The Praesidium of Archive

Tales of the Concordat

Book Five

By

Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Copyright © 2016 Jefferson P. Swycaffer

All Rights Reserved

Version 2.A.01

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Several of the concepts and nomenclatures used in this story are from the games Imperium ™ and Traveller © published by Far Future Enterprises and designed by Marc W. Miller, to whom all my thanks for his kind permission regarding this use.

This novel was previously published in 1986 by Avon Books.

Dedication

This book is for S.T.A.R. San Diego,

for the OSMUN,

and for Scott S. Norton, who taught me how much fun politics really can be.

Introduction

This book is in the form of six stories, short novelettes in length, each featuring one of the six members of The Praesidium of Archive, the six souls at the core of the government of a vast star-spanning polity, known as The Concordat of Archive. The stories are linked by segments of the minutes of a meeting of the six members.

To my mind, this is a collection of stories. But author and editor Ben Bova, in a note in Locus Magazine (ever so long ago; this would have been in 1986) said that this book is a novel. I am certainly not competent to dispute this judgement, and am actually quite happy with it. I take it to mean that the segments are sufficiently linked together to give the wholeness of a novel. Certainly, my original intent was to present "parts of a whole" that the reader can assemble into a unity, just as the members of a committee, working together, begin with diversity and end with solidarity.

The Concordat of Archive is, in large part, inspired by the climactic days of the end of the Soviet Union. One of my quips regarding the Concordat is: "Socialist Utopia or Stalinist Nightmare?" The answer, of course, is: some of each, but a lot of neither. The Concordat may resemble what Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to put together, before history bypassed his efforts and, in history's ineffable way, came up with a solution no one had quite envisioned. The Cold War is over, but Russia remains a "sick man of Europe."

Gorbachev tried to perform the balancing act which I describe in the sixth and final of the stories here, but he dropped the ball — spilled the glass of water — and nobody was truly the winner.

Each of these stories is about a facet of governing: finance, the military, multi-disciplinary coordination, law & order, etc. But each of these stories is, more importantly, about a facet of being human. Love, loss, growing older, the self-delusion of middle age, and dying. I am trying, here, to balance the "spirit of the times" model of history with the "great man" model. Each model has its attractions and adherents; each model has its faults and detractors. We lack a working machinery of "alternate history" — Harry Turtledove's heroic efforts notwithstanding. We cannot know what would have happened if George Washington had been shot down by a British Sniper at Brandywine Creek: it is simply beyond anyone's ability to know, or even to guess meaningfully. Would the American Revolution have succeeded...or failed? Would there ever have been a U.S. Constitution? Speculative Fiction can depict possible scenarios, but there is (as yet) no "Science of Psychohistory" (as Isaac Asimov famously depicted in his "Foundation" novels.)

For what it's worth, take this book as a loose exploration and depiction of our own times, and people in headlines today. There is a vast universality to "current events," and it is as valid to think of any period of history as a rough model of any other. Swap Julius Caesar and George Washington, at the tender age of, say, twenty, and (language issues aside) each could have accomplished much in the role of the other.

This book is a kind of model of the times of A.D. 1986, but also of 1945, of 1787, of 1814 (the post-Napoleonic conference of Vienna,) or even of 49 B.C. (Julius Caesar takes control of Rome.)

This is a book of governing and governance, both civil and individual.

There is also a rather blatant "Easter Egg" hidden in one of the stories, a bit of a jape, which my playful soul was unable to resist. That's one way to stay young!

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Table of Contents

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Case and Cause

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

The Damnable Price

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Escalation

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

A Precise Young Death

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

To Live; To Learn

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Archive Midwinter

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Praise for the Books of Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Other Books by Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Minutes of Praesidium Meeting, 363-1108

#

Present:

First Secretary Raymond Parke

Justicar Leonard Solme

Secretary of the Navy Grand Admiral Jennifer de la Noue

Secretary of the Treasury James Wallace

Foreign Secretary Antonin Vissenne

Secretary of Commerce Adrian Redmond

#

Also Present:

Shtirmer, deSily, Tring, Steldan, Bourdages, Merlino, O'Riley, Rowland, Platt, Daigle, Garig, Meyers, Benedict, Proctor, Hamm, Lowe, Cowan, Noel.

#

7:58

#

Parke: The meeting is convened.

Solme: Improper.

Parke: Good heavens, Leonard; why?

Solme: Our hour has not arrived.

Vissenne: Are you speaking literally, or metaphorically?

Parke: We're all here; why should we wait for...um...

Vissenne: Forty-three seconds, but then, who's counting?

Parke: If you wish.

#

8:00

#

Parke: The meeting is convened.

Vissenne: Does that make two meetings tonight, or just one? For the record, that is.

Solme: One.

De la Noue: May we get to business?

Vissenne: In a hurry, Grand Admiral? I move we adopt an executive session.

Parke: I really don't see any need... All in favor?

#

[Solme, Wallace, Vissenne]

#

Parke: Against?

#

[Parke + Parke, de la Noue, Redmond]

#

Parke: If there's nothing further...

Solme: Your introductory comment before calling for the vote was prejudicial, and in direct violation of the rules. Further —

Parke: Does this matter?

Solme: Further, you failed to state the substance of the motion before you called for the vote.

Parke: Um... I think we all knew what was being...proposed... Very well. We've got a full load of business for ourselves tonight. I was hesitant at calling the meeting this soon after the recent...um...unpleasantness in the area of our Octivigan neighbors...

De la Noue: The military end of things is under control.

Parke: Yes, well, we'll be covering that...later. I think that Secretary Vissenne will have something to say on the matter.

Vissenne: How ever did you guess? I eagerly anticipate the correct moment to propose disciplinary action.

Parke: First, however, Justicar Solme has —

Solme: I move the following amendment to the First High Charter, to be forwarded to the regular session of the Supreme Council of Sectors for consideration, to be the first item in an open-ended Third Schedule of Amendments: 'We do not recognize the right of an individual to hold supernaturalist beliefs, nor to behave in any way to advocate such beliefs.'

Wallace: A constitutional amendment, sir? Is it truly necessary?

Solme: I await a second for my motion.

Vissenne: It's...ahem...a trifle overstrong

Parke: I'm not sure we have the moral right...

Vissenne: Well, look... I didn't have any part in this, although I can see what the Justicar is trying to say. If he'd come to me first, I'd have helped put this into proper form. We've outlawed religion already, as a profit-making and decision-making concern. But are we really willing to tell people what they can or cannot believe?

Redmond: You're the Ideologist.

Vissenne: Justicar, will you enlighten us?

Solme: This discussion is out of order.

Vissenne: That's as may be! You proposed this intrusive, self-righteous, troublemaking amendment, and it's up to you to defend it! Damn it, Justicar, you know I'm on your side. You know how I feel about religious thought — 'supernaturalist,' we've euphemized it — but whether or not I'm ideologically in favor of this, I don't think we have the right. Can you speak to this?

Redmond: Other than being unenforceable, this does have some real moral problems...

Parke: With no second to the motion, I'm afraid I'll have to mark it down as...failed.

Wallace: Why, Justicar?

Solme: Why?

Case and Cause

A storm-swept field of goddesses and gods Is overshone by three who stride the sky: Diezette, merciful, pleads for souls' reprieve; Horor the Finisher cries punishment; Kretosa is the judge whose word and sword are just. Dream not to think them slain; gods, eternal, endure.

Anonymous: Song of Her None Knows

#

The night before the trial, Justicar Leonard Solme had a dream.

All was unnaturally clear, as his dream-self stood naked on a midnight desert, boulder strewn, beneath the swimming orb of a full moon. Solme was not a man plagued by dreams; those few that penetrated the nearly impermeable barrier sealing off his unconscious mind were never dreams in color, let alone experiences that spoke to all of his senses with a solid and convincing reality.

The still-warm sand, black as powdered coal, clung to his feet when he walked. A soft breeze whispered by his face. Distant sounds of a hunting pack of wilderland predators lent the scene the faintest tone of menace.

He turned to his right. A woman, glimmering slightly with eerie radiance, approached. She was chastely gowned, while indisputably feminine. Solme felt a momentary embarrassment at his nakedness, but overmastered it. He faced her, and she watched him appraisingly.

She came closer, and he knew beyond any questioning that she was the goddess Diezette, who was to be his shield and his voice, here in this place where he was to be judged. She held out her hand.

He would not take it. Speech was beyond him, but his defiance was put into his stance. This was no dream he had by choice; it was put onto him by the parts of the mind that were older than reason, older than language itself.

Diezette gestured, and the movement spoke of the joy that could be his, if only he would let her speak for him. She could gain him entrance into the gardens of heaven, if only...

"No," he forced out. The effort came from the deepest center of him. He regretted the pain that the single word brought to the face of the goddess, but he knew that there were things more important by far than living forever.

#

He woke then, and stretched his thin limbs, and rubbed his leathery face. Setting aside the book that had gone to bed with him, he rose, obscurely relieved to be alive.

The gods died seven hundred and fifty years ago, and still we dream of them. Unreasonably angered by his treacherous unconscious — overimaginative though it was, it was his, and should obey him — he made an effort to calm himself before his appearance in court.

It was still two hours before sunrise, and the court session wasn't to begin until eight. Solme, however, had become a light sleeper as the years had crept over him. He had to be thankful for that; his hours were not overmany. He resented the loss of each of the fleeting minutes of his life that were surrendered to sleep, although he knew well what restorative effect that uncaring rest brought to him.

No one else of his household was awake at this hideous hour, however. Like the gaunt ghost of the mansion, he padded silently through the halls to the kitchen, where he expertly brewed himself a pot of steaming sour tea.

In my youth, I was heavily addicted to coffee, strong and black, and the more bitter it was, the more I liked it. It was the only stimulant I allowed myself, and it helped me to keep the clerk's hours I so hated. Through my legal tenure, I made do with nothing stronger than cold water. Now, when clerk's hours come naturally to me, I find myself again addicted, to the sourest of sour teas. He drank deeply of the scalding stuff.

I'm hurting no one but myself, he thought moodily, and took the pot with him as he trod back up the stairs.

His library was not the center of the large house, but in his own mind it was the house's heart. He seemed to spend more and more time in the high-arched room, writing nearly as much as he read. This chill morning, he entered, pressed the lights on, and set the pot onto the ceramic trivet that graced his tiny desk.

He circled the high stacks, noting automatically the small gap that belonged to the book still reposing on his narrow bed. Sullenly he pulled a volume entitled Interstellar Religious Law and Supernaturalist Rulings 1100-1105. He found his place from memory, and took his pencil again to the already much-annotated margins.

Diezette, Mistress of Mercy, a part of his mind thought wonderingly. Why should my dreams turn suddenly to her? His eyes and attention were on a paragraph dealing with statutes restricting healing by mental power. "The attitude of the afflicted," the passage read, "has a well-understood effect upon the recuperative process. This does not give confirmation to the central dogma of charlatanry, that healing is an unadulterated function of mind."

Solme's pencil put down the thoughts that passed through the foreground of his mind; in the background he was marveling at the pure and classic beauty of the woman that was Diezette.

#

At seven-thirty exactly, the driver rapped apologetically on the paneled door. By seven fifty-two, Solme was in the secluded lounge of the Supreme Judiciary Building, speaking gruffly with several of the ten other Justices. Two stood off to one side, remarking privately upon their superior.

"We've been here since six-thirty," said the first. "He never arrives until the last moment, does he?"

"The Justicar is one of the crankiest men I've ever met. He's unsociable, often rude, and more legally fastidious than the rest of us combined." The second Justice avoided looking at the surly object of his speech, who stood across the room.

"It is this meticulous delicacy," he continued, "and not his legal brilliance — the latter putative at worst, abstruse at best — that has earned him fame and respect."

The first Justice nodded. "Nevertheless, he is famed and respected. I have had no cause to question his integrity, only his personality."

The second Justice agreed, capping the conversation with the dire comment: "Working for him is a challenge. A life with him could only end by murder or suicide."

On your part, thought the first Justice, breaking away at the sound of the chime calling them to session. Solme is imperturbable to a degree you don't appreciate. There is something unmovable about him. Stubbornness can account for only part of it. From what source does the rest of his unyielding defiance spring?

The eleven filed into the broad, high-ceilinged courtroom and seated themselves at its head. They wore either black or red robes, alternating by seating order; Solme, in the center, wore black, while the two Justices on his flanks wore red. Their heads were bare; an identical ring graced the left hand of each.

From the back of the room, where the public entrances were, a bank of plush seats sloped forward, today filled only partway with spectators and a scattered few journalists. The high wall to the left of the audience, to the right of the Justices, was broken with arched floor-to-ceiling windows that admitted the warm rays of the bright sun over Archive. The opposite wall was hung with a great projection map of the five hundred nearest stars, which composed the Archive, or Capital, Sector.

A waist-high railing of carven wood separated the audience from the court; before it were the three stations reserved for plaintiff, accused, and for the testimony. From the latter stand the Justices might be addressed, any plea given to them directly. The view from this stand was of the elevated bench behind which the Justices sat, and of the great, ornamental sword that was affixed to the front of the panel before the Justicar. As a sword, it was a two-meter monstrosity that would be the hilarity of a true swordsman; as a symbol, it shone, long-hilted, a clear reminder of the role of enforcement in protecting society, and of the penalty that was society's ultimate force of persuasion.

Solme looked down at the few instruments — voice-stress analyzer, transcription device, and so forth — set into the bench before him, screened from the audience. The clock read 8:00:02. He rapped a bony knuckle sharply onto the polished wood of the benchtop.

"Item 15-975," intoned a clerk, carefully enunciating the numerals; "the world of Tzoseba, H., versus Catherine Taygete, D., Leonard Solme, for the Supreme Judiciary, K."

"The court is now in session," Solme said, fighting, as always at this point in the proceedings, not to show his admittedly irrational annoyance. Those allusive initials of gods best forgotten were no insult to him. They were, however, a traditional holdover from a darker age, and they served continually to remind him that the customs of his court were not his to alter.

"Ms. Taygete has been charged with unlawful practice of religious ceremony with intent to undermine the legitimacy of the government of Tzoseba." The clerk ran briefly through the history of the case, by this time actually over a year old. It had worked its way up, passing through review after review, narrowly surviving as a disputed case, and always avoiding the final step of becoming a recorded precedent. If convicted, Ms. Taygete was liable to no more than a two-month prison term, which would almost certainly be suspended.

Taygete's representative, Alphonse Loma, stood and announced: "The defense is ready." Satisfied, he sat again.

The representative of the Chief Prosecutor's Office from Tzoseba, Sandra Vicente, stood and likewise made her readiness known. Solme looked carefully at her.

It was going to be hard, as hard as it always was for him when questions of religious abuse arose, even to pretend to be fair. A strong temptation to lecture tore at him, a temptation to hold forth at length with his opinions on the matter. With an effort, he kept his face stiff, inflexible, unresponsive, as Loma again stood to state the terms of the appeal that had thrown the case into this court.

I was against hearing it. They had her fairly convicted, and that should have been the end of it. But these poor oversympathetic idealists that I must work with saw only that Taygete's rights might have been somehow violated. If that is true — and I don't think it is — the enormity of her crime must necessarily be matched by an exacting and unsparing punishment. Religious fervor is so strong an emotion in mankind that catering to it, inflaming it, whipping it up into righteous action, is a very dangerous course.

What of it have I not heard before? They will claim that the gods have told them what to do, and they will question my right to gainsay the gods. There is the law of man, they say, and the law of Kretosa; the first may not stand in the way of the second.

Well, in this courtroom, I judge and Kretosa does not. The laws enacted by the Supreme Council shall be upheld.

This reaffirmation of his determination gave him no relief; when religious questions arose, no one could truly emerge the winner.

Loma, comfortably formal, not-overly-serious, was summing up. His dark hair curled over his expressive round face; his hands traveled, eloquently, through the air.

"...I ask only that you rule as you would in any case where the statutes are contradictory in their regulatory intent." These final words seemed to satisfy him, and he abruptly resumed his seat.

Vicente rose to frame her case for the state. "By publicly urging all people to vote against a township referendum," she began, all seriousness, "Ms. Taygete was within her rights as expressed in the body of Tzoseba election law. When she closed her videoed speech, however, she committed two breaches of election and videocast statutes.

"First, she made an appeal for funding, and I quote, 'in the name of immortal Kretosa, who hears all prayers.'

"And second, she informed the people listening that, and again I quote, 'Kretosa himself has made it clear that we must vote down the referendum, which could only have been authored by the agents of the Dark Lords of the Second Hell.'

"Her conviction under the videocast laws was upheld by an appeal to the Denbar Prefecture High Court; her conviction under the election laws was successfully appealed, first to the Second Union High Court, then to the Tzoseba Supreme Judiciary, finally to today's hearing in the Court of the Supreme Judiciary of the Concordat of Archive."

She paused for breath, and Solme had to stifle a wry smile. The young woman was quite short, but she had no lack of scrap. It was plain that she felt herself to be out of her depth, and that she intended fighting this one through nevertheless. Her hair was close-cropped and her outfit was businesslike and plain. Solme detected an austere and compelling beauty to her, and wondered what had moved her to try to disguise it.

"Tzoseba law," she went on, "exactly like Concordat law, allows each individual the freedom of their beliefs. Like Concordat law, our laws allow any system of belief to seek new members, to collect monies, to arbitrate their own rules of behavior and of morality. When that system of morality is pressed into service as a means of political action, however..."

The rest of her opening statement was in a similar vein. Solme found himself in full agreement, a fact that did not make it any more pleasant for him to sit and listen to a theme he'd lived with, day and night, for many, many years. Nothing the earnest young woman had to say was original with her; the ideas were old, and had been phrased better, certainly, when first formulated.

Before long, he was listening more carefully for her to overstep the letter of the law in her statements than he listened to the statements themselves. The temptation, he knew, would be strong upon her to inject her own views into the case she presented.

"...Therefore, we must respectfully ask that when the case has been heard, the conviction that has been upheld by each of the lower courts will remain upheld. This crime is a small one in itself, large in what it threatens."

With this, she closed, having avoided Solme's displeasure. Before the case could be presented, however, there were several preliminaries to be seen to.

"By Concordat statute," Loma asked deferentially, "we suggest that the verifier-imprints of the testimony from the lower courts be discarded — "

"Which Concordat statute?" Solme interrupted. He knew very well which law was being referred to, but if the grimacing lawyer couldn't put a number to it, the request would be denied.

"It is Interpretation 19, Article 2, of the Rights Definition Act of 1078. It amplifies — "

Solme again interrupted. "What it amplifies is not an issue. So ruled."

"But as I was still asking, we request that voice-stress analyzers and other truth-discernment devices, so-called, be discarded..." He let his voice trail off, and looked slightly helpless, as if he had lost his place.

Vicente saw an opening, however, and spoke up. "The prosecution has no objection. Since all of the things that Ms. Taygete is likely to say come from religious revelation — " she made a brief frown as if the words tasted bad " — then undoubtedly she will feel them to be true. Lie detectors don't work against delusions."

Loma looked pleased instead of insulted, even at the rudeness of the truism. Solme noted this, and saw that Vicente did also. The case began to appear interesting to him, perhaps even promising. In his mind he rapidly followed out the more likely reasons for these motions, and the reactions given to them. He didn't have the time for any examination in depth, a fact that he regretted. There was much here to be seen. His reputation as a Justicar always ready with a quick ruling came through undamaged; his answer was unhurried, but swift.

"Since both parties agree, I will so rule."

With the exception of an hour's break at midday, the rest of the morning and afternoon were, from Solme's point of view, wasted with procedural details that didn't matter, couldn't matter, would never matter. He was in a rare foul mood when he called the adjournment at four-forty that afternoon.

Arriving home, wrote in his records, and dined alone. He finished reading two books, one legal and one of relaxing classical fiction, drowning them with a huge pot of strong, black sour tea. By midnight he was ready for the bed that received him.

#

"Catherine, I no longer understand what it is you want to do. Plainly, this entire series of court battle after court battle has been with this confrontation in mind. You will now tell me why."

Taygete looked coolly at Loma. They sat at a good table in a fine restaurant in the high towers of an Archive hotel; the meal that was laid before them was rich and colorful, a work not of craft, but of art.

"The money I've spent to come this far has been my own, not the donations of the devout. I want you to believe that."

Loma could not help but believe, fervently, anything that this prepossessing woman chose to tell him. But he, too, had his strengths, and he knew that more was at stake here than a two-month suspended sentence for an election violation.

"Tell me, Catherine."

She looked down at her untouched meal. The meat pastries looked quite appetizing. She didn't need to tell Alphonse anything. She didn't need to. Secure in her knowledge that it was by her choice, and by the will of Kretosa, she nodded, agreeing to tell him.

"What do you know of Kretosa?"

Loma frowned. "He was the god of the underworld in the myths of the ancient times. He was declared dead in the year 347."

She heard him out, an amused smile playing about her lips. "Do gods die when men wave their arms and deny them?"

"It was a euphemism," Loma said, glancing sidelong at his meal. "What it means is that the religion was disbanded, after a long period of decline."

"Do gods die, though?" Her smile was quiet, almost cruel.

"You will tell me that they do not?"

"I will." It was soft, the way she said it, but there was a power in it. Loma turned his attention to his meal. It was quite good, but it couldn't fully distract him from Taygete's story.

"The year 347 was the lowest point in history. The strong, brave men of Archive had lost their Empire, which had been founded in blood and therefore collapsed in blood. Naturally, this was the empire that was to have lasted forever." The sarcasm in her voice was not good to hear.

"But it collapsed, and did not last forever, because the gods willed it so. What choice did those strong, brave men have but to blame the gods for that collapse?

"The gods also willed it, when we were made, that we grow old and finally die. There was a greater plan, though, and in time it was made known to us."

She glanced at her meal, but it had no attraction for her.

"We do not die, when we die. That is the statement of truth, which sounds so like a contradiction when it is not known for the reality it is.

"Empires die, and we live. Can anyone wonder that the empire builders put themselves against the gods? Now, everyone will claim that the Concordat is no empire. But it, too, puts itself against the gods, and so it, too, shall someday die."

Loma was watching her carefully by now, caught up in her story. There was a compelling fascination about her as she presented the disturbing and incongruous doctrines in a direct, matter-of-fact manner. What she said went against reason; the way she said it appealed to sensibilities deeper than reason. Loma was enthralled by the seeming contradiction and, will-less, listened avidly.

"The strong, brave men, being unable to see the difference between their empires and themselves, resent the realities that the gods have made. When their own deaths come to them, they turn with their last breath against the gods.

"And, in a puny and desperate attempt to deny the truth, they invented the philosophical doctrine known as materialism. 'All is matter,' they say, as if there were no soul. No soul. How can they think such an odd thing?" She withdrew for a moment into herself. "Don't they feel love? Don't they feel fear? Those do not come from any computer."

"Perhaps — " Loma tried to begin.

Taygete turned her laughing eyes back to him. Her wonderful, ever-merry eyes, with the loving laugh marks in their corners. She was a happy woman, and Loma could find no fault with that.

"But you didn't want to hear all that, did you? I'm sorry, Alphonse. I will preach. Did you know that in the ancient days, women weren't allowed to preach the tales of the gods? I think —

"Oh, Alphonse. How little you understand. Kretosa, to begin with, is not the god of the underworld. Kretosa is the judge, who selects the worthy from the unworthy. He is cruel, cruel as death itself. He is also the embodiment of perfect justice. Mercy comes from another source.

"But Kretosa is the god of judges, and of judging. It has been my daily prayers to him that have brought us to this point."

"The legal issues — "

"What are man's laws to the immortal gods?" Her smile was deep, sincere; she cared, and Loma could feel that.

"Then why are we here?"

"Because Justicar Solme is near death, and I must save him. If he were to die now, the judgement, afterward, could go only one way. He has mocked the gods, in his words and in his thoughts. But worse, he has fought the gods, here in this place, with his laws. Not even the mercy of Diezette could save him. But perhaps, before it is too late, I can."

Loma was embarrassed by this kind of talk. Perhaps he wasn't exactly a materialist — certainly he didn't know why he felt the loves and hates he did — but this speech of gods that were really no more to him than words caused him some discomfort. The notion of going up against Justicar Solme acutely frightened him.

"Does the thought of facing him on his home ground bother you?" she asked gently, exactly as if reading his thoughts. "Does it seem dangerous, or merely wrong?

"It must be done. I hope you can understand that. This has been my goal from the very beginning. Have you wondered why I insisted you have him throw out the voice-stress analyzer?"

"I had wondered, yes."

"It's because I don't want him distracted by watching a wiggling green line on a screen when instead he must be meeting my gaze. 'Through the eyes, soul flows.' It is vital, vital to him, that he read the elemental truth that I can show him."

"Why him?"

Taygete laughed, a gentle, happy sound. "For an entire universe of reasons. You will understand some of them. His laws have hurt us, and if we can't beat him, we would have him join us. That's a reason that even he could understand, don't you think?"

Loma only nodded.

"But there is more." She grew serious. "Kretosa is the god of judges, and Solme is the highest judge alive. For him to misuse this honored, exalted status, near to the divine, is an affront to Kretosa. We don't punish people who affront the gods; we try to rescue them.

"And most important, Solme himself is in danger of finding himself cast out when the final judgement is made. And I don't want that to happen. I love him. Surely you can see that?"

"You...?"

She put her slim hand on Loma's sleeve. "I love him as I love you, and I love all people. But he is something special, and always has been. I can't explain it, and I'm not sure that you would understand."

Loma was still struggling to assimilate what he had been told. "What if the case had been thrown out at a lower level?"

Taygete looked up from her reverie. "I have you to thank for that, don't you agree? We worked together to bring it this far. Daily, I pray to the gods for guidance; with that and our hard work, we have done very well. The hardest part is ahead of us."

"Is it up to us, or to the gods?" Loma felt that he needed to know how much dependence his client put upon supernatural aid.

"Prayer is the most potent force in the universe," Catherine explained gently. "But more than that is still needed. The gods can do nothing without us as their hands. That's why I brought the package with me from home; that's why I've taken some actions that you shouldn't know about. There is more to getting things done than prayer; prayer only ensures that what we try will have a fair chance to work."

"What if things don't work?"

She was slightly daunted. "Failure is never the fault of the gods," She looked at her meal, sitting untouched on the plate before her. Lifting her fork, she quietly began to eat.

The gods are real. That is the truth that perfects the universe. But why there is failure, we don't know. Are there truly Dark Lords, as my teacher insisted, Dark Lords who cause all pain? Some of my students question this, and indeed the truth has not been revealed to us. I hope that someday we will be worthy of knowing.

I'm glad that there are mysteries left! Science tried to take them all away, and to our delight only opened up more. I'm glad that I live the way I do, and that I can go on learning new things forever. I will never forget the true things, of course. Science may not be a true thing, but it is delightful, and it is useful. I enjoy being a scientist; I love chemistry. Working with acids, reagents, molecules and atoms serves to remind me daily that there is far more to a human mind than merely its chemicals. Can anyone really think otherwise?

I will continue to pray for Solme, no matter what happens. Whether or not he knows it, he is truly valued, and loved.

The dinner was as good as it looked. Afterward, the talk turned to legal matters.

#

In the hush of the small bedroom, during his agitated sleep, Justicar Leonard Solme was visited by the fear of death.

The terror was a dream-fear, born of no identifiable cause. It was illogical; it was groundless. It cared not for any rationality, however, and came at him like a clawing beast. He shivered, tossed, tried to throw himself awake, failed. Little animal moans escaped his thin lips as he tried to shout. His voice was dumb, and his emotions would not obey his will.

From a state of ripping fear close to the threshold of waking, he sank into deeper dreaming, and found a dream-body. Again he stood on the endless waste, and again Diezette came to him.

She was tall, handsome, more than mortal. Her hair, unbound, flowed back from her proud head and mingled with her gown. Again, the dream was in vivid color, and again the goddess of mercy tried, gently, to comfort him.

His dreaming mind broke an internal barrier, and speech, or its seeming, became possible for him.

"I know who you are," he said; Diezette met his earnest gaze. He could not meet her eyes — yes, he found, with a great effort he could. A calm expression of prideful approval came to her unforgettable features.

"But I also know who I am. You are the illusion of hope, born of the fears that we all feel. I may believe in you — it seems I have no choice — but I will not make obeisance. I am mightier than you."

Diezette said nothing, but stepped forward and gripped his upraised right hand in her left. Solme swung his own left in, moved by instant fury, trying to strike a chastising blow at her ribs. She caught this wrist also.

He struggled, his back and knees bent, his head twisted to the side with the power of his anger. He fought to pull himself loose. Her grip was not painful, but her person was as unmovable as if she were cast of faultless marble. He was held, his wrists fixed at an awkward and defeated angle, by a woman, indisputably alive, whose strength was to his as an adult's is to the youngest child. Her hands were warm, her face alive. He could not move, nor could he move her.

This, he then knew, was absolute power held in check by absolute wisdom. But it was not tempered with justice. Her compassion could not be absolute, for what kindness is it to strip the last shreds of dignity from a man? Where is the love shown, he tried to ask, in slowly forcing a man to his knees?

