The Zen Gun

12

Ragshok’s voice was slurred as he spoke to Archier. He had not been able to resist the intoxicating airs and beverages so freely available on the flagship.

“We’ll be in Diadem in less than two days,” he said. “Listen, you could be useful to us. Tell us which are the juiciest worlds. Where we’d go to forestall resistance.”

“I’m your prisoner, that’s all,” Archier said dully. “Don’t expect me to be a traitor as well.”

Ragshok took a long sucking drag on the foot-long charge cigar he was smoking. He grinned glassily at Hesper. “Work on him, love. Make him see the light. Simplex take it! I can offer you anything. Wanna be total dictator of a hundred worlds? Satisfy any kink you like? Come on, everybody’s got his price!”

Hesper snuggled closer to Archier and stared at the pirate distastefully.

“Aaargh…” Ragshok growled in his throat, his natural aggressiveness overcoming even the calming effect of the drug. “Who needs you, huh? Who needs you?”

The door slid open with a bang. Ragshok turned, eyebrows lifted, as someone burst into the small sitting room where they were talking. It was one of the women in his band, a middle-aged virago who had been particularly bloodthirsty during the takeover. Her face was ugly with alarm.

“There’s a fleet ahead of us, chief!”

“What are you talking about?” Ragshok’s surprise was almost comic. He took the cigar out of his mouth, rolling it between thumb and finger.

“It’s on the radar. A big Imperial fleet!”

Grumbling incoherently to himself, Ragshok lurched to his feet. He pointed to Archier. “Bring him to the Command Room.”

He ran through the door. Archier didn’t need the scangun that was pointed at his head to persuade him to follow. He went willingly, and in the Command Centre found Ragshok already on the throne, his lieutenants, Morgan included, grouped around him. In the air in front of them there hovered the radar report.

There was no doubt of it. The oncoming blips were in standard Star Force formation, and there were more of them than Ten-Fleet could currently boast. In fact, from the identifying symbols in the top left of the image Archier knew it to be Seventeen-Fleet.

Swivelling the throne, Ragshok glared at Archier. “So this is what you’ve been keeping quiet,” he accused, speaking the words round the huge, puffing cigar. “Diadem is defended.”

“I don’t really understand it,” Archier admitted mildly. “No fleets are stationed in Diadem. The last I heard, Star Force had been ordered to stay away altogether.” He smiled faintly. “That’s Seventeen-Fleet coming at us, and she’s nearly up to strength. You’d better surrender. Maybe you’ll be treated leniently—given remedial treatment, given homes in Diadem, even.”

“Made tax slaves, you mean. They haven’t even attacked yet, and they won’t when we put you onscreen to reassure them.”

“I’m afraid they will, whatever you make me say. We’re supposed to be somewhere else. Remember those funny cobweb things that were making people disappear? We are supposed to be investigating that. Turning up like this makes us look like a threat. You see.” He explained after hesitation, “there’s been a civil conflict inside Diadem. They probably think we’re aiming to mix in it. They must think it, in fact, or they wouldn’t be coming out to meet us.”

The radar picture suddenly disintegrated into a three-dimensional cross-patchwork. Then the operators briefly obtained a single magnified image of one of the dreadful front-line-o’-wars, already extending its immensely long gun barrels.

“They outgun us,” Ragshok muttered.

“Fight ’em, chief!” Morgan urged. “We’ve got plenty of guns too. They don’t outgun us all that much.”

“They know how to use what they’ve got, you fool, and we don’t!” Ragshok retorted. He took the cigar from his mouth and flung it away. “We’ll be smashed to pieces if we stay in formation like this. Order the fleet to disperse. Every ship to avoid contact as best it can and make its own way into Diadem. We can exert some leverage there. Civilians are always soft-bellied.”

When he heard this, Archier’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he yelled.

“SHUT UP! Get him out of here!”

He heard the order being relayed and was still protesting as the virago hustled him from the room. Outside, he stared blankly at the lens of the scangun she held on him. How much should he exert himself, risk his life even, for the sake of these people?

