Seven Conquests

by Poul Anderson

  As he stumbled out, he heard Way land say thoughtfully: “Three gets you four he suicides rather than take psychorevision.”

  “You’re covered!” said Christabel.

  Imagine that we did learn how to end war and build an all-around decent world. It is conceivable. In fact, some people believe we already have that knowledge as, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount. Given the program, though, can we put it into effect? The record of man’s attempts to improve man is not especially encouraging.

  Details

  The most austerley egalitarian societies—and the League is a mature culture which has put such games behind it—soon learn they must cater to the whims of their leaders. This is true for the simple reason that a mind on whose decisions all fate may turn has to function efficiently, which it can only do when the total personality is satisfied and unjarred. For Rasnagarth Kri the League had rebuilt a mile-high skyscraper. His office took up the whole roof, beneath a dome of clear plastic, so that from his post he could brood by day over the city towers and by night under the cold radiance of the Sagittarian star-clouds. It was a very long walk from the graveshaft door to the big bare desk.

  Harban Randos made the walk quickly, almost jauntily. They had warned him that the High Commissioner was driven by a sense of undying haste and that it was worth a man’s future to spill time on a single formality. Randos fairly radiated brisk-143 ness. He was young, only a thousand years old, plumpish and sandy-haired, dressed in the latest mode of his people, the Shandakites of Garris. His tunic glittered with starry points of light and his cloak blew like a flame behind him.

  He reached the desk and remained standing. Kri had not looked up. The harsh blue face was intent over a bit of paper. Around him the sky was sunny, aircraft flittered in dragonfly grace, the lesser spires glowed and burned, the city pulsed. For the blue man in the plain gray robe, none of it existed, not while he was looking at that one sheet.

  After all, its few lines of text and paramathematical symbology concerned eight billion human lives. In another lifetime or so—say 10,000 years—the consequences might well concern the entire League, with a population estimated at ten to the fifteenth power souls.

  After an interminable minute, Kri scribbled his decision and dropped the report down the outgoing chute. Another popped automatically from the incoming slot. He half reached for it, saw Randos waiting, and withdrew his hand. That was a gaunt hand, knobby and ropy and speckled with age.

  “Harban Randos, sir, by appointment,” rattled off his visitor. “Proposed agent-in-chief for new planet in Section two-three-nine-seven-six-two.”

  “I remember now. Sit down.” Kri nodded curtly. “Coordinator Zantell and Representative Chuing urged your qualifications. What are they?”

  “Graduated in seventy-five from Nime Psycho-technic Institute in the second rank. Apprenticeship under Vor Valdran on Galeen V, rates as satisfactory.“ Damn the old spider! What did he think the Service was…the Patrol?

  “Galeen was a simple operation,” said Kri. “It was only a matter of guiding them along the last step to full status. The planet for which you have been recommended is a barbarous one, therefore a more difficult and complex problem.”

  Randos opened his mouth to protest that backward planets were, mathematically, an elementary proposition…Great Designer, only a single world to worry about, while the Galeenians had reached a dozen stars at the time he went there! Wisely, he closed il again.

  Kri sighed. “How much do you know of the situation on this one?—No, never mind answering, it would take you all day. Frankly, you’re only getting the job for two reasons. One, you are a Shandakite of Garris, which means you are physiologically identical with the race currently dominant on the planet in question. We have no other fully trained Shandakite available, and indeed no qualified man who could be surgically disguised. Everyone I would like to appoint is tied up elsewhere with more important tasks. Two, you have the strong recommendation of Zantell and Chuing.

  “Very well, the post is yours. The courier boat will take you there, and supply you en route with hypnotic instruction as to the details. You already know the Service rules and the penalties for violating them.

  “I wanted to see you for just one reason…to tell you personally what your job means. You’re a young man, and think of it as a stepping stone to higher things. That’s an attitude which you’ll have to rub off. It’s an insignificant planet of an undistinguished star, out on the far end of the galaxy, with a minimum thousand years of guidance ahead of it before it can even be considered for full status. I know that. But I also know it holds more than a billion human creatures, each one fully as valuable as you and I, each one the center of his own particular universe. If you forget that, may the Great Designer have mercy on them and on you.

