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TEXT of page 40 -41 LORDS OF THE SEVAGRAM

page 40                                   A. E. VAN VOGT 3 “Da,” baby Ylara crowed, “da!’   Hedrock smiled: He had held hundreds of infants, most of them his own, and he knew the sound was meaningless, just the first word babies bubbled. Still, it sounded like “Dad”. Every baby was a miracle, he thought, the kick start of a brand new universe.   “Could I take her now, Lord?’ the nurse asked. “It’s time for Ylara’s nap.”   “Of course.”   Behind the window the sun remained a pale orb in the darkling sky. It was only half past noon yet several stars showed.   The alien ship crawled across the sky, a fat dot, trailed by a V of superdreadnoughts. After the annihilation of the first squadron they kept a careful thousand mile distance.   Hedrock slept alone that night. Empress Inelda was making her yearly  tour of the great island continent of Chit Nei. She ruled the sloe-eyed, pale skinned aboriginals as the Virgin Goddess of the Kauri Tree and her subjects took the virgin part rather seriously. A baby and a husband would have spoiled the illusion. In time of crisis it was more important than ever to keep up the appearance of normality.   Immortal didn’t mean invulnerable and Hedrock slept as light as a hare.   Suddenly he was wide awake. Had there been a sound, so soft as to be almost subliminal, a movement in the still air?   The bedroom was pitch black and he blinked twice, boosting the output of his optical nerves.   The room emerged in grainy black-and-white. A young woman stood at the foot of his bed, leveling a gun between his eyes.   Hedrock noted two things in the first split second. She must be family, however distant. Those proud cheekbones and the rather fierce nose were the hallmark of the Isher clan. page 41                                          A. E. VAN VOGT  The second was the gun. It was an unknown model, strangely ornate, but clearly imperial issue. The energy cell sported the fierce two-headed condor of the House of Isher. The gauge was pushed all the way to “lethal”, so she must have come to kill him.   “Oh,” she said, “you’re awake.” And that was her second mistake. An assassin should never talk to her victim. It made him human, no longer only a target. Her fist mistake was of course not firing the moment she stepped into his room.   Hedrock saw her face change.   “I’m so sorry, sangra,” she whispered and pulled the trigger.   “I put suppressors in the walls,” Hedrock said when she kept pulling the trigger. “No atomic weapon can fire here.” He lifted his hand and a small titanium crossbow slapped his palm. “This one, though, works quite well.”   “You don’t understand!” the woman cried. “I come from the single future in three billion where the sun shines again. In all other timelines you and Inelda failed.”   Hedrock felt a stab of pure wonder: Someone had tamed the deadly seesaw effect. And then the full meaning of her words hit. “But in your future I died. I died in time and Inelda saved the empire.”   The woman nodded. “Seen from our time the past is inchoate, a maelstrom of possibilities. But yes, that is the single difference.”   She shoved the gun back in the holster and vanished like a popped soap bubble.   “She must have been your daughter,” the noman said. "With a probability of seventy nine. Empress Ylara of Isher.” He eyed his friend. "You didn’t realize that?’   “No, she felt like family. But that close…”   “She called you ’sangra’,” the noman said. “You don’t have teenage children like me but that term is just coming into vogue. It is a word of slightly condescending affection and means something like ‘good, old dad’.”