The Chosen

EPILOGUE

John Hosten smiled at his wife from the hospital bed. "Yes, Pia, I agree. A holiday. . when things are settled a bit."

She put her hands on her hips. "They will never be settled. Already they are talking of drafting you as a candidate for premier in the next election."

John sat upright and winced at the pain in his leg. The doctors had saved it-and him-but it had been touch and go for a while. "Not a chance, by God!"

Pia sighed and smiled. "They will tell you it is for the public good-"

correct, Center said.

Shut up, John hissed mentally.

"— and you will rise to it like a trout to a fly."

She gathered her cloak. "Now they tell me you must rest. But you will see our son married-"

Maurice Hosten put his free arm around his fiancee; Alexandra Farr was still in Auxiliary uniform, and he in Air Corps sky-blue. The left arm was in a sling, but the cast was due to come off any day now. With luck, he might be able to fly an aircraft again, although not a fighter.

"— and you will rest for one year. If I have to hit you over the head with a hammer to make you do it."

She swept out, her son in her wake. Jeffrey sat on the edge of John's bed, and offered him a cigarillo. John leaned forward carefully.

"I feel like someone who's been climbing up a staircase all my life," he said, blowing smoke towards the open window. A spray of blossoming crab apple waved across it in the mild spring breeze; the warm season came early to Dubuk. "Suddenly I'm at the top, and there's a whole new staircase."

eliminating the chosen menace was the first step towards restoring visager to the second federation, Center said. every journey begins with a first step, yet that is only the beginning.

Images spun through his mind: universities, trade treaties. .

And Jeff will have a fair bit of fighting to do still, Raj said, with cheerful resignation. I fought all my major wars on Bellevue before I was thirty, and damned if the mopping up didn't take the rest of my days.

Jeffrey sighed and trickled smoke from his nostrils. "Some of what we're doing is harder to stomach than the war," he said. "Santander troops have had to fire on Imperials to keep them from slaughtering Chosen trying to surrender to us. They're finally doing that in some numbers, and your friend Arturo doesn't like it at all. He thinks their national destiny is fertilizer."

John shrugged, remembering the cellars in Ciano. "He's got his reasons. Still, he won't push it. We'll probably have to stop calling it the Empire, by the way. A republic? We'll see."

"The Premier is talking about a protectorate," Jeffrey said.

John laughed, and winced at the jar to his leg. "When iron floats. I know the Santander electorate, and they want complete demobilization, yesterday if possible."

"Damned right. We had a mutiny in Salini, just last week-troops demanding we disband them."

John scowled. "Which means we won't be able to do anything about Libert. Damn, but I hate to see that slimy bastard getting away with it. He's not as bad as the Chosen, but that's not saying much."

But he's popular in the Union now, Raj said to both of them. He kept them out of war, and grabbed off a big chunk of territory from their traditional enemies. Are you ready to fight a major war and lose another hundred thousand dead to topple him?

"If Gerard were alive, yes," Jeffrey said. "As it is-" He sighed. "But are we storing up trouble for the future? An awful lot of Chosen took Libert's amnesty, as many as surrendered to us. It didn't make it easier to get the Settlement Act through the Congress."

Which allowed the Chosen refugees resident status and citizenship for their children. Not quite as generous as Libert's offer, although the Republic was a more advanced country. Most of the Chosen were highly educated, highly intelligent people. They'd be an asset. . provided they assimilated.

they will, Center said. the overwhelming majority. the events of the past generation were sufficient to destroy even the most intensive cultural conditioning.

And the real irreconcilables died rather than surrender, Raj said.

correct. the chosen elements in the union will also be assimilated to their surroundings, albeit more slowly. they will, however, serve as a nucleus of resistance to santander hegemony. . which is a positive factor, in this context. remember, we must think in terms of planetary welfare, not national. this world has been severely damaged; more than one-tenth of the planetary population has died, and there will be further extensive losses from famine and disease in the immediate aftermath of the wars. the former imperial territories are in chaos and will, with a high degree of probability, splinter politically. there will be wars of succession there and in the unoccupied areas of the sierra. the former land is likely to decivilize entirely, as proteges and slave laborers fight over the spoils-and the land was dependent on imported food supplies and a highly advanced agriculture, neither of which still exist. some degree of long-term cultural damage and demoralization will also result from the brutalizing effects of the conflict. we must ensure a long period of relative stability to ensure a regenerative process.

"Yeah, it was a damned hard war," Jeffrey agreed, flicking the butt of his cigarillo out the window. "You're right; the complete hardasses among the Chosen are pushing up the daisies. We can deal with the others."

John nodded. "Except, perhaps, Gerta's?"

the western isles lack the area and resource base to support a major military power, Center said, then slowly added: from a eugenic point of view, the settlement there will supply material for valuable study. existence without a slave base will lead to rapid cultural change, however. the maximum probability is a reorientation of effort from military to commercial-scientific endeavor.

John shrugged. "Good luck to Gerta, then," he said. "Probably better for her than winning would have been, when you think about it."

Jeffrey snorted laughter. "I doubt she'd agree."

"True. But it's our opinion that matters, isn't it? That's what winning means. Not killing your opponents, but converting their children's children. The Chosen made tools of human beings, and that had to be stopped. But we're all the tools of humankind."

The brothers sat in silence for a long moment, looking down the years ahead.

"Well, I've got a wedding to plan," Jeffrey said at last. "Which is the future incarnate. That's what it was all about, wasn't it?"

"Amen," John said softly. "Amen, brother."