The Thyrian nation was loyal to Jensu and indeed provided the Governance with many of its best constables, but clan ties still counted. Thus it came about that soon after he received his commission, Panthos was posted halfway around Earth to North Meric, where he reported directly to the Executive of that continent, his great-uncle. Given the growing unrest there, opportunities for conspicuously useful service and consequent rapid advancement in rank should be frequent.

"If you survive them," cautioned the old man. "Rats' nests of tribes, peoples, classes, religions, godknowswhats, scourings of wars, migrations, revolutions, conversions, history — much too much history, much too little of it ours."

Straight and trim in his new gray uniform, optionary's bars newly gleaming on his shoulders, Panthos replied, "They won't dare rebel, any of them, will they, sir?"

"Not yet. Not in my lifetime, maybe not in yours. They hate each other worse than they hate the Coordinator. But they do riot. If we can't keep that within bounds, it will stir up notions, and that will not be unwelcome to certain Jensui magnates  —  Never mind."

"I see what you mean, sir."

"I doubt you do, except very vaguely. Well, you'll learn. Don't expect any favoritism."

"I don't want any!" Panthos exclaimed.

Firix overlooked the breach of military manners, this time, and finished: "I'm far too busy for it. I will try to get you assignments suited to your degree of experience and to developing you as an officer." His features unbent.

"For your part, you'll come to dinner this evening. I've no end of questions, family, the estates, friends, everything, even the animals and adapts."

In the course of the next year or so Panthos learned about homesickness. Telepresence was thin rations when you never had the bodily reality. Besides, a man was generally too tired at day's end to make a call, which would have been at an inconvenient antipodal hour anyway. Or he had to attend some social function or he and his fellow juniors were taking their much-needed relaxation or he was playing with a joygirl or — whatever it was.

He also learned that maintaining the Coordinator's peace involved more than policing the Solar System.

At first he was stationed safely in Sanusco, meeting few natives other than servants, purveyors, and gentry, Jensuized in greater or lesser degree. Going on patrol through the streets, warrens, and sublevels, he discovered that the inhabitants were not a picturesque, undifferentiated rabble but individuals, who belonged to ancient cultures and held by ancient faiths. This education was interesting, occasionally delightful, now and then dangerous. He acquitted himself well, acquired the basics of two important languages, and was put in command of a platoon. They went widely over the continent as need arose, to assist a garrison in difficulties or to apply their special skills directly.

They went at last to Tenoya.

Firix first gave Panthos an intensive private briefing. "It's as nasty a hole as you'll find anywhere," the Executive said. "Aswarm with fanatics. Arods, you know. Nowadays their priests don't preach insurgency, but they do tell and retell how their valiant ancestors resisted the Pacification, and it wouldn't take a very hot spark to detonate the whole region. If this Seladorian business gets out of hand, that could just possibly be it."

Panthos frowned, searching a memory lately overburdened. "Seladorians? A cult, aren't they, split off from Arodism, but peaceful?"

The Executive scowled. "Peaceful in theory. In practice, unshakeably determined. And only partly Arodish. They've taken notions and practices from a wide range. Their prophet's father was a Kithman who left his ship to marry an Arodish woman. That made them outcasts in her people's eyes, and they had to move to Kith Town. She never felt at home there, and after he died young she returned to Arodia with her son. I can imagine the influences on him and in him. It doesn't help matters a bit that in the end Selador was martyred.

"Now the Seladorians in Tenoya have begun actively expanding their area of cultivation. That's brought on conflict with their neighbors, which has brought on killings. Retaliating for several deaths, a band of believers has wrecked a number of robots belonging to Arods, and even some municipal machinery. Their creed has technophobic implications, and the extremists among them are mechanoclasts.

"The city's aboil. The garrison's barely able to keep a semblance of order. A control team has to go in and attack the trouble at its heart. I'd frankly prefer a more seasoned man, but every one of them is engaged elsewhere. And this could be the making of your career, Panthos."

Ardency blazed. "Thank you, sir!"

The session went on for a pair of hours. At the end, when they parted, Firix said low, "I wish it didn't have to be you. Not that I don't have confidence in you, but — your mother's been my favorite niece."

"I'll be fine, sir," Panthos assured him. He snapped to attention and lifted his arm in salute. "Service to the Coordinator."

Firix's response was correct but without fire. Perhaps he was thinking of that painted giggler who sat in the Uldan Palace.

