Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against

MOREL AND UPWRIGHT ^{DAVID WELLINGTON}

FRANZ MOREL WOKE early that particular morning, in a bed that could comfortably have parked a fleet of staff cars. He stretched his arms above his head and smacked his lips, imagining the glorious day to come.

He descended to his third most opulent bathroom—the one done up in rose-colored marble, which had the best acoustics—and sang an old campaigner’s song as he cleaned his teeth and had a very thorough shave, taking time to carefully trim his glorious handlebar mustache and tiny, devilishly pointed beard. In the Breakfast Wing of the Presidential Palace, he took three eggs, each in an individual diamond-encrusted egg cup, and a pot of coffee scented with rose and saffron. The delicate saffron, of course, failed to impart any flavor to the coffee, but Morel had always been of the opinion that when a chance for true decadence came the way of a hard-working dictator, it was his duty to himself—as the living embodiment of the state—to take it, and thereby signal the great wealth and power of the Nation.

There was, of course, no newspaper to read while he ate. He could have simply decreed one to be printed, but then he would have had to edit and censor it himself, and he just didn’t have the time. So instead he stared out a window while he sipped his coffee, gazing out upon all that land that was his to sport with as he pleased. Admittedly there wasn’t very much of it. Just a low line of hills on the horizon. And it was a given that the horizon was rather closer than he would have liked.

One finds ways to cope with adversity, of course. “Martin-8,” he barked, and the robot who was his Major Domo, Chief of Staff, Aide-de-Camp, Seneschal, and Valet rolled up to a neat stop by his elbow. “My best set of medals, today,” Morel ordered. When speaking to the robot it was crucial, always, to maintain the air of command. “And once I’m finished dressing, I believe we shall have a parade.”

“Of courze, zir,” the robot buzzed. It reached its many-jointed arms across the table to refill his coffee, then withdrew.

When Morel had finished dressing, he found he could not so much walk down to the parade stand as shuffle, really. The weight of all the gold braid on his shoulders was the main problem, though the twelve kilograms of bronze and silver pinned to his chest probably didn’t help. The chief culprit, however, had to be the pair of ivory pommel sabers he wore on either hip, which kept getting tangled with his legs as he attempted to stride with pomp and dignity across the public square. He managed, however, to struggle up into the place of honor, a chair of red velvet and so much gilt wooden decorative fussiness that even Morel found it a bit de trop.

In all things, though, it was essential to project an air of confidence and might, and Morel was happy to make such sacrifices for his adopted homeland.

Once he was properly seated the parade could begin.

An observer, if any had been present, might have noticed that the long reviewing stand set up in the main square of Morelograd was a bit thinly populated. In point of fact, said hypothetical witness might have remarked that it seemed Morel was the only person who had come to watch the parade happen. There was a reason for this.

It was the same reason why, as the parade filed past, it was made up entirely of Martin-8 the robot dragging a rose-covered float past the stands, then zooming around the corner to fetch a wooden mockup of a missile carrier, followed by Martin-8, again, running quickly out of sight only to drag in a pipe organ on wheels, on which he played the national anthem (“All Glory to our Beautifully Mustachioed Leader,”) with one telescoping arm while steering the vehicle with his other hand.

Martin-8 had to play all the parts required of a properly vigorous parade, because there was no one else to take part.

Franz Morel, undisputed and eternal leader of the planet VZ-61a, was also its sole human inhabitant. Unconquerable ruler of all he surveyed, Morel was also his own—and only—subject.

One might have suggested that Martin-8 the robot was an exception to this, that the mechanical man was under Morel’s command. And it was true that Martin-8 performed the duties of a subject rather well—he was always perfectly happy to put on another parade (Morel commanded these to occur at least three times a week) or make another rasher of bacon, or build a new wing onto the Presidential Palace as Morel desired. Yet in another sense, Martin-8 could not be considered a subject at all. In addition to his roles as Major Domo, Aide-de-Camp, Secretary of the Navy, Chief Strategic Advisor and Vice President-for-life, Martin-8 had two other jobs. One was to be Franz Morel’s jailer. The other, should worse come to worst, was to serve as The Great Leader’s executioner.

PLANET VZ-61A LACKED any more sonorous name, largely because the astronomer who discovered it had found it so underwhelming that she never bothered actually looking at it again after it was catalogued. It possessed no resources worth exploiting, nor was it big enough to be worth colonizing. Barely five hundred kilometers across, it possessed something like gravity and something like air, but not enough of either to make it a pleasant vacation spot. Furthermore, it was a great deal of distance from anywhere people bothered to go, and its evening sky lacked any particular beauty.

Even Franz Morel, who had once been the paramount leader of a very large nation on the next world over—a man possessed of imperialist tendencies that would make a Napoleon blush—had never bothered to plant a flag on the place, or even to threaten to blow it up for being so irritatingly useless.

When the time came and the people decided that Franz Morel had to go, they faced a dilemma. Morel was a butcher, a ruthless murdering reptile of a leader. His death squads and purges had made him the most hated man in the galaxy. Yet those who replaced him couldn’t simply kill him. That would have been sinking to his level. Everyone wanted him dead, but no one wanted to get their hands dirty by strangling him. In the end they hit upon a plan that would allow them to remain blameless, but almost certainly result in the desired end. They would exile Morel to VZ-61a. They would provide for his every need and allow him to rule the place as he chose. The only condition of his retirement (as it was always described) was that he would never be allowed to leave VZ-61a, nor make any contact with another world. If he did so, his robot butler was to enact Protocol Zeta Four Cobalt—that is, to shoot him in the back of the head. It would be his own fault, and he would pay the price for his own perfidy, and everyone could get a good night’s sleep for a change.

