Where a bridge arched over a brook, a man and a woman stood, perhaps enjoying the place and one another. Their eyes widened in startlement as the invaders appeared. Pistols were already out. Before anyone could shout a warning, the woman crumpled. She could only be unconscious for an hour or so, but lying there in her raiment she was pathetically like a heap of rags.
The man, tall and powerful, had also dropped. It was a lightning-swift deception. The shot at him had missed. He bounded back to his feet. More shots, fired in surprise, went wild. He sprang behind a weeping willow and thence into deeper reaches. A roar trailed after him: "Belov! I know you!"
Mikel's party traded glances. "I know him too," Olver said. "Dammas, Arkezhan's nephew. I've seen him run down horses and wrestle bulls." "Ill luck," groaned Teng.
"Proceed the faster," Mikel ordered. "Vahi's squad may well take care of him."
The bridge thudded under their feet. The garden soon gave way to lawn. The house loomed ahead. A machine stopped work, uncertain what this meant. Several peacocks squawked and scattered. The companion detachments broke out into view. They converged from left and right, to join their fellows in the final headlong dash.
Up the ramp and across the portico they went. The main door grew suspicious and began to draw shut. Mikel had prepared for that. Nothing here was planned for serious defense, not after three centuries of the Great Peace. One of his pistols carried explosive rounds. An assembler in a cellar had secretly crafted them for him. He fired with precision. Impact crashed. Shock passed through to the embedded computer. The door halted half open. The raiders stormed inside.
Polished marble encompassed them. Fish swam below a transparent floor. A rampway swept upward. A few individuals, drawn by the noise, saw what was entering and fled. They were merely attendants, ceremonialists, entertainers, or the like. One stood fast, gray, weather-beaten, obviously a kinsman here on a visit. "Who the filth are you?" he exclaimed.
Vahi and Turkan closed in to seize his arms. "Where is Arkezhan Socorro?" demanded Mikel.
"Hoy-ah?" Now the man saw the small clan insignia on the newcomers' breasts. "Belovs! All of you! What is this outrage?"
"We require direct speech with Captain Arkezhan. We know he's •it home. If we must ransack, there may well be trouble, ancestral treasures damaged, people hurt or even killed. For everybody's sake, tell us."
"He-he may be gone-"
Mikel sneered. "So you believe your noble captain forsakes his folk and their heritage in an hour of danger?"
Angry but shaken and bewildered, the man blurted, "Never! I, I saw him last... in the Winter Room."
"Likely enough," Teng said. "Doesn't he often flit to the high North?"
"Claims it inspires him," Olver growled. "To what foulness this time?"
The loyalty of his followers, their rage on his behalf and his lather's, stirred Mikel's spirit anew. He had wondered earlier how many there were to whom clanship meant anything other than relationships and rituals. Now he wondered how many more would have risen like these had he called on them. All?
Then it must be the same for the Socorros. He'd better exploit the advantage of surprise while he had it. "Come," he said. The men let their prisoner go and ran up the rampway at his heels. The house had been famous for generations; its layout was public knowledge.
Stillness brooded in long halls and spacious chambers. Mikel wondered fleetingly if the house ever called back to mind the days when life and noise Riled it, when children had kept it busier than everything else put together. Aghast; Children! But surely, if any were present, they had immediately been taken out of harm's way.
A pair of men had armed themselves with wine bottles, the only weapons to hand. They stood forlornly brave in the last corridor. Two stun shots laid them out. The invaders burst into the room beyond.
The air was cool here, though the true cold lay in a simulacrum of an Arctic region where some polar cap had been preserved- glacier and snowfield, blue-shadowed white, and a black glimmer of sea between ice floes. The scene dwarfed Arkezhan. He stood before a multifunctional terminal, clutching a fur-lined robe to him. The cabinet was needlessly large, gold-inlaid ebony with a rock crystal desk surface. You always were vainglorious, Mikel thought. I/only I could spatter you against those screens like a swatted fly.