Panthos chose a slow transport for the flight to his destination. It gave him the time and the equipment-carrying capacity for direct mnemonic input. He arrived with some knowledge of the political situation and well-informed about the geographies. Nonetheless, what he saw from aloft struck him hard.

Perhaps it was the westward desolation, a rain-gullied plain stretching farther than his sight, dust scudding between scattered shrubs and clumps of harsh grass. Eastward the land sank down to a former lake bottom. That vast expanse of moister soil was green, cropland and groves streaked with irrigation pipes and studded with units processing the materials the plants yielded. Attendant robots moved about; brief sparks flashed where metal reflected sunlight. After the throngs in Sanusco and other cities — and the castles, preserves, villages, and archaic human-worked plantations in their hinterlands — desert and sown felt alike forsaken. Thyria seemed light-years distant, a dream half remembered.

Perhaps it was Tenoya, sprawling over square kilometers. Toward the center, folk and vehicles beswarmed the streets. Tenants filled Cyclopean buildings once devoted to other purposes but not yet fallen. Small houses made from wreckage huddled beneath. Here and there lifted the bulbous spire that marked a temple. Three antique towers, refurbished, soared in graceful lines and pastel hues close to the fortified garrison compound.

A haze blued the city core, dust and smoke, man sign. At night, Panthos knew, lights would flare hectic. But, more than the surrounding hectares of ruin and abandonment, this life shocked him. He thought of maggots in the corpse of a beautiful woman.

Enough. He had work to do.

The carrier set down in the compound. He led his men out, told them to wait, and reported to the summarian. "I suggest an immediate reconnaissance, sir," he said. "We're fully prepared, and in fact want some movement after all that sitting. It'll familiarize us, and a show of force ought to make for a healthier attitude."

"I'm not sure," the senior officer replied slowly. "Yesterday we got word that Houer Kernaldi is in town. We don't know when he arrived. Maybe days ago."

The note of hopelessness, the acceptance of being pretty well bottled up within these walls, chilled Panthos. He kept his tone respectful. "Who, sir?"

"You haven't heard of him? Houer Kernaldi. Double name, you notice. A Kithman by birth, but a Seladorian convert. He's been evangelizing and organizing for a good ten years, while maintaining connections with his kinfolk."

He must be a lonely one, Panthos thought. If he'd abandoned the star ways, what had he left but tiny Kith Town and the rare ship from outside? Well, there were his fellow believers here on Earth, few though they were. And his god — or Atman, Entelechy, Ultimate Motive, Meaning, whatever the word was in various languages. The Executive and the educator program hadn't told Panthos much about that. They didn't know much. "A troublemaker, then, sir?"

"Not really, at least not by intent. He's never preached sedition, and may well be trying to calm his followers down. It could have the opposite effect, as crazy as everybody in Lowtown is."

"I definitely need to meet him. Permission to go out, sir?"

"I have orders to allow you broad discretion," the summarian answered resignedly. "But remember, if you get into a broil, it may touch off general rioting, and if that happens, we may not be able to rescue you."

Panthos doubted the most besotted fanatic would care to attack a band like his. Still, he should avoid provocation. He took them through the main gate in close order and at a slow pace, not thrusting through the crowds but passing through, causing people to move smoothly aside, as a boat parts the sea.

That was a wistful image. The summer sun burned in a bleached and empty sky. Shadows lay hard-edged. Heat seethed in air so dry that breath stung nostrils. It struck from walls, hammerblows. Stenches worsened with each step onward, unwashed humanity, rankly seasoned cookery, dung, offal, sometimes a dog or giant rat ripening in death. The natives clamored from shopstalls, shrilled at each other; the shuffle of their sandals mingled with wheel-creak from carts and blare from the occasional motor vehicle. They were mostly Arods, lean, of medium stature and light brown skin, black hair hanging braided, faces high in cheekbones and flat in nose and slant in eyes, men generally in dingy white gowns, women in layers of gaudily striped cloth. A lively lot, Panthos admitted; hands waved, feet hopped, mouths moved incessantly. Sometimes a gaunt yellow desert dweller or a tall ranger from the northern bottomlands came by.

Briefly, Panthos felt lost — he, his troop, his civilization — among these and a hundred different foreignnesses around the globe, grains in a dust storm that blew on and on forever. Nonsense! He led the Coordinator's men, constables of the Governance. Their two dozen embodied mastery.