  “Dismissed.”

  Randos walked out, carefully energetic. He had been prepared for this, but it had still been pretty raw. Nobody had a right to treat a free citizen of a full-status planet like…like a not very trustworthy child. Damn it, he was a man, on the mightiest enterprise men had ever undertaken, and—

  And someday he might sit behind that desk.

  Kri allowed himself a minute’s reflection as Randos departed. It was so tinged with sadness that he wondered if he weren’t getting too old, if he hadn’t better resign for the good of the Service.

  So many planets, spinning through night and cold, so many souls huddled on them…a half-million full-status worlds, near galactic center, members of interstellar civilization by virtue of knowing that such a civilization existed…and how many millions more who did not know? It seemed that every day a scoutship brought back word of yet another inhabited planet.

  Each of them had its human races—red, black, white, yellow, blue, green, brown, tall or short, thin or fat, hairy or bald, tailed or tailless, but fully human, biologically human, and the scientists had never discovered why evolution should work thus on every terrestroid world. The churches said it was the will of the Designer, and perhaps they were right. Certainly they were right in a pragmatic sense, for the knowledge had brought the concept of brotherhood and duty. The duty of true civilization was to guide its brothers in darkness—secretly, gently, keeping from them the devastating knowledge that a million-year-old society already existed, until they had matured enough to take that bitter pill and join smoothly the League of the older planets. Without such guidance…In his younger days, Kri had seen the dead worlds, where men had once lived. War, exhaustion of resources, accumulation of lethal genes, mutant disease…it was so hideously simple for Genus Homo to wipe a planet bare of himself.

  The old blue man sighed, and a smile tugged at his mouth. You didn’t work many centuries in the Service without becoming an idealist and a cynic. An idealist who lived for the mission, and a cynic who knew when to compromise for the sake of that mission. Theoretically, Kri was above political pressures. In fact, when there was no obvious disqualification, he often had to give somebody’s favorite nephew a plum. After all, his funds and his lower echelons were politically controlled…

  He started, realizing how much time had passed and how many decisions had yet to be made before he could quit for the day. His wife would give him Chaos if he stayed overtime tonight. Some damned card party. He bent over the report and dismissed from his mind the planet called Earth.

  1.

  The doorman was shocked.

  He was used to many people going in and out of the gray stone building, not only toffs and tradesmen but foreigners and Orientals and even plain tenant farmers, come down from Yorkshire with hayseeds in their hair. Benson & McMurtrie, Import Brokers, were a big firm and had to talk to every sort. He’d served in India as a young fellow and considered himself broad-minded. But there are limits.

  “

  ‘Ere, now! An’ just where d’yer think you’re going?”

  The stocky, sunburned man with the tattered clothes and the small brass earrings paused. He had curly black hair and snapping bl
ue eyes, and was fuming away on an old clay pipe. A common tinker, walking into Benson & McMurtrie cool as dammit! “In there, ould one, in there,” he said with an Irish lilt. “Ye wouldn’ be denyin’ me a sight of the most beautiful colleen in London, would ye?”

  “That I would,” said the doorman. A passing car stirred up enough breeze to flutter the tinker’s rags, flamboyant against the grimed respectability of Regent Street. “On yer wye before I calls a constable.”

  “Sure an’ it’s no way to be addressin’ a craftsman, me bhoy,” said the tinker. “But since ye seem to be sharin’ of the Sassenach mania for the written word, then feast your eyes on this.” Out of his patched garments he produced a letter of admittance, dated two years ago and signed by McMurtrie himself.

  The doorman scanned it carefully, the more so as McMurtrie was eight months dead, the nice white-haired old gentleman, struck down by one of these newfangled autos as he crossed this very street. But it gave a clear description of Sean O’Meara, occupation tinker, and set no time limit.

