For Texas and Zed Page 16

  discovered by testing the Empire thought monitors led to many new things. Miniaturization in many fields, but, most importantly, they led to a new understanding of the human mind. The mind is a funny thing, Lex. We think we do what we want, but sometimes we're conditioned to think we're doing what we want to do by an oversecretion of some obscure enzyme in the body. Or our thoughts are colored by emotions. Grief has a chemical effect on the brain, and on the entire entity we call mind, soul, ourselves."

  "I won't say that I'm not a different man because of—"He paused, then said it. "—because of Riddent's death, but it's Texas I'm thinking of." "Is it?" . "What else is there?" He looked at her challengingly. "Glory?" "Bullshit." "I talked with Billy Bob."

  "Changing the subject?" "Not really," she said, smiling. "He says you spend a lot of time alone and that when you're not working you're reading, old things from Earth. Do you know Alexander?"

  "Do you know Sargon?" he countered.

  "And Frederick and Napoleon and Eisenhower and Hitler and Stalin," she said. "Yes, I remember, you mentioned Hitler to me once." "He killed fifty million people, directly or indirectly," she said. "And Empire has been fighting the Cassies for hundreds of years," Lex said. "I'm going to stop the killing,

  not continue it." "Alexander was a young man, too," she said, "and he established what was, perhaps, the first empire." "He sold his captive women and children into slavery," Lex said. "Am I Alexander? When we liberated

  the first Cassie planet the people were, at first, suspicious, but when we opened the political prisons and allowed the citizens to elect their own local officials—"

  "Yes, yes," she said. "Of course," he said, "there is a comparison with Hitler, because, like Hitler, I have turned down the opportunity to ally myself with one of our most powerful enemies, the Empire, to fight both Empire and the other strong force in the galaxy."

  "You said it, not I," she said.

  "That's the real reason for the delegation, isn't it? You think, at home, that I'm biting off more than I can chew?" "There is talk," she said. "Fear, you mean." "Fear. Yes. We're afraid of the casualty reports, Lex. We live by them. For the first time in history

  there's unlimited birth on Texas. That's a blessing, I suppose, because now people can have as many children as they want. They can have boys and girls without strict control, letting nature do the balancing. But the joy of a young one in the house is diminished by the news that a husband, a brother, a son has died out here in the galaxy."

  "It will end soon."

  "Will it, Lex? When you've beaten the Cassiopeians, what then? Will you then come home and bring our young men with you?" "There'll be opportunity to go home." "But you'll have a galaxy at your command. Will you leave it and come back to Texas?" "Those who want to go home will be allowed to go home," he said stubbornly. "And Texas will never be the same. Already we're scattered over vast distances. Families separated.

  Men making alliances with Empire women."

  "Distance is nothing," Lex said. "You're not aware, apparently, of the work being done at the Blink Space Works on Macall. Using the Empire techniques of miniaturization we are installing multiple generators on ships of the line. That means no charging periods along known space routes, making a series of blinks possible, reducing the distance between, say, Earth and Texas to hours. The approach to a planet will take longer than the blink across galactic distances."

  Emily smiled sadly. "And it will make the Texas fleet even more invincible."

  "I'd like to talk more with you," Lex said. "Will you May with me? Here?"

  "No," she said. He examined her face closely. "I'm still a Texican woman, Lex. I've had my two

  husbands and I've lost both of them. I'll admit that once I was close to you, but—"

  "Who has changed?" he asked. "You? Me? I'm a Texican, too, Emily. I'm a lonely Texican. I remember how you—"

  She broke in, not wanting to hear it. "I am told that Empire women flock to all fleet bases. I am told that they like Texas men."

  "A man wants to be with his own," Lex said.

  "Then come home, Lex. Let the Empire take care of its problems with Cassiopeia."

  "No."

  "Why?"

  He thought for a moment. He wanted to be truthful with her. He owed her that. "Texicans have died,"

  he's aid. "They've died uselessly. Riddent died for no good reason. I'm going to see that there is an end to

  useless dying."