Always awesome were the Warriors, two and a quarter meters tall, identical in thick body and stony countenance: adapts, their genes shaped not for civilian service but for battle. The riflemen were generally more useful, being more flexible in their ways. The flittermen, little fellows who looked as if the apparatus on their backs would soon crush them, were the least impressive. However, if things turned jeapardous, suddenly jets would lift them off the ground, whirlyblades deploy, and the opposition find itself covered from above.

Panthos marched in front, unarmored, bearing only a sidearm, the golden rings of Jensu on his cap like a target. That also belonged to the show.

Eastward the streets zigzagged down, narrowing into lanes, pavement cracked and pitted, until the platoon was in shadowed canyons under a ragged strip of sky. Walls gaped with holes, revealing the detritus behind. Panthos reviewed his data. Here was Lowtown, where war and quarrying had uncovered the remnants of earlier cities — before Tenoya, Arakoum; before Arakoum, Cago.... If collapse had not choked a building or if people had grubbed it clear, they occupied it afresh, roofed the top and shuttered the windows with whatever materials they could salvage, peered out at the newcomers, came forth and trailed him in a flock that grew steadily bigger, noisier, more hostile.

To them the constables were invaders. This quarter that they had made from ruins was itself centuries old.

Paceman Bokta advanced to the optionary's side. "They're in an ugly mood, sir," he said.

Panthos nodded. "I can see that," he replied. "And hear it and smell it."

"Reminds me of once in Zembu, before your time, sir, when we were putting down Migoro's Rebellion. On patrol through a district kind of like this. I never found out what set 'em off, but in an eyeblink a howling mob was at our throats. We had to shoot our way clear back to cantonment. Left four good men behind, torn to shreds."

"Do you think we should withdraw?"

"Well, no, sir, can't do that exactly. We could turn at the next intersection and take the first upbound street after that. They'll suppose we're only making a quick survey." Bokta's leathery countenance had stiffened. Plainly, he didn't like the taste of what he advised.

"Do you know they will? These aren't Zembui."

"No, sir. Maybe they wouldn't get bumptious. I just thought I should take leave to mention it."

The veteran was no coward. Nor was a crack unit, forewarned, likely to suffer serious casualties. On the other hand, if they had to kill, the consequences could go far beyond serious. As never before, the loneliness of decision caught at Panthos.

He mustn't hesitate. "This may be our last chance to find somebody who'll negotiate," he said. "We will proceed."

"Yes, sir." The paceman fell back into formation.

As if to bear him out, a noise awakened ahead. Raw yelps echoed between walls, above a growl that took chilly hold of spine and scalp. The throng dissolved. Men, the fewer women, and the yammering urchins shouted, jostled, ran toward the racket, disappeared down the crooked passages. Emptiness loomed and yawned.

Nobody was left to keep the platoon from returning to base, and return had become impossible. "Alert!" Panthos snapped. "Forward!" He broke into quicksteps. Boots thudded at his back.

The canyon opened. He had reached the Seladorian purlieu.

Another world. Another universe? Right, left, and behind, walls rose in their ravaged tiers like hills enclosing a valley. In front, afar, Panthos spied the lake bed, hazy green to the horizon. Green, too, were the terraces that descended intricately before him, but paler, the green of hardihood and frugality. These grasses, grains, bushes, and trees were not biosynthesizers, they were life in its own right, food for their cultivators. The single extravagance was flower beds, flaunting to the sun. Houses and utility buildings stood along paths, a layout planned for optimum use of space. They, too, were made from salvage, but sturdily and neatly, colored rose or yellow or blue.

Recalling what he had learned, Panthos guessed how the Seladorians had toiled, generation by generation, to create this oasis. More to the point today was their effort to expand farther. Yes, they had acquired lawful title to what they set about razing. That mattered nothing to the inhabitants they displaced, or to kindred and friends of the newly homeless. Besides, in Arodish eyes Seladorians were blasphemers. They wanted to abolish the machines on whose productivity depended the subsidies that kept poor folk alive. Drive them into the desert! Exterminate them! If it weren't for the damned interfering Governance —

At first Panthos saw no rioters. They had spilled off onto lower terraces. Screams and cries tore through the heat. Smoke began to rise. The structures wouldn't burn, but what was in them could, and it was ill to think about dwellers who hadn't escaped.

He studied the map in his brain. "We'll make for the bottom ledge," he said. "Refugees will have. Hold your fire till I give the order."

