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XIII

The telephone image of Irwin Milner said: "Greeting, Your Grace. I hope you are well."

Like death and hell you do, Sandra thought. She jerked a nod in reply, but could not bring herself to wish good health to the commander of planet-based Baburite occupation forces.

Did he stiffen the least bit? She watched his features more narrowly. He was a squat redhead whose gray uniform differed little from that on the lowliest human among his troops. Born on Earth, he retained an accent in his Anglic that she had been told was North American. He was naturalized on Germania, he said; it was a faraway neutral, hence his service with Babur did not make him guilty of any treason.

So he claims.

"What did you wish to discuss, General?" she demanded rather than inquired.

"A necessary change," he replied. "To date, we've been busy getting the protectorate functional, the military side of it, that is."

Warcraft in orbit, whose crews are more alien to man than a shark or a nightshade, ready to hurl their nuclear weapons downward. On the ground, oxygen-breathing mercenaries, human, Merseian, Gorzuni, Donarrian—adventurers, the scourings of space, though thus far they've stayed disciplined. Not that we see much of them. They have taken over our abandoned navy facilities, plus the Hotel Zeus and a few other buildings roundabout in Starfall. He says they will spread out in garrisons, in all the inhabited parts of Hermes. He has given me no satisfactory answer as to why, when it would seem that those circling spacecraft are ample to assure our meek behavior.

"That work will go on," Milner continued. "But we're now ready to start making a sound, uh, infrastructure. I'm sure your people understand they can't have our protection for nothing. They'll need to do their share, producing supplies in their factories, food and raw materials from their lands—you see what I mean, I'm sure, madam." He scowled. "I told you before, the attack those Hermetian ships made on ours, their defiance of orders . . . Yes, yes, not your fault, madam. But if your navy had that many subversives in it, what about civilians? We might start getting sabotage, espionage, aid and comfort to enemy agents. That has to be guarded against, doesn't it?"

He paused. "Go on," Sandra said. The words sounded remote in her ears. She was tensing to receive a blow.

The first several days of the occupation had gone with eerie smoothness. Were the people stunned, mechanically tracing out routines—or how much ordinary life went on, education, recreation, lovemaking, even laughter? She herself had been astonished to find she could still enjoy a meal, be concerned when her favorite horse developed a limp, take interest in some unusual triviality on the newscast. Of course, no doubt it helped that few dwellers on the planet had glimpsed an invader. And she liked to think that her speeches had had their effect—first, on a conference hookup, to the world legislature, the presidents of the domains; afterward on television to everybody. "We have no other choice but our useless deaths and our children's . . . . We yield under protest, praying for eventual justice . . . . Our forebears entered wildernesses whose very life forms were mostly unknown to them, and many suffered or died, but in the end they overcame. In this hour we must be worthy of them . . . . Prudence . . . . Patience . . . . Endure . . . ."

"We'll have to organize for the long pull," Milner told her. "Now I'm a plain soldier. I don't know the ins and outs of your society here. But I do know there isn't another like it anywhere that humans have settled. So we're bringing in a High Commissioner. He and his staff will work closely with you, to ease the, uh, transition and make what reforms are required. He's Hermetian born, you see, madam, Benoni Strang by name."

Strang? Not one of the Thousand Families. Possibly a Follower, but I doubt it; I'm sure I'd remember. Then he must be—

"He arrived today and would like to meet with you informally as soon as possible," Milner was saying. "You know, get acquainted, let you see that it's his world too and he has its best interests at heart. When would be a convenient time, madam?"

They are very polite to the prisoners, not?

* * *

Waiting, she wandered alone save for one of her hounds, across the top of Pilgrim Hill to the Old Keep. Its stone massiveness housed nothing these days but records and a museum; nobody else was in the formal gardens surrounding it. The stillness made her footsteps seem loud on the graveled paths.

Flowerbeds and low hedges formed an intricate design anchored to occasional trees. Most blooms were gone; colors other than green were only in crimson daleflower and small whitefoot, in shrubs where skyberries ripened vivid blue, in the first yellow on leaves of birch and purple on leaves of fallaron. Maia shone muted through a hazy sky. The air was mild, with a slight tang. Trekking wings passed overhead. Autumn is gentle around Starfall, despite its latitude; Hermes tilts less on its axis than Earth. Under the hill gleamed the river, the city stretched eastward in roofs and towers to the bay, westward it soon gave place to plowland and pasture and Cloudhelm's ghostly peak. She saw little traffic and heard none. The world might have been keeping a Sabbath.