  The violence of her response shook him, made his face go slack as he withdrew within himself. "Meacr shit," she said. "You're not thinking of Riddent. You're not thinking of dead Texicans. You're thinking of revenge, of yourself. Lex, no amount of killing, no amount of conquest can bring her or them back."

  "You are entitled to your opinion," Lex said weakly.

  "Tell me, Lex, how does it make you feel to know that you're the moving spirit of the most deadly battle force the universe has ever seen? Does it make you feel powerful?"

  He looked at her with his eyes cold. "I know my power," he said. "I know it down to the last man on the

  last airors, to the last projectile in the arsenal."

  "And do you realize how that power has changed you?"

  "We all grow up."

  "No," she said sadly. "It isn't just that. You've changed, Lex. You're not Lex anymore. You're not even a Texican. You're Alexander. You're Napoleon. You're capable of wielding unlimited power and that power will, eventually, turn on you. It always has. It always will."

  "When it's over, I'll come home."

  "No," she said. "No."

  When she was gone, Lex sat at his desk, moodily fingering the corner of his star chart. Then, with a shrug, he bent to check, once again, the path of Texican conquest.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Second Battle of Wolfs Star lasted two hours and ten minutes. The allied dictatorships had massed their main power there, at the site of the last major engagement with the Empire, and it was met by a Texican fleet which was outnumbered ten to one.

  On Texas, Emily heard the engagement called the Slaughter of Wolfs Star.

  With the miniaturized multiple-blink generators installed, the Texican fleet blinked circles around the traditional formations of the Cassiopeians. So efficient had become the killers from extra-galactic space that the destruction was selective. First, Darlene projectiles took out the protecting Vandys, then, millions of men dead, a concerted effort demolished the Cassiopeian force of Middleguard cruisers, leaving a core of huge Rearguards grouped together like frightened, herded meacrs.

  "To the death," vowed the elected battle leader of the Cassiopeians.

  "Death it is, then," Lex sent. "In three minutes and live seconds your ship dies." He himself pushed the button which sent a Darlene projectile blinking into the main control room, there to hang in air as Lex sent, "There is death, my friend. Now you must choose. Surrender, if you will."

  "Never," said the dictator, speaking his last word.

  "Any more heroes?" Lex sent.

  The final engagement of the War of Texican Conquest saw a battered Empire allied with the Cassiopeians, their traditional enemies. Lex sent a phalanx of captured Cassie Rearguards into the scattered formations, spreading fire on all sides. Two days after the final surrender, ship works on a thousand planets began conversion of the huge warships into merchantmen.

  Behind him, Arden Wal administered all of the Cassiopeian territory, bending his main effort to trade, for the Cassies excelled at agriculture. In exchange for foodstuffs, a flow of manufactured goods began to stream out of the old Empire even before Lex began the slow, triumphal march to the home planet, old Earth. Blant Jakkes was in charge of the outer limits of Empire. Form had died at the Second Battle of Wolfs Star. Billy Bob Blink, after the final victory, said goodbye and blinked toward Texas. All over the galaxy, young Texican officers were assuming their duties as administrators of planets, groups of planets, vast star fields. An isolated dictatorship, embracing six plane
ts, resisted. The main military planet was broken, burned, using captured Empire planetkillers, and there was peace.

  The Texas-builtLone Star , flagship of the victorious Texican fleet, neared old Earth, paused as scanners played over the planetary surface to show, in full color close-ups, a park planet, manicured and clean, population confined to towering cities, the main administrative city covering the central belt of the North American continent in what had once been the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. The spaceports which had once served the capital were deserted. In the streets there was little movement.

  Lex scorned the spaceports, lowering theLone Star into the vast reaches of the park surrounding the Emperor's palace. The building, when he stepped out onto the earth of his mother planet, towered over him, gleaming, dazzling in the bright summer sun. The planet was weather-controlled. The temperature, after he confines of a warship, seemed chill at seventy-two degrees. Around him growing things followed orderly patterns as he walked, at the head of his crew of officers, toward the group which was forming to greet him on the palace entry.

