by Bill Adams
This uncertain remark is followed by a pause—about as long as it would take to fall thirty stories.
“Yes?” she says, with that same condescending patience.
“Oh for God’s sake, we have a class together.”
“I had heard,” she says, to heaven, “that we had a poet in my Rhetoric class. A sort of noble savage who sleeps with the owls and lives on steak tartare. One really doesn’t know what to expect…Do you know your name?”
I know my name.
The image is breaking up, she’s receding from me along with that moment of history, I am hanging from the wall of a jail, but I know my name, I know what I’ll lose if I give up the past. If I never parted Domina’s thighs with the edge of my hand, never took the pulse in her throat with my lips, never made her call out the name I know, then I was never a man, never lived at all.
I am Evan Larkspur.
Accept no substitutes.
Chapter Five
The two Tribunes picked me up early the next day and brought me back to Von Bülow’s suite, after they had engaged in some badinage with the jailer:
“Sleeping like a baby this morning, but there was all sorts of crying out and muttering in the middle of the night.”
“We were hoping for screams.”
“Oh, they always find a way to sleep the first night. But the second night, they’re screaming after ten minutes. Very gratifying, if you like that sort of thing. Don’t see it here unless the Tribunal’s in town.”
“Maybe you’ll see it tonight.”
But there was something wistful in the cop’s tone that gave me hope.
Von Bülow was eating a room-service omelet with good appetite and a chablis.
“Sit and eat. You look surprisingly composed, Mauldin—or whatever you call yourself.”
“I am myself again—for the time being.”
“Let me make one thing clear. Before we proceed. If I should feel like taking this fork and sticking it through your eye into your brain, I would. No one would question why I needed to dispose of a corpse. Much less whose. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
“You seem to have a certain low cunning. Various criminal skills. Most importantly, that face. I wouldn’t have thought there could be two. If it’s true you’re a competent actor, and most con men are, then you could be useful to me. If so, you’ll live.”
“I’ll have some chablis, then.”
“Not for you. Pay attention. Otho, brief him.”
An attaché in a Marine uniform lit up a holo table that hadn’t been there the night before. Aside from indicating that I could sit, Otho dispensed with preliminaries.
“As His Eminence has indicated, Freeman Mauldin, the Column has a problem that you may be able to help us with. It is, of course, the Evan Larkspur on Venezia—the one who’s rapidly taking over the Kanalist underground.”
The air flickered above the hologram table, and an image appeared: a crowd of people dressed like Ur-Terran gypsies or pirates, and among them the young version of myself I’d seen at the meeting last night.
“You want me to help expose him for a fraud?” I asked.
“Not clear he is,” Von Bülow interrupted. “It’s said he knows things only Larkspur could know. And the likeness—there were no good pictures to guide a plastic surgeon. But now I’ve seen you—who knows? Perhaps Larkspur left a slew of bastards behind. Perhaps a clone fetus. Though why someone would have kept it on ice for so many years before allowing it to grow up—Baah. There’s no knowing.”
“Whoever he is,” Otho cut in smoothly, “he first surfaced just a few years ago. Then he dropped out of sight, apparently with the help of powerful protection, only to reappear on the semiautonomous fringe world of Venezia.
“He presents plays there, right in the private theater at the palace of the Doge. The first one was called Bolivar, and it’s a scandalous piece of anti-Column propaganda that’s being pirated everywhere now. Computer analysis of its vocabulary and phrasing suggests that it is, or is at least based on, an authentic Larkspur text. Of course, that doesn’t mean this new boy wrote it. His backers may just have access to a ‘lost’ Larkspur play—there have always been rumors that one was suppressed.”
So an audience had finally seen Bolivar. This fraud had done that much good, then.
“What does it matter whether he’s real or not?” I said. “Just a figurehead either way. You could have worse enemies than some nancy poet. Unless”—I tried to keep this bit casual—“unless he knows the whereabouts of the Barbarossa. The survey ship he vanished in. That survey data would be worth a fortune; I suppose he could bankroll a revolution with it.” More important, to me: I had no clear idea where the Barbarossa was myself. How could a “Pretender” know?
“According to the accounts of people who’ve seen him locally on Venezia, he professes not to know that. Says he suffered some head injury during the Barbarossa’s mysterious accident. That would argue against his authenticity. But on the other hand, he does seem to have the White Book.”
Stay in character, Evan. What would the con man ask? “The bald guy mentioned that last night. What is the White Book?”
“When I was a member of the Nexus University chapter, before Reform,” Van Bülow said, “we called it the Vice Book. Part of the initiation. We had to confess things, personal things, to the Master, Summerisle. He recorded them in the Vice Book.” For a moment he looked uneasy, then proceeded as if to something more important. “But now we know that the Nexus temple was the oldest in Kanalism. The White Book was passed down from the founders. And it also contains their secrets.”