His rage blossomed to a rippling climax, and then he made submission.

Instantly he awoke, lying free on the bed from which he had thrown all the bedcovers. His wrists were free also; the dream had not been inspired by entangling sheets. He lit a bedlamp, and looked at his hands. They were strong, untrembling, if thin and bony.

Skeletal? Near dead? Trailing filaments of his dream floated through his mind, like fragmental emotional wisps, nearly visible in the half-lit room. He shook his head, and rose, dressing himself for reading, although it was barely three in the morning.

I thought I'd made my peace with mortality. I thought I'd be able to face my end with the dignity due me. I thought that death was something that a man comes to be able to live with.

The more fool I.

Facing it peacefully requires periodic renegotiation. If the full impact of what death means is not faced — faced honestly — it will come up and claw at a man from behind. I've never had dreams like that before, but perhaps I should have.

Because no matter what my instincts tell me, my reasoning mind knows this at least: the gods will not help me. Only I control this mind of mine; I alone shall judge me.

The gods. Look at them! How can a diverse field of beings such as they be claimed to outshine our more various and noble humanity? The gods have — had, in the old tales — the wrong kind of dignity. They were depicted with caricatures of the human graces: strength, wisdom, and more; it's a short list. But for every noble trait in man, the old gods had the same trait magnified, almost burlesqued. If strength is admired — and it should be, certainly — why not tell a story about a god as strong as forty men? If wisdom is admired, why not invent a god so wise as to know all things?

This exaggeration of good things leads to dangerous ground, very rapidly. If a god is premised as being all-wise, then it is obviously folly to ignore his words. How do we know his words? Someone will come along and tell you, you may be sure of it.

I'm amazed, and gratified, that we've never seriously invented a single, universally powerful and wise god. I don't know why we haven't, but I'm thankful. Perhaps we'll adopt one from one of the cultures we've conquered.

I'm tired, and I'm bitter. A dream like that one will tear at a man unless he knows how to channel away the frustration. But far beyond that, it raises the ghosts of thoughts I'd hoped were put away, safely locked where I wouldn't think of them. I'm tired, bitter, and old. My reason will see me through, however — I think. I've never shied away from a thought merely because it's an unpleasant one.

What I face now, though, is...more unpleasant than usual.

She was beautiful, wasn't she?

He tasted his tea, found that it had gone cold, and, frowning, drank it anyway. It sat like a lump in his stomach, nestled comfortably with his anger and his helplessness.

#

Court convened at eight exactly.

Sandra Vicente summed up her arguments precisely, quickly, with an ease that spoke of a long night of private rehearsal. Solme could detect the overfamiliarity that memorized lines sound of, even when delivered by a competent actor.

"If a decision here has the effect of overturning not only Ms. Taygete's conviction, but also the laws under which she was prosecuted, this will completely eradicate the ability of our planet to conduct elections with rational arguments alone having sway. Mythology, especially the mythology of our ancestors, written over four thousand years ago, can have no possible relevance to an election — a referendum, rather, excuse me — dealing with the apportionment of representative districts."

She shuffled papers in front of her while carefully choosing exactly how much emphasis she should put onto the next few points.

"The referendum referred to throughout this case was held with no further illegal electioneering; the issue passed by fifty-nine percent. Ms. Taygete can therefore claim to have had no effect upon the outcome, beyond shaving a few points from the final tally.

"But by forcing her appeal through all the way to this court, she has made her defiance of the highest laws most clear."

She sat down, then blinked and rose again.

"I ask that the conviction be upheld."

Trying not to look either too confident or too unsure, she sat again.

"Very well," Solme intoned. "Mr. Loma?"

Alphonse Loma, who had been listening with care, wiped his hands upon his jacket front and rose. "My client has asked to address the court personally." With that, he sat. Solme considered the statement vulgar, poorly phrased, and of dubious value to today's proceedings. His refused to let his personal antipathy toward Ms. Taygete's case guid him, however, as he wordlessly nodded, silently granting the request.

"Justicar Solme," Catherine Taygete said, her voice clear and stirring. She stood and walked around to the front of the long table behind which Loma waited. Solme noted that she didn't address the court, or the other Justices, but instead spoke to him alone.

"I am a research chemist. I know about 'matter, molecules, motion.' Indeed, that is the title of the textbook I authored on the subject, for undergraduate study. I know science — "

"Ms. Taygete," Solme interrupted gently, "does this have a relevance to the case?"

"Am I restricted in what I may say here?" she challenged, the winning smile never leaving her face.

"In theory, no. I will strongly object to any attempt to filibuster this session, however. You may continue."

"I know science," she said again. "And, while it is the best way in the world for us to begin seeking knowledge, in the end we must return to the true things that came before. Science is the best way to begin, and the worst possible place to stop.

"Science will claim that a man's mind is composed of many tiny brain cells, which together make up his thoughts and dreams." As she said the last word, Solme winced. Taygete saw, and smiled a sympathetic, friendly smile.

"Well, of course it's true, there are brain cells. I've seen them. I know one end of the microscope from the other. But the questions of life and of thought have not been answered.

"Those brain cells cannot explain our higher emotions."

She was oversimplifying, of course, and she was unhappily aware that it was necessary. How deeply into the esoteric concepts of ribonucleic acid and acetylcholine could she delve without alienating Solme? It was for his sake that she lectured, and it was he she must judge as an audience. His attention must be held, even if it involved bending the truth. It was against that possibility that she had arranged for the ruling that set aside the voice-stress analyzer built into Solme's desktop. What she had to say would certainly be misunderstood by him, and today his very life — his eternal life — depended upon his belief.

"There are the baser emotions, hardly worthy of the name: anger, fear, hunger. Everything that lives feels these things to some degree.

"But love, devotion, protection, sacrifice, endeavor; these are things that come from the soul, not from the inert chemicals that constitute us.

"Science can tell us nothing about these things. Certainly, psychology and psychiatry have opened up our ignorance for us. Due to them, we now know what it is we don't know."

Slowly, as she spoke, she walked forward, until by now she stood almost directly before and beneath Solme. Her attitude reminded him of his own when he stood before the goddess of his dream; here, the positions were reversed. The notion filled him with an obscure unease.

As far as Taygete seemed to care, the other Justices, her counsel, her prosecutor might as well not have been present. She paid them no heed; her words were for Solme alone. Her eyes were upon him. He met that gaze, and kept his own expression neutral, but in his mind was the image of a goddess unmovable.

The earnestness shone from Catherine Taygete. Her lively face was eloquent; her hands moved through short arcs, eye-catching, but done without her conscious knowledge.

"Can you imagine your own death? No. No one can. The mind insists on wondering what will happen after. It should be clear that the mind knows more than we would like to admit.

"Science is like a strong searchlight, gleaming up into the sky. But the sky is dark. The light can show us one or two aircraft as they pass through the beam, but there is a sky full of more aircraft than we can see."

"If we can't see them, how do we know they're there at all?"

Taygete gave no sign of the joy she felt at Solme's involuntary question. Certainly, it was a good question; her analogy had been designed to draw it forth.

"Because they drop bombs on us."

Solme started to speak, and found that he could not.

"The mind knows more than we admit, and the soul knows everything."

Solme listened intently, caught up against his will in the web of words Taygete was casting skillfully over him. Her arguments approached the point toward which they had been leading inevitably.

"Leonard Solme, will you let me help you?"

All was silence. Ten Justices in robes black and red, and eighteen intently watching spectators, well schooled in courtroom etiquette, held their peace. Alphonse Loma blinked in distress, and said nothing.

Sandra Vicente, only at this late pass understanding what Taygete was up to, emitted a sharp, "Wait!"

Solme pulled out of the trance that had been dragging him under. Taygete riveted him with her gaze, knowing better than to break contact for even a fraction of a second. The damage, however, had already been done.

The positions had once again been reversed, Solme realized with a flush of fury; he had again been forced nearly to his knees, in a submission no less real for being altogether imaginary.

Slamming his hand down roughly upon the solid wood of the bench, he recalled control of the room to himself. The report was as loud as would have been the clack of the gavel that he disdained. The numbing shock of it braced him. Tongue thick, he announced that the session was closed, and that the hearing was adjourned.

"The Justices will meet at seven tomorrow, to arrive at the decision of this court." His pallid face, trembling hand, and deep-sunken eyes told a great deal about what he now felt.

Catherine Taygete threw Sandra Vicente a brief glance composed of sadness and regret, and of tolerance. More had been lost through the young prosecutor's uncomprehending intervention than she, looking away from the glance, would ever know. Perhaps something could be salvaged from the debacle...

Alphonse Loma took her firmly by the arm and steered her from the room.

Solme, in the rear of the building, shunned the questions that his ten Justices deferentially probed him with; divested of his robe, he left. Although a few of them thought him shamed, some observed that his hurry was not caused by embarrassment.

Dressed now in the formal street clothes that he favored, he found his driver ready for him. Together they made their way to the underlevel parking garage where Solme's austere ground-car awaited them. The address that Solme gave the driver came as a surprise to the latter.

"Are you all right, sir?"

"Drive me to where I ask, please, and ask no questions."

With admirable professionalism, the driver complied.

I was about to say yes, Solme thought grimly. I would have embraced all that she asked me to. My willpower was degraded to that extent. Her means of persuasion are powerful, subtle, and reprehensible. But even without them, I was susceptible to the arguments she presented me with.

I was right; 1 have been deluding myself. The fear of death may not have me in thrall, but it does have a hold on my mind. Reason alone is a flimsy weapon with which to fight emotions from a man's inner core. But reason is all we have. It is the only facility that sets us higher than the gods.

He knew that there was only one thing he could rationally do.

#

That night he slept in a different place, and was attended by another as he dreamed. The dream was the logical culmination of the sequence; he was about to give an answer, when he was awakened.

"What...?"

"Justicar Solme?"

"Yes? Yes...just a minute." He rubbed his eyes and tugged at the unfamiliar bedsheets.

"How do you feel?"

"Very unwell." Blinking, he let his eyes accustom themselves to the blazing lights of the small room. The man that stood before him was tall and straight within his crisp grey and black uniform.

"Well," Solme demanded after a moment, "was I correct?"

"Yes. Your system was flooded with mnemonically coded molecules. Ribonucleic-acid-induced false memories. Simply put, you were drugged, and your dreams programmed."

"When your men went through my home, did they...?"

"They found what you described. The dreams were encapsulated in timed-release dosages mixed with the brand of tea that you favor."

Solme sat up, gingerly adjusting his mind away from the false paths it had been led along. After a moment he could see well enough to read the insignia on the breast of the doctor's uniform.

"A Navy Commodore?"

The doctor nodded. "At first glance, it looked like an attempted assassination, or worse — "

"Worse."

" — so the hospital quietly alerted Naval Intelligence, to track down the facts."

"And what did you find?"

"Exactly as you were already aware, it was Catherine Taygete who concocted your dreams of the past two nights. The RNA was directly from her own brain; the dreams were hers. It's as unpleasantly close to mind-reading — or mind-writing — as I've ever seen."

Solme closed his eyes, and gingerly examined his feelings. It was hard to be certain, but he felt free, now, from the lingering dream-associations.

He looked up at the doctor. "Will it wear off?"

"By now, it already has. The molecules are naturally unstable."

"Will I recover?"

The doctor smiled. "Yes, certainly. Of course, you'll remember those dreams for the rest of your life, probably quite clearly. But you'll be free of the artificial emotional links."

"That's good to hear."

"I would like to know, however, how you knew."

Because I was about to say yes? That's not the reason. If she had come to me privately, and if somehow she had persuaded me to listen to her, she might well have achieved all that she had set out intending. I'm human, and perhaps more foolish than I ever knew. Even now, free of her chemicals, I feel the attraction of what she tried to offer me.

I feel the attraction, and I will not heed it! I will not live my life or die my death bound to the hope of a better world coming after. That false ideal only cheapens this life; the one life I will ever have.

How did I know I was being drugged?

Aloud, he said only, "It has something to do with falling bombs."

The doctor, recognizing the answer as a purposeful obscurity, declined to press for further information. Exacting a mild, doctorly revenge, he offered Solme a glass containing a strong sedative.

Solme took it, and soon drifted off into a deep and free sleep.

#

At eight o'clock on the third day of the hearing, Solme called the court into session. Catherine Taygete had by this time recovered much of her natural optimism. The failure was hers alone, and not the gods'. Loma, standing beside her, strove to appear alert, although in truth his exhaustion and dejection numbed him. He was no longer able to care. Sandra Vicente was puzzled, but hopeful. Of all that had happened, she had heard no more than rumors. Conscientiously, she'd ignored them.

"By a vote of eleven to zero, the court rules Catherine Taygete guilty of the crimes for which she was previously convicted." Solme's voice was loud and firm.

Vicente looked up in surprise. That was unusually strong language for an upholding decision.

"It is clearly stated in the Third Amendment to the First High Charter: 'We do not recognize the right of an individual to achieve exalted status by an appeal to the supernatural.'"

There was more, much more, and all of it was exceptionally strongly phrased. Vicente found herself almost crediting the rumors that there had been an attack upon Solme.

What he said next left her with no possible remaining doubt.

"Catherine Taygete shall not be taken back to Tzoseba for resentencing." His face was serious, his voice heavy. "She has this morning been charged with violation of the stipulations of her license, and with second-degree assault. At another level, she is charged with conspiracy to misuse religious ceremony, and with high treason."

The great hall was totally silent. The journalists present wrote the words carefully into their notebooks, knowing that more complete information would not be forthcoming today. Solme had no use for the press, even to the degree of forbidding any recording devices and cameras in his courtroom.

Vicente frowned, imagining for a moment that her target was somehow eluding her. After a moment's thought, she realized that the more important issue, the question of the legality of Taygete's actions, had been incontrovertibly settled.

Solme brought down his palm heavily upon the bench, signally proclaiming the decision and the hearing closed.

Taygete looked up at him with a wistful smile, a smile that seemed to offer forgiveness and to promise hope. Solme made no sign of recognition. Without sorrow, Taygete surrendered herself to the Sergeant-at-Arms.

"Thank the gods," Vicente whispered, and there was no real reverence behind the words.

#

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Parke: This is not germane.

Solme: Existing laws will have to serve.

Parke: It's only that... We don't want to be here all night. We've got material to cover, and tomorrow is the last day of the year. I'd hoped to be home, myself. I feel...well, the Justicar will forgive me if I confess to a premonition... It seems to me that the new year will be different than any we've known before. It seems to me that events are breaking, once and for... Secretary Wallace.

Wallace: Yes?

Parke: My agenda lists your report to be next.

Wallace: Ahem. Yes. The money supply and other Treasury information

8:10

is in my official report. None of that need concern us. The fluctuations... Well, the only important item was the problem we had with diverted funds, out near the Octivigan border.

Vissenne: 'Diverted funds' is the most kindly euphemism I've yet heard for piracy per se. Can you explain this abstract delicacy?

Wallace: It was not piracy. I have to make that clear. The distinction is as vital, and yes, as imaginary, as the difference between violating a nation's neutrality and invoking the right of angary against them. From one point of view, the difference vanishes. From another, it is essential.

Vissenne: You could probably make treason sound legal.

Wallace: You won't anger me, Antonin. I'm too tired. The new year is upon us. We rule over an empire —

Vissenne: Am I expected to object? I do so. We are no empire.

Wallace: Empire with a small e. And I suppose that even that is unacceptable language.

Solme: If you are calling the Concordat of Archive an empire as a specific type of political entity, you are not only speaking improperly, you are violating the law.

Wallace: I'll make my point. The Sonallan race has been our primary antagonist since we encountered it. They're our opposite in every sense worth mentioning. We're egalitarian; they're monarchists, with an extensive nobility structure. We're carefully state socialist; they have the ultimate laxness of a free-market 'reflex' economy. We plan ahead; they react. We elect our leaders...save for we six members of the Praesidium, where appointment is theoretically determined by the qualifications of the nominees; the Sonallans have a hereditary King. We've hurt them as much as they've hurt us. They've instigated rebellions, deliberately, while we gave them the painful example of a purely evil society — in their view — that is ahead of them in every respect. The war that we fought with them six years ago proved only that we were stronger, but not that we were better. Now, if they've got us all stirred up ideologically, you can be sure they're at odds with each other also. That was the reason for their schism, for the huge segment of their empire splitting away to become the independent Octivigan sphere.

Vissenne: I won't take the time, now, to correct you. Consider yourself wrong in every important detail that you've misrepresented to us.

Wallace: As a diplomat, Antonin, you'd make a very serviceable gardener. I sometimes wonder... The Octivigan leaders hate us, and have worked against us. Some of that came into play during the recent contretemps involving the diversion of funds.

Vissenne: Piracy.

Wallace: Whatever you insist. The Octivigan border, that we've never agreed on and now never will, was so close nearby that I could only wonder. Was the...piracy...being instigated by them, or were they simply the recipients of the loot, albeit willing accomplices after the fact? I needed to know what their role was.

Vissenne: What you found was affected by what you sought. You do see, don't you? You didn't leap to conclusions; you caused conclusions to leap to you. You compared it to the right of angary, of a nation to preempt the use of a neutral nation's strength before it is used against them. I'm the Foreign Secretary; I have to deal with the Octivigans as a sovereign nation. Why did you have to drag them into it at all?

Redmond: Are you upset because he made your job more difficult?

Vissenne: No...

De la Noue: Or because a military solution was made inevitable? You like to ask me, Secretary Vissenne, if I've started any new wars lately. Have you stopped any?

Vissenne: I see that the 'Thermonuclear Pacifists' have gotten together to compare notes. When facing nations whose interests lie in thwarting your own, you don't go drawing lines. I only wish that you could have developed a face-saving formula that would have allowed the people who were backing the pirates to disassociate themselves from the crime, so that de la Noue's war wouldn't have been necessary.

Wallace: I never intended to start a war...

De la Noue: You didn't, James. Most certainly, you didn't.

Vissenne: Granted. He never pulled the trigger. He merely charged, loaded, and primed the cannon, and handed you the already-lit fuse.

De la Noue: Secretary Vissenne, if you —

Parke: Um, please, if we could —

Vissenne: Is slander out of order?

Solme: You well know that it is.

Vissenne: Fine. Not having been ruled out of order, I can't have slandered anyone. All I resent, Secretary Wallace, is the linkage of causes. Couldn't you have left each cause independent? Couldn't you have left the blame alone?

Wallace: I looked into that.

Vissenne: Yes, it does make my job harder. But it's such a small matter compared to...

Wallace: I may have postponed a war. I may have hastened one along. I don't know. Will you accept my report, Antonin?

Vissenne: I...accept your report.

#

The Damnable Price

With a shock, James Wallace was startled from his slumber. In the darkness of his cabin, the gentle chiming of his intercom called softly to him, asking for his attention. Where was the switch? After a moment he found it, glimmering, a cool pinpoint of light in the enveloping blackness. It danced before him, seeming, surely, to move. It hovered. He believed in it.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Secretary, we've found them." The voice of his executive aide, Gwen Valentine, was tense, and Wallace understood.

"Finally," he said, and his voice sounded thin in his ears. Fumblingly, he threw off the last, lingering chains of entangling lassitude, and stood and struggled into a fresh uniform. The artificial gravity of the baitship Watchdog felt almost as solid and convincing as true gravity. It was difficult, for a moment, for him to adjust to the fact that the ship was still some eight million kilometers from the nearest world. A twinge of pain in a pulled muscle reminded him to slow down. He couldn't remember when he'd overexerted that arm; he couldn't remember the last time his heart had raced as fast as it was now hammering. Easy, James, easy. It won't do any good to go bursting onto the bridge in a flaming hurry. Show some form.

He combed his hair into place by feel, and slid open the cabin door. His hair, deep brown, cut short, was paling slightly at the temples. Would it be grey soon? Pushing the thought away, he emerged to blink awkwardly in the sudden bright light of the corridor.

Moments later he entered the forward command bridge from its port doorway, unconsciously stiffening his spine and gait. The orderly attitudes of the several officers standing about reassured him, and he took his time looking around the room in approval.

Captain Sims stood off to one side, only turning away from an operations console when Gwen looked up at Wallace's arrival. The two crossed the small, semicircular room to greet their superior.

"Hello, sir," Sims said casually. "We're pretty certain that this is what we've been looking for." He cut a dramatic figure in his trim uniform, standing gaunt and tall in the cool indirect lighting of the bridge. He sported a moustache that seemed to gall him, for he was forever tugging distractedly upon it. His eyes were a friendly liquid brown.

"An unmarked ship," Gwen amplified, tossing in the details that Captain Sims seemed unwilling to supply for Wallace. "It has its identification transponders cut out, and it's radar-blacked, radiation-shielded, and heavily armed. Our advanced detection package caught it easily enough, though."

Wallace nodded, trying not to let his eyes linger overlong upon her face. He appreciated that face, sharp, lively, intelligent. He was coming to the conclusion that he was infatuated with her. She was of medium height, slimly proportioned, agile, and strong. Her reddish hair was unconfined. She returned his gaze without apparent recognition of the scrutiny he gave her, but a charming light was in her eyes.

"Very good, then," he said, drawing his mind forcefully back to business. "Now we'll see how good our disguise is."

"It's the best, sir," Sims said happily. "This Watchdog is one marvel of a ship. Naturally, I've not alerted the planet below — "

"Since that would alert our mysterious friend as well."

" — And in any case, they can't have a ship on this vector in less than two hours."

"I assume that our shadow has our course well matched?"

Gwen answered. "With precision. I expect the attack very soon, Mr. Secretary."

Captain Sims nodded his agreement.

"Let them have the first move, then, and be prepared to hit them, adequately hard. What world is it that we're approaching?"

"Nimmerwelt, sir. This is where Birkenlines cargo flight Tendaly-Nimmerwelt-455 disappeared."

"It was a mistake for them to remain here for a repeat performance, then," Wallace said, and nodded.

James Wallace, forty-eight years of age, Secretary of the Treasury for the Concordat of Archive, felt strongly optimistic about the upcoming operation.

He was pleasantly aware of Gwen's nearness as together they looked over the data-screen displaying the characteristics of the foe that stalked them. Almost, he put his arm around Gwen's trim waist; startled by the impulse, born of what source he couldn't name, he moved slightly aside. Gwen followed, her hip against his, as she gazed professionally at the readout.

"It's the equivalent of a Navy Destroyer. Fairly respectable. They can't know that we're aware of them, though." Her voice was always gentle to Wallace's ears. He wondered abstractly if he would be better off with another aide. Keeping his emotions level in her presence was sometimes difficult...

"We're better armored than they can possibly guess," he said, his voice sounding odd to himself. He cleared his throat. "The loss of Birkenlines flight 455, being as it was a Treasury shipment, was regarded more seriously by the Praesidium than I may have mentioned before."

Captain Sims said carefully, "I had wondered how high-level the involvement was..."

Wallace turned to him. "Piracy. It should sound ludicrous. But if they know how to catch Treasury couriers, then they have a way of making it profitable. Bank-plates and verifiers from the missing flights have turned up on the Sonallan rim. I've come to suspect that there are still some would-be empire builders out there." He did not add his thought, Empire builders upon whose side, though?

"And it's they who are attacking our shipping? I suppose that it's possible, but is it likely? Mightn't it be no more than a shipload of marauders on their own?"

"It might be, of course. As you probably know, we of the Praesidium are prone to seeing conspiracies behind every act that comes to our attention."

Gwen objected. "I hope you aren't questioning the wisdom of the Praesidium." She overrode his interruption. "Even if you are a member, it's not good to say such things. If we can't trust our leadership, who can we trust? Whatever interpretation you put upon these events is certain to be right."

Wallace looked at her, seeing her bright eyes and all-too-serious expression. He had failed in his training of her if nowhere in her makeup was there any realistic portion of cynicism. Belief in the wisdom of the government's leaders was a very noble ideal, but only if tempered with the recognition that those leaders were human. He looked for a moment longer at her wide blue eyes and shoulder-length auburn hair. He felt very human indeed.

#

The Watchdog, antipirate baitship, falsely identified by its doctored transponder as the Thrysis-188, appeared in the viewscreen of the fast-closing marauder Laughing Jack as a slow-moving, clumsy merchanter, unarmed and unarmored. It was closely watched by Daniel Pietrs, the Jack's incongruous and affable Captain. Helpless or not, he thought, the crew of the doomed merchantman would likely find some way of marking their killers before dying themselves. He was determined to thwart this.

Pietrs stood, his slim frame dressed in the remnants of a faded Navy dress uniform, his glory of tan-gold hair hidden beneath an old desertman's kepi. He admitted that the outfit was an affectation; fond of it nevertheless, he retained it, and it lent him a visibility that he shamelessly enjoyed. He was twenty-two years old; it was his drive, rather than his quickly mounting experience, that held his crew's intense loyalty. A small man, he stood upon the busy bridge with an insolent ease. His short nose was upturned, and his lips were full. Even when, in quiescence, those lips relaxed, they retained an easy grin; awake, his impertinent smile and piercing eyes made mock of all things. Today his expression seemed joyous as he exulted in expectation of his next kill. Even through his huge cheer, though, his eyes and mouth mocked the triumph, dismissing it, marring it. It was nothing special, he seemed to be saying silently; it was nothing whatever, and he intended to wring all the pleasure he could from it despite this.

Perhaps the ship should be known as the Laughing Jack IV, he smiled to himself. Three previous versions of the low, needle-formed corsair had been wrecked beneath his feet. Wrecked, maybe, but not captured. Each time, he had taken his quarry with him, capturing his enemy's ship and piloting it to his well-hidden base. The old versions of the Laughing Jack he had destroyed without compunction, knowing that his sponsors back in the Octivigan worlds would resupply him. Each time, the new ship was better than before.

This Laughing Jack had heavy beam turrets and recessed missile launchers — weaponry enough to take on the largest of unarmed merchantmen, plus whatever light escort might be along. He let large convoys alone, regretfully, for although he knew his ship capable of winning even an uphill fight, he carried munitions plentiful enough for only a few firings of his most deadly weapons, his missiles. The ship was built as a raider, not a warrior. It was equipped with the best in detection-avoidance systems, from an absorbent coat of black, black paint to a radar-fooling electromagnetics pod that would be the envy of a Navy Heavy Cruiser.

Pietrs didn't care. He leaned negligently against a navigation console and rested his chin on his fist, watching the bridge crew from this easy attitude. What would the lumbering Thrysis be most likely to do in its own defense? Pietrs' ship could easily stay out of the way of its gravitic engine-wake, which was only a feeble weapon in any case. Clearly the ill-tuned wreck had no weapons turrets showing; equally clearly, that target ship could never outrun or out-maneuver the nimble Jack.

Pacing a tight pattern, Pietrs asked in a voice loud and pleasantly tenor, "Ronson! What range?" Impatience clawed at him, impatience that strict effort kept hidden from his men.

"Missile range one, sir." Ronson held his eyes to the small viewscreen before him.

"Prepare to fire — oh, I don't know. How about three missiles?" Pietrs laughed; the eight men on the bridge cast half-amused glances at each other. Their Captain might do things by pure guess and by dead reckoning, but he always won his battles.

"Sounds good, sir." Ronson talked by keyboard to the fire-control computer.

"Engine room selective, as always. I don't give a darn about the crew, but the cargo is sort of important to us,"

"Yes, sir. Do you want us to fire a crew-killer?"

Pietrs' grin leveled for an instant. A crew-killer was an enhanced-radiation warhead that would flood the target ship with slow neutrons. It killed people, but left the cargo intact. "Oh, what the heck. Sure, fire one of those, too,"

#

Accelerating easily inward toward the slowly rotating planet of Nimmerwelt, each of the two ships played the role demanded by its captain. The invisible marauder moved in on its target like a man-eating deep-sea crayl, its only thought murder. The disguised baitship, looking terribly vulnerable, pushed leisurely toward port, seemingly unaware of its pursuit. But the Watchdog wore fifteen compact layers of ceramic-sandwich armor beneath the false hull that it showed to any watcher, and mounted behind a breakaway bow was the louvered firing aperture of a heavy missile bay.

Aboard the Laughing Jack, the boarding party of fifty hardened rogues suited themselves in mismatched pieces of body-armor. The tight-fitting scraps of chainplastic were hung every which way from homemade web belts and bandoliers. These men, knowing that their Captain intended firing crew-killer missiles, expected no surviving resistance to their eventual boarding. Going in unprepared, however, was a folly that Pietrs would not allow. The men prepared.

On the Watchdog, fifteen Concordat Marines, drawn from the 54th Guards Division, accoutered themselves in a precise, orderly fashion. They donned uniform outfits of close-fitting ballistic plate, a flat pastel green in color, and final-checked the actions of the S.L.A.P.-guns that elite Marines favored for action in defense of a ship. Captain of Marines Randolph Kinross looked them over.

Long had the stern Captain argued for more troops on the innocent-appearing baitship. His every point had been countered by Secretary Wallace. Since they would be liable to a surprise attack, Wallace insisted on building the ship with all the armor that could be crammed into the limited space, and upon packing what space remained with gravitic and anticoncussion protective-field generators.