  The Lady Gwyn was there, dressed officially. In addition, there were somber-faced old men, documents in hand. "In the name of the Emperor," said one official, "we welcome you to Earth."

  Lex waved them aside, taking the steps two at a time, his officers following, hands on their side arms. The Lady Gwyn, as they passed, said bitterly, "Gentlemen, this is your new Emperor."

  Lex heard. He kept his face forward, striding purposefully up the stairs to the grand entry door. Inside, a huge hall stretched away from him. Uniformed attendants stood fearfully at attention. "The Emperor," Lex said to one of them.

  "This way, sir," the attendant said, bowing, leading Lex across the huge hall into a series of corridors until, with another bow, the man indicated a door flanked by two men, tall by Empire standards.

  "To see the Emperor," the attendant said. "President Lexington Burns."

  Lex brushed past the two guards.

  The Emperor was a very old man, small, seemingly enfolded in official robes of purple. Contrary to Lex's expectations, the room was only of moderate size and there was no throne, only a large desk flanked by a bank of communication equipment. The walls were simple white, decorated with sun paintings, the floor not as luxuriously thick in pile as the corridors outside.

  "Ah," the Emperor said, standing, making a short, stiff bow. "President Burns. Or should I say Emperor Burns."

  "I don't want your title, old man," Lex said.

  The Emperor remained standing. Lex examined the simply furnished room.

  "If I may have your permission to sit," the Emperor said. "Age is a terrible adversary, even more irresistible than your Texicans."

  "Sit, sit," Lex said impatiently.

  "Thank you. May I send for something? A brandy, perhaps?"

  "Nothing," Lex said. He stalked toward the desk. One chair faced it. He sat, letting his feet stick straight out in front, oversized for the chair. He looked at the old man, wondering.

  "So now it's over," the Emperor said. "Strangely, I'm not even sorry."

  "Old man, you launched population reducers on Texas," Lex said.

  "I plead guilty," the Emperor said, with an open-handed gesture. "For I must confess that even then I felt,

  shall we say, a prescient foreboding." He sighed. "Ah, well, there is an end to everything, man, his works, even the universe ultimately."

  Lex had looked forward to the moment. All the way, all that long, terrible way, with death his constant companion, feeling the pain of his victims, drinking blood with his soul, a bitter draught. Now, as he looked at the withered, old, feeble man he felt as if he'd been cheated.

  "Empires," said the old man, "are among the most fragile of man's creations, coming and going as history marches inevitably onward. Now my time has come, just as yours will come."

  "You won't live to see it."

  "Ah." Lex noticed that the old hands were shaking even more. "I ask only, if I am allowed that favor, that I be allowed to choose my own way, a peaceful slumber, as it were, in my own bed."

  Lex rose, walked to a white wall, examined a particularly effective painting. When he turned, the old man's eyes were on him.

  "No," Lex said. "We won't ask that. You can go, if you want to. Pick a place. Just go."

  "Ah. There is a planet. It's in the Sirius sector, a family place. Thinly populated, treed, a green place of quietness and peace. I used to go there when—"

  "Yeah, sure," Lex said. "Just go, huh? Take any with you who want to go. But do it."

  For he had seen, in those few troubled moments, that the death of one old man, already near a natural decease, would change nothing. He turned on his heel and left the Emperor's office, finding his officers in conference with the Emperor's people, discussing an orderly turnover of the mechanics of government. Bored by the discussion he wandered the halls and rooms of the huge building. He discovered the war room in a sub-basement, a huge, gray place of the most sophisticated instrumentation, and that occupied his attention for an hour. Beyond the main room, with its vast arrays of communications, computers and gear, was a wonder which halted his step upon entering, a vast, complicated, scaled model of the galaxy. The loom stretched far and away, two hundred, three hundred feet, and it was filled with it—the galaxy, the stars and the fields and the glowing areas of space debris.

  At first he thought he was alone in the room, but he gradually felt the presence of another and he turned to face a uniformed woman.