But nothing ever really stopped work, least of all the forces of disruption. Soon she must go back inside and haggle for the liberties of her people. She remembered that it had been just this season and just this weather when she and Pete rode into the trouble at Whistle Creek. Pete—Her mind flew back across twenty-two Hermetian years.

 

This was awhile after they met. That hour was still in the future when he would ask for marriage, or she would. (They were never quite sure which.) They were, though, seeing a good deal of each other. He had suggested she join him for some outdoor sport. She left Eric in her mother's care and flitted northeast from Windy Rim, across the Apollo Valley, to Brightwater in the foothills of the Thunderhead Mountains.

It did not belong to him. The Asmundsens were Followers of the Runebergs, whose domain had property in these parts as well as on the coastal plain and elsewhere. However, the Asmundsens had been tenants of the estate called Brightwater for generations, managers of the copper mining and refining which were the area's sole industry. Pete was content to let his older brother handle that, while he went into business for himself, exploring the planets of the Maian System and developing their resources. (Naturally the domain took a share of the profits; but then, it had put up the original investment, after he persuaded the president and advisors that his idea was sound.)

The family made Sandra welcome, at first with the formalities due a person of her rank, but soon warmly and merrily. Having seen different cultures in her travels, she noticed what she would earlier have taken for granted, the absolute lack of subservience. If they had by birthright a single vote each in domain affairs while every adult Runeberg had ten, what of it? Their rights were equally inviolable; they enjoyed hereditary privileges, such as this use of a lucrative region; they were spared tedious detail work vis-a-vis neighbor domains; if any of them came to grief, it was the duty of the presidential bloodline to mobilize what resources were necessary to help. Indeed, they stood to the Runebergs much as the Runebergs stood to whatever head of state the legislature elected from the Tamarins. Her awareness growing keener as time passed, Sandra often wondered whether she envied more the Kindred or the Followers.

On the day that she was to recall long afterward, she and Pete took horse for a ride to Whistle Creek, the industrial community. There they would visit the plant and have a late lunch before turning back. The route was lovely, a trail along ridges and down into vales whose forests were beginning to add gold, bronze, turquoise, amethyst, silver to their green, along hasty brooks, across meadows which had heaven for a roof. Mostly they rode in a silence that was more than companionable. But for an hour Pete unburdened himself to her of certain cares. Grand Duke Robert, old and failing, had begun by seeking his opinion on interplanetary development questions, then lately was progressing to a variety of matters. Pete did not want to become a gray eminence. Sandra did her awkward best to assure him that he was simply a valuable counselor. Inwardly she thought that if somehow she should be chosen successor, he never would escape the role.

They entered the town in a step, for it had no agricultural hinterland or suburbs. A single paved road to the mine served it; otherwise traffic went by air. Its core was the sleek, largely automated refinery, carefully designed to spare the environment. Round about clustered the shops, homes, and public buildings of a few thousand inhabitants. The streets smelled of woods.

Today they were strangely empty. "What's going on?" Pete asked, and sent his horse clopping ahead. Presently a human noise became audible, the fitful shouting of a crowd. Heading in that direction, the riders rounded a corner and found a small park. Three or four hundred folk stood in it. Mostly they were clad in coveralls without insignia, showing them to be Travers who worked here. Shoulder patches identified Runeberg Followers; these kept apart from the rest and looked unhappy. Followers, too, were the police at the corners of the park. Evidently a disturbance was considered possible.

This was near the end of the midday break. Obviously the meeting would continue into working hours, and the management had decided not to make an issue of that. The arrangers had timed themselves shrewdly; Pete's brother was absent, overseeing the start of a new mine.

A woman stood on the bed of a truck which had set down on the yerb and spoke into an amplifier mike. From newscasts seen at Windy Rim, Sandra recognized her wiry figure, intense dark features, military-style slacksuit—Christa Broderick, Traver born but heiress of a fortune made by her sea-ranching parents. Her words stormed forth.

"—overdue to end the reign of the Thousand Families and their lackeys. What are the domains but closed corporations, whose shares are required by self-serving law to pass from generation to generation? What were those corporations, ever, but the outfits which happened to come here first, and so seized the choicest lands of an entire planet? What was the Declaration of Independence but an attempt to escape the democratization that was stirring in the Commonwealth, an attempt to perpetuate an aristocracy which even stole a medieval title for its new head of state?

