“Stand back,” said Alexander. “Where is the spokesman of the third research project I created?”
“He is not here,” was the answer. “He is engaged on a final verification of his solution to the problem posed. As we understand it, that was to ensure that no smallest corner of the galaxy remained free from your puissant sway.”
They had expected rage at the discovery that one who was required was not there to report. Instead, Alexander felt a stir of something akin to gratitude, that yet another moment of uncertainty was granted him. Mildly he inquired, “What is the name of this man?”
It was, according to the record, forty-one centuries since Alexander inquired the name of a man, and the answer was long in coming. They said at length, timidly, “Amaliel, Your Supremacy.”
“We will await him,” Alexander said.
They waited. On the crowded continent there were deaths, and the corpses were removed and deputies took the place of those who had gone; there was hunger and thirst and the smell became appalling, but changes were made in the plans and food and sanitation were provided. Soon enough those who waited adjusted to their predicament.
Alexander, however, grew almost impatient, and before half a year had slipped away he had changed his mind.
What, after all, was this snippet of time before the remainder of eternity?
“We shall proceed,” he said.
His image appeared to each and every one of the billion human beings on the planet, and they fell silent and gazed at him with adoration.
He said, “There is no star, no planet, no cloud of gas, no place left in the galaxy which does not own my dominion.”
So: what now? Do I bid the scientists perfect my body, make it outlast the stars, that I may embark on the infinite conquest of the plenum? I am the master of the galaxy, but—
And a voice said, “Not so, Your Supremacy.”
A shudder went through the assembly, greatest in the history of mankind. Its ripples spread outward from the focus before Alexander’s imperial dais, occupied now by an old man in a white robe with a wisp of beard at his chin, beside whom floated a silvery machine whose purpose was hard to discern by merely looking.
“Who are you?” said Alexander.
“My name is Amaliel,” the old man said. “You charged my ancestors to determine whether any corner of the galaxy, no matter how small, was left unabsorbed into your dominions. We pored over records, we analysed computer memories, we compared meticulously the maps of the galaxy with the records of the armies of conquest, and we found no discrepancy.
“Yet, intent on doing our duty without the least hint of laxness, we went further than I have described. We all fanned out to scour the galaxy ourselves and see with our own eyes the truth of what was reported to us. When our bodies failed us, we recruited substitutes and sent them on in our place. Century after century we have traveled the starways, confirming that indeed the reports were accurate.”
“In that case,” Alexander said, “the conquest is complete.”
“Not so,” Amaliel declared as he had done before. “This galaxy is not conquered. Your Supremacy, I have been to the planet Earth.”
“Earth?” Alexander echoed the word in his booming voice, and all the ranked billions heard and shook. “That is the place from which men first came, and it submitted to me eight hundred and six thousand years ago.”
“But you do not even rule all of Earth,” said Amaliel. “I have brought this machine with me from there, and with it I will demonstrate the truth of what I say.”
Alexander searched his memory, and searched again, for any clue to the meaning that underlay Amaliel’s words. He found none, and a sense of impending doom overtook him, far worse than the prevision of frustration already weighing down his mind.
He said, the words tolling like a brazen gong, “Then do so!”
“Let one person come forth from that crowd yonder,” Amaliel requested.
It was done; they brought to him a beardless youth, slim, not tall, with light brown hair and the sallow skin of one of the ever-recurring sport-lines humanity had generated. Amaliel gestured him to stand before the machine on which he rested one arm for support, for he was very old.
“Watch, Your Supremacy,” he whispered, and it began. Projected as it were within a cloud, feeling vast yet visibly limited to the few square yards of vacant ground before the imperial dais: images. . .
The brush parted. A man’s head peered out—grizzled and gap-toothed as he smiled in anticipation. Beside the head a spear appeared, a crude thing with a point of stone and a shaft of hardened wood. Muscles bunched beneath a shawl of shaggy goat-hide. The spear flew. A thing clad in stripes and armed with raking claws spewed blood into the water of a forest pool.
In a cave hungry children tore gobbets of reeking flesh from its bone and stuffed them into their mouths. Their hands came to hold exquisite knives and forks of engraved silver; their greasy naked shoulders vanished beneath elegant coats of plum-colored velvet, while the roof reared up and turned to a carved ceiling across which an artist had painted Truth Descending to the Arts and Sciences. Lolling in handsome oaken chairs around a walnut table, the company sipped wine from crystal goblets.
Instruments of inlaid rosewood under their chins or poised before their lips, they answered the signal of the conductor and music rang out. In response to the frequency of the vibrations, dust organized itself into patterns on a tight-stretched membrane and the scientist showed them to the mathematician, who dipped his quill in a pot of ink and wrote quickly.
Reading the fine leather-bound volume, the student paused and stared at the flame of his candle. It enlarged to shine so brilliantly he could not keep his eyes on it; he slid a piece of smoked glass across the eyepiece of his telescope and continued his observations, sketching