Wallace had his way, of course. When a member of the Praesidium suggested a method, the most that anyone else could do was obey with alacrity. Kinross remembered his repetitious, fruitless arguments with some satisfaction, however. Wallace had at least listened before going ahead with what he had intended from the first.

Well, Kinross had fifteen Marines, good men and women all, from a tough fighting division, and he knew that greater victories had been won with less.

In minutes, the fifteen were waiting in specially built niches, where a steady anticoncussion field cushioned them against the impact of enemy missile fire.

Kinross had every expectation that his troops would never be needed. Too canny to be beguiled by over-confidence, he once again reviewed his preparations. "Lance Corporal. Come here."

Lance Corporal Archer stepped smartly forward, suited all in pastel green combat armor save for his bare head. He was very young, very bright, very blond. One gauntleted hand cradled his thick helmet; with the other he snapped a salute.

Kinross spoke rather more at him than to him. "We'll feign ship's death, and let them board. This hatch, floor fields on. Zero-G combat would be to our advantage, but it increases the area we'd have to defend. Clear?"

"It increases casualties, sir," Archer said, as if it were something he knew from experience rather than as a textbook maxim.

Kinross permitted himself a tight grin. "Theirs, too, lad. And Marines are nothing if not killers." His expression reverted to a stern neutrality. "Issue the ammunition."

#

Four sleek missiles leaped from firing vents on the Laughing Jack's flank. Pietrs watched with open humor as the defenseless merchantman tried vainly to outmaneuver the flashing darts. Four long minutes would elapse before the target was struck; already, the cargo ship ahead was sending a hysterical message to the world below, begging for help.

The Laughing Jack's radioman failed to notice the coded message subtly woven within the more clearly audible plea. The officials of the world were soon apprised of the fact that the Treasury Secretary was springing his trap. Slowly, too slowly, two Light Cruisers left their orbits of routine patrol and began accelerating toward the scene of the impending attack. Their arrival, even under full power, would be hours too late. But their commanders knew the truth of the strange situation above them, and prepared not for combat, but to mop up after a one-sided victory for their side.

#

"Shall I match courses, sir?" Ronson asked of the cruelly grinning Pietrs. The target, ripe for plucking, was driving hard, putting useless kilometers between itself and the supposedly unseen force that had launched the missiles. The impact of those missiles was utterly inevitable; human nature demanded that the merchantman's pilot strive for an impossible escape.

"And throw us about like skittles? Wait until they have no engine room, and then we'll move in at our leisure."

Ronson frowned, keeping his displeasure to himself. That would add another four minutes, he judged, to the final time elapsed before they could board the then-dead merchant. Seconds counted in operations of this type, and yet Pietrs insisted upon an altogether miserly conservation of the ship's impressive power. Another glance at the projected courses of the hard-driving Cruisers gave Ronson the assurance he craved, however, and with an abstracted nod, he put the Jack into the smoothest of pursuit curves.

Perfectly in accordance with the plans of all concerned, the three standard missiles impacted upon the rear portion of the Watchdog, while the neutron warhead detonated itself with a cool, brief display of incandescence. The standard missiles gouged away large sections of the target ship's false hull, revealing the artfully sculpted hollows beneath, which looked for all the world like impact craters. Slow neutrons and high-energy particles alike were absorbed by the first layer of ceramic and plastic armor. The ship's acceleration, transverse to the approach of the missiles, died, leaving the seeming wreck drifting slowly away from the world.

The people aboard were not inconvenienced in the slightest.

#

"All according to plan, sir," Sims said quietly to Wallace. "They were no more than conventional explosives, so our wounds might appear a bit too large, but if so, it won't be by much. We eased into a drift rather convincingly, I think. Because of their enhanced-radiation warhead, they must certainly think us all dead."

"How much radiation exposure did we take?" Gwen asked.

"Not a millirem. Fifty times the warhead wouldn't have given us any more, either. When we armor a ship..." He let the cliché pass. He still felt proud of the precisely deceptive cessation of maneuvering that left the ship with the appearance of a drifting corpse.

"If their spies are tapping the channels I think they are," Gwen said expectantly, "they'll think that our cargo is an unsecured load of bank-plates."

She seemed so competent, so efficient. Wallace found himself wondering why he was along. Surely it was not merely to be near her?

I've missed something in my life. And I'm not sure whether I'm here for the danger, or just to be away from my offices for a time.

This threat, these marauders: How serious can they be? At most, they might claim a fraction of one per cent of the Treasury shipments that pass through even this limited zone. Is it merely my perfectionism that makes me see to this so personally? Gwen could have handled the operation without my direct assistance.

I probably should have let her.

Closer in, the black marauder was still invisible to the normal spectrum; the subtler detection scanners peeking from their narrow apertures around the ship saw the predator indistinctly, as a shadowy shape against the stars. It neared.

The two ships mated together under the control of Pietrs and his bridge crew. Exterior airlocks came against one another, sealing themselves to Pietrs' will.

Pietrs was the first aboard the target ship that he thought was helpless and unarmed.

"Surrender!" called Captain of Marines Kinross into the confidently milling crowd of boarders.

"Of course not!" Pietrs snapped, and without a moment's further thought plunged forward into the midst of the waiting Marines. He was meters ahead of his startled and unprepared boarding party when he dove among his foes; with a terrible uncertainty, Ronson knelt and began to fire his laser carbine into the mass of what he recognized with a thrill as Concordat Marines.

The party behind Ronson either took to cover or desperately joined him in sending scintillant laser bolts into the dense ranks of the enemy. The hollow slam of the Marines' weapons echoed in even volleys; at each resounding crash, two or three marauders dropped.

But among them, dancing between his heavily armored foes, Pietrs swung the stock of his laser carbine with dramatic effect. None of the Marines could fire at him, in their midst as he was, without fear of hitting a friend; in their heavier armor, they seemed unable to match his darting agility. He wasn't dealing them any casualties; he hadn't as much as floored a single one of them. That wasn't his intention. By distracting the ordinarily more efficient Marines, he was giving his own men a fighting chance to take out the heavily armored soldiers. He had seen the green shoulder sleeves on the troops, signifying elements of an elite Guards unit; he saw the twin white stripes along the epaulet of their leader: a Captain.

A thick combat knife swiped the air near his unprotected face. Someone in the mob knew about hand-to-hand fighting. He ducked back, into the arms of another soldier, anonymous behind his light green armor and helmet mask. It was only the effort of a moment to wrench free, a moment lost, however, when time counted against him.

The firefight became intense. Under protection of a furious barrage of red-sparkling laser fire, the mass of Pietrs' troops, led by a madly firing Ronson, charged bodily into the Marines. Pietrs saw, as he wrestled loose from another hastily applied armlock, that his force had lost nearly a third of its number, while the Marines were down only two. Staccato cadences of S.L.A.P.-gun discharge rippled twice, after which any range of fire became as dangerous to friend as to foe. With a disconcerting unison, the Marines lowered their guns and drew great heavy-hilted fighting knives, which they began to apply with horrid precision.

The marauders, twice-decimated within moments, fell back in poor order and took to planting close-range laser shots into the packed Marines. The Marines, grimly, cached their knives, pulled up their guns, and gave back half the fire with twice the effect. Too late the knowledge returned to Ronson: Those helmets had a radio-link built in; the Marines were in perfect command control, while no shout he could have mustered from his gasping throat would have carried over the din that resounded heavily from the laser-scarred walls.

Heavy fire sang past his face; he saw Pietrs nimbly ducking about behind the Marines' barricade. A gun snout was leveled at the lone Captain's head, in line with his tip-tilted kepi. Ronson blindly fired his laser carbine at the offending Marine, who, although unharmed, gave his attention back to the main firefight.

Again the marauders surged forward, ready to follow their Captain further into the ship. Surely for all their trouble, they should be allowed a share of whatever valuables were aboard, so heavily defended. The Marines' resistance held firm, however, now that the distracting presence of the deft Pietrs was gone. Captain of Marines Kinross, firing from a braced rest, snapped an order for Archer to follow the maddening fugitive, lest he cause further havoc somewhere in the ship's vitals. He then devoted his attention to preventing a repetition of the breakthrough. The opposition was losing heart; only their body-armor, scanty though it was, had kept them in the fight this long.

#

James Wallace, on the command bridge, watched the firefight from the vantage of the transmitted picture from Kinross' helmet monitor. Although uneven, swinging rapidly with Kinross' movements, the view of the holding action was clear, its nature obvious. The boarders would have surrendered at the first, had it not been for the impetuous charge of their leader. Now, with only one Marine in pursuit, that leader was loose on the Watchdog, free to do whatever damage his quick mind might suggest.

"Handweapons?" Wallace asked of Captain Sims.

Sims absently patted his sidearm; swallowing, he suggested that he could go for more.

"And travel alone in the corridors? He'd stumble on you without fail." Wallace watched the firefight begin to wind down. I'm helpless here, damn it. What's wrong with the surveillance system?

Startled, he realized that he hadn't ordered it up. How forgetful will they allow me to become before they retire me?

"He'll either head here, or back to the engine room," Gwen muttered. She eyed the door nervously, and gasped and turned a shocked white as she saw the breathless figure of Pietrs come darting through.

"Hold it, everyone," Pietrs gasped triumphantly. "I have no wish to — "

Sims tried to draw and fire his sidearm; Pietrs was incalculably faster. Two angry red wounds appeared on Sims' face and thigh. Two thin plumes of smoke rose from the scars etched into flesh and clothing. Afterimages danced, dazzling, before the eyes of the unprotected bridge crew, confusing their sight of Sims slipping loosely downward, eyes clenched tight against the pain he was beyond feeling.

Wallace knelt to examine him. Pietrs whirled, taking in the stunned bridge officers, all of whom had started to their feet, there to freeze. Gwen looked away.

"Will he live?" Pietrs' question, tossed back over his shoulder to Wallace, was strangely concerned.

"No." Wallace straightened slowly; Sims' pistol was stuck through his belt, behind him where it couldn't be seen. Pietrs looked around at him, a question on his face, his smile a sorry one.

"No," Wallace repeated. "He's quite dead." Before him, images of Sims' wounds hovered, sickening to his mind's eye. Nothing would bring Sims back; not all the prayers in the cosmos nor all the hopes of all those who fiercely yearned for the return of their own lost ones. For a moment Pietrs met Wallace's gaze, and it seemed that they shared, in that passing instant, the awareness that this was, somehow, surreally wrong. No one should die. Not for this. Pietrs and Wallace looked upon one another as upon themselves...then the roles that fate had cast them in reasserted control. Wallace became again the older, shrewder, more contemplative and officious one. Pietrs was the young and active one.

"Which of these is your computer?" he asked, having already forgotten Sims and Sims' death.

Wallace had no intention of answering; Pietrs merely followed Gwen's unguarded gaze.

Pietrs pumped eight rapid laser bolts into the metal and plastic front of the panel. With a quiescent and subdued sputter of fused components, the computer terminal slumped into ruin.

Does he know that the computer itself is below, cased in an armor sheath? Does he know that there is another terminal in our engine room? Wallace's silent questions were answered, indirectly, by Pietrs' next words.

"And now that I know you can't follow me — " he began; Lance Corporal Archer arrived, took a firing stance in the doorway, and discharged his S.L.A.P.-gun at the figure of his quarry, who stood motionless in the middle of the bridge.

Three harsh, flat reports slammed. The Marine waited for a moment to gauge the results of his fire. Pietrs was staggered by the impact of the heavy, fragmenting shards, which burst forward into his armored chestplate with a horrid clang. Neither it nor he was penetrated. His response took the better-armored soldier unawares; Archer pulled back from the rapid succession of laser flickers that were scattered in his direction. The Marine's pastel green armor was scored, revealing the darker green of the antilaser intermixture that edged the deep cuts. Braced, steady, the Marine gave back fire for fire. The bridge crew had scattered for cover at the first exchange; Archer felt little concern for them, although some of them were near to his line of fire.

Shrapnel, breaking down in flight into smaller and smaller shaped-charge fragments, hurtled in bursting gusts from the wide muzzle of his gun, tearing away large portions of Pietrs' armor. From the black muzzle of Pietrs' laser carbine, bright scarlet flickers, thread thin, scintillant, leaped to the pull of his trigger finger.

All at once, he moved, realizing at last that his makeshift armor could not be depended upon as fully as could the Marine's military armor. Already blood coursed down the side of his face from a heavy gouge at his temple. Unnoticed by him, another shearing fragment had bitten deeply into his left calf.

Wallace seized the moment, and pulled up the sidearm he'd taken from Captain Sims' corpse. Aiming quickly, he let fire. His unfamiliarity with handguns hampered his aim; the round spun into Pietrs, staggering him, yet failing to harm him significantly.

Pietrs whirled about to meet this new attack, an expression of deep hurt and betrayal upon his face. He began to raise the laser carbine for a quick revenge, then dashed forward, brought the barrel down upon Wallace's hastily upthrown forearm, scooped up Gwen from the alcove she'd sheltered within, and made an almost leisurely retreat through the far door. Archer of necessity held his fire; any round fired would be far more likely to kill the hostage than to injure the foe even slightly.

Wallace, from a better vantage and angle, aimed low and fired again. Again his aim was off by a hair. The bullet ploughed into the padding in Pietrs' lower-body armor; Pietrs gave it no heed as he vanished.

Archer disappeared from his doorway to give pursuit down the parallel corridor, hoping to intercept Pietrs before he could try to rejoin his men.

Pietrs was nowhere to be seen.

Flipping his helmet radio to its backup channel, Archer tried to raise Secretary Wallace for information. Wallace, it seemed, was on the tactical channel with Kinross. It wouldn't have done him any good anyway, Archer thought grimly, looking about him. With the bridge computer out, Wallace wouldn't be able to pinpoint the fleeing enemy in any case.

A happy thought occurred to him. On the backup channel, he signaled for and raised the two-man crew barricaded in the engine room.

"Engineering. Barrie."

"This is Archer. Is your computer operational?"

Barrie sensed the urgency in the query. "Yes."

"Hook up corridor surveillance and tell me where the fugitive is. A man in a cap, with a female hostage."

A tense moment passed by. Archer fumed at his inability to act. A single step in a wrong direction would be worse than his waiting motionless, here where his field of view was unobstructed down four corridors.

"He's in the starboard forward EVA room, suiting up." Instantly Archer was in full flight down the corridor leading forward. As he ran, his heavy boots pounding the ringing deck-plates, he keyed his radio to the tactical channel.

"Captain Kinross?"

"Kinross here."

"The fugitive has damaged the bridge and is trying to flee out through an EVA port. He must be trying to get back to his ship." He didn't speak his thoughts, knowing that Captain Kinross could deduce all he needed. But as he ran, Archer thought. Extravehicular activity is impossible without a suit. A suit takes time to get into. Will he take the time — time he might not have — to get his hostage into one also?

Kinross responded, finally, over the radio-link. "When he gets back to his ship, we won't be aboard it. They just withdrew, after suffering heavy casualties, and they were able to seal the lock from their side."

"Archer out."

He arrived at the doorway to the airlock, where a red light flashed angrily. The exterior door was gaping and braced, with some heavy object wedged in the runners. The interior door had no intention of letting itself be opened.

Archer felt otherwise. Flipping aside an emergency override panel cover tripped a strident alarm bell; twisting an oversized, T-shaped handle and dragging it forcefully outward blew the entire airlock assembly, inner door, outer door, Archer and all, bouncing raggedly into the hard vacuum of interplanetary space. Just down the corridor, a heavy blast door slapped itself into place, and sealed the invading vacuum into a no-longer-spreading confinement.

When the great frosted cloud of quick-frozen air dispersed, Archer in his vacuum-tight armor saw Pietrs and his captive, each in a protective spacesuit, jetting briskly across the wide gap between the bows of the two ships. Archer, with no propellant pack, spun lazily away from the gaping rectangular hole in the Watchdog's side. He set the select lever on his gun to single-projectile/semiautomatic; on his next revolution he fired the full magazine of nine rounds. It had no effect other than to imperceptibly alter his gyrations. The long seconds passed. Inside the baitship, Kinross was trying desperately to plant a demolitions charge against the securely locked port; Archer listened to the progress of this task, wondering if they would be in time.

Then the gravitic wake of the suddenly departing marauders' ship tumbled him about haphazardly, doing no damage other than to his dignity.

Helpless, he drifted, patiently spinning heels over head, waiting for someone to take the time, in a spare moment, to pick him up before his air ran out.

The wait was not overlong, and weightlessness was something a Marine comes to be familiar with.

#

Gwen, in her ill-fitting vacuum suit, felt the blows of the small projectiles as they impacted upon the young man who bore her in his arms. The armor beneath Pietrs' suit absorbed the damage; the suit was holed despite this, and air misted out in curdling jets of pale vapor.

Now, he was helpless. She struggled, straightening her arms between herself and her captor to hold him away. Stars, everywhere, watched. She hung suspended in the great sphere of the sky, moving her feet reflexively as if that would somehow alter her motion. Behind her, the curved flank of Pietrs' Laughing Jack loomed, filling half the sky. She bumped into the icy infinite mass of it. Pietrs grabbed again for her, then doubled over.

Blindly she took hold of him. He straightened, doubled, writhed like a worm on a griddle.

Dying? Suffocating? Gods! He's dying slowly, and still fully aware of his pain. Stop it! Stop —

She couldn't stand it. No living thing can be allowed to suffer so. She hauled on him, pulled him to her, took the propellant pack from him. Firing short bursts, carefully counteracting each small quantum of velocity before it could move them too far astray, she maneuvered them toward a forward airlock. When Pietrs ceased his convulsions, it made the work that much easier.

Seconds passed, each taking too large a fraction of eternity. The lock cycled open. Gwen wrestled them through, swinging solidly to the floor as she came within the grip of the gravity field. Pietrs landed beside her, inert. Dead?

Air gusted in. The inner door slid wide. Men gathered. With what dignity she could muster, she allowed them to lead her away, a captive, a hostage, the one thing of value extracted from Wallace's Watchdog.

#

The pursuit was not close, but it was careful. The Laughing Jack pushed outward with a steadily building velocity, moving constantly closer to a minimum safe jump distance from the planet of Nimmerwelt. The Watchdog followed along a parallel trajectory, keeping in constant touch with the two Light Cruisers that were steadily closing the distance. By the time they arrived within weapons' reach, however, the marauding Jack would be beyond the Rialle-McMirin Wall, the precisely defined limit from within which any entry into jump space was a dangerous risk.

The Watchdog, with its missile bay now clearly revealed on its smooth nose, undisguised by the since-dropped false bow, was fully capable of destroying the Jack, or of disabling it to whatever degree Wallace might desire. But Gwen was aboard, a hostage to Pietrs' safety, a guarantee of his escape.

"Will he jump from within the limit?" Kinross asked.

"Be sure of it." Wallace was exhausted. His burning frustration would not let him rest, however, nor would his fevered conviction that something could, and must, be done.

"I'd suggest, then, that we take his engines out. It seems to me that the risk of a misjump is more dangerous to her than the chance that he'll kill her."

"I hate it like hell, but I have to agree." Wallace's face was pallid, somber.

Then do it now, man, Kinross cried in his mind, hiding his agitation from Wallace.

"There's no other way," Wallace continued despondently. "At least, none that I can think of. But I don't like taking that kind of risk until the last moment."

"What last moment?" Kinross asked. "They could jump now, with only a thirty percent chance of disaster."

"I know that!" Wallace mopped his forehead, although it was unpleasantly dry. "And they're moving away at three steady gravities." He thought a moment.

"From how great a height can a fully outfitted Marine drop?" he asked, a great urgency in his face.

Kinross answered carefully. "On a world with normal gravity, with anticoncussion protection, we do routine drops of ten and twenty kilometers. Are you thinking of dropping us in the path of that ship?"

Wallace, although relieved that Kinross had reasoned ahead of him so swiftly, noted the doubt in the Marine Captain's voice. "That was my idea..."

"Okay, we can do it. We're from a Guards division; we've practiced leap-boarding. How much acceleration can you drag out of this ship?"

"Four gravities."

"Start pulling ahead of them as fast as possible while my troops and I suit up."

"I'm going with you."

"The living, livid hell you are." Seeing Wallace's determination, he took the time to explain, although time was in grievous short supply.

"A ninety-seven per cent anticoncussion-field generator, man portable, masses one hundred and eighteen kilograms. Crash boots and a support suit mass another twenty-eight. Vacuum-tight combat armor: seventeen. Rifle: three. Put that under three gravities." Brutally: "How old are you, sir?"

Wallace's face sank, his eyes weary. "Go ahead, then. I'll see to things from this end. Go! And save her, damn it."

"Yes, sir." Kinross left in a hurry.

#

Pietrs, very much alive, visited Gwen in the cabin where she was held. He breathed deeply, savoring the living taste of air. And he smiled, a smile that would have been too friendly on any face less pleasant than his.

"Who the hell are you?" Gwen let burst.

"Daniel Pietrs, at your service."

"You're lucky to be alive."

"Am I, my lady?"

"You had no air left in your vacuum suit. It had nine holes in it. Only your armor kept you alive. And if I hadn't pulled you through that lock..."

"I'd be dead, and you'd be rescued." Bright eyes flashed. "But you did what you had to do, and so we're here. I thank you."

"You bastard."

"You delightful little thing. I can see I grabbed the right person. A woman for a hostage always carries more leverage than a man. A beautiful woman is even better."

"What do you intend?"

"To begin with, I plan to escape. After that...who knows?"

"Will I be kept as your prisoner?"

Pietrs looked hurt, but only for a moment. "It's either that, or I can kill you. I think I'd hate to do that. It would be such a waste."

Gwen paled, and tried not to show it. His words were so maddening, mocking, while delivered in such a straightforward, unaffected way. She compared his speech with the heavy precision that Wallace had. Wallace always seemed so distant; he seemed to taste everything he said before saying it, to see how it would sound. Pietrs — a clever name, the way he said it — seemed to speak the way he moved, without planning it, just doing it.

While she let these thoughts slide through her mind, she couldn't help noticing how Pietrs watched her. His gaze was frank, guileless, easy and playful. He said nothing, and the silence drew itself out. Gwen felt very alone, here in this cabin with him. His closeness pressed at her, as did his appreciative glances.

"Where are we going?" A random question, perhaps, but she needed to hear a voice.

"I've got a hideaway I work from."

"And when we get there?"

"You'll have to stay. I could ransom you off — " pleasure at the novelty of the idea showed in his face " — but by then, you'd have seen too much. It would be too dangerous. But don't worry. No one will hurt you, and I'll visit you as often as I can."

Although the words were suggestive, even threatening, the way he said it made it sound desirable, as if it were a promise. She almost felt that she was being carried off to be his bride, rather than the price of his freedom.

He watched her think these thoughts, and the way of his watching brought a flush to her cheeks.

"How old are you?" she asked, another random question. This one, however, was one she hadn't meant, quite, to ask.

"Twenty-two, ma'am. And yourself?"

"Thirty-two."

Pietrs' eyebrows rose in evident surprise. Instead of any insincere compliment he might have offered on how good she looked, he said only, "That old?"

It's not old, she thought, an odd mixture of anger and embarrassment again coloring her face. Not like Secretary Wallace. More carefully, she said, "Thirty-two isn't all that old."

Pietrs shrugged, dismissing the subject. To Gwen it seemed that she, also, had just been dismissed. It hurt. For a moment or two she tried to think of ways to redeem herself in his eyes. When the full impact of what she was thinking finally struck her, she blushed heavily for the third time.

Raising her eyes, she saw Pietrs watching her, an intensity upon his face, an irony in his smile. Bravely, she fought to control herself, and not to color again before this daring young man's probing eyes.

"You're rather fun to watch," he said finally. "You are a very interesting person. Why do you serve them?"

"Them?"

"The Concordat. Surely they must stifle you. I've never seen so many rules as they seem to have. I once saw a photograph of a huge library, with stack upon stack and row upon row of books. And all of them were full of nothing but laws. Doesn't that begin to make you tired?"

Gwen, whose training had been in the legal department of the Treasury Branch, felt herself torn between agreement and denial. The laws were necessary, that much was obvious. For the depths of complexity into which a case could become mired, a depth of legal insight and wisdom was needed. But she also remembered her first visit to a law library, and the enormous effort needed to find the one grain of wisdom in the great granary of the law.

"It never seemed to bother me," she equivocated, still wishing to be careful of Pietrs' sensitivities.

"Did you know that Concordat money — when you ever see any — is made of plastic?" Gwen was fully aware of this; Pietrs went on without pausing. "It's not based on gold, or on energy, or even on work. I can't see why it's worth anything at all."

Try to counterfeit some, Gwen thought, and tried not to frown. Money is worth what we say it is, because... I don't understand what his point is.

"How do you get paid?" he asked after a moment, launching headlong into a third, unrelated subject.

"My wages are read directly into my account at the interbank complex."

"So you never see them?"

"I receive a counterfoil..."

Pietrs grinned. "You never see them. You never see what it is that you're being paid. The money isn't real, don't you understand that? The taxes you pay are deducted before you ever receive your flimsy little copy — copy, mind you, not the original — your copy of what they've already done without your permission."

He looked at her for a long time. "Can't you see why I had to become a pirate?"

Gwen was beginning to see, although she would always disapprove.

"I'd hate to think that you were like everyone else," he went on. "People condemn pirates and thieves because they themselves can't be raiders and bandits. I'm here, a free man, with a good crew and a fast ship. I'm my own man. I haven't a boss, a supervisor, a superintendent, a master for gods' sakes. I can go where I want to.

"And wait till you see the base. On the outside, it's nothing more than a dingy old asteroid in the belt around Maleare, but inside...inside, we've fixed it up so that you would be proud to live in it."

He stopped, and thought. "You won't ever be able to leave, but you won't want to. We've got light, and heat, and food; we've got swimming globes and hidden doorways..."

His enthusiasm touched Gwen's fancy, and she wished, for a moment, that she were herself twenty-two again. Sadly she admitted to herself that she was a little beyond the age where secret doorways were a thrill.

And with that, the gulf between her and Pietrs became unbridgeable. She sensed it first, and after a moment, so did he.

Mutual acknowledgment of this fact, if only unspoken, was postponed by the signal from his fighting bridge that the enemy ship was swinging dangerously near. Ronson, on the intercom, was agitated. What the enemy intended was unclear to him.

Pietrs leaned forward and gave Gwen a brief, brushing kiss, his eyes gazing into hers for an instant of forever. Then he was gone, and the door locked behind him.

#

"What is it, you overanxious ass?"

Ronson took this greeting for the harmless hyperbole that Pietrs meant it to be. "They're swinging close — closer each second. I took the liberty of pulling the ship away from their line of approach — "

"You're letting them herd us?" Pietrs exclaimed.

"I had to, or they'd be upon us by now. I don't know what they're trying to do."

"They're trying to cut us off from safe jump distance. They're trying to buy time. Now swing the ship back, so we can get ourselves out of here."

"Yes, sir." Ronson worked carefully with the navigation console's keyboard, deftly entering complex strings of commands. "They're nearing, sir."

Pietrs looked over Ronson's shoulder. "Gods. Do they want to ram us?" He dismissed that possibility without further thought. "They know that they can't match courses with us, don't they?"

"To a degree, they can. They're faster than we. But..."

"But what?" Pietrs' irritation showed in his voice.

"They certainly can't match courses precisely enough to board us, but we can't prevent them from getting ahead of us."

"Ronson, you ass, they can dance circles about us, for all we care. Don't you think they have weapons aboard that disguised warship?"

Ronson didn't understand.

"We've got a hostage. They won't open fire on us, because we'll kill her if they do."

"What if it occurs to them that we'll kill her in any case? What if they decide they have nothing to lose?"

"But we won't kill her; not really. I hope you didn't think that we would." He looked away, eyes dreamy. "I'm growing sort of fond of her. A damned shame she's so old."

"Blast it, sir!" Ronson's outburst pulled Pietrs rudely back from his reverie. "It's not what I think. It's what they think!" He gestured harshly to his instruments. "If they feel they can't save her, they at least know that they can prevent our escape."

Pietrs shrugged. He felt secure in the knowledge that even under the superhuman control of a good computer, no ship could match courses with another that wished to avoid contact. He thought wryly of the enemy's ruined computer, dead with his eight laser bolts through it. The image came to him of the engine room crew guiding the ship by orders relayed from their Captain, who would be standing, braced against shifting acceleration, trying to sight through an optical telescope.

A laugh rang from his lips; Ronson's brow furrowed in consternation.

"Jink about a bit, if you want, Ronson. They can't stop us. Let me know when we reach safe jump distance."

#

Pietrs' humorous image of the makeshift efforts of the crew of the Watchdog was entirely incorrect. From the temporary command bridge set up in the engine room, the ship's computer relay was operating perfectly.

The seemingly battered baitship, guided by its computer, anticipated the Jack's next dodging swing and arranged to be directly ahead of it, moving with the exact velocity required. Had either Pietrs or Ronson been more familiar with the rarely used tactic of leap-boarding, perhaps they could have taken countermeasures.

