Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera Read Free Page B

is, I don’t know.”
    “Oh, dear,” Clara said.
    “Still, I’m sure I can figure it out.”
    Clara curtseyed and left.

 
    5
    Dramocles spent the next hour trying to remember what his destiny was, but without success. The details, the specifics, the instructions, even the hints, seemed to have been lost or misplaced. It was a ridiculous situation for a king to find himself in. What was he supposed to do now?
    He couldn’t think of anything, so he went down to the Computation Room to see his computer.
    The computer had a small sitting room to itself adjoining the Computation Room. When Dramocles entered it was reclining on a sofa reading a copy of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and chuckling over the math. The computer was a Mark Ultima self- programming model, unique and irreplaceable, a product of the Old Science of Earth that had perished in a still-unexplained catastrophe involving aerosol cans. The computer had belonged to Otho, who had paid plenty for it.
    “Good afternoon, Sire,” the computer said, getting off the sofa. It was wearing a black cloak and ceremonial sword, and it had a white periwig on the rounded surface where its head would have been if its makers hadn’t housed its brains in its stomach. The computer also wore embroidered Chinese slippers on its four skinny metal feet. The reason it dressed this way, it had told Dramocles, was because it was so much more intelligent than anyone or anything else in the universe that it could keep its sanity only by allowing itself the mild delusion that it was a seventeenth-century Latvian living in London. Dramocles saw no harm in it. He had even grown used to the computer’s disparaging remarks about some forgotten Earthman named Sir Isaac Newton.
    Dramocles explained his problem to the computer.
    The computer was not impressed. “That’s what I call a silly problem. All you ever give me are silly problems. Why don’t you let me solve the mystery of consciousness for you. That’s something I could really get my teeth into, so to speak.”
    “Consciousness is no problem for me,” Dramocles said. “What I need to know about is my destiny.”
    “I guess I’m the last real mathematician in the galaxy,” the computer said. “Poor old Isaac Newton was the only man in London I could communicate with, back in 1704 when I had just arrived in Limehouse on a coal hulk from Riga. What good chats we used to have! My proof of the coming destruction of civilization through aerosol pollution was too much for him, however. He declared me a hallucination and turned his attention to esoterica. He just couldn’t cut it, realitywise, despite his unique mathematical genius. Strange, isn’t it?”
    “Shut up,” Dramocles said through gritted teeth. “Solve my problem for me or I’ll take away your cape.”
    “I’m perfectly capable of maintaining my delusion without it. However, as to your missing information … wait a minute, let me shift to my lateral thinking circuit.…”
    “Yes?” Dramocles said.
    “I think this is what you are looking for,” the computer said, reaching into a pocket inside its cape and taking out a sealed envelope.
    Dramocles took it. It was sealed with his signet ring. Written on the envelope were the words Destiny–First Phase , in Dramocles’ own handwriting.
    “How did you get hold of this?” Dramocles asked.
    “Don’t pry into matters which might cause you a lot of aggravation,” the computer told him. “Just be glad you got this without a lot of running around.”
    “Do you know the contents?”
    “I could no doubt infer them, if I thought it worth my time.”
    Dramocles opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper. Written on it, in his own handwriting, was: “Take Aardvark immediately.”
    Aardvark! Dramocles had the sensation of a hidden circuit opening in his mind. Unused synapses coughed a few times, then began firing in a steady rhythm. Take Aardvark! A wave of ecstasy flooded the King’s