Empire

by Clifford D. Simak

  _CHAPTER SIXTEEN_

  A miracle came to pass in Ranthoor when a man for whom all hope had beenabandoned suddenly appeared within the city's streets. But he appearedto be something not quite earthly, for he did not have the solidity of aman. He was pale, like a wraith from out of space, and one could seestraight through him, yet he still had all the old mannerisms andtricks.

  In frightened, awe-stricken whispers the word was spread ... the spiritof John Moore Mallory had come back to the city once again. He bulkedfour times the height of a normal man and there was that singularghostliness about him. From where he had come, or how, or why, no oneseemed to know.

  But when he reached the steps of the federation's administrationbuilding and walked straight through a line of troopers that suddenlymassed to bar his way, and when he turned on those steps and spoke tothe people who had gathered, there was none to doubt that at last a signhad come. The sign that now, if ever, was the time to avenge the purge.Now the time to take vengeance for the blood that flowed in gutters, forthe throaty chortling of the flame guns that had snuffed out livesagainst a broad steel wall.

  Standing on the steps, shadowy but plainly visible, John Moore Mallorytalked to the people in the square below, and his voice was the voicethey remembered. They saw him toss his black mane of hair, they saw hisclenched fist raised in terrible anger, they heard the boom of the wordshe spoke.

  Like a shrilling alarm the words spread through the city, reverberatingfrom the dome, seeking out those who were in hiding. From every cornerof the city, from its deepest cellars and its darkest alleys, poured outa mass of humanity that surrounded the capitol and blackened the squareand the converging streets with a mob that shrieked its hatred, bellowedits anger.

  "Power!" thundered the mighty shadow on the steps. "Power to burn! Powerto give away. Power to heat the dome, to work your mines, to drive yourspaceships!"

  "Power!" answered the voice of the crowd. "Power!" It sounded like abattle cry.

  "No more accumulators," roared the towering image. "Never again need yourely on Spencer Chambers for your power. Callisto is yours. Ranthoor isyours."

  The black crowd surged forward, reached the steps and started to climb,wild cheers in their throat, the madness of victory in their eyes. Upthe steps came men with nothing but bare hands, screaming women, jeeringchildren.

  Officers snapped orders at the troops that lined the steps, but thetroopers, staring into the awful, raging maw of that oncoming crowd,dropped their guns and fled, back into the capitol building, with themob behind them, shrilling blood lust and long-awaited vengeance.

  * * * * *

  Out of the red and yellow wilderness of the deserts, a man came toSandebar on Mars. He had long been thought dead. The minions of thegovernment had announced that he was dead. But he had been in hiding forsix years.

  His beard was long and gray, his eyes were curtained by hardship, hiswhite hair hung about his shoulders and he was clothed in the tatteredleather trappings of the spaceways.

  But men remembered him.

  Tom Brown had lead the last revolt against the Martian government, anill-starred revolt that ended almost before it started when thetroopers turned loose the heavy heaters and swept the streets withwashing waves of flame.

  When he climbed to the base of a statue in Techor Park to address thecrowd that gathered, the police shouted for him to come down and hedisregarded them. They climbed the statue to reach him and their handswent through him.

  Tom Brown stood before the people, in plain view, and spoke, but hewasn't there!

  Other things happened in Sandebar that day. A voice spoke out of thinair, a voice that told the people the reign of Interplanetary was over.It told of a mighty new source of power. Power that would cost almostnothing. Power that would make the accumulators unnecessary ... wouldmake them out of date. A voice that said the people need no longersubmit to the yoke of Spencer Chambers' government in order to obtainthe power they needed.

  There was no one there ... no one visible at all. And yet that voicewent on and on. A great crowd gathered, listening, cheering. The policetried to break it up and failed. The troops were ordered out and thepeople fought them until the voice told them to disband peaceably and goto their homes.

  Throughout Mars it was the same.

  In a dozen places in Sandebar the voice spoke. It spoke in a dozenplaces, out of empty air, in Malacon and Alexon and Adebron.

  Tom Brown, vanishing into the air after his speech was done, reappeareda few minutes later in Adebron and there the police, warned of what hadhappened in Sandebar, opened fire upon him when he stood on a park benchto address the people. But the flames passed through and did not touchhim. Tom Brown, his long white beard covering his chest, his mad eyesflashing, stood in the fiery blast that bellowed from the muzzles of theflame rifles and calmly talked.

  * * * * *

  The chief of police at New Chicago, Venus, called the policecommissioner. "There's a guy out here in the park, just across thestreet. He's preaching treason. He's telling the people to overthrow thegovernment."

  In the ground glass the police commissioner's face grew purple.

  "Arrest him," he ordered the chief. "Clap him in the jug. Do you have tocall me up every time one of those fiery-eyed boys climbs a soap box?Run him in."

  "I can't," said the chief.

