by M. K. Wren
Alexand folded his arms under his cloak, tensing with the inner alarm of suspicion, yet it was quieted by the regret he read in Rich’s eyes; he waited silently for him to explain.
“The military phase will be brief, ideally consisting of one massive attack in a limited area, and our primary objectives will be Concord military and police facilities. It will be a small war, but that won’t make it less a war, nor less tragic to those affected by it. Nor less distasteful to us. But we must have Phase I, the foothold in the Concord hierarchy, because we’ll have to work through the existing power structure to bring about the reforms we consider vital to the Concord’s survival. Ultimately, we’ll get that foothold by bargaining for it, and that’s the real purpose of the military phase. That’s the only way we can force the Concord to the bargaining table.”
Alexand nodded. “In other words, you must—again—make the Concord aware of your existence in terms it can understand.”
Rich smiled at that, but only briefly.
“Yes. We have to force them to take us seriously. And believe me, Alex—you must believe this—the Society’s leaders are reluctant to accept the necessity of even a limited war, but it’s the only alternative, and that’s not just opinion; that’s based on ex seqs drawn by experts over decades. We’ve had to accept the necessity, because if we fail, the only other alternative for the Concord is a third dark age. We’ve had to compare the casualties that will result from our war with those that will result from the collapse of our civilization.”
That created a silence, and Alexand knew Rich was considering those casualties, looking back with the cognizant perception of a historian on the last civilizational collapse.
“What happens after Phase I?”
“A lot happens after Phase I—we hope. First, we’ll use that foothold to bring about a gradual process of reform, working through established channels. Our objectives will be to break down the feudalistic system and spread the power base into the middle class, as well as developing a literate lower class and relaxing the barriers between all classes. The dynastic House system will be maintained, but the concentration of power within them reduced. In this phase there will be a very real danger of revolt—true revolt—of two kinds: reactionary revolt among conservative Lords, or a liberal revolt fostered by an impatient middle class. Maintaining a balance between stability and reform will be difficult, but if that can be managed, we’ll be ready for Phase II. That begins with the establishment of electoral processes. That is, when individuals are given a voice in their government by vote. These elections will be limited at first and will probably evolve from the Guilds; they already use majority vote to some degree within their membership. The right to vote will be progressively extended to all adult citizens, and at the same time the issues decided by election will be enlarged until finally we each our ultimate goal—Phase III, the establishment of a true democratic republic. It might be a form of monarchal republic; there are advantages in maintaining vestiges of the hereditary system. But it must be—in the words of our Charter—‘a form of government that will provide a maximum of individual choice, opportunity, and judicial equality within the limits of a stable system.’ ”
Alexand listened attentively through this, and Rich’s calm tone made it all sound imminently reasonable, almost inevitable. But a mental backwash soured the hope when he stopped.
“We used to dream of such things, Rich, talking into the small hours of the nights, solving humanity’s problems with all our adolescent erudition. But the ideal is a long way from the real.”
“Yes, it is,” Rich said softly. “The ideal envisioned by the Phoenix is at least five and possibly seven generations from the real.”
Alexand’s head came up, and it took him a moment to focus on Rich’s transcendentally composed features.
“Five to seven . . . generations?”
“Yes. Phase I must be accomplished in the near future, or there’ll be no power structure to work through or save, but Phase II and III . . .” He smiled. “As you said, evolution is a slow process.”
Alexand needed a moment to digest that. He found it difficult to sort his thoughts from his emotions, from a hope he kept trying to put down.
“Rich, the plans might be practicable, but to see that they aren’t lost or betrayed over that many generations—”
“The chances of failure have been calculated. Assuming Phase I is accomplished within the next ten years, there’s approximately a fifty percent chance of achieving Phase III.”
“And the chances of achieving Phase I—have they been calculated?”
Rich nodded. “They’re calculated almost daily as changing events affect the data. The last figures I saw put the chances at between thirty and forty percent.” He leaned forward, meeting and holding Alexand’s eyes. “We’ve also calculated the Concord’s odds for survival. The chances that the Concord will survive more than thirty years under present conditions run between ten and twelve percent. They drop to five percent over a fifty-year period.”
The ring of truth was in those figures. Alexand listened to the vibrant, vital hum of Concordia, yet he wondered if the Phoenix might even be showing an unwarranted optimism.
“Rich, do you really . . .” He couldn’t go on.
“Yes,” Rich said quietly, “I do believe. I believe the Phoenix offers at least a slim hope of averting a third dark age, the only hope available to the Concord.”
“And the Concord brands the Phoenix traitor.”
Rich laughed tolerantly. “Of course, but the Lords know nothing of our real aims at this point. Not that they’d consider us any less traitors if they did.” For a moment he was silent, studying his brother’s face, the lean planes lighted by the glow in the eastern sky. He said with a sigh, “You were right, Alex. Father has sired a strange pair of sons. I suppose I shouldn’t have told you all this. I’ve made you an accessory to treason.”
