“Actually,” he added, “when one stops to think about it, the Nine Cities have not at all been innocent martyrs. Their discrimination against the Arulians, their territorial aggressions against the outbacicers, were what really brought on the trouble. Merseia then exploited the, opportunity—but didn’t create it in the first place.
“Why then should the heedlessness of the Cities, that proved so costly to the Empire, not be penalized?”
Cruz looked disappointed. “I suppose the Policy Board could adopt some such formula,” he said. “But only if it wanted to. And it wont want to. Because what formula can disguise the fact of major physical harm inflicted in sheer contumacy?”
“The formula of over-zealousness to serve His Majesty’s interests,” Ridenour cast back. He lifted one palm. “Wait! Please! I don’t ask you, sir, to propose an official falsehood. The zeal was not greatly misguided. And it did serve Terra’s best interest.”
“What? How?”
“Don’t you see?” Tensely, Ridenour leaned across the table. Here we go, he thought, either we fly or we crash in the fire. “The outbackers ended the war for us.”
Cruz fell altogether quiet.
“Between you and me alone, I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming this outcome was planned in detail,” Ridenour hurried on. “But that is the effect. It was Nine Cities, their manufacturing and outworld commerce, their growth potential, that attracted the original Arulian settlers, and that lately made Freehold such a bait. With the Cities gone, what’s left to fight about? The enemy has no more bases. I’m sure he’ll accept repatriation to Aruli, including those of him who were born here. The alternative is to be milled to atoms between you and the outbackers.
“In return for this service, this removal of a bleeding wound on the Empire, a wound which might have turned into a cancer—surely the outbackers deserve the modest reward they ask. Amnesty for whatever errors they made, in seizing a chance that would never come again; a ‘charter giving them the right to occupy and develop Freehold as they wish, though always as kiyal subjects of His Majesty.”
Cruz was unmoving for a long time. When he spoke, he was hard to hear under the military noise outside. “What of the City humans?”
“They can be compensated for their losses and resettled elsewhere,” Ridenour said. “The cost will be less than for one year of continued war, I imagine; and you might well have gotten more than that. Many will complain, no doubt. But the interest of the Empire demands it. Quite apart from the problems in having two irreconcilable cultures on one planet, there’s the wish to keep any frontier peaceful. The outbackers are unprofitably tough to invade; I rather believe their next generation will furnish some of our hardiest marine volunteers; but at the same time, they don’t support the kind of industrial concentration—spaceships, nuclear devices—that makes our opposition worried or greedy.”
“Hm.” Cruz streamed smoke from his lips. His eyes half closed. “Hm. This would imply that my command, for one, can be shifted to a region where we might lean more usefully on Merseia yes-s-s.”
Ridenour thought in a moment that was desolate: Is that why I’m so anxious to save these people? Because I hope one day they’ll find a way out of the blind alley that is power politics?…
Cruz slammed a fist on the table. The bottle jumped. “By the Crown, Professor, you might have something here!” he exclaimed. “Let me pour. Let us drink together.”
Nothing would happen overnight, of course. Cruz must ponder, and consult. and feel out the other side’s representatives. Both groups must haggle, stall, quibble, orate, grow calculatedly angry, grow honestly weary. And from those weeks of monkey chatter would emerge nothing more than a “protocol.” This must pass up through a dozen layers of bureaucrats and politicians, each of whom must assert his own immortal importance by some altogether needless and exasperating change. Finally, on Terra, the experts would confer; the computers spin out reels of results that nobody quite understood or very much heeded; the members of the Policy Board and the different interests that had put them there use this issue as one more area in which to jockey for a bit more power; the news media make inane inflammatory statements (but not many—Freehold was remote—the latest orgy given by some nobleman’s latest mistress was more interesting)… and a document would arrive here, and maybe it would be signed but maybe it would be returned for “further study as reccommended…”
I won’t be leaving soon, Ridenour thought. They’ll need me for months. Final agreement may not be ratified for a year or worse.
Some hours passed before he left the Terran camp and walked toward the other. He’d doubtless best stay with the outbackers for a while. Evagail had been waiting for him. She ran down the path. “How did it go?”
