The Rebel Worlds

I

The prison satellite swung in a wide and canted orbit around Llynathawr, well away from normal space traffic. Often a viewport in Hugh McCormac’s cell showed him the planet in different phases. Sometimes it was a darkness, touched with red-and-gold sunrise on one edge, perhaps the city Catawrayannis nickering like a star upon its night. Sometimes it was a scimitar, the sun burning dazzlingly close. Now and then he saw it full, a round shield of brilliance, emblazoned on oceans azure with clouds argent above continents vert and tenné.

Terra looked much the same at the same distance. (Closer in, you became aware that she was haggard, as is any former beauty who has been used by too many men.) But Terra was a pair of light-centuries removed. And neither world resembled rusty, tawny Aeneas for which McCormac’s eyes hungered.

The satellite had no rotation; interior weight was due entirely to gravity-field generators. However, its revolution made heaven march slowly across the viewpoint. When Llynathawr and sun had disappeared, a man’s pupils readjusted and he became able to see other stars. They crowded space, unwinking, jewel-colored, winter-sharp. Brightest shone Alpha Crucis, twin blue-white giants less than ten parsecs away; but Beta Crucis, a single of the same kind, was not much further off in its part of the sky. Elsewhere, trained vision might identify the red glimmers of Aldebaran and Arcturus. They resembled fires which, though remote, warmed and lighted the camps of men. Or vision might swing out to Deneb and Polaris, unutterably far beyond the Empire and the Empire’s very enemies. That was a cold sight.

Wryness tugged at McCormac’s mouth. If Kathryn were tuned in on my mind, he thought, she’d say there must be something in Leviticus against mixing so many metaphors.

He dared not let the knowledge of her dwell with him long. I’m lucky to have an outside cell. Not uncomfortable, either. Surely this wasn’t Snelund’s intention.

The assistant warden had been as embarrassed and apologetic as he dared. “We, uh, well, these are orders for us to detain you, Admiral McCormac,” he said. “Direct from the governor. Till your trial or … transportation to Terra, maybe … uh … till further orders.” He peered at the fax on his desk, conceivably hoping that the words it bore had changed since his first perusal. “Uh, solitary confinement, incommunicado — state-of-emergency powers invoked — Frankly, Admiral McCormac, I don’t see why you aren’t allowed, uh, books, papers, even projections to pass the time … I’ll send to His Excellency and ask for a change.” I know why, McCormac had thought. Partly spite; mainly, the initial stage in the process of breaking me. His back grew yet stiffen Well, let them try!

The sergeant of the housecarl platoon that had brought the prisoner up from Catawrayannis Port said in his brassiest voice, “Don’t address traitors by titles they’ve forfeited.”

The assistant warden sat bolt upright, nailed them all with a look, and rapped: “Sergeant, I was twenty years in the Navy before retiring to my present job. I made CPO. Under His Majesty’s regulations, any officer of Imperials ranks every member of any paramilitary local force. Fleet Admiral McCormac may have been relieved of command, but unless and until he’s decommissioned by a proper court-martial or by direct fiat from the throne, you’ll show him respect or find yourself in worse trouble than you may already be in.”

Flushed, breathing hard, he seemed to want to say more. Evidently he thought better of it. After a moment, during which a couple of the burly guards shifted from foot to foot, he added merely: “Sign the prisoner over to me and get out.”

“We’re supposed to—” the sergeant began.

“If you have written orders to do more than deliver this gentleman into custody, let’s see them.” Pause. “Sign him over and get out. I don’t plan to tell you again.”

McCormac placed the assistant warden’s name and face in his mind as carefully as he had noted each person involved in his arrest. Someday — if ever—

What had become of the man’s superior? McCormac didn’t know. Off Aeneas, he had never been concerned with civilian crime or penology. The Navy looked after its own. Sending him here was an insult tempered only by the fact that obviously it was done to keep him away from brother officers who’d try to help him. McCormac guessed that Snelund had replaced a former warden with a favorite or a bribegiver — as he’d done to many another official since he became sector governor — and that the new incumbent regarded the post as a sinecure.

In any case, the admiral was made to exchange his uniform for a gray coverall; but he was allowed to do so in a booth. He was taken to an isolation cell; but although devoid of ornament and luxury, it had room for pacing and facilities for rest and hygiene. The ceiling held an audiovisual scanner; but it was conspicuously placed, and no one objected when he rigged a sheet curtain for his bunk. He saw no other being, heard no other voice; but edible food and clean fabrics came in through a valve, and he had a chute for disposal of scraps and soils. Above all else, he had the viewport.

