The Rebel Worlds

III

The third stop Asieneuve made on her way to Llynathawr was her final one. Flandry recognized the need for haste. In straight-line, flat-out hyperdrive his vessel would have taken slightly worse than two weeks to make destination. Perhaps he should have relied on records and interviews after he arrived. On the other hand, he might not be given the chance, or Snelund might have found ways to keep the truth off his headquarters planet. The latter looked feasible, therefore plausible. And Flandry’s order granted him latitude. They instructed him to report to Llynathawr and place himself under the new high command of Sector Alpha Crucis “with maximum expedition and to the fullest extent consistent with your fact-finding assignment.” A sealed letter from Kheraskov authorized him to detach his ship and operate independently; but that must not be produced except in direst need, and he’d have to answer for his actions.

He compromised by making spot checks in three randomly chosen systems within Snelund’s bailiwick and not too far off his course. It added an extra ten days. Two globes were human-colonized. The habitable planet of the third sun was Shalmu.

So it was called in one of the languages spoken by its most technologically advanced civilization. Those communities had been in a bronze age when men discovered them. Influenced by sporadic contacts with traders, they went on to iron and, by now, a primitive combustion-powered technology which was spreading their hegemony across the world. The process was slower than it had been on Terra; Shalmuans were less ferocious, less able to treat their fellow beings like vermin or machinery, than humankind is.

They were happy to come under the Empire. It meant protection from barbarian starfarers, who had already caused them grief. They did not see the Naval base they got. It was elsewhere in the system. Why risk a living planet, if matters came to a local fight, when a barren one served equally well? But there was a small marine garrison on Shalmu, and spacemen visited it on leave, and this attracted a scattering of Imperial civilians, who traded with the autochthons as readily as with service personnel. Shalmuans found employment among these foreigners. A few got to go outsystem. A smaller but growing number were recommended for scholarships by Terran friends, and returned with modern educations. The dream grew of entering civilization as a full-fledged member.

In return, Shalmu paid modest taxes in kind: metals, fuels, foodstuffs, saleable works of art and similar luxuries, depending on what a particular area could furnish. It accepted an Imperial resident, whose word was the ultimate law but who in practice let native cultures fairly well alone. His marines did suppress wars and banditry as far as practicable, but this was considered good by most. The young Imperials, human or nonhuman, often conducted themselves arrogantly, but whatever serious harm they might inflict on an innocent Shalmuan resulted, as a rule, in punishment.

In short, the planet was typical of the majority that had fallen under Terran sway. Backward, they had more to gain than lose; they saw mainly the bright side of the Imperial coin, which was not too badly tarnished. Or so the case had been till a couple of years ago. Flandry stood on a hill. Behind him were five men, bodyguards from his crew. Beside him was Ch’kessa, Prime in Council of the Clan Towns of Att. Ch’kessa’s home community sprawled down the slope, a collection of neat, whitewashed, drum-shaped houses where several thousand individuals lived. Though peaked, each sod roof was a flower garden, riotous with color. The ways between houses were “paved” with a tough mossy growth, except where fruit trees grew from which anyone might help himself when they bore and no one took excessively. Pastures and cultivated fields occupied the valley beneath. On its other side, the hills were wooded. Apart from somewhat weaker gravity, Shalmu was terrestroid. Every detail might be strange, but the overall effect spoke to ancient human instincts. Broad plains, tall mountains, spindrift across unrestful seas; rustling sun-flecked shadows in a forest, unexpected sweetness of tiny white blossoms between old roots; the pride of a great horned beast, the lonesome cries descending from migratory wings; and the people. Ch’kessa’s features were not so different from Flandry’s. Hairless bright-green skin, prehensile tail, 140-centimeter height, details of face, foot, hand, interior anatomy, exoticism of his embroidered wraparound and plumed spirit wand and other accouterments — did they matter?

The wind shifted. On planets like this, the air had always seemed purer than anywhere on Terra, be it in the middle of a nobleman’s enormous private park. Away from machines, you drew more life into your lungs. But Flandry gagged. One of his men must suddenly vomit.

“That is why we obeyed the new resident,” Ch’kessa said. He spoke fluent Anglic.

Down the hill, lining a valleyward road, ran a hundred wooden crosses. The bodies lashed to them had not finished rotting. Carrion birds and insects still made black clouds around them, under a wantonly brilliant summer sky.

