Inferno: A Chronicle of a Distant World (The Galactic Comedy)

by Mike Resnick

  As the Men and moles followed the Enkotis' exodus from Romulus, the capitol began falling into a state of disrepair. Barioke spent a fruitless three months urging them to move back, and then appropriated Remus for the government as well.

  Bobby, who understood how government worked, went to the press and vehemently protested—but Barioke, who understood how power worked, simply shut down those segments of the media that presented the prime minister's case. Then the president took to the airwaves—everywhere but in the heartland of the Enkoti—and explained that he was the president of all the jasons, and that he would never agree to the Enkoti demand for special treatment. If the prime minister would not abide by the constitution, he concluded, then he would reluctantly have to remove him from office.

  Bobby countered by holding a huge rally at the recently-constructed sports arena in Remus. 40,000 Enkoti and Men filled the seats, and after a few lesser Enkoti officials addressed the crowd, Bobby himself stood before the microphones.

  "I will not stand by and watch my people being systematically robbed by a government that has sworn to eradicate tribalism and favoritism," he announced. "Where in the constitution does it say that entire cities can be appropriated by executive fiat or, even worse, by executive whim? Where does it say that the president can deny the prime minister access to the media? The Enkoti don't ask for special treatment, but merely for fair treatment—and if we cannot get it from William Barioke, then we shall present our case to the Republic."

  During the applause that followed, Bobby scanned the faces at the front of the audience, and stopped when he came to a huge jason in a military uniform.

  "I see that Barioke has sent his general here to listen to what I have to say," he continued. "And doubtless to report every word back to him." He paused and smiled. "Are the words I'm using too big for you, General Labu?" he asked sarcastically.

  The audience laughed, none more loudly than Gama Labu himself.

  "Perhaps you would like to come up onto the platform and tell us what you are doing here?" said Bobby.

  Labu, accompanied by his own personal translator, got to his feet and climbed the small set of stairs with his ungainly stride.

  "I am not political," he said, speaking in Maringo and obviously uncomfortable before such a large audience. "We are all jasons, and I will never hold a grudge against another of my kind. I am a soldier, so I go where my president sends me, but I have no opinion in these matters."

  "And what will you tell your president?" demanded Bobby when the translator had finished.

  Labu grinned. "That the arena food is not very good, but the human beer is excellent!"

  The tension was diffused by a burst of laughter. Labu smiled and waved to the crowd, then took his seat and listened as Bobby concluded his tirade.

  The next morning Labu was back, with five hundred soldiers, to place the prime minister under house arrest.

  The first person Bobby sent for was Arthur Cartright, who showed up half an hour later and found his way blocked by Labu himself.

  "What is the meaning of this?" demanded Cartright. "I have been summoned here by the prime minister."

  Labu shrugged, a grotesque gesture for an alien with his enormous bulk.

  "Thank you very much," he said with a smile.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Thank you very much," repeated Labu.

  Then Cartright remembered that the jason was uncomfortable with Terran, quite possibly illiterate it in, and he switched to the Maringo dialect.

  "What is going on here?" he said.

  "I am simply following my orders," replied Labu.

  "You were ordered to arrest the prime minister and confine him to his house?" said Cartright. "Why?"

  Labu shrugged again. "I have no idea," he said. "I am sure it must be a mistake, and will soon be corrected."

  "Does the president know about this?"

  "He is the one who issued the order," replied Labu with a huge grin.

  Cartright paused and stared at Labu for a moment. "The prime minister has sent for me," he said at last. "May I please pass through your lines?"

  "Of course, friend Cartright," said Labu. "We are great friends, are we not?"

  "I don't know," said Cartright. "Are we?"

  "Of course, of course," said Labu, thumping him on the back. "I have no enemies."

  "That must be a great comfort," said Cartright.

  Labu laughed uproariously, as if Cartright had just made a joke, then stepped aside and signaled his men to let the human through. A moment later another uniformed jason escorted him into the mansion and up to the door of Bobby's bedroom. The door slid open long enough for Cartright to step inside the room, then closed behind him.

  "Arthur!" said Bobby, rising from a huge desk where he had been scribbling something in longhand. "I am so glad you came!"

  "What's happened?" asked Cartright. "I got your message, and I arrived to find your house surrounded by the army."

  "I don't know!" said Bobby. "They haven't charged me with anything—but they won't let me leave!"

  "Last night's speech didn't exactly endear you to your enemies," said Certright. "Let me contact Barioke and see what we can work out."

  "Thank you."

  Cartright left the prime minister's home and returned to his office, where he called Barioke on the vidphone. After twenty minutes of being transferred from one bureaucrat to another, he was finally connected to the lean, conservatively-attired president.

  "Good morning, Mr. Cartright," said Barioke. "I've been expecting to hear from you."

  "Then you must know why I'm calling, Mr. President."

  "Certainly."

  There was a long pause.

  "Well?" said Cartright.

  "Well what, Mr. Cartright?"

  "Why has he been arrested?"

