The Return of the Emperor (Sten #6). Allan Cole

it was the last place shortages of any kind should show up. When he had learned of the “disturbances,” he had made his views even plainer. But the Kraas and the others assured him that all was well. There had been a few small glitches in the supply system, that was all. The supplies and the peace had been restored. Right! It wasn’t the lies that disturbed Kyes so much—he was a master dissembler himself. It was the plain wrongheadedness of the matter.

      If the privy council could not keep matters under control a few kilometers from its own front door, how could they possibly succeed in ruling a far-flung Empire? And if they failed, Kyes was doomed to something far worse than any hell they could imagine.

      A second immensely irritating factor: If things were really so awful that basic foods were out of the reach of the local populace, then why were the members of the council flaunting their own wealth?

      He groaned aloud when he saw, ahead of him, the spire needling up over the tall buildings of the financial district. It was the newly completed headquarters of the privy council.

      “Amazin’ as clot, ain’t it,” his driver said, mistaking the groan for a belch of admiration. “You fellas done yourself proud with that buildin’. Nothin’ like it on Prime. Specially with the Emperor’s old castle wrecked by bombs and all.

      “I know yuz ain’t seen it yet, but wait’ll ya get inside. You got fountains and drakh. With real colored water. And right in the middle they put in this great clottin’ tree. Called a rubiginosa, or somethin’. Probably sayin’ it wrong. Big mother fig tree. But the kind you can’t eat.”

      “Who’s idea was it?” Kyes asked—dry, noncommittal.

      “Dunno. Designer, I think. What was her name? Uh... Ztivo, or somethin’ like that. But, boy did she charge an arm and two, three legs. The tree alone’s gotta be fifteen, twenty meters tall. Dug it up from someplace on Earth. But they was scared it’ud shrivel up and blow away if they brought here direct, like. So they seasoned it. On three four different planets. Spent a big bundle of credits on it.

      “Musta worked. It’s goin’ crazy in there! Picked up another two meters, I heard, in the last two-three months. Why, that clottin’ tree’s the pride and joy of Prime World, I tell you. Ask anybody.”

      As the gravcar slowed, Kyes saw a crowd of beggars push forward. A wedge of club-wielding cops beat them back. Certainly, he thought. Ask anybody. Go right ahead.

      * * * *

      The AM2 secretary’s report was a dry buzz against glass. On the table before him was a one-third-meter stack of readouts, the result of many months labor. He was reading—syllable by maddening syllable—from a précis not much slimmer. His name was Lagguth. But from the glares he was getting from the members of the privy council, it was likely to be changed to something far worse.

      Kyes and the others had gathered eagerly around the table. This could possibly be the most important listening session of their lives. So no one objected a whit when Lagguth’s aides hauled in the mass of papers. Nor did anyone raise a brow when the preamble went a full hour.

      They were in the second hour—a second hour to a group of beings who habitually required their subordinates to sum up all thinking in three sentences or less. If they liked the three sentences, the subordinate could continue. If not, firing was a not indistinct possibility. After the first hour, the AM2 secretary had gone past firing.

      Executions were being weighed. Kyes had several nasty varieties in mind himself.

      But he had caught a different tone than the rest. There was real fear beneath all that buzz. He caught it in the nervous shufflings and newly habitual tics in Lagguth’s mannerisms. Kyes stopped listening for the bottom line and started paying attention to the words. They were meaningless. Deliberate bureaucratic nonsense. That added up to stall. Kyes kept his observation to himself. Instead, he began thinking how he might use it.

      The Kraas broke first.

      The fat one cleared her throat, sounding like distant thunder, loomed her gross bulk forward, and thrust out a chin that was like a heavy-worlder’s fist.

      “Yer a right bastard, mate,” she said. “Makin’ me piles bleed with all this yetcheta yetch. Me sis’s arse bones’r pokin’ holes in the sitter. Get to it. Or get summun else in to do the gig!”

      Lagguth gleaped. But, it was a puzzled sort of a gleap. He knew he was in trouble. Just what not for.

      Lovett translated. “Get to the clotting point, man. What’s the prog?”

      Lagguth took a deep and lonely breath. Then he painted a bright smile on his face. “I’m so sorry, gentle beings,” he said. “The scientist in me... tsk... tsk... How thoughtless. In the future I shall endeavor—”

      The skinny Kraa growled. It was a shrill sound—and not nice. It had the definite note of a committed carnivore.

      “Thirteen months,” Lagguth blurted. “And that’s an outside estimate.”

      “So, you’re telling us, that although your department has had no luck in locating the AM2, you now have an estimate of when you will find it. Is that right?” Lovett was a great one for summing up the obvious.

      “Yes, Sr. Lovett,” Lagguth said. “There can be no mistake. Within thirteen months we shall have it.” He patted the thick stack of documentation.

      “That certainly sounds promising, if true,” Malperin broke in. She stopped Lagguth’s instinctive defense of his work with a wave of her hand. Malperin ruled an immense, cobbled-together conglomerate. She did not rule it well. But she had more than enough steel in her to keep it as long as she liked.

      “What is your opinion, Sr. Kyes?” she asked. Malperin dearly loved to shift discussions along, keeping her own views hidden as long as possible. It was Kyes’s recent surmise that she actually had none and was waiting to see which way the wind blew before she alighted.

      “First, I would like to ask Sr. Lagguth a question,” Kyes said. “A critical one, I believe.”

      Lagguth motioned for him to please ask.

      “How much AM2 do we have on hand right now?”

      Lagguth sputtered, then began a long abstract discussion. Kyes cut him off before he even reached the pass.

      “Let me rephrase,” Kyes said. “Given current usage, current rationing—how long will the AM2 last?”

      “Two years,” Lagguth answered. “No more.”

      The answer jolted the room. Not because it was unexpected. But it was like having a death sentence set, knowing exactly at what moment one would cease to exist. Only Kyes was unaffected. This was a situation he was not unused to.

      “Then, if you’re wrong about the thirteen months...” Malperin began.

      “Then it’s bleedin’ over, mate, less’n a year from then,” the skinny Kraa broke in.

      Lagguth could do no more than nod. Only Kyes knew why the man was so frightened. It was because he was lying.

      No, not about the two-year supply of AM2. It was the first estimate that was completely fabricated. Thirteen months. Drakh! More like never. Lagguth and his department had no more idea where the Emperor had kept the AM2 than when they started more than six years before. Motive for lying? To keep his clotting head on his shoulders. Wasn’t that motive enough?

      “Stay with the first figure,” Kyes purred to the skinny Kraa. “It’s pointless to contemplate the leap from the chasm when you have yet to reach the edge.”

      Both Kraas stared at him. Despite their brutal features, the stares were not unkind. They had learned to depend on Kyes. They had no way of knowing that from the start, his personal dilemma had forced him into the role of moderate.

      “Sr. Lagguth believes it will take thirteen months to locate the AM2 source,” Kyes said. “This may or may not be the case. But I know how we can be more certain.”