The platoon jogged across the uppermost terrace and scrambled down a stone stairway. Some of the mob raged below. They kept their distance from the constables, shrieking their hatred. Most were on the third level. Men surged from the homes they were plundering. Shouts; rocks and debris thrown; the troopers glared and kept going. A bruise, an impact that drew blood, corpsmen could take it. For a while.

Before patience and discipline broke, they reached the fifth and final terrace. On foundations that must have belonged to a dock, it jutted sheerly out, its edge a cliff. The expanse was all garden and orchard except for a building larger than any above, decked in flowerful vines. The Seladorian temple — no, they called it a communion house. This was hallowed ground.

Several hundred people were there. As abruptly and insanely as the violence started, the attackers had not pursued, not quite yet. Instead they went for the residences and whomever didn't get away. Those victims couldn't be many, for believers hadn't tried to bar doors, nor bolted panicky in every which direction. Somebody had taken quick, effective leadership and brought them here. Mothers bore babies, youngsters trotted at their skirts, men helped the old and the lame along. Children wailed, a few adults wept, but in stumbling wise they moved toward the refuge.

They were garbed like their persecutors, except for one who trotted back and forth beside them. He wore a blue cloak over his gown and carried a staff. With calls and gestures, he herded them on their way.

A few cheered raggedly when they saw the Jensui. The cloaked man waved them to keep moving and hurried over to the platoon. He was short, hard-bitten, less dark than the others, nose craggy, eyes without obliqueness — Kith, by the look of him.

Panthos drew to a halt. "Form your line," he commanded. "If any rioters show, shoot above them, warn them off." To the leader: "Are you Houer Kernaldi?"

"Yes," replied the man, his Jensui accented but fluent and steady. "You arrived in bare time, Optionary. Thank you. The Ultimate is with you."

Panthos grinned. "Happenstance is. Are you in charge here? Don't they have a, uh, priest or councilor?"

"I don't know where Honrata is. May she be safe."

"Meanwhile they look up to you, eh? Well, you did a good, forceful job. But this is a blind end. You're boxed in."

"There was no other way to go. The sanctuary doors are stout. I hoped they'd withstand battering till a rescue squad came."

That could have been too long, Panthos thought. He suspected the summarian wouldn't mind having the Seladorian problem taken off his hands. Afterward he'd shoot several arbitrarily arrested offenders. The Arodish high priest would protest the executions while privately feeling relieved himself, and that would be that.

However, here Panthos was, bearing the authority of his mission. "I'll call for an airlift to bring you to safety," he said, and raised his transceiver bracelet.

The response he got hit him in the belly. "We can't," a subcommander groaned. "The whole damn city's erupting. Mobs are collecting around every Jensui property. We've got to keep force at the sites, all sites, or else they'll turn into lynch-and-loot packs."

"Hoy, you can spare a flyer or two to ferry us."

"Sorry. The summarian told me to tell you." He must have monitored the call, Panthos thought, but not wanted to give this matter any more time than that at this moment. "It'd be too provocative, he said. Better to let this thing burn itself out where it is than risk it spreading through the whole province. We've spotted you by satellite. You're secure where you are, aren't you? Stand guard till we have calm again. Service to the Coordinator."

The voice cut off. Panthos lowered his arm. "Did you hear?" he asked Kernaldi.

"I did," the other said without anxiety. "You will protect us?"

"Of course. You're subjects of the Governance."

Men appeared at the top of the stairs. They bounded down. "Fire high," directed the paceman. Fulgurators flared and boomed. It was a more effective demonstration than bullets or sonics. The men scuttled back up out of sight. Their curses and obscenities trailed them.

"We're safe," Panthos said. "We just have to wait. No fun in this weather, but if you can keep your followers quiet, we'll manage." He felt confident of that. Here was a natural-born commander.

Kernaldi shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Optionary. No water."

"What?"

"I checked that immediately when we got here. As I feared, nothing flows. The pipes are fed from above. Somebody has turned the valves. They aren't all witless hysterics. This hasn't happened randomly. There has been a certain amount of advance planning."

"Um." Panthos considered. Each man of his carried a canteen, and would need each drop in it. "The soil must still be moist. We'll find vessels, dig down, squeeze out what we can for your weakest" — infants, the aged, the infirm. "That ought to keep them alive till morning."

"I doubt it." The tone was dispassionate, setting forth fact and logic. "Besides, will we be free then? This siege could go on for days, if the constabulary takes no action to stop it. And, Optionary, think of the spiritual side. The psychological side, if you prefer. Everything else of these people's is being destroyed. This garden is their center and symbol. If we  —  they themselves — uproot it, will they ever have the heart to rebuild?"