His usurpers assumed that within days, the hated man would summon up some cadre of loyal army officers to fly to VZ-61a in a heavily armed raid to free him from his confinement. Or he would, through sheer cunning, manage to build some sort of rocket that would allow him to escape into hiding, from which he would slowly rebuild his power base like a patient spider in a secluded web. In these cases the robot would be fully justified in its pre-programmed act of regicide. The third possibility was that the isolation of VZ-61a would very quickly drive Morel as mad as a toad in a stock pot, and that in a fit of despair he would take his own life.

None of those things happened. For seven and one half years, Franz Morel ruled VZ-61a with an iron fist; but always he kept punctiliously within the bounds of his new estate.

Each of his deposers’ assumptions was based on a flawed postulate. The first: there was no loyal cadre. Morel’s reign had been so brutal, and so corrupt, that he had lost every last friend he ever might have had. The second: that Morel had the intelligence to build a rocket. He had ruled a technically advanced society, but had never actually bothered to learn anything about technology himself in his forty-seven years. Had he wished to nail a self-portrait to the wall of his palace he would have been hard-pressed to know which end of the hammer one grasped and which was the business end.

The third flawed assumption: that he would go mad, living by himself.

He did not go mad, no matter how many years passed on VZ-61a. For the very simple reason that Franz Morel was already about as insane as it is possible for a human being to become. The effects of isolation, social and physical, on the human mind are well studied and known to be highly deleterious, but there is also such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. A man so suffused with neuroses, complexes, fixations and delusions as Franz Morel could withstand a little alone-time. He could do exile standing on his head.

Indeed, in many ways the days Morel spent alone on VZ-61a were the happiest of his life. He possessed all the power he had ever desired, as ruler not just of some middlingly impressive country but of an entire world. Every whim, every gratuitous impulse, every whimper of his rabidly overactive id was catered to by Martin-8, the robot. All the little frustrations and mild irritations of having to actually run a country were removed from him, and he could settle down to some proper and healthful self-indulgence. On VZ-61a he could do anything he desired. He might learn how to paint, he told himself, or he might begin the multi-volume set of memoirs he’d always wanted to write.

In the meantime, he could have parades. He’d always loved parades.

Solitude, in a word, became Franz Morel. The world of his exile had become a megalomaniac’s paradise.

Sadly, paradises are only ever built to be lost.

IT BEGAN UNREMARKABLY enough. A star in the evening sky grew brighter each night, rather faster than astronomical bodies typically did. Morel, possessing a quite shocking lack of intellectual curiosity, paid it no mind. His first sense that something might have changed was when, lounging in his five-hundred-gallon bathtub one morning, he called out for Martin-8 to refresh his hot water and—unthinkably—there was no response.

There came a great whooshing noise from outside, followed by a clap of thunder. In all of his days on VZ-61a, Morel had never seen nor heard a thunderstorm. This just about reached the threshold of his interest. He called out for Martin-8 to come explain what was going on.

Again, there was no response.

Morel was forced to get out of the bath and, unbelievably, fetch his own towel. He dressed—by himself—in a bathrobe worked with cloth-of-gold in a motif of his own initials and went down to the main hall of the Presidential Palace. The doors were thrown open, letting in light and air from the main square of Morelograd. The day being clement—as close to being pleasant as any day on the unremarkably warm planetoid ever got—Morel stepped outside in his bare feet and looked around. What he saw surprised him utterly. Martin-8 was approaching down the main thoroughfare—accompanied by a human being.

Morel’s imagination began to fizz. This being another quality he lacked in a truly outstanding degree, it took him quite a while to begin to understand the possibilities of what had occurred.

Another human, another person, had come to VZ-61a. The whoosh and the roar he’d heard must have been the sound of a rocket descending and landing just outside of the city. Another person—

Morel rushed forward, his hands out in warm greeting. “Hello, hello!” he cried. “Hello! I must admit, I’m pleased, I truly am!”

Martin-8 rolled to a stop. The robot extended one arm to gesture at the newcomer. “Zir,” the machine said, “may I introduze Tolliver Upwright?”

Morel grabbed the other man’s hands in welcome.

Upwright sneered.

He was tall, a good head taller than the admittedly short Morel. He was also very thin, thin like a mantis, whereas Morel was decidedly stout. Upwright possessed no facial hair whatsoever and the hair on his head had been shaved back on the sides and—interestingly—the hairline, as if to suggest that he possessed a higher forehead than, in actuality, he did. His face was spare to the point of gauntness. He wore a very severe tunic buttoned very tightly at his throat. Of ornament or decoration he had none, except a tiny enamel pin on his breast that looked like the insignia of some political party. Which party did not matter in the slightest to Morel.

“How very good of you to come!” Morel said. “How wonderful! How quickly can we get on our way? I have a few things to pack, it shouldn’t amount to more than a short ton of cargo in all, and then we can—”

“Ahem,” Upwright said. “Ahem.” When this seemed to fail to achieve the desired effect, he turned to face Martin-8 with one raised eyebrow. “Ahem,” he said.

“Pleaze, Mr. Upwright, may I introduze Franz Morel?”

Morel frowned in confusion. The new man didn’t know who he was?