It was a grotesque death. But he would get his fleet back…

He remained wrestling with his conscience when she vanished, with a clap of air.

For a while he stood there. Then, slowly, he walked back into the Command Centre. It was empty, of course. With a dazed feeling, he took up the throne so precipitously vacated by Ragshok Hesper found him there a few minutes later, having followed at her own pace. “Where are they all?” she asked.

“Back in the Claire de Lune,” Archier told her dully. “But dead, of course.”

While she continued to stare at him in mystification, he waved at the radar picture. “Do you see that? It’s another Imperial fleet on its way to intercept us. To escape it Ragshok decided to scatter Ten-Fleet. But he didn’t understand about the intermat, you see. I don’t suppose hardly anybody outside Star Force does.

“You see, the intermat only works inside the big feetol bubble that encloses the fleet when it’s flying in what we call feetol formation. And it isn’t really permanent. You have to return to your point of origin before the bubble disappears, otherwise you’ll transpose back there spontaneously, in a horribly mangled state because there’s no intermat kiosk to regulate the process. That’s what happened when Ragshok dispersed the fleet and burst the bubble. Remember, his people had spread themselves around the fleet by intermat in the first place. I don’t like to think what it must look like on the Claire de Lune right now.”

He wasn’t sure Hesper took in what he had said about the feetol bubble, but she was bright enough to grasp the bottom line.

“You mean all Ragshok’s people have been killed?” she said. “All of them?”

“All except the handful who stayed aboard Claire de Lune from the beginning. Some of my own people must have got caught, too,” he brooded. “Not everybody managed to get back to their own vessels after the takeover.”

He sighed. “Better get on to Seventeen, I suppose, before they blast us out of the galaxy.”

Using his Admiral’s throne codes to override the crewless space torsion room, he succeeded in sending a leader tone burst to the flagship of the approaching fleet. Once contact was made the signal was good; they were only minutes away from gunnery range.

In the other’s torsion room, he found himself looking into the mild face of a koala. “This is Admiral Archier,” he announced. “Would you please put me through to Admiral Tirexier.”

“Admiral Brusspert now has command, sir. I will try to get him for you.”

Brusspert? Archier frowned. He knew no such admiral. Very likely he or she was a promotion… but surely Tirexier was not suspected of disloyalty? He could no more believe it of him than he would of himself.

He thought the koala had made a mistake when a grinning pig face confronted him. The pig wore something on its head: it was with a shock that he recognised it, after a moment, as an adaptation of the ceremonial admiral’s hat, with its peaked, bell-shaped dome.

“Ah, there you are, Archier. Now then, what the Simplex do you think you’re doing?”

“Do I address Admiral Brusspert?” Archier asked after a pause.

“Indeed, indeed. Now come to it! Our gunners are raring to go! You saw Crane and Oblescu, I suppose?”

Archier swallowed. As concisely as he could, he related everything that had taken place. When he had finished, Brusspert sniffed dubiously.

“A pretty unlikely tale in the circumstances, I must say… Still, we’ll confirm the truth, or otherwise, of it sharp enough.” The pig’s eyes flickered to something in his range of vision. “Your ships don’t behave as though they have anyone at the helm, at that. Zipping about like a bunch of pesky swamp flies. We’ll chase them down and board. Meantime, make ready to receive our gig. We’re coming over.”

“First,” Archier said, “may I ask how a second class citizen comes to have the rank of admiral? Yours is an acting rank, I take it?”

Brusspert stared at him. Then he broke into squealing laughter. “You haven’t heard, then? Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough!”

The picture vanished. The new admiral had cut him off.

In the short interval before the gig from Seventeen Fleet arrived Archier made some attempt to put his flagship back in order. He called the living quarters and informed the vessel’s denizens that it was safe to come out. Slowly the ship began to fill with sounds of life, and he was surprised once again to see his Fire Command Officer, whom he had presumed killed along with so many other animals. It transpired that Gruwert had spent the last few days hiding in a locker, and had ventured forth only when he heard voices he recognised. Thinner, and somewhat bad-tempered, he gulped down an enormous quantity of his favourite mash, and then reported for duty.