“Do you see?” Ch’kessa asked anxiously. “We did refuse at first. Not the heavy taxes the new resident laid on us. I am told he did that throughout the world. He said it was to pay for meeting a terrible danger. He did not say what the danger was. However, we paid, especially after we heard how bombs were dropped or soldiers came with torches where folk protested. I do not think the old resident would have done that. Nor do I think the Emperor, may his name echo in eternity, would let those things happen if he knew,”

Actually, Flandry did not answer, Josip wouldn’t give a damn. Or maybe he would. Maybe he’d ask to see films of the action, and watch them and giggle. The wind changed again, and he blessed it for taking away part of the charnel odor.

“We paid,” Ch’kessa said. “That was not easy, but we remember the barbarians too well. Then this season a fresh demand was put before us. We, who had powder rifles, were to supply males. They would be flown to lands like Yanduvar, where folk lack firearms. There they would catch natives for the slave market. I do not understand, though I have often asked. Why does the Empire, with many machines, need slaves?”

Personal service. Flandry did not answer. For instance, the sort women supply. We use enslavement as one kind of criminal penalty. But it isn’t too significant. There isn’t that big a percentage of slaves in the Empire. The barbarians, though, would pay well for skilled hands. And transactions with them do not get into any Imperial records for some official computer to come upon at a later date.

“Continue,” he said aloud.

“The Council of the Clan Towns of Att debated long,” Ch’kessa said. “We were afraid. Still, the thing was not right for us to do. At length we decided to make excuses, to delay as much as might be, while messengers sped overland to Iscoyn. There the Imperial marine base is, as my lord well knows. The messengers would appeal to the commandant, that he intercede for us with the resident.”

Flandry caught a mutter behind him: “Nova flash! Is he saying the marines hadn’t been enforcing the decrees?”

“Yeh, sure,” growled an adjacent throat. “Forget your barroom brawls with ’em. They wouldn’t commit vileness like this. Mercenaries did it. Now dog your hatch before the Old Man hears you.”

Me? Flandry thought in stupid astonishment. Me, the Old Man?

“I suppose our messengers were caught and their story twisted from them,” Ch’kessa sighed. “At least, they never returned. A legate came and told us we must obey. We refused. Troops came. They herded us together. A hundred were chosen by lot and put on the crosses. The rest of us had to watch till all were dead. It took three days and nights. One of my daughters was among them.” He pointed. His arm was not steady. “Perhaps my lord can see her. That quite small body, eleventh on our left. It is black and swollen, and much of it has fallen off, but she used to come stumping and laughing to meet me when I returned from work. She cried for me to help her. The cries were many, yet I heard hers. Whenever I moved toward her, a shock beam stopped me. I had not thought there could be happiness in seeing her die. We were instructed to leave the bodies in place, on pain of bombing. An aircraft flies over from time to time to make sure.”

He sat down in the whispering silvery pseudograss, face on knees and tail across neck. His fingers pluck at the dirt. “After that,” he said, “we went slaving.”

Flandry stood silent for a space. He had been furious at the carnage being inflicted by the more advanced Shalmuans on the weaker ones. Swooping down on a caravan of chained prisoners, he had arrested its leader and demanded an explanation. Ch’kessa had suggested they flit to his homeland.

“Where are your villagers?” Flandry asked at length, for the houses stood empty, smokeless, silent.

“They cannot live here with those dead,” Ch’kessa replied. “They camp out, coming back only to maintain. And doubtless they fled when they saw your boat, my lord, not knowing what you would do.” He looked up. “You have seen. Are we deeply to blame? Will you return me to my gang? A sum is promised each of us for each slave we bring in. It is helpful in meeting the tax. I will not get mine if I am absent when the caravan reaches the airfield.”

“Yes.” Flandry turned. His cloak swirled behind him. “Let’s go.”

Another low voice at his back: “I never swallowed any brotherhood-of-beings crap, you know that, Sam’l, but when our own xenos are scared by a vessel of ours — !”

“Silence,” Flandry ordered.

The gig lifted with a yell and trailed a thunderbolt across half a continent and an ocean. Nobody spoke. When she tilted her nose toward jungle, Ch’kessa ventured to say, “Perhaps you will intercede for us, my lord.”

“I’ll do my best,” Flandry said.

“When the Emperor hears, let him not be angry with us of the Clan Towns. We went unwillingly. We sicken with fevers and die from the poisoned arrows of the Yanduvar folk.”

