more years than his middle age. What was hardest to get used to was not the nagging pain. It was his face. One side displayed what he had once believed to be the dignified gullies and edges of a long and interesting life. The other was baby-bottom smooth. The doctors had assured him that the plasflesh was programmed to gradually match the elder side. Mahoney did not believe them—although he had to admit that four months ago his jaw had not worked, either. Now it did, after a painful fashion.
Mahoney did not have the faintest idea why the Emperor had requested his presence. He suspected they were still friends enough that the Emperor might want to personally break the news to him that he was getting the old heave-ho into early retirement. What the clot, half pension for a two-star general was not bad. Besides, he could always get another job, couldn’t he?
Give it a rest, Ian. Killing people is not considered one of the more desirable skills in private industry.
He came back to reality when the Gurkkhas stopped in front of an unmarked door. They motioned for him to place his thumb against the security beam. It beeped satisfaction, and the door hummed open.
Mahoney stepped into the Emperor’s suite. There was no one there to greet him, just gray walls and Spartan furniture. Mahoney figured his first guess had been right. He was for the old heave-ho.
Then another door opened, and Mahoney was suddenly overwhelmed by kitchen smells and kitchen heat. It was like being inside an immense Irish meat pie. And there was the muscular figure of the Eternal Emperor standing in the doorway. He looked Mahoney up and down as if measuring him for the pie. Old soldier’s habit tried to pull Mahoney’s creaking bones to attention. Then the Emperor smiled.
“Mahoney,” he said. “You look like a man who could use a stiff Scotch.”
* * * *
“I tell you, Mahoney, this Tahn business has given me a whole new outlook on life. When I finally get them out of my hair, things are going to be different. I don’t know if you know it or not, but the job of Eternal Emperor is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Mahoney grinned a crooked grin. “Uneasy lies the head, and all that,” he said.
The Emperor looked up from his chopping board. “Do I detect a note of cynicism?” he asked. “Careful, Mahoney. I have the power of Scotch.”
“Beg your pardon, boss. My most grievous error.”
They were in the Eternal Emperor’s kitchen, which looked like a ship’s wardroom mess area. The Emperor was not happy about that, preferring his old kitchen with its mixture of antique cooking gear and redesigned modern equipment. But this, he had told Mahoney, was adequate for his current needs. Besides, he had not had much time lately to fool around with cooking.
Mahoney was sitting at a stainless-steel table, a double shot glass in his hand. The Emperor was on the other side, preparing a dinner that he had promised Mahoney was perfectly suited to a war motif.
He called it “nuked hen.” Between them was a quart of the home-distilled spirits that the Emperor thought might be pretty close to Scotch. The Emperor topped their glasses up and took a sip before going back to his task. As he worked, he talked, shifting back and forth between subjects with a logic unique to him.
“I don’t remember the real name of this dish,” he said. “It was part of a whole phony Louisiana cooking fad that went back even before my time.”
Mahoney guessed that Louisiana was a province on ancient Earth.
“Apparently some people thought food wasn’t food unless you burned the clot out of it. It didn’t make sense to me, but I’ve learned over the years not to be too quick about judging folk beliefs. So I tried a few things.”
“And it was all delicious, right?” Mahoney asked.
“No. It was all terrible,” the Emperor said. “First, I thought it was me. I burned everything. My granddad would have killed me if he had seen all the food I wasted. Finally, I worked out a few ground rules. You just can’t go around burning anything.”
“Like potatoes,” Mahoney said. “A man wouldn’t want to burn a potato.”
The Eternal Emperor gave Mahoney a strange look. “Who was talking about potatoes?”
Mahoney just shook his head. He lifted his glass and worked the edge between his lips. He tilted his head back and drank it down. He was beginning to feel a lot better. He refilled his glass.
“I was just being silly,” he said.
The Emperor grew silent for a few minutes, going on automatic. Using his fingers and the hollow of his palm as measuring spoons, he dumped the following ingredients into a bowl: a pinch of fresh cayenne; two fingers of ground salt, ground pepper; a palm of dried sage, and finely diced horseradish. He moved the bowl over to his big black range. Already sitting beside it was a bottle of vodka, fresh-squeezed lime juice, a half cup of capers, and a tub of butter.
The Emperor took a fat Cornish game hen out of a cold box and placed it on the metal table. He found a slim-bladed boning knife, tested the edge, and then nodded in satisfaction. He turned the hen over, back side up, and started his first cut alongside the spine. He paused for a second, then laid the knife down.
“Let me run something down to you, Mahoney,” he said. “See if it comes out to you the same way it does to me.”
Mahoney leaned forward, interested. Maybe he would finally learn why he was really there.
“You familiar with the Al-Sufi System?”
Mahoney nodded. “Big AM2 depot, among other things,” he said. “We’ve got, what, maybe one-third of all our AM2 stored there?”
“That’s the place,” the Emperor said. “And lately I’ve been getting reports of a big Tahn buildup in that area. Not all at once. But a real gradual shifting of fleets from one sector to another. We’re also picking up a lot of radio chatter from supply ships.”
Mahoney nodded in professional sympathy. “Those buggers are all alike,” he said. ‘Tahn or Imperial. Can’t follow even the simplest rules of security.” He worked on his drink, thinking. “So, what’s the problem? If we know they’re going to hit us, then we’ve got the fight half-won before the first shot is even fired.”
“That’s so,” the Emperor said. Then he picked up his knife again, leaving the whole subject hanging. “You might want to watch this, Ian,” he said. “Boning a hen is easy when you know how, but you can chop the clot out of it and yourself if you don’t.”
Very carefully, the Emperor cut on either side of the spine. He pushed a finger through the slit and pulled the bone up through the carcass. Next, he laid the hen flat, placed a hand on either side of spine, and crunched down with his weight.
“See what I mean?” he said as he lifted the breastbone out.
“I’m impressed,” Mahoney said. “But never mind that. I’ve got the idea you aren’t too impressed with this intelligence you’ve been getting on the Tahn.”
The Emperor moved over to his range and fired up a burner.”You guessed right,” he said. “But I don’t blame my intelligence people. I think the Tahn have something entirely different in mind for us.”
“Such as?”
“Al-Sufi has a neighbor. Durer.”
“I’ve heard of it, vaguely.”
“You put a dog’s leg on Al-Sufi,” the Emperor said, “and you’ll find Durer on a bearing just about at the dog’s big toe.”
Mahoney remembered and grunted in surprise. “Why, that’s only…”
“If you stood on Durer,” the Emperor said, “you could just about reach here with a good healthy spit.”
That would have been one mighty spit, but Mahoney basically agreed.
“Assuming