"They will ram us!" Ronson had time to scream. Before the words had fully left his throat, he could tell that he was wrong. "What...?"

Pietrs spun about at Ronson's shout. The bridge crew sat frozen at their stations, motionless in stunned attitudes.

From the Watchdog tumbled twelve figures, men and women in heavy combat armor, strapped into the confining and hampering packs of portable anticoncussion-field generators.

Less than four seconds after they fell from the Watchdog, itself already swinging wide, they impacted with great force onto the forward flanks of the gyrating Jack.

Captain Kinross felt a dizzying moment of crushing force; the webs of his harness dragged at him, compressing his upper chest until the pressure caused him to black out. As quickly, he regained consciousness, blacked out again, and came to for a final time. Two ribs broken: not bad, he thought, and watched idly as the tiny figures of two of his effectives tumbled away into the emptiness. They'll fall until... A twinge of pain shot through his abdomen. They'll fall until one of the Light Cruisers picks them up. They're lucky. Their suits will take care of them, and they don't have to crawl up this ship to fight.

Inside the ship, artificial-gravity deck-plates counteracted the three driving gravities of the ship's acceleration; here, clinging like a fly to the sheer metal surface, Kinross was dragged down with three times his normal weight, and that thrice again and more from his equipment. He slapped a release plate; the anticoncussion generator, no longer needed, fell away with a ripping of straps. Kinross took stock of his situation.

Hanging like a picture on a wall. The atomic bond of the contact hook from which he clung fastened him securely to the featureless hull. Hanging like an eel in a snare. Seventeen seconds had passed since he had hit the pulsing metal.

He drew loose his climbing hooks, electromagnets with enough contact adhesion to allow him to ascend the gently curved flank.

He monitored the progress of the battle on his helmet radio's tactical band. Already one Marine was inside, holding a landing zone just within the starboard airlock. From his transmission, Kinross was able to pinpoint his own location: just aft and above the port airlock. He set his teeth and climbed.

The airlock, when he reached it, was tightly sealed. He shrugged, a difficult feat in three gravities and a suit of combat armor, a struggle in itself with two broken ribs. From forward, climbing down with gravity helping, came another Marine. It was Lance Corporal Archer, and he had a bomb.

Five seconds to weld it in place. The battle at the starboard airlock grew intense. Three seconds to shield oneself.

The bomb blew, a flat, ringing detonation that could be felt as a resounding slap of hull against armor. An almost graceful parabola of gusting and condensing air blossomed forth. Kinross ducked in.

He slipped a chock in under the steadily descending inner door, wedging it two-thirds open. Air roared past, a typhoon that was unpleasantly audible.

Defenders began to appear, some of them in armor, all of them in spacesuits.

Kinross' Marines had equipped themselves this time with heavy Magnetic Accelerator Rifles, with an armor-penetrating potential far in excess of the standard S.L.A.P. gun. When the fighting was aboard the enemy's ship, no one cared a whit about collateral damage.

Kinross knelt, so as to present the smallest possible target to the fusillade of laser bolts directed at Archer and himself. He thumbed the select lever on his bulking black rifle to full automatic, and quietly, professionally, avenged the three casualties of the earlier firefight. The backblow of the rifle was a satisfying, if painful, jar against his shoulder; he leaned into it as he moved his fire around.

After less than eighty seconds of heavy exchange, the corridor was clear of defenders. The pirates had withdrawn to other parts of the ship. Kinross found himself united with the rest of his soldiers. To his radioed directions, they spread out, probing for any marauders who wished to continue the useless resistance.

Working aft, Archer encountered no opposition. Tearing open an unmarked door, he discovered Gwen, who was almost as surprised as he was, and more alarmed, as the air burst frostily into the unpressurized corridor. He swiftly pulled a rescue bubble around her and turned to defend her against any comers. His "all clear; rescue accomplished" signal was the key for the Watchdog to fire a single standard missile into the Jack's unoccupied engine room. The mighty engines, slowly accumulating energy for the jump, perished utterly; the ship lost headway, to drift with no acceleration. The Watchdog was easily able to match its course.

#

The shooting was not over when Wallace, feeling like a damned fool half his age in a borrowed suit of armor, stumped through the temporary airlock and onto the not-yet-completely captured Jack. The crinkled soles of the thick greave-boots tended to squeak, rubberlike, over the deck-plates; the joints clashed upon themselves with a disturbing subliminal clatter. The visibility through the faceplate was narrow and constrained, like looking down a tunnel. In recent years, Wallace's peripheral vision had been closing in, but he found he liked the helmet not at all.

He found the key to the tactical channel without difficulty, and announced his presence aboard when a clear moment came by. Carrying the clumsy Magnetic Accelerator Rifle cradled in his arms, he tried to follow the path of the fighting.

Rounding a corner, he discovered a six-way intersection of narrow passageways. Across from him, and in two of the other arms, Kinross and his Marines waited, keeping well out of the view from down the forward-leading corridor that was slightly wider than all the others.

"Careful, sir," Kinross said, his voice scratchy over the common radio band. "We've got them pinned down, ahead there."

Wallace sidled closer to the intersection. Experimentally, he pushed the rifle and half his faceplate around the corner.

A cold, instantaneous blur of brilliant red light splashed over his faceplate. The antilaser compound in the transparent plate darkened in response, then cleared. Two more shots flashed inaudibly at him. Without much hope of having any effect, he answered their fire.

The rifle kicked animatedly; the impact spun him almost halfway around. Angered now, not hearing the warning comments thrown to him by Kinross and by Archer, he knelt, aimed, and opened up with a burst of automatic fire.

I'm angry, I know I'm angry, and I think that this is a fine way of showing it. He knew that even if he wasn't hitting anything, his covering fire was forcing the foe to keep their heads down. From nearby him the Marines joined his uneven fire. He let off another burst.

"Up," came Kinross' voice over the command channel. "One, five, take 'em!"

Wallace wasn't familiar with the command code. He ceased his fire. Four of the Marines ducked from their safe concealment and dodged valiantly forward to where the enemy waited. The rest of the Marines leaned out to aim the ugly snouts of their heavy rifles down the hall. They were firing, spitting heavy armor-piercing rounds in fours and tens. Wallace resumed fire, carefully avoiding his Marines.

His Marines. Had he been a younger man, had Gwen not been rescued, had not the fire from his own side been more dangerous right now than that of his enemy, he would have leaped up and charged down that hallway himself.

Rank has its privileges, but among its concomitant responsibilities is the doctrine that the commander must sit safely back, while the subordinate is free to act. Perhaps Wallace had already bent the rule beyond recognition.

How can I wait in sloth while a battle remains to be won? In the command bridge, forward, their young Captain is surely fighting, kneeling in the midst of his men, wielding a weapon. Why am I denied the right to do the same?

He knew the reason. It was the same reason that he had been prohibited from taking the drop with the first wave of Marines. Not because he was too old; that was only the excuse.

Damn it, it's because I'm needed. My life is no longer my own, to be thrown away on a gallant whim. I'm a member of the Praesidium. It was almost with a shock that he thought that, realizing for the first time in years, I'm one of the six most important people in the whole of the Concordat.

Suddenly the entire chase seemed unreal, foolish. Why hadn't he detailed an undersecretary — or an assistant, or a clerk, or a common Navy Lieutenant — to see the raider captured? It was his duty to stay well rooted in the organizational headquarters; it was his duty to maintain the Treasury back on Archive.

He was not a blushing man, but the image of himself kneeling in a corridor, dressed in an outlandish, ill-fitting suit of body-armor, yanking inexpertly on the trigger of a rifle nearly as long as he was tall, left him with an acute thrill of embarrassment. He was making a prime fool of himself.

"All clear," Kinross' voice echoed from the link inside the helmet of each soldier. "Secure the ship. Help me disarm these prisoners."

In the forward control room, where the last marauders had been holding out, a surrender had been negotiated. In the most private portions of Secretary Wallace's mind, another had been also.

#

After their several weeks cooped up in the cramped Watchdog, Wallace and Gwen were relieved to step forth onto the cool openness of the favorable world that was Nimmerwelt. The fresh twilight of their landing saw the two standing close to one another, refreshed, renewed.

"This shouldn't have been my mission." Wallace was well into a swift recovery.

"The Navy, perhaps?" Gwen thought about it. "I suppose they'd have done almost as well."

Wallace had to smile. "Perhaps. But the Treasury Branch needs to maintain its own security. The Navy's job will be to stop the backers of this type of raiding. If this were homegrown crime, a small band of marauders with a stolen spaceship, then it would be my duty to stop them. Being a systematic, foreign-sponsored operation the way this one was, it's my duty to expose it." He laughed, although it sounded forced. "I don't believe in small, privately supported piracy. Raiding requires too much of an initial investment. No, when the Navy raids that base of theirs, I'm sure that the true organizers of the adventurers will come to light. They'll be foreign, and they'll be big." He looked around. "No matter. I'm for a rest."

"Isn't that what you came along for?" Gwen gave him a coy look. "To get away from your office?"

He smiled back. "Piloting a desk is enough excitement for me, I'm afraid. I should have known that before I came along. I will, however, need a good copilot."

"I'm with you, Mr. Secretary." Seriously, "This was more than I was prepared for as well."

"Back, then, to Archive. Back to a kind of freedom."

"Freedom?"

"Freedom to live our lives without the encumbrance of having something to prove. Freedom to be ourselves for a while."

Gwen nodded. "For a while."

Before that could begin, however, there was another duty to perform.

#

Eight weeks later, another twilight, the half-lit twilight of dawn, came in its chill gentleness to Nimmerwelt. A procession of eight individuals marched out from a gate and into a courtyard. One was in fetters.

"You're far from alive, yourself," Pietrs said gleefully to the somber-faced Wallace. "You're not so old, not really. But mortality comes creeping up on you just as it does on me. I've lived, in my twenty-two brief years. I've lived those years fully, pushing myself to every limit. I know what I'm capable of. I know, more completely than you ever will, what I can do."

"I know what I cannot."

Pietrs cocked back his head with silent mirth. "What," he asked after a moment, "can that possibly be worth?"

Wallace looked at him. "It's worth a lot to me. I'm glad for you that you depart happily."

"Oh, hardly that. I guess I also know a few things I can't do." He raised his wrists. "I can't break these links and whip your men to death with the broken ends. I can't close my hands about your neck. I can't..." Again, silent laughter came to him.

Still smiling, he looked at Gwen. "You too. You've changed. For a moment there, sitting on my bunk, I think you loved me. But you've lost that, too. You've lost everything."

Gwen edged closer to Wallace, and said nothing.

"Goodbye, Mr. Wallace. Goodbye, Gwen. I think you both know why I'm happy now. I've been one thing you will never be: I've been free. I've been my own man."

And because it would be the ultimate cruelty, Wallace did not say aloud his thoughts. What we got from your Mr. Ronson suggests otherwise, Captain Pietrs. Do you know who your backers were? Did you ever meet the vengeful aliens, humanoid, humanlike, who live on the Octivigan worlds?

Did you know whom it was you served?

I may be bound, bound by chains tighter than yours could ever be. But I know my loyalties.

The man with the gold sash stepped forward then, and applied the cold tip of the cordula to the center of Pietrs' chest. The trebly fatal dose of narcotics spread instantly into every portion of the young man's body; his brain ceased functioning without ever a final thought.

Wallace watched, unmoved, while the youthful, lithe body slumped limply to the paves. Gwen held more tightly to his hand, which had taken both of hers unconsciously. He gripped back.

They had the rest of their lives together in which to forget.

#

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Solme: Your actions appear legal. I have no complaints.

Parke: But, then, it's all a part of the continuing Octivigan problem. They revolted against their King —

Vissenne: So did we, a few centuries back.

Parke: Yes, well, the Octivigan worlds are taking their ideals in a different direction than we took. They loosened up an almost ridiculously loose economy...

Redmond: They've never gotten beyond the market as the first approximation to an economy. Thus, making the best of a bad thing, they've deified the market... I can't blame them. When you take a free market, and sanctify it so firmly, till it's hidebound and iron-strapped — yet still very, very free — it comes close to a second approximation to an economy.

Vissenne: Ordinarily, how they run their internal affairs would not have concerned any of us. However —

Parke: They made our internal affairs their concern.

8:20

Vissenne: Yes. Part of the "free market" was in ideas, or, more free and less acceptable, in ideologies. Which is not to say that they abandoned the prosecution of heretics; they didn't. There was more open competition among views and beliefs. Again, as an internal problem, if they wanted to splinter themselves into dozens of competing belief systems, it was not our duty to stop them. But so many of those belief systems were built around active proselytizing. Borders have never been considered legitimate obstacles to that sort of thing. All I want to say in this regard —

Parke: There are other items on the agenda in advance of this. Does anyone object if we deal with this now? No one? Very well, Secretary. Continue.

Vissenne: Thank you. The Praesidium is most kind. Best if the matter is over with and forgotten, I guess. Admiral de la Noue?

De la Noue: I'm ready, Mr. Secretary.

Vissenne: You are the Secretary of the Navy. You —

De la Noue: Spare me a recitation of the obvious. You're out to dismantle the fleet. You always have been. I'm not sure that it's sunk in with you that peace always involves a readiness to fight.

Redmond: The truth, no less. Economic strength cannot deter adventurism.

Vissenne: As ever, the Grand Admiral has her forces on ready alert. Redmond, why do you bother?

Redmond: I've found it rewarding.

Vissenne: And you, James?

Wallace: I'd like to be counted with the Grand Admiral, and not against her.

Vissenne: How very loyal of you all. Imperialism needs little more than a power base of this nature. Why you haven't deposed the First Secretary, and set yourselves up as the Triumvirate of Imperiality —

Solme: You are out of order, Secretary.

Vissenne: Ah. Now I've slandered someone. It took me enough time.

Solme: An apology would be in order.

Vissenne: Until one is forthcoming, Justicar, may I suggest that you stand on your head?

Parke: Secretary Vissenne...um...please. I cannot allow...

Vissenne: Allow?

Parke: Countenance...

Vissenne: Perhaps you're misinterpreting the image of the Justicar standing on his head as insulting. The exercise...

Parke: Get to the point, please.

Vissenne: Admiral de la Noue. When the Octivigan worlds sent agents provocateurs into our border regions, were you not under orders? I seem to remember...correct me if I'm wrong... I remember a meeting in which we discussed what your actions would be in the case of encountering any opposition. It seems that you had a rather large fleet on hand.

De la Noue: Five Battleships, two Improved Dreadnoughts, eighteen Heavy Cruisers, twenty-five Attack Cruisers —

Vissenne: A rather large fleet. Facing you was...?

De la Noue: A flotilla of some seventy ships.

Vissenne: None of which was larger than a Light Cruiser, and most of which were Scout size or lesser.

De la Noue: Every ship in that flotilla outclassed any ship in my fleet on the basis of acceleration and agility, and their leadership and command structure were inspired.

Vissenne: Better than yours?

De la Noue: No. I have some very capable staff officers.

Vissenne: Tell us what happened.

#

Escalation

The two Admirals sat, waiting, in the dimly lit conference room aboard the titanic Battleship Phyllida. Both were comfortably advanced into the late portion of middle age; both wore their uniforms with longstanding familiarity. Alike they had dark hair, trim builds, bright eyes.

Admiral Nathan Davis, vice-chief of operations, with the long, rugged face and light brown jacket, glanced at his watch. Unsatisfied with the amount of time remaining until the conference was to begin, he stretched and muttered aloud, "Foreign. The Starfalcon Squadron has to be foreign. And that means it was they who started the local rebellion. They don't just start by themselves, you know."

Admiral Robert Morgan, chief of intelligence, with the round, smooth face and grey jacket, responded without moving, "You're wrong, Nathan."

"You think that the Starfalcons are locals?"

"I didn't say that."

"Well, I say they're foreign. And that would make it an act of war, coming in and supporting a rebellion."

"Yes, it would. But rebellions don't happen without a reason. That squadron may have supported this one, but they didn't start it."

Their Phyllida was one of five Battleships heading the powerful fleet of warships that orbited Khanlendri, chief of the thirty worlds of the Perigadi Sector that had declared themselves independent of the Concordat of Archive. When the worlds chose to demand their freedom, they selected the characteristic method of announcing it: an act of war.

The flare-up was swift. Garrisons found themselves cut off, under siege from the enraged citizens they existed to protect. The rebellion came to be led by those who provided the most organization — organization surprisingly efficient and motivated. Concordat spaceports and ships were taken or attacked, without warning, and the little loyalist sentiment that arose was brutally stifled. Property changed hands, profits were garnered, and the interstellar presence was critically diminished.

The Concordat, in the person of its Praesidium, was quick and unsubtle in its reaction: A war fleet was dispatched under Grand Admiral Jennifer de la Noue. Working inward, crossing the borders of the self-proclaimed free-state, she found Khanlendri protected by a small fleet, privately owned, whose master called it the Starfalcon Squadron. Seventy ships formed it, a flotilla of no great size. It was, however, a substantial and threatening intrusion, easily capable of destroying all life on the world it circled. Most of its warships were medium-sized, agile vessels, subtly alien in line and configuration. Three Light Cruisers, formerly belonging to the Concordat, significantly bolstered the squadron's strength, and provided an alarming clue to the rebellion's weighty consequences.

"The style of those ships — the other ones, not the captured ones of ours — is Octivigan," Davis asserted.

"Which doesn't detract from the validity of my thesis."

"Oh, yes. You'll tell me that the rebellion had 'underlying social causes,'" he japed.

"Why should I?" Admiral Morgan, motionless in his padded conference chair, regarded his operations counterpart. Appearances to the contrary, each valued the other's opinion.

Davis held up his hands. "All right. I'll ask. What started the rebellion?"

Morgan grinned. "Underlying social causes, of course. Mainly economic protectionism. Frontier worlds operate at a disadvantage in comparison to the rich interior sectors. They can't see how the overall economy is so carefully controlled that they're being helped, not hurt, by the artificial trade barriers that they want eliminated."

"Which means all of what?" Davis growled.

"It means that de la Noue has a war on her hands."

"And I as well."

"Yes. You are vital to the execution of any plans."

The unexpected absence of sarcasm in Morgan's voice took Davis by surprise, and silenced the retort that his mind was preparing.

They sat, alone together in stillness, for a time. At five minutes before the hour, the officers began to assemble. The first one in turned up the lights; Davis' and Morgan's debate was forgotten.

On the hour, Grand Admiral de la Noue strode in. She looked about her at the room of high-ranking personages; she saluted and seated herself.

She was young for a Grand Admiral; the upper echelons had been thrice-decimated by the wars of the decade. She was a survivor, uncorrupt, incorruptible, and yet free from the naiveté that would have long since led to her ignominious downfall. She was of a good height, with an alert bright face that spoke of habitual overseriousness, although she knew how to laugh. She was blond, trim, and thoroughly competent.

Silence fell.

"Stopping this arrogant rebellion — sending all naval detachments into encircling garrison orbits — was all I originally intended." She spoke earnestly. "But the Starfalcon Squadron is itself orbiting. We can't destroy them without also threatening the planet, a planet that, rebellious or not, is still one of ours.

"A mercenary squadron, whose strength, added to that of the region, is all that has made the rebellion viable. By selling the services of their warships, they made revolt possible; by refusing to surrender now, they are delaying any settlement, making eventual terms only harder to come to."

"Which could be interpreted as part of the job they hired on to do," Commodore Athalos Steldan said thoughtfully.

De la Noue turned to him in disapproval. "Why do you feel it necessary inevitably to defend our enemies, Commodore?" Her gaze was harsh upon him; the two faced one another with mutual, hurt incomprehension. The remaining officers in the room looked on in silence. Admiral Morgan watched with wry approval as his subordinate bucked tradition in order to make his point. Admiral Davis slitted his eyes in disapproval that approached real anger, incensed at the disrespect cropping up in the newer generation of flag officers.

"It seems to me," Steldan said finally, carefully choosing his words, "that the Starfalcon Squadron is too good, too efficient, well manned, well led, and well prepared for us to be allowed the luxury of disdaining them. I, too, am disgusted by their actions — "

"Which are morally inexcusable," de la Noue interjected.

" — But at the same time, I can only admit that, damn it, they're good."

De la Noue looked at him once more. He was a tall man, with wide shoulders, a wide face, his hair dark above grey eyes. There was always a guilelessness in his expression, an innocence, so convincing that, had de la Noue not known him to be a consummate and creative liar, she would never have been able to believe it. His uniform jacket was grey, although he wore the medical-blue rank-chips of a doctor. He was the most trustworthy liar she knew.

"All right. You've proven that you can find a way to separate your personal feelings from your professional views." She took a deep breath. "For my part, I suggest that that is a luxury I cannot allow myself. I can't afford to compartmentalize my feelings, Commodore." A normal trace of liveliness returned to her speaking tone; her face relaxed into an expression almost of humor. "I can't afford to neglect for one second the full implications of these things we're faced with."

Steldan nodded, giving something like assent. The assembled officers relaxed slightly. Admiral Davis, anxious to return to the Battleship Daphne and his own staff, spoke up, cautiously taking the moment. "Ma'am, the representative from the squadron will be arriving momentarily..."

"Let him wait."

When Grand Admiral de la Noue gave an order with that kind of steel in her voice, Davis knew better than to make subsequent objections.

"Why did the sector choose to rebel?" She continued, speaking firmly to the assembled officers. "Where did it get the funds to hire a mercenary fleet? And where did the Starfalcon Squadron come from?

"I haven't heard a convincing answer to any of these three questions. What I do know is that a foreign fleet with its own integral ground forces is in occupation of one of our worlds, and that they have enough strength to threaten us, here, even with our five first-line Battleships and accompanying fleet. Their very presence makes me angry."

Steldan heard her out. "As close as this region of space is to the border of the Sonallan-independent Octivigan sphere, extreme care is called for in the handling of the stalemate." He would have said more beyond that obvious preamble, but was frozen by de la Noue's evidently expressed impatience.

"Commodore, the proximity of that border has been preying on my thoughts for the entire voyage here from Archive. When I recognized the style of those ships as Octivigan-Sonallan, don't you imagine that thoughts of an invasion came to me first? But that border explains things both ways. If the Starfalcon Squadron is what it claims to be — an independent mercenary fleet bent upon adventurism, not conquest — then Sonallan ships would be the most easily obtained.

"Further, since the Octivigan worlds sheared away from the control of their Sonallan masters, they've been a constant thorn in our sides. That only means that there are too many possibilities.

"The representative from the Starfalcons will be shuttling across soon, probably to place demands before us."

"Grand Admiral," Steldan forced out, "I think that you're too close to the situation to interview him yourself. As a trained interrogator, and as a person who can make the practical distinction between my prejudices and the need for diplomacy — "

"I'm sorry, Commodore. When their representative comes aboard, I, and I alone, will conduct the negotiations with him." Her face was stern, ominous. Then she softened. "All right. I'm angry. I'm too angry with them, certainly, to be able to go in and make them offers. If that's what it takes, though, it will be better coming from me than from you."

Steldan hid his unease. He hadn't expected de la Noue to agree with even a part of what he'd ill-advisedly just said. What she perhaps hadn't yet learned about him — although he felt it to be manifestly obvious — was that he was by nature a word-fighter. It was his greatest liability, as well as one of his stronger assets. And yet, he certainly had to concede that de la Noue could surprise him, almost at will. She, then, had depths that he hadn't spotted yet, and facets he hadn't seen through to. It almost irked him.

"Shouldn't someone go to meet their negotiator — " he began.

"Sit down. I said to let him wait. What I've so far chosen to tell none of you is that we set course for this trouble spot under a set of Praesidium general orders. Ordinarily, I would have had a free hand, but in this case, the Praesidium scraped together a quorum and overruled me. The orders specifically forbid action on my part that would aggravate tensions along the Sonallan border. I'm not to initiate hostilities against insurgent units — including the Starfalcon Squadron. They're included in the prohibition because of the unforgivable inflexibility of the orders' construction; it's a loophole that none of us saw, and which the civilian members of the Praesidium never would have thought of. Only if we are attacked may I return fire. And any actions of any nature that would be relevant to the Octivigan worlds are very strictly forbidden to me."

Do you intend following these orders? Steldan was minded to ask; controlling the impulse, he stood with the other officers as de la Noue stood, and with them saluted her. Gazing about once again at them, she returned the salute, and left to greet the waiting envoy from the Starfalcon Squadron.

#

"Salutations," said the tall, thin, overdressed man that had been sent across from the blockaded squadron.

"Hello," de la Noue dutifully replied. The two looked quietly at each other for another moment, making inward judgements and appraisals.

"I'm Edward Marker. I am the chief legal officer for the Starfalcon Squadron."

"I am Grand Admiral Jennifer de la Noue, Secretary of the Concordat Navy. I represent our Praesidium. For the record, do you operate with the sanction of a government?"

"A government?" Marker gave the notion thorough consideration. "May I be seated?"

De la Noue nodded; Marker levered himself onto the plush chair on his side of the small, featureless table that was the room's only fixture. De la Noue took the opposite seat.

"A government?" Marker said again, trying for a fuller appreciation of the word. "No. I owe allegiance to none other than Commander Ursula Montrose, who owns the squadron." He appeared so utterly unaware of de la Noue's contempt that she could only assume the man to be ignoring it — which gave some little insight into his ability to dissemble. Taking this as a caution, she set herself to try to assess this incredibly officious lawyer more professionally.

"It isn't likely that your Commander is totally nonaligned — " de la Noue began.

"You are seeking data that doesn't exist," Marker said with solemn care. "There is simply no pinning us to a world or to any interstellar government."

"You hired yourselves to the world of Khanlendri without any prejudices, then?"

"None whatever. Had your Concordat offered us more pay — prior to any signing of contracts — we would have gladly joined you in your brutal suppression of the sectorwide revolt."

De la Noue blinked. Beyond the flippant and unrealistic nature of his reply, she received a definite impression that he was lying. "The Concordat does not recognize the right of a private individual to own or to control a military formation; we could never have dealt with you. I also need to point out that only the presence of your squadron gave the sector any chance whatever of succeeding with its revolt. To that degree, you influenced policy."

"Is it a crime for someone with a commodity to actively seek a market? Commander Montrose merely pointed out to the sector's councils, both here and on Khanlendri and at the sector capital on Perigadi, what advantages could be had for a remarkably reasonable fee."

De la Noue gazed into the eyes of the very earnest man. Her distaste for the matter was beginning to color her judgement; with an effort of will she put aside her partiality. Still, the thought of a mercenary fleet, moving hungrily from one crisis zone to another, worsening troubles wherever it appeared by its inherent invitation to escalation, was by its very nature obscene.

"It was a crime. Our ships and installations were fired upon, and only the arrival of my fleet stopped the violence."

"I don't see that we committed any wrong." Marker frowned as he pretended to search through his recollections. "I agree, of course, that our selling our services to a Concordat planet would have been illegal. But Khanlendri had declared its independence before any transactions were completed, and thus was not a member of the Concordat."

De la Noue remained expressionless. That the man could so smoothly put across an evasion so raw was almost amazing. "I'll put it simply. The planetary council was guilty of illegal misconduct when it claimed independence. Your Commander Montrose was guilty of criminal militarism when she agreed to aid them. You, for having helped draw up the contract, are also to blame."

"Then arrest me."

And that was the best that de la Noue was going to get.

Because of the dangerous delicacy of the situation, she had to give true negotiation a try. She knew that Marker had what he considered a winning hand, with a winning trump card close to his chest. But he didn't know that she knew, nor that she had already taken steps. But before that comes out into the open, I've got to try — seriously — to arrange a settlement. She coldly began to work, from the flimsy base that was all she had to build upon, putting together a convincing good-faith effort.

"We might — just might — be able to let you go. But we can't let you take the captured Concordat Light Cruisers with you."

"That was our pay. They are now ours."

Against an inward reluctance that nearly overmastered her, de la Noue made a final offer. "We can pay you the equivalent value of the ships. The Cruisers themselves, however, represent a technological investment that we can't let go. Further, you would have to leave the area of hostilities, and give me some guarantee that you'd never return."

"As for the ships, we will accept no less than eight hundred per cent of their value- — "

"That can't be done."

" — which is still, for us, an equivalent loss. The ships are an immediate source of income, in a way that negotiable cash is not. As for leaving this lucrative area, I'm afraid not. You provide such an unequaled market." Marker's cruelty began to glint through his mask of impersonality. "Nowhere else have we found an interstellar government that, by its many repressions, so invites planets to hire our services."

"Have you tried our neighbors, in the Octivigan worlds?" de la Noue said, instantly regretting that the detestable man had drawn her anger into the open.

"They are somewhat unwilling to accept your Concordat currency," Marker sniffed.

"How did you pay them to equip and to outfit your squadron?"

The significant fact of her anger deterred him from making the show of hurt and betrayal that he normally would have produced. Instead he essayed a countercharge. "Octivigan ships? Perhaps. Privately purchased, of course. We've found that the Sonallan freedom from artificial markets allows more true liberty than your Concordat has. I also find that the laws here change from moment to moment, as it suits those in charge."

De la Noue was not taken aback as Marker had intended she be, nor was she distracted.