Did Arkezhan tremble beneath his garment? His tone certainly quavered shrill: "What are you doing? Are you deranged? Is this some obscene prank? Get out! Go at once!"
"We will when we have completed our business with you," answered Mikel around the lump of hatred in his gullet.
"What business? Your own ruination? Are you aware-"
"Be still."
"No. You-peacebreaker-"
Mikel grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled. "Be still and listen." Arkezhan stared at the younger, stronger man and the grimness behind him. "Sit down. Over there." Mikel hustled him to a chair a few meters off.
The men posted themselves, alert, two of them at the terminal. Vahi began to monitor the house and its activities. Olver called up outside views to cover every direction. Now and then he magnified for a closer scan.
Mikel paced to and fro before the chair. Arkezhan gripped its arms and perforce looked up. His features writhed.
The winter seemed to speak through Mikel. "You know full well why we are here. You deliberately provoked my father Wei, Captain Belov, to the point where his sole choice was to avenge his honor and the honor of his family."
Arkezhan rallied. "Nonsense. If he was so unreasonable as to take offense at a few remarks, he could have made complaint later. The dishonor sprang from his behavior, there before the Regnant."
"He would not repeat your vile words in a suit at law for the whole nation to hear."
I exaggerate, Mikel knew. My father did lose control. But he was goaded beyond a proud man's endurance. And he was my father and I he captain of my clan.
"Well, he could have complained at once," Arkezhan said.
"The Regnant would have referred the matter to the Chief Enactor." If the Regnant did not simply dismiss it on the spot. He must have heard what went on, and spoke no word. "Thereupon you would have kissed Mahu Rahman's . . . hand ... as usual, and suffered not so much as a reproof."
Arkezhan flushed and started to rise. "Now you impugn my honor." Mikel gestured and he sank back. "This is intolerable. I shall enter criminal charges against you and your gang."
Mikel shook his head. "No. You shall admit your own guilt directly to the Regnant. He will proclaim it, absolving my father of every blame."
Arkezhan gasped. "You dare-you, who have broken into my home, terrified and assaulted my people-"
"In view of the mitigating circumstances, and at your urgent request, the Regnant will publicly annul every offense of ours. He will emphasize that the honor of Clan Belov remains unstained."
"How can you imagine this?"
Mikel shrugged and grinned a bit. "I daresay the Chief Enactor will have prevailed on him. You see, if it does not come about, we will kill you."
Arkezhan gaped like one stunned.
"We will then make the truth known to the whole world," Mikel went on. "And then, of course, we will ourselves die-free. The story will live on."
"To the disgrace of your clan," Arkezhan said frantically.
"Oh, no. Do you suppose we haven't given it thought? Similar occurrences in the past came to be regarded as glorious. Our deaths will atone, as my father's did for a fault that was not even his. The Belovs will remember us in pride. Tahalla will. Tell me, though, how can Clan Socorro ever lose the infamy?"
Arkezhan sat mute.
Mikel halted his pacing. "You will properly serve your people, you, their captain, if you do what we ask," he said. "The Regnant will doubtless pardon your admitted wrongdoing. That should suffice."
In his mind, he will certainly never pardon us. We must always he on guard against a sly vengeance. I will encourage every Belov household to keep arms and train
in their use.
"Think," Mikel said. "Do not be slow about it."
"Absolutely not," Olver called. "Look."
Mikel went over to the screens. Men were emerging from the garden. Olver enlarged the view. They straggled, unskilled, but they moved resolutely and they carried hunting weapons. A skyward scan showed two cars approaching.
"That Dammas," Olver opined. "A Socorro, but a man. He's pulled together those who fled from the house, equipped them from the gamekeeper's lodge, and sent for help from other homes."
Mikel's followers reached for their lethally loaded guns. Some cursed. A sudden, strange detachment came over him. Is this how soldiers felt in the old days? he wondered. He turned back to his prisoner. "You can prevent a fight," he said. "Tell them to hold off."
