good sir, these are hard times,’ said Riose, with meaning, ‘and you have children and friends. You have a country for which you have mouthed phrases of love and folly in the past. Come, if I should decide to use force, my aim would not be so poor as to strike you.’
Barr said coldly, ‘What do you want?’
Riose held the empty cup as he spoke. ‘Patrician, listen to me. These are days when the most successful soldiers are those whose function is to lead the dress parades that wind through the imperial palace grounds on feast days and to escort the sparkling pleasure ships that carry His Imperial Splendour to the summer planets. I … I am a failure. I am a failure at thirty-four, and I shall stay a failure. Because, you see, I like to fight.
‘That’s why they sent me here. I’m too troublesome at court. I don’t fit in with the etiquette. I offend the dandies and the lord admirals, but I’m too good a leader of ships and men to be disposed of shortly by being marooned in space. So Siwenna is the substitute. It’s a frontier world; a rebellious and a barren province. It is far away, far enough away to satisfy all.
‘And so I moulder. There are no rebellions to stamp down, and the border viceroys do not revolt lately; at least, not since His Imperial Majesty’s late father of glorious memory made an example of Mountel of Paramay.’
‘A strong Emperor,’ muttered Barr.
‘Yes, and we need more of them. He is my master; remember that. These are his interests I guard.’
Barr shrugged unconcernedly. ‘How does all this relate to the subject?’
‘I’ll show you in two words. The magicians I’ve mentioned come from beyond – out there beyond the frontier guards, where the stars are scattered thinly—’
‘“Where the stars are scattered thinly,”’ quoted Barr, ‘“And the cold of space seeps in”.’
‘Is that poetry?’ Riose frowned. Verse seemed frivolous at the moment. ‘In any case, they’re from the Periphery – from the only quarter where I am free to fight for the glory of the Emperor.’
‘And thus serve His Imperial Majesty’s interests and satisfy your own love of a good fight.’
‘Exactly. But I must know what I fight; and there you can help.’
‘How do you know?’
Riose nibbled casually at a cakelet. ‘Because for three years I have traced every rumour, every myth, every breath concerning the magicians – and of all the library of information I have gathered, only two isolated facts are unanimously agreed upon, and are hence certainly true. The first is that the magicians come from the edge of the Galaxy opposite Siwenna; the second is that your father once met a magician, alive and actual, and spoke with him.’
The aged Siwennian stared unblinkingly, and Riose continued, ‘You had better tell me what you know—’
Barr said thoughtfully, ‘It would be interesting to tell you certain things. It would be a psychohistoric experiment of my own.’
‘What kind of experiment?’
‘Psycho-historic.’ The old man had an unpleasant edge to his smile. Then, crisply, ‘You’d better have more tea. I’m going to make a bit of a speech.’
He leaned far back into the soft cushions of his chair. The wall-lights had softened to a pink-ivory glow, which mellowed even the soldier’s hard profile.
Ducem Barr began, ‘My own knowledge is the result of two accidents; the accidents of being born the son of my father, and of being born the native of my country. It begins over forty years ago, shortly after the great Massacre, when my father was a fugitive in the forests of the South, while I was a gunner in the viceroy’s personal fleet. This same viceroy, by the way, who had ordered the Massacre, and who died such a cruel death thereafter.’
Barr smiled grimly, and continued, ‘My father was a Patrician of the Empire and a Senator of Siwenna. His name was Onum Barr.’
Riose interrupted impatiently, ‘I know the circumstances of his exile very well. You needn’t elaborate upon it.’
The Siwennian ignored him and proceeded without deflection. ‘During his exile a wanderer came upon him; a merchant from the edge of the Galaxy; a young man who spoke a strange accent, knew nothing of recent Imperial history, and who was protected by an individual force-shield.’
‘An individual force-shield?’ Riose glared. ‘You speak extravagance. What generator could be powerful enough to condense a shield to the size of a single man? By the Great Galaxy, did he carry five thousand myria-tons of atomic power-source about with him on a little wheeled gocart?’
Barr said quietly, ‘This is the magician of whom you hear whispers, stories and myths. The name “magician” is not lightly earned. He carried no generator large enough to be seen, but not the heaviest weapon you can carry in your hand would have as much as creased the shield he bore.’
‘Is this all the story there is? Are the magicians born of maunderings of an old man broken by suffering and exile?’
‘The story of the magicians antedated even my father, sir. And the proof is more concrete. After leaving my father, this merchant that men call a magician visited a Tech-man at the city to which my father had guided him, and there he left a shield-generator of the type he wore. The generator was retrieved by my father after his return from exile upon the execution of the bloody viceroy. It took a long time to find—
‘The generator hangs on the wall behind you, sir. It does not work. It never worked but for the first two days; but if you’ll look at it, you will see that no one in the Empire ever designed it.’
Bel Riose reached for the belt of linked metal that clung to the curved wall. It came away with a little sucking noise as the tiny adhesion-field broke at the touch of his hand. The ellipsoid at the apex of the belt held his attention. It was the size of a walnut.
‘This—’ he said.
‘Was the generator,’ nodded Barr. ‘But it was the generator. The secret of its workings are beyond discovery now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it to be fused into a single lump of metal and not all the most careful study of the diffraction patterns have sufficed to distinguish the discrete parts that had existed before fusion.’
‘Then your “proof” still lingers on the frothy border of words backed by no concrete evidence.’
Barr shrugged. ‘You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its extortion by force. If you choose to meet it with scepticism, what is that to me? Do you want me to stop?’
‘Go on!’ said the general, harshly.
‘I continued my father’s researches after he died, and then the second accident I mentioned came to help me, for Siwenna was well known to Hari Seldon.’
‘And who is Hari Seldon?’
‘Hari Seldon was a scientist of the reign of the Emperor, Daluben IV. He was a psycho-historian; the last and greatest of them all. He once visited Siwenna, when Siwenna was a great commercial centre, rich in the arts and sciences.’
‘Hmph,’ muttered Riose, sourly, ‘where is the stagnant planet that does not claim to have been a land of overflowing wealth in older days?’
‘The days I speak of are the days of two centuries ago, when the Emperor yet ruled to the uttermost star; when Siwenna was a world of the interior and not a semi-barbarian border province. In those days, Hari Seldon foresaw the decline of Imperial power and the eventual barbarization of the entire Galaxy.’
Riose laughed suddenly. ‘He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold bleakness of the border. Come to the inner worlds some day; come to the warmth and the wealth of the centre.’
The