  "He has not been arrested," replied Barioke. "No charges have been made."

  "Then why has he been confined to his quarters by the head of your army?"

  "Because I don't know what to do with him, and I am keeping him there until I can decide."

  "That's illegal!"

  "Would you be happier if I charge him with treason?" asked Barioke mildly. "I have every right to, you know."

  "He's broken no laws."

  "He threatened to disobey a presidential edict," said Barioke, "and he did it in front of 40,000 witnesses. Left to his own devices, I am sure he will eventually urge the Enkoti to rebel against the planetary government and set up their own separate state."

  "You can't arrest him because of what you think he might do!" said Cartright.

  "Do you think it would be wiser to wait until he had completely discredited the duly elected government?" asked Barioke sardonically.

  "I think the two of you should get together and sort out your differences," said Cartright. "I will be happy to act as a mediator if you feel one is necessary."

  "I think not," said Barioke. He paused and turned his piercing eyes full upon Cartright's image in his vidscreen. "Let us understand one another, Mr. Cartright. You are the one who did not wish my planet to obtain self-rule for another quarter of a century. You are the one who has constantly favored the Enkoti in all things. You are the one who made that irresponsible, game-playing spendthrift the interim president. You are the one who urged your fellow Men to erect their buildings and start their businesses on Enkoti land. And now you are urging me to deal with an Enkoti who has publicly condemned my government. You are not my friend, Mr. Cartright. I am trying to unify this world, and you are hindering me every bit as much as the prime minister, perhaps more."

  "That is a very one-sided statement of the facts," responded Cartright. "Robert August Tantram was elected prime minister by your people, not mine."

  "In point of fact, he was defeated by my people, and appointed to a meaningless office by me," said Barioke. "In retrospect, it was a mistake. He has opposed me at every turn."

  "He has only requested that you not appropriate the privat
e property of the Enkoti for governmental use."

  "He does not request; he demands. And I should point out that the prime minister and his tribe possessed the property we have confiscated only because of the favored treatment his father and brother received at the hands of your race. You literally threw money at them, Mr. Cartright. They did nothing to earn it, except to give you a free hand to use our world as your Department's grand social experiment."

  "I resent the implication!" said Cartright. "We have helped elevate all the jasons. Our medical clinics have been constructed in every tribal homeland, our teachers have gone into the most remote areas, our—"

  "But always you have begun with the Enkoti," interrupted Barioke. "You make it sound as if I wish to enslave them, Mr. Cartright. All I wish to do is redress the inequities and unify all the inhabitants of Faligor. No Enkoti will suffer during my rule."

  "What kind of impression do you think you're making on the Enkoti right now, with hundreds of soldiers surrounding the prime minister's residence?"

  "A momentary disruption, nothing more," said Barioke. "If he will publicly apologize for attacking the government and swear fealty to it, all will be forgiven."

  "And if not?"

  "Then I shall have to charge him with treason."

  "That's ridiculous!" snapped Cartright.

  "I realize that you and I have honest disagreements, Mr. Cartright," said Barioke, "but I cannot permit you to address me like that."

  "I apologize, Mr. President," said Cartright, struggling to control his temper. "But I helped draft your constitution. It guarantees freedom of speech, and all that the prime minister did last night was exercise that right."

  "I have studied your laws, Mr. Cartright," said Barioke, still unperturbed, "and I think you and I both know that freedom of speech is not an absolute, that there are circumstances under which it can and indeed must be restricted."

  "Voicing an honest opinion about the government is not one of them."

  "And if it is his honest opinion that the government must be overthrown by force, or that the Enkoti must secede, is that protected by our constitution?"

  "He did not urge anyone to secede or use force," said Cartright. "I was there."

  "There were nuances and implications," answered Barioke.

  "You don't charge someone with treason because of nuances."

  "This is getting us nowhere, Mr. Cartright," said Barioke. "If you will give me your word that he will make no further public statements, the army will withdraw immediately and his freedom will be restored."

  "Let me speak to him."

  "Certainly," replied Barioke. A small smile cross his face. "He is not, after all, going anywhere."

  Cartright broke the connection and immediately called Bobby.

  "What did Barioke say?" asked Bobby the moment he looked at his screen and saw that he was speaking to Cartright.

  "He says that if you'll promise not to criticize the government again, he won't press any charges."

  "And the army?"

  "They'll withdraw."

  "We've created a tyrant, Arthur. The Republic has to do something about him."

  "I don't know exactly what the Republic can do," replied Cartright. "You're no longer a protectorate, and you're not yet a member. You're an independent world."

  "You've got to get them to apply economic pressure," continued Bobby. "If he can do this to me, he can do it to anyone who speaks out. He's not always going to have Gama Labu in charge of the army; the next commander could be a serious threat to the populace." He paused. "Why is he doing this, Arthur?"

  "He has his reasons," answered Cartright. "I don't think they're valid, but I'm willing to believe that he does. I think the best thing to do is to try to set up a meeting between the two of you."

  "Do you think he'll do it?"