  He handed it back. “In yer goes, then,” he conceded, “though why they—Nev’ mind! Behyve yerself is all I got ter sye.”

  Sean O’Meara nodded gaily and disappeared into the building. The doorman scratched his head. You never knew, you didn’t, and those Irish were an uppity lot, a bad lot. Here Mr. Asquith was trying to give them Home Rule and the Ulstermen were up in arms about it!

  Sabor Tombak had no trouble getting past the private secretary, who was a Galactic himself, but he sadly puzzled the lesser employees. Most of them concluded, after several days of speculation, that the tinker was a secret agent. It was well known that Benson & McMurtrie had sufficient financial power to be hand in glove with the Cabinet itself. They weren’t so far off the mark at that.

  The inner office was a ponderosity of furniture and sepia. Tombak shuddered and knocked out his pipe. Usrek Arken, alias Sir John Benson—grandson of the founder, who had actually been himself— started. “Do you have to bring that thing in here?“ he complained. “The London air is foul already without you polluting it.”

  “Anything would be welcome as a counterirritant to this stuff,” answered Tombak. His gesture included the entire office. “Why the Evil don’t you guidance boys get on orbit and guide the English into decent taste? An Irish peasant without a farthing in his pocket has better-looking quarters than this kennel.”

  “Details, details.” The sarcastic note in Arken’s voice did not escape Tombak. The word had somehow become a proverb in his absence.

  “Better get hold of the boss and let me report,” he said. “I’ve an earful to give him.”-

  “An eyeful, you mean,” replied Arken. “Written up in proper form with quantitative data tabulated, if you please.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. Gimme time. But this won’t wait for-”

  “Maybe you don’t know we have a new boss,” said Arken slowly.

  “Huh? What happened to Kalmagens?”

  “Killed. Run over by a bloody Designer-damned petroleum burner eight months ago.”

  Tombak sat down, heavily. He had had a great regard for Kalmagens, both professionally—the Franco-Prussian business had been handled with sheer artistry—and as a friend. He dropped into fluent Gaelic for a while, cursing the luck.

  At last he shook himself and asked: “What’s the new man like?”

  “Harban Randos of Garris. Arrived six weeks back. Young fellow, fresh out of his apprenticeship. A good psychotechnician, but seems to think the psychotechnic laws will cover every situation.” Arken scowled. “And the situation right now is nasty.”

  “It is that,” agreed Tombak. “I haven’t seen many newspapers where I’ve been, but it’s past time Kaiser Wilhelm was put across somebody’s knee.” He jumped back to his feet with the restless energy of two years tramping the Irish roads. “Where’s Randos now? Damn it, I want to see him.”

  Arken lifted his brows. “All right, old chap. If you really insist, I’ll call him for you, and then I’ll crawl under the desk and wait for the lightning to subside.” He buzzed for the secretary and told him in English: “Send Mr. Harrison to me, please.” That was for the benefit of the non-Galactic employees. When the door was closed, he remarked to Tombak: “You know how complicated the secrecy requirement can make things. Bad enough to always have to look your Earth age, and officially die every fifty years or so, and provide a synthetic corpse, and assume a new face and a new personality. But when you’re at the top, and the leading autochthons know you as an important man—Chaos! We have to fob Randos off as a senior clerk, freshly hired for nepotistic reasons.”

  Tombak grinned and tamped his pipe. He himself was in the lowest echelon of the five thousand Galactics serving on Earth, and refused to study for promotion. He liked the planet and its folk, he liked being soldier and sailor and cowboy and mechanic and tramp, to gather knowledge of how the Plan was progressing on the level of common humanity. He did not hanker for the symbological sweatshop work and the identity problem of the upper brackets.

  A plump, undistinguished form, in somber clothes that looked highly uncomfortable, entered. “You sent for me, sir?” The door closed behind Harban Randos. “What’s the meaning of this? I was engaged in an evaluation of the political dynamics, and you interrupted me precisely as I was getting the matrix set up. How many times do I have to tell you the situation is crucial? What the Chaos do you want now?”