  "Sir," she said.

  "Who are you?"

  "I am the operator."

  "Of this?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "It's remarkable," he said.

  "Shall I show you?" the woman asked.

  "Yes."

  He seated himself. The woman disappeared. In a moment the model of the galaxy glowed to wondrous

  life. It was as if he were looking from the viewport of a ship to see the universe spread before him.

  A voice came to him, pleasant, speaking in Empire accents.

  "We have traced your progress," the voice said. "From the time you left your home planet and entered

  the galaxy here."

  A red glow showed the point of entry.

  "And I, personally, could not help but admire you," the female voice said, as the red glow began to move

  into the galaxy, coloring star after star in its inevitable spread.

  "The red color of your movements," the voice said, "the path of conquest as it passed Centaurus and then into Cassiopeian space."

  Seeing it graphically reproduced, he felt, for the first time, the sweep of it. In his mind he relived the

  march down the starways, in his eyes the glow of red, the color of his achievements.

  "At the Battle of Wolfs Star," the woman was saying, but he blanked it from his mind, the voice, and let his eyes watch the march of red toward Earth and then it was all red, the galaxy, all red, all his. And as he watched motion began in the vast wheel as it simulated the 'whirl of the galaxy in space, the movement greatly accelerated. He watched it wheel before his eyes and wished, dreamed, that she was by his side to see. Riddent.

  Or Arden Wal. Or Jakkes. Form and Billy Bob. His father. But he was alone with the slowly wheeling galaxy, his galaxy, his red, beautiful galaxy.

  And they were dead. Riddent. His father. Form. Billy Bob was back on Texas, probably competing for the hand of a Texas girl. Jakkes and Arden were doing his work out in his galaxy and he was alone.

  Emily.

  He had offered her a chance to be by his side and she had refused.

  A moment of hurt and anger. He could send for her. He was Lex. He could order and she would come,

  or be forced to come.

  But no.

  "Please go," he said.

  The woman heard. "Yes, sir," her amplified voice said.

  "Leave it turning."

  Now he was truly alone with his galaxy and it flowed in
red and wheeled in front of his eyes and he

  remembered the awe he had felt when he first came to be aware of the extent of the old Empire. Now the Empire seemed puny when compared with the sweep of his galaxy. Now it was all one, under the protection of Texas, a unit. Billions of people with the capability of expanding, of peopling the uninhabited stars past galactic center. Cassiopeia and Empire were one, under the flag of Texas.

  Why, then, did he feel as empty as space, as sterile as a sun which has long since gone into nova, crisping life from its planets?

  Emily.

  She had been so close, once. And there on the flagship when she'd come with the Texican delegation she'd been cold, sadness in her eyes. Why sadness? He had not changed. She compared him with the ancient conquerors of old Earth and, in effect, told him that he had changed. But he bad not changed. He was older and he'd seen enough death and destruction to drive the joys and frivolity of youth from his mind, but every man grows up. How had he changed?

  He remembered the day in his home when she was preparing him for his first venture into the Empire, a trip as a prisoner. And, as if she were with him, standing by his side as the model of the galaxy rolled, he could hear her voice.

  "You cried because it was beautiful," she had said. "I hope you never lose the ability to cry over beauty."

  "No," he said aloud, "I have not changed."

  And with a gesture of personal triumph, he wiped a tear from his cheek.

  "I haven't changed," he said, his voice going out to lose itself in the sheer wonder and beauty of the galaxy which wheeled majestically before him. His galaxy. And somewhere in it the memory—he did not believe in the soul—the fractured atoms of what once had been Riddent and his unborn son, old Form, dead at Wolfs Star, all of them, all the good Texicans dead and gone, their elemental particles spinning, spinning in space or reintegrating with the soil of Dallas City. And he felt a vast and overwhelming sadness as he watched the model of the galaxy spin them away from him forever. He had come so far. So far. Now it was over, the fighting. Now was only the task of restoring order, of making the galaxy the best possible place for people.