“You’ve come to take me back, yes?” the erstwhile dictator inquired. “I’m being released. That’s why you’re here.”

In his head he could see no other reason for this unexpected and unprecedented visit. Clearly he had been forgiven by the people back home. Most likely, Morel’s successor had proved so unequal to the task of actually running a country that the people had clamored to have their beloved Morel back. There could be no other explanation—

“Mr. Upwright will be a guezt here,” Martin-8 droned. “On a permanent baziz.”

“A guest,” Morel said.

“Yez, zir.”

“Here.”

“Yez, zir.”

Upwright leaned forward, looming over Morel. “I know you. I’ve heard about you,” he said. “I’ve heard a great deal about… you.”

Morel glanced back and forth between the robot and the newcomer. He didn’t understand. Not at all.

“You,” Upwright said, lifting one very long finger and pointing it squarely in Morel’s direction, “are the Butcher of Fluoristan. You’re the one who ordered the pre-emptive execution of the Humanist Congress. You’re the fellow who had an entire regiment of your own soldiers flogged because they failed to meet dress code.”

“Don’t forget,” Martin-8 intoned, “the inzident with the zchoolbuz.”

“Quite,” Upwright said. “The… school bus.”

Morel squirmed inside his robe. “War,” he protested. “You know. Accidents.”

“You,” Upwright said, “are the most hated man in history. You are a villain, sir. A monster of religious proportions. That is to say, a creature so vile, so despised, that in future I fully expect you to be written into the official text of various religions. Specifically, written in as an example of what not to do.”

Morel smiled. He had a very good, very practiced smile. It was a smile that, once upon a time, had sent entire crowds into a frenzy of applause and cheering.

Perhaps he was out of practice.

“You, robot,” Upwright said. “This is unacceptable. You expect me to spend the—I am certain the very short, but meaningfully long—span of my exile here? With this man? You expect me to spend one more moment in his presence?”

“I am afraid the conditionz of your zentence—” Martin-8 began, but clearly Upwright had more to say.

“Why, simply being within a hundred kilometers of this… this organism, which I dare not give the noble name of man, must be considered highly unusual and innovatively cruel punishment—”

“What’s he in for?” Morel asked the robot.

“They called it the National Paztry Day Mazzacre,” Martin-8 replied.

Morel licked his lips.

“Massacre—”

Upwright’s face turned a bright purple. His eyes vibrated with rage.

“Those nuns were known counter-revolutionaries!” he roared.

EVENTUALLY IT GOT through the rather thick skull of Franz Morel that he was no longer alone. That he would not be, from here out, the only human resident of VZ-61a. The basic facts of the case drilled their way into his worldview.

The meaning of those facts, the subtle implications, were to work themselves out over time. First, though, he announced that the newcomer must be tired after his long journey, and therefore he must be given refreshment. Martin-8 acquiesced at once, preparing a full banquet of welcome. Dinner was served in the very best of the Presidential Palace’s seven dining halls. The one that would seat fifty. The walls were hung with campaign banners, some from battles and wars Morel had actually won, some from the victories and conquests he only claimed in the official histories. The silver service reflected the light of a thousand candles and the napkins were freshly starched and folded perfectly.

Upwright entered the room with his hands clasped behind his back. He took one look, lifted his chin, and sniffed in disdain.

Morel hurried to indicate a chair near the head of the table. Near it. He took the place of honor for himself, of course. Once they were seated, he snapped his fingers and Martin-8 rushed in from the kitchen, bearing platter after platter of steaming food.

“So,” Morel said. “You’ve been exiled.”

Upwright lifted one shoulder in a shrug that required only the minimum of muscular contraction. “I prefer to think of it as an involuntary period of reflection, before the full reinstatement of my plenary powers,” he said. “I am certain that within the space of a month—likely less than that—the officials of the People’s Party will come to their senses and recognize that I did nothing wrong, that I have never done anything wrong, that my motives were of the purest and my decisions were based, always, on the best possible information available at the time. In short, I will be exonerated, cleared of all charges, there will be public apologies, there will be a formal reception upon my return, there will be—”

“Chop?” Morel asked, lifting the bell of a silver platter, revealing a mountain of succulent and perfectly sauced cuts of something that was not, in fact, pork, but which wore a cunning disguise as such.

Upwright’s nose twitched. “I am a strict vegetarian,” he insisted. “Please cover that up. It borders on the offensive.”

Morel replaced the bell. Though not, he told himself, because he’d been told to do so. Only to make sure the chops stayed warm.

“In fact,” Upwright said, “as I am to be a prisoner here, I believe I shall take this opportunity to demonstrate solidarity with all political prisoners everywhere. I shall have toasted bread and water, please.”

Martin-8 zipped off to comply.

Morel squinted at his new companion. “I’m not sure I’ve ever met a trustworthy vegetarian,” he said. “There’s always something wrong with a fellow who doesn’t enjoy a good, bloody steak.”

Upwright straightened the cutlery arrayed before him. “Is that what you told General Ugholini, when you forced him to eat the heart of his own beloved lieutenant?”

Morel chewed on his mustache.

He was at a disadvantage, here. Upwright seemed to know all about his exploits, whereas he knew nothing whatsoever of the newcomer’s curriculum vitae. This was, of course, a simple accident of timing. Morel had been exiled seven and one half years earlier. At the time, Tolliver Upwright had been little more than a party apparatchik, a rising star in the revolutionary government of the last major nation Morel had not yet gotten around to conquering.

