A notation followed, referring to one of many further comments appended at the end of the text. Grinning to herself, Loreanna found a crate to sit upon and manipulated the knurled bands of which the thille was mostly constructed, turning them against each other and observing the result of her adjustments in the air above the player. She came to the appropriate spot:
The names of reigning polities, their units of currency, as well as many titles they confer, descend from those of commercial entities founded earlier in history. This is an obscure fact, in general known only to historical and linguistic scholars, and relatively few of the former remain — and even fewer of the latter — since close study of history or linguistics is, for obvious reasons, not much encouraged.
True, she thought, and, as with State and Capital under murchantile soci^ism, entwined inextricably among the reasons her life was in turmoil. How had it happened that an obscure fact of history and linguistics came to have so direct a bearing upon her personal misfortune? The steps of Loreanna's line of reasoning were many and she retraced them now as she had not been able to avoid doing several times a day over the past weeks.
Step One: truth of any kind—linguistic, historical, or otherwise—is, according to an ancient proverb, the first casualty of war. The imperia-conglomerate had waged war for a millennium over trade routes and colonies, representing markets for goods manufactured in better-settled regions, such as Hanover itself, and sources of supply. Aside: after a millennium, how much was left—linguistic, historical, or otherwise—of the truth?
Step Two: the chiefmost contenders of this era were the mighty domains known as the Monopolity of Hanover and the Jendyne Empery-Cirot. It was inevitable that victory and defeat should shift back and forth between them, decade by decade, century by century, with no genuine resolution in the offing. Before the Thousand Years' War had become quite so formalized, a planet or two, which, for a time, had provided centers for embyronic imperia-conglomerate of their own,
had been blasted into cinders, wiped clean of every life form, rendered, for millions of years to come, uninhabitable. Later, §-fields, and their capacity for neutralizing atomic weaponry, had come into common usage. More to the point, the survivors of previous disasters had learned to appreciate that war—with all its myriad convenient justifications for secrecy, taxation, conscription, and suppression of the troublesome individual—is, indeed "the health of the State." Thus it was arranged that victory and defeat should become eternally transitory.
Step Three: temporary victors of any moment were free to grant franchised access to whatever they had won to favored entities with requisite family or financial connection. In that portion of the galaxy under Jendyne control, the process was more complicated. Families and financial empires granted the State its operating franchise, in effect, in a manner roundabout, making commercial concessions to themselves. Under either system, unauthorized individual enterprise was suppressed with vicious enthusiasm.
Step Four: none of this, of course, had ever found direct expression in Loreanna*s texts, nor had her tutors ever told her of it in so many words. None had ever conceded, straightforwardly and without euphemism, that, because of the way affairs had been arranged for centuries, all intellectual, technical, and economic progress within the human-occupied galaxy had remained at a standstill for generations, save in those frontier reaches the imperia-conglomerate could not control. Teachers, even of the children of the wealthy and powerful, who made a point of airing seditious opinion, found themselves—provided they were lucky—banished to those frontier reaches, even as Loreanna now was bound for exile for a rather different assortment of reasons. Such areas, as Loreanna knew—and knew she would soon appreciate at closer hand—were many, the present age being, despite the self-induced stagnation of the central worlds, one of broad-ranging exploration. They acted as a safety valve for individuals whose personal furies were left unsatisfied by the opportunity to participate in the Thousand Years' War.
Aside: perhaps, as some contended, always with discretion, a change was coming, widespread revolt which would cure every evil and set every injustice to right. Observers agreed
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it was too far in the future, even for those who could sense its putative inevitability, for anyone, upon any side of any issue of the day, to be much concerned. Meanwhile, as Loreanna had found recent occasion to discover—and was this Step Five or Step Six? As always, she lost track and gave up counting at this point. One imperium-conglomerate, her own Monopolity of Hanover, had become desirous of a respite. Doubtless the Ceo's purpose was to gain some tactical advantage, perhaps only to gather resources for a subsequent outbreak of civilized savagery. In any event, and whatever his purpose, he had determined to offer, to his best-esteemed and longest-standing enemy, a truce.
