"Mule..."
Summary: My AU version of the Asimov tale from his collection of Foundation and Second Foundation tales.
Even as civil war threatens the mighty but flawed Foundation, the Galaxy's greatest power since the Fall of the great Galactic Empire, its road to eventual triumph as the reuniting force in the Galaxy yet (supposedly) guaranteed by the quasi-mystical Seldon Plan, a mysterious warlord of a new and rapidly rising power is maneuvering to seize domination of the Galaxy in defiance of Seldon.
Book II: The Search...
Part VII...
There was not a word to be said. The echoes of the blast rolled away into the outer rooms and rumbled downward into a hoarse, dying whisper. Before its death, it had muffled the sharp clamor of Bayta's falling blaster, smothered Magnifica's high-pitched cry, drowned out Toran's inarticulate roar. There was a silence of agony.
Bayta's head was bent into obscurity. A droplet caught the light as it fell. Bayta had never wept since her childhood. Toran's muscles almost cracked in their spasm, but he did not relax...He felt as if he would never unclench his teeth again. Magnifica's face was a faded, lifeless mask.
Finally, from between teeth still tight, Toran choked out in an unrecognizable voice, "You're a Mule's woman, then. He got to you!"
Bayta looked up, and her mouth twisted with a painful merriment, "I, a Mule's woman? That's ironic." She smiled...A brittle effort...And tossed her hair back. Slowly, her voice verged back to the normal, or something near it.
"It's over, Toran, I can talk now. How much I will survive, I don't know. But I can start talking..." Toran's tension had broken of its own weight and faded into a flaccid dullness, "Talk about what, Bay? What's there to talk about?"
"About the calamity that's followed us. We've discussed it before, Torie. Don't you remember? How defeat has always bitten at our heels and never actually managed to nip us? We were on the Foundation, and it collapsed while the Independent Traders still fought...But we got out in time to go to Haven. We were on Haven, and it collapsed while a few of the others still fought...And again we got out in time. We went to Neotrantor, and by now it's undoubtedly joined the Mule."
Toran listened and shook his head, "I don't understand."
"Torie, such things don't happen in real life. You and I are insignificant people, we don't fall from one vortex of politics into another continuously for the space of a year...Unless we carry the vortex with us. Unless we carry the source of infection with us! Now do you see?"
Toran's lips tightened. His glance fixed horribly upon the bloody remnants of what had once been a human, and his eyes sickened. "Let's get out of here, Bay. Let's get out into the open."
It was cloudy outside. The wind scudded about them in drab spurts and disordered Bayta's hair. Magnifica had crept after them and now she hovered at the edge of their conversation.
Toran said tightly, "You killed Ebling Mis because you believed him to be the focus of infection?"
Something in her eyes struck him. He whispered, "He was the Mule?"
He did not...Could not...Believe the implications of his own words.
Bayta laughed sharply, "Poor Ebling the Mule? Galaxy, no! I couldn't have killed him if he were the Mule. He would have detected the emotion accompanying the move and changed it for me to love, devotion, adoration, terror, whatever he pleased. No, I killed Ebling because he was not the Mule. I killed him because he knew where the Second Foundation was, and in two seconds would have told the Mule the secret."
"Would have told the Mule the secret," Toran repeated stupidly. "Told the Mule..." And then he emitted a sharp cry, and turned to stare in horror at the girl, who might have been crouching unconscious there for the apparent understanding she had of what she heard.
"Not Magnifica?" Toran whispered the question.
"Listen!" said Bayta. "Do you remember what happened on Neotrantor? Oh, think for yourself, Torie..." But he shook his head and mumbled at her.
She went on, wearily, "A man died on Neotrantor. A man died with no one touching him. Isn't that true? Magnifica played on her Visi-Sonor and when she was finished, the crown prince was dead. Now isn't that strange? Isn't it queer that a creature afraid of everything, apparently helpless with terror, has the capacity to kill at will."
