Garen did not like "teleporting."
He must have used it - teleportation - and he had not felt himself die. Many scholars wondered how the Transients could get from one place to another. The technique resembled the theseism of passage into the After: one generated an atom by altering the texture of vacuum fluctuations, an atom copied from the thing one wanted to transport, and one destroyed that atom on the original.
Atom by atom, preserving the physical properties. The copied replica was then "called back" by some hidden physical power, but the destruction of the original was carried out by absorption into the quantum vacuum, and a mysterious balance allowed the body to remain in reality.
This mode of transport, reserved for gods, provoked in him an almost paralyzing anxiety, and Garen found himself reduced to traveling by ships like any mediocre human being, of course pretending it was an act of humility and rapprochement with his peers. If they only knew...
Not only did he struggle to convince himself that the arriving Garen Antor was the same as the one who had departed, even though his continuity of consciousness was evident, but on top of that he had declared war on the Transients. What if they managed to deceive the "mysterious balance" of physics during the generation of his body and he was recalled to oblivion?
After his victory on the Royal Planet, he had made his rounds - on Jerimadeth, where envoys from œcumenical convents had subtly shown him disrespect with their restrained enthusiasm, then on Titus, where the crowd had been far more pleasant. He had read in their minds their boundless devotion, and that had pleased him. Strangely, when he was in a room of the prefectural palace, he felt a great emptiness that he could neither identify nor fill. He could influence his emotions, but a moment's lapse in concentration and they returned stronger. After a few efforts in that direction, he altered his appearance and, incognito, moved through the crowded streets of the center, then took a train north - the Express of the Stars, which ran at 2,000 kilometers per hour and was so named because it served the ship-engine construction sites.
He pushed on into the evening to Vedrana, the terminus, which was nothing more than a row of prefabricated dwellings along a poorly lit muddy road. He followed a solitary woman who hurried home despite being very drunk, and, offended, sent a perpetual shadow of guilt into her heart. He entered a longhouse and bought himself a dish of soybean sprouts in a spicy tomato sauce, producing a citizen card from fluctuations of the vacuum.
His counter neighbor started talking to him right away. Kristofor, called Kris, lived off his citizen card and small illegal jobs. The card provided food every day, but in the center, he explained, sometimes the longhouse is full or the pantry is empty. Other guys came in: sturdy types who loaded and unloaded goods from the Express of the Stars for a few thalers. Garen showed generosity on tour with thalers produced from vacuum fluctuations - which was no small feat, each thaler being tied to a central database that also had to be altered - and to change from being the king of men, thus became the king of the evening.
Garen had lived the loneliness of a demanding family, of a demanding school, of the knot of viperish politics, the rejection and ostracism of the Lodovico project, the great solitude... and then the burden of the Aleph. Solitude. He looked at these people whom he judged objectively limited and despicable, but he would have liked to be like them. He loved them, and despised himself so much for that feeling... between two laughs, he wired a million thalers into each of their bank accounts.
The conversation shifted to the topic that the whole HS (Human Society) was talking about: the Aleph. Garen did not want to talk about it, but:
- "So what do you really think?"
- "And you, what do you think?" answered Garen.
- "The older I get, the more everything goes to shit."
The others nodded and agreed with gestures and words.
- "The free meal our fathers fought for, well you have to go to the end of the world to get it. Free housing, same."
- "Yeah," continued another, "all the free housing in the center is occupied by friends or cousins of people in the administration. And often they're rich, they could buy, you see. And the best jobs are over there. So they get richer. It's always been like that and it's getting worse. So I say, the Aleph - he said on his first day there were shady things. I don't know if it'll be better. But sure, it won't be worse."
- "There's the military service, anyway," said a guy in the back.
- "Well, at least we're not killing League guys."
- "Poor Xenos who didn't ask for anything."
- "The Aleph says it's so each of us can have our own planet."
- "Hahaha, now that's bullshit. That's the typical government lie."
- "No," said Garen Antor firmly. "The Aleph is sincere. You will all have your planet. I am certain of it."
Faced with his seriousness, they burst out laughing. Garen continued:
- "You don't believe it because the HS lied to you your whole life. But it's the truth. I'll meet you here in 20 years, day for day, and I'll bet everything I have that you'll then have your planet."
His resolve impressed them and silence set in, including among the others. But a voice rose. An older woman, about fifty. She wore green canvas clothes and, if her job or occupations were mysterious, it involved something in the countryside of Titus.
- "If the Aleph doesn't destroy him first, I'll be in the After in 20 years, so I won't be able to see you on your shitty planets. A planet! What will you do with a planet, you bunch of idiots? You don't even know what to do with your lives! We're going to kill entire civilizations so that people as dumb as you can have a whole planet? Even one house is too much for you."
- "Easy on the insults, Halva," said a guy at the bar.
- "Xenos are ugly but they figured out a couple of things. They live without money, without property, and they never beat each other up. They know how to behave. They're clever and often wise. We say hello and they say I love you. Humans, we painfully wrestled from our violent nature a damn free meal a day, and a society where everyone has a say. And when some guy from nowhere sweeps all that away to send us off to kill Xenos, you congratulate him? You're dogs."
She downed a drink and stood up. She limped. She wrapped herself in a kind of shabby poncho, shouting:
- "And he'd be the envoy of the Blind Gods? What nonsense. To me, he's worse than an idiot. He's worse than you. Because he's the same as the others, he's the same as us! But he thinks he's above us!"
Garen felt an unbounded hatred for this Halva. If he could have, he would have beaten her in the face until she died. He restrained himself, trembling. He would make her die of a simple heart attack in half an hour. No After for you, bitch.