One cannot wage continuous war for a thousand years. Such hiatuses were not unprecedented, nor the treachery they often presaged. She entertained not a moment's doubt that, receiving the offer, doddering Ribauldequin XXIII, Ceo of the Jendyne Empery-Cirot (or whoever wagged his flagellum these days) suspected trickery and would be well prepared to trick back. For the time being, through diplomatic channels, he had expressed a certain willingness to listen to the proposition. And thus, following customs older than the Thousand Years' War itself, and in token of all this counterfeit cordiality and nonexistent good faith, an exchange of gifts seemed called for . . .
"Miss?" Brougham reentered the sunny chamber and glanced from the doorway to the pile of crates. A subtle ripple passed through his hundreds of locomotory filaments, his species' equivalent of a sigh, followed by a shrug, a human gesture he had somehow absorbed over the many years he had been a faithful retainer to the Daimler-Wilkinson family.
His young mistress was fatigued by the many preparations for her coming voyage, as well as by stresses engendered at the prospect itself Not to mention those emotion-charged events between her uncle and herself which had precipitated it. Yet (and she was like her uncle in this) she was unwilling to acknowledge her exhaustion and remedy it, instead, once again, seeking refuge from her troubles in her texthilles. She lay now, her weight supported by one crate, lean-
ing back against another, eyes dosed, breathing shallow and even. The player, balanced atop a third crate, had shut itself off.
Loreanna stirred at his mellow-accented voice, not quite emerging from the warm, half-dreaming state into which she had slipped without noticing. Another ripple passed through his supporting filaments as he whisked across the room and lifted Loreanna in his arms as he had so many times before when she was just a little girl and had fallen asleep in exactly this manner.
"Brougham?" her sleepy voice was younger in pitch and timbre than had earlier been the case.
"Yes, Miss?" The alien servant was incapable of anything like a facial expression, yet his tone reflected abiding affection for the human girl.
"It is still daylight, not time for bed. Where are you taking me?"
Brougham made a murmuring sound which served him as a chuckle. They entered the dynalift at the core of the house and ascended. "To your suite, Miss, for a rest. A much-needed one, if I may make so bold as to say so. You may rely upon me to awaken you in good time to dine with your uncle."
The dynalift whined, bathing them in its eerie blue §-glow, before Loreanna was able to sort out something resembling a coherent reply. "Very well, my stalwart Brougham, I shall. I was only thinking, anyway. It was quite warm and pleasant. Now, what was I thinking about?"
"I am afraid," he lied, for he knew what subject had been uppermost in her mind for two almost sleepless weeks, "I could not say. Miss." Exiting the lift. Brougham carried her along a broad carpeted hallway toward the suite of rooms which had been hers since earliest childhood. She was again oblivious to her surroundings as he exercised typical Broughamlike decorum in summoning a yensid maid to prepare her for her nap. Yes, he thought, she had been thinking that an exchange of gifts seemed called for. And had his young mi
stress not spoken out when she did, earning, thereby, the exile she was about to enter, she—Loreanna— would have been that gift.
Chapter XXXII: The 'Droom of the Monopolity
"Ambathador Frantithek Demondion-Echeverria. of the Jendyne Empery-Thirot!"
At the great doors of the 'Droom, each half a klomme high, the latest Stentor-Honorary gave the nickel-steel floor beneath his feet a ponderous drubbing with his two-measure mace. So vast was the chamber, so noisy and crowded, that the sound, along with that of his voice, might have been lost had not an amplifier been built into the head of the mace itself. A small, neat man—dark, handsome, and well dressed —the official representative of the principal enemy of the Ceo and Monopolity of Hanover stepped past the threshold and melted into the glittering throng.
Another crash, another shout: "Drector-Extraordinary John Cameron Cronkite-Goebbelth and the Lady Cronkite-Goeb-belth!" A man in a black masque watched the entrance. Nearby, a quieter voice arose at his shoulder, its cultured tones rippling with cynical amusement.
