Heirs of Empire

the Emperor would only let them have their jobs back, they would get down to it immediately.

They had. Still not without a certain amount of foot dragging when they thought no one was looking, but they had gotten down to it. Of course, every one of their earlier objections had had its own grain of truth, which made the introduction of an entirely new educational system difficult and often frustratingly slow, but once they accepted that Colin was serious, they’d really buckled down and pushed. And, along the way, the ones who had the makings of true teachers rather than petty bureaucrats had rediscovered the joy of teaching. The ones who didn’t make that rediscovery tended to disappear from the profession in ever greater numbers, but their earlier opposition and lingering guerrilla warfare had delayed the full-scale implementation of modern education on Earth by at least ten years.

Which meant, of course, that children on Birhat had a measurable advantage over those educated on Earth. Dahak spent most of his time in Birhat orbit, and while Earth’s teaching establishment grappled with Imperial education theories, Dahak had already mastered them. More, he, unlike they, had no institutional or personal objections to adopting them, and it required only a tithe of his vast capacity to institute what amounted to a planet-wide system of small-group studies. His students responded with an insatiable hunger to learn, and, to Colin’s knowledge the twins had never played hooky, which was almost scary.

He walked into the study, and Jiltanith smiled at him from her desk. He took the time to kiss her properly, then flopped into his chair and sighed contentedly as it adjusted to his body’s contours.

“Thou soundest well content to leave thine office behind thee, my love,” Jiltanith observed, putting her own computer on hold, and he nodded.

“You oughta try it sometime,” he said pointedly, and she laughed.

“Nay, my Colin. ’Twould drive me to bedlam’s brink did I have naught to which to set my hands, and this—” she gestured at the hardcopy and data chips strewn over her desk “—is a study most interesting.”

“Yeah?”

“Aye. Amanda hath begun to think how best we may use Tao-ling’s Mark Twenty hyper gun in small unit tactics.”

Colin shook his head wryly. Jiltanith didn’t love combat—she knew too much of what it cost—yet there were dark and dangerous places in her soul. He suspected that no one, not even he, would ever be admitted into some of them, but a lifetime of bitter guerrilla warfare had left its mark, and, unlike him, she saw war not as a last response but as a practical option that worked. She wasn’t merciless, but she was far more capable of slaughter—and less inclined to give quarter—than he. That was why he’d made her Minister of War. As Warlord, Colin was the Imperium’s commander-in-chief, but it was ’Tanni who ran their growing military establishment on a day-to-day basis.

“Well, if you can tear yourself away, we’re about to have visitors.”

“Ah?” She cocked her head at him.

“Isis, Cohanna, and Cohanna’s … project,” he said less cheerfully. “I’m afraid Jefferson may be right about the logic of ordering them destroyed, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to making that decision.”

“Nor shouldst thou.” His wife stood and walked around her desk. “Logic, as thou hast said time without number, my love, may be naught but a way to err wi’ confidence.”

“You got that right, babe,” he sighed, snaking an arm around her as she passed. She paused to ruffle his sandy hair, then sank into her own chair. “The thing is, I think I’m trying to psych myself up to decide against them ‘cause I think I ought to, and that makes me feel sort of ashamed.”

“The day thy self-doubt ceaseth will be the day thou becomest less than thy best self, Colin,” she said gently.

He smiled, changed the subject to something more comfortable, and let ’Tanni’s voice flow over him. He treasured the moments when they could forget the Imperium, forget their duties, forget the need to finish the Achuultani threat once and for all, and ’Tanni’s soft, archaic speech wove a spell that helped him hold those things at bay, be it ever so briefly. She’d learned her English during the Wars of the Roses and flatly refused to abandon it. Besides, as she’d pointed out upon occasion, she spoke true English, not the debased dialect he’d learned.

“Excuse me, Colin,” a mellow voice injected into a break in their conversation, “but Cohanna and Isis have arrived.”