Upwright’s rise had been nothing short of meteoric. By the classic pincer move of (a) endlessly, tirelessly proving his purity and devotion to the Party’s ideals, and (b) knowing whose throats he could safely and without consequence cut, Upwright had quickly found himself at the very center of a tidy cult of personality and had been made the First Citizen of his nation by the time he was thirty. His people had loved him dearly (or else) and the Party had heaped accolades and encomia upon him, right up until the moment of his exile.

It was a testament to Upwright’s bloody, brutal efficiency that the nation he helped create was a model of bureaucratic effectiveness. Deposing Franz Morel had required a prolonged and costly battle that left his capital city (also called Morelograd) in ruins. When the time came, however, to remove Upwright from power, the Party had simply had to submit a single form, properly notarized and copied in triplicate. By name, a Party Inner Circle Eyes Only Form 57/J: Authorization for Removal/Assassination/Usurpation of High Official. The only small hang-up with the entire process had been that some anonymous clerk had made a typo on the form. Said person had meant to make a very large, emphatic X in the box marked Summary Execution Preferably Including Public Spectacle, but had instead managed to check the box that read Permanent Exile. The Party Secretary had passed on the form without actually reading it, and so the life of Tolliver Upwright had been spared.

“Hmm,” Morel said. Knowing none of this, only that he had been caught out.

“Hm,” Upwright said, more succinctly.

Martin-8 arrived with a new platter almost at once. It bore a stainless steel rack of toast soldiers and a glass bottle of still water.

“That’s fine,” Upwright said, using a silver fork to snag one of the toast triangles. He laid it down on his porcelain plate and stared at it for a while. “A fitting meal for a prisoner of conscience. I think that the statement I’m making here is clear.”

Morel spooned caviar onto a blini. “Absolutely,” he said.

Upwright nodded. He poked at the piece of toast with his fork. His mouth pursed up in distaste, however, and he employed his knife to dissect the piece of half-burned bread.

“These aren’t caraway seeds, are they?” he asked.

They almost certainly were not—technically. Martin-8 made do with what he had available on VZ-61a, a world which possessed no great wealth of culinary raw materials. It was a triumph of technology that the robot was able to convert the local bacteria, slime molds, and fungi into something resembling human food. Whether or not the robot was proud of its ability to construct things that looked like caraway seeds would forever remain unknown, however, as Upwright did not provide him a chance to answer the question.

“I can’t have caraway seeds in my bread,” the former Party Official said. “They get stuck in my teeth. And this water. I assume it has been double filtered? Was it secured from a sustainable source? It looks a bit gray to me.”

“Zir,” Martin-8 said, whisking the offending foodstuffs away from the table.

When the robot was gone, Upwright drummed his fingers on the table in an impatient way. “I suppose there’s no chance of getting decent food here.”

“You could go on a hunger strike,” Morel pointed out. “That might make an even bolder statement than bread and water.”

Upwright stared at him through dramatically narrowed eyes.

“Hmm,” he said.

It was Morel’s turn to prove that brevity was the soul of wit. “Hm,” he said. And forked the largest of the chops onto his plate.

AFTER THE BANQUET was finished, the two of them went for a stroll. Morel desired to show off the grandeur of Morelograd, his capital and home. It didn’t take very long. The city was dominated utterly by the Presidential Palace, by far the largest building on VZ-61a. Beyond the precincts of the palace, the city possessed only the one main square and the four roads which radiated from it. There were a number of buildings of tastefully restrained architecture facing the palace, but these structures possessed a common flaw which Upwright, to Morel’s embarrassment, was quick to point out.

“They’re façades,” Upwright said.

In fact, the buildings were all front. Designed cunningly to look like complete houses, banks, factories and schools from one side—the side that faced the palace—there was nothing to them when they were viewed from other angles, just flat faces propped up with long wooden buttresses from behind.

Essentially two-dimensional in nature, these buildings served only to present Morel, in the palace, with a stately view.

“But then where am I to live, while I’m here?” Upwright asked.

“I’ll find some place for you in the palace,” Morel said. “I only ever really use seven of the twenty bedrooms. One a day, rotating each week, so I always have clean sheets.”

“You expect me to sleep in that rococo nightmare?” Upwright asked. “I should think all the gilt and ormolu and baroque tchotchkes would invade my dreams. I would wake up every morning thinking I was drowning in chintz.”

Morel took a deep breath. He understood that not everyone shared his decorating sense. He did not, actually, understand why, but he supposed people were people and by definition perverse.

Still.

It was becoming rapidly clear to him that a situation was brewing, here. One which he was going to have to nip in the bud.

“Perhaps the time has come to discuss how you’re going to fit in here,” Morel said. “What position you’ll fill. I’ve been operating for some time with a reduced staff, and it would be good to fill some of the vacant seats. Martin-8 does his best as chief of staff, press secretary, and bodyguard, but honestly, he lacks initiative and vision. You could help round out the body politic, as it were.”

“Is that a fact?” Upwright asked.

“Indeed. I find myself in need of a Minister of Propaganda, for instance. Do you think you could bring something unique to the role?”

“Minister,” Upwright said. “Minister.”

“I admit it’s asking a lot. The requirements of the post may be taxing, and I’m afraid the hours will be long. It is a position with great responsibilities—but also excellent perks. You would have the ear of the highest office in the land, for instance. Unfettered access to my glorious self.”

