorification, then carried out a more personal duty: as he’d once promised Stef, he ordered the release of Iris and Ananda from the White Chamber. He did not see the young people, and so never knew that their brief stay beneath the Palace of Justice had turned their hair the same color as the tiled walls of their cells.
Weary and ready to go home, Yama was thinking of Hariko and his children when a piece of copy containing two lines of script was hand-delivered to his desk. Thus he learned that the woman Lata, last survivor of Crux on earth, had been tracked down at a village near Karakorum. She had committed suicide before the polizi and the Darksiders arrived and had left this note.
“It is all over,” she wrote, “and I know it. This world endures as if protected by a god. But what sort of god would protectthis world?”
Yama slid the paper into a port of his mashina.
“Copy, file, destroy,” he said.
On the next Great Genghis Day, Government of the Universe Place was crowded with people. From every flagpole hung nine white faux yak tails in honor of the famous Unifier of Humankind. But the event of the day was not honoring Genghis-though President Mobutu burned incense on his grave-but the dedication of Stef’s memorial.
As the veil over the statue fell, Dzhun and Selina stood together looking at an idealized Stef striding ever forward, holding an impact pistol in one hand and a globe symbolizing the world order in the other.
Since Dzhun was only semi literate, Selina read the epitaph that Yang had composed: “Like the Great Khan in Courage and Like Jesus in Self-Sacrifice.”
“Yang’s been made a grandee, you know,” Dzhun said. “They needed somebody to purge subversives from the University, and he just dropped into the slot. We’re lucky to have him for a customer.”
She had used the million Stef had left her, not to buy a cottage or get an education, but to open her own brothel. She called it House of Timeless Love. With clever Selina to manage it-and to serve a few select customers, such as the now famous, rich and powerful Yang-it had rapidly become the most popular of the newer houses, with capacity crowds every night.
Selina smiled down at her friend and employer.
“Anyway, the statue’s nice. Of course he never walked stiff-legged like that. Stef just lounged around.”
“I think I preferred him as he was,” mused Dzhun. “Alive.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“I guess so. I really don’t know much about love. I know that I love you.”