"Thith new thtentor of the Ceo'th." Saint-Lennon deFen-der-Gibson, Drector-Hereditary of the Hanoverian Isle of Farfaraway, adjusted his glitter-gilded oscarwilde, assumed a stance with one hip thrust outward, and flopped a perfumed handkerchief at his neighbor of the moment. "Quite capable of babbling anything, I tell you, in any of a thouthand different languageth, and underthtands nothing at all in any of them."
It was an opening gambit, an invitation to partake in the perilous two-edged game of 'Droom repartee. DeFender-Gibson lowered his masque, raised a plucked eyebrow, and awaited reply. Behind the masque of black his temporary companion frowned. A player of far more dangerous games, he had never cared for repartee, had never liked this DeFender-Gibson, his gaggle of androgynous friends, nor
any of their degenerate affectations, no matter how popular they happened be. According to the tacit rules, a measured rudeness was in order. "Perhaps because he was chosen from the hereditary Drectorhood."
DeFender-Gibson dropped his masque to reveal a painted mouth open in mock outrage, covered the orifice with a soft, nail-enameled hand, winked, and turned to pass the remark along. The man in the black masque turned his back.
"Wanque." He uttered the expression of perhaps childish derision under his breath, dismissed DeFender-Gibson, and resumed watching the colorful spectacle which a mass audience with Ceo Leupould IX never failed to present. The space they all occupied, shoulder to shoulder and, as always, raising an unbearable racket, was simple in conception and design, no more than a cube proportioned with an accuracy of one ten-thousandth of a siemme, and being a full klomme upon each side. This vast space was the 'Droom of the Monop-olity of Hanover, the center from which the Ceo's will was imposed upon a million suns. As with all such architecture, it was intended to impress, to belittle and intimidate at an animal level inaccessible to rational analysis those whose fates were decided within. At this it was well suited.
The floor was a single mass of carbon-bearing nickel-iron, the naked heart of a planetoid, cut, rough-planed, and delifted from orbit eleven centuries earlier, siemme by siemme, over the endless period of an entire year, a titanic feat of courage, planning, expertise, and Deepsmanship which in all probability could not be duplicated today. In place, it had been laser-polished to a half wavelength mirror-smoothness. Over the centuries, with continued careful attention, under the subtle friction and persistent pressure of a billion locomotory appendages, it had by gradual degrees, acquired the patina it now wore, a flawless blue of infinite depth. Those standing within the mighty chamber—upon those rare occasions when sufficient room existed to appreciate the phenomenon—appeared to be walking upon water. Knowing more of history than most visitors to the Ceo's 'Droom, the man in the black masque never failed to be amused by this illusion.
Occupying the center of the 'Droom, taking up only a
tenth of the surface of the meteoric steel floor, a dais lifted a single, modest measure. Rather, the floor had been relieved, representing, to those with understanding to appreciate it, the most arrogant feat of machining ever accomplished. This rectangle, five hundred measures in length, two hundred in width, was the Ceo's Table. Anyone, lacking the credentials of a Drector or the Ceo's permission, who dared step onto its gleaming surface would be cut down in an instant by hundreds of Oplytes standing at its perimeter or patrolling overhead upon personal §-field suspensors—representing in themselves a fabulous expense—possession of which was savagely restricted.
At the end of the Table furthest from the great doors at which the black masqued man had earlier been announced by the Stentor-Honorary, an elevation of another measure—two hundred measures wide, fifty measures deep, also integral with the floor—was set aside for the Ceo and his personal retinue. At present, save for guards, it was unoccupied. The vast and noisy gathering in the 'Droom was in anticipation of the Ceo's arrival.
The walls enclosing the 'Droom were no less impressive than its Deep-spawned floor, composed, as they were, of purest silica a klomme square and fifty measures thick. Gigantic spreighformers, requiring the combined output of a planetary system's thermonuclear reactors and early §-field annihilators, had been assembled upon the site and afterward (in some haste) disassembled; the parts destroyed or dispersed out of fear that a fabricator so massive might be employed to create whole warships or other weapons threatening to the interests which had caused it to be constructed. By daylight, the walls admitted an eerie tinted view of vast gardens about the 'Droom which somehow rendered those manicured expanses more remote than the stars and made the building's occupants feel they were standing at the bottom of an ocean. By night, despite their seamless perfection, they seemed to swallow illumination like frozen slices of the infinite Deep.