“Very well, I’d say,” he said.
She cast herself into his arms, laughing and weeping. He soothed her, affectionately but just a little impatiently. His prime desire at the moment was to find a place by himself, that he might write a letter home.
Concealed and ignored at the time, the Freeholders’ rebellion was a signal that the Empire’s long afternoon was drawing to a close. However, other vigorous folk, both human and non-human, had learned the same lessons from history and were individually preparing to survive their effete overlords. In the meantime, Terra’s reign had generations yet to run, thanks in no little measure to the cunning and valor of men like Dominic Flandry, the naval intelligence officer turned Imperial advisor.
Yet sunset could not be postponed forever. Terra and Merseia wore each other into oblivion. Their exhausted dominions were devastated by rebellions from within and attacks from without. By the middle of the fourth millennium, the fearful Long Night fell.
A Tragedy of Errors
Once in ancient days, the then King of England told Sir Christopher Wren, whose name is yet remembered, that the new Cathedral of St. Paul which he had designed was “awful, pompous and artificial.” Kings have seldom been noted for perspicacity.
Later ages wove a myth about Roan Tom. He became their archetype of those star rovers who fared forth while the Long Night prevailed. As such, he was made to ‘ fit the preconceptions and prejudices of whoever happened to mention him. To many scholars, he was a monster, a murderer and thief, bandit and vandal, skulking like some carrion animal through the ruins of the Terran Empire. Others called him a hero, a gallant and romantic leader of fresh young peoples destined to sweep out of time the remnants of a failed civilization and build something better.
He would have been equally surprised, and amused, by either legend.
“Look,” one can imagine his ghost drawling, “we had to eat. For which purpose, it’s sort o’ helpful to keep your throat uncut, no? That was a spiny-tail period. Society’d fallen. Andhavin’ so far to fall, it hit bottom almighty hard. The economic basis for things like buildin’ spaceships wasn’t there any more. That meant little trade between planets. Which meant trouble on most of You let such go on for a century or two, snowballin’, and what’ve you got? A kettle o’ short-lived dwarf nations, that’s what—one-planet, one-continent, one-island nations; all of ’em one-lung for sure—where they haven’t collapsed even further. No more information-collatin’ services, so nobody can keep track o’ what’s happenin’ amongst those millions o’suns. What few spaceships are left in workin’ order are naturally the most valuable objects in sight. So they naturally get acquired by the toughest men around who, bein’ what they are, are apt to use the ships for conquerin’ or plunderin’… and complicate matters still worse.
“Well,” and he pauses to stuff a pipe with Earthgrown tobacco, which is available in his particular Valhalla, “like everybody else, I just made the best o’ things as I found ’em. Fought? Sure. Grew up fightin’. I was born on a spaceship. My dad was from Lochlann, but outlawed after a family feud went sour. He hadn’t much choice but to turn pirate. One day I was in a landin’ party which got bushwhacked. Next I heard, I’d been sold into slavery. Had to take it from ther
e. Got some lucky breaks after a while and worked ’em hard. Didn’t do too badly, by and large.
‘Wind you, though, I never belonged to one o’ those freaky cultures that’d taken to glorifyin’ combat for its own sake. In fact, once I’d gotten some power on Kraken, I was a lot more int’rested in startin’ trade again than in anything else. But neither did I mind the idea o’ fightin’, if we stood to gain by it, nor o’ collectin’ any loose piece o’ property that wasn’t too well defended. Also, willy-nilly, we were bound to get into brawls with other factions. Usually those happened a long ways from home. I saw to that. Better there than where I lived, no?
“We didn’t always win, either. Sometimes we took a clobberin’. Like finally, what I’d reckon as about the worst time, I found myself skyhootin’ away from Sassania, in a damaged ship, alone except for a couple o’ wives. I shook pursuit in the Nebula. But when we came out on the other side, we were in a part o’ space that wasn’t known to us. Old Imperial territory still, o’ course, but that could mean anything. And we needed repairs. Once my ship’d been self-fixin’, as well as selfcrewin’, self-pilotin’, self-navigatin,’ aye-ya, even self-aware. But that computer was long gone, together with a lot of other gear. We had to find us a place with a smidgin of industrial capacity, or we were done for.”
