Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War

by Jerry Pournelle

  Note also the odd sympathy and support between the diagonally facing quadrants, as opposed to the antipathy between contiguous ones—at first blush diagonals would seem to make natural enemies, yet artists, intuitive by definition and anti-statist almost by definition, yearn for a world where true art is replaced by Socialist Realism—while libertarians provide the theoretical groundwork for right-wing dictatorships! Odd, very odd.

  Note also how one can define "reasonable" as any position no farther from 3/3' than one's own: those farther out in one's own quadrant are pleasantly dotty; those farther out in another, unpleasantly so . . .

  But it's not my aim to analyze the Pournelle Axes in depth; any such attempt by me would be necessarily superficial. One of these days I'll get another column from him on this subject. My point is that for this column Jerry Pournelle is guilty. Guilty as sin. Of modesty.

  —Baen

  AN AFTERWORD ON THE FUTURE

  Destinies isn't the only work James Patrick Baen and I have created in collaboration. When he was over at another publishing house we together generated a series of anthologies which I wanted to call Future Men of War; but which Jim insisted on calling There Will Be War despite vigorous arguments that the title would kill all its sales.

  He must have done something right: the series is in six volumes with a million copies in print; and we are at work on volumes seven and eight.

  That, of course, is the genesis of Imperial Stars: a series that might be called There Will Be Government. Of course that doesn't sound so exciting. Or does it? Empires rise and fall; republics come and go; we seek perfection, and we may or may not find it; but the manner of our seeking is terribly important.

  The next volume of this series will be called Republic and Empire; and will contain stories and essays on the strengths and weaknesses of those forms of government, and of the conflicts and wars between them. We will look at the matter of conscription, and what obligations (if any) a free citizen owes to government. We will continue my speculations about all ends of the political spectrum, and our search for a real science of politics.

  Well do all this our way, which is with good stories that entertain as well as instruct.

  Editor's Introduction To:

  Finger Trouble

  Edward P. Hughes

  Everyone knows how we came to be. There was a primordial Big Bang that created the Universe from nothing. This made a lot of hydrogen and helium, which sort of clumped into stars, which cooked new higher elements and eventually exploded. New stars formed, and planets; and on some of those planets there was a kind of organic soup, and—

  There was a cartoon once. Three white-coated scientists looked at a blackboard covered with equations. Step by step the equations proceeded, until, in about the middle, were written the words: "And then a miracle occurs." The equations continued. The caption was, "Now, Dr. Hanscomb, about that eighteenth step . . ."

  After life swam out of the organic soup we had Darwinian evolution. Everyone knows what that is. And of course it must be correct; after all, our schools are now required to teach it.

  Sir Fred Hoyle, who knows a little about the origins of the universe, has some harsh words for all this. For example:

  ". . . nothing remains except a tactic that ill befits a grand master but which was widely used by staunch club players, namely to blow thick black pipe tobacco smoke in our faces. The tactic is to argue that although the chance of arriving at the biochemical system of life as we know it [through random action] is utterly minuscule, there is in Nature such an enormous number of other chemical systems which could also support life that any old planet like Earth would inevitably arrive sooner or later at one or another of them.

  "This argument is the veriest nonsense."

  In their work Evolution From Space Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe argue that life throughout the universe has arisen by design. They don't deny that most life on Earth, including human beings, evolved from simple forms that first appeared on the planet some millions of years ago; but they claim that the evolution was directed. Darwin was simply wrong.

  This isn't as new an hypothesis as you might think. After all, most of us were taught in high school biology the cellular theory: "Omnia cellula e cellula," said Schleiden and Schwann. All cells come from other cells. There is no spontaneous generation of life. This was accepted well into this century. Arrhenius, Nobel Prize winner for chemistry in 1903, argued that life pervades the universe, and is carried across it in spore form. Life was no more spontaneously generated in Earth's primordial organic soup than is the serpent of Egypt born in the mud "by the action of the Sun." Thus believed Pasteur; thus believed everyone. Except they didn't.

  Hoyle and Wickramasinghe: "Yet by a remarkable piece of mental gymnastics biologists were still happy to believe that life started on Earth through spontaneous processes. Each generation was considered to be preceded by a previous generation, but only so far back in time. Somewhere along the chain was a beginning, and the beginning was a spontaneous process.

  "Most but not all. Even in the nineteenth century there were a few scientists who felt the situation to be contradictory. If spontaneous generation could not happen, as Louis Pasteur had claimed to the French Academy, then it could not happen. Every generation of every living creature had to be derived from a previous generation, going backward in time to a stage before the Earth itself existed. Hence it followed that life must have come to the Earth from outside."

  And indeed, according to Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, that is exactly what happened. Not only that: although there is a chance element in evolution, we continue to receive new genetic material from space to this very day. There is Evolution From Space, and it is not yet completed.

  Their conclusion is remarkable: there is only one chance in ten to the fortieth—ten followed by forty zeroes—that life arose spontaneously by chance.

  After all: if you put all the parts of a watch into a barrel, you can shake the barrel until doomsday and the parts will not fall together into a watch. If you find a watch in the woods, does that not imply a watchmaker? And if you find a watchmaker?