A klomme overhead, the ceiling of this vast monument to power was the latest addition to the structure, one made, by comparison to the original effort, in modem times. Once a
unitary span of glass, albeit less massive than the walls supporting it, five hundred years ago, during a period of economic and political "readjustment," it had been demolished by a single small trajectile weighing less than a gramme, traveling at nine klommes per second, inserted from orbit, with thousands of identical others, by insurgents never identified or apprehended. Now the ceiling of the 'Droom was metalloid mesh, supported by §-beams and suffused with energies more than capable of withstanding such assault. Devices installed upon its under-surface controlled "weather"—for the most part indoor rain—which otherwise would have occurred spontaneously within the enormous enclosed volume. The glow from overhead bathed everything beneath it in a pale blue light, reflected from the mirrorlike floor and absorbed by the surrounding walls.
Additional embellishment, the elaborate ornamentation which otherwise characterized this age, had been avoided, so that the architect's assertion of unanswerable power remained unblunted. To the man in the black masque, it was the most beautiful place in the known universe, and, at the same time, the most horrifying. And the most astonishing fact about the 'Droom, at least to him, was that it had never been intended as a seat of government, but had been built by private parties for individual murchantile purposes a century before the founding of the Monopolitan Imperium-Conglomerate. He shook his graying head and took a deep breath, never lowering his masque.
The cast of characters strutting this mighty stage was mostly human, although centuries upon unwelcoming worlds or floating in the ni^t-black Deep itself, and consequent genetic drift imposed by mutation and natural selection, had modified the meaning of the word. With conquest of the stars, an enormous physical variation had begun imposing itself upon humanity. Some present stood no fewer than three measures tall, having arrived from small, light wcwlds with little or no appreciable gravity. Many wore metalloid braces to ailment their muscles or protect fragile bones, or shuffled about the mirrored floor in walking frames. A wheeled chair or two and one powered stretcher indicated those whose missions at the 'Droom must be urgent
to necessitate heroic
294 HENRY MARTYN
measures. Others of the far-flung Monopolity, possessed of thick bones and massive hmbs, moved with exaggerated circumspection in gravity constituting but a fraction of what they had been bom to, attempting to avoid an accidental head-high leap which might embarrass them or earn them a kinergic reprimand from ever-suspicious Oplytes.
The man in the black masque nodded to a colleague he suspected of trying to have him assassinated the previous year, but continued concentrating upon his own thoughts. The rich variety of visible accessory and dress served purposes other than ostentation. For some visitors, attenuate and emaciate or broader and compact, the ambient temperature (in which he felt quite at home) was one of freezing discomfort. They were swathed in thick furs, featherpelts, or quilted kefflar, a poignant reminder of someone he loved and had recently condemned to spend the rest of her life in such repellent swathing. For others the 'Droom was intolerably hot or humid. These unlucky individuals were attired in minimal clothing more suitable for swimming, sunbathing, or erotic play. Some few unfortunates required bacterial or allergenic filters, canisters of supplementary oxygen, exotic trace gases, or other contrivances from which they breathed, at intervals or upon a continuous basis.
Meanwhile, servants— yensid in the main, along with a stylish smattering of less-familiar others (some of dubious sapience, no more, he suspected, than bright domesticated animals)—bustled about the cavernous chamber fetching food and drink. The aromas—along with those of bodies, pheromones, and breathing gases—created a sometimes overwhelming olfactory experience even in this well-ventilated space. Those carrying messages or running other errands for their owners and employers were not the only aliens within view.
This day a delegation of "stiquemen" was at the 'Droom. Repulsive in appearance, they remained the most humanlike non-humans yet discovered. In point of fact, they had discovered humanity two generations ago, arriving without prior detection about Hanover itself, not bothering with intermediate stops that any Hanoverian starship would have
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