"There is nothing more that I can offer you." She half-rose, starting to stand in order to signify the meeting to be over.

"But wait," Marker said easily. Reluctantly, de la Noue reseated herself. "I can appreciate your dilemma; why cannot you understand mine?" He held up his hand to forestall her answer. "Let us be totally honest. Even though you are a Grand Admiral — the Grand Admiral; I'm sorry — and you are a member of your all-high Praesidium...even so, you are not free to settle this matter by yourself. I suspect strongly — indeed, I know — that you were sent here with orders from your Praesidium delineating exactly what you are allowed to do. And what you are not allowed to do."

That put a different light on things; de la Noue listened, her mind racing. None of her officers of staff had known about her orders until mere minutes ago. And it was inconceivable that any operation as small as a mercenary squadron would have spies as far from their theater of operations as Archive was from here. Governments — interstellar governments specifically — were the smallest organizations that kept spies that efficient.

Marker interpreted her silence both as an assent and as a guilty admission that her earlier talk of offers had been shy of what had been authorized.

"Shall we stop wasting our time?" he went on. "Those general orders, I'm told, list the maximum settlement that you are allowed to offer me. Let us then directly proceed to accept these best terms that you may present; the terms that you must present. I assume that they will be generous enough that we can agree to them."

"I'm afraid that — "

"You are going to claim that you don't know about any orders. Very loyal of you. But I know better, and no facile evasion will free you from your obligation to your superiors. You are Grand Admiral — such an overblown title — but you have no more freedom of action than does the lowliest spacehand. You have in your possession the orders that utterly limit the depths of your involvement. Since you have no choice but to follow out those orders, we might as well come to an agreement."

De la Noue's mind was elsewhere. As legal officer of the mercenary Starfalcon Squadron, he likely serves as intelligence officer also. But he's too low-placed to know. He's clearly deluded about the orders' significance; they don't specify any "deal" I'm allowed or required to make. He said he was "told" about them. What is he involved with? And yet he's correct that the orders strictly limit my freedom of action, especially where the Sonallan-Octivigan border is concerned. And that border is so near...

"Any orders I may be operating under are not relevant to this matter."

Marker let out a long breath of disapproval. "I will try once again."

De la Noue interrupted him before he could repeat his maddening demands. "Go back to your Commander Montrose and tell her — " For a moment only unsuitable replies came to her mind; she discarded them. "Tell her that we are unable to come to an agreement, and that her immediate surrender is demanded."

"She would fight first, you know."

"Our ships outclass hers utterly."

Marker sat as if in thought. "I have a better notion." His hand snaked into his jacket, whipping forth the small, flat pistol he had hidden next to his breast. His smile was triumphant as he drew a bead upon de la Noue, who sat motionless. Seeing her patient, knowing expression, he paused, a terrible uncertainty now seizing upon him.

She let him worry for another moment. The gun, she observed with distaste, was a dart-firing tranquilizer gun, although the hollow projectiles were filled with a fluid more insinuatively potent than any knockout drug. To his credit, he didn't try to fire. That didn't matter; she had what she needed.

"Didn't you think we'd notice if you tried to bring a gun aboard our ship?" she asked quietly. Marker looked at her, glanced down at the pistol, returned his gaze to her.

"We drained its power cell by focused electric-field projectors while you sat waiting. Feel how warm the grip is."

Marker blinked, his aplomb long gone.

"What would you have done? Taken me hostage? No; under the influence of your drug, I'd have been my own hostage, here, aboard my own ship. I'd have obeyed whatever orders you whispered to me. Would I have had a mind left, or would the drug have murdered that part of me? A very nice try." She hammered the point home. "Did you plan for possible failure? Do you consider yourself expendable?"

Marker shivered, and let the gun slip onto the tabletop, where it glittered, sleek, silvered, and inert.

"I don't particularly want to die. I certainly don't want to die in the vacuum of space when you open up Montrose's ships with your lasers. But I will not spend my life in one of your prisons, nor will I die at the hands of one of your executioners."

De la Noue looked long at him. "I don't think that it's up to you to decide your fate." She had what she needed. Marker's actions were clearly an attack; she was free of the strictures against being the first to make a hostile move. Regarding the Octivigan worlds, however, nothing had changed.

Marker wore the face of a man who is backed up against the sheer edge of a bottomless chasm. "You won't get me."

De la Noue smiled coldly. "We already have."

By the time Steldan, summoned, arrived, all the fight had gone out of the unfortunate Marker.

#

De la Noue swung into one of the Phyllida's computer rooms and quietly caught the attention of Admiral Davis. He looked up over his shoulder, his fingers yet poised over the keyboard of his terminal.

"I need some expected-action predictions run on Montrose's squadron."

Davis smiled. "Right here. I've had it ready for five minutes. Just now, I'm running validation checks."

"Good. I see the Starfalcons as being extremely flexible. That worries me."

"I suppose it should. But we outclass them in every fighting department. If they were faster than we are... But they aren't."

De la Noue sighed. Preparations for a battle were always the most difficult operational consideration for her. The execution of a good plan was where her strengths showed; saving a plan gone wrong was where her brilliance showed.

"They're capable of surprises?"

"Absolutely. I'm depending on it." Davis hurried to explain. "We're so much better organized than they are, both for flexibility and for mass, that anything they try that isn't by the book will only work to our advantage. It's like — " He searched for an analogy. "It's like in chess. If the person you're playing against is better than you are, you can try to throw him off by playing with an odd, unorthodox style. And you'll only lose faster."

De la Noue understood. "I'll have the Fighter screen on maximum dispersal, and we'll core the Scouts."

"Hammer and anvil?" Davis said uncertainly.

"Spear and net." She looked over his shoulder at the abstract symbols upon his computer screen. The Starfalcon Squadron was indeed very flexible. Which implied a corresponding sacrifice of strength.

This was going to be no battle. The Starfalcons would be netted. Netted and speared.

But another alternative existed for them, and de la Noue needed to know how likely they would be to opt for it.

#

"You're legal officer now, Charles." Ursula Montrose, aboard the flagship of the Starfalcon Squadron, had appeared before the squadron's assistant legal officer without warning.

"But Marker — " Charles Vasey tried to object.

"Edward Marker is dead." Montrose clipped her hand through the air angrily. "Dead and to hell with him."

Vasey sat stunned. "How do you know they didn't capture him alive?"

Montrose inhaled deeply. "He was equipped with a hidden poison capsule. No method of revival could keep him alive. Rather than be captured to stand trial — "

Vasey had nothing to say. He, along with all of Montrose's officers, had the same capsule implanted; he knew himself to be too much of a coward ever to make use of it. Absorbing the news, he swiveled his chair about to face Montrose, only to avert his gaze from her fiery face. She moved at all times like a flood or a typhoon; her shrill voice cut, and it commanded. Scorning the gilded title of Admiral, she styled herself Commander and let her strength belie the humble rank.

She was of no more than average height, but her wide hips, wider shoulders, and deep swell of bosom gave her a statuesque presence that her forceful personality lived up to. Her long, long auburn hair was confined only by an encircling headband of cloth-of-gold. Her face would have been attractive were it not for the constant roil of her fierce emotions. She never frowned but scowled, never smiled but laughed. Her crew was in awe of her, nearly to the degree of fear, and devoted, nearly to the degree of love.

"Marker never listened to me," Vasey said at last. "Will you?"

Montrose perched herself on Vasey's chair arm, uncomfortably close to him. "What advice would you give me?"

"To leave the Concordat of Archive, and seek wars elsewhere."

Montrose's eyes flashed. "Why?"

"I've been studying their legal systems. They're extremely intolerant of adventurism."

Montrose looked away; her silence dared Vasey to speak on. "They value security more than autonomy; freedom over liberty. Their First High Charter — their constitution, as it were — gives an implied listing of the rights that are granted to all citizens. It also gives an explicit listing of rights that are not granted. We are in violation of two."

"They are repressive," Montrose snapped, springing up from the chair arm. "I don't care how many of their damnable laws we ignore. We make our own laws. There are planets groaning under the Concordat lash that would gladly pay for our services to help them become free. That means money, which means more ships, which means more planets."

Vasey knew better. This revolution was sparked by outside intervention, which had brilliantly capitalized on the frontier worlds' economic disadvantages in comparison to the rich interior sectors. But the Concordat's overall economy was so carefully crafted, so unified and integrated, that the tariffs these rim worlds were demanding would hurt them, not help them. They seemed unable to see how their slowly growing economies were being artificially protected; they were only able to see other worlds growing more rich, and doing so more swiftly.

But Vasey knew his limitations, and said none of what he felt to the keenly listening Montrose.

"All I am is a lawyer," he said, sounding almost resigned. "Tell me what you want, and I'll write up the contracts."

"Just a lawyer?" Montrose said spitefully. "Keep that in mind. Marker was twice the man you are; I'll keep you only for your skill in overcomplicated phrasing." But there seemed to be more that she was unwilling to say aloud.

"I'll do all I can," Vasey suggested easily. "You know that I'm loyal to you and to the squadron." Then he waited.

"Marker was my political advisor also," Montrose finally and peevishly admitted. "I can't always tell which planets are ripest for...for our services."

"I can spot incipient rebellion as well as he could," Vasey said matter-of-factly. This, he knew, was no time to ask her for the job, but a time to demand it. "If you want someone to steer you toward the most promising customers, I'm the best you'll get. He was a ball of fire; I'm a chill snake." In fact, the chill was one he felt, not one he projected. None could fault his abilities as a liar; he made himself sound little short of indispensable.

Montrose, embarrassed at having admitted her need for an advisor, lashed out. "What makes you think you can help me?"

Vasey took it in stride. "The fact that you asked me for help." Montrose began to deny that she had; Vasey overrode her.

"I know a little something about political matters, Commander. I can dispel any illusions you might be entertaining about taking on the Concordat all by yourself." The last words he said with such bitter irony that Montrose jerked her head as if slapped; she glared hatefully. "You can't do it without more help from the Octivigans — listen to me, woman! I'll help you fight your fight, but only on the terms I set forth."

His raised voice and forthright attitude were the stuff that Montrose's respect was ever won by. Vasey now had the advantage; keeping it was his next task.

"We can't beat them head on. We'll be lucky to get away from this planet unmauled. They've got ships that are too big for you to face. But if you'll let me help you, you can carve away a large section of their restive frontier, here with the Octivigans' help. One thing is for damned sure: You can't do it by yourself."

Montrose shook her head back and stretched herself. "Why not?"

"Because you're a brilliant military leader...and a wretched diplomat. Marker — rest him — could seduce a planetary council to his will in ten words or less. It'll take me twenty. You, however, could rail at them for days and not make the sale."

She gazed at him speculatively. She didn't know, and couldn't know, how much of what he said was bluster, and how much he intended to make good upon. Despite herself, she liked his style.

"I'll give you a chance," she said at last. "Where do we begin?"

"So now you need me as a strategist?" he mocked her, gauging to the last millimeter how far he could push her.

As he knew she would, she flared up, anger showing too clearly on her emotion-abused face. "You bastard — "

"Foul names won't hurt me. Do you go cursing at enemy ships? Do you curse your own computers when they give you information you don't like? Shut up and listen. You're the tactical genius. You can maneuver the fleet. But, since you asked, I'll tell you where to go. Can you get us to a safe jump distance?"

She frowned. This young man she had thought modest and retiring had just levered himself into her closest confidence. She would never be self-aware enough to know, as he certainly did, that that was exactly what she had come to him hoping for.

"Yes," she snarled at last. "I can get us out of here. Where do we go?"

"Lungmal, five jumps distant."

"We came from there! Why should we make a retreat?"

"Look out a window, you wide-eyed air-head!" He hoped she wouldn't strike him in the face. "Five Concordat Battleships, of the elite Philomena class! Do you think the seventy small-gauge ships of your squadron — your squadron that is no more than an Octivigan smokescreen — could face those five giants? This squadron couldn't survive a contact with their support fleet, let alone with those armored titans!"

Montrose was beside herself. "So we're to run away, defeated before we've begun? I'll — "

"You'll do nothing without my okay. Listen...listen! We go back to Lungmal, we pick up another eighty or so ships, and we go on a raiding expedition. We'll hit them where they're weakest, stirring up revolts in our wake. They won't know it's a war until it's far too late." He switched abruptly to a reasonable tone. "You've been promised you'll become overlord of a three-planet cluster of stars if the region achieves independence. The region never will, however, if you insist on fighting the Concordat Battleships face-to-face."

Montrose slumped, exhausted. "I'll do what you say."

Carefully now, Vasey thought. "And Commander?"

"What?"

"You are still in charge. I could never hope to replace you." His gaze was frank as he met her eyes.

She couldn't meet his. Uncertain, hopeful, she mumbled her thanks and strode off to the command bridge where a brief battle awaited her. Vasey smiled silently after her. Liar, liar, liar. I'm in charge, and she doesn't need ever to know it. I wonder what prerogatives come with the job? I wonder if Marker, as well as being the true leader before me, was also one of her lovers?

Things certainly looked good for him.

#

"Lungmal, fifty light-years distant. I wouldn't have thought of it as a likely place for the revolution to have its hidden center." There was no doubt or hesitation in Steldan's voice as he mused upon Admiral Morgan's revelation.

De la Noue had to agree. "A very unlikely site. Which is why it was chosen." She reflected. "Perhaps we of the Praesidium have lost touch with the needs of these border worlds. They see the sparsity of contact as insensitivity, and it keeps us from hearing of their complaints."

Morgan, standing while the others sat, knew the strain that the Secretariat of the Praesidium daily labored under, and forbore to lay any blame. The rebellion was an artificial construct, visible only now as a device of war no less than would have been an invading battle fleet. The problem for the current time, however, was to destroy the Starfalcon Squadron, and to do so most efficiently.

"We can get most of them," de la Noue observed after a third run-through of a battle simulation. The ship's computer labored at its full capacity to supply her and her tactical staff with needed options. She knew that the situation was the same aboard the Daphne and the others, where other tactical planning staffs likewise pored over the possibilities.

Steldan, as always, had reservations, which for once he kept to himself. "They've been under way for just over an hour, driving for safe jump distance from the planet. We haven't got enough data on how their Commander thinks to be absolutely certain of how much early-jump risk she'll be willing to take."

Morgan cleared his throat, interrupting gently. "Based on what I now know of her past record in similar combat situations, I'd say forty minutes early."

"She'll scatter fifty per cent of her ships," de la Noue stated doubtfully.

"The ones that survive know how to find her and rejoin her fleet. But she doesn't seem to care."

"I'd find losses like that to be unacceptably excessive."

Steldan looked past her. "You're not Ursula Montrose."

De la Noue threw him a sharp glance. He hadn't meant any unfavorable implication by what he'd said, however, and she was forced to agree that she was a far different sort of woman and leader from her flamboyant adversary.

Taking Morgan's estimate as a basis from which to work, she charted a final course of action that would best serve her needs.

"She can't let us close to laser range. If we press her tightly enough, she'll be forced into a premature jump that will do our work for us. It's a murderous way of ruining a fleet, but it saves lives among the crews of my own ships, and it's to them that I owe the most consideration. If Montrose has a habit of making dangerously early jumps, I can't be blamed for putting it to use."

Morgan and Steldan looked at one another. Having nothing further to offer, Morgan turned and made his way out of the computer room.

For the moment, there was time to spare in a careful analysis of how much pressure to put upon the fleeing squadron. Battles in space are drawn-out events, invariably stretching over long, furious hours, and often into days. De la Noue had chosen her blockading position carefully, mindful of the eventual desire of the Starfalcon Squadron to attempt escape. With Montrose's predilection for early jumps, it seemed likely that the Concordat's losses would be minimal. Some enemy ships would escape; more would not.

While de la Noue made the most of the wait in intense tactical planning, Ursula Montrose stalked the length of her flagship, paroxysms of rage, frustration, and bored impatience disfiguring her face with the passage of the all-too-visible emotions. When at long last the time for action approached, she dashed to the cramped command bridge, where she strapped herself into the pilot's couch and console in order to wrestle the ship about by herself. Although she was not foolish enough to disdain computer-assisted piloting, it was nevertheless true that Ursula Montrose was not a person well suited to the deliberate and formal stateliness of strategic space combat.

Jennifer de la Noue was. "General orders, then," she spoke tersely to the video-linked fleet officers. "We won't have time for subtlety. Set all missiles for direct-hit kill. Destroy what you can. Any questions?"

"What about our three stolen Light Cruisers?" asked the Commander of a Fighter squadron.

"They're enemy ships. Give them no preference either way."

There were no further questions; the video-links flickered once under the battering onset of the heavy electromagnetic and radio-jamming fields emitted from the Phyllida's electronic warfare bay. Between de la Noue's ships, ships that outclassed and outnumbered Montrose's, there was no difficulty in reestablishing moment-to-moment communication. The massive computers that oversaw the jamming emissions needed only a slight additional effort to overlay a heterodyned and coded supersignal that could be received and correctly interpreted by smaller units on all ships, from the mammoth Battleships to the fleet's darting Fighters. Montrose, for battle communication, was restricted to line-of-sight laser link, and even that was difficult in the flux-charged fields that permeated nearby space, where nanoflutters of variably projected electric fields bloomed and decayed, all invisibly.

Action was entered; the fleets engaged.

On zigzagging tails of fire, missiles shot forth from the gaping launching bays that interrupted the smooth flanks of the titanic warships. In even volleys of five-hundreds, the slim, nuclear-tipped darts tore across the emptiness of extreme range, heading for their targets.

From the smaller ships of the Starfalcon Squadron, a steady return fire of missiles burst forth. Salvo after rippling salvo was exchanged, the smartly dodging missiles trailing kinked paths of fire.

"Their missiles are quite poor," an officer informed de la Noue. She, knowing the weapons for their origin in the technologically trailing Sonallan sphere, nodded, continually glancing back to her fleet status displays.

Her multiplex computer station let her be everywhere at once, and she never strayed far from it. But she did stray, moving about in the small, instrument-lit annex that was the fleet command bridge, adjacent to the larger ship's command bridge. She stopped, bending to confer with a pale defense officer.

"All lasers will be yours for antimissile fire," she murmured to him, telling him nothing that he didn't already know and yet giving him a measure of confidence. Later, when the fleets neared one another, the lasers would be allocated on a more frugal basis, some for defense, and more for offense. She moved on, the officer already forgotten.

Long minutes later, as the fleets drove toward each other, the missiles began to arrive near their targets, having crossed the wide yet closing gap. De la Noue watched closely, monitoring the patterns of defensive antimissile fire. Although the ships of the opposing sides were themselves well beyond efficient laser range, the swiftly oncoming missiles were not so. Guided by their well-shielded onboard computers, they drove headlong toward the bulks of their targets that were visible to them by the gravitic equivalent of radar. Many died in clusters under the raking touch of de la Noue's defensive lasers; more survived. But she saw, on her own screen, that at the opposite end of the exchange, her own missiles fared better than the older and less reliable foreign weapons supplied to the Starfalcon Squadron.

Not long thereafter, the Concordat-built ships, both hers and the captured Light Cruisers used by the enemy, snapped loose flailing clouds of antimissile dartlets, which burst with subdued twinklings to sweep many of the oncoming warheads from existence. The ships of the Starfalcon Squadron per se had less in the way of protection.

"Damage control?" de la Noue said softly.

"We're untouched," replied an officer.

That was well, although it was due to the flagship's post at the declined flank of the echelon advance. The surviving warheads had their turn, impacting mindlessly upon their targets of opportunity, detonating luminescently to etch and scar deep wounds into the flanks of the ships that could never maneuver to dodge the flitting missiles. De la Noue watched in solemn concentration, appreciating yet again the Concordat's traditional emphasis on hull armor, which kept many ships in action that would otherwise have been lost. Montrose had long eschewed armor as a space-wasting commodity best torn out and replaced with offensive weaponry.

"Close the range," de la Noue ordered, her voice low in the air-conditioned silence of the fleet command bridge. The fleets moved ultimately to her will, no matter who, on either side, performed the piloting. They neared one another, sliding from missile range five, one hundred and twenty thousand kilometers, to missile range four, and three, and two, each successive closing of the range-band marked by an increase in the efficiency of the fire. In only a few minutes, the two fleets would pass through each other, mingling for a brief time at close laser range.

The heightened deadliness of the missile fire began to tell on both sides. De la Noue looked up swiftly as an officer ripped loose his headphones and announced, "We just lost the Potestas and Iaculum."

De la Noue's glance, stern, composed, sent him back to his station. He seethed with frustration as he sought to redistribute control. The loss of those Heavy Cruisers put more kinks in the battle plan than he cared to consider.

"Montrose's fleet is scattering." This was from Admiral Davis, who had never taken his eyes from the display, even during the general shock at the announcement of the loss.

De la Noue's plan seemed invalidated before it had fully begun. She peered over Davis' shoulder at the velocity-vector display, where abstract, computer-generated symbols painted a clearer picture of the battle than a true telescopic image would have. Reaching out, she tapped an instruction key. The display gave her another angle.

She reacted to it instantly. "Cut the Fighters loose. They don't need central control any longer."

"Control was with the Potestas — " Davis began.

"Now destroyed."

"Whose computers passed control along to the Amaryllis. They're maintaining it."

"Override it. Let each Fighter pilot choose his or her own target."

The ships of the Starfalcon Squadron continued their dispersal, sacrificing fleet cohesion for a chaotic, free-for-all versatility. After them, de la Noue's Fighters shot in all directions, forming a thousand-kilometer net barbed with laser hooks. Just off center, the remainder of the Concordat fleet massed, sending out a fiery stream of stabbing missiles.

It was net and spear, and although it was not the way de la Noue had planned it, it showed what improvisation she was capable of.

Montrose had only one recourse. Rather than come face-to-face with the ships that she could never hope to outslug, she ordered her squadron into immediate, premature jump. It was the only move that de la Noue could not counter.

Vasey, watching his Commander across the flagship's bridge, knew a brief instant of utter panic as Montrose belted out the order to secure for jump. It was his poor luck, and his undoing, that she glanced just then at his wrenched face, into his cringing eyes.

And I would have followed his advice? Never again! Montrose laughed aloud as she gave the final order that ripped them from the gravitationally twisted region of normal space and into the deep red folds of dimensionless jumpspace.

"One in four that I die," Vasey found time to moan, his observation inaudible against the jamble and chatter of various alarm signals that only worked at cross-purposes.

The jump was a total disaster. Twenty ships only, of the sixty-two that essayed it, came through into the oven-warmness of jumpspace in any condition to complete the journey to their destination. Twenty simply failed to jump at all, remaining behind in the Khanlendri system in various states of ruin. Thirteen more performed skittish, hopping microjumps, ending up in locations more and more remote, some to limp to haven, and some stranded until the Concordat deigned to undertake a rescue effort. In the engine rooms of the nine remaining, the energies that normally harnessed the spatial flux of the jump instead ran wild, killing ship, engines, and crew, leaving wrecked, radioactive hulks of the unfortunate vessels.

#

"Earlier than I would have believed," de la Noue said, stunned by the magnitude of her enemy's disaster. Shaking herself from her amazement, she spun on her bridge crew and swiftly delineated the remainder of the operation.

"Two Heavy Cruisers will stay here and oversee rescue. Take no chances against the possibility that some heroic imbecile will feel brave and self-sacrificing. Those ships still have missiles."

To Admirals Davis and Morgan, watching from their own posts, she explained further. "The captured Light Cruisers will almost certainly make it through to their destination unharmed. If Montrose is alive — and I don't see her ship in-system — she'll transfer aboard one of those Cruisers and head straight for Lungmal."

"Do we need to arrive there before them?" Commodore Steldan asked. De la Noue hadn't noticed his entry onto the command bridge; the question gave her a moment's pause.

"I doubt that we could," she eventually admitted. "The sooner the better, though. At least no surprises await us."

Not long thereafter, the Phyllida led the fleet into the first of the five sequential jumps that would take them to the rebellious planet of Lungmal.

#

"Nice battle, Admiral Davis."

"Thank the Grand Admiral, not me."

"Hm. Yes. She planned it. Nevertheless, your part of the execution of that plan was competent enough."

"I had little to do with it."

"Why are you so grumpy?"

"We just killed several thousand people, and you come in and start congratulating me. I'm tired. Go away."

Admiral Morgan made no move to leave.

"Do you still think of them as people? You should learn to view it all abstractly." The slight smile on his face utterly belied the fact that he, too, acutely felt the suffering he'd helped cause. The principle behind the battle was more important than the lives lost. Wasn't it? He fought to hold that thought.

"Why should I want to do that? You can be sure the Grand Admiral doesn't 'view it abstractly.'"

"You think not? Perhaps. Her battle plans don't suffer from it if so." He went on, ignoring Davis' sour expression. "She's certainly competent, our de la Noue."

"I'm glad you approve. I'll tell her, when I next get the chance, that you do."

Morgan affected not to have heard. "She spoke of not being able to compartmentalize her feelings. I don't agree. I think she does so very well. At the planning boards, she speaks very casually of destroying ships, as if they're no more than unmanned gunnery targets. But, as you suggest, during the execution of the plan, she watches, feeling something like horror — horror at a remove; it never shows — at the incredible price in lives."

"If if doesn't show, how do you know all this? Or do you read minds?"

Morgan grinned. "Hang around the Intelligence Branch as long as I have, and see if you don't learn to see a bit beneath the surface."

"Below the surface, I'm just tired. Go and psychoanalyze someone else, someplace else." He thought, and added, "I also disagree with you about her. She's a better officer than you will ever be, than you could ever be. She sees lives, and not just numbers on some computer screen inside her mind. Like some people I could name."

Morgan let the implied insult pass. It was part of an intelligence officer's perspective to see beyond lives, and it was part of his carefully cultivated image to seem uncaring.

"Lives, numbers; all the same when you haven't met the people you're killing. Eventually, I'd like to psychoanalyze you. I wonder what I'd find...if anything."

"Go on, will you?"

"Yes. I'm going." Very seriously, "Do what you can to make her job easier, will you? She drives herself too hard."

Davis sighed. "And, yes, maybe she cares too much. Damn. I don't know. I'm for some sleep. Talk to me next week."

Shaking his head, Admiral Morgan let himself out.

#

The long period of enforced idleness put upon de la Noue and Steldan gave them time to piece together a final battle plan against the enemy that would be waiting for them at Lungmal.

"It's a rather unimportant world," Steldan pointed out; "a world that we'd never have suspected as being the focal point of the insurrection."

"Which exactly explains why it was chosen as the spot from which the rebellion was inspired."

"This fleet isn't the largest. Will it be large enough?"

She shrugged off this objection. "We can destroy any enemy we'll be likely to find at Lungmal, and I've sent couriers back toward the central sectors calling up reinforcements."

Many hours of interactive work with the ship's computers left her with the certainty of victory. She then had nothing to do but wait patiently until she came upon Lungmal.

#

Her fleet fell from jumpspace precisely on target and schedule. Clearly visible was the half-lit pearly sphere of the ill-used planet; to one side, shining golden, was the harsh star that was its primary.

The fleet of two hundred Octivigan warships that hung clustered in shifting orbits had been joined by the three captured Concordat Light Cruisers. Those ships, and the few others that remained of the battered Starfalcon Squadron, had come here bearing the alert. But not even the several hours' warning granted the combined Octivigan fleet allowed it to assemble into a suitable battle formation. They had little hope of standing against de la Noue's five Battleships and her support fleet of Light and Heavy Cruisers. They had little choice but to try.

The battle flared, going through the on-again-off-again phases that could so frustrate the impatient, for the time it took Lungmal to spin five times about its axis; just over six standard days. The result was never truly in doubt.

By the second standard day of the assault, de la Noue could clearly see the outcome, as visible as if it were written in a history text rather than in the near future. She took herself away for some needed rest, well deserved after the two days of sleepless effort that the battle had required of her. If anyone could have claimed to have won it alone, however, it would have been she.

By the fourth day, the Octivigan fleet, critically damaged, began to seek to disengage and to depart the system. Only by the sixth day, much further depleted, did it succeed. Less than eighty ships participated in the out-jump.

Three Concordat Light Cruisers were not among their number.

#

The command bridge of Montrose's shattered flagship was no less a wreck itself. Light came from emergency lamps; air came from reserve tanks. Beyond that, the facility was ruined, its stations and terminals inactive, its screens and controls dead, its occupants numbed, anchoring themselves listlessly in the absence of gravitic floor-fields.

"What now?" Charles Vasey asked, stirring himself from his apathy, his misery.

"I won't have you speak to me, you damnable coward," Ursula Montrose said in a deadly shrill whisper. The two floated in weightless stillness.

Something within him snapped. Gone was the humbled whine with which he had been about to beg her forgiveness; gone were the impotent words of defeat.

"Coward? Who's lying on the floor with her arm over her face?" He watched, and met Montrose's gaze as she uncovered her eyes and scowled at him. "Which of us is the more afraid? Are there no missiles left in our magazine?"

"The ship's power plant is dead," Montrose said, the numbness of despair in her voice.

"Missiles fly by their own power."