Without that sun, planet, constellations, frosty rush of Milky Way and dim gleam of sister galaxies, he might soon have crumbled — screamed for release, confessed to anything, kissed the hand of his executioner, while honest medics reported to headquarters on Terra that they had found no sign of torture or brainscrub upon him. It would not have been the sensory deprivation per se that destroyed his will in such short order. It would have been the loss of every distraction from the thought of Kathryn, every way of guessing how long a time had gone by while she also lay in Aaron Snelund’s power. McCormac admitted the weakness to himself. That was not one he was ashamed of.

Why hadn’t the governor then directed he be put in a blank cell? Oversight, probably, when more urgent business demanded attention. Or, being wholly turned inward on himself, Snelund perhaps did not realize that other men might love their wives above life.

Of course, as day succeeded standard day (with never a change in this bleak white fluorescence) he must begin wondering why nothing had happened up here. If his observers informed him of the exact situation, no doubt he would prescribe that McCormac be shifted to different quarters. But agents planted in the guard corps of a small artificial moon were lowly creatures. They would not, as a rule, report directly to a sector governor, viceroy for His Majesty throughout some 50,000 cubic light-years surrounding Alpha Crucis, and a very good friend of His Majesty to boot. No, they wouldn’t even when the matter concerned a fleet admiral, formerly responsible for the defense of that entire part of the Imperial marches.

Petty agents would report to administrative underlings, who would send each communication on its way through channels. Was somebody seeing to it that material like this got — no, not lost — shunted off to oblivion in the files?

McCormac sighed. The noise came loud across endless whisper of ventilation, clack of his shoes on metal. How long could such protection last?

He didn’t know the satellite’s orbit. Nevertheless, he could gauge the angular diameter of Llynathawr pretty closely. He remembered the approximate dimensions and mass. From that he could calculate radius vector and thus period. Not easy, applying Kepler’s laws in your head, but what else was there to do? The result more or less confirmed his guess that he was being fed thrice in 24 hours. He couldn’t remember exactly how many meals had come before he started tallying them with knots in a thread. Ten? Fifteen? Something like that. Add this to the 37 points now confronting him. You got between 40 and 50 spaceship watches; or 13 to 16 Terran days; or 15 to 20 Aenean.

Aenean. The towers of Windhome, tall and gray, their banners awake in a whistling sky; tumble of crags and cliffs, reds, ochers, bronzes, where the Ilian Shelf plunged to a blue-gray dimness sparked and veined with water-gleams, that was the Antonine Seabed; clangor of the Wildfoss as it hurled itself thitherward in cataracts; and Kathryn’s laughter when they rode forth, her gaze upon him more blue than the dazzlingly high sky—

“No!” he exclaimed. Ramona’s eyes had been blue. Kathryn’s were green. Was he already confusing his live wife with his dead one?

If he had a wife any more. Twenty days since the housecarls burst into their bedchamber, arrested them and took them down separate corridors. She had slapped their hands off her wrists and marched among their guns with scornful pride, though tears rivered over her face.

McCormac clasped his hands and squeezed them together till fingerbones creaked. The pain was a friend. I mustn’t, he recalled. If I wring myself out because of what I can’t make better, I’m doing Snelund’s work for him.

What else can I do?

Resist. Until the end.

Not for the first time, he summoned the image of a being he had once known, a Wodenite, huge, scaly, tailed, four-legged, saurian-snouted, but comrade in arms and wiser than most. “You humans are a little breed,” the deep voice had rumbled. “Together you can show courage that may cross the threshold of madness. Yet when no one else is near to tell your fellows afterward how you died, the spirit crumbles away and you fall down empty.”

“Heritage of instinct, I suppose,” McCormac said. “Our race began as an animal that hunted in packs.”

“Training can tame instinct,” the dragon answered. “Can the intelligent mind not train itself?’

Alone in his cell, Hugh McCormac nodded. I’ve at least got that damned monitor to watch me. Maybe someday somebody — Kathryn, or the children Ramona gave me, or some boy I never knew — will see its tapes.

He lay down on his bunk, the sole furnishing besides washbasin and sanitizer, and closed his eyes. I’ll try playing mental chess again, alternating sides, till dinner. Give me enough time and I’ll master the technique. Just before eating, I’ll have another round of calisthenics. That drab mess in the soft bowl won’t suffer from getting cold. Perhaps later I’ll be able to sleep.

He hadn’t lowered his improvised curtain. The pickup recorded a human male, tall, rangy, more vigorous than could be accounted for by routine anti-senescence. Little betrayed his 50 standard years except the grizzling of black hair and the furrows in his long, lean countenance. He had never changed those features, nor protected them from the weathers of many planets. The skin remained dark and leathery. A jutting triangle of nose, a straight mouth and lantern jaw, were like counterweights to the dolichocephalic skull. When he opened the eyes beneath his heavy brows, they would show the color of glaciers. When he spoke, his voice tended to be hard; and decades of service around the Empire, before he returned to his home sector, had worn away the accent of Aeneas.