"The music and the light-effects," said Toran, "have a profound emotional effect..." He paused, realizing.
"Yes, yes, an emotional effect. A pretty big one. Emotional effects happen to be the Mule's specialty. That, I suppose, can be considered a coincidence. And a creature who can kill by suggestion is so full of fright. Well, the Mule tampered with his mind, supposedly, so that can be explained. But, Toran, I caught a little of that Visi-Sonor selection that killed the crown prince. Just a little...But it was enough to give me that same feeling of despair I had in the Time Vault and on Haven. Toran, I can't mistake that particular feeling."
Toran's face was darkening. "I...felt it, too. I forgot. I never thought..."
"It was then that it first occurred to me. It was just a vague feeling...Intuition, if you like. I had nothing to go on. And I did not, do not, want to believe." She paused.
"And then Pritcher told us of the Mule and his mutation, and it was clear in a moment. It was the Mule who had created the despair in the Time Vault. It was Magnifica who had killed with despair on Neotrantor. It was the same emotion. Therefore, the Mule and Magnifica were the same person. Doesn't it work out nicely, Torie? Isn't it just like an axiom in geometry...Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other?"
She was at the edge of hysteria, but dragged herself back to sobriety by main force. She continued, "The discovery scared me to death. If Magnifica were the Mule, she could know my emotions...And cure them for her own purposes. I dared not let her know. I avoided her. I tried to keep Torie from her. Luckily, she avoided me also, she was too interested in Ebling Mis."
"I planned killing Mis before he could talk. I planned it secretly...As secretly as I could...So secretly I didn't dare tell it to myself. If I could have killed the Mule herself, my best friend...My nearest thing to a younger sister..." Tears running.
"But I couldn't take the chance. She would have noticed, and I would have lost everything." She seemed drained of emotion.
Toran said harshly and with finality, "It's impossible. Look at her, the poor thing. She the Mule? She doesn't even understand what we're saying."
But when his eyes followed his pointing finger, Magnifica was erect and alert, her eyes sharp and darkly bright. Her voice was without a trace of an accent, "I hear her, my dear, dear friend. It is merely that I have been sitting here and brooding on the fact that with all my cleverness and forethought I could make a mistake, and lose so much."
Toran stumbled backward as if afraid the girl/the clown/the jester/the conqueror of the Foundation now firmly eyeing him might touch him or that her breath might contaminate him. Magnifica nodded, and answered the unspoken question. "I am the Mule."
"My friends...I am sorry, but for my own purposes it was quite necessary to deceive you. And as you are somewhat are, thanks to poor Pritcher's misguided attempt to warn you off, aware of my abilities, it was quite simple, as you are now beginning to realize. Come, it's about to rain, and I do wish to speak to you both." She indicated the open hatch. They followed her without a word and in the main cabin, took seats. There was a faint cry of Torie in his crib in the open nursery cabin.
"Let him be." Bayta insisted, though no one had moved or indicated such.
Magnifica sighed. "I do regret this, I am truly fond of you both, I do love young Toraan, and I truly was fond of Ebling and Mylin whose deaths I regret as well...Personally, as well as for the sake of my plans..."
"All this time..." Toran shook his head. "We loved you."
"And I, in my way, have loved you, Toran...All of you..." she eyed them calmly. "But I had my plans and my purposes...And now I have my regrets. I point out, only to say I am not quite a monster, that you, or the Foundation whom you would have instantly handed me over to, no doubt with regret..." wry smile. "Would have killed me without hesitation. And that people who loved me, followed me, some quite voluntarily and without compulsion, people you do not know or care for, died or suffered at the Foundation's hands."
"We've defeated you, Torie and I! And the Second Foundation survives! Kill us if you want, you're beaten." Bayta, proudly, but trembling, tears running. Toran staring, still stunned.