“How exciting,” Upwright replied. “Though I wonder if—perhaps—I might challenge a supposition.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Upwright said. “What exactly makes you think that you’re in charge, here?”

“I beg your pardon?” Morel asked. Dim as he was, he honestly didn’t understand what Upwright was asking.

“You have assumed, sir, that I would be interested in playing your subordinate. I don’t see why I should just acknowledge your preeminence. Perhaps I intend to be the leader of this world. You, of course, would be my constituent.”

Morel laughed. “Preposterous! This is my planet. Come now, man, you must see that it has to be so. For seven and a half years I’ve been in charge here, with no real help from the robot, and—”

“Perhaps,” Upwright said, “the time has come for a change. A clearing out of the dead wood, so to speak. A great rethinking of the political economy on VZ-61a.”

Morel turned bright red. He smacked a fist against the palm of his other hand. Repeatedly. When this failed to have the desired effect—or any visible effect at all—he reiterated, “Preposterous! There can be no debate about this. I am the sole commander of all I survey.”

“But—and again, I ask with all due respect—why?”

“Why?” Morel asked. “WHY? Well, sir, because—because—because of the oldest principle of governance known to man!”

Upwright pursed his lips. “Which is what, exactly?”

“I was here first!”

Upwright chuckled a bit, but said nothing. They continued their stroll in silence, for a while. Eventually they returned to the place where they’d started from—the gates of the palace—where they stood for some time in perfect silence, regarding each other. Morel finally turned to the newcomer and gave him the slightest of bows. “There you have it. I’m glad we came to an understanding.” Morel had always considered silence to imply consent. Especially the permanent sort of silence he’d formerly imposed on those who challenged his authority. “I think,” he said, “that we should have a parade tomorrow. Yes, a parade. Everyone loves a good parade,” he mused aloud. They were so very useful for demonstrating who was in charge, and who was under control.

Upwright opened his mouth as if to speak, but Morel hurried to fill the vacuum.

“I’ll even allow you to participate. Yes, yes, I think that’s exactly what will fit the bill, here. I herby formally permit you to march in tomorrow’s parade. Now, now, before you say anything—”

“Ahem,” Upwright said. “I was about to accept your kind offer.”

Morel’s brow clouded. “You were.”

“Indeed,” Upwright replied. “I wouldn’t miss your parade for the world.” And with that he walked away, laughing a bit under his breath.

“Well,” Morel said, his overheated brain working very hard. “Well. Good, then.”

IT PROVED A fine morning for a parade. At the very least, it didn’t rain, and the temperature never fell below freezing. On VZ-61a, you took what small victories were vouchsafed you by the elements. Morel took his time dressing. He found he was oddly nervous, fluttering with a sort of stage fright he hadn’t felt since his first days doing press events as a young dictator. That was so long ago, now. Back before he had all the reporters fed to hyenas.

He’d attended hundreds of these parades, of course. He knew exactly what to expect. Yet the fact that today there would be an audience—for the first time in his exile—sent tremors of excitement and dread running through him until he was all atingle.

He picked his favorite two sabers, and rolled his hat between his hands endlessly, trying to give it the perfect shape. When Martin-8 came to tell him the parade was ready, Morel stuck out his chin, adopted his well-trained swagger, and headed down to the stands feeling almost giddy.

The parade began as soon as he’d taken his seat. There was no immediate sign of Upwright, but Morel supposed the newcomer might simply wish to make a dramatic entrance, or could still be working on his parade float. He hoped it would be tasteful—perhaps a ten-meter long display of roses spelling out Morel’s name, or perhaps Upwright would come out dressed in sackcloth and tear at his hair while making a public apology for his remarks that had challenged Morel’s rightful place as ruler of VZ-61a.

Nothing too fussy, of course.

Morel nodded approvingly as Martin-8 came around the corner, leading a wooden mockup of a Megalodon M-99 missile carrier, a weapons system Morel had always adored for its ability to render cities into rubble with a minimum of user training. He clapped politely as Martin-8 rushed around the block and returned driving a staff car flying a giant flag bearing Morel’s coat of arms. He feigned a slight yawn as Martin-8 made its third trip, this time marching with one arm up in a salute.

Where the devil was Upwright? Morel frowned and peered around the square, looking for any sign of the frankly obstreperous fellow.

Then the newcomer did arrive, and Morel nearly had a fit.

Upwright had not put on a fancy costume. Nor had he bothered creating an imaginative yet decorous float for the parade. Instead he had simple written a slogan on a piece of cardstock, mounted it on a wooden pole, and marched forward thrusting his sign in the air, chanting the same message out loud.

The message was simple: DOWN WITH MUSTACHIO’D OPPRESSORS.

But far, far worse than this—he had recruited Martin-8, the robot, to carry a similar sign, and to chant along with him. “Down with muztachio’d oprezzorz!”

Morel’s jaw fell open. His blood pressure soared. One of his sabers fell off his belt and clattered under the reviewing stand.

The two of them, upstart and robot, marched around the corner. Almost instantly, Martin-8 reappeared, this time holding a very large wreath of cunningly worked flowers in the colors of Franz Morel’s nation, which the robot presented to the dictator with as graceful a bow as his mechanical limbs permitted.

Then Martin-8 rolled around the corner—and came back at Upwright’s side. This time they carried an effigy with a very poorly drawn-on mustache and beard, hanging from a pasteboard gibbet.

Morel’s left eye started to twitch alarmingly.