Alexand shrugged at that. “Treason is relative; it usually depends on who wins. I envy you, Rich. You’ve found . . . a cause. If you’re right about the Phoenix, if it does offer a hope for averting another dark age, then you have no choice but to pursue it.”
Rich nodded, turning his gaze again to Concordia, rose-hued, its lights, even in the burgeoning dawn, a scintillant sea vanishing into distance.
“Look at it, Alex. Have you ever tired of seeing it? The city of lights. Was ever an appellation so appropriate?” He paused, then added almost in a whisper, “The lights must never go out.”
Alexand could find no words. After a long silence, Rich turned his luminous eyes on him.
“I’ve detained you long enough. You must go now.”
Alexand looked at his watch and nodded. “Rich, when will I see you again?”
“Concord Day. Octov. I’ll miss your graduation leave in Septem, but I’ll be home for the Concord Day holiday.”
Six months. Half a year. An interminable time, yet only a month more than the separation Confleet imposed on them.
Alexand turned to look out at the city.
The lights must never go out.
“I’ll miss you, Rich, and I’ll never be free of fear for you from this hour on, but I can only offer my respect and admiration. And my love.” He looked down at his brother. “You’re my linked-twin soul, and you carry a part of me with you, as I hold a part of you—always.”
Rich didn’t speak for some time; he gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles were white, then finally he said, “Alexand, you’ve loved me with all your heart, and in a few years you’ll be repaid with grief, and that seems a bitter recompense. I can’t spare you the grief, and it might seem that in leaving you now I’m only adding more, but I believe beyond a doubt that the seeds I’m planting will bear fruit one day, and perhaps you’ll taste some of the fruits of the harvest; you and your children. That’s the only way I can m
ake restitution for the grief, and the only form of immortality I can believe in.” Then he smiled and reached for his brother’s hand. “Besides, I expect your first born to be named for me. I’d hate to think of my namesake growing up to a heritage of rubble. I’ll leave you now. No landing-roof farewells.”
Alexand held that frail hand and found in it the strength he always did; the strength now to hold back the waiting pain.
“Rich . . . good fortune.”
Rich released his hand. “Peace be, Alex. Goodbye.”
Alexand couldn’t bring himself to speak that word.
PHOENIX MEMFILES: DEPT HUMAN SCIENCES:
BASIC SCHOOL(HS/BS)
SUBFILE: LECTURE, BASIC SCHOOL 9 JANUAR 3252
GUEST LECTURER: RICHARD LAMB
SUBJECT: POST-DISASTERS HISTORY:
THE HOLY CONFEDERATION (2585–2903)
DOC LOC #819/219–1253/1812–1648–913252
Lord Patric Eyre Ballarat is often called the true heir of Even Pilgram (whose last genetic heir died childless in 2514), and there are obvious similarities. There is also a bias on the part of many historians to see the PanTerran Confederation as a natural culmination of Pilgram’s Holy Confederation. The former was, however, in no way inevitable, and was in fact a first in human history, and might just as “naturally” have grown out of the Sangpor League, the Sudamerikan Allienza Salvador, or, even more likely, the powerful Sudafrikan Union.
What Pilgram and Ballarat had in common was that they were both successful at conquest and consolidation, and both made of their campaigns holy wars, but even in these affinities there are more points of divergence than convergence. Time tends to foreshorten the sequence of events as they become more distant. We lose sight of the fact that nearly as much time separated Ballarat from Pilgram as separates us from Ballarat. Whatever they might have had in common as personalities is irrelevant in the face of the vast differences in their historical contexts. Pilgram lived in a strictly feudal world in which the primary source of energy was animal (including human) power, sovereignty was still rooted ultimately in the exchange of fealty for protection, and trade was conducted primarily on a barter level.
Ballarat’s world was quite different, although it might be argued that it couldn’t have existed without Pilgram’s consolidation of the feudal holds. In that sense perhaps he is Pilgram’s heir, but so are we all. The Holy Confederation hastened the advent of Conta Austrail’s renaissance, which was, unlike the renaissance following the First Dark Age, also an industrial revolution. Some knowledge always survives a dark age, and humankind entered the Second Dark Age at a more technologically advanced level in the twenty-first century than pertained in the fifth century when it entered the First Dark Age. Even in Pilgram’s time a few crude radio communication systems were still in operation. His strategic use of this “word-winger” contributed to his military success, in fact. I doubt that he or anyone who employed radio devices at the time understood how or why they worked; their construction, maintenance, and use was a matter of tradition hoared with dogma, but with the advent of the Holy Confederation, pooling and expansion of knowledge by interchange became possible. The first organized educational institutions—the forerunners of the University System—were established during this period under the aegis of the Church, and when some of the great libraries were later discovered in the ruins of Canber, Brisbane, and even in Melborn before it became the site of Concordia, the intellectual soil had been prepared for the seeding of that precious knowledge from the past.