- "Halva, you can insult everyone here, but watch out with the Aleph," said the guy in the back. "There are rumors..."
- "No, real stories. You say bad things about him and you die."
Silence fell over the assembly and Garen felt unjustly accused. Oh, he had indeed killed in rage a few people who had spoken hurtful words from a distance, but "not that many" in his recollection. The power of rumors, he thought. However, he was feared. It had worked. Maybe, in addition to not speaking ill of him, people would in general avoid speaking ill of other people, and the world would be better for it.
He took his leave of the assembly and returned to the prefectural palace, trying to weigh the good and the bad of that evening. He concluded that there would always be malcontents and unbelievers, but that time would play for him.
Before getting there, he had passed Halva's window, an opening onto a filthy prefab in which she had laid her mangy body on a couch. He forced the door intending to beat her to death and engrave her sufferings into his mind to wash away his humiliation. And afterward he would modify his brain to forget her: she wouldn't even deserve to live in memory. On entering the dim living room, a dog jumped on him - a long, black Titus hound that was very affectionate and drenched him with love. He ended up petting it, and that woke Halva who smiled at him:
- "His name is Yeti, after a legendary monster from mythic Earth. Can I get you a drink?"
- "No, thanks," said Garen, disturbed.
- "Hey, sorry for calling you an idiot. But you have to shake the guys at the bar, otherwise they stay dumbed down by work and the PanHS. Sit down. Do you want to stay here tonight?"
For an instant Garen thought it would be interesting to sleep with the ugliest creature on Titus while all the women of that planet dreamed only of being with him. To sleep with someone he had come to kill. A perverse kind of game that excited him and made him dizzy. Lost, he stammered, and Halva gave him a small kiss on the cheek that brought him back to forgotten times when he had been cared for by a loving nurse. Recovering himself, in a submissive voice he said:
- "No, Halva. No. Thank you. Tell me, really, do you think the Aleph is not worth much?"
- "I don't know, old man. What's the point of talking about it? He doesn't care about nobodies like us."
- "It could happen, Halva. If you could tell him one thing, what would you tell him?"
She thought for a moment, stroked her dog. She had a sincere smile, a diamond in a coal face; with a sigh she answered:
- "I'd tell him people don't want a planet. They just want a little love."
- "Thank you. I'll think about it, Halva."
And he left. She was not so miserable, though a bit naive. For a moment he was revolted by the thought that it would not have been unpleasant to make love to her and chased the idea away with a deep disgust for himself.
At sunrise - nights on Titus lasted seventeen of Prospero's hours - he reached the Intricated Gate which returned him by individual train first to Prospero, then to Origin. To the officer who accompanied him - a very loyal and reliable type, aware of his limits, the perfect kind of man, ultimately - he said he wanted a pet dog, and asked that different specimens be brought to his office in the Tower.
He was walking alone in a corridor on the top floor. Over time the Tower emptied. Some officials who had fought all their lives, even over generations, to work there clung like barnacles to the rock, but there was nothing to be done, and so they left, often in shock. The Council of the HS was no more. Some even took their own lives in their offices, and Garen had ordered that their bodies be left hanging, illustrating in his view the emptiness of the old government which had as its purpose only its own stability and the survival of its ruling caste.
There was a presence in the main corridor. A Xeno. It was a large brown-green phasmid with expressionless eyes, moving slowly toward him. Its presence brought him back to painful memories on a distant planet, and he stood on guard.
- "What do you want, Xeno?"
He dove into the creature's thoughts. It formulated a strange thought that said in substance, "I move, you move, we cross paths, we no longer see each other, except by the intimate bond of the Blind Gods."
- "I know your race too well without ever understanding how you function. Xeno, with a thought I can destroy you. But long ago I was lost and yours saved me. In memory of that, and in full payment of that debt, you will live. I am not afraid that you have left any mortal trap on my throne. I am a god now, as powerful as the Blind Gods you worship."
The Xeno said nothing. It passed by with a free spirit. It was hard for Garen Antor to keep his promise, but he did. He hurried with quick steps into the throne room where there was no one and concentrated to detect any threat. There was none. He approached the throne, all his defenses engaged. A nuclear bomb could have exploded here and he would have survived. He sat down.
And he saw before him, carved into the stone of the columns, a message in the damned language of the Xenos.
YOU MISSION
YOU DEBT
YOU ACT
He straightened, breathing, terrified. The Xeno was their messenger. They were recalling him at their request.
Yes, the powers had made a precise demand. And now they were threatening him, hunting him down to demand of him an account? And then what next? The thought was so painful he could not even form it... How dare they!
He screamed:
- I WILL FREE YOUR DAMNED PLANET! AND THEN, THEN!
He screamed so much he felt his lungs detach.
- "THEN, I WILL DESTROY IT! I WILL CONFRONT YOU! I WILL DESTROY WHAT YOU CHERISH MOST! YOU WILL HAVE ONLY PIECES, PEBBLES, YOU WILL SEE MY FURY!"
Three soldiers accompanied by specialists entered the throne room as, in his mind, he defaced the Xeno inscriptions. The visitors were accompanied by many breeds of dogs: Labradors of the Old Earth, golden and silver, with collars so clever they could communicate with a grafted device; Alonzo's basenjis, striped like zebras and as affectionate as they were crazy; all sorts of classic dogs like dwarf greyhounds or humped bassets; and Xeno dogs like Ariel's scaly igor or Jerimadeth's laurel, which was indeed an animal though it looked like an affectionate bush.
Consumed by anger and rage, screaming, the Aleph turned on his visitors and killed them all at once by making them explode, by increasing the pressure of their internal fluids, humans as well as dogs, covering the entire entrance with blood, flesh, fur, and a few leaves.