Martin-8’s next float was themed on Morel’s famous victory over the potato farmers of Yuziristan. One of his more flawless performances as a military commander. The float depicted a trio of farmers throwing down their pitchforks, while a flattering image of Morel pointed down at them with an imperious finger from the hatch of a main battle tank. The whole thing was made of dyed ostrich feathers that fluttered magnificently in the breeze.

Then Martin-8 disappeared around the corner again. Only to return with Upwright, both of them carrying shoes in their throwing arms.

“Enough!” Morel screamed. “Stop!”

“What’s the matter, Morel?” Upwright sneered. “You can’t handle the sight of citizens expressing their right to free speech?”

“Speech?” Morel shouted, aghast. “Free?” He shook his head in utter incomprehension. “Rights?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Upwright announced. He paused for a moment to put his shoe back on.

“And you—Martin-8—you, you traitor, you apostate, you—you—”

“I beg your pardon, zir,” Martin-8 said. “Have I dizpleazed you?”

“You betrayed me,” Morel said. “After seven and a half years, I assumed we were simpatico. I assumed we had a rapport. I assumed you were my friend, you bucket of lowest bidder-assembled parts!”

“Zir,” Martin-8 said, “many apologiez. However, it iz part of my programming to zerve all inhabitantz of VZ-61a equally. I cannot refuze an order from Mr. Upwright, any more than I can refuze an order from yourzelf, unlezz zaid order contradictz the termz of your exilez.”

Morel couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t hold it in his head at all. He blinked rapidly, as if this was all an illusion and it would simply go away any moment now.

It did not.

“I… I forbid it,” he said. “I forbid this vulgar display. I forbid you from participating in any more acts of disobedience,” he said.

He had been speaking to Martin-8, but Upwright lifted his chin and said, “Ha.” Then he stamped one very narrow foot.

Morel sputtered in rage. Utter, nonverbal rage.

“In that case,” Upwright said, “then you give me no choice. Martin-8, I’d like to make a statement.”

The robot took out a pad of paper and a tiny, well-sharpened pencil.

“As of this moment,” Upwright said, “I declare the formation of the People’s Revolutionary Party of VZ-61a. Too long have the people of this world toiled under the yoke of the lunatic oppressor Francis Morel.”

“Franz,” Morel interjected. It should come as little surprise to anyone that he hated having people get his name wrong in official pronouncements.

“Leave it as is,” Upwright told the robot.

Morel fumed. Soundlessly.

“The People’s Revolutionary Party will not rest until the madman Morel has been removed from office, and preferably from this life. Of course, every revolutionary party needs a president. I nominate myself as president pro-tem, until such time as a free election can be held. Martin-8, this is the point where you say, ‘seconded’.”

“Zeconded,” the robot dutifully zaid. Said.

“The motion is carried,” Upwright pronounced. “Now. Come with me. There is a great deal of work to be done.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door of the façade building across the street.

The robot followed.

Up in the reviewing stands, Morel shook and quivered and steamed. He simmered with rage, in almost complete silence.

He boiled with anger, without making a peep.

He grew as brightly red as a ripe tomato, and sweat popped out of his forehead, dripping across the huge, prominent vein that protruded there. Quietly.

Then he screamed his lungs out.

MOREL SPENT A fitful night full of restless dreams, only to wake, as usual, in his enormous bed. As was his wont, he called for Martin-8. It was time for breakfast.

For a very long time, perhaps as much as a quarter of an hour, the robot did not come. Morel pulled the blankets up to his chin. Perhaps the horrible Upwright had subverted the machine. Perhaps the newcomer had disassembled the robot—how terrible that would be—Morel would be forced to cook his own eggs. To brush down his own uniforms. And who would march in his parades?

When the door did open—and the robot entered, as discreetly as ever—Morel felt a palpable sense of relief trickle down his spine. Martin-8 had a silver tray balanced in one mechanical claw, and when it lifted the lid to reveal three rashers of bacon and a jeroboam of champagne, well, it was almost like everything had returned to normal. Morel sighed deeply and began to tuck in.

“You were late, this morning,” he said, to the robot. There might have been a trace of diffidence in his voice, but he knew Martin-8 would never judge him for it. “I—ha ha—began to worry.”

“Apologiez, zir. I waz detained. I worked all night and into the morning conztructing Mr. Upwright’z new dwelling.”

Morel raised an eyebrow. So the upstart had found himself a place to live? Well. That might be for the best. Maybe some dreadful little hole halfway across the planet. Yes. That would suit the prig. “A little hovel he can call his own,” Morel said, and tittered to himself. “No doubt very small, and minimal in design.”

“The term he uzed was ‘Brutalizt’, zir.”

Morel nodded and poured himself another mimosa. “No appreciation for proper architecture, that lot. Why, they never met a portico or a colonnade they… they… hmm. Martin-8, do you hear something?”

“Zir?”

“Something like… music. Rather vulgar music. I wonder if—”

With a sudden, terrible presentiment, Morel jumped from the bed and ran to the French doors of his balcony. He threw them open and a great cloud of noise pushed into the room. The music was blaring, and full of squelching feedback as it was blasted out of poorly-designed loudspeakers.

It had the strong, driving rhythm of a march, and there was a fair amount of tuba in it, but beyond that Morel did not find anything to like in the music. A chorus of rough male voices formed the vocal component, voices raised in solidarity and union, calling for the destruction of all tyrants and enemies of the people.