"Bayta...I've no intention of harming you or your husband. My mistakes are my own." Shrug. "But I do ask that you listen. I truly do want people to understand me..." Magnifica eyed her, her sad brown eyes staring.
"I was born in poverty on one of the ruined worlds in a backwater of the Galaxy, abandoned centuries ago by the Empire. Sesa, a crude, poor, backwater mining world. My mother died bearing me...I don't know who my father was. But from the moment I became conscious of my existence, I've known I'm ugly...A freak...Deformed. And never lacked for people to tell me so. I was exactly as I've told you for years...A clown, a fool...Lucky when I wasn't raped by the few who didn't care what I looked like or simply beaten or ignored. I was known even in my youth as a queer child. All avoided me, most out of dislike, some out of odd fear which I then could not understand. But then, odd incidents occurred...Well, never mind! Enough happened to enable Captain Pritcher, in his investigation of my childhood to realize that I was a mutant, which was more than I ever realized until I was in my late teens. But nature gave me something else, a power I wasn't aware of for years...At first, I merely thought I could amuse people enough to make them stop hurting me. The whole notion of my unusual power seems to have broken on me so slowly, in such sluggish steps. Even in my teens, I couldn't believe it. To me, men's minds are dials, with pointers that indicate the prevailing emotion. It is a poor picture, but how else can I explain it? Slowly, I learned that I could reach into those minds and turn the pointer to the spot I wished, that I could nail it there forever. And then it took even longer to realize that others couldn't."
"But the consciousness of power came, and with it, the desire to make up for the miserable position of my earlier life. Maybe you can understand it. Maybe you can try to understand it. It isn't easy to be a freak...To have a mind and an understanding...My IQ by the way surpasses even the highest on record..."wry smile... "And be a freak. Laughter and cruelty! To be different! To be forever an outsider!"
"You've never been through it! Yes, it was years before I realized I could control people mentally...Fix their minds as I wished, even permanently...And even longer before I realized others couldn't. As I tried to understand the nature of my abilities...I studied when I could, trying to learn the nature of my power and learned of the history of the Empire and of your great Foundation...And I escaped Sesa, at last, stowing away on Lord Rox's flagship." eyeing them coolly.
"And along the way, I learnt of the Seldon Plan and its promises...Promises I saw meant nothing to billions, trillions like me, left on worlds like mine. Suffering in poverty and war even as the Foundation prospered and grew and became cruel...You don't know, I suspect, just how cruel in furthering your grand Plan, your Foundation has become. What your agents have done in the shadows and corners, in the name of the great Seldon Plan...And slowly my ambitions changed, to my mind became unselfish though not to yours I understand." wan smile.
"It seemed curious and hardly a blessing that so many must suffer, even for a thousand years. Or that the noble, magical Foundation should have so little regard for the suffering of so many. And you, my dear, might be surprised how many feel that way, in the Galaxy beyond your Foundation. And wonder what sort of new Empire the Foundation will impose, where the individual counts for nothing...The powerful still reign supreme...And all is allowed by the sacred, mystical power of Seldon's Plan."
"We were trying to change that...Our movement..." Bayta insisted. "You knew that..."
"Your intentions are honorable, but you know Seldon had expected your movement would be defeated...Perhaps with some reforms but to him, my counterpart..." smile to Bayta's glare. "Nothing mattered but that his grand scheme to recreate the Empire was achieved, regardless of what individuals suffered. You think I'm an egomaniac, comparing myself to the great Hari Seldon. But think, Bayta...He violated his own doctrine of psychohistory, setting himself up as the one individual who would change the Galaxy's course. And did it without concern for those he knew must suffer as a result, perhaps forever if his Empire rises. And in doing so, he failed to allow that another individual might arise to counter him and his Plan. Me." Gentle smile, slight bow.
"I decided that the Galaxy and I could take turns. Come, they had had their innings, and I had been patient about it - for twenty-two years. My turn! It would be up to the rest of you to take it! And the odds would be fair enough for the Galaxy. One of me! Quadrillions of them! Though, in time, I did find others, others who found my dream quite attractive, even without my singular method of compulsion."