Montrose's shoulder slumped. "No."

"You'll die anyway."

"Damn you — "

"No, damn you." He pushed himself near and slapped her smartly across the face, although the motion nearly sent him spinning away. No one else of those on the bridge made any move to interfere. It wasn't clear whether they even listened.

Montrose's discipline had always been the brittle variety based upon emotional involvement. Vasey was ready to see how she responded to a little emotionality herself.

I'm not a coward. I'm not. They'd execute her, but not me. Why am I willing to push her, to force her to die fighting? Because I'm no coward, and damn it, I'll have her know that!

"You bastard," Montrose muttered, and, clumsy in the absence of gravity, rose up from the deck.

"When they get you, they'll kill you. You'll be executed for your crimes. Will you go that way, or will you die fighting?"

"I'll — " she began.

"You'll die fighting. Otherwise, you're not a woman worth my time. I've followed you; prove yourself worth it." Prove myself worth her, he thought, not even aware of how irrational the notion was.

"Bastard." She moved away from him.

"Slut." He hauled her to him and struck her, once, twice, again.

"All right!" She took back the initiative, the command. Throwing his hands roughly from her, she glowered at him. "Come with me."

Her liveliness was back, her drive, her fire. Vasey rejoiced, within him, at having brought this best part of her back from the dead. By this time, he had even deluded himself into believing that he loved her.

Together, they floated down the corridors of the ship, moving easily from handhold to handhold down the length of a lift shaft. At a forward missile bay entrance, they passed through, Montrose first, then Vasey. Together. The way it would always be, Vasey dared to dream.

It was the effortless effort of a few minutes, working as if underwater, to lift a sleek, black missile onto a launch-rack. Massive and deadly, twelve meters of nuclear-tipped death, it moved with nightmarish inertia to their laborious urging. Upon the rack, its thermonuclear warhead armed by hand through an access panel, it waited, the last reminder that Ursula Montrose was not finished until she was dead.

She darted forward, and manually cranked open the firing louvers.

The two-kilometer bulk of the Battleship Milla hung aimed at them like a sword, a spear, a magnificent, threatening shaft of infinite mass, of dimensionless bulk. It gleamed, it shone, it filled the sky.

Vasey recoiled, terrified. Montrose disdained him; he no longer existed within her universe. Revenge — and through it, death — was within her grasp. She fired the missile.

It leaped forward, needling through the aperture, grew a tail of fire, jetting with an acceleration beyond human appreciation.

And was swatted from the sky by a cloud of sparkling antimissiles, shot in a burst from the Milla's vast flank.

Whatever it was in Vasey that had driven him to courage snapped again, and, broken forever, he curled up in midair, rocking slightly as he hugged himself in terrified misery.

Ursula Montrose had tasted despair; Vasey hung before her as a reminder of the loathsome weakness of it. Never again. She knew her strength now, although she would never admit to herself Vasey's part in reawakening it.

She would face her captors; she would defy them; she would die with courage and dignity.

She eyed the bulk of the Milla as if her hatred, alive of itself, could vaporize it, the enemy fleet, the worlds and worlds, and finally the whole of the cosmos.

Thus she stood as, in time, they found her.

#

"Grand Admiral," Steldan called, interrupting de la Noue's laborious after-action paperwork. "We have an interesting prisoner."

"If it's an Octivigan Admiral — " she began; Steldan's amused expression denied that possibility. "Who, then?"

Steldan stepped aside, and a two-man Marine security detachment ushered in Ursula Montrose.

De la Noue stood. She eyed her former opponent with a cautious, bemused fascination. Montrose, for her part, glared hatefully, hopeless anger hot upon her face.

"I am owed an explanation," she spat. "I have been told that a ship cannot be trailed through jumpspace. How did you find this secret base?"

"You were correct. Ships cannot be followed — once they jump. How we tracked you to your staging area..." De la Noue broke off and glanced at Steldan, who seemed to be deriving some subdued amusement from the confrontation.

"I've told her nothing, ma'am," he said. She saw that he meant to give her the pleasure of explaining; but she felt no pleasure in destroying other people's delusions. For a moment, resentment for Steldan flitted through her mind. This was no treat; it was a hateful task. But Steldan had — she could think of no better term — a mean streak. Interrogators are no more than the basest form of practical jokers, she decided at last, although she felt no malice.

"Bring Edward Marker in here please," she said into her desk intercom.

Across Montrose's face a grim succession of emotions passed, the shadow of clouds across a hilly field, a display that showed clearly her transparency. De la Noue did not enjoy this.

"You called for me?" Marker, likewise escorted, found room in the office that was becoming slightly overcrowded.

Montrose spun on him. "You told them?"

"I told them everything," he admitted silkily, his eyes wide in feigned astonishment.

"Why?" The question was forced from Montrose's heart; it was more breathed than spoken.

Marker pretended to speculate upon the myriad of reasons leading to his betrayal of her. At last, he said simply, "Collaboration was preferable to suicide. Because I helped them, I, at least, won't be executed."

Montrose sagged in defeat, only to straighten, rallying herself. "What about your secret orders?" she asked of de la Noue. "The orders that specifically forbade you to take any action that would be at all relevant to the Octivigan border? Our spies were very sure on that point."

De la Noue, unlike Marker, had no wish to further hurt this woman who had striven so heroically, so foolishly. "Those orders," she said softly, "were a dead letter the instant I saw the first of the Octivigan warships in our space. Their very presence was an act of war; war overturns Praesidium advisory orders.

"But that wasn't the first I knew of Octivigan involvement."

De la Noue saw that Montrose didn't understand, and that, surprisingly, she wanted to.

"How could you have known about my orders? No mere mercenary squadron could possibly know. Clearly your intelligence-gathering capability was insufficient. It would take the sort of spy network that an interstellar government could afford, not a squadron of seventy ships.

"I knew of the Octivigan involvement from the moment your Mr. Marker began to threaten me."

That was the end of that. Steldan somewhat apologetically herded the prisoners back to their detentions, leaving de la Noue with a sad smile that admitted, silently, that he had obscurely miscalculated. Then he too was gone.

I'll forgive him, of course, de la Noue thought. I always do. And I'll need him for the upcoming operation.

#

Orders, having been received, were carried out with the Concordat Navy's usual efficiency. Worlds burned in the wake of the out-fanning fleets as they penetrated deep into sovereign Octivigan domains. The war was to be brought home to the enemy; Octivigan independence was at an end.

Aboard the Daphne, Admirals Morgan and Davis sat, alone together in a situations room that had been quitted, not long ago, by the assembled officers of de la Noue's staff. Every two hundred and forty seconds, as inescapably rhythmic as a Titan's footfalls, the massive ship shuddered, jolted by the release of nuclear-tipped missiles shot outward by the five-hundreds and the thousands. After each regularly paced launch, and after the missiles' flight, fireballs blossomed, and people died.

Davis watched without seeing as the pervasive vibration of the never-ceasing launches gently walked a sheaf of papers across the surface of the conference table, and spilled it onto the floor.

Morgan saw, stood, retrieved it, squared the papers against the tabletop, and set them firmly upon it.

"Why do you care?" Davis' voice was an exhausted monotone.

"I assume you don't mean about the papers."

"Why do you care?"

"Do I ask you why you don't? Or do you?"

"Why... Why do you get up, shower, put on your uniform, and report to duty, day after day, when every day brings only more of this?"

"For the same reason you do. De la Noue needs us. As long as we're able to serve, we shall serve. If I were to offer you medical furlough — "

"No. I won't take it."

"Exactly. Neither would I. And neither would de la Noue. We, you and I, would follow her into the fuming hell of the ancients. That's why we care. Because she does."

"How? How can she? How can anyone?"

The rippling thud of missile discharge drummed through the room.

"How? If I knew that..." He spread his hands helplessly.

Together, in silence, they counted the seconds until the next firing, knowing that on the surface of the world below, individuals huddled and counted likewise. , No one could be human who didn't feel it. De la Noue would not have been human, had she not felt it.

#

"Commodore?"

"Missile stocks are low, but resupply — "

"Commodore?"

"Yes?"

"Why me?"

Steldan, behind the mask of his face, switched from officer to doctor. He could do this; that was why he was along. She, though...

"There's no one else. No one else whose leadership would be followed the way yours is, without question and without hesitation."

De la Noue looked up at him. "If only..."

"Yes. 'If only.' The two most tragic words we've got. Take a sleeping pill, and drop out of the universe for eight hours. Repay the faith that your Admirals have in you by trusting them to oversee operations for that long."

She said nothing.

Energy would return to her; it always did. Only a few ever saw her like this. To the rest of the many who saw her, she was a striding colossus who marched at the head of her legions, which, one after another, hurtled across the border.

She slept the sleep of exhaustion while her fleet gathered itself. Morning arrived, a brilliantly glowing thermonuclear sunrise, a dawn of Concordat retribution. De la Noue, personally directing the assembled might of the fleet, shattered the Octivigan sphere like a globe of crystal, held overhead and dashed to the stony earth.

#

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Vissenne: You can, perhaps, see why I need to introduce a motion to submit Admiral de la Noue's actions to Administrative Review. I'd suggest that her choices, moving against prior Praesidium orders, were a flagrant violation of the law. I'd also like to suggest that we don't need any more conquered territory! We are not the conquering hordes nor the conniving aggrandizers that our enemies choose to believe we are. There are unoccupied avenues of expansion; there are stars enough for all. Justicar, second my motion.

Solme: I second the motion to submit de la Noue's actions to Administrative Review. Secretary Vissenne's rhodomontade will have to stand on its own.

Vissenne: Always the charmer, Leonard. I'll thank you properly someday. In any case, de la Noue's personal penchant for entangling us in wars is something that needs little historical documentation. One might almost call it a hobby of hers. For years now I've watched her flip men, women, and ships, entire sectors of stars over her shoulder with callous and disdainful disregard for the cost. And she does this all by herself! Did any of us order her to prosecute her war? All by herself. Imagine the cost, in property, in technological base, in economic disruption. Why, if we want to get downright maudlin, we might even count lives. Lives are not the coin in which we deal, perhaps, but that's simply the way of war. Nuclear warheads have this unpredictable habit of —

Solme: Enough, Secretary.

Vissenne: Enough! I say yes, we have had enough! These wars that serve no purpose, the little wars, these abstract games of strategy and tactics, are no longer to be tolerated.

Parke: If we were, perhaps, surrounded by peaceful neighbors, then peace —

Vissenne: If. We don't have neighbors like that. I ask for a review for several reasons. I need some questions answered. Did the war leave us stronger or weaker than we were before? How much did it cost?

Wallace: Funds allocated —

Vissenne: I don't want you to tell me here and now. I don't want it boiled down, prepackaged, already digested from your idiot point of view.

Solme: Secretary.

Vissenne: Never mind the cost of lives. Evidently the cost of lives is too painful for this Praesidium to contemplate — not too painful to cause, but too painful to contemplate — so let us confine ourselves to other effects of the war. Secretary Redmond?

Redmond: Yes?

Vissenne: Ignore lives. Ignore the incredible cost of wounded and dead, on both sides. Ignore that. Tell me, in a purely economic sense, what we've lost.

Redmond: You tend to amaze me, Mr. Vissenne. Who else would have had the depth of sight to think beyond the

8:30

obvious...? Well, I won't go on. I guess I'm just not built for sarcasm. Sorry. I'll try again, practicing in the privacy of my own home, until someday I master the technique. Economic disruption? Minimizable. It won't throw the eight-year budget off by more than half of one percent. De la Noue actually minimized losses — both lives and property — with admirable efficiency. I support her, and see no need for review.

De la Noue: Thank you, Adrian. I'm sorry —

Redmond: Never worry about it. People do what they must. You see, Secretary Vissenne, economically, the military is a drainhole. Money goes in, and nothing comes out. The people in the military are very similar to unemployed people. So, when they die, or are wounded, they aren't taken from the work force, and don't unbalance my finely crafted economy.

Vissenne: Military deaths are merely the deaths of surplus people? Is that the attitude you want me to take?

Redmond: Well, only from the economic point of view...

Wallace: We are necessarily devoted to economic determinism, but we can't let that overrule humanitarian...

Redmond: Oh, never. All I want to say is that de la Noue's war — inappropriate phrasing, perhaps — was run with a not-surprising attention to minimizing human misery.

De la Noue: Thank you.

Redmond: It wasn't your fault. None of it should be blamed on you. I won't hear your apologies, Jennifer, because you have nothing to apologize for. Shh. Be still.

De la Noue: I wish —

Redmond: So do I...

#

A Precise Young Death

"There are some evil surprises that no one can expect, and against which there are no defenses. Serpents strike from deep grass; a hidden cancer, all unknown, becomes malignant; lightning cascades from an empty sky."

#

Adrian Redmond, Secretary of Commerce for the star-spanning Concordat of Archive, stood upon the threshold of the Commerce Branch central office building, letting the feel of the city pervade him. Traffic, heard and not seen in its proper viaduct, gave the pedestrian levels a penetrating, antisocial background resonance. The not-quite-musical blend of tones, Redmond had often noticed, was just precisely loud enough to discourage conversation; he wondered if anyone would ever do anything about it.

The building balanced above him, jutting sky wise and yet failing to block off the eager and balmy spring sunlight. People strolled everywhere, ignoring one another, passing Redmond by on one side, past him on the other, probably wondering why he had chosen that spot to stop. He imagined that he must look like someone who has forgotten what it is that he has forgotten.

The large, opaque glass doors of the building — his building — swung to and fro under the hands of the dozens of people passing through each minute. He would join them in his time.

Trepidation touched him, as if his death lay beyond those doors.

But, then, he thought, my death probably lies beyond many more doors than simply these. He squared his shoulders and marched through.

He nearly lost his cap in the cross-traffic within the echoing vastness of the fifteen-tiered lobby. Warm, human-smelling air moved lightly, tickling his nose with his moustache. Individuals strode, stalked, darted everywhere, intent, passing him nearby in the stirring crowd, so that his jacket flapped and his pants legs tugged tight about his calves. He aimed along a circuitous path for the elevators, moving at more than a walk, less than a jog. Above him, banks of lights shone on balconies and promenades, upon high footbridges and racing artificial watercourses.

I've probably got a mountain of stuff to do. The paperwork... He didn't really mind. Bureaucracy is just like skin diving; cold at first, so one might just as well plunge in. After that, it goes swimmingly. There's a shared freedom: All one needs is either a snorkel or a pen. A shared danger? Don't get in too deep? And watch out for swimming crayls, people with the manner of office sharks, sad, overserious, who can't see the fun.

For Redmond, it was a game. It was what grown men did for their pastime. Certainly he found it impossible to believe that there was a real reason for his Commerce Branch.

Doesn't anybody see that this is simply what we do? It takes up the time between young adulthood and death, time that, one must admit, isn't good for much else. Why shouldn't I enjoy it?

Yes, he admitted firmly to himself, his death was somewhere beyond the elevator door that gaped to receive him. He didn't know where, or when; there was no turning back, however, so he strode forward, to the back of the car, five steps closer to his eventual mortal ending.

I solemnize the trivial. He didn't know whether or not that was right, and beneath that doubt lurked a deeper concern: was he therefore guilty of trivializing the solemn?

Absorbed by this speculation into his force of habit, he stepped out of the lift and into his sparkling and modern office suite on the hundredth floor.

His relief at finding his staff in occupation brought an involuntary smile to his wide, happy face. It always occurred to him at the moment he passed through his office doors that his clerks, recorders, secretaries, and assistants must have finally recognized the incongruity of his branch of government. Futility was fine for those with the whimsy to appreciate it, but surely they had better things to do.

He closed the door behind him, and turned again to face his staff, only then noticing that something was deathly wrong. A miserable expression crawled across the face of each of the several people present. One by one they lowered their gazes from him, guilt written upon them, and a little fear; shame written upon them, and the well-meaning pity that no human had ever learned properly to express.

Remaining facing him was Navy Captain Alexys Lowe. Redmond had always liked her, and even in her ever-hardworking seriousness, he had sensed her devotion to quiet joy. Her soft face was now hard-set, and she, at least, had learned to put stern sympathy upon her features.

Redmond came closer at that moment to understanding how mind-reading would work, if it were real.

He could see, there on Lowe's pink face, every word, every emotion, every thought. He doesn't know, she realized, and he read this, as clearly as if it were printed. I thought that he'd have gotten the message earlier. Oh, damn, damn. I didn't want him to learn of it from me!

Redmond almost smiled. He pulled his glance away from hers, breaking the eye contact that was hurting her. Resolutely, having nothing to fear now, for the worst of all his fears had come true, he pushed his gaze past her, toward his desk.

The tinted window muted the sunlight. Deep blue carpeting muffled his footsteps as he moved slowly forward, walking as if underwater. The desk was thick, broad, and upon it, a solitary yellow envelope lay, decorated with faint green stripes. He didn't need to read it; he knew.

It lay there before him, horribly inviting, and horribly innocuous. Captain Lowe had opened it; the top was torn and the contents, a folded slip of creamy yellow paper, peeked obscenely from within.

It was a notification from Admiral de la Noue's Navy, informing him of the death of one of her Marines. Just one Marine, one casualty of an ongoing situation not even fully a war.

The death of one of her Marines,

I might as well read it. He hesitated, picked it up, dropped it. His death lay beyond it.

And for the first time in his life he turned away from the inevitable.

"Captain Lowe." His voice was smooth, of moderate pitch, and he possessed a slow, pleasant articulation. He smiled and beckoned.

Lowe moved gingerly toward him.

He watched her watch him. In other circumstances, that would have amused him. He was slightly trimmer than she; she was slightly taller than he. Both were red of hair, grey of eyes, pink of face. Redmond's trim moustache and small beard were, he knew, appealing to Lowe; he loved to watch her walk. Nothing had ever occurred between them, and their relationship held strictly to business. What they shared was a deep knowledge of commerce, he from the economics end of it, and she from the Navy's logistics branch.

"Mr. Secretary, I don't know what to..." She blinked. Was that an amused expression upon his face? Looking more closely, she saw that it was not. Not precisely.

"Have I ever mentioned my daughter to you?"

"Once or twice. Sir, I'm sorry — "

Redmond fixed her with a quick glance; Lowe shut herself up.

Relenting, Redmond smiled, a private expression that said, without words, that he held no ill feelings toward her. Nevertheless, she watched him closely.

"Cynthia Eliza Redmond. Let me see... She'd be twenty-nine in another two months. A Sergeant-Major in de la Noue's Fortieth Marines Division. She's the most charming and petite young lady ever to have gone into battle in ballistic plate. She was..." He closed his eyes. "...only a hundred and fifty-seven centimeters tall, but a fireball, a dynamo. The most energetic child you'd ever have imagined."

He almost lost control at that point. His hands clenched, and his face twisted. Had his eyes been open, had he been able to watch Lowe watching him, he would have slid down the steep emotional incline, folding down to the floor in unstoppable weeping.

His voice continued, and he spoke to Lowe alone, not to the assembled men and women of his staff, who listened because they didn't dare not to.

"Only one fifty-seven. And a half. She insisted on adding the half. She told me once that that half centimeter was all that got her into the Marines.

"Bright eyes. She had my eyes. Bright eyes, that always had an insolence in them. And, although she wasn't strong, she was agile." He opened his eyes, carefully, and saw Lowe drop her gaze, unable to meet his. It wasn't the reality he wanted to return to, and although he was wise enough not to retreat again, he deeply felt the wish to.

"She was constantly getting into scraps. She got into her first fight at the age of four, and she told me that she won it. The school disciplinarian mentioned it to me, unsure of what to do about it. He was more upset by the fact that she'd won than by the fact of the fight.

"I've seen her throw a strong man, at a wrestling demonstration. He was some three times her mass, and yet it was over the shoulder with him and to the mats. 'All in the leverage,' she said, so obviously proud of herself."

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to continue.

"At seven, she came with her mother and me on an excursion out to the Eiglophian Mountains. Have you ever been there?"

His gaze upon Lowe was so earnest that she could only shake her head to signify that she hadn't. She began to understand what he was trying to do, and she steeled herself to help him, although how she could, she was in no way sure. The letter. She'd opened it, not knowing what was inside. It was her current duty, on assignment to act as Secretary Redmond's military liaison for logistics purposes. By now, she'd worked with him so steadily that she was virtually a member of his economics staff. Dealing with his mail was commonplace, mutually understood to boost efficiency. The letter: so formal, correct, distant. Was it better that he had read the truth from her face, and not from the coldness of that impersonal form? There it sat, visible to her beyond Redmond's shoulder. Her gaze was drawn to it, compelled by the magnetic influence of its baleful message.

"The Eiglophian Mountains, in Boria," he said, and paused. "This world, surely, has more to offer than the planets of the farthest stars. I've known this for a long time; I appreciate it more every day. I wonder why we ever traveled out?

"In any case, it was a family outing. The mountains loomed over us, higher and higher as we followed the road up beside the riverbed. It was spring, and the water was cold. Much too cold for swimming, being snowmelt straight from the highest peaks. Cynthia would have been only a few weeks past her seventh birthday.

"We arrived at last at a sheltered place, under an unclimbable rock cliff. There was a grassy shelf, and below it the water ran more slowly, disappearing farther on over a small, noisy rapids. We spread a lunch, and enjoyed the solitude.

"Not long after, while her mother napped, I watched Cynthia splashing in the pools. She made little boats of twigs, and sent them to their doom over the rapids. Suddenly she noticed something, bent close, and leaped back in pure terror. I started forward to see what it was, although she didn't see me.

"It was a school of fresh-water crayls, little white things that couldn't harm an infant. They don't have teeth, you know, only a mouth ridge of cartilage. Years later I caught one for her, and showed her how they can't even bite hard enough to bruise. But they had the same shape, the same lines, as deep-sea crayls, and Cynthia certainly knew, from reading and the video, what those were.

"She crept forward again, forcing herself closer to these things that were obviously terrifying to her. She moved closer, and closer, until her feet were actually in the water. I only realized much later that it wasn't the fish that she was facing, but her own fears. And when she was satisfied that fear had no power over her, she came back, slowly, out of the water, making sure to herself that she knew she wasn't retreating out of fear. She picked up a large rock, the largest that she could carry, and heaved it into the water, right where the crayls were swimming. They scattered, of course, before the stone could crush them. But that wasn't Cynthia's intention.

"She had something more important to prove to herself than that she could kill them. She could frighten them. She sent them flying, as they had failed to send her."

The words tumbled out of him, freed now, and he scarcely paused to breathe. Captain Lowe watched him carefully, noting everything about him as he sought to bring, through words alone, his daughter to life.

"She never gained her mother's height. Instead, she took mine. And even I am taller than she. She adapted to this the way she adapted to everything: by facing it. Being short, she took to wrestling, a sport where the length of the lever arm isn't all-important. She was never as strong as she wished to be, so she studied and practiced all the harder to gain a superior technique.

"She would bounce back. She was prepared to win in an important all-schools wrestling tournament. At her school, there were only a few who could challenge her in her weight class. When the tournament was over, though, she had been defeated, not by someone from another school, but by one of her own classmates. She placed second. I was ready with some sympathy, if she was going to need it. She didn't. 'He knew my weaknesses, of course,' she said. Then she looked thoughtful, and added, I knew his, too, though. Against strangers, then, he and I are the best.' She didn't lose herself in revenge. I had worried that from then on, every time she wrestled him she would be mentally replaying the tournament match. But she wasn't. She forgot it, or let it lose its hold over her.

"She had looked at revenge, faced it, and saw that it held no attraction for her.

"She would never take abuse. She had a literature teacher, nearly twice her height, and probably three times her mass. He was abusive, or so she claimed, and yet she'd face him down. She'd stand toe to toe with him and yap and yammer, ten words to his four, until all he could do was spread his hands and concede the point. She was always somewhat shrill, but it was never offensive. It was more endearing, like a barking lapsetter at the end of its leash. It was endearing, and she hated the thought of becoming endeared to people.

"She took honors in that literature course. She took honors in most of her courses, other than the sciences. There's no forcing your will upon the sciences, of course. If there was one thing she had, it was willpower."

He paused, and looked away. It was only for an instant, but to Lowe, it seemed an age. All of the other people in the office had by now moved back, camouflaging themselves with an assumed normality. Seated or standing, however, they listened. An unspoken gratitude toward Captain Lowe manifested itself. No one wanted to be here for this; no one envied Lowe her role.

Redmond's color was returning. His eyes were less meltingly moist. Lowe wanted more than anything to know what would be right to say. She knew without thinking that nothing could be said, and that there were no words fit enough to serve.

"Willpower. In her science courses, it was sheer, self-brutal willpower that got her through. She lacked the insight, the gift, to understand. Some of her willpower made itself show through in the form of stubbornness. When she got an idea of something being one way, it was damnably hard for her to back up and revise it. She was too stubborn to accept failing marks, however, and so she forced herself to memorize what she needed to know in order to succeed. That's the second-best way to get through science classes, of course. But it was a way that she was suited to.

"I don't know much about her social life in her later schooling. I don't know how she let off steam; how she partied; whether she experimented with sex. She was a wrestler; that means that she was never a stranger to her own body. There are so many changes that come over a young woman at that age. How would I know which changes would be due to which experiences?

"She climbed mountains, but gave it up quickly. Mountain climbing is much too chilly an outdoor-type sport for her. She was far more a hot-water and steambath type of person, sweating away her extra pounds. She never let herself get above fifty-seven kilos, but even at that, she was softer of contour than she liked.

"She was rosy-skinned, and very huggable. But she never liked the 'pick-me-up-and-hold-me' message that her physique seemed to broadcast.

"She was an interesting student of ideology," Redmond went on, still conjuring with his voice. "Ideology. You know that political theory is created at the top levels. I can say that; I'm at the top level myself." His gaze wandered away for a moment. The notion of being no one's subordinate was one he would never become accustomed to.

"Cynthia and I had endless arguments about ideology. She seemed to think — as she was taught, of course — that the prevailing doctrine was somehow real. She knew that it was formulated by people, by individuals..." He groped for words. "She didn't see how I had any right to alter the formulas. She knew — bright young woman — that I was no more wise, or brilliant, or insightful than anyone else. What right had I to have a voice in, for example, amending the Charter? And how, she continually asked me, could I know enough to oversee the entire economy of the Concordat?

"She never appreciated that ideas and ideals are the property of individuals. She thought that 'government' was some venerable system above the common reach. Since I, her father, was as common as they come, she refused to approve of my making far-reaching decisions."

He turned then and strode to the window, coming to it and standing close against it. The forced air that kept it unfogged toyed with his hair and teased the hem of his jacket. The city was below him, its avenues open to his sight. He felt the way he had when he'd first come to understand the nature of the economy; what had been obscured was clear, and what appeared complex became resolved into the elegant lines of its underlying plan. Towering even over his Commerce Branch building was the Secretariat's Spire, where the real decisions were made. The sunlight fired the vista with a golden glaze. In the distance, barely visible, snowcaps on eastern mountains gleamed, blue-white beneath a distant, high shelf of cloud.

"Ideology. We try, you know, to do our best. Leadership is of no use whatever if we don't lead the people in the direction they're already going. It can't be like herding beasts, or like scattering fresh-water crayls. The people, the planets, they have a direction. All that a leader may do is get them to go where they're going, and lead them around obstacles, pitfalls, traps...

"The worlds want one thing more than anything else. The worlds want surety."

He turned back to Lowe, the light behind him silhouetting him in the lesser light of the room.

"The adventuring spirit isn't — " Lowe began.

Redmond smiled. "Isn't what?"

"Isn't dead." This was no time to shy from the word.

"Do you think so? Maybe. But it's buried so deeply, repressed so effectively, that novelty and originality are not the everyday conditions that they should be. They once were, and we cast that away from us."

He spread wide his hands. "The Empire of Archive had twenty thousand wonders. They took for granted techniques, tools, devices, and even toys that we have done without for centuries. The Empire collapsed, torn apart from within. These days, we don't approve of all that was done in the name of the Revolution, but it only happened because it was needed. We threw away their commonplace miracles. We turned the clock back. That disproves the central theme of our dogma, doesn't it? No matter. We were threatened.

"They had too much. It's not difficult, for instance, to take a big enough computer and make it think. Imagine that. A machine, whose thoughts are as intricate, as deep, as personal as your own. A machine, with creativity and imagination. Is that right?

"And how much have you heard of the Empire's skill at genetic engineering? Our species is much more pure, these days, for their having eliminated the genes for certain types of malignancies, deformities... All of us, everywhere, bear upon us the marks of their genetic surgeons. Every cell in our bodies has, deep within it, the traces of viral micrografting. The chromosomes reproduce themselves, and in doing so reproduce the deliberately designed traits. Does that frighten you?"

Lowe frowned slightly, and shook her head. Redmond's airy, flourishing attitude collapsed. He took up again with greater reserve.

"Those brilliant surgeons removed more than merely the genes that control certain inherited diseases. They trimmed the race. They removed some particular physical characteristics viewed as unpopular. Some other traits, minor and perhaps unimportant, they played games with. Over the centuries, we've diversified — a little — away from the master mold they tried to force us into.