He lay there, concentrating so furiously on imagined chessmen which kept slipping about like fog-wraiths, that he did not notice the first explosion. Only when another went crump! and the walls reverberated did he know it was the second.

“What the chaos?” He surged to his feet. A third detonation barked dully and toned in metal. Heavy slugthrowers, he knew. Sweat spurted forth. The heart slammed within him. What had happened? He threw a glance at the viewport. Llynathawr was rolling into sight, unmarked, serene, indifferent.

A rushing noise sounded at the door. A spot near its molecular catch glowed red, then white. Somebody was cutting through with a blaster. Voices reached McCormac, indistinct but excited and angry. A slug went bee-yowww down the corridor, gonged off a wall, and dwindled to nothing.

The door wasn’t thick, just sufficient to contain a man. Its alloy gave way, streamed downward, made fantastic little formations akin to lava. The blaster flame boomed through the hole, enlarging it. McCormac squinted away from the glare. Ozone prickled his nostrils. He thought momentarily, crazily, no reason to be so extravagant of charge.

The gun stopped torching. The door flew wide. A dozen beings stormed through. Most were men in blue Navy outfits. A couple of them bulked robotlike in combat armor and steered a great Holbert energy gun on its grav sled. One was nonhuman, a Donarrian centauroid, bigger than the armored men themselves; he bore an assortment of weapons on his otherwise nude frame, but had left them holstered in favor of a battleax. It dripped red. His simian countenance was a single vast grin.

“Admiral! Sir!” McCormac didn’t recognize the youth who dashed toward him, hands outspread. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. What—” McCormac willed out bewilderment. “What is this?”

The other snapped a salute. “Lieutenant Nasruddin Hamid, sir, commanding your rescue party by order of Captain Oliphant.”

“Assaulting an Imperial installation?” It was as if somebody else used McCormac’s larynx.

“Sir, they meant to kill you. Captain Oliphant’s sure of it.” Hamid looked frantic. “We’ve got to move fast, sir. We entered without loss. The man in charge knew about the operation. He pulled back most of the guards. He’ll leave with us. A few disobeyed him and resisted. Snelund’s men, must be. We cut through them but some escaped. They’ll be waiting to send a message soon’s our ships stop jamming.”

The event was still unreal for McCormac. Part of him wondered if his mind had ripped across. “Governor Snelund was appointed by His Majesty,” jerked from his gullet. “The proper place to settle things is a court of inquiry.”

Another man trod forth. He had not lost the lilt of Aeneas. “Please, sir.” He was near weeping. “We can’t do without you. Local uprisin’s on more planets every day — on ours, now, too, in Borea and Ironland. Snelund’s tryin’ to get the Navy to help his filthy troops put down the trouble … by his methods … by nuclear bombardment if burnin’, shootin’, and enslavin’ don’t work.”

“War on our own people,” McCormac whispered, “when outside the border, the barbarians—” His gaze drifted back to Llynathawr, aglow in the port. “What about my wife?”

“I don’t … don’t know … anything about her—” Hamid stammered.

McCormac swung to confront him. Rage leaped aloft. He grabbed the lieutenant’s tunic. “That’s a lie!” he yelled. “You can’t help knowing! Oliphant wouldn’t send men on a raid without briefing them on every last detail. What about Kathryn?”

“Sir, the jamming!! be noticed. We only have a surveillance vessel. An enemy ship on picket could—”

McCormac shook Hamid till teeth rattled in the jaws. Abruptly he let go. They saw his face become a machine’s. “What touched off part of the trouble was Snelund’s wanting Kathryn,” he said, altogether toneless. “The Governor’s court likes its gossip juicy; and what the court knows, soon all Catawrayannis does. She’s still in the palace, isn’t she?”

The men looked away, anywhere except at him. “I heard that,” Hamid mumbled. “Before we attacked, you see, we stopped at one of the asteroids — pretended we were on a routine relief — and sounded out whoever we could. One was a merchant, come from the city the day before. He said — well, a public announcement about you, sir, and your lady being ‘detained for investigation,’ only she and the governor—” He stopped.

After a while, McCormac reached forth and squeezed his shoulder. “You needn’t continue, son,” he said, with scarcely more inflection but quite softly. “Let’s board your ship.”

“We aren’t mutineers, sir,” Hamid said pleadingly. “We need you to — to hold off that monster … till we can get the truth before the Emperor.”

“No, it can’t be called mutiny any longer,” McCormac answered. “It has to be revolt.” His voice whipped out. “Get moving! On the double!”