She paused to glance at Bayta swiftly. "But I had a weakness. I was nothing in myself. If I could gain power, it could only be by means of others. Success came to me through middlemen. Always! It was as Pritcher said. Through my Lord Rox and his fleet, I obtained my first asteroidal base of operations. Through an industrialist, I got my first foothold on a planet. Through a variety of others ending with the warlord of Kalgan, I won Kalgan itself and got a navy. After that, it was the Foundation...And you two, poor Mylin, and dear Ebling came into the story."
"The Foundation," she said, softly, "was the most difficult task I had met. To beat it, I would have to win over, break down, or render useless an extraordinary proportion of its ruling class. I could have done it from scratch...But a shortcut was possible, and I looked for it. After all, if a strong man can lift five hundred pounds, it does not mean that he is eager to do so continuously. My emotional control is not an easy task, I prefer not to use it, where not fully necessary, apart from the fact that I relish voluntary recruits. So I accepted allies in my first attack upon the Foundation."
"As my own clown, I looked for the agent, or agents, of the Foundation that must inevitably have been sent to Kalgan to investigate my humble self. I had converted a few my intelligence services, operating at quite high, compelled efficiency had located but they weren't quite what I needed, though extremely useful. I know now it was Han Pritcher I was looking for. By a stroke of fortune, I found you instead. I am a telepath as well, but not a complete one, and, my lady, you were from the Foundation. I was led astray by that. It was not fatal, for Pritcher showed up afterward, but it was the starting point of an error that was fatal."
Toran stirred for the first time. He spoke in an outraged tone, "Hold on, now. You mean that when I outfaced that lieutenant on Kalgan with only a stun pistol, and rescued you...That you had emotionally controlled me into it." He was spluttering. "You mean I've been tampered with all along."
A thin smile played on Magnifico's face. "Why not? You don't think it's likely? Ask yourself then...Would you have risked death for a strange grotesque you had never seen before, if you had been in your right mind? Perhaps you would take the risk yourself, you are inherently kind." Faint smile. "But you would have hesitated, especially as it would put your wife at risk. I imagine you were surprised at events in cold after-blood."
"Yes," said Bayta, distantly, "he was. It's quite plain."
"As it was," continued the Mule, "Toran was in no danger. The lieutenant had his own strict instructions to find a way to let us go. He cleverly and dutifully used what Toran's actions provided. So, the three of us went to the Foundation...And see how my campaign shaped itself, instantly. I probed the Sagosa government and the Foundation garrison and converted Admiral Callier while we were in the Sagosa system, as I'd done earlier on my own, traveling incognito with my Viceroy Keffin portraying me, at Calthonia and Droxima. Later, when Pritcher returned from his travels and the poor man was court-martialed and we were present, I was busy. The military judges of that trial later commanded their squadrons in the war. They surrendered rather easily, and my Navy won the battle of Horleggor, and other lesser affairs. I slowly undermined the key personnel of various commands, though I had to be careful. I had no idea if the Second Foundation maintained agents, though I can tell you I since sensed no such mentalic activity. Also I suspected the Foundation might be doing its own researches into mentalic defense...No human being loves the idea of control, so I kept my probings to a minimum. Indeed I had a moment of panic at first meeting my Lady Mylin...When you spoke of her being a robot or biobot. I'd heard from Rox of such things and feared her mind might be unprobable. But, you assured me she was human and in fact I found her mind very much so, though I was cautious about probing anyone too deeply."
"Through you, I met Dr. Mis, who brought me a Visi-Sonor, entirely of his own accord, and simplified my task immensely. Only it wasn't entirely of his own accord."
Bayta interrupted, "Those concerts! I've been trying to fit them in. Now I see."