  "Not if you don't promise to stop criticizing him in public."

  Bobby lowered his head in thought for a moment, then looked up and bared his teeth in a very alien grin. "Tell him he's got a deal."

  "I mean it," said Cartright. "And more to the point, he means it. If you speak out against him again, I can't protect you."

  "I won't say anything against him," answered Bobby. "You have my word on that."

  "All right," said Cartright. "I'll call him and tell him you've agreed to his terms, then see what I can do about arranging a meeting."

  Two hours later Bobby was freed.

  Four days later, President William Barioke refused to meet with him.

  One week later, Bobby gave another speech. This time he never mentioned Barioke by name, but made an impassioned argument that it was time for Faligor to apply for full membership in the Republic, that only the Republic could assure that no tyrant ever ruled the planet, and that he himself planned to travel to the Deluros system to present his case.

  The next morning, Gama Labu led his 500 men down the streets of Remus toward Bobby's home. When they got within three hundred yards, they were met by gunfire from an army of 2,000 Enkoti warriors.

  Labu retreated half a mile, sent for reinforcements, joked with the press and onlookers while awaiting them, explained once more that he was simply a soldier carrying out his orders and that the politics of the situation were beyond him, and then stormed the mansion.

  Twenty minutes later Robert August Tantram II, the 302nd Sitate of the Enkoti, and two thousand of his followers, lay dead in the ashes of his mansion. Before sunset, they were buried outside of town in a mass grave.

  That evening William Barioke announced that the constitution would be suspended for a period of three months, while a better document, one that would never allow a traitor to rise to the rank of prime minister, was drafted and implemented.

  And Arthur Cartright sat by his video, listening to the news and wondering what he could have done differently, and trying to determine exactly what had gone wrong.

  7.

  "Has he written the last chapter yet?"

  That was the joke among the Men who lived on Faligor, and it referred to the constitution which William Barioke had suspended for three months. But the more he tinkered with it, the less he liked the results, and three years later the constitution was still being rewritten.

  Barioke decided that there was no need to allow the office of prime minister to remain vacant, simply because there was no constitution, so he combined it with the office of president. And since there was no constitution to state how elections should be held, there were no elections.

  General Labu went on video a week after the death of Emperor Bobby to apologize to the public; he assured them that he had no grudge against the Enkoti, and was merely following his orders. He deeply regretted the fact that he been forced to kill so many of Bobby's followers to protect his own men, and he assured anyone who was listening that he was just a soldier who had sworn his loyalty to the president, even when he didn't necessarily agree with the president's orders.

  Barioke considered firing him for insubordination, but found that the speech had made Labu an overnight hero, and any action taken against the huge soldier might well result in an insurrection. So instead the president called his general to his office, they hugged each other for the holo cameras, and another crisis was averted.

  Things remained calm for a few months, and then disconcerting rumors began to reach Remus: the Bolimbo had tortured and killed two members of the Traja, the Rizzali had set fire to the home of an Enkoti merchant who had opened a business in one of their cities, the Enkoti refused to trade with the Bolimbo. Sabare University, which was still dominated by Enkoti, refused admission to three qualified Rizzali students in retaliation for the burning of the Enkoti home. More than 20,000 moles, assuming they would be the next group to be discriminated against, emigrated back to their home planet.

  Finally Cartright organized a group of some dozen Men and gained an audience with Barioke.

  Your society, explained the Men, is falling apart. Something must be done to combat this reemergence of
tribalism. You are the president. If you won't ratify a new constitution, at least do something about this problem, or before long Faligor will need twenty-seven constitutions, one for each tribe.

  Barioke heard them out, pledged to attack the problem with all the forces at his command, and thanked them for this show of concern. They left his office half-convinced that he really meant to take some action.

  But no one was quite prepared for the action he took.

  Within two weeks he had nationalized all the mines, and before three months had passed, the government had assumed ownership of all businesses that employed more than one hundred jasons.

  With each acquisition, Barioke went on the video to explain his actions: the best way to combat tribalism was to totally remove it from the economy. Jasons no longer worked for Enkoti or Rizzali or Traja employers, but for the government, which was not a tribe, but rather a combination of all the tribes.

  There were cries of outrage from those jasons whose businesses had been appropriated, but the cries grew fewer and farther apart after Barioke had the apologetic Labu march his army through the streets in front of the establishments in question.

  Since the government did not pay taxes to itself, the assimilation of all the major industries made a major dent in the tax base, and Barioke's answer was to raise taxes on all other segments of the planet's economy. Since the Enkoti had the most to give, they were taxed at the highest rate; his own Rizzali were taxed at the lowest, and could avoid all taxes whatsoever simply by having a member of their immediate family serving in the military.

  Complaining to the government was useless, to say nothing of dangerous, and numerous committees of jasons visited Cartright and the other Men who were stationed in Remus, imploring them to intervene with Barioke on their behalf.

  Finally Cartright yielded to their pleas and arranged another meeting between himself, a handful of his aides, and Barioke.