The music came from a number of horn-shaped speakers mounted on the front of the building across the street. A new building across the street. Though not particularly wide—it took up only as much space on the main square as the average house—the building rose to towering heights. It was built of dull, unornamented concrete, without the slightest concession to aesthetics or flair. Only two things distinguished the building at all. One was the bright red flag flapping atop a pole at the building’s apex.

The other was a curious mass, not unlike a growth of mushrooms, that sprouted from the front of the building—directly across the square from Morel’s balcony. This concrudescence took the form of a cluster of the aforementioned loudspeakers, but also included a wide variety of cameras, radar dishes, telescope lenses and directional microphones, all of which were pointed right at Morel’s face.

“Brutalist,” Morel said, to himself. “Brutalist. And… and so high…”

“He azked me how tall the Prezidential Palaze waz,” Martin-8 said, its mechanical voice almost lost in the swell of chanting proles. “I informed him that it iz exactly one hundred and zeventeen meterz in height. He then requezted that I conztruct hiz new tower to be one hundred and zeventeen meterz tall.”

Morel’s left eye twitched. “The same height. Exactly the same—”

“Then he requezted the flagpole,” Martin-8 went on. “Which technically addz five more meterz to the building’z height.”

Morel’s right eye started to twitch as well.

A sudden flash of motion drew his attention back to the building across the way. One of the closed-circuit television cameras there had swiveled on its bracket, to focus better on his reddening face.

One of the windows higher up on the building opened. A long banner unfurled from the window, bearing the legend:

PRESIDENT UPWRIGHT IS WATCHING YOU.

Morel squeaked in terror and slammed the French doors of his balcony closed. He rushed across the room to take—ahem—strategic cover behind an arras.

“This,” he swore, with the robot to witness him, “is too much. This is the last straw!”

The only question that remained was what he planned on doing about it.

Morel’s brain worked overtime, proposing and rejecting possibilities. He weighed the pros and cons of various schemes of action, had fierce if short-lived internal debates over the likelihood of success of various schemes, plans, and gambits. His eyeballs quivered in his head as he imagined all the various ways he could have revenge.

Finally, he hit upon the one surefire strategy that had always worked for him before, the one method of dealing with enemies which had become the hallmark of his wildly successful career.

“I’ll murder the bastard,” he said.

THERE GREW, NEAR the equator of VZ-61a, a thing that was not a tree. Not in the slightest. The most generous botanist would have been at pains to call it a bush. It was not green, for one thing, nor did it have branches. It was made of a certain slimy kind of fungus that grew slightly taller than the other seventy-nine species of slimy fungus which had inhabited VZ-61a before the arrival of humanity.

This one particular specimen of fungus, which was the tallest of its kind that had ever grown, was just tall enough to provide Morel with a modicum of shade from the noonday sun.

Before him spread a broad plain of absolutely nothing. Nothing grew in the cracked and lifeless soil that stretched out for kilometers in every direction.

It was the closest thing the planet could provide to approximate a field. Namely, a field of honor.

A plume of dust rose like a great column on the horizon. The horizon of VZ-61a never being too far off, it wasn’t long before Martin-8 appeared, drawing a two-wheeled litter. Upwright sat perfectly straight in the back, with an expression of muted annoyance.

When the litter had come to a stop, the newcomer unfolded his long legs and stepped out to stand in front of Morel. “I was busy,” he said. “I do not appreciate being summoned away from my work.”

Morel smiled broadly. He used his fingers to straighten his mustachios. He lifted one of his many medals and breathed upon it, then wiped away the condensation with a handkerchief.

“So what is it?” Upwright demanded. “What is so all-fire important that it was worth coming here? I could have written another twenty pages of my new manifesto if you would have had the simple courtesy to leave me alone.”

Morel’s smile broadened. He unbuttoned his left glove, then carefully peeled it off, one finger at a time.

“Speak, man! Speak or I’m going to add interference with party activities to the long list of your—”

Morel rose up on his tiptoes—regretfully this was necessary—and slapped Upwright across the cheek with his glove.

“I demand satisfaction,” he said.

Upwright looked duly stunned. Morel took an enormous degree of pleasure from this.

“I beg your pardon,” Upwright said. “Did you just say—are you—is this supposed to be some kind of duel?”

The would-be usurper looked around—at the thing that was not in any real sense a tree, at the broken ground. At the pair of pearl-handled sabers in their carved mahogany display case that Martin-8 suddenly held out in its mechanical hands.

Then he broke out in a fit of dry laughter.

“This planet,” Morel said, “is proving too small for the both of us. Of the many reasons why I might be justified in taking your life, there are sixteen which I feel are the most egregious and require immediate redress. I shall begin to enumerate them, starting with number the first: You interrupted my breakfast this morning. Number the second—”

Upwright hadn’t stopped laughing. “You can’t be serious, little man. I have no inclination to fight you. As much as I’d like to see you dead, the very institution of dueling is a barbarous practice suited only to reactionary elements who are not yet evolved enough to understand the concept of civil debate, and furthermore—”

“You refuse my challenge?” Morel asked.

He’d been prepared for this.

“Yes,” Upwright told him. Then he turned on his heel and started walking back toward the litter.

“I thought you might be a coward,” Morel said.

Upwright stopped instantly in his tracks. He did not, however, turn. Nor did he say anything. He reached up and brushed some imaginary dust off the shoulder of his tunic. He might have let out a disdainful sniff.