  The police commissioner seemed ready to explode. "You can't? Why thehell not?"

  "Well, you know that hill in the center of the park? Memorial Hill?"

  "What has a hill got to do with it?" the commissioner roared.

  "He's sitting on top of that hill. He's a thousand feet tall. His headis way up in the sky and his voice is like thunder. How can you arrestanybody like that?"

  * * * * *

  Everywhere in the System, revolt was flaming. New marching songs rolledout between the worlds, wild marching songs that had the note of angerin them. Weapons were brought out of hiding and polished. New standardswere raised in an ever-rising tide against oppression.

  Freedom was on the march again. The right of a man to rule himself theway he chose to rule. A new declaration of independence. A Solar MagnaCarta.

  There were new leaders, led by the old leaders. Led by spirits thatmarched across the sky. Led by voices that spoke out of the air. Led bysigns and symbols and a new-born courage and a great and a deepconviction that right in the end would triumph.

  * * * * *

  Spencer Chambers glared at Ludwig Stutsman. "This is one time you wenttoo far."

  "If you'd given me a free hand before, this wouldn't have beennecessary," Stutsman said. "But you were soft. You made me go easy whenI should have ground them down. You left the way open for all sorts ofplots and schemes and leaders to develop."

  The two men faced one another, one the smooth, tawny lion, the other thesnarling wolf.

  "You've built up hatred, Stutsman," Chambers said. "You are the mosthated man in the Solar System. And because of you, they hate me. Thatwasn't my idea. I needed you because I needed an iron fist, but I neededit to use judiciously. And you have been ruthless. You've used forcewhen conciliation was necessary."

  Stutsman sneered openly. "Still that old dream of a benevolentdictatorship. Still figuring yourself a little bronze god to be set upin every household. A dictatorship can't be run that way. You have tolet them know you're boss."

  Chambers was calm again. "Argument won't do us any good now. The damageis done. Revolt is flaming through all the worlds. We have to dosomething."

  He looked at Craven, who was slouched in a chair beside the desk acrosswhich he and Stutsman faced each other.

  "Can you help us, doctor?" he asked.

  Craven shrugged. "Perhaps," he said acidly. "If I could only be left tomy work undisturbed, instead of being dragged into these stupidconferences, I might be able to do something."

  "You already have, hav
en't you?" asked Chambers.

  "Very little. I've been able to blank out the televisor that Manning andPage are using, but that is all."

  "Do you have any idea where Manning and Page are?"

  "How could I know?" Craven asked. "Somewhere in space."

  "They're at the bottom of this," snarled Stutsman. "Their damned tricksand propaganda."

  "We know they're at the bottom of it," said Craven. "That's no news tous. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have this trouble now, despiteyour bungling. But that doesn't help us any. With this new discovery ofmine I have shielded this building from their observation. They can'tspy on us any more. But that's as far as I've got."

  "They televised the secret meeting of the emergency council when it metin Satellite City on Ganymede the other day," said Chambers. "The wholeJovian confederacy watched and listened to that meeting, heard oursecret war plans, for fully ten minutes before the trick was discovered.Couldn't we use your shield to prevent such a situation again?"

  "Better still," suggested Stutsman, "let's shield the whole satellite.Without Manning's ghostly leaders, this revolt would collapse of its ownweight."

  Craven shook his head. "It takes fifty tons of accumulators to build upthat field, and a ton of fuel a day to maintain it. Just for thisbuilding alone. It would be impossible to shield a whole planet, anentire moon."

  * * * * *

  "Any progress on your collector field?" asked Chambers.

  "Some," Craven admitted. "I'll know in a day or two."

  "That would give us something with which to fight Manning and Page,wouldn't it?"

  "Yes," agreed Craven. "It would be something to fight them with. If Ican develop that collector field, we would be able to utilize everyradiation in space, from the heat wave down through the cosmics. Withinthe Solar System, our power would be absolutely limitless. Youraccumulators depend for their power storage upon just one radiation ...heat. But with this idea I have you'd use all types of radiations."

  "You say you could even put the cosmics to work?" asked Chambers.

  Craven nodded. "If I can do anything at all with the field, I can."

  "How?" demanded Stutsman.

  "By breaking them up, you fool. Smash the short, high-powered waves intoa lot of longer, lower-powered waves." Craven swung back to faceChambers. "But don't count on it," he warned. "I haven't done it yet."

  "You have to do it," Chambers insisted.

  Craven rose from his chair, his blue eyes blazing angrily behind theheavy lenses. "How often must I tell you that you cannot hurryscientific investigation? You have to try and try ... follow one tinyclue to another tiny clue. You have to be patient. You have to hope. Butyou cannot force the work."

  He strode from the room, slammed the door behind him.

  Chambers turned slowly in his chair to face Stutsman. His gray eyesbored into the wolfish face.

