Skylark DuQuesne

30. EMPEROR

THE Fenachrone had taken off and DuQuesne had watched them go, taking extreme precautions — none of which, it turned out, had been necessary — that they did not eliminate either him or the rest of the party as soon as it became safe for them to do so. He had taken Stephanie de Marigny and all her belongings aboard, saying that he was going close enough to Tellus so that it would be no trouble at all to drop her off there. And lastly, when Seaton and Crane had insisted upon thanking him for what he had done:

“Save it,” he had sneered. “Remember, that time on XWorld, what I told you to do with that kind of crap! That still goes,” and he had taken off at full touring drive on course one seven five Universal. This course, which would give the First Galaxy a near miss, was the most direct route to a galaxy that was distant indeed; the galaxy lying on the extreme southern rim of the First Universe; the galaxy in which the DQ had been built; the galaxy that DuQuesne had surveyed so thoroughly and which he intended to rule.

DuQuesne and Stephanie were in the DQ’s control room, which was an exact duplicate of the Skylark of Valeron’s. He placed her in the seat that on the Valeron was Crane’s, showed her how to elevate herself into his own station.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re going to give me the whole gigantic Brain?”

“That’s the best and easiest way to do it. I boiled down about ten thousand lifetimes of knowledge and experience into ten half-hour sessions. The ten tapes on that player there are coded instructions for the Brain — what to give you and how. There are minds who could take the whole jolt in seconds, but yours and mine aren’t that type — yet. But you’ll get it all in five hours. Every detail. It’ll shock you all hell’s worth and it’ll scare you right out of your panties, but it won’t hurt you and it won’t damage your brain. Yours is one of the very few human brains that can take it. I’ll start it and in five hours I’ll be back. Ready?”

“As much so as I ever will be, I guess. Go.”

He started the player; and, after waiting a few minutes to be sure that everything was going as programmed, he left the room…

He came back in just as the machine clicked off, lowered her “chair,” and lifted her to her feet. “Good-God-In-Heaven!” she gasped. Her skin, normally so dark, was a yellowish white; so pate that her scattered freckles stood out sharply, each one in bold relief. “I don’t… I can’t… I simply can’t grasp it! I know that I know it, but…” She paused.

He shook his head in sympathy. Which, for Marc C. DuQuesne, was a rare gesture indeed. “I know. I couldn’t tell you what it would be like no possible warning can be enough. But that’s the bare minimum you’ll have to start with, and it won’t take you very long to assimilate it all. Ready for some talk?”

“Not only ready, I’m eager. First, though, I want to give you a vote of full confidence. I’m sure that you’ll succeed in everything you try from now on; even to becoming Emperor Marc the First of some empire.”

“Huh? Where did you get that?”

“By reading between the lines. Do you think I’m stupid, is that why you gave me all this?”

“Okay. You’ve always known, as an empirical, non-germane fact, that the Earth and all it carries isn’t even a flyspeck in a galaxy, to say nothing of a universe; but now you know and really understand just how little it actually does amount to.”

She shuddered. “Yes. It’s… it’s appalling.”

“Not when viewed in the proper perspective. I set out to rule Earth, yes; but after I began to learn something I lost that idea in a hurry. For a long time now I haven’t wanted Earth or any part of it. Its medical science is dedicated whole-heartedly to the deterioration of the human race by devoting its every effort to the preservation of the lives of the unfit. In Earth’s wars its best men — its best breeding stock — are killed. Earth simply is not, worth saving even if it could be saved; which I doubt. Neither is Norlamin.

Not because its conquest is at present impossible, but because the Norlaminians aren’t worth anything, either. All they do — all they can do — is think. They haven’t done anything constructive in their entire history and they never will. They’re such bred-in-the-bone pacifists — look at the way the damned sissies acted in this Chloran thing — that it is psychologically impossible for any one of them to pull a trigger. No; Sleemet had the right idea. And Ravindau — you have him in mind?”

“Vividly. Preserve the race — in his way and on his terms.”

“You’re a precisionist; that’s my idea exactly. To pick out a few hundred people — we won’t need many, as there are billions already where we’re going — as much as possible like us, and build a civilization that will be what a civilization ought to be.”

The girl gasped, but her eyes began to sparkle. “ ‘In a distant galaxy’, as Ravindau said?”

“Very distant. Clear out on the rim of this universe. The last galaxy out on the rim, in fact; five degrees east of Universal south.”

“And you’ll be Emperor Marc the First after all. But you won’t live long enough to rule very much.”

“You’re wrong, Steff. The ordinary people are already there, and it’s ridiculous for a sound and healthy body to deteriorate and die at a hundred. We’ll live ten or fifteen times that long, what with what I already know and the advances our medical science will make. Especially with the elimination of the unfit.”

“Sterilization, you mean?”

“No; death. Don’t go soft on me, girl. There will be no second-class citizens, at least in the upper stratum. Testing for that stratum will be by super-computer. Upper-stratum families will be fairly large.”

“Families?” she broke in. “You’ve come to realize, then, that the family is the sine qua non of civilization?”

“I’ve always known that.” Forestalling another interruption with a wave of his hand, he went on, “I know. I’ve never been a family man. On Earth or in our present cultures I would never become one. But skipping that for the moment, it’s your turn now.”

“I like it.” She thought in silence for a couple of minutes, then went on, “It must be an autocracy, of course, and you’re the man to make it work. The only flaw I can see is that even absolute authority can not make a dictated marriage either tolerable or productive. It automatically isn’t, on both counts.”

“Who said anything about dictated marriage? Free choice within the upper stratum and by test from the lower. With everybody good breeding stock, what difference will it make who marries whom?”

“Oh. I see. That does it, of course. Contrary to all appearances, then, you actually do believe in love. The implication has been pellucidly clear all along that you expect…”

“ ‘Expect’ is too strong a word. Make it that I’m ‘exploring the possibility of’.”

“I’ll accept that. You are exploring the possibility of me becoming your empress. From all the given premises, the only valid conclusion is that you love me. Check?”

“The word ‘love’ has so many and such tricky meanings that it is actually meaningless. Thus, I don’t know whether I love you or not, in your interpretation of the term. If it means to you that I will jump off of a cliff or blow my brains out if you refuse, I don’t. Or that I’ll pine away and not marry a second best, I don’t. If, however, it means a lot of other things, I do. Whatever it means, will you marry me?”

“Of course I will, Blackie. I’ve loved you a long time.”