"And what are you, the Travers, but workers and businesspeople, excluded from inherited privilege, denied any vote, who nevertheless provide the energy that drives what progress Hermes is making? What are you but the fraction of its population which is not caught in a web of custom and superstition, the part whose vitality would haul this stagnant world into the modern age and the forefront of tomorrow, were you not shackled hand and foot by the ancestor worshipers? What are you but a three-fifths majority?

"Oh, the feudalists are clever, I admit. They hire you, they buy from you and sell to you, they leave your private lives alone, occasionally they adopt one of you into their own ranks, above all they exempt you from taxation. I have heard many a Traver say that he or she is quite happy with things as they are. But ask yourselves: Is this not a subtle slavery in itself? Are you not being denied the right to tax yourselves for public purposes chosen by your democratically elected representatives? Are you content with the do-nothing government of a decadent aristocracy, or would you rather bequeath to your children a state—yes, I will say a commonwealth—to which everything is possible? Answer me!"

A part of the listeners cheered, a part booed, most stood in troubled muteness. Never before had the Liberation Front sent a speaker—its leader, at that—to Whistle Creek. Of course, Sandra realized, those here would have seen rallies and heard speeches made elsewhere, on their telescreens; some would have read the literature; a few might have dropped in on movement headquarters in Starfall. But she felt with shocking suddenness that there was nothing as powerful as a meeting of flesh with eye, voice with ear, body packed close to body. Then the ancient ape awoke. Briefly, sardonically went through her the thought that perhaps this was why Kindred and Followers went in for so much pageantry.

Turning her head, Broderick saw her and Pete in their saddles. They had each gotten a certain amount of publicity; she knew them by sight. At once she pounced. Yet her sarcasm was delicate. "Well, greeting! All of you, look who've come. Peter Asmundsen, brother of your general manager; Sandra Tamarin, possibly your next Grand Duchess. Sir, madam"—and that second title reminded those who knew of Eric that he might in his turn bring foreign blood to the throne—"I hope I've not given offense in proposing some reforms."

"No, no," Pete called. "Sail right ahead."

"Perhaps you would like to reply?"

"'Tis your speech."

Chuckles came from the Followers and half the Travers. Broderick plainly knew the charm was broken. Men and women were beginning to glance at their watches; most of them were skilled technicians who could not be absent too long without problems developing in their departments. She would have to start fresh to rearouse interest.

"I'm glad you're here," she said. "Very few of your class can be bothered to debate the issues the Liberation Front is raising. Thank you for showing public spirit . . . . Do you wish to respond?"

Expectant gazes turned toward the pair. Dismayed, Sandra felt her tongue lock tight. The sky pressed down on her. Then Pete brought his horse forward a pace, sat there with light shining on his blond mane and in his blue eyes, and said in a deep drawl that carried from end to end of the park:

"Well, thank you, but we're only visiting. Anybody interested in a thorough discussion of the pros and cons of this subject should fax the Quadro twelfth issue of the Starfall Weekly Meteor. After that, you can find any number of books, recorded talks, and what have you.

"I might say this, for whatever 'tis worth. I don't think democracy, or aristocracy, or any other political arrangement should be an end in itself. Such things are simply means to an end, not? All right, then ask yourselves if what we've got isn't at least serving the end of keeping Hermes a pleasant place to live.

"If you're feeling restless—well, belike most of you know I'm in charge of an effort to exploit the other planets, instead of overexploiting this one we inhabit. 'Tis tough and often dangerous work, but if you live, you've a goodly chance of getting rich, and are bound to have the satisfaction of knowing you did what not many persons could have done. We're chronically short of labor. I'll be delighted if you mail me your applications." He paused. "My brother will be less delighted.

"Carry on," he said into their laughter, and led Sandra away.

Later, when having skipped lunch they were riding back through the woods, he apologized: "I'm sorry. We'll have to try another time. I'd no idea this would happen."

"I'm glad it did," she answered. "It was interesting. No, more than that."

I learned a little something, Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen remembered. Including, maybe then, maybe a bit later, that I loved you, Pete.

During the years between, the Liberation Front had gained strength. Much of her reign had gone into a search for compromises. Principally, Travers now had a vote in choosing municipal officers. Broderick and her kind were still maintaining that this was a mere sop; and they seemed to make ever more converts. What will Benoni Strang be like?

