Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [85]
“Trantor?” questioned the emperor, mildly, “Trantor?”
Then a look of puzzled pain crossed his thin face. “Trantor?” he whispered. “I remember now. I am making plans now to return there with a flood of ships at my back. You shall come with me. Together we will destroy the rebel, Gilmer. Together we shall restore the empire!”
His bent back had straightened. His voice had strengthened. For a moment his eyes were hard. Then, he blinked and said softly, “But Gilmer is dead. I seem to remember—Yes. Yes! Gilmer is dead! Trantor is dead—For a moment, it seemed—Where was it you said you came from?”
Magnifico whispered to Bayta, “Is this really an emperor? For somehow I thought emperors were greater and wiser than ordinary men.”
Bayta motioned him quiet. She said, “If your imperial majesty would but sign an order permitting us to go to Trantor, it would avail greatly the common cause.”
“To Trantor?” The emperor was blank and uncomprehending.
“Sire, the Viceroy of Anacreon, in whose name we speak, sends word that Gilmer is yet alive—”
“Alive! Alive!” thundered Dagobert. “Where? It will be war!”
“Your imperial majesty, it must not yet be known. His whereabouts are uncertain. The viceroy sends us to acquaint you of the fact, and it is only on Trantor that we may find his hiding place. Once discovered—”
“Yes, yes—He must be found—” The old emperor doddered to the wall and touched the little photocell with a trembling finger. He muttered, after an ineffectual pause, “My servants do not come. I cannot wait for them.”
He was scribbling on a blank sheet, and ended with a flourished “D.” He said, “Gilmer will yet learn the power of his emperor. Where was it you came from? Anacreon? What are the conditions there? Is the name of the emperor powerful?”
Bayta took the paper from his loose fingers, “Your imperial majesty is beloved by the people. Your love for them is widely known.”
“I shall have to visit my good people of Anacreon, but my doctor says . . . I don’t remember what he says, but—” He looked up, his old gray eyes sharp, “Were you saying something of Gilmer?”
“No, your imperial majesty.”
“He shall not advance further. Go back and tell your people that. Trantor shall hold! My father leads the fleet now, and the rebel vermin Gilmer shall freeze in space with his regicidal rabble.”
He staggered into a seat and his eyes were blank once more. “What was I saying?”
Toran rose and bowed low. “Your imperial majesty has been kind to us, but the time allotted us for an audience is over.”
For a moment, Dagobert IX looked like an emperor indeed as he rose and stood stiff-backed while, one by one, his visitors retreated backward through the door—
—to where twenty armed men intervened and locked a circle about them.
A hand-weapon flashed—
To Bayta, consciousness returned sluggishly, but without the “Where am I?” sensation. She remembered clearly the odd old man who called himself emperor, and the other men who waited outside. The arthritic tingle in her finger joints meant a stun pistol.
She kept her eyes closed, and listened with painful attention to the voices.
There were two of them. One was slow and cautious, with a slyness beneath the surface obsequity. The other was hoarse and thick, almost sodden, and blurted out in viscous spurts. Bayta liked neither.
The thick voice was predominant.
Bayta caught the last words, “He will live forever, that old madman. It wearies me. It annoys me. Commason, I will have it. I grow older, too.”
“Your highness, let us first see of what use these people are. It may be we shall have sources of strength other than your father still provides.”
The thick voice was lost in a bubbling whisper. Bayta caught only the phrase “—the girl—” but the other, fawning voice was a nasty, low, running chuckle followed by a comradely, near-patronizing, “Dagobert, you do not age. They lie who say you are not a youth of twenty.