"I-I do not know if I can-by now." Arkezhan got to his feet. His head lifted, his tone steadied somewhat. "Or if I should."
No, went Mikel's cold thought, your captaincy would ever after be hollow, wouldn't it?
"Maybe they'll only lay siege," Vahi said.
"Till the Regnancy hears, if it hasn't already, and sends reinforcement," Olver replied.
If the Chief Enactor dares, Mikel thought. He is not popular with most of the clans. He must know the consequences will foe unforeseeable. That was part of what we counted on. But in any case, we will have overwhelming strength against us.
Arkezhan gained nerve. "Now that they are heartened, my folk will not tolerate what they realize is my humiliation," he said. "And they will absolutely exact justice for my death. They have the same historical examples to cite that you do, and more clearly applicable. Yield, and perhaps I can negotiate safe conduct for you out of this trap you have closed on yourselves."
Mikel sighed. "That is impossible for us. Have you enough rudimentary sense of honor to understand? We will fight, and no one shall take any of us alive." He slid his killer pistol from the sheath. A harsh glee leaped. "Least of all you."
"No," proclaimed a new voice.
7
It came not from any throat or any instrument. Maybe the walls of the house reverberated with it, soft though it was. The men outside must have heard it too, for they stopped in their tracks.
The voice was a deep contralto, calm and implacable. "Desist." Abruptly, heatlessly, every weapon within a kilometer slumped into uselessness.
Down on the grass, men stood as if frozen, or sank to their knees. Three screamed and bolted back into the garden. The cars aloft stopped and hovered. Up in the Winter Room, Arkezhan sagged down again. Mikel's followers stared at their emptied hands or wildly around at the ice.
"You were about to go beyond a brawl or even a murder," said the voice. "You would have broken the Peace of the Covenant."
It was the Worldguide that spoke, Mikel knew. Amidst tumult, a tiny part of him wondered how much of its attention the central intelligence of the Solar System was giving to this occasion and this moment.
"Did you think your actions went unobserved?"
The machines, robots, planetary maintenance, the whole incomprehensibly vast meshwork of communications, computations, and information, Mikel realized. Yes, and satellites, and invisibly small flying sensors, everything in the service of humankind and of life everywhere, therefore its deeds and decisions unquestioningly- gladly-accepted by nearly every person alive.
"Your own laws, usages, and consciences preserved it thus far in l his nation. Your own ceremonies, rituals, vyings for status, and pleasures took up your energies."
What else was left for us? cried the unborn rebel.
"But now that very tradition has led you to reignite the old violence. Unchecked, it would burn more fiercely from generation to generation, resentment, blind hate, feud, war, with unrest in many other societies. It must end at once."
The voice mildened the barest bit. "Take comfort. Yours is not the first country where the threat has arisen, nor will it likely be the last, for long times to come. Always the flame has been quietly clamped. So it shall be here.
"The raiders shall go freely home. There shall be no penalty upon them, overt or covert, and their people may feel themselves vindicated if they so desire; but neither shall there be penalty for anyone else, or revenge-ever, in the lifetimes of you and your descendants.
"Go in peace. Abide in peace."
No words about enforcement were necessary.
The voice fell silent. Slowly, men looked into one another's eyes.
In a rush of horror, which was followed by relief and a kind of resignation, Mikel thought: Now we know our future.
Vll
The day came when that which had been Christian Brannock asked for an ending.
He supposed it had happened before, and surely it would happen again, across spans of centuries and light-centuries. Not that he knew how many of him had come into being, copied and recopied. The memories of this one recorded only four such births. In each case, an intelligence had wanted to leave a place where a Brannock chanced to be. Generally it had stopped there in the course of exploration farther into the galaxy, seeking a site auspicious for the founding of a new outpost of intelligence. The intelligence wanted helpers with various abilities, less of the body-a body could be designed and made for any special purpose-than of the mind, the spirit. Brannock's ranked high among the humanlike. Thus he could hardly ever simply join the expedition. He was still needed where he was.