 

Received in her confidential conference room, he proved a surprise. Medium-sized, slim, the rather handsome features of his rectangular face ornamented by a neat mustache and a suntan, his slightly grizzled brown hair sleeked back, he spoke as smoothly as he moved. His clothes were of rich material, soft in hue but cut in the latest Terrestrial mode. He bowed to her as courtesy required a Traver do. (A member of the Kindred would have shaken hands with the Duchess, a Follower would have saluted.) "Good greeting, Your Grace. I thank you for the honor you do me." The words were traditional, though Hermetian intonation had worn away. He must have spent long years separated from the Strangs whom a city directory listed as being of his class.

Her throat tightened as if to keep her heart from jumping out. Traitor, traitor. Barely could she make herself say, "Be seated" and take her own carven armchair.

He obeyed. "It's a wonderful feeling to be back, madam. I'd well-nigh forgotten how beautiful this area is."

"Where else were you?" I must find out everything about him I can. For this purpose, I may have to smile at him.

"Many places, madam. A checkered career. I'll be glad to reminisce if you wish. However, I suspect today you'd rather get straight to the point."

"Yes. Why are you working for the Baburites?"

"I'm not really, madam. I hope to do my best for Hermes. It was not always kind to me, but it is the world of my fathers."

"Invaded!"

Strang frowned, as if wounded. "I sympathize with your distress, madam. But Babur was forestalling the Commonwealth. Intelligence discovered that the general staff of the enemy had a plan, the preliminaries already in train, to take over this system."

So you say, Sandra thought. Yet she could not help wondering.

"You can hardly blame Babur for acting," Strang continued. "And from your viewpoint, isn't it the lesser of two evils? It doesn't want to rule you; couldn't possibly; the idea is ridiculous. At most, some kind of postwar association for mutual defense and trade may prove desirable. But the Commonwealth has always deplored the fact that several colonies broke loose from it."

True enough. Our forebears did because they were evolving societies, interests, philosophies in their new homes, too strange to Earth, Luna, or Venus to fit in well with laws and usages developed for those worlds. The Commonwealth didn't resist independence by force of arms. But many of its citizens believed that it ought to.

"Madame," Strang said earnestly, "I've been a xenologist, specializing in subjovian planets and Babur in particular. I know that race and its different cultures better than any other human. No boast, a plain statement of fact. In addition, as I said, I'm a Hermetian, yes, a Hermetian patriot. God knows I'm not perfect. But I do think I'm the realistic choice for High Commissioner. That's why I volunteered my services."

"Not on any quick impulse," Sandra scoffed. "This whole operation must have been planned far ahead."

"True, madam. In a way, all my life. Since I was a boy here in Starfall, I was conscious of things deeply wrong, and thinking how the wrong might be set right."

Fear brushed Sandra and made her snap, "I've lost more time out of my own life than I like to reckon up, listening to the self-pity of the Liberation Front. What's your tale?"

Cold anger flared back at her: "If you haven't understood yet, probably you never will. Have you no imagination? Think of yourself as a child, crowded into a public school while Kindred children were getting individual tutoring from the finest teachers on the planet. Think of having dreams of accomplishment, of becoming somebody whose name will survive, and then finding that all the land worth having, all the resources, all the key businesses belong to the domains—to the Kindred and their Followers—who stifle every chance for a change because it might upset their privileges and make them use their brains. Think of a love affair that should have led to marriage, was going to, till her parents stepped in because a Traver son-in-law would hurt their social standing, would keep them from using her to make a fat alliance—"

Strang broke off. Silence filled the room for half a minute. Thereafter he spoke calmly.

"Madame, quite aside from justice, Hermes must be reorganized so it can aid in its own defense. This archaic half-feudal society is flat-out too cumbersome, too unproductive . . . most important, too alienating. The naval mutiny and flight to Earth showed that not even your government is safe from the insolence and insubordination of an officer corps drawn from the aristocrats. You have to win the loyalty of the Traver majority for practical as well as for moral reasons. But why should it care what becomes of Kindred and Followers? What stake has it in the planet as a whole? Production can no longer be divided among domains. It has to be integrated on a global scale. So do distribution, courts, police, education, welfare, everything. For this, the domains have to be dissolved. In their place, we need the entire populace.

"And after the war—it'll be an altogether new universe. The Polesotechnic League won't be dominant anymore. The Commonwealth won't be the most powerful state. Leisured negotiation won't be the single way of settling disputes between nations and races. Hermes will have to adapt or go under. I want the adaptation to start immediately.

"We're going to have a revolution here, madam. I hope you and your upper classes will willingly assist it. But be that as it may, the revolution is going to happen."

 

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