"Yes," said Magnifica, "The Visi-Sonor acts as a focusing device. In a way, it is a primitive device for emotional control in itself. With it, I can handle people in quantity and single people more easily. The concerts I gave on Terminus before it fell and Haven before it fell contributed to the general defeatism. I might have easily made the crown prince of Neotrantor very sick without the Visi-Sonor, but it would have been an effort to have killed him. You see?"
"As for command of my forces, the matter was simple. An encrypted subspace transmitter using a frequency suggested by one of your former Foundation intelligence agents I converted to my cause on Kalgan. When we were off-Terminus enroute to my off-world concerts, it was quite safe, but it was still easy to mask even there. And anyone who should possibly walk in on me while I issued orders would simply have a tiny slice of memory removed. It happened, once or twice." wan smile, shrug.
"But it was Ebling Mis who was my most important find. Or, he might have been..." Magnifica said it with chagrin, then hurried on, "There is a special facet to emotional control you do not know about. Intuition or insight or hunch-tendency, whatever you wish to call it, can be treated as an emotion. At least, I can treat it so. You don't understand it, do you?"
She waited for no negative, "The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition. I found early that I could induce a continual use of high brain-efficiency. It is a killing process for the person affected, but it is useful...The nuclear field-depressor which I used in the war against the Foundation was the result of high-pressuring a Kalgan technician. Again I work through others."
"You..." Toran stared. "You were driving Eb...? To find the Second Foundation..."
"You were pushing him to his death..." Bayta cut in, grimly.
"Yes." Nod. "He was dying at the end and I regret that but I had to know...Whether you choose to believe me or not, the instant I knew the secret I meant to try and save him. It was a slim chance, but not impossible. A moment more and I would have known and we would have gone, all three of us. It would have been the last battle. But now...I knew I should have realized the danger, but..." slight shrug.
"You'll never destroy the Plan..." Toran shook head, Bayta shaking head.
"The great Plan..." Magnifica smiled, then sighed. "And have you ever asked what sort of Empire Seldon's Plan would create, after a thousand years of suffering? Will it be better than the original Empire? Freer, more caring? I've seen little to suggest Seldon, who to all I've learned, cared nothing for people except as tools he could manipulate...In the mass..." smile. "...has worked a miracle in that regard. And then I learned, though encounters with my dear Lord Rox and others, including several of your people...Of the mysterious Second Foundation. A group of people, Seldon's sly little 'ace in the hole' who sought learn to develop and use telepathic control, not unlike mine but learned rather than natural, to maintain the Plan and then their Second Galactic Empire. Crushing anyone who dared think in ways they will decide would threaten their perfect Empire...How is that a blessing for Humanity?"
"Isn't it what you're doing?" Bayta fumed.
"One person, me, controlling a few to encourage them to help achieve a better Galaxy...While they would impose total control, forever. Is that Seldon's perfect Galaxy? So, having decided I did not care for that future, I decided to change things and inject myself, the counter Seldon, into the game. It would be me, mostly alone, against the Galaxy...For all those like me for whom Seldon had no place for in his grand design."
She put a hand at Bayta's glare...
"You think me a monster...And perhaps, to those, like Pritcher, if he were ever to regain his old thought patterns, I am. But think, Bayta..." calm stare. "Think of the trillions, the quadrillions, even, who have no stake in your beautiful Seldon Plan, for whom the Galaxy must remain a cold and desperate place for the next 700 years, assuming your Hari Seldon truly is right, and his Plan could restore unity to the Galaxy. Your noble Foundation was a weak dictatorship, crushing its opponents even among your own people, about to dissolve into civil war. Where was Seldon's great Plan? What does it matter to trillions of the dispossessed, like me, that maybe, if all goes well with this lovely theory, the Galaxy will reunite one day, 700 years from now? Why not now, if it can be done, in just a few years, by me?"
"Under your control...Everyone..." Bayta shook her head.