Archier was not sure what it would be like to confront a pig admiral. There was an ingrained protocol for dealing with animals. He did not go to the boarding bay to meet the gig, as he might have normally have done, but waited in his office for the party to come to him.

It was larger than he had expected: about twenty animals and humans, though few of the latter. Half a dozen of them trotted into his office, and all of them were four-footed.

He had not realised earlier that Admiral Brusspert was a sow. Her plump dangling udders were evidence that she had littered recently. Archier noted the fact only in passing. It was swallowed up in his general shock.

“Admiral,” she announced with a toss of her snout, “permit me to introduce Imperial Council Member Hiroshamak.”

Standing beside her was indeed someone in a Council Member’s robe, but instead of hanging with loose dignity from a pair of shoulders, it had been cut and shaped so as to drape upon the broad shoulders of a quadruped.

Imperial Council Member Hiroshamak, also, was a pig.

Archier swayed, then fell back into his chair. “So the Council has been overthrown,” he gasped softly. “Revolution!”

“Do not distress yourself, Admiral,” Hiroshamak said in gruff but resonant tones. “The Council still rules: there has been no revolution, at least not of the kind you mean. If you are truly loyal to the Empire, you should be pleased by the turn of events.”

He started to pace up and down. Archier could not help but notice the personal charisma of the animal, the sense of purpose and restless energy. “Let me put this to you, Admiral. For a long time now it has mainly been we pigs who have been propping up the Empire. To put it bluntly, we are more capable than other animals—just as capable as humans, in fact. Implanted intelligence works particularly well with us. But unlike humans, we have not lost interest in the well-being of the Empire. We have not become, if you don’t mind me saying so, effete, incompetent and short-sighted. In addition, we breed at a healthy rate and so there are plenty of us! You will grant that all this is so.”

“Oh yes,” Archier said faintly. “My pigs have always been most efficient. And resourceful.”

“I’m glad you agree. The truth is that again and again the senior pig administrators in the civil service have had to rescue the Imperial Council from the consequences of its own bungling. Left to its own devices, it would have wrecked the Empire on a dozen occasions over the past few years. Well, things have simply been going from bad to worse. The present crisis finally convinced us that matters can no longer be left to human ineptness. We have found it necessary to act—with a small measure of illegality, regrettably, but that has been kept to a minimum… Not to put to fine a point on it, the entire membership of the Imperial Council has been ‘persuaded’ to resign. A new Council has been appointed, consisting entirely of pigs. Like myself, they are mostly drawn from the higher ranks of the civil service.”

“Second class,” Archier muttered in bewilderment. “You are second-class citizens. It isn’t possible…”

“Not any longer. We have introduced a second innovation. Since the pigs are now to play such a prominent part in the affairs of the Empire, they have been elevated to first-class citizenship alongside humans. We are now equals in law.”

“If you think about it,” the pig continued as Archier struggled to absorb what he was being said to him, “I’m sure you’ll realise it’s the only way. Only forthright measures will restore the Empire’s fortunes, and the simple fact is that humans have become too accustomed to hesitancy and weakness. Let me give you some idea of the programme we pigs have adopted.”

Hiroshamak raised a trotter in the air and counted off points with it. “One: recalcitrant or tax-defaulting worlds to be destroyed promptly and without warning as an example to others. Two: all striking robots to be exterminated and a new class, with lower intelligence and no political aspirations, to be manufactured. These will begin work immediately on replacement war fleets to bring Star Force up to strength. Three: human immigration into Diadem to be forcibly increased for work in laboratories or where creative effort is required, also to supplement the robot labour force if the new brand of robot proves too low-grade for skilled work. These new immigrants will have no citizenship rights at all to begin with. They will have to earn them. That way they can be stopped from running out on us.”

“But that would make them slaves!” Archier protested.

“Slave, slave! It’s only a word. This attitude of yours is exactly what’s been wrong with our political position up until now. These measures are necessary, but 1 grant it takes a certain amount of determination to apply them. That is what humans appear to lack.”