“Secrets of an alien technology they learned during their years of exile in the early colonial period,” Otho explained. He’d picked up Von Bülow’s cue, I noticed. Von Bülow didn’t want to dwell on the “Vice” aspect of the book—the personal secrets of the great families, including his own, who had been Old Rite Kanalists for generations. Despite the century that had passed since the downfall of the Nexus chapter, some of that information might still have blackmail potential. But I went with the change of subject.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If he really controls some technology so advanced it poses a danger to the Column, why have you let him run around loose on Venezia?”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Otho said. “We can’t get at him on Venezia. And his technology appears to be the reason why.”
“Can’t get at him? Do you mean they hide him when you try to arrest him?”
“Well, formal arrest isn’t really an option. The Tribunal has been unable to obtain an extradition order from the Consultant—he’s notoriously lenient in these free-speech cases.”
“Pleases the mob,” Von Bülow said, his mouth full.
When Otho continued, it was with his face frozen in that peculiar bureaucratic way meant to suggest that he was not himself listening to the confidential material he was imparting. “A few early attempts at assassination—via individuals smuggled in on regular commercial vessels—failed. They also brought a protest from the Consultant, who guessed who was behind them and said he didn’t want us to create a martyr for the underground.
“Fortunately, military justice supersedes extradition law. His Eminence the Director managed to persuade some high officers in the navy that Larkspur must be detained for questioning about the whereabouts of the missing naval vessel Barbarossa. A small naval detachment was dispatched to Venezia to pick him up quickly and discreetly—”
“Before the Consultant could hear about it?” I asked.
Otho’s expression became even less scrutable. “Oh, chances are that the Consultant would be more favorably inclined toward a navy interrogation—he started in naval intelligence himself, and his people dominate it. But one never knows what games he’s playing; it was thought best to present him with a fait accompli.”
“But you’ve failed to accomplish it.”
“Yes,” he said, table-projecting
a stock hologram of a heavy cruiser. Briefings have to be audiovisual. “The naval detachment never arrived. It wasn’t destroyed, but it could not enter the system. We soon determined that this was true of all naval vessels. Also every Tribunal-owned craft with military capabilities. When they attempt to enter the system via p-space, they are ‘reflected’ back in some way that we still do not understand.”
“They’ve blocked off their star to sunplunging? How can that be?” I’d piloted sunplungers myself. You enter the curved space near a sun; press a force field against that curvature until your ship doesn’t “fit” space anymore; and slip through praeterspace to reappear where you can fit, in tight orbit around a target star across the galaxy.
“Actually, there have always been some suns that can’t be visited,” Otho said, “no matter how much survey data we obtain on them. Niflheim, for instance. We assume such stars are too unstable; the p-drive cannot match the space curvature and hydrogen density precisely enough to define the geodesic of travel. But that’s a natural phenomenon that locks out all ships. Venezia’s star, Goldman 320, is not locking out everyone—only enemies.”
We were now staring at a white ball in the air. Goldman 320, I supposed. Very informative.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.
“Commercial ships continue to come and go. Venezia has trade legations all over the human sphere. Within the last two years, every legation has received a strange device in the diplomatic bag. These devices, which the Venezians call Censers, allegedly affect every ship within the system in which they operate.”
“Affect them how?”
Otho looked uncomfortable. “According to the Venezian shipping agents we’ve abducted and interrogated—these Censers have telepathic powers.”
“They can read minds?”
“It’s worse than that. P-space navigation requires holistic real-time computing of a high order. The only computers that can manage it contain an organic lobe, actual brain tissue grown and shaped for this task. And those lobes are the minds that the Censers allegedly communicate with. The Censers plant something like a hypnotic suggestion in a drive computer. If the ship is on an innocent commercial mission, it will be able to pass the barrier to Goldman 320. Otherwise, it will fail to ‘think’ the password, and it will not be allowed through.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Gizmos that can influence minds across the radius of a solar system. A p-space barrier that operates before you hit it, across galactic distances…This is crap, pure and simple. If your enemy had that much power, why doesn’t he fry your brains in your skulls from Venezia?”
“What I said!” Von Bülow spat, his mouth half-full. “No such thing as telepathy.”
“I am only repeating the story the captured Venezians believed and told us,” Otho said. “They were probably fed an exaggerated tale of the Censers’ capabilities to build up their morale and undermine ours. Perhaps only brains as limited as the computer lobes can be influenced. Unfortunately, we know no way to read organic minds and see if these suggestions are actually stored there. But the Censers exist. We have captured several; we’ve taken them apart; and they are alien artifacts that do things we do not understand.
“Similarly, many aspects of praeterspace are still a mystery. You think it impossible for a barrier to repel a ship from a relativistic distance away, but at one time, we believed faster-than-light travel impossible, too. Our physicists still have problems reconciling the relativity paradoxes it opens up, but we can sunplunge anyway. And Larkspur can keep us out of Venezia’s system with a selective barrier—that’s a fact.”
“All right, let’s pass over that for a moment,” I snapped. My best chance of improving my situation lay in assertiveness; Von Bülow didn’t need another flunky, he needed a player. “Can’t you mount a military expedition against Venezia using commercial vessels?”