The image in the viewscreens flickered so badly that Tom donned armor and went out for a direct look at the system he had entered.
He liked being free in space anyway. He had more esthetic sense than he publicly admitted. The men of Kraken were quick to praise the beauty of a weapon or a woman, but would have considered it strange to spill time admiring a view rather than examining the scene for pitfalls and possibilities. In the hush and dreamlike liberty of weightlessness, Tom found an inner peace; and from this he turned outward, becoming one with the grandeur around him.
After he had flitted a kilometer from it, Firedrake’s lean hull did not cut off much vista. But reflections, where energy beams had scored through black camouflage coating to the steel beneath, hurt his eye… He looked away from ship and sun alike. It was a bright sun, intrinsic luminosity of two Sols, though the color was ruddy, like a gold and copper alloy. At a distance of one and a half astronomical units, it showed a disc thirty-four minutes wide; and no magnification, only a darkened faceplate, was necessary to see the flares that jetted from it. Corona and zodiacal light made a bronze cloud. That was not a typical main sequence star, Tom thought, though nothing in his background had equipped him to identify what the strangeness consisted of.
Elsewhere glittered the remoter stars, multitudinous and many-colored in their high night. Tom’s gaze circled among them. Yes, yonder was Capella. Old Earth lay on the far side, a couple of hundred light-years from here. But he wanted home, to Kraken: much less of a trip, ten parsecs or so. He could have picked out its sun with the naked eye, as a minor member of that jewel-swarm, had the Nebula not stood between. The thundercloud mass reared gloomy and awesome athwart a quarter of heaven. Arid it might as well be a solid wall, if his vessel didn’t get fixed.
That brought Tom’s attention back to the planet he was orbiting. It seemed enormous at this close remove, a thick crescent growing as the ship swung dayward, as if it were toppling upon him. The tints were green, blue, brown, but with an underlying red in the land areas that wasn’t entirely due to the sunlight color. Clouds banded the brightness of many seas; there was no true ocean. The southern polar cap was extensive. Yet it couldn’t be very deep, because its northern counterpart had almost disappeared with summer, albeit the axial tilt was a mere ten degrees. Atmosphere rimmed the horizon with purple. A tiny disc was heaving into sight, the farther of the two small moons.
Impressive, yes. Habitable, probably according to the spectroscope, certainly according to the radio emissions on which he had homed. (They’d broken off several light-years away, but by then no doubt remained that this system was their origin, and this was the only possible world within the system.) Nonetheless—puzzling. In a way, daunting.
The planet was actually a midget. Its equatorial diameter was—6810 kilometers, its mass 0.15 Terra. Nothing that size ought to have air, and water enough for men.
But there were men there. Or had been. Feeble and distorted though the broadcasts became, away off in space, Tom had caught Anglic words spoken with human mouths.
He shrugged. One way to find out. Activating his pellers, he flitted back. His boots struck hull and clung. He free-walked to the forward manlock and so inboard.
The interior gee-field was operational. Weight thrust his armor down onto his neck and shoulders. Yasmin heard him clatter and came to help him unsuit. He waved her back. “Don’t you see the frost on me? I been in planet shadow. Your finger’d stick to the metal, kid.” Not wearing radio earplugs, she didn’t hear him, but she got the idea and stood aside. Gauntleted, he stripped down to coverall and mukluks and lockered the space equipment. At the same time, he admired her.
She was slight and dark, but prettier than he had realized at first. That was an effect of personality, reasserting itself after what happened in Anushirvan. The city had been not only the most beautiful and civilized, but the gayest on all Sassania; and her father was Nadjaf Kuli, the deputy governor. Now he was dead and his palace sacked, and she had fled for her life with one of her Shah’s defeated barbarian allies. Yet she was getting back the ability to laugh. Good stock, Tom thought; she’d bear him good sons.