  “Sir Randos…Sabor Tombak, one of our field agents, returned from a survey of Ireland,” murmured Arken. “He has important new information for you.”

  Randos did not bow, as urbanity demanded. He looked tired and harried. “Then file it and mark it urgent, for Designers sake!”

  “Trouble is,” said Tombak imperturbably, “this is not stuff that can be fitted into a mass-action equation. This concerns individual people…angry people.”

  “Look here—” Randos drew a ragged breath. “I’ll take time to explain to you.” His tone grew elaborately satirical. “Forgive me if I repeat what you already know.

  “This planet wasn’t discovered till seventeen ninety-eight, and three years went by before a mission could be sent. The situation was plainly critical, so much so that our men couldn’t take a century to establish themselves. They had to cut comers and work fast. By introducing technological innovations themselves and serving with uncanny distinction in several countries’ armed forces and governments, they barely managed to be influential at the Congress of Vienna. Not very influential, but just sufficiently to get a stopgap balance-of-power system adopted. They couldn’t prevent the antidemocratic reaction and the subsequent revolutions…but they did stave off a major catastrophe, and settled down to building a decent set of governments. Now their whole work is in danger.

  “We’re too damned few, Tombak, and have to contend with too many centuries of nationalism and vested interest. My predecessor here did manage to get high-ranking agents into the German leadership. They failed to prevent war with Denmark, Austria, and France, but a fairly humane peace treaty was managed after eighteen seventy. Not as humane as it should have been, it left the French smarting, but a good job under the circumstances.”

  Tombak nodded. He had seen that for himself. He had been a simple krauthead officer then, moderating the savagery of his troops…less for immediate mercy than for the future, a smaller legacy of hatred. But rumors had filtered down, which he later gleefully confirmed: British pressure secretly put on Bismarck to control his appetite, and the pressure had originated with the Prime Minister’s good friend “Sir Colin McMurtrie.” And the Boer War had been unavoidable, but the quick gestures of friendship toward the conquered had not—The Plan called for a peaceful, democratic British Commonwealth to dominate and stabilize the world.

  “Kalmagens’ death threw everything into confusion,” went on Randos. “I suppose you know that. You fellows carried on as best you could, but the mass is not identical with the sum of the individuals concerned. There are factors of trad
ition, inertia, the cumbersome social machinery…it takes a trained man to see the forest for the trees. Things have rapidly gone toward maximum entropy. An unstable system of checks and balances between rival imperialisms is breaking down. We have less than a year to avert a general war which will exacerbate nationalism to the point of insanity. I have to develop a program of action and get it into effect. I have no time to waste on details!”

  “The Turkish-Italian war was a detail, of course,” said Tombak blandly.

  “Yes,” snapped Randos. “Unfortunate, but unimportant. The Ottomans have had their day. Likewise this Balkan business.”

  “Saw a paper on the way here. Sun Yat-sen’s government is having its troubles. Are all those Chinese another detail?”

  “No, of course not. But they can wait. The main line of development toward full status is here in Western Europe. It happened by chance, but the fact is there. It’s European civilization which has got to be saved from itself. Do you realize that Earth is only a century or so from atomic energy?“ Randos took an angry turn around the office. “All right. I’m trying to work out a new balance, an international power alignment that will hold German ambition in check until such time as their Social Democrats can win an unmistakable majority and oust the Prussian clique. After that we can start nudging Europe toward limited federalism. That’s the objective, sir, the absolute necessity, and your report had better have some relevance to it!”

  Tombak nodded. “It does, Chief, I assure you. I’ve talked with thousands of Irish, both in Ulster and the south. Those two sections hate each other’s intestinal flora. The southerners want the present Home Rule bill and the Ulstermen don’t. They’re being whipped up by the Carson gang, ready to fight… and if they do, the Irish-Irish are going to revolt on their own account.”

  Randos’ lunar face reddened. “And you called me in to tell me this?”