"And they created a slave race. Nonhuman. Incapable of revolt. A new species, existing only to serve...

"No more." He shook his head to clear it. "The worlds are afraid. The Empire went too far. It marked every one of us. It experimented with things that the people, deep within them, were fearful of. The Empire, an Empire that was ours, that was us, crumbled and was replaced. The Concordat was formulated to guarantee a surety that had been denied us. Compared to what we have now, the Empire was superlatively rich. There was more individual wealth than anything we can conceive of today. And yet there was such an extended stratification of social classes, that the poorest citizens, and those who were beneath citizenship, were pinned in grinding drudgery far worse than anything the Concordat has ever known.

"The Empire was replaced with something that would give us surety, safety, certainty.

"That's why my daughter had to die.

"I'll never fully recover. My life has lost something irreplaceable...

"But without her ability to sacrifice herself, and without that same ability in the hundreds of thousands who give their service to the military, then the surety that the planets crave would be lost.

"I'm as hypocritical as any man. I'd give ten planets — planets I've never seen or set foot upon — to have her back. But she never belonged to me. She belonged to those worlds. She was trained to believe in the doctrine, the dogma that her life was second in importance to the good of the many.

"I can't believe that. I never will. She did.

"She joined the Concordat Marines under no false impressions. They told her, up front and flat out, what her chances were of coming home dead, or of being killed in a way that nothing of her would remain to be sent home.

"She wasn't afraid, of course. By that time, when she enlisted fifteen days after her eighteenth birthday, no fear remained to her. Or, if it did..." His voice sank.

"If it did, she had mastered it. I know she would have faced both fear and death in whatever form they came to her. She would have stood, legs widespread and planted, fists on hips, head high..."

He was silent for a time. He'd done what he needed to, to put the despair beyond him. He'd done what was needful. Now, carefully, he could allow himself to feel the grief.

"She joined because it was necessary for her to serve, in the direct way that the military allows one to. She wasn't about to give her two years to a construction crew, or an assembly plant. She'd seen me run the economy too long. She didn't believe in it. She didn't understand that the wealth that commerce creates is what the military is there to defend. She saw the Concordat as something above its components, something transcending its people. She would have been appalled to think of the military existing to protect wealth; I never burdened her with the concept."

"The protection of lives," Lowe said gently, "is the military's true calling."

Redmond smiled, a crooked, unhappy smile. "Saving lives, of course. You know me too well to think I'll argue." Sadly, he went on. "My arguing days are past, I'd say. And I don't believe that I ever once won one of those long, thoughtful arguments with Cynthia. She could talk rings around me, even on subjects where I was unquestionably better informed.

"No, she signed on to protect, directly, the people who may only be protected by military force. But every bit as much, she joined to defend the integrity of the Concordat as a whole. She swore her oath, with her class of recruits, to the First High Charter, never choosing to believe that I have more power, in reality, than it does.

"And now she's gone. That leaves me somewhat alone."

He turned about to look again at the letter waiting for him upon his desk. Cynthia Eliza Redmond. Sergeant-Major in the Fortieth Marines. Killed in action...

"I guess I'll read this letter now."

He had to. His death lay beyond it.

#

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Vissenne: How touching. I call for the vote.

Parke: To submit de la Noue's actions — relating to the Octivigan war? — yes? — to Administrative Review. All in favor?

[Solme, Vissenne]

Parke: Against?

[Parke + Parke, de la Noue, Wallace, Redmond]

Parke: And as long as things have been taken out of order...with the agenda put aside —

Solme: Only the one item was agreed upon.

Parke: Quite right. Thank you. Next...um...next seems to be a matter of approving Secretary Vissenne's resettlement of a migrant group of aliens onto a sector of preserve worlds. Um...was that wise?

Vissenne: I had little choice.

Parke: We can ram this through with the minimum of —

Solme: No! I am no longer prepared to listen to this popinjay making Praesidium policy by himself. If he and I have been ever in alliance, it is because we together disdain the use of force. Military solutions are no solutions at all.

Vissenne: You noticed!

Solme: There is no reason, though, that I need to approve of your self-important habit of writing the laws to suit yourself.

Vissenne: You'll get over it. You've been known to —

Parke: With a minimum of —

Vissenne: Shut up. You, Justicar, are the Presidium's ranking hypocrite. I've been writing the laws for myself for several years now, certainly. Why deny it? But you, under the guise of 'strict impartiality,' have been interpreting existing laws to your own ends, and that, by the gods that are not, is the worse crime. So be damned to you, while —

Parke: With a minimum —

Solme: While what, Secretary?

Vissenne: You... Ahem. I'll have to ask you to make allowances for the strain that I've been under. You don't know...you can't know...

Solme: Is this an apology, Antonin?

Vissenne: It looks that way, doesn't it? Yes, the Praesidium writes the laws. Yes, you interpret the laws. I, however, am the appointed Ideologist, and...

Solme: And what?

Vissenne: We live by basic principles. History is the driving force of events, not the happenstance that it seems. Humankind goes, inevitably, through phases, advancing two steps forward and falling one step back, but always progressing.

Solme: Standard dogma.

Vissenne: If it's wrong, we're all sunk.

De la Noue: It doesn't seem relevant. We shape events, and either succeed or fail. The battles I win lengthen the lifespan of the Concordat. But I can't win them all. We aren't eternal.

Vissenne: No, we aren't. And what replaces us might well be worse, not better. But the overall trend is toward improvement. When anti-progressive regimes seize power, they nevertheless do so in the name of progress. These are fundamental axioms. They must apply universally. Among these axioms is that, although alien beings may be clothed in different flesh, intelligence may take only one form. There is only one mathematics, or logic, as certainly as there is only one chemistry. Languages vary tremendously; minds do not. We must believe all of this.

Solme: I don't see what your problem is, then. Surely, we all agree so far.

Vissenne: I dealt recently with the alien race that the survey team had spotted. These aliens — not prepossessing physically, but alert mentally — were spreading out, driving into our territory. They were primarily motivated by drives that seem to contradict our axioms.

Wallace: That makes it time to change our axioms, then, doesn't it?

Vissenne: Does it? Would you not agree that an essential

8:40

part of our collective historical ideology is that the race has always wanted to be free? That all races, all intelligent beings, want to be free? That slavery is never desired by the slaves? That's more than vital; it's central.

Parke: We all feel that way, yes. Slavery was the worst offense of the old Empire.

Vissenne: I've dealt with willing slaves. I will say no more.

#

To Live; To Learn

Early on the morning of his twenty-first birthday, Antonin Vissenne opened the veins of his wrist. In this rather extreme endeavor, as in much else in his brief life, he failed. His physical recovery was swift. In time he was pronounced mentally fit. By the age of thirty-four he was a member of the Praesidium of Archive, holding the sensitive post of Foreign Secretary.

Of life's lessons, he had best learned the earliest. Life had taught him well how to hate.

#

"Mister Vissenne," chirped the tall, wide-eyed, furry creature who hosted the reception aboard the small, alien spaceship, "we're not a warlike race. We don't want war any more than you do. Why are you being deliberately obstructive of the negotiating process?"

Vissenne saw himself scowling back from the convex mirrors that were the being's large, soft, brown eyes. He was torn between an admiration of the aliens' beauty and trembling poise, and dull anger at their pretentious idiocy, their vacuous innocence, their inability to comprehend. The constant reminder of his own taut expression was a further incentive to sullenness. "I don't believe that you understand our institutions well enough to name them."

He would have said more; the alien interrupted him sharply, treading on his words without any awareness of being rude. "I'm very sorry. Your language is...intricate...is that the word? What did I say wrongly?"

Vissenne would have answered; instead, the commercial attaché, one stocky, sturdy, and deliberate man named Robert Lawrence, coughed twice and launched into an explanation tangential to the issue. Or was it? Vissenne swallowed his wrath and paid grudging attention.

"The concept that you were using, or rather trying to use, is the one called war." Lawrence looked back and forth between Vissenne and the alien. "War is that ill-defined state where goals, or targets, are sought by two sides, and where — "

The alien showed obvious distress at Lawrence's circumlocution; its natural haste forced it to mentally demand a swiftness that was not forthcoming. Vissenne stopped listening and gave the alien a closer look. It was taller than he, and more agile, more slim, trimmer and quicker. It bore a soft pelt of luxurious fur, light brown, shading to creamy white on its chest and stomach. Its proportions were not dissimilar to those of a thin human, and it was certainly not unhandsome, even in its features, which were deep, intelligent, bespeaking an attractive dignity. Not entirely humanlike, its head bore small, sharp ears near the top, catlike, alert. Its face blunted out in a short muzzle, and a small black nose centered the face. Nevertheless, the emotions with which it wrestled were human.

By nature nude, as possessors of a thick pelt of fur, the aliens here made the concession to their hosts' sense of propriety by putting on short pants. Nothing more.

Vissenne kept seeing himself, no matter where on the being's face he looked. The eyes were too large, too darkly reflective. Antonin Vissenne was a tall man, a strong man, with a large head, short dark hair, and eyes that were, in a human way, as large and as dark as the alien's. His crisp green tunic gave him a militaristic look quite out of character for a diplomat.

The alien stirred, preparatory to speaking; Vissenne returned its earlier favor by interrupting roughly, cutting off Lawrence's yet-uncompleted definition of war.

"Larkbonee... I may call you by name, may I not?"

"Yes; in fact — "

Vissenne overrode him. "In the way that I couldn't call you an ambassador for your people, and I can't call this a war, I can't call what was earlier begun a true negotiating process." He stepped closer to the tall, slender, furry creature, close enough to feel its warmth. Soft fur touched the front of his tunic.

Different races have different distances at which they prefer to converse. The distinction is felt between the individual members of the human race — as Vissenne well knew from trying to keep an arm's length away from the ever-advancing Lawrence. That difference can be magnified to almost painful extremes when the individuals involved are of alien races. Had Vissenne stood any farther away, the alien, needing the proximity, would have pursued him the length of the spaceship's ballroom. Vissenne despised the intimacy of this contact, being a reserved person by nature, but found it more dignified than trying to discuss issues while continually backpedaling.

"What am I not understanding?" Larkbonee asked, unable to bear the silences that Vissenne insisted on leaving after every speech, and which Lawrence was not quick enough to fill.

Vissenne forced the silence to stretch out as long as he could, if only to annoy Larkbonee. Members of his gregarious race were invariably unhappy in the absence of nonstop conversation.

"To begin with, a cease-fire implies that the space fleets of both sides stop maneuvering for advantage. They are to either hold their places, or withdraw to a reserve position. The renewed fighting — so-called — has been due to your fleets incessantly advancing, and setting up outposts upon worlds we claim."

"But the worlds are there," Larkbonee said, his words following so swiftly upon Vissenne's that there was no instant of silence between them. And yet Larkbonee spoke in a plaintive, innocent tone totally unlike the arrogance that a human would have put into the statement.

"They aren't yours, though. The true negotiations cannot be properly begun until the fleets are fully disengaged."

Although as yet, the fleets had never come to a true engagement, for which Vissenne was thankful. One thing was ultimately clear; these fuzz-brained innocents hadn't a notion in the cosmos as to how civilized states handled their territorial disputes. Vissenne knew from Navy reports that the alien warships — a clear misnomer — were incapable of being used for offensive purposes. They were not armed. All that the huge, streamlined spaceships carried were hundreds of thousands of these handsome and personable aliens, who disembarked to occupy world after world that did not belong to them. That the worlds were vacant was all that they saw; the fact of the Concordat's legal ownership of them for purposes of planned colonization was unimportant.

One breathes unoccupied air; one drinks unoccupied water. How can anyone, therefore, lay claim to unoccupied land, especially when Larkbonee's strangely anxious race seemed to need it?

Property was a concept that they found the greatest difficulty in adapting to.

Indeed, "I don't understand" was Larkbonee's response, his arms tight against his sides. Vissenne fought down the urge to step back. Around him, the subliminal chatter of the room of friendly aliens, all standing quite close together, discomfited him more and more. And through the floor-to-ceiling viewport, the blackness of interplanetary space hung like damp sailcloth. The glass mirrored the ship's lounge, mirrored the occupants, and gave Vissenne back his image, tall, in green and black, watching himself watch himself. He snapped his gaze away.

"Your fleets of transports are moving forward. Your illegal colonies are being emplaced. We haven't agreed to this. It is within our power to stop you by force." He watched in helplessness as the being before him expressed more puzzlement.

"Mr. Secretary," Lawrence said quietly, "remember that they don't know, because of their cultural and evolutionary heritage, what the meaning of war is, at least not the way we understand it. They aren't a totally cooperative race, of course, but they simply don't have the aggressive instinct in any measurable amount. My experts have come to feel that they are the remnants of a genetically engineered species, created to be a slave race, and in whom the combative tendency has been decreased if not eliminated. They do not know how to fight."

Vissenne gave his attention back to Larkbonee, who watched in deep-breathing natural impatience. Some slave race. "We have warships," he said at last. "Do you claim not to understand the nature of these? Of war itself?"

"We've tried to." The alien sounded honestly miserable in its noncomprehension. Vissenne refused to let himself sympathize. "We've studied your system of settling disputes by force. Our kind never has that kind of dispute. We take what we want."

We take what we want, Vissenne thought unhappily, his shoulders slumping. The entire history of human civilization had been the community effort to prevent exactly that behavior. Cities had been founded to defend land; nations had been created to protect rights and privileges; the Concordat itself had been drafted to guarantee its members surety against opportunistic zeal from within and without.

"We haven't used force against you. Not yet. The naval engagements we've seen so far have been limited almost to shadow-boxing displays. No ships have been destroyed — "

"Destroyed? You actually could...would...destroy a ship?"

"Could, would, have, and will!" Vissenne exploded. "Do you have any idea how many of our citizens have died in wars in just the last ten years? All in all, some billions. We've destroyed thousands of warships, and we've had thousands of ours destroyed. We've been gaming with you, because you're not equipped to handle the concepts involved. That will stop."

He drew a breath. "When a fleet of your ships, your bulking transports crammed with would-be colonists, first enters one of our systems, we try to warn it away. Why won't you heed that? You don't have offensive-weapons capabilities. We're not willing to murder a helpless load of idealistic settlers. But you come on ahead. You always do. What the naval task force Commanders have taken to doing is maneuvering their ships into matched courses and bumping them up against yours. It does no good, but we've hoped that the shaking-up you receive would serve to get the message across. You've consistently ignored that, as well as warning shots, both laser and missile."

"We need those worlds," Larkbonee said with dignity. "If we are supposed to learn how to fight for them, we will learn. But that isn't what we want! We want to live beside you, with you, near you. We want to help you, and to have you help us."

Vissenne slapped his hand against his hip in agitation. Lawrence spoke before him. "We would rather teach you how to negotiate a settlement than how to fight for one. There are many, many worlds, mostly unoccupied. Are you interested in means to control your prolificity? Your population pressure, driving you outward the way it currently is, will eventually overcome your ability to settle new worlds."

This was merely another source of puzzlement for the keen mind of Larkbonee. "It isn't population pressure that drives us to the stars. Was it that which drove you?" He shrugged, a rapid, nervous movement. "We evidently need to learn war. We'll start now."

Vissenne looked up in startlement. With no more warning than that, the aliens' spaceship enfolded itself in the curdled coils of the oven-redness that was jumpspace. The view through the transparent window became cheerfully rosy.

"Are you kidnapping me?"

Larkbonee nodded. "Is that a reasonable way of opening hostilities?"

Lawrence muttered, quietly, "It is...hm...traditional. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Secretary?"

Vissenne's mind clouded over with disgusted rage. He tried to step past Larkbonee, toward the control room of the small spaceship. Larkbonee stepped, lithely, into his path, passively blocking him. Vissenne sidestepped. Larkbonee did likewise. Vissenne grasped his fists together and swung, underhanded, forcing his stiffened and linked arms into Larkbonee's midsection. He was rewarded with the alien's gasp of expelled air as the blow sank deep into fur and muscle.

Larkbonee, reviving slowly, drew himself up into an almost parodying copy of Vissenne's stance, linked his arms, and mimicked the assault. Vissenne parried easily. Larkbonee frowned.

"Mr. Secretary," Lawrence harrumphed. "This isn't doing any good." Vissenne looked up, and slowly lowered his fists. "We're already in jumpspace. Since that can't be reversed, there's no real point in your performing so."

Vissenne's rage dissipated instantly. What replaced it, a cold and bitter disgust that drained the life from all it beheld, was little better, but it was not violent. To the now fully recovered Larkbonee, Vissenne snapped, "You have me. Do what you must." He stalked off toward where he expected passenger cabins to be located, and was satisfied to find one unoccupied.

I was ready to rip his head from his shoulders. I was prepared to... The thought unsteadied him. To kill him? A viewport loomed across from the bed upon which he sat, a port that shot sheer from floor to ceiling, tight-shuttered against the background heat of jumpspace. Vissenne saw himself reflected in the shadowy glass, giving himself back a quiet, mocking glance. It was as it often was before: the reflected image took on a personality other than his own. A smiling, derisive creature from the mirror world, watching, seeing, who bore the most hated of features: Vissenne's own.

#

"You're not hurt. Bruises only."

Larkbonee winced at Asilomar's deft touch. "He did it with such ease. I tried the same thing, and nothing happened."

"He blocked you," Asilomar corrected, his wide eyes full of sympathy for Larkbonee's hurt. Asilomar was an older being, toward the maximum age for his species. No trace of this showed in his lines, his eyes, his thick pelt. Death would be swift, unlingering. Larkbonee would become chief of the thinkers, of the planners.

"Is that going to be the way it always is with them?" Larkbonee's anguish was clear. "Do they know the way to block everything they know how to do?"

Asilomar helped him stand. "I don't know. But I think that, yes, they can counter any move we make."

"We can't give up."

"No. It's not within us. But fighting also is not within us. I wondered, watching you swing on Secretary Vissenne, if you knew what you were trying to do."

Larkbonee met his elder's gaze with some curiosity. "I was trying to do what he did."

"But you were trying to do it to him. He would have been in the pain that you were in. He would have been in worse pain; you're much stronger than he."

Larkbonee struggled to fend off the rushing tensions that seemed ready to wash over him, submerging him. He'd never thought of that; he wasn't prepared for it.

Asilomar nodded. "You saw him. He was mad. Angry. Wrathful... We have the words, but can any of us understand them?"

Larkbonee groped for words of his own. "The pain isn't great. I've been hurt worse, in accidents. It hurts me more, now, to think of what I tried to do. I don't understand."

Asilomar spoke gently. "We were built without any violence in us. That was to someone's advantage, surely. Whose? I'll always wonder. What we need to know is what it is, exactly, that keeps us from learning it, from understanding it. Violence, clearly, is universal. These humans of the Concordat are not unusual in possessing it. We are the unusual ones. Only now do I begin to wonder if they don't have the counter to every action that we could ever take, and if we are truly helpless."

Asilomar paused, for the barest moment, then spoke hurriedly on. "We must learn this thing that they have to teach us. Their Secretary Vissenne is our captive; go to him and find out what you can. I will talk to our ship's engineers about those two words he spoke so casually: lasers and missiles. Perhaps..."

Larkbonee touched the elder's arm in a submissive farewell, and strode away to find Vissenne.

He found him in that passenger cabin in which the Foreign Secretary had earlier taken refuge. How does one learn violence?

"Mr. Secretary?" Larkbonee held himself from offering an honorific gesture. Violence seemed to deal with the alteration of ritual propriety.

"What do you want?" Vissenne forbore to rise.

"Secretary Vissenne, you are inefficient. You speak slowly."

"I'm glad that I annoy you."

"You annoy me. I don't like being near you. You are human and inefficient." Larkbonee felt acute embarrassment.

"Inefficiency," Lawrence put in thoughtfully, "is a somewhat relative term. Interspecies differences — "

Vissenne waved him to silence. "No." Cruelly, "Let him say what he would." Is this furball trying to insult me?

"We are racially different," Larkbonee took up, building on what Lawrence had said. "That makes us superior."

He is! Vissenne exulted. "You are inferior," he drawled, "in mass, mobility, and mental adaptability. You are jerky, darting, unstable, hyperkinetic hairballs; you are nature's buffoons; you are stupid, confused, aimless, and mindless clods, with nothing more potent than raw vacuum inside your undersized skulls." Probably too erudite for him.

Indeed, Larkbonee managed only a puzzled expression, which he tried, unsuccessfully, to change into a threatening one.

Vissenne was startled nevertheless, but not at the display of clumsily feigned hostility. "Inspector Lawrence."

"Yes?"

"Do I see canine teeth in that creature's mouth?"

"You probably do."

"How could they evolve the teeth, cutting and ripping teeth, without the mental and emotional ability to use them?"

"I told you. These creatures didn't evolve."

"Is that why they're so bent on invading this region of space? Some built-in drive to seek their masters?"

"It could well be."

Larkbonee watched this byplay without understanding. "I'm trying to get you to become violent, Secretary Vissenne. Would you tell me how to go about it?"

"Hm. Let me think." Vissenne feigned deep concentration. Then, too brightly, "Perhaps if you insulted me?"

"I did."

"That was no insult. Now, if I called you a mop with no handle, or compare you to two brown eyeballs stuck in a stack of — "

"Please," Lawrence blurted. "Try not to play his game."

"All right. I won't play at all." To Larkbonee he added, brusquely, "Go away. I'm not about to become violent."

"If I were to call you a hairless...um...papery weakling, would that work?"

"Not bad. And you're a two-meter collection of pocket lint."

"I don't understand."

Vissenne rose from his seat, his resolve forgotten. "No. You don't understand. You haven't got it m your makeup to understand." His voice turned particularly nasty. "Have you seen death? Have you seen individuals of your species die, by being burned, or by being crushed, or by exposure to radiation?"

Larkbonee nodded, a swift, jerking, frightened assent. Vissenne closed in on him. "Have you seen your people die from being impaled? Drowned? Suffocating in vacuum?" He advanced, and Larkbonee gave way.

"We will kill your people, on purpose, deliberately, by fire, and by radiation, and by vacuum. We will open up those colossal, unarmored transports that you seem so idiotically fond of, and the beings within will die, some swiftly, some slowly, but all will die. We will do this unless your race agrees to settle on the planets we assign them to, and ceases its migration into our regions. Do you understand?"

From Vissenne's vibrant, shocking intensity, Larkbonee could only retreat. Until all at once a thought struck him. Acting with lightning-swift reflexes that no human could hope to match, he gripped his fists and swung, upward, for Vissenne's stomach.

Vissenne had only enough warning to let him pull his belly muscles into defensive tautness; the blow staggered him but did not floor him.

Larkbonee lowered his linked fists, preparing to repeat the blow in an identical way. Vissenne lowered his left arm to block, and drew back his right fist for a devastating shot to the creature's despised, furry face.

Time slowed, for him; adrenaline jetted into his system. The arcing path of the blow painted itself upon his mind's eye, tracing the way it would fly in a luminous red. Fist, through space, to round, padded cheek below huge brown eye. His grip tightened, coiling upon itself in preparation. A shot to the eye.

He saw himself in that eye. And time stopped, for him.

Is this what I want? To let this punch fly? To snap his neck around as if it were rubber? Do I want to feel the meaty, bony, furry feel of it? Do I relish the pain of it, the jar of it to my own fist, the slam of it into my own knuckles?

He wants to learn violence from me. Do I want to teach him?

And when he learns? What then?

He'd be no more than the mirror of me.

The thought undid him.

His indecision lasted, all told, less than a second. Even so distracted, he was able, without difficulty, to block Larkbonee's amateurish belly blow. He stepped back.

His face looked back, worried, thoughtful, from Larkbonee's eyes. He hated the sight, more than he hated anything in all the cosmos. To fight, to create in Larkbonee the hatred that was in himself, of himself...

He wouldn't. He lowered his fists. Larkbonee frowned, lost in thoughts that Vissenne, for his part, could not follow. Then he spun and departed.

Vissenne turned to Lawrence, who for once had nothing to say.

#

It was instantly clear to Asilomar that Larkbonee was in pain; no frail and ephemeral pain of the flesh, but a lasting pain of the spirit. There were no words fitting to the sympathy he knew himself incapable of sharing. He let his touch speak for him, holding the numbed Larkbonee to him in unspeaking embrace. Moments passed. Larkbonee nodded; Asilomar released him.

"It is its own counter. It blocks itself."

"What does?"

"The violence that we would have had Vissenne teach us."

"It can't serve us?" Asilomar strove for understanding.

"When I hit him, it hurt my hands. But when I was angry at him, it hurt my mind. When the two spaceships collide, both are damaged. Violence is a cutting tool with no handle."

"Our engineers can make lasers for us. Missiles will take more time. Are you trying to explain how they won't help us?"

"Yes. Partly, they won't work because the Concordat ships have them also. We can't hope to learn in mere weeks what they've known for centuries. But it's much more than that. Violence hurts merely to try to use. It hurts the mind. It's like the tiredness you'd feel after much too long without sleep. And it is its own opposite. It automatically punishes the one who uses it."

Asilomar tilted his head in thought. "I remember tales of the ones of our race who were weapons masters."

"Where are they today?"

"I don't know. This was centuries ago. If what you say is true, then they may have killed themselves. Or each other."

"Please believe me when I say that those are the same thing."

"Does this mean we have lost?"

"I suppose so. But if, in order to win, we would have needed to learn even as much as I have learned, it would not be right. It hurts too much."

"In the tales that I have been told, the old stories that are all of our history, it is said that we were once their slaves. Could we have been made so that for us disobedience was impossible?"

Larkbonee lowered his head, so that his chin rested upon his chest. "If so, it was done too well."

"I will tell the pilot to take us back. They will want Vissenne returned unharmed."

#

"What do I do when he comes back?" Vissenne sat crumpled on the bed, his back propped against the cabin's wall.

"You will have to keep a tight rein on your temper." Lawrence sat in a soft chair to Vissenne's right, keeping an alert eye upon his superior. His watching was unobtrusive, masked by the general passivity with which he viewed all things, no matter how trivial or vital.

Vissenne shot him a venomous look. "Would I be here if I were capable of that?" He slumped back. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. These creatures are — what words would describe them? Uncorrupt? Innocent? I've seen that from the beginning, and not been fully aware of it. That's why I'm both attracted to them and repelled by them. It occurs to me..."

"Yes?" Lawrence prodded.

"He only wanted to learn violence from me. A coin of little price. I could teach him hatreds that would destroy him. Is that what he wanted? And what could he have taught me in return?"

"He wasn't made for violence," Lawrence said slowly. "He hasn't the necessary background to understand it, but more importantly, he doesn't have the mental aptitude to take anger into himself. None of them do, or ever will.

"That's where you're better than they are, Mr. Secretary. For I believe that you have, within you, the ability to find some form of peace. They can never learn war."

Vissenne was shocked. "Peace? Me? That hardly — " He stopped, and looked against his will at his image reflected in the window-wall of the cabin. Handsome? Strong? Capable of normal warmth and love? What looked back was a chill block of man-shaped marble, wearing his uniform in a deliberate mockery of his high post, his relative youthfulness, his ambition.

"Don't be a fool," he said at last. Lawrence looked down at his hands upon his lap.

Larkbonee had learned something; Vissenne had not. Life and death were as simple as that.

Larkbonee appeared in the doorway. Vissenne stood.

"I don't understand what it is that you are," the furry alien said to the emotionless human. They stood some five meters distant from one another.

"I'm not able to teach you."

"And I'm not able to learn. Nor do I believe I'm willing. We're going to head back, as soon as we can. You'll be returned to your people. What will happen to mine?"

"We'll find planets for you. All we want is to redirect your headlong migration."

"And all we want..." Larkbonee stopped. He didn't know. A thought popped into his head. "Maybe finding you was it."

#

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Parke: In that case —

Wallace: Will it be necessary to quarantine them?

Vissenne: Unless you know of a way to alter genetically determined behaviors.

Solme: Extermination?

Vissenne: Leave it to the Justicar to suggest the least-effort solution. Why not exterminate the Octivigans, and after that, your personal enemies — high among whom I imagine that I would rank. And then, having exterminated your superior, our dear First Secretary Parke, you would arrange to succeed him, and reign forever as Emperor.

Solme: I don't like to hear such speech.

Parke: Well, it's somewhat overblown, but...assassinations have been known to be a matter of policy...in the past.

De la Noue: I've dealt with the problem. Assassination, even in time of war, is not a viable method of dealing with one's enemies.

Parke: Yes, but with one's friends...

De la Noue: None of us need to listen to Vissenne's rantings.

Vissenne: Same to you with knobs on, love. Remind me to —

Solme: Order.

Redmond: Mr. Secretary? What did you mean?

Parke: All that I meant was that assassinations are more usually performed upon individuals ostensibly on the same side as the person ordering the killing. Historically, that is. I'm guessing, of course, but it seems that it's just

8:50

easier to get at the man on your side. Having the right uniform does wonders in lulling the security forces...

Solme: Secretary Parke, you are speculating to any purpose?

