Julian had many opportunities to converse with Reinhard as they traveled to Phezzan together aboard Brünhild. Reinhard enjoyed hearing Julian relate anecdotes about Yang Wen-li. Sometimes he nodded eagerly, sometimes he laughed aloud, but, according to Julian’s recollections, “great as the kaiser was, his sense of humor was somewhat underdeveloped. Two jokes out of every five left him baffled and struggling to understand where the humor lay.” We should note, however, that Julian’s grasp of Imperial Standard may not have been entirely what the kaiser would have preferred.
Naturally, the journey to Phezzan also saw serious debate on future governance.
Iserlohn Fortress would be returned to the empire. In return, the empire would grant the right of self-governance to Heinessen and the rest of the Baalat System. On these two points, full agreement had been reached. There were many in the Empire’s Ministry of Domestic Affairs who had already concluded—based on the string of man-made calamities there—that Heinessen all but ungovernable. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Military Affairs would certainly be pleased to regain Iserlohn Fortress without bloodshed. Accordingly, both ministries were sure to welcome the agreement.
However, on the matter of an imperial constitution and parliament, Reinhard would make no commitments. He would consider the merits of constitutional governance, he said, but he could offer no promises, and did not wish to lie to Julian.
“If you and I settle everything ourselves, what would be left for later generations to do? ‘If only those two had minded their own business,’ they would grumble.”
Reinhard spoke in a jocular tone, but it was clear he had no interest in allowing democracy to continue to exist without conditions or regulations to govern it. This was a reminder for Julian that the kaiser had not lost his cold realism as an administrator.
Achieving self-governance for Baalat was a major concession. But Heinessen would first have to rebuild after the devastation of Rubinsky’s Inferno. In astrographical terms, too, the planet would be easier to attack and harder to defend than Iserlohn Fortress. Furthermore, since the entire system tended toward consumption rather than production, food and other supplies had to be imported from other systems—and those other systems would remain entirely under imperial control. Viewed in military terms, their situation would actually worsen. The magnanimity Reinhard had shown Julian was a double-edged sword, and both of them knew it.
Incidentally, there was good reason why the disease that claimed Reinhard’s life so early became generally known as “the Kaiser’s Malady.” Few could pronounce or even remember its proper name, “Variable Fulminant Collagen Disease.” In fact, when Wittenfeld had first heard it, he had flared with rage and accused Reinhard’s physicians of mockery.
High fever, inflammation and hemorrhaging of the internal organs with the resultant pain, loss of energy, degradation of hematopoietic function and the resultant anemia, mental confusion—these are given as the disease’s main symptoms, though Reinhard had thus far shown little mental confusion even when feverish. Aside from his refusal to leave his sickroom during Rubinsky’s Inferno, he had not done anything to suggest psychological instability. His appearance, too, was all but unchanged, with only a hint of gauntness and a tinge of unhealthy color in his porcelain-white skin. If there was a Creator, He was permitting Reinhard to remain beautiful until the very end in exchange for his early death—evidence, perhaps, that the kaiser had enjoyed more of His favor than others. Julian left detailed notes on Reinhard’s condition every day. Had Yang Wen-li been alive, he would surely have envied Julian, and knowing this was precisely why Julian did not take his mission as recordkeeper lightly.
On July 18, Brünhild reached Phezzan. The place Reinhard had chosen as the center of the galaxy would be the place where he ended his life. A landcar furnished with medical equipment was waiting when he arrived to carry him to his wife and child.
With Stechpalme Schloß burned down by the Church of Terra, Kaiserin Hilda and Prinz Alec, after being discharged from the hospital, had taken the residence once used by the high commissioner of the Goldenbaum Dynasty. The building came to be known as the Provisional Palace of Welsede, named simply after the area in which it stood, and it was to become the unassuming terminal station where Reinhard’s vast, sweeping life came to an end. The first floor overflowed with civilian and military officials, the second was staffed by physicians and nurses, and the third was where the kaiser’s family awaited him.
