Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [76]
“Come, the democrats have fought the mayors and the Traders for eighty years by connivery. Let’s try assassination.”
“How?” interposed the Fox, with cold common sense.
The captain said slowly, “I’ve spent three months of thought on that with no solution. I came here and had it in five minutes.” He glanced briefly at the man whose broad, pink melon of a face smiled from the place at his right. “You were once Mayor Indbur’s chamberlain. I did not know you were of the underground.”
“Nor I, that you were.”
“Well, then, in your capacity as chamberlain you periodically checked the working of the alarm system of the palace.”
“I did.”
“And the Mule occupies the palace now.”
“So it has been announced—though he is a modest conqueror who makes no speeches, proclamations, nor public appearances of any sort.”
“That’s an old story, and affects nothing. You, my ex-chamberlain, are all we need.”
The cards were shown and the Fox collected the stakes. Slowly, he dealt a new hand.
The man who had once been chamberlain picked up his cards, singly. “Sorry, captain. I checked the alarm system, but it was routine. I know nothing about it.”
“I expected that, but your mind carries an eidetic memory of the controls if it can be probed deeply enough—with a Psychic Probe.”
The chamberlain’s ruddy face paled suddenly and sagged. The cards in his hand crumpled under sudden fist pressure, “A Psychic Probe?”
“You needn’t worry,” said the captain, sharply. “I know how to use one. It will not harm you past a few days’ weakness. And if it did, it is the chance you take and the price you pay. There are some among us, no doubt, who from the controls of the alarm could determine the wavelength combinations. There are some among us who could manufacture a small bomb under time control, and I myself will carry it to the Mule.”
The men gathered over the table.
The captain announced, “On a given evening, a riot will start in Terminus City in the neighborhood of the palace. No real fighting. Disturbance—then flight. As long as the palace guard is attracted . . . or, at the very least, distracted—”
From that day for a month the preparations went on, and Captain Han Pritcher of the National Fleet having become conspirator descended further in the social scale and became an “assassin.”
Captain Pritcher, assassin, was in the palace itself, and found himself grimly pleased with his psychology. A thorough alarm system outside meant few guards within. In this case, it meant none at all.
The floor plan was clear in his mind. He was a blob moving noiselessly up the well-carpeted ramp. At its head, he flattened against the wall and waited.
The small closed door of a private room was before him. Behind that door must be the mutant who had beaten the unbeatable. He was early—the bomb had ten minutes of life in it.
Five of these passed, and still in all the world there was no sound. The Mule had five minutes to live—So had Captain Pritcher—
He stepped forward on sudden impulse. The plot could no longer fail. When the bomb went, the palace would go with it—all the palace. A door between—ten yards between—was nothing. But he wanted to see the Mule as they died together.
In a last, insolent gesture, he thundered upon the door—
And it opened and let out the blinding light.
Captain Pritcher staggered, then caught himself. The solemn man, standing in the center of the small room before a suspended fish bowl, looked up mildly.
His uniform was a somber black, and as he tapped the bowl in an absent gesture, it bobbed quickly and the feather-finned orange and vermilion fish within darted wildly.
He said, “Come in, captain!”
To the captain’s quivering tongue the little metal globe beneath was swelling ominously—a physical impossibility, the captain knew. But it was in its last minute of life.
The uniformed man said, “You had better spit out the foolish pellet and free yourself for speech. It won’t blast.”
The minute passed and with a slow, sodden motion the