And wreck what was a rather promising culture, Flandry thought.

“If punishment must be for what we have done, let it fall on me alone,” Ch’kessa begged. “That does not matter greatly after I watched my little one die.”

“Be patient,” Flandry said. “The Emperor has many peoples who need his attention. Your turn will come.”

Inertial navigation had pinpointed the caravan, and a mere couple of hours had passed since. Flandry’s pilot soon found it, grudging down a swale where ambush was less likely than among trees. He landed the gig a kilometer off and opened the airlock.

“Farewell, my lord.” The Shalmuan knelt, coiled his tail around Flandry’s ankles, crawled out and was gone. His slim green form bounded toward his kin.

“Return to the ship,” Flandry instructed.

“Doesn’t the captain wish to pay a courtesy call on the resident?” asked the pilot sarcastically. He was not long out of the Academy. His hue remained sick.

“Get aloft, Citizen Willie,” Flandry said. “You know we’re on an information-gathering mission and in a hurry. We didn’t notify anyone except Navy that we’d been on Starport or New Indra, did we?”

The ensign sent hands dancing across the board. The gig stood on its tail with a violence that would have thrown everybody into the stern were it not for acceleration compensators. “Excuse me, sir,” he said between his teeth. “A question, if the captain pleases. Haven’t we witnessed outright illegality? I mean, those other two planets were having a bad time, but nothing like this. Because the Shalmuans have no way to get a complaint off their world, I suppose. Isn’t our duty, sir, to report what we’ve seen?”

Sweat glistened on his forehead and stained his tunic beneath the arms. Flandry caught an acrid whiff of it. Glancing about, he saw the other four men leaning close, straining to hear through the throb of power and whistle of cloven atmosphere. Should I answer? he asked himself, a touch frantically. And if so, what can I tell him that won’t be bad for discipline? How should I know? I’m too young to be the Old Man!

He gained time with a cigaret. Stars trod forth in view-screens as the gig entered space. Willig exchanged a signal with the ship, set the controls for homing on her, and swiveled around to join in staring at his captain.

Flandry sucked in smoke, trickled it out, and said cautiously: “You have been told often enough, we are first on a fact-finding mission, second at the disposal of Alpha Crucis Command if we can help without prejudice to the primary assignment. Whatever we learn will be duly reported. If any man wishes to file additional material or comment, that’s his privilege. However, you should be warned that it isn’t likely to go far. And this is not because inconvenient facts will be swept under the carpet,” though I daresay that does happen on occasion. “It’s due to the overwhelming volume of data.”

He gestured. “A hundred thousand planets, gentlemen, more or less,” he said. “Each with its millions or billions of inhabitants, its complexities and mysteries, its geographies and civilizations, their pasts and presents and conflicting aims for the future, therefore each with its own complicated, ever-changing, unique set of relationships to the Imperium. We can’t control that, can we? We can’t even hope to comprehend it. At most, we can try to maintain the Pax. At most, gentlemen.

“What’s right in one place may be wrong in another. One species may be combative and anarchic by nature, another peaceful and antlike, a third peaceful and anarchic, a fourth a bunch of aggressive totalitarian hives. I know a planet where murder and cannibalism are necessary to race survival: high radiation background, you see, making for high mutation rate coupled with chronic food shortage. The unfit must be eaten. I know of intelligent hermaphrodites, and sophonts with more than two sexes, and a few that regularly change sex. They all tend to look on our reproductive pattern as obscene. I could go on for hours. Not to mention the variations imposed by culture. Just think about Terran history.

“And then the sheer number of individuals and interests; the sheer distance; the time needed to get a message across our territory — No, we can’t direct everything. We haven’t the manpower. And if we did, it’d remain physically impossible to coordinate that many data.

“We’ve got to give our proconsuls wide discretion. We’ve got to let them recruit auxiliaries, and hope those auxiliaries will know the local scene better than Imperial regulars. Above all, gentlemen, for survival if nothing else, we’ve got to preserve solidarity.”

He waved a hand at the forward viewscreen. Alpha Crucis blazed lurid among the constellations; but beyond it — “If we don’t stick together, we Terrans and our non-human allies,” he said, “I assure you, either the Merseians or the wild races will be delighted to stick us separately.”

He got no reply: not that he expected one. Was that a sufficiently stuffy speech? he wondered. And was it sufficiently truthful? I don’t know about that last. Nor do I know if I have any right to inquire.

