Ministry of Disturbance - H. Beam ...

Ministry of Disturbance - H. Beam Piper, ebook, Temp

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//-->Ministry of DisturbancePiper, Henry BeamPublished:1958Type(s):Short Fiction, Science FictionSource:1About Piper:Henry Beam Piper (March 23, 1904 – c. November 6, 1964) was anAmerican science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and sever-al novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future His-tory series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate historytales.He wrote under the name H. Beam Piper. Another source gives hisname as "Horace Beam Piper" and a different date of death. His grave-stone says "Henry Beam Piper". Piper himself may have been the sourceof part of the confusion; he told people the H stood for Horace, encour-aging the assumption that he used the initial because he disliked hisname.Source: WikipediaAlso available on Feedbooks for Piper:•Little Fuzzy(1962)•The Cosmic Computer(1963)•A Slave is a Slave(1962)•Time Crime(1955)•Four-Day Planet(1961)•Naudsonce(1962)•Genesis(1951)•Last Enemy(1950)•Omnilingual(1957)•Time and Time Again(1947)Copyright:Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/orcheck the copyright status in your country.Note:This book is brought to you by Feedbooks.Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.2Sometimes getting a job is harder than the job after you get it—and sometimesgetting out of a job is harder than either!The symphony was ending, the final triumphant pæan soaring up andup, beyond the limit of audibility. For a moment, after the last notes hadgone away, Paul sat motionless, as though some part of him had fol-lowed. Then he roused himself and finished his coffee and cigarette,looking out the wide window across the city below—treetops andtowers, roofs and domes and arching skyways, busy swarms of aircarsglinting in the early sunlight. Not many people cared for João Coelho'smusic, now, and least of all for the Eighth Symphony. It was the music ofanother time, a thousand years ago, when the Empire was blazing intobeing out of the long night and hammering back the Neobarbarians fromworld after world. Today people found it perturbing.He smiled faintly at the vacant chair opposite him, and lit another ci-garette before putting the breakfast dishes on the serving-robot's tray,and, after a while, realized that the robot was still beside his chair, wait-ing for dismissal. He gave it an instruction to summon the cleaning ro-bots and sent it away. He could as easily have summoned them himself,or let the guards who would be in checking the room do it for him, butmaybe it made a robot feel trusted and important to relay orders to otherrobots.Then he smiled again, this time in self-derision. A robot couldn't feelimportant, or anything else. A robot was nothing but steel and plasticand magnetized tape and photo-micro-positronic circuits, whereas aman—His Imperial Majesty Paul XXII, for instance—was nothing but tis-sues and cells and colloids and electro-neuronic circuits. There was a dif-ference; anybody knew that. The trouble was that he had never met any-body—which included physicists, biologists, psychologists, psionicists,philosophers and theologians—who could define the difference in satis-factorily exact terms. He watched the robot pivot on its treads and glideaway, trailing steam from its coffee pot. It might be silly to treat robotslike people, but that wasn't as bad as treating people like robots, an atti-tude which was becoming entirely too prevalent. If only so many peopledidn't act like robots!He crossed to the elevator and stood in front of it until a tiny electroen-cephalograph inside recognized his distinctive brain-wave pattern.Across the room, another door was popping open in response to therobot's distinctive wave pattern. He stepped inside and flipped aswitch—there were still a few things around that had to be manually3operated—and the door closed behind him and the elevator gave him aninstant's weightlessness as it started to drop forty floors.When it opened, Captain-General Dorflay of the Household Guardwas waiting for him, with a captain and ten privates. General Dorflaywas human. The captain and his ten soldiers weren't. They wore hel-mets, emblazoned with the golden sun and superimposed black cog-wheel of the Empire, and red kilts and black ankle boots and weaponsbelts, and the captain had a narrow gold-laced cape over his shoulders,but for the rest, their bodies were covered with a stiff mat of black hair,and their faces were slightly like terriers'. (For all his humanity, Captain-General Dorflay's face was more like a bulldog's.) They were hillmenfrom the southern hemisphere of Thor, and as a people they made excel-lent mercenaries. They were crack shots, brave and crafty fighters, totallyuninterested in politics off their own planet, and, because they hadgrown up in a patriarchial-clan society, they were fanatically loyal toanybody whom they accepted as their chieftain. Paul stepped out andgave them an inclusive nod."Good morning, gentlemen.""Good morning, Your Imperial Majesty," General Dorflay said, bowingthe couple of inches consistent with military dignity. The Thoran captainsaluted by touching his forehead, his heart, which was on the right side,and the butt of his pistol. Paul complimented him on the smart appear-ance of his detail, and the captain asked how it could be otherwise, withthe example and inspiration of his imperial majesty. Compliment and re-sponse could have been a playback from every morning of the ten yearsof his reign. So could Dorflay's question: "Your Majesty will proceed tohis study?"He wanted to say, "No, to Niffelheim with it; let's get an aircar and flya million miles somewhere," and watch the look of shocked incompre-hension on the captain-general's face. He couldn't do that, though; poorold Harv Dorflay might have a heart attack. He nodded slowly."If you please, general."Dorflay nodded to the Thoran captain, who nodded to his men. Fourof them took two paces forward; the rest, unslinging weapons, wentscurrying up the corridor, some posting themselves along the way andthe rest continuing to the main hallway. The captain and two of his menstarted forward slowly; after they had gone twenty feet, Paul and Gener-al Dorflay fell in behind them, and the other two brought up the rear.4"Your Majesty," Dorflay said, in a low voice, "let me beg you to bemost cautious. I have just discovered that there exists a treasonous plotagainst your life."Paul nodded. Dorflay was more than due to discover another treason-ous plot; it had been ten days since the last one."I believe you mentioned it, general. Something about planting loosestrontium-90 in the upholstery of the Audience Throne, wasn't it?"And before that, somebody had been trying to smuggle a fission bombinto the Palace in a wine cask, and before that, it was a booby trap in theelevator, and before that, somebody was planning to build a submachinegun into the viewscreen in the study, and—"Oh, no, Your Majesty; that was—Well, the persons involved in thatplot became alarmed and fled the planet before I could arrest them. Thisis something different, Your Majesty. I have learned that unauthorizedalterations have been made on one of the cooking-robots in your privatekitchen, and I am positive that the object is to poison Your Majesty."They were turning into the main hallway, between the rows of por-traits of past emperors, Paul and Rodrik, Paul and Rodrik, alternatingover and over on both walls. He felt a smile growing on his face, andbanished it."The robot for the meat sauces, wasn't it?" he asked."Why—! Yes, Your Majesty.""I'm sorry, general. I should have warned you. Those alterations weremade by roboticists from the Ministry of Security; they were installing anadaptation of a device used in the criminalistics-labs, to insure more uni-form measurements. They'd done that already for Prince Travann, theMinister, and he'd recommended it to me."That was a shame, spoiling poor Harv Dorflay's murder plot. It hadbeen such a nice little plot, too; he must have had a lot of fun inventingit. But a line had to be drawn somewhere. Let him turn the Palace upsidedown hunting for bombs; harass ladies-in-waiting whose lovers he sus-pected of being hired assassins; hound musicians into whose instru-ments he imagined firearms had been built; the emperor's private kit-chen would have to be off limits.Dorflay, who should have been looking crestfallen but relieved,stopped short—shocking breach of Court etiquette—and was staring inhorror.5 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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