A new uploading gave a new Brannock, eager to go. Often the older Brannock watched the departure with something akin to wistfulness. However, the work he had been engaged in remained fascinating and challenging. Should it cease to be so, then he could shut himself down. Eventually he would be reactivated, aroused, to a fresh undertaking or to a ship willing to carry him elsewhere.
"Old" and "new" had little meaning, though. Immediately after an uploading, the two information-patterns of his basic self were essentially identical. Afterward their destinies diverged, and different experiences wrought different changes in them. Any single line "I such a many-branched descent could only guess at what had become of the others. If once in a great while chance brought two individuals together, they met as strangers.
Yet to all of them, "age" was meaningful. They existed not in short-lived, vulnerable flesh, but in enduring molecules and in data flows, complex energy exchanges, with no inevitable mortality. Nevertheless, time passed for them too. Being sentient, they felt it. At last it brought a certain weariness upon them.
This Brannock on this day flew above a planet far from Earth. Sol was invisible among its stars after dark. At the moment its sun stood small and dazzling in a greenish sky. Red-tinged clouds drifted on winds that a human could not have breathed and lived. Lakes glinted in the glare. Heat-shimmers danced over low hills and the growth upon them. Those mats, stalks, fluttering membranes, and spongy turrets were purple, ruddy, gold, in a thousand mingled shades. Now and then swarms of tiny creatures whirled aloft. Light shattered into sparks of color where it struck them.
To Brannock the world was beauty and marvel. It did not threaten him. Nor did raw rock or empty space; but here was life. That it was primitive hardly mattered, in a universe where life of any kind was so rare as to seem well-nigh a miracle. That it was altogether alien to Earth's made it a wellspring of knowledge, from which Intelligence 'lime and, through its communications, intelligences across the known galaxy had been drinking for these past seven hundred years. I lie farthest off among them had not yet received the news; photons fly too slowly.
And Brannock had shared in the enterprise: helping establish the first base; helping build the industries necessary for its maintenance, enlargement, and evolution; helping explore, chart, study, discover. Often his quests had been difficult, even precarious. Always they had been adventures.
The goal was nearly gained, the planet was nearly understood, what remained was an almost algorithmic research that did not require him. Intelligence Prime was turning its attention to other things. Once Brannock had meant to go unconsc
ious when that time came, to wait for recruitment into some undertaking new and mysterious. But time itself had worn away the desire.
Because this would be his last journey, he took care to savor it. Instead of merely communicating his intent, he went in a material body, which he had chosen just for the purpose. It flew. Through its sensors he felt power coursing, control surfaces flexing, air slipping by like water by a swimmer; he heard and tasted its changeableness; he scanned over wide horizons or magnified perception to follow the least of living creatures kilometers below. The flight was his farewell to a phase of existence.
He passed above a seashore. Tides were weak, on this world without a moon, but wind raised surf and blew foam off wave crests. Microbes yellowed the water. An island hove in sight. He slanted down toward it. Eagerness lifted, though it was largely intellectual, maybe not unlike the feelings of an ancient mathematician as a theorem came together for him. Once upon a time Brannock's heart would have racketed, his blood pulsed, his muscles tensed, the breath gone quickly in and out. But he was a man then.
A young man, at that. . . once upon a time.
And a man of the West, not the East. Even when old, would he have looked forward to losing selfhood?
Well, he thought for an electronic instant, J expected to lose it when I died, and suddenly I sidestepped that. This today won't actually erase me. It will-I don't know what it will be like. I'm not capable of knowing. Not as I now am.
He landed, folded his wings, and advanced.
Before him loomed a-call it a huge, many-faceted jewel. Say that lightnings and rainbows moved over it, shone from it, made a dancing glory around it. Say that low domes and high pylons stood in attendance, while air and ground murmured with unseen energies. Brannock perceived more than this; the sensors of his body were more than human. Still, he knew that much was intangible to him, incomprehensible, force fields, quantum computations, actions far down in the foundations of reality.
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