His ship swam into sight. The tiny spindle, well-nigh lost beside the vast glowing bulk of the planet and circled, grew to a steel barracuda, guns rakish across the star clouds. She was no more than an escort destroyer, she had speed but was lightly armed, her crew numbered a bare fifty. Nevertheless, she was Flandry’s first official command and his blood ran a little faster each time he saw her — even now, even now.

The gig made a ragged approach. Willig probably didn’t feel well yet. Flandry refrained from commenting. The last part of the curve, under computer choreography, was better. When the boat housing had closed and repressurized, he dismissed his guards and went alone to the bridge.

Halls, companionways, and shafts were narrow. They were painted gray and white. With the interior grav generators set for full Terran weight, thin deckplates resounded under boots, thin bulkheads cast the noise back and forth, voices rang, machinery droned and thumped. The air that gusted from ventilator grilles came fresh out of the renewers, but somehow it collected a faint smell of oil on the way. The officers’ cabins were cubbyholes, the forecastle could be packed tighter only if the Pauli exclusion principle were repealed, the recreation facilities were valuable chiefly as a subject for jokes, and the less said about the galley the wiser. But she was Flandry’s first command.

He had spent many hours en route reading her official history and playing back tapes of former logbooks. She was a few years older than him. Her name derived from a land mass on Ardèche, which was apparently a human-settled planet though not one he had ever chanced upon mention of. (He knew the designation Asieneuve in different versions on at least four worlds; and he speculated on how many other Continent-class vessels bore it. A name was a mere flourish when computers must deal with millions of craft by their numbers.) She had gone on occasional troopship convoy when trouble broke loose on a surface somewhere. Once she had been engaged in a border incident; her captain claimed a probable hit but lacked adequate proof. Otherwise her existence had been routine patrols … which were essential, were they not?

You didn’t salute under these conditions. Men squeezed themselves aside to make way for Flandry. He entered the bridge. His executive officer had it.

Rovian of Ferra was slightly more than human size. His fur was velvet at midnight. His ponderous tail, the claws on his feet and fingers, the saber teeth in his jaws, could deal murderous blows; he was also an expert marksman. The lower pair of his four arms could assist his legs at need. Then his silent undulant gait turned into lightning. He habitually went nude except for guns and insignia. His nature and nurture were such that he would never become a captain and did not want to be. But he was capable and well liked, and Terran citizenship had been conferred on him.

“S-s-so?” he greeted. His fangs handicapped him a little in speaking Anglic.

Alone, he and Flandry didn’t bother to be formal. Mankind’s rituals amused him. “Bad,” the master said, and explained.

“Why bad?” Rovian asked. “Unless it provokes revolt.”

“Never mind the morals of it. You wouldn’t understand. Consider the implications, however.”

Flandry inhaled a cigaret to lighting. His gaze sought Shalmu’s disc, where it floated unutterably peaceful in its day and night. “Why should Snelund do this?” he said. “It’s considerable trouble, and not without hazard. Ordinary corruption would earn him more than he could live to spend on himself. He must have a larger purpose, one that requires moonsful of money. What is it?”

Rovian erected the chemosensor antennae that flanked the bony ridge on his skull. His muzzle twitched, his eyes glowed yellow. “To finance an insurrection? He may hope to become an independent overlord.”

“M-m-m … no … doesn’t make sense, and I gather he’s not stupid. The Empire can’t conceivably tolerate breakaways. He’d have to be crushed. If necessary, Josip would be deposed to clear the track for that operation. No, something else—” Flandry brought his attention back. “Get patrol clearance for us to go in half an hour. Next rendezvous, Llynathawr.”

Hyperdrive vibrations are instantaneous, though the philosophers of science have never agreed on the meaning of that adjective. Unfortunately, they damp out fast. No matter how powerful, a signal cannot be received beyond a distance of about one light-year. Thus spaceships traveling at quasivelocity are not detectable by their “wakes” at any farther remove than that. Neither are the modulations that carry messages quicker than light; and the uncertainty principle makes it impossible to relay them with any hope that they will not soon degenerate into gibberish.

Accordingly Asieneuve was within two hours of her goal before she got the news. Fleet Admiral Hugh McCormac had escaped to the Virgilian System. There he had raised the standard of rebellion and proclaimed himself Emperor. An unspecified number of planets had declared for him. So had an unspecified proportion of the ships and men he formerly commanded. Armed clashes had taken place and full civil war looked inevitable.