Parke: Probably not. It just seems to me that, as Secretary Vissenne said, assassination is the least-effort solution to almost any problem. But we don't work that way. Vissenne's OIS — Official Information Service — has assassins in its employ —

Vissenne: Try to prove it.

Parke: Well, I don't need to. And all of us have toyed with the notion of using secret force as an alternative to using open force. How much easier things would be if someone had arranged to kill, oh, the King of the Sonallans at the right time... We can't work that way. We have to keep the balance, and you can probably see how that sort of thing has no built-in counteracting...um...vector? Not, for instance, the way war does.

Solme: Would you like to move a resolution to that effect?

Parke: Well, it would be interesting to see who votes against it... Maybe I'd better not.

Vissenne: One gets the impression that you'd rather not know.

Parke: Yes. One does.

#

Archive Midwinter

Take a glass of liquid. A high, cylindrical glass nearly two-thirds full. Swirl it, and watch the sine wave of liquid — in this case a translucent green concoction, caffeinated, fruity, its initial chill lost through neglect — spinning, hypnotic. Place the glass on a smooth desktop, and try to get it to wobble, rotating, the gyrations made unpredictable by the impetus of the swirling juice. Grab it before it topples.

Raymond Parke put aside this play, and drank deeply from the glass. Half-empty now, its balance was ruined for such games. The distraction was helpful, for him; it refocused his mind onto the equally unstable, shifting problems that he faced. As head of government, he saw it as his job to keep things moving, to stir the many departments and branches, to maintain the unstable stability of the wobbling system. Too much intervention, a push too hard or mistimed, and the system overbalances; too little, and it settles, flat, stable, moribund.

Raymond Parke, First Secretary of the Concordat of Archive. Head of State. Chairman of the Praesidium. His power seemed severely limited despite these formidable titles.

His government was a dangling monstrosity with six reaching tentacles, only one of which he personally controlled. And that was not the strongest.

Which one was? That question always left him slightly ill at ease.

The hour arrived, and his few minutes' interlude of idleness departed. Two individuals awaited his call, and further delay would imply a self-indulgent disrespect for the rigors of schedule.

But I do disrespect schedule! When putting together a daily agenda, I allow an additional twenty minutes of waste on top of every hour. Something always goes wrong. People are late; a point needs extensive clarification; a conference runs overtime.

And sometimes I think that twenty-five per cent allowance for slippage is dreadfully insufficient.

He took a last glance at the office he knew as well as he knew anything in the world. His face, in the morning mirror, was less familiar to him than the layout of his desk, computer folded away under here, videophone there, keyboard swung back to the right, file and fax to the left... A major control system, backed up by computational reserves sufficient to pilot a starship, it was nevertheless no better than the man who ran it.

Parke disliked thinking about that.

Couches, padded chairs, a long table by the high windows (windows now curtained against the wan noon of an Archive midwinter), all slid past his gaze, retaking their accustomed sites in his memory.

He touched a contact; he cleared his throat. "Send in Poole and Lang."

The two young women pushed through the door, unconsciously competing with one another to be in the lead. They approached, and stood before him awkwardly.

Annyn Poole and Suzette Lang. Poole was thirty-five, neither tall nor short, tanned, forward, over-serious. Lang was taller, slimmer, younger, and more retiring. Where Poole had well-developed proportions, Lang was girlishly slim; where Poole's face had depth and character, Lang's face was smooth and attentively blank. Both had dark hair, darker eyes; both were unquestionably attractive.

Parke couldn't help wondering how they saw him. His pasty face, his rumpled hair, his thick, stubby-fingered, clumsy hands, his short, overweight, bent stature all worked against him — save for the times, too many, too often, when he desired to be underestimated. He wasn't ugly, nor haggard, nor truly careworn. He was...he admitted it...dumpy. A dumpy, frumpish lump.

And two young women watched him, waiting for his word.

"Um...you two can sit down... This won't take long, you know, but..."

It was more than force of habit that made him mumble, hesitantly and awkwardly. He truly did not like the guarded admiration these women showed for him. Habit, however, remained the largest part of his speech.

"As you know, my last nominee for a successor has chosen to disqualify himself. He'll do well in...um...mercantile pursuits, but it is a shame to lose him. Now, certainly, as First Secretary, I'm good for a few more years yet. But it's not at all wise for me to have no successor picked. If anything should happen to me, the remainder of the Praesidium would gather to...replace me..."

What use to mention the obvious? He pondered for a moment on the other five members of the Praesidium. Some were allies, and some were enemies; he wondered how they, themselves, would categorize themselves in that respect.

Poole gently cleared her throat.

Parke's attention came back to the pair. "Oh... Sorry... One becomes distracted easily at my age..." He knew, as he said that, how obvious a falsehood it was. He was only fifty-six, and the years had not been unkind to him. It was, however, no less than the truth in one way; he had always been easily distracted.

"Well," he continued, "since I like to have these things thought out in advance, I had a program run some years back, and updated every so often since... I asked for the names of those who would be reasonable nominees, based on my own list of criteria...

"Your names came up."

Poole and Lang listened sharply, and the thoughts behind each face were abundantly clear. They'd heard rumors of exactly that, and neither of them had dared to believe it true.

"One of you will, very likely, be First Secretary someday. I'd like to believe that the job will be handled...um...competently..."

Has it been, for the past few years? I must believe that it has.

"Is this to be considered a competition?" Poole asked carefully. "Are you intending to rate our performances upon some test?" Earnestness shone upon her face. "I believe that we have the right to understand the conditions by which we shall be judged."

Lang, slightly withdrawn, murmured, "Unless our remarks, here and now, are a part of the competition."

"There's no need to be suspicious...or oversubtle. Yes, you two are in competition for the nomination. But that doesn't mean...it mustn't mean that you're to be judged. I've tried, throughout my tenure, to avoid judgementalism.

"Miss Poole: you head the Office of Review's verification program. You daily deal with people from every branch of government, often at even Praesidium level. You know people.

"Miss Lang: you run the Office of the Program's budgeting predictor-corrector department. You know, in fine detail, how the Concordat is run, and you're familiar with the long-term structure of our systems. You know paper.

"So, you see, the decision I have to make today is that of people versus paper more than...um...Poole versus Lang."

Neither of the two appeared convinced or mollified. The stakes were too high.

Parke sighed. "My plan is simply to start at the top, and work down. Only... Only..." But no. This was no time to tell them what he knew, and what he wished that he did not. Sometime, today, while his current nominee was ineligible to succeed him, and while he had not yet nominated a new successor, someone would try to kill him.

He didn't know who was behind it; he deliberately fought not to speculate. Today, this day, an assassin would strike, and Parke knew he would die.

I've seen death. It's actually rather uninteresting. The blood dries, slowly, making your fingers sticky. Corpses...sometimes need a bit of convincing to stop moving... It's not edifying; it's not aesthetic. Neither is it the awesome horror it's made out to be.

I'm not afraid, and that should tell me something.

Who is it, I wonder, who wants me dead?

"Well, come along then. We'll give you each the grand tour. None of it will be totally unfamiliar, I suppose, but..."

He stood, and motioned Poole and Lang to precede him out the door. Here, at least, in his official sanctum on the top floor of the Secretariat's Spire, he was safe, and they were safe as well.

"The First Secretary...myself...oversees all functions of government, from top to bottom." He paused, and was not disappointed when Poole corrected him.

"The Office of Review does, more precisely. The First Secretary's job is to overwatch the Secretariat."

Parke kept his expression neutral, but he caught Lang's glance of reproach toward Poole.

"Well, yes. That's what my subdepartments are for. The Program " — he gestured toward Lang — " to predict, and the Review " — he nodded to Poole — " to correct. Tension, and equilibrium, and, well, you know all the metaphors."

The annex extended far around them from the suite of offices in the midst of which was set Parke's office. This topmost floor was filled, length and breadth, with his operations. The eye could only appreciate a fraction of the tidy flood of activity ongoing; Parke always ran his branch like a business, and not like a government. The income was from taxes, and there was no competition; otherwise, the principles held the same. A profit was good, and a loss bad. Efficiency was important, in the correct, moderate degree. A balance must be maintained between top-heaviness and decentralization.

And there were his colleagues to deal with.

"I have aides to handle most vital functions, and undersecretaries, and deputy undersecretaries...but I remain in charge. I must, you know. And, when I'm gone, they will still be here. Go out, and look around. I daresay you've been up here before, but have you ever nosed right in and looked?"

Poole answered him. "No, never." Lang shook her head.

"Go on, then."

He followed Poole for a few moments, as she edged into the maze of shoulder-high room dividers, of computer terminals that flickered gently, comfortably, of image-fixers putting out occasional hardcopies. Clerks and secretaries and undersecretaries sat, or walked, or chatted happily. The room was constantly awash, day and night, with a calm susurrus of background noise. Poole dived in, and plunged deeper. She followed a path that Parke could not guess at, until, by following her, he arrived with her at a master station in charge of a mnemonic filer.

Poole accosted the clerk in charge. "What's on tap?" If she was aware of Parke's attention, she gave no sign.

The clerk, whose athletic trimness had not been dulled by his work, moved his hand in a quick, choppy circle. After a moment, realizing that that wasn't sufficient, he explained, "Big batch of corrections to the two-year budget. Midpoint estimates."

Poole nodded. "What's your role in the forecasting?"

He looked up, startled. "Me? I'm just babying the machinery."

"'Just?'"

"Well, I guess."

"Do you read items as you enter them? Do you pay attention?"

"Yes; I'm not prohibited. Of course, I'm interested in it all."

"Any opinions?"

"Well, sure. Always. I'm human. I don't like what's going to the Foreign Service. I say we should solve our own problems first. I'd like to see a whole lot more go to supporting the arts, and for pure research and development. I'd like...well, hell, I'd like a lot of things. Overall, I guess I'm happy."

"Do you write to your representative on the Supreme Council?"

"No," the clerk admitted, "although I do answer his questionnaires. Sure, I have some gripes, but I'm happy." He half-turned, turned back. "Pardon me; the machine wants looking at."

"No further questions," Poole said airily, and strolled away. The clerk had never spied Parke, who watched and listened closely.

Shrugging, Parke moved off, casting about for Lang. There she was, before a data terminal, running a long column of decisions that had been subjected to Administrative Review. A parallel note-file ran alongside it, and Lang entered her ideas, her opinions, and her thoughts for transmission to her own database later, when the machine found a spare nanosecond.

Parke watched her, admiring the speed with which she worked. Surreptitiously, he nabbed an empty terminal and, over Lang's shoulder, as it were, followed her thoughts as best he could. Swiftness was the first trait of hers he noted. Efficiency was the second. And insightfulness was the third. Sheer brilliance in the way she took unrelated facts and built a structure out of them. Her notes, which he accessed only by computer legerdemain, were obscure, written in a code known only to her, but when concepts were phrased in clear language, they made sense. Too much sense? Parke looked very carefully at her "recommendations," although they were never phrased as such. They were good ones, involving a clear appreciation of the current balance of affairs.

Time passed; Poole interviewed; Lang reviewed. Parke was amused to note that each spent most of her time looking at the other's departments.

But there was more to do, and somewhere, today, in the building below, a shot had yet to be fired. He gathered the two aspirants together, and ushered them to an elevator. They went only a little way down, onto a floor dominated by a three-dimensional situations table.

Parke stepped forth first, unwilling to expose these two to any unnecessary danger. No shots rang out, for which he had to be grateful. They would, in time; the danger was not imagined. Somewhere in the building was a man with a gun.

#

The situations table was a pompous, overglorious thing, almost totally useless, and almost painfully beautiful. It was the first thing the average person thought of when the Secretariat's Spire was mentioned.

Twenty meters high, spherical, the projected image hung in midair in the high-domed room. For the moment, it showed the Concordat's full region of space. Stars burned forth, too dense to be truly appreciated; one could not see through to the other side. Moment by moment, connections traced themselves, outlined in glowing red or in brightest green. Trade routes, or express-boat networks, or military patrols, or Treasury transfers, or... Parke watched, enraptured, almost hypnotized, while pattern after pattern flicked across the starfield. Some patterns popped in, whole, and popped out entire. Some chose a point of origin and grew, branching out like some fast-growing vine. The colors varied, shifted, while information conveyed itself to any watchers.

Other than Parke, none watched. There was no need to. Computers perceived far more fully the import of what happened here, and the data was then boiled down into humanly accessible options. The projection, beauteous and luminous, had been the showy spree of a First Secretary long past who had needed something to point to while explaining his position in debate. No one since had seen fit to dismantle the device, which was, certainly, a very impressive monument.

The waste of money, the waste of energy... It was worth it, Parke decided, tearing his gaze away at last.

He smiled. Poole stood off to one side, in the midst of some eight data-reduction technicians, getting their views and giving out hers. She waved her hands, and her dissertation was rhetorically inspired.

Lang, more productive if less charismatic, sat with another technician, up to her elbows in hardcopy. She fluffed the thick sheaf of documents, squared it neatly against the small desktop, and slipped them into her portfolio. This under her arm, she returned to Parke, smiling shyly.

"I'll study this later; there's real information in here."

They stood, together, silently, watching Poole work with the people around her. Lang nerved herself to speak.

"She's better with people than I am. Better, probably, than I'll ever be. I think..."

"What do you think?" Parke prompted, very gently.

"I think she'd be better dealing with the other members of the Praesidium than I would. Vissenne — " She stopped herself, afraid of committing some act of lèse majesté.

"Go on," Parke said. "Vissenne won't hear you."

"He's such an angry man. Would I be able to deal with him?"

"Perhaps not. But, I'll tell you frankly, neither am I. Vissenne has much more power than I do."

Lang looked up at him, shocked.

"Yes, it's true," he admitted. "Vissenne's power base is wider than mine, and it goes deeper. He has access to power, both in terms of military support and in his espionage agency. The man with the spies learns much of use, even about those on his own side. And he does employ assassins," he finished darkly.

"But...you control him, don't you?"

"Control Vissenne? No; I merely have learned, in my way, to play him off against the others. De la Noue, with her Navy, serves me very well in that regard. While they're feuding, the rest of us can breathe easier."

"Does she also employ assassins?"

"Yes. Be sure of it. Someday, I'll tell you about her Black Book. The names in it don't live long."

"And the Justicar?"

Parke closed his eyes a moment. Justicar Solme was one of the few true friends he had in the whole of the universe.

"Him too. He calls them the Crew, and does his best to rationalize the hypocrisy. You can't believe in law and justice and utilize extralegal means, but he manages to convince himself that he's right to do so."

"Redmond and Wallace?" Lang spoke in little more than a whisper.

Parke beamed. "Those two constantly amaze me. I can't believe that they have a wicked bone between them. Two of the nicest people I've ever worked with." His voice husked low. "Is it any wonder that their power is so minimal?"

Lang was silent. Soon Poole, her audience over, joined them. The three, together, departed thoughtfully.

Parke, over his shoulder, allowed himself a final glance at the projected sphere of stars. The beauty of it fulfilled him.

More stars than could be counted in long months of solid enumeration, and more than could be known, or even named, in a long lifetime. And it was only the tiniest bubble of space, in one spiral arm of a commonplace galaxy. Coldness gripped him.

The elevator deposited them on a floor yet lower. Tall corridors stretched, curving, out of sight, lit by the sunlight through floor-to-ceiling windows. Opposite them, wide double doors were spaced widely, set into the wood-paneled wall. People stalked the halls, moving toward the elevators from doors far to the left, beyond the curve of the wall, where a set of doors had opened, spilling out its roomful of spectators.

Parke led Poole and Lang to the nearest door, and entered with them. He was still alive, and that, he decided, was better, even with the deadly anticipation clawing at him, than would have been the finality, no matter how it simplified things, of death.

Inside, short, carpeted stairways took them up to the top of a large, gently inclined auditorium, down one aisle of which they peered. At the lectern, addressing the banked rows of attentive listeners, a tall woman in a fashionable business suit spoke, while to one side, at a second lectern, another woman waited with folded arms. It was a debate, upon some finagling point of law that Poole, and even Parke, were soon mired in. Lang, rapt, moved off and seated herself, soon enfolding herself in the tricky point being made. Parke and Poole, knowing their limits, strolled back out into the hall, to await the outcome.

"She knows her facts," Poole muttered bitterly. "She clearly is better educated than I am, and she applies it more widely."

"There's too much to know," Parke responded.

"More than any one mind can contain. That's true. But she does what she can so incredibly efficiently." She lowered her head. "And the truth daunts me terribly."

"The truth?"

"That meeting in there. Very much like a meeting of the Supreme Council of Sectors. If I am appointed to be your successor, and if I do succeed you, then someday I'll be in front of an audience that large — "

"Larger."

" — And yet I relish the thought. The challenge, and, yes, the feeling of power, are things that call to me. I wish I could guide the Concordat, make it move the way I want it to."

"Moving the Supreme Council is like...well, like sweeping water, or like carrying sand and your bare hands. By the time you think you've accomplished something, you find out how much has slipped by you."

"That's my kind of challenge," Poole exulted. "The Supreme Council is neither a true legislative body, nor merely the rubber stamp of popular myth. It's a true seventh branch of government, along with the six Praesidium seats. I yearn for the chance to work with them." Her head, which had risen higher in her exuberance, sank again.

"But Lang, Lang. I'm sure she's more qualified than I. She knows the facts; she has the knowledge."

"Yes," Parke admitted. "She does."

"She's learned from history," Poole continued unhappily. "I'm only beginning to understand the significance of the two would-be revolutions we've had in the past two years. Lang explained to me, quietly and concisely, how little it would take to touch off a full-scale, Concordat-wide revolution, one that would put the Revolution that founded us totally to shame. I wouldn't have seen that, although, once she pointed it out, it's obvious."

"There are a dozen flash points," Parke agreed. "The people resent the Universal Service that takes every youth from ages sixteen to twenty and trains them. That's our most important tool for socializing the generations of the future; it's all that's kept us stable for seven hundred and seventy years."

"No, not all. We've been isolated. Think... What was the longest-lasting and most stable empire of the days before spaceflight?"

Parke considered. "Most people would say the Khanate of the Chens."

Poole nodded, her face wry. "Who lived in their river valleys, isolated, unaware of distant lands. They were stable, and yet not moribund. They grew, slowly, and with minimal upsets from new developments."

"And outside contacts shattered them when the steamships sailed up their rivers."

Poole shivered. "It took Lang to mention the analogy to me. I'm historically ignorant. Will outside influences shatter us, since we have come upon other starfarers?" She shook herself. "I won't believe it. We're stronger than that; far stronger."

"The Chens died by the millions," Parke whispered, "in rebellions, and in riots, and in civil war."

"I can stop that from happening!" Poole let burst.

"The High Khan of the Chens could not."

Poole, to stop her chin from trembling, bowed her head to her chest.

Lang, exuberant at her ideology having won the debate, emerged just ahead of an enormous flood of people, some equally happy, and some furious or somber. A rematch might reverse the opinion. Nothing was settled.

Parke went with them to the elevator.

"Explain how she won," he asked of Lang.

"She had her facts marshaled, all in one place...in her mind, that is. She knew what the answer to each point had to be, and the weaknesses of the opposite view."

"Did it have anything to do with playing to the crowd?"

Lang blinked. "It wouldn't have worked," she said finally, after thinking about it. "They were swayed far more by her well-put-together logic than by her personality."

The elevator let them off near the bottom of the high spire, where the supporting columns bulked thick and massive between high windows, supporting the tremendous weight above. Books, everywhere, in cases that stretched up into the shadows of the ceiling, lined the walls. The library's halls shot off beyond sight, and everywhere was the irregular patchwork of books above books beyond books.

"A waste of space," Parke said needlessly, gesturing to a busy station, well manned, that produced bound facsimiles quickly and quietly. "Punch in a number, and the computer does the printing and binding. This, too, is for show."

He strolled off, and the two women followed him. He turned left and right at random, moving through the cases, running his hand along the books. They were electronically coded, with microfilaments running down the spines, so that relocation was a simple job. All cataloging was by computer; perhaps one out of a thousand of these had actually been read, once, years ago, by some seeker now dead. Silence pressed in on them, and years overshadowed them. Knowledge hemmed them in.

Not able to walk abreast, Parke led Poole, who glided just in advance of Lang. The light seemed dimmed here, as the high fluoros shed their brilliance down on shelf upon shelf of high-stacked books. Below, it was almost like walking undersea, save for the deadly silence. A musty smell pervaded the mazelike warren, where centuries ate into even time-proofed books.

"I haven't been here for quite some time," Parke whispered. "It is. really quite a monument. It puts our endeavors into perspective." He arrived at a wall and perforce turned right. The wall was solid with books.

"Why...? Why?" Lang asked, herself awed.

"Why not let the computers file them for us and retrieve them instantly? Most people do, of course. I don't know. It seems right, though... It seems right."

Poole seconded Lang. "It's inefficient. This space could be used for more productive purposes."

"It's traditional," Parke responded. "And tradition, for us, is what has been most productive. This world is named Archive. The race was born here. We've gone on, to other worlds, leaving our home-world only an archive in truth. It's fitting that it be made so in actual fact, as well as in computerized seeming."

He followed the wall, trailing his left hand idly over the shelves.

A footfall echoed that was not of any of the three of them.

Parke's heart leaped. It is now.

He had some free will left. He repeated his earlier words. "It puts our endeavors into perspective."

"How nice," sneered the masked assassin who hove into view. "That'll make you a nice epitaph."

Parke closed his eyes. That's why I said it.

Poole saw the gun in the assassin's hand, a cold black metal shape of infinite fear. She reached to the wall and turned off the lights.

Lang saw the gun and recognized it by its type, a heavy slugthrower, recoil-stabilized, backspiral-silenced. She reached to the bookshelf and pulled forth a shield of bound volumes.

The lights out, the books thrust between the assassin's gun and Parke, the two women advanced, fighting mad, fighting cold, moving in efficiently because they hadn't been given time to be afraid. Parke, buffeted aside as they moved past him, listened with openmouthed fascination as they took the man apart.

Poole wrenched the gun away from him, gripping his unseen arm with fierce determination, grappling in the darkness. Lang used the heavy books as heavy books have been used too many times in the past: as weapons.

Reason returned to Parke at the last possible moment.

"Don't injure him! Here, release him!" He pulled Lang aside, spoiling her attempt to brain the man with her book; he shoved Poole away before she could reverse the gun, training it on the would-be killer.

"Back away," Parke said, control returning. "Back away."

The assassin scuttled backward near to the floor until he regained his feet.

"Freeze!" Poole snapped, aiming the gun randomly down the aisle.

"No," Parke sighed, and clumsily reached for her. The assassin, given the free moment, ducked between two bookstacks and was gone.

Lang turned the lights back on, which dazzled for the moment it took eyes to readjust. "Where's a phone? I'll have him stopped at the door."

"No," Parke said again, while nervous reaction surged within him. He mastered it. "Let him go."

They turned to him. "Why? Did you know him?"

At that, he smiled. "No. His face was almost certainly not his own. I think..." Had we captured him, we'd have been sure. We'd have known without question who he was, and who had sent him. And that would have been a disaster beyond compare.

He watched the two women, and when Poole, first, showed by her expression that she understood, her nomination was secured.

#

The three of them sat again in Parke's office at the top of the building; he felt glad to be alive. He savored his glass of juice as if it would be his last. He smiled, inwardly. It yet could be.

"Annyn Poole is now my official nominee for the post of First Secretary of the Praesidium of Archive. I want you both to understand why.

"You both have strong points, and you both have failings. Be sure that so do I.

"Poole, you're strongest in dealing with people. You're an orator, and a manipulator — I mean that kindly — and you have a knack for everyday psychology.

"Lang, you're best with knowledge, and with facts. You're best when it comes to the support function. You'll be in charge of the Program someday, and your recommendations will shape the worlds. But you'll be supporting Poole, where she would not be able to support you except by speaking for you. That can't be done. Communication is too important to be left to a spokesman.

"And I'll be here for several years to come, I must hope. Now that I've named a successor, there's no need for...a certain one...to wish me dead."

Poole threw him a glance. "There's more."

"Yes there is. I faced the question of too much versus too little. Miss Poole, you are too active. You'll keep things stirred up, and I have to admit that I fear what overreactions you'll succumb to. Miss Lang, you are too inactive. You would be likely to rely upon autonomous programs, and upon underlings. You're too trusting; Poole is not trusting enough."

"Why did you let the assassin go?" Lang asked.

"Because — " he began.

"Because you knew whom he served, and didn't want him to know that you knew," she guessed shrewdly.

"No. Because I did not know, and didn't dare to learn."

"Is it so frightening to you to find out which of your many enemies want you dead?"

"It's one of my allies."

Lang was silent for a moment. "You mentioned the OIS, and the Crew, and the Black Book... Which of those was it?"

Parke looked down. "As long as I don't know, then that member of the Praesidium is safe. If it came out — and it would have had we...had you captured him — then one member of the Praesidium would be discredited. I can't have that."

"One member of the Praesidium tried to kill you! He must be discredited."

"Oh, no," Parke said, waving his hand in dismissal of the subject. "Discomfited, maybe. Embarrassed a little bit by knowing that he's failed. Maybe even a little bit relieved that he's just missed causing such an uproar.

"But if no member of the Praesidium is ever to be paramount, then no member may ever be degraded. The overall balance is totally important. Vissenne and Solme balance de la Noue and the two neutrals, who tend to band together. I find that glorious.

"Poole, your job will be, someday, to find the weaknesses in the Praesidium with which you work, and to keep the members fractioned along those fault lines. You cannot afford to let them unify, and you cannot afford to let them disintegrate."

The memory of a gun pointed at him froze him for a long moment.

"You cannot afford it."

He finished his juice, and set the glass very firmly level upon the desk.

#

Upon the Eve of the Last of Days

Solme: We have only begun the night's work.

De la Noue: Will we have finished by daybreak? I've a fleet to tend to.

Vissenne: And I, too, have business. Some ofyou will probably delight in imagining it to deal with assassins, booted and gloved in deepest jet, with daggers in their teeth.

Parke: I never meant any such accusation.

Vissenne: Think what you will; can we get on with business?

Parke: Well, yes, I guess so. Only a few hours, you know, and it will be the last day. The last of days...

Vissenne: Ahem.

Parke: Ah? I was just thinking. The last day of the year, and all that. We're here, planning the course of the future of the race, more of a family among ourselves than our own families are to us, dealing with the press of business on the last day of the year.

Vissenne: So?

Parke: You know. 'No end without a new begning,' almost as if —

Vissenne: Drivel.

Parke: Yet I choose to believe in it.

#

And so, into the night.

The End

Praise for the Books of Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Web of Futures:

"All of Swycaffer's books are great, some are classic pursuit novels like Universal Prey, Warsprite, etc. This, like some of his others, is one of a kind. You'll never forget it. I told people that at one point, 3/4ths of the way through this book, I had to hold it up in front of my face, as I read it at lunch at a fast food place, to hide the tears coming out of my eyes. They said "Sounds like a sad, depressing book; won't try it." That's NOT why I was crying. I was moved, rewarded, what else can I say? It was NOT a depressing book. Haven't you ever cried from the heart, or because of delight, etc.?"

— George H. Wells, on Amazon

At the Sign of the Brass Breast and Other Stories:

"The best parts of the stories for me were the characters of Daran and Caroline, a witty pair of rogues I wouldn't mind spending some time with — as long as my money was carefully locked away, that is — and Swycaffer's writing style. He plays with the language like a cat with a toy mouse: never content to simply describe what's going on, he adds a lyrical, polished touch to every sentence that makes all of these stories a joy to read. Each story is self-contained but builds a bit from the one before it. If you enjoy well-written, whimsical fantasy with a twist, check this out. You're in for a treat!

— Winterhawk, on Amazon

Voyage of the Planetslayer:

"This is a very solid sci-fi adventure with some original themes. A spaceship crew of independent operators (think Han Solo and Chewie) is drafted through bureaucratic nonsense into a secret government mission — sterilize an entire world, full of lush but toxic life, in preparation for human colonization. It's more cerebral than action-oriented — much of the book is discussions between the characters about the morality and practicality of their mission. The most interesting character is the alien crewmember — the author does a fine job of creating a unique alien race that truly thinks differently than we do. It's not just 'humans in a funny suit'- this is a creature with a completely different mindset. This reads smoothly and quickly, with some nice surprises, such as a courtroom drama and secret-agent style intrigue. Recommended."

— A. C. F. Crawford, author of Sailor of the Skysea, on Amazon

Other Books by Jefferson P. Swycaffer

The Tales of the Concordat of Archive novels,

first series, "Spaceships and Empires":

Become the Hunted

Not in Our Stars

The Captive's Rank

The Universal Prey

The Praesidium of Archive

The Concordat of Archive novels,

second series, "The Marterly Trilogy":

The Empire's Legacy

Voyage of the Planetslayer

Revolt and Rebirth

The Halcyon Novels (Urban Fantasy):

Warsprite

Web of Futures

The Demon Constellation Novels (Urban Fantasy)

The Shadowy Road

Story Collections:

At The Sign of the Brass Breast and Other Stories

The Capitulation of the Carnivores and Other Stories

Other Novels

Eye of the Staricane

The Chain Forge