"Hardly everyone, dear..." sigh. "I can't control trillions, I can't even control those I do every moment of every day of their lives. You saw that with Colonel Pritcher. I simply have inspired them to loyalty to my cause. In some cases, far more than you might think or wish to believe, many've joined me voluntarily...Or would have, under the right circumstances."
"Hardly. And your war is killing thousands..."
"And your nice, neat conquest of a thousand years will kill countless trillions..." shrug... "And what will it bring those who survive, in the end? Seldon's Empire, ruled by an elite of technocrats? You are aware of the Foundation's history...And forever guarded/guided by a Second Foundation of not one...'Mule'..." she grinned. "But hundreds, maybe thousands of people with mentalic power. Not equal to mine, I believe, given their failure to stop me as yet...But even more crushing than mine in the shape of a mind-controlling elite, that will reproduce itself."
"As for you and your victory here...It's my own failure. I knew the danger but...You see, Toran..." sigh. "Why, your wife was the mistake. She is an unusual person." Fond smile to a grim Bayta.
"I had never met her like before in my life. I ... I–" Quite suddenly, Magnifica's voice broke. She recovered with difficulty. There was a wanness about her as she continued. "She liked me without my having to juggle her emotions. She was neither repelled by me nor amused by me. She truly liked me!" shake of head in wonderment. "She felt friendship, even kinship for me."
Bayta reddened... "And you took that feeling..."
"Please." Magnifica raised a hand. "Rage on me, after I finish. Don't you understand? Can't you see what that would mean to me? Never before had anyone –Even dear Rox was manipulated to care for me, at first. Well, I ... cherished that. My own emotions played me false, though I was mistress of all others. I stayed out of her mind, you see; I did not tamper with it. I cherished the natural feeling too greatly. It was my mistake – the first. I've never had anyone who cared for me in any way, without being controlled by me. You and Toran were the first people who ever felt kindness and friendship for me...And as I said, I controlled Toran, at our first meeting, to assure that you would take me along with you, but only those first few days. Sorry, my dear." She eyed the horrified Toran. "It was merely to dull your suspicions of me. I had to be sure you wouldn't question me or have doubts. And while you are naturally kind and felt pity towards me...As dear, poor Mylin did and poor Ebling. Your feelings didn't touch me as Bayta's did."
"You were special to me, Bayta. All of you were, in some ways. You were much like Lord Rox, my first friend and first senior convert. He was kind in his way and while, when I stowed away aboard his vessel, back on Sesa, I did manipulate his emotions, he did quickly come to care for me. The closest thing I ever had to a father." Wan smile.
"And his dreams of restoring the Empire, via mentalic power, over time, became mine. You see, he learned of the Gaia secret while combing through old Imperial files seeking anything that might prevent the collapse...And he found the genetic data on Gaians, hoped to find a pool of them who might be used to shore up the Empire and defeat the Foundations, both of them. Oh, yes, he knew of them both, my wise Rox...And hated you and Seldon for what you'd, or rather your Foundations and your dear Seldon had done to His Empire, an Empire he sincerely cherished and wished to save, not for himself or his class, but all those he felt it could help and for his Emperor. I came to love and respect him and his dream, though I saw it couldn't work without a mentalic of true power. Me." Wry shrug.
"But despite that, you were my first, and probably only, voluntary friend, Bayta. And then sweet Torie, the first person who ever truly loved me without any judgment or prejudice." She eyed the cradle through the cabin door. "I simply could not bear to adjust your mind, Bayta...Disturb that natural feeling. I hoped I could conceal myself from you with a few tricks and I failed, as I should have expected. It was so foolish of me to leave you as you were but... And when the Crown Prince..." she shrugged. "I killed him. For dear Mis, and his poor Flavia, as well as you, I should note. It was a foolish gesture. An unobtrusive flight would have served as well." Wry shake of head.