Julian was surprised by the modest simplicity of this provisional palace. Compared to the average commoner’s residence, of course, it was sprawling and lavishly appointed. But for a conquering king who ruled the entire galaxy, it was extremely reserved, a thousand times smaller than the Neue Sans Souci Palace of the Goldenbaum Dynasty. Of course, Julian had only ever seen Neue Sans Souci from outside, and that only once.
Julian and his companions Dusty Attenborough, Olivier Poplin, and Katerose von Kreutzer checked into the Bernkastel Hotel, located about ten minutes’ walk from the temporary palace, “guarded” by a company’s worth of imperial army troops stationed around the hotel. Julian accepted this as unpleasant but understandable.
“I think we can let this one slide,” agreed Attenborough, with an uncharacteristic lack of bellicosity.
If the Galactic Empire adopted a constitutional system and a parliament in the future, Julian thought, Dusty Attenborough might show his triumphant face there as leader of the progressive faction. Oddly, the Attenborough who lived in Julian’s imaginary world was always in the opposition. Julian simply could not imagine him occupying a seat of power in the ruling party. As leader of the opposition, he would denounce corruption among the powerful, criticize failings of governance, and take a firm stand on protecting the rights of minorities. That would suit him best—even if, once or twice a year, he might start a brawl in the debate chamber.
In a way, Kaiser Reinhard had imposed a painful trial on democratic republican governance. Your values have survived war, he seemed to say; now let us see if they can escape corruption in peacetime. Attenborough would spend his life fighting to prevent that corruption, and do so with no regrets.
Regarding Olivier Poplin, however, Julian’s imagination could only admit defeat. What kind of future was the green-eyed ace preparing for himself?
“Space piracy might not be bad. I used up all my obedience and patience under Yang Wen-li. I don’t intend to bow my head or tie my fate to anyone else until the day I die.”
Poplin always kept his true feelings obscured, but Julian suspected that he may have been serious about the gravestone inscription of “Died June 1” that he had chosen. Long ago, when the calendar in use had been AD rather than SE, Chao Yui-lin, one of the elder statesmen of the Sirius Revolution, had turned his back on public office and taught singing and organ playing to children instead. It seemed to Julian that this kind of second act might suit Poplin surprisingly well.
What about Karin’s future? No doubt it would be intertwined in large part with his own. The thought made Julian feel something difficult to put into words. If Yang Wen-li and Walter von Schönkopf were watching from the next world, what kind of expressions would they wear?
In any case, it was good to be able to plan for the future. There had been a real chance of things going badly enough to leave them with no interest in the future at all.
Among the facts brought to light by Adrian Rubinsky’s death and Dominique Saint-Pierre’s confession, one revelation had made Julian shudder. It seemed that Job Trünicht had hoped to create something that, outwardly, was exactly the same as what Julian sought—a constitutional system within the empire. Furthermore, with Rubinsky’s assistance, his personal and financial influence within the empire’s halls of power had been gradually expanding.
If von Reuentahl had not shot him dead at the end of the previous year, it might have been Trünicht who proposed to Reinhard a transition to constitutional governance. Then, after ten years or so of quiet patience, he might have risen once more to become prime minister of the Galactic Empire. He would have been in his fifties, still young for a politician, with a rich future ahead of him. After selling out his country, its people, and democracy itself to autocratic governance, Trünicht might have become a “constitutional politician” ruling not half but all of the galaxy.
The prospect was chilling. Job Trünicht was a master of self-interested political art, and his vivid vision of the future had been partly realized by the time of his untimely death. It was not the law that had interrupted his machinations, or even military action. A single beam of light, fired out of pure emotion rather than sober reason, had banished Trünicht and his future beyond the horizon of reality. Von Reuentahl’s private feelings about the man had made that correction to the map of humanity’s future.
Fate, Julian realized, was a marvelously convenient word. Even circumstances as involved as these could be explained to the satisfaction of others if fate was invoked. Could that have been why Yang had tried to never use it?