  "And now," he suggested, "suppose you tell me just why you did it."

  Stutsman's lips curled. "I suppose you would rather I had allowed thosetroublemakers to go ahead, consolidate their plans. There was only onething to do--root them out, liquidate them. I did it."

  "You chose a poor time," said Chambers softly. "You would have to dosomething like this, just at the time when Manning is lurking around theSolar System somewhere, carrying enough power to wipe us off the face ofthe Earth if he wanted to."

  "That's why I did it," protested Stutsman. "I knew Manning was around. Iwas afraid he'd start something, so I beat him to it. I thought it wouldthrow a scare into the people, make them afraid to follow Manning whenhe acted."

  * * * * *

  "You have a low opinion of the human race, don't you?" Chambers said."You think you can beat them into a mire of helplessness and fear."

  Chambers rose from his chair, pounded his desk for emphasis.

  "But you can't do it, Stutsman. Men have tried it before you, from thevery dawn of history. You can destroy their homes and kill theirchildren. You can burn them at the stake or in the electric chair, hangthem or space-walk them or herd them into gas chambers. You can drivethem like cattle into concentration camps, you can keep the tortureracks bloody, but you can't break them.

  "Because the people always survive. Their courage is greater than thecourage of any one man or group of men. They always reach the man whohas oppressed them, they always tear him down from the place he sits,and they do not deal gently with him when they do. In the end thepeople always win."

  Chambers reached across the desk and caught Stutsman by the slack of theshirt. A twist of his hand tightened the fabric around Stutsman's neck.The financier thrust his face close to the wolfish scowl. "That is whatis going to happen to you and me. We'll go down in history as just acouple of damn fools who tried to rule and couldn't make the grade.Thanks to you and your damned stupidity. You and your blood purges!"

  Patches of anger burned on Stutsman's cheeks. His eyes glittered and hislips were white. But his whisper was bitter mockery. "Maybe we shouldhave coddled and humored them. Made them just so awful happy that bigbad old Interplanetary had them. So they could have set up little bronzeimages of you in their homes. So you could have been sort of a solargod!"

  "I still think it would have been the better way." Chambers flungStutsman from him with a straight-armed push. The man reeled andstaggered across the carpeted floor. "Get out of my sight!"

  Stutsman straightened his shirt, turned and left.

  Chambers slumped into his chair, his hands grasping the arms on eitherside of his great body, his eyes staring out through the window fromwhich flooded the last rays of the afternoon Sun.

  * * * * *

  Drums pounded in his brain ... the drums of rebellion out in space, ofrebellion on those other worlds ... drums that were drowning out andshattering forever the dream that he had woven. He had wanted economicdictatorship ... not the cold, passionless, terrible dictatorship thatStutsman typified ... but one that would bring peace and prosperity andhappiness to the Solar System.

  He closed his eyes and thought. Snatches of ambition, snatches ofhopes ... but it was useless to think, for the drums and the imaginedshouting drowned out his thoughts.

  Mankind didn't give a damn for good business administration, nor a hootfor prosperity or peace or happiness. Liberty and the right to rule, theright to go risk one's neck ... to climb a mountain or cross a desert orexplore a swamp, the right to aim one's sights at distant stars, tofling a taunting challenge into the teeth of space, to probe with clumsyfingers and force nature to lay bare her secrets ... that was whatmankind wanted. That was what those men out on Mars and Venus and inthe Jovian worlds were fighting for. Not against Spencer Chambers orLudwig Stutsman or Interplanetary Power, but for the thing that droveman on and made of him a flame that others might follow. Fighting for aheritage that was first expressed when the first man growled at theentrance to his cave and dared the world to take it from him.

  Spencer Chambers closed his eyes and rocked back and forth in thetilting office chair.

  It had been a good fight, a hard fight. He had had a lot of fun out ofit. But he was licked, after all these years. He had held the biggestdream of any man who ever lived. Alexander and Napoleon, Hitler, Stalinand those other fellows had been pikers alongside of Spencer Chambers.They had only aimed at Earthly conquest while he had reached out to grabat all the worlds. But by heaven, he'd almost made it!

  A door grated open.

  "Chambers!" said a voice.

  His feet hit the floor with a thud and he sat stiff and staring at thefigure in the door.

  It was Craven and the man was excited. His glasses were slid far down onhis nose, his hair was standing on end, his tie was all awry.

  "I have it!" Craven whooped. "I have it at last!"

  Hope clutched at Chambers, but he was almost afraid to speak.

  "Have what?" he whispered tensely.

  "The collector field! It was und
er my nose all the time, but I didn'tsee it!"

  Chambers was out of his chair and striding across the room. A tumultbuzzed within his skull.

  Licked? Hell, he hadn't even started! He'd win yet. He'd teach thepeople to revolt! He'd run Manning and Page out to the end of space andpush them through!