  It simply isn't true that if forty million monkeys sat at typewriters they would eventually produce all the works in the British Museum. If every molecule in the universe were a monkey complete with typewriter; if those monkeys had all begun typing at the moment of the Big Bang, and each monkey had produced one English character each second—the chances are no more than one in ten to the twentieth that among them they would have produced one of Shakespeare's plays.

  But of course. Shakespeare produced Shakespeare's plays.

  Precisely. And how probable was Shakespeare?

  We need not settle this here, which is as well, because we're not going to. My point is that evolution could proceed from design. Of course we already know that: we're already doing gene splicing and other experiments with DNA. Add to that some of the discoveries we've made about electric eels and think how we might improve upon them; stir together into a mixture containing old and new civilizations; recall that many people know little about their own history; and you have the ingredients for a whacking good story. Edward Hughes has done just that.

  Finger Trouble

  Edward P. Hughes

  Make Ready Jones was lying low with the dogniks aboard a sunken houseboat in Kelmet Old Dock when his finger first began to ache.

  He showed it to his dognik friend, Fide O'Reilly. The tip of his index digit had swollen. The skin was black, shiny, and angry-looking.

  Fide sniffed the offending object. Dogniks were normally short on hygiene, but Fide knew about the septic. He cocked his head on one side, whining. "Did you prick it on anything dirty?"

  Make Ready screwed up his face, trying to recall past events. One day ran unrecognizably into another. He scowled his frustration. "Can't remember." He glared at the offending digit. "It scares me, Fide."

  Fide laid back his ears. The dognik was fond of this hairless whelp who had take
n shelter with the pack. He growled deep in his throat. "You ought to let the medsin see it. It could be the gangreeny."

  Make Ready held the finger to his nose. "It don't smell bad."

  Fide showed his canines. "I wouldn't risk it, M'kreddy. If that black skin spreads, your finger's a goner . . . maybe your whole hand . . . your arm." Fide rolled his eyes. "Even . . . you!"

  Make Ready surveyed the houseboat's canting desk, the rotting bulwarks, the black Kelmet river scummed with effluent from the chemplant upstream . . . and sighed. Life was too pleasant to hazard recklessly. He said, "If I go to the medsin . . . who pays?"

  Fide O'Reilly scratched a flank with blunted talons. "Healer Grumm don't charge much if you're short of frons. And he comes this way, regular."

  Make Ready had seen Healer Grumm . . . a near-standard man, sharp of tongue, but tolerant with orphan dogniks. Perhaps the man could be wheedled into a ringer inspection in exchange for a few errands?

  The click of rowlocks and the splashing of an oar floated over the water. They leaped together for dry land.

  Fide yelped. "It's Healer Grumm. He's sculling in." The dognik waved his arms. "Chuck us a line, Messer Grumm!"

  Make Ready caught the healer's rope. Together they took the strain, holding the boat against the current, then hauling it towards the pilings. When Grumm's craft bobbed below them, Fide threw a hitch around a bollard and made fast.

  Healer Grumm tossed up a bag of clinking instruments, then climbed the rusting ladder to the dockside, the scabbard of his short sword clinking against the stonework. He grunted, "Thanks, lads. I ran out of mazoo halfway over the river. Would've had to walk back from Garbage if the current had got me."

  They clucked in sympathy. The sea-dump where Kelmet's rubbish went was a three hour walk downstream.

  Make Ready grabbed the medsin's bag. "Carry your tools, Messer?"

  Grumm took the bag from him. "I can manage it, lad." His eyes narrowed. "What you done to your finger?"

  Make Ready put the hand behind his back. The healer's interest embarrassed him. "Tain't nothing, Messer Grumm."

  The healer extracted a shiny dixer from his pocket. He spun it in the sunlight. "I suppose you want a tip for pulling me in?"

  Make Ready stuck out a ready palm.

  "T'other one!" Grumm commanded. "Or the dixer goes back in my pocket."

  Make Ready's left hand crept from concealment. Grumm inspected the swollen digit. "How long it's been like this?"

  "Three—four days."

  "Can you move it? Bend it?"

  Make Ready tried to curve his finger. "Only at the bottom knuckle."

  Grumm gripped his wrist. He took the swollen digit between thumb and forefinger, and squeezed gently. "Does that hurt?"

  Make Ready winced. "I can stand it."

  "You got any other symptoms?"

  Make Ready looked blank.

  Grumm gave him back his hand—with the dixer. "Better come up to my dispensary. I'll take a proper look at it."

  Startled, Make Ready glanced at Fide. Going with Grumm meant abandoning the pack. Would they let him back afterwards?

  Fide wagged his tail. "Go with the healer, M'kreddy. He'll fix that finger."

  Make Ready tarried. "Can I come back, after?"

  Fide O'Reilly whined. "I'll speak for the others. It'll be okay."

  Make Ready sighed. He flicked the dixer to Fide, then turned and followed the medsin.