“But there’s a reason why animals were made second-class citizens,” Archier objected earnestly. “Animals don’t have creative minds!”

“I acknowledge that,” Hiroshamak said instantly, “but it doesn’t matter a damn! Governing an Empire doesn’t call for creativity—it was a misconception ever to think that it does. Shrewdness, cunning and self-confidence are what’s needed. We pigs have proved ourselves there.”

“Society needs creativity,” Archier insisted. “It’s what keeps it evolving.”

“Of course. Who doubts it? And that’s exactly the role we see humans filling in the new dispensation. Creative thought—art, science, the things they are good at. And we’ll take care of practical affairs.”

Admiral Brusspert interrupted him enthusiastically. Only now did Archier spot the feminine difference in her voice tone. It never was very noticeable in porcines. “Absolutely right, Council Member,” she said. “Pigs make the right decisions! The weasels, for instance—tell him about that!”

“Weasels?” Archier enquired.

“Guard!” Hiroshamak snapped in answer. “Get in here sharpish!”

Into the room, walking on its hind legs, came a five-foot stoat in military accoutrement. The scangun at its waist was adapted to fit its paw. Its backpack, breathing kit and communicator made it look even more predatory.

“He’s had his inhibitor removed,” Hiroshamak said.

Now Archier was not merely shocked. He was aghast. Of all the mammals in the commonalty, there was one family that was never used in war: the weasel family, including stoats, polecats, wolverines and fishers. Tigers and bears were as nothing to the mad ferocity of these creatures. They were the most gifted murder machines nature had devised, restricted only by their size—wolverines and fishers, in fact, would unhesitatingly attack and kill anything they came across, no matter how large. That was why intelligent weasels were given additional implants to repress their savage urges, and why wolverines and fishers were very rarely made intelligent at all.

“You are seeing the backbone of the future Drop Commando,” Hiroshamak informed Archier. “Tell him how you feel without the inhibitor, guard.”

Archier could almost see the stoat smile. “Much better, sir. Much sharper. And more ready to serve the Empire, sir, of course.”

“All right, guard. That will do. Wait outside.”

“The old Council never need bodyguards,” Archier remarked when the predator had gone.

“Oh, I don’t suppose we will when things have settled down.”

“There’s something I must ask you,” Archier swallowed. “Are you Biotists? You must be, since you want to dethrone man from his superior position—”

“No, no, we are not Biotists.” Hiroshamak and Brusspert both shook their heads emphatically. “It was partly to stop the Biotists taking over that we acted as we did! Like them, we assert that the Empire belongs to all mammals, not merely to humans. But we shall never recommence gene mixing. The species should stay separate. It’s the best way of standardising intelligence.” Hiroshamak’s eyes twinkled. “Besides, we like being pigs!”

“What happened to Admiral Tirexier?” Archier asked suddenly, with a bite in his voice.

“Ah yes. You force me to a delicate matter,” Hiroshamak replied after a pause. “A new High Command is being organised. The new command structure is to consist entirely of pigs, and affects all ranks from admiral up. That means, Admiral Archier, that you are being retired from active service as an admiral. You will retain the rank of Admiral retired, of course, and you will continue to serve in the fleet in a lower acting capacity. Your Fire Command Officer Gruwert is being promoted in your place. You have always commended his initiative.”

A squeal of delight sounded behind Archier. It came from Gruwert, who together with others of the Command Staff had been standing silently listening to the exchange.

“Yes, I have,” whispered Archier. “Indeed I have.”

Carefully he removed his admiral’s ceremonial hat, with its bell-shaped crown, its glittering feathers, and placed it on his desk.

My fleet, he thought agonisedly. My beautiful Ten-Fleet.

But of course it was not his fleet, and never had been. It was the Empire’s, and now the Empire belonged to the pigs.

Gruwert came trotting forward, snuffing the air. “No hard feelings, Archier old chap? It’s all for the best, you know. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like you to get out of my office. It’s time to start doing things properly!”