“Possible, but costly,” Otho said. “Commercial vessels, with their less finely tuned p-space drives, take longer to reorient upon emerging from a sun. The Venezians have recently moved some asteroid defense bases into tight sun-orbits, and check out all incomers while their instruments are still confused. It’s a cheap but useful defense. You could overwhelm it with sheer numbers, but you’d have to pay dearly.”
“And how often?” Von Bülow interjected.
“Indeed,” Otho said. “What if other systems acquired the barrier? How many little wars could the Column navy afford to fight, if it had to buy every single vessel from a commercial fleet and arm it from scratch?”
“So the Revolution is on,” I said. “Why haven’t I heard about it in the news?”
“We appear to be in some sort of test phase,” Otho said. “There has been no public opening of hostilities. Oh, the capital city of Venezia has announced that it is a Free City, no longer subject to Column regulations, but that news is merely trickling out—the Pan-Kanalists aren’t broadcasting it. For the moment. We are testing their barrier, and they are letting us do it. Maybe they hope to discover and correct any weaknesses now, before going to the next stage.”
“The next stage?”
More holograms: images of canals lined with shiny towers and crisscrossed with bridges and walkways. Round lagoons bordered with the same type of circular stone towers.
“The planet Venezia was known as Neuworld when first terraformed and life-bombed with Earth species, but it was later named after its capital city, a small artificial continent. The city Venezia is actually a titanic reef of mutant coral, a triumph of genetic engineering. Her limestone buildings were grown from living coral over a hundred-year period, then shaped, polished, and lined with wood from the agricultural continents. It’s a strange and beautiful place, modeled in spirit if not in detail on a famous old Earth city. The inhabitants lead a simple but rich life, largely devoted to pleasure. Everyone who visits Venezia falls in love with her.”
This description made Von Bülow stare at him.
“I’m sorry,” Otho said, “but that’s important. Venezia is the perfect place for the Pan-Kanalists to start. The main industry is a form of tourism, somewhat like here on Troudeserre. Commercial agents from all over the human sphere go to Venezia to see new products demonstrated, to meet dealers, to line up markets. The contacts, the network for distributing more Censers and barriers, is already in place. But Venezia is more than that. It is an idea of what a free republic could be.
“It’s a peaceful, easygoing society, without real poverty or ethnic hatreds. And it has a certain lifestyle—wood and metal furnishings, wool and cotton and leather clothing, candles and fireplaces for light and heat. The deliberately archaic, low-technology things we associate with luxury and the very rich are the universal fashion there. This…glamor of the past is what seduces every visitor. And what are the Pan-Kanalists selling, if not a sentimentalized, glamorized vision of the past, the Federal Alignment, a universal freedom that never was?”
“And Larkspur is perfect for them,” Von Bülow said.
Otho nodded. “A hero from the past. A legend brought to life. The Master of a millennium-old mystical tradition. If the real Larkspur hadn’t come back—”
“They would have had to invent him,” I said.
We all mulled that over for a while.
“Even if you can’t get ships in—” I began.
Otho shook his head impatiently. “Infiltrate with many individual agents, pull some sort of coup or paramilitary assault? It wouldn’t be easy—Venezia has no army, but Larkspur has surrounded himself with mercenaries. And we don’t know what we’re up against. Is Larkspur the real leader, or just a front man for a group based elsewhere? Is the barrier projected from some physical plant on Venezia, or is that elsewhere, too? Are barriers and Censers being distributed, and if so, who is going to get them first? If any planet could quietly secede from the Column without having to fire a shot—if it could continue to trade freely with all the other seceding planets…Well.” Otho had painted himself into the corn
er of having to express why this would be a bad thing.
“Anarchy,” Von Bülow said. “Chaos.”
“And you just know postal rates would go up,” I said. Two dark glares; tough audience.
“We need better intelligence from Venezia, and we need it fast,” Otho said. “The Tribunal has a number of informants there, and one top operative to run them—”
“Boy named Rezakhan,” Von Bülow said. “Very keen.”
“—but he can’t seem to crack the inner circle of society, the Palace of the Doge, Larkspur and his people. Now, Larkspur is putting on a new play—more publicity and propaganda for his cause, more bait for tourists—”
“And you’re an actor,” Von Bülow said. “A confidence man. And a student of Larkspur’s personality. His interests, his tastes. What could you do if you were on Venezia?”
What could I do, Lex, old classmate? I could find out the answer to all my questions. If I’m the real Larkspur, why is this fake so convincing? And if he’s the real one, where did I pick up so many of his memories? Real memories, I won’t doubt that again. And who is the true leader of this revolution? If the Evan on Venezia were really on the side of the angels, I could help his masquerade succeed; I could feed false information back to the Tribunal. And if he weren’t straight—who would be in a better position to keep him from betraying Kanalism?
“He must be expecting all sorts of spies,” I said, screwing up my face. Please, Lex, don’t throw me in that briar patch.
“No contact with our people,” Von Bülow said. “A free hand for you, no risk to them if you’re caught. Rezakhan will know who you are, but you won’t know him. He’ll make contact if you succeed in placing yourself. Or if you try to run away.”