“Thanks.” Colin sighed and set the moment aside, feeling the universe intruding upon them once more but revitalized by the temporary escape. “Tell them we’re in the study.”

“I have already done so. They will arrive momentarily.”

“Fine. And hang around yourself. We may need your input.”

“Of course,” Dahak agreed. Colin knew a tiny bit of the computer’s attention always followed him about, ready to respond to questions or advise him of new developments, but Dahak had designed a special subroutine to monitor his Emperor’s whereabouts and needs without bringing them to the front of his attention unless certain critical parameters were crossed. It was his way of assuring Colin’s privacy, a concept he didn’t entirely understand but whose importance to his human friends he recognized.

The study door opened, and Cohanna marched in like a grenadier with a delicate, white-haired woman whose aged eyes were remarkably like Jiltanith’s. Isis Tudor was over ninety, and there’d been no bio-enhancement for the Terra-born in her girlhood. By the time it became available, her body was too old and fragile for full enhancement, and age pared away more of her strength with every year. Yet there was nothing wrong with her mind, and the enhancement she could tolerate gave her an energy at odds with her growing frailty.

Jiltanith stood to embrace her while Cohanna met Colin’s gaze with an edge of challenge and four black- and-tan dogs followed her through the door. They moved in formation, with a most undoglike precision, and arranged themselves in a neat line as they sat on the rug.

They looked, Colin thought, like fireplugs on legs. Tinker Bell’s pups had been sired by a pedigreed rottweiler, and the lab side of their heritage was scarcely noticeable. They had a solid, squared-off appearance, with powerful muzzles, and the biggest must have massed almost sixty kilos.

He studied them for signs of the changes Cohanna had wrought. There weren’t many. The massive rottweiler head was perhaps a little broader, with a more pronounced cranial bulge, though he doubted he would have noticed without looking for it, yet there was something. And then he realized. The eyes fixed upon him with unwavering attention betrayed the intelligence behind them.

“All right, Colin.” Cohanna’s voice wrenched his attention from the dogs. “You wanted to see them. Here they are.”

He looked up quickly, but her expression gave him pause. He was accustomed to her testiness, but her dark eyes were fierce. This, he realized with a sinking sensation, was no bloodless project for her.

“Sit down, ’Hanna,” he said quietly, and knelt before the dogs as she sank into an empty chair. Heads cocked to look at him, and he ran a hand down the biggest’s broad back. His sensory boosters were on high, and he felt the usual bunchy muscle of the breed … and something more. He looked at Cohanna, and she shrugged.

“ ’Hanna,” he sighed, “I have to tell you I’m less worried, in a way, about the genetic stuff than the rest of it. Do you have any idea how the anti-techies will react to fully enhanced dogs? The idea of a dog with that kind of strength and toughness is going to terrify them.”

“Then they’re idiots!” Cohanna glared at him, then sighed herself, and something very like guilt diluted her fierceness. A knot of tension inside him relaxed slightly as he saw it and realized how much of her anger at him came from an awareness that perhaps she had gone too far.

“All right,” she said finally, her voice low. “Maybe I was an idiot. I still maintain —” her eyes flashed “—that they’re superstitious savages, but, damn it, Colin, I can’t understand how their minds work! These dogs represent no more danger to them than another enhanced human would!”

“I know you think they don’t, ’Hanna, but—”

“I don’t ‘think’ anything, Colin—I know! And so will you if you take the time to get to know them.”

“That,” he admitted, “is what I’m more than half afraid of.” He turned back to the dogs, and the big male he’d touched returned his gaze levelly. “This is Galahad?” he asked Cohanna … but someone else answered.

“Yes,” a mechanically produced voice said, and Colin’s eyes widened as he saw the small vocoder on the dog’s collar. A shiver ran down his spine as a “dumb animal” spoke, but it vanished in an instant. Wonder replaced it, and a strange delight he tried hard to suppress, and he drew a deep breath.