When Iserlohn learned through underground routes from Heinessen that von Oberstein had departed Phezzan to quell the unrest, it sent a chill wind through the fortress’s air ducts.
“Von Oberstein’s a coolheaded military bureaucrat and a master of intrigue,” said von Schönkopf. “He won’t simply throw brute force at the problem. What he will do, though, I have no idea.”
None argued with this summary of the situation.
Von Schönkopf had once described von Oberstein as “a razor bearing the imperial seal and chilled to absolute zero.” The two had never met in person, but once, whiskey glass in hand, von Schönkopf had wondered if that was really true.
“I remember walking through the city once with my mother, back when I was a young boy in the empire. I saw another boy with a dark, baleful glare coming the other way, so I stuck my tongue out at him as hard as I could. Thinking back, that might have been von Oberstein himself. I should have thrown a rock at him when I had the chance.”
“I imagine the other boy recalls the incident in much the same way,” remarked Captain Kasper Rinz as he drew in his sketchbook.
Von Schönkopf paused. “What makes you think that?”
“Why, when I was in my mother’s womb I was a subject of the empire myself,” said the young officer and would-be artist, not quite answering the question.
In any case, von Oberstein was a man now. What kind of rock was he preparing to hurl at the republic?
There was no pressing strategic need on the imperial side to maintain control of Heinessen. If it fell into enemy hands, they could simply apply military force to recapture it at their leisure. Unlike Iserlohn, it was not a fortified military base and the space around it was safe. Also, the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army was not large enough to secure an entire planet as well as their home fortress.
If von Oberstein were to make a show of abandoning Heinessen, Julian was not sure how to fight back. The planet’s inhabitants would surely be overjoyed and call the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army to join them right away. But if Julian heeded such a call, Iserlohn would find itself floating in space without any defenses to speak of, liable to be surrounded and crushed by the imperial forces at any time. On the other hand, if he refused to go to Heinessen, that might amount to abandoning the planet to permanent military rule under the empire.
Suddenly, Julian remembered something. The record that proved the relationship between the Church of Terra and Phezzan—a record that he had risked his life to bring from Terra itself.
It was a record which viewed humanity in a profoundly negative light. Von Schönkopf, Poplin, Attenborough–none of them smiled after reading it. On the contrary, they looked as though they had drunk and then regurgitated poisoned liquor. And these were Iserlohn’s finest, famed for their nerves of steel and stomachs of reinforced ceramic.
Julian himself felt no joy at having brought this information to Iserlohn, even after risking his life to travel to Terra, infiltrate the Church, and obtain it. Above all, it had not been sufficient to save Yang Wen-li’s life.
But did Iserlohn’s knowledge of the connection between Phezzan and the Church give them an advantage over the Galactic Empire? From a strategic perspective, the task before them was to put that information to use in such a way as to make it an advantage. But Julian was not sure he could do that. If only Yang had been alive, he would surely have found a way to fit it into the dazzling, finely worked-out jigsaw puzzle of his strategic thinking.
Either way, there was nothing on Terra that made me want to return. What lies there is not the future but the past. If we have a future, it’s not on Terra, but…
Here Julian’s heart fell silent as mild consternation gripped him. Did humanity’s future lie on Phezzan? Not as the former Phezzan Land, but as capital of the New Galactic Empire? In short, would the future of humanity be entrusted to Reinhard von Lohengramm and his dynasty? The idea was not itself impossible for Julian to accept. Simply by moving the capital to Phezzan, Reinhard had demonstrated that he was a creator of history. But if a reformation could be effected by one “great man” alone, where did that leave the people? Were they just a powerless, passive presence there, existing solely to be protected and rescued by their heroes? This was a painful notion for Julian, just as it had been for Yang.
In any case, Julian remained unsure of what to do with the knowledge that a web of intrigue had been spun between Phezzan and the Church of Terra.
“Maybe we should instruct Kaiser Reinhard on the matter, and bill him one planet as tuition,” Attenborough suggested with a chuckle.
He was clearly joking, and Julian laughed too, but, on reflection, “one planet” struck him as a telling phrase. Reinhard would not, of course, exchange an entire planet for that information alone. But politics, and diplomacy in particular, always had a transactional side. If they sought reconciliation and even concessions from the proud kaiser, they would need something of appropriate value to trade. Perhaps, Julian thought, a measure of victory through military force could play that role.
Julian’s thoughts roamed still further. All this aside, what had happened to Adrian Rubinsky, the man who had not only escaped the crushing weight of an eight hundred–year grudge but had actually repurposed it to fuel his own ambition and talents? Was he deep underground on some planet somewhere, still sharpening the claws of his conspiracy against the empire and its ruler? If he was, he had surely painted those claws lavishly with venom…
✦ ✦ ✦
Julian was not the only one wondering where Rubinsky was. The empire’s Ministry of Domestic Affairs and military police headquarters were running a manhunt of their own.
As for the last landesherr of Phezzan himself, he lay on a sofa, fully dressed in a suit, in a small room somewhere in the galaxy. The sweat that beaded on his forehead was the fault of his physical condition rather than insufficient air-conditioning. His mistress, Dominique Saint-Pierre, sat at a table beside him, whiskey glass in hand, studying him with a gaze that belonged neither to an observer nor a spectator.
“I didn’t know you were so sentimental,” Rubinsky said.
He had just heard about the kindness she had shown to Elfriede von Kohlrausch, when Dominique had summoned a doctor for her and her newborn child, and sent her to Heinessen on a trading ship she owned to see the child’s father.
“Where is the woman now?” he asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Dominique calmly flicked the rim of her glass. As the sound propagated to Rubinsky’s ears, its ring was so clear and pure that the effect seemed almost contrived. Dominique changed the subject. “I understand why you are in a hurry, your health being what it is. But I wonder how much can be achieved through some minor increase in the disruptions to supplies and communications.”
She knew that Rubinsky’s attempt to delete Phezzan’s navigational data had failed, and was happy to mock him for it.
“Sometimes you have to play a hand that doesn’t have any trumps at all,” Rubinsky said. “This year is one of those times. What you think of the matter does not concern me.”
“You are in decline, aren’t you? You never spoke in such trite clichés before. Your powers of expression are starting to fail you. How sad—you always used to know just what to say, too.”
It is possible that a microscopic fragment of pity was mingled with her caustic tone. The two of them had accumulated a certain tangled history between them, insubstantial though it was. How many years had it been now? She reeled in the slender thread of memory. She had met Rubinsky when both of them were still young, creatures more of ambition than accomplishment. They had been too busy to reflect on the past then. Rubinsky had only been a secretary in Phezzan’s government, while Dominique had intended to scale society’s heights using nothing but her talents as a singer and dancer.
Suddenly, Rubinsky’s voice closed the door on her memories.
“Do you intend to sell me out, just as you sold out Rupert?”
Dominique raised her eyebrows a fraction. With a sober, dispassionate gaze, she surveyed the form of the man to whom she had, indeed, once been joined in body and soul. But all she could see now was the rift between past and present, already vast and widening by the second.
“Rupert went down fighting, in his way,” she said. “What about you? Do you ever plan to challenge the kaiser openly?” By now Dominique was speaking more to the afterimage of the man beyond that yawning crevasse than anything else. “After you die, others will decide how you faced Reinhard—whether you fought him, or whether you simply tried to trip him up. And you won’t be there to argue with their assessment.”
There was no reply.