That seeding precipitated a technological renaissance that evolved far faster than the social structures supporting it, and that’s one problem our era shares with Ballarat’s: our social structures still haven’t caught up, and various factors have combined since then to further retard them.
But in the twenty-ninth century, the technological resurgence was more obvious than the social lag, and, as is so often the case, the resurgence hinged on one key invention. That was the energy amplification/storage cell, whose invention in 2761 was credited to Lord Cilas Darwin, although it was probably developed by scientists allieged to him, and was undoubtedly based on twenty-first-century prototypes. Hydroelectric power and fossil fuels were the primary sources of power before the development of the Darwin cell, but neither were abundant enough to adequately power an industrial renaissance. The Darwin cell, however, made possible full exploitation of solar power, even without the advantage of beamed solar power systems, and the Holy Confederation took the first step into a new age.
In the century between that crucial invention and Ballarat’s emergence into the light of history, much that is familiar in our world came into existence. The term “Fesh,” for instance, derived from “professional.” More important, the first industrial—as opposed to landed—Houses appeared, which led to the establishment of the franchise system. The term “House” came into general use during this period, too. Prior to the development of exclusively industrial Houses, terms such as “domain,” “dominion,” “province,” or the archaic “station” were used to describe the primarily geographical boundaries of sovereignty.
The Holy Confederation flourished, expanded, and differentiated at an astounding rate so that one generation’s world was all but unrecognizable to the next. Industrialization begat trade, and trade begat the need for expanded markets and the means to reach them. The Holy Confederation moved out into the world via waterborne and airborne craft that seem slow and even dangerous to us, but were wings to the Confederation. This was a period of reaching out, of the rediscovery of Terra and of the receding boundaries of knowledge, and there is evident in its extant writings on almost any subject a blithe optimism we can only look back on with envy.
Among other things, the traders and explorers of the mercantile and industrial Houses of the Holy Confederation discovered that although many parts of the planet were still blighted by the poisoning of pollution and exploitation, and the scars of nuclear war left by the Disasters, people and cultures were thriving in other areas. None of the cultures had advanced beyond feudalism, but that didn’t make them less attractive as markets for the products of Conta Austrail’s industrial Houses, or as producers of raw material for further industrialization.
This was a crucial period not only because of the many changes that did occur in a relatively short time, but because of one change that might have occurred, which would have drastically altered the future course of history, but did not occur. The Fesh, the middle class that burgeoned inevitably during this period, did not escape the dominion of the Elite. (That term, of course, didn’t come into general use until after the Wars of Confederation.) The Fesh did not break the allegiance system to their Lords, perhaps because House specialization blunted the effects of individual specialization, or perhaps it was simply attributable to the lag between social and technological development. As a corollary, the Bond class also remained bonded to their Lords. It might be noted that there was some potential for upward movement from one class to another during this period, which may have made the class restrictions more acceptable. Another factor is that the Orthodox Church was a dominant social force—far more so than today—and one of the Church’s doctrines was the sanctity of allegiance. The Church also offered individuals the option of what was essentially another class, that is, becoming part of the Church hierarchy. “Tithe” conscriptions were not yet practiced, and entry into Church service was entirely voluntary. At any rate, the Holy Confederation moved into the industrial renaissance with its feudal foundations intact.
An important factor initially overlooked by contemporaries in this pre-Wars period was that the Holy Confederation’s interactions with other cultures inevitably changed them. It hastened their emergence out of feudalism so that the primitive cultures that had once docilely provided markets and raw materials finally became manufacturers themselves, or developed their own marine fleets and began
to threaten, by competition or piracy, the Holy Confederation’s mercantile Lords.
It was at this pregnant point in history that Lord Patric Eyre Ballarat appeared, and it was Ballarat who made enemies and heathens of the “outlanders,” and convinced the other Lords of the Holy Confederation that it was their duty and destiny to conquer the enemy and make enlightened Mezionists of the heathen.
CHAPTER IV
Octov 3250
1.
The screens and the comconsole occupied only a part of Alexand’s mind; enough to stave off boredom. The rest could be devoted to anticipation. Only a few more hours stood between him and a week’s leave: the Concord Day holiday.
It would entail more long evenings with Julia Fallor, but even that seemed a small price for a few days at home, out of the black uniform; a few days with Rich. He would be home for the holiday, too. Home from Leda, from the—
A stir of sound in his ear alerted him. He adjusted his headset as one of the ’com screens flashed to life.
Leftant Commander Evret.
“Flagship Stanton to Corvet Ariad . . .”
Alexand touched a lighted button on the console.
“Ariad to flagship. Leftant Woolf on line.”
“Commander Evret for Major Goring.”
“Yes, sir. Just a moment.” Alexand swiveled his chair toward Goring, who occupied the command seat in the center of the Corvet’s crowded control deck. “Major Goring?”