“You’ve never actually been in a real fight, have you?” Morel asked of Upwright’s back. “You’ve never taken a man’s life in single combat. No. Your type never do. You’d much rather sign a form that consigns a thousand of your own people to their deaths, rather than strangle the enemy before you.”

Upwright’s left hand started to curl into a fist.

“You have no sense of honor, none at all,” Morel said.

“You are a moral sewer,” Upwright replied, turning.

“Bloodless philistine,” Morel impugned.

“Violent thug,” Upwright pronounced.

Morel: “Stuffed shirt!”

Upwright: “Visigoth!”

“Weakling!”

“Cretin!”

This went on for some time. It ended only when, with a sudden, jerking motion, Upwright seized the hilt of one of the sabers and drew it from its sheath.

The fact that he had, in fact, never held such a weapon in his hand before did not stay him in the slightest. The fact that Morel had once been a champion fencer and had slaughtered dozens of men in duels might have given him pause—except that he didn’t know it.

“Have at you, then,” Upwright said, and launched an attack before Morel had even drawn his blade.

A frightful breach of the normal rules of dueling. Then again, there were no referees or seconds there to complain. Martin-8 was impartial.

Morel let out a triumphant laugh, and rolled easily away from Upwright’s telegraphed blow. He drew his own saber and assumed a fighting stance.

“En garde,” he said.

Upwright moved in for a second slashing attack. He failed to connect. Fencing is, in fact, quite a bit harder than it looks, and unless one is a natural talent at it, one is likely to lose one’s first—and therefore only—bout.

Really, it should have been one of the shortest matches in the history of people whacking at each other with swords. Morel should have made very quick and very bloody work of Upwright.

Instead, the duel went on for nearly an hour. This was not, despite what he might have told himself, because Morel was toying with his opponent. Savoring each easy parry and holding back from the final, fatal stroke simply for the fun of it.

No. Instead, what delayed the inevitable was that Morel’s fencing days were years behind him. It was true he’d once been a fiend with a foil. That had been several thousand heavy, rich meals ago. That had been before he downed a cumulative ocean of breakfast champagne. Morel had been lithe and athletically built, back when he was establishing his reputation. In the years since his ascendancy, he had rather let himself go.

So when Upwright flailed at him like a boy waving a stick, he was just able to cross swords and step back. When Upwright tried to run him through with a wrong-footed lunge, Morel was hard-pressed to get his copious gut out of the way in time.

He did manage to nick Upwright’s cheek. Upwright, on the other hand, managed to raise a pretty good weal on Morel’s forearm. Before very long, however, both of them were puffing and huffing so much that they could barely lift their weapons.

“A villain… like you,” Upwright gasped, “can never… defeat… the will… of the people!”

“Will?” Morel coughed. “Will is… the strength of… the paramount leader. The people… know their master… when they… when…”

He couldn’t finish. The stitch in his side stole his breath. His feet hurt from standing so long. His head spun from lack of oxygen. He wondered if he might pass out, right there in the middle of the duel. It took him quite a while, in fact, to notice something rather important.

Upwright had dropped his sword.

The newcomer’s arms hung low at his sides. His chest heaved for breath and his legs shook visibly. It looked like it was all he could do to keep from falling backward onto the rough soil of VZ-61a.

Morel had won. He merely needed to step forward—despite the pain in his knees—and deliver the coup de grâce.

Which would have been much easier if he had any feeling left in his own arms. Somehow he found the strength to bring his saber up and aim its wobbling point at Upwright’s Adam’s apple. Yes, just one thrust, and… and…

That was when he heard a mechanical whirring and the strident ringing of a bell. He touched the saber’s point to Upwright’s throat, much as someone interrupted while reading might place an index finger against the page to save their place.

He turned his head to look.

The first thing he saw was the barrel of an enormous firearm pointed directly at his head. The weapon was connected to a mechanical arm that emerged from a hatch in the torso of Martin-8.

The robot’s glass eyes flashed. The ringing bell alarm came from its mouth.

“Wh… what?” Morel managed to say. “What’s… this?”

“Orderz, zir. My orderz are to protect the two of you againzt all threatz.”

“Threats. Including a fully sanctioned duel, between two consenting parties.”

“All threatz, zir. My program iz clear.”

“And if I kill this dog, here and now, as I could easily do—”

“I muzt prevent it, zir.”

“And you’ll prevent it by blowing my head off?” Morel asked. “You’re saying, if I try to kill him, you’ll take action to stop me—by killing me?”

“Yez, zir.”

“So… I’ll die, and he’ll live? But that would mean—”

“Yez, zir.”

“That would mean…”

Morel’s heart skipped a beat.

“That would mean he would win.”

Morel pulled his arm back, removing the point of his saber from Upwright’s pulse. He looked down into the mirror-bright metal of the sword, and saw his own eyes staring back at him. Eyes enormous with madness.

He flung the saber away from himself, out into the sun-baked plain. It landed point down and quivered impotently there for a while, a flag of ultimate defeat.

“He would win. He would win!” Morel shrieked.

He grabbed two thick handfuls of his luxuriant hair and pulled. Luckily they were too carefully maintained to come loose.

He turned to face the robot.

“What,” he demanded, “is the point of exile if you have to share it?”

The robot had no answer.

Morel, bellowing in rage, ran out across the plain, shaking his fists in the air. All too soon he was over the horizon, and his outrage had faded from earshot.

Eventually Upwright sat down in the shade of the thing that failed at being a tree and closed his eyes, intending to take a nap.

“What time should I expect lunch?” he asked.