  At Haut Chateau on the Mont des Chênes above Kelmet, court officials packed a labour room to witness the birth of Dame Dimsina Persay's second son. Present by ducal edict, were the court's annalist, lyricist, geneticist, priest, police chief, tutor, strangler, a wet nurse, and the midwife.

  Of Dame Dimsina's husband, Duke Corwen Persay, Grand Maitre de Marécage, Marechal de Haut Barbarie, there was no sign. Rumor had it that his lordship was out shooting corbies in the chateau woods.

  Clem Gamble, obstetrician, elevated a syringe to squeeze out a drop of fluid, murmuring to the midwife, "Pray for a paragon, Martha. If his little lordship's anything less than perfect, the duke will have us flayed."

  Bregonif, court tutor, undersized and wizened, scuttled back and forth behind a forest of legs, trying to catch a glimpse of the event. Only that very morning, the duke had promised, "If the boy satisfies Greville, you can have another fifteen years." Bregonif badly wanted those fifteen years.

  Larry Greville, genetist, and a man who required no admonition from his master, stood before the witnesses, and watched the child slide into the world. Without emotion, he noted one head, two arms, two legs and a penis—all in their proper places. His back straightened. In appearance, the child was a true paragon. There remained the tests. Greville snipped a microscopic sample from the squawling infant's left heel, and hurried to his laboratory.

  Annalist Clippy Cummins noted the time of birth, the sex, color of eyes, number and disposition of limbs, and waited for the midwife to announce the weight.

  Genevieve Demain, lyricist, and Hector Garman, chef de police, were silent, absorbed in their own thoughts. Genevieve with rhymes for a sonnet to the new heir, Garman with plans for the heir's security.

  On the bed, Dame Dimsina gave drowsy thanks to the Double Helix for a safe delivery. Having now doubly secured the succession, the duke might permit her a daughter. There was little fun in dressing boy babies.

  The Duchess of Mary Cage went to sleep sucking her thumb.

  James Laporte, strangler, folded his arms and waited. The geneticist's approval was required before he could leave the chamber.

  But Larry Greville returned to the delivery room shaking his head. He made a sign to Laporte, then left. Gently, Laporte removed the child from the wet nurse's arms . . .

  And Formal Crowfoot, the duke's confessor, knelt to mutter a prayer, tears running down his cheeks. The Double Helix gave, but High Barbary took away.

  Hector Garman, who combined a spy's role with that of chief of police, began composing a message for transmission to his other master on a distant world: a message reporting that the latest heir to the Duchy of Marécage was inadequate and . . . unsatisfactory.

  Healer Grumm's dispensary occupied one room of his home in the upper branch of a live timber shopping mall in downtown Kelmet. The dispensary overlooked a short order caff run by ophids. Grumm's shingle vied with a luminous sign advertising the caff.

  Make Ready followed Grumm inside to discover a nest of carpetted and furnished rooms. Since Make Ready's more recent pieds-a-terre had included a disused pig-stye, a rubbish-choked cellar, a dockside packing case and an empty tomb in St. Diennay's churchyard, Grumm's home seemed palatial. He tried to conceal his feeling of awe.

  Grumm said, "You don't have to tip-toe about, lad. The tree won't collapse if you breathe." Grumm shed his jacket, revealing a pair of muscular arms, and a down-covered chest. He hung his sword-belt and weapon on the back of the door, grinning. "Must get meself plucked, soon. Plumes ain't good for business. Folk like to believe their medsin's a near-paragon. Them vermy fugers in partic wouldn't let me near 'em if they knew I grew feathers."

  Make Ready's eyes grew saucer-shaped. A feathered healer was a long way from standard. He said, "If you let them grow—could you fly?" Fide O'Reilly, with a yard of canine DNA in his genes couldn't urinate on demand.

  Grumm flapped his elbows. "Guess I'm more of an osprich or an emug. Too much ballast for flight." He studied the silent youngster. "Not funny? Never mind. Don't suppose you'd say no to a spot of dinner before I check that finger?"

  Make Ready shook his head. No adult had addressed him so civilly for years. And no dognik ever refused food.

  Over bacon and eggs, Grumm continued. "And what's a lad like you doing with those dogniks? You in trouble with the flix?"

  Make Ready wagged his head again, mouth full of delicious food.

  Grumm raised his eyebrows. "Not the recruiters, is it? You ain't old enough to be took for the militia."

  Make Ready lowered his eyes. H
e had fled the tomb in St. Diennay's churchyard when his smouldering fire attracted the attention of Duke Corwen's impress sergeant.

  "I'm near seventeen," he muttered.

  "But you don't fancy carrying a pike against the chelonians, eh?" Grumm's voice was jovial. "Not that I blame you, lad. They say as how Colly Caswell's turtles cut themselves a slice of Mary Cage last month, up Whernmoor way."

  Make Ready cleared his mouth of food. He set his jaw. "Why should I fight for the duke? He ain't never fought for me."

  Healer Grumm brandished a fork approvingly. "True, lad. I don't suppose our duke even knows you exist." He cocked his head. "Though perhaps Messer Garman's men might be happy to make your acquaintance?"