The Ultimate Egoist by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page B

that faced the people, or his substitute. It was a pleasing plan, and he instituted a great and secret search through the land for such a servant.
    It was hard. The details of that vast and quiet search are one of the most monumental stories ever to write its dark lines on the pages of history. But in months the thing was done, and the man was presented to the Leader.
    He was perfect. Nearly every line of his face, every tone of his voice, every gesture, was that of his Leader. He knew the Leader’s ways, too, and the Leader’s thought. The Leader himself taught himwhat details he lacked, in many secret conferences held in the Leader’s rooms in the dead of night, with but one trusted sentry guarding the double doors.
    There came a time when the Leader fell deathly sick from a malignance in his throat. He sent an urgent, secret message to the royal physician of a rival country’s King, and the physician refused to come. For had the Leader died under the knife, the physician never would have left those rooms alive.
    But the Leader did not die. One was found to cure him, an old wise man whose only thought was for gain, and it was done, and forgotten. He did not die, but while he was sick, something worse than death happened to the Leader. It was his man, his perfect prototype.
    He was
too
perfect.
    While the Leader lay abed, his great organization had gone on its way unchecked, unhampered by his illness. His man had stepped in to fill his place, and had done it so perfectly that no one knew—no one ever knew. There had been four momentous decisions then, too, and the man had handled them well, even as he would have. Too perfectly.
    The Leader began to look askance at this man. Suppose he, the Leader, were to be killed now, tomorrow, quietly? He would be a nameless corpse, and thereafter the memories of man would record doings that were not his, but those of another. The Leader was a god. His people spoke of him as a god—because they must; yet they spoke of him so, and such speech was necessary to him, as worship is necessary to the perpetuation of any god …
    And so it came about that a god knew the meaning of fear. Fear was hate, and hate was anger. The man must be killed.
    The killing happened sooner than the Leader had expected. It was on a night shortly after the Leader had bloodlessly invaded a part of a neighboring land. He was, with his men’s help, drawing up a promise to the world that he would take no more from that or any other neighbor.
    And his man had the impertinence to disagree! It was the first time, and the Leader was frightened and filled with hate and angertowards him. The man said that there should be more such invasions, and more, and more, until the Leader’s country not only had what territories she had lost to other lands in her stormy past, but had yet more and more, until she dominated a continent and then a world. The man gave reasons, too, and they were good. But in his stubborn anger, the Leader pretended to scoff, and the man caught the shifty glint of his eyes as he pawed a side-arm from his belt. The man, since he was dressed exactly like the Leader, also had a side-arm, and both weapons came up together. One man was a little faster.
    The sentry outside heard a sound that meant death, and he flung open the double doors. He saw two men, identical in build, in garb, in hate-filled countenance. As he watched, one of the men slumped dead to the floor. The other shrugged, put away his weapon, and gave orders that the dead man was to be removed and disposed of, most secretly.
    There followed a reign of terror and triumph, as the forces of the Leader swept south and east, taking country after country, land after land of their ancient possessions. Every nation was defied, every nation was cowed, and the land of the Leader stood in its prime, unconquerable, threatening.
    Then there was the great fall. The trusted sentry betrayed his trust one day, and whispered a suspicion. His words became a