"And still your suspicions would not have been certainties, if I had stopped Pritcher in his well-intentioned babbling, or paid less attention to Mis and more to you...Well." She shrugged.
"That's the end of it?" asked Bayta, wanly now.
"That's the end."
"What now, then?"
"As I say, my mistakes are my own. I will go on, continuing with my program, alone as always. That I'll find another as adequately brained and trained as Ebling Mis in these degenerate days, I doubt. I shall have to search for the Second Foundation in my own way, with what poor tools I can find. But I will defeat them and unite the Galaxy." Nodding...
"And you and Toran and Torie may go in peace, for the sake of what I choose to call friendship."
"And you...?" Bayta glared. "One Empress and her dynasty controlling us forever? Well, you've been stopped and the Second Foundation is safe to plan its attack. That attack may even be underway right now. You won't succeed! I have faith in the wisdom of Seldon yet. You shall be the last ruler of your dynasty, as well as the first."
"My dynasty..." Magnifica smiled faintly. "You needn't have any fear of that...Not that I wouldn't have loved to found one...With a suitable consort." Glance to a staring Toran...Bayta looking horrified now. Magnifica, shaking head...Placating wave. "Now...I could've made you very happy if I tried, Toran. And you, Bayta, quite accepting of the situation. But...You've nothing to fear there...It would be pointless. Whatever else you may believe I am, I am not needlessly cruel and I can find other...Diversions as I wish." Eyeing them carefully...
"Though I would suggest a dynasty of mine still would've been less oppressive than what your noble Second Foundation may offer you." Wry, sad shrug.
"But...The Galaxy will be free to find its own way after I've reunited it. It will be up to all those individuals your Seldon so despises, not him and his elite...Perhaps it will be better, perhaps not...In any case it will be faster." She turned.
"You see...I call myself the Mule, not obviously, because of my physical strength." She said, quietly...Not turning back to Bayta though she paused for an instant by the little cradle. Bayta moving quickly, but halting as the Mule raised a hand.
"Goodbye, sweetheart." The briefest of smiles at the crib. "Mistress Bayta...Master Toran...My friends..." she breathed, quietly, without turning back to them.
"Colonel Pritcher!" she called at the now opening hatchway, her tone immediately turning commanding. Colonel Pritcher entering in full uniform, followed by a squad of heavily armed troops, blasters drawn.
"See to Dr. Mis in his quarters!" Pritcher ordered, signing to the guards.
"No!" Bayta cried. "Torie?!" she turned to Toran who put up a hand.
"Please. Let us take him..." he asked Pritcher. Magnifica, at the hatchway, paused...
Pritcher eyeing him briefly, then offering Magnifica, now donning a robe brought by one guard, a questioning look.
"Let them be...Give them any help they need with securing the Professor's remains. They're free to go. Is the Emperor Dagobert here?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am." Pritcher nodded. "He's awaiting you aboard your flagship."
"Make sure he's treated with proper respect, Pritcher. Send my respects and tell him I'll be with him shortly. Lets go."
She went out the hatch...Pritcher eyeing Toran and Bayta a moment then following...
Bayta quickly taking up little Torie and moving to the hatch, two guards closely watching her as she peered out, Torie stretching arms out to reach...Crying out as Bayta tried to still him.
Magnifica, flanked by multiple rows of troops in tight black, stiffly at attention, striding confidently to the waiting ship now landed beside the Dartells'. Overhead the sky of Trantor, filled now by the holo image of a spokeman in the black uniform of the Kalganian forces, proclaiming the re-establishment of the Galactic Empire in the Union of Worlds...Under its Emperor, Dagobert IX, with the help of his most loyal associate and minister, the ruler of Kalgan, the First Citizen of the new Union of Worlds...A new era of prosperity and peace to follow the final reunification of the Galaxy...Triumphant music blaring...The row of troops in black saluting the striding Magnifica.
She paused a last instant, as she reached the stairway to her ship, but did not look back..
