To achieve it, all means were justified.
"Master!" The aide answering the summons was new; Jarvet, old in years and service, had received his final reward. Even now his living brain was a part of the massed gestalt of central intelligence. Wyeth bowed his respect. "Your orders, master?"
"The reports needing final decision?"
"On your desk, master."
The inescapable routine of high office. Marie, seated, scanned the sheets with practiced efficiency, pausing at one before reaching out to touch the intercom.
"Master?"
"Check report HYT23457X. The stable product of Lemass."
A second, then, "Hargen, master."
"Make cross-check with Quelchan." Marie nodded at the answer. "The same. I see."
Someone would pay for that error-the association should have been noted. As it was, no harm had been done and Marie paused for a moment, assessing the best method of utilizing the information. Lemass was already beneath the influence of the Cyclan with its rulers helplessly dependent on the advice given by resident cybers. They were men and a world to be played as an instrument could be played to yield the maximum advantage to the master plan. Quelchan, close enough to be a commercial rival, was still stubbornly resisting the advantage to be gained by hiring the services of the Cyclan. If a calamity were to affect their stable crop the economic balance would shift to the advantage of Lemass. Desperate, they would seek help and yet…
To maintain the balance would not be in the best interest as far as the Cyclan was concerned. One or the other of the worlds must be brought to the brink of ruin in order that both be held fast in the net. The obvious plan was to move against Quelchan but their soil was more fertile, their production higher. If disease was introduced to destroy the hargen the probability was high that the world would be lost as a potential granary.
Marie reached for the recorder.
"Instruct our agents on Lemass to buy all the hargen Quelchan can supply. At the same time offer them, via intermediaries, cut-rate supplies of manufactured goods from Elmonte and Wale. The general plan is to make Quelchan dependent on off-world products."
Paid for with money received by the sale of their crops. Too late they would realize they had exchanged food for toys-expensive items needing maintenance and replacement. In order to retain their new standard of living they would be forced to seek the help of the Cyclan.
The rest of the reports were routine, items needing his final check before being put into operation. Small nudges which would, like the falling pebble triggering an avalanche, result in overwhelming change on the worlds concerned.
Marie sat back, vaguely dissatisfied. As yet he had done nothing he'd not done previously-only the import of his decisions had extended their scope and, as far as intellectual pleasure was concerned, the solving of a problem was sufficient to itself. To assess the data and extrapolate from it to form a prediction and then to see that prediction verified and so gain the satisfaction of mental achievement-the only pleasure a cyber could know.
Was that the reason for Avro's decision?
Marie rose, touching a switch, a blaze of luminescence springing to life before him. Suspended in the air and filling the office with glittering points of light, the electronic depiction of the galaxy was a miracle of technology. It condensed as he activated the control, suns flaring, worlds flickering, sheets and curtains of brilliance merging into somber clouds of interstellar dust.
"Master!" Wyeth had entered the office, a tray holding a beaker in his hand. "Your nourishment."
Fuel to ensure the optimum functioning of the machine which was his body. A blend of vitamins and nutrients which he drank without ceremony. Tiny sparkles of light shone on his hand, his face, adorned the rich scarlet of his robe, accentuated the gleaming device on his breast. The Seal of the Cyclan, copied by the aide's own, convoluted mirrors which enhanced the glow of the miniature suns.
Too many suns and too many worlds. Glowing primaries and planets without end, all confined within the galactic lens, thin toward the edges but thick in the center. A maze in which a man could hide. In which a man was hiding- Dumarest!
"Master." Wyeth took the empty beaker. "A vessel has landed with a party for processing. Massaki asks you to visit him. A report from laboratory seven-negative."
Those details could wait. The old cybers waited for his final words before having their brains stripped of outworn flesh. Massaki wanted to demonstrate his new virus bred for the selective destruction of certain genetic traits in cattle; already he was working on a similar strain for use against humans bearing undesirable hereditary weaknesses. The report from laboratory seven merely emphasized Avro's mission.
"Master?"
"Leave me."
Alone Marie studied the simulated galaxy, points of brilliance seeming to shift as he watched, to adopt the identifying symbols of the molecular units forming the affinity twin. With it one intelligence could take over the mind and body of another; the host subject totally dominated by the invader. With its use a cyber could become the ruler of a world, an old man gain a new, young body, a crone renew her beauty. That was power none could resist and a bribe none could refuse.
Those fifteen units, assembled correctly, would give the Cyclan domination over the entire universe.
A secret lost-stolen, to be passed on. The units were known but not the sequence in which they must be assembled. The possible combinations ran into millions-to try each by trial and error would take millennia.
Dumarest had the secret and Dumarest had to be found.
Craig burped and wiped greasy fingers on the grass at his side.
"That was good," he said. "Damned good. There's nothing to beat the taste of real food. Fresh meat cooked over an open fire-I know places where you'd give a week's pay for a meal like that."
"And I know places where, if you were found eating it, you'd be stoned to death." Andre Batrun sucked at a bone before throwing it into the fire. "Zabupa for one. I lost a third officer there a decade ago. He came from Gandlar and couldn't understand why the locals held such a veneration for life in all its forms. A vegetable diet didn't suit him so he bought meat from the handler of another ship. No harm in that but the fool allowed himself to be seen eating it."
"And they killed him?" Craig sounded incredulous. "For that?"
"For them it was reason enough." The captain looked at the ruined carcass. "A little more, my dear?"
Ysanne smiled as she handed him another portion. "Here, Andre, enjoy yourself."
He needed no telling. Time had taught him the value of small pleasures as it had silvered his hair and marked his face with the passage of time. An oddly smooth face now that rest and sleep had erased the dragging marks of fatigue, but it bore the stamp of hard experience and battles won.
"Some wine," said Craig. "I've a bottle." He poured into fragile cups without waiting for comment. "To luck!"
Dumarest swallowed the last of his meat and took the cup. He sipped, tasting a tart rawness which cleansed his mouth of lingering grease. Batrun coughed and, setting aside his container, reached for snuff.
"Good, eh?" Craig lifted the bottle. "More?"
"I like it," said Ysanne and held out her cup. "I like what it does."
She meant what all alcohol did to her, which was the reason she had to be wary of drink. A lack of tolerance sent her into rapid intoxication unless premedicated to prevent it. But she was among companions, she had eaten, it was a time to relax and, if she should get a little lightheaded, where was the harm?
As she sipped she said, "So you found nothing out there, Earl. No monster waiting to pounce."
"None that I could see."
"There's none to see." She gestured with the cup and held it out to be refilled. "And none to hear-if there was it would have responded to the sound of the pumps."
"Not necessarily," said Batrun. "That sound is repetitive, mechanical. Normal life-forms do not make such noises. If something was out there it would have assessed and dismissed it."
And the beast they had eaten could have been running from a predator when it had fallen to Dumarest's thrown knife. A possibility he didn't mention. Instead, he said to the captain, "How is progress on the ship?"
"The final instrument-checks are almost complete. As soon as we've filled the tanks we can be on our way." Riding on canned air with the limitations it imposed. Something no captain liked but they had no choice. "We'll need replacements, of course. From the closest world with technical facilities. Which would that be, Ysanne?"
She frowned. "Lorenze, I think. Or Gillaus. Or Ween and-hell, I don't carry that kind of data around in my head. I look it up as needed. That's what an almanac is for." The frown changed into a laugh as the drinks began to register. "A book we don't need-we know where we're going."
"To Earth!" Craig lifted his cup. "All the way to Earth!"