“Did you see trace of humans?” she asked. He had believed her Anglic bore a charming accent—it was not native to her—until he discovered that she had been taught the classical language. Her gazelle eyes flickered from the telescope he carried in one fist on to his battered and weatherbeaten face.
“Trace, yes,” he answered bluntly. “Stumps of a few towns. They’d been hit with nukes.”
“Oh-h-h…”
“Ease off, youngster.” He rumpled the flowing hair. “I couldn’t make out much, with nothin’ better’n these lenses. We’d already agreed the planet was likely raided, that time the broadcasts quit. Don’t mean they haven’t rebuilt a fair amount. I’d guess they have. The level o’. shall I say in two words, radio activity—” Tom paused. “You were supposed to smile at that,” he said in a wounded tone.
“Well, may I smile at the second joke, instead?” she retorted impishly. They both chuckled. Her back grew straighter, in the drab one-piece garment that was all he had been able to give her, and somehow the strength of the curving nose dominated the tenderness of her mouth. “Please go on, my lord.”
“Uh, you shouldn’t call me that. They’re free women on Kraken.”
“So we were on Sassania. In fact, plural marriage—”
“I know, I know. Let’s get on with business.” Tom started down the corridor. Yasmin accompanied him, less gracefully than she had moved at home. The field was set for Kraken weight, which was 1.25 standard. But she’d develop the muscles for it before long.
* * *
He had gone through a wedding ceremony with her, once they were in space, at Dagny’s insistence. “Who else will the poor child have for a protector but you, the rest of her life? Surely you won’t turn her loose on any random planet. At the same time, she is aristocratic born. It’d humiliate her to become a plain concubine.”
“M-m-m… but the heirship problem—”
“I like her myself, what little I’ve seen of her; and the Kuli barons always had an honorable name. I don’t think she’ll raise boys who’ll try to steal house rule from my sons.”
As usual, Dagny was no doubt right.
Anxious to swap findings with her, Tom hurried. The passage reached empty and echoing; air from the ventilators blew loud and chilled him; the stylized murals of gods and sea beasts had changed from bold to patheticnow that only three people crewed this ship. But they were lucky to be alive—would not have been so, save for the primitive loyalty of his personal guardsmen, who died in their tracks while he ran through the burning city in search o
f Dagny—when the Pretender’s nonhuman mercenaries broke down the last defenses. He found his chief wife standing by the ship with a Mark IV thunderbolter, awaiting his return. She would not have left without him. Yasmin huddled at her feet. They managed to loose a few missiles as they lifted. But otherwise there was nothing to do but hope to fight another day. The damage that Firedrake sustained in running the enemy space fleet had made escape touch and go. The resulting absence of exterior force-fields and much interior homeostasis made the damage worse as they traveled. Either they found the wherewithal for repair here, or they stayed here.
Tom said to Yasmin while he strode: “We couldn’t’ve picked up their radio so far out’s we did, less’n they’d had quite a lot, both talk and radar. That means they had a pretty broad industrial base. You don’t destroy that by scrubbin’ cities. Too many crossroads machine shops and so forth; too much skill spread through the population. I’d be surprised if this planet’s not on the way back up.”
“But why haven’t they rebuilt any cities?”
“Maybe they haven’t gotten that far yet. Been less’n ten years, you know. Or, ’course, they might’ve got knocked clear down to savagery. I’ve seen places where it happened. We’ll find out.”
Walking beside the girl, Roan Tom did not look especially note-worthy, certainly not like the rover and trader chieftain whose name was already in the ballads of a dozen planets. He was of medium height, though so broad in shoulders and chest as to look stocky. From his father, he had the long head, wide face, high cheekbones, snub nose and beardlessness of the Lochlanna. But his mother, a freedwoman said to be of Hermetian stock,, had given him dark-red hair, which was now thinning, and star-blue eyes. Only the right of those remained; a patch covered where the left had been. (Some day, somewhere, he’d find someone with the knowledge and facilities to grow him a new one!) He walked with the rolling gait of a Krakener, whose planet is mostly ocean, and bore the intertwining tattoos of his adopted people on most of his hide. A blaster and knife hung at his waist.
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