"Maybe they can't," Panthos said. "Maybe they should go back to the old faith and the old ways, rejoin their folk."

He promptly regretted his words. The small man stood erect and replied — if a knife could speak, so would it have spoken  —  "That is impossible. We are what we are. We will die here, or flee to Seladorian communities elsewhere, but we will not surrender."

Panthos kept silence for a span, watching the fugitives. Most were braving the sun, leaving the shelter of the sanctuary to the vulnerable among them. Mothers comforted children, fathers led them to what meager shade lay at the building or under trees. Exhausted, stunned, they nonetheless bore themselves well and talked softly. Always their glances went back to the evangelist.

"What is this lifeway of yours?" Panthos asked.

Kernaldi smiled. His voice eased, the tone of one reasonable man to another. "That's nothing to explain in a single quick lecture, my friend. How much of the history do you know?"

"Very little. Tell me what you can."

Still Kernaldi spoke calmly. "Selador was not the first to see that all existence is unity and life its culmination — its purpose, for how can a lifeless universe have meaning? Intelligent life, awareness, is the goal. Rather, I should say, it's the forefront, for it's to evolve onward, till at the end it is identical with the Ultimate that realizes itself through life. We humans, though, have taken a wrong turning. If we persist as we are, we'll become more and more irrelevant to the Meaning, or even, on Earth, a threat to it. In the course of time, our race will go through misery to extinction." He shrugged. "In everyday language, a mistake of nature's. Selador didn't want that to happen."

"He, uh, preached against machines, didn't he?"

"No. He was not technophobic It's unfortunate that some of us today are. Having a technology is part of being intelligent. But humans have taken it too far, and in bad directions. They've adapted themselves to it, rather than it to the Meaning. They've cut themselves off from the living world. Too often, they're its enemy." Kernaldi gestured. "The desert here was once woodland and prairie. Our souls have shriveled like this country. Our duty to it, to the future, and to ourselves is to restore it and begin to live wholly with life."

He smiled again, ruefully. "But now I am preaching. Sorry. I'll only add that a great many local people, both high and humble, hate the idea. It would make them, or at any rate their descendants, the enclave."

"I'm surprised they don't regard it as just a daydream," Panthos said, wishing he could be kindlier.

Kernaldi took the remark in good part. "Oh, it is possible. I won't live to see it carried through, but we can make a start, and will if we're given the chance. Including the right sort of technology." He lowered his voice. "Bioengineering doesn't have to produce monsters. Apologies to those brave men of yours, but they are an example of what I'm talking about. Our scientific knowledge is valuable, but we should use it to restore a natural world that is in accordance with our own natures. Spacefaring is another example. It gave us many wonderful things and insights, but it is not an end in itself — that attitude has also produced monsters, of the spirit if not the body — and the time is overpast for us to take what we have gained from it for the enrichment and enlargement of life and mind, here and now."

Had Kithhood brought him to his faith? wondered Panthos. Generation after generation within metal, cruising the hollowness between the stars; alien planets, alien beings; on his own brief visits to Earth, an ever dwindling Kith Town from which Earth grew ever more estranged. . . .

Kernaldi put aside the emotion that had begun to show and went back to practicalities. "Well, obviously, in the course of time we Seladorians have developed our peculiar rites, observances, practices; and we stick together, if only because we have to. That alone gets us disliked. And we have our conflicts with the Governance. As a Kithman, I understand all this very well."

Sharply: "Have I said enough? Your turn. What about these people you see before you?"

The sun was a fire, the air a furnace. In the darkness of the sanctuary, a baby cried.

Panthos was young. Decision came fast. Yet he felt quite coolheaded as he answered, "You're right. Holding you guarded is no real protection. We'll escort you to the garrison."

Kernaldi regarded him for half a minute before asking, in the same level tone: "Isn't that against your orders?"

"I've received no direct orders." Panthos felt he had better speak openly; and he wanted to. "When we've left this spot, we can't turn back. That'd certainly mean a fight. When we get to the compound, they can't refuse you water, food, and shelter." As for himself, he should suffer no worse than a reprimand, and maybe nothing more than a tongue-lashing from the summarian. After all, he commanded a special force, dispatched by the Executive, whose grandnephew he was.

Kernaldi raised hand to brow. Though he had had nothing to do with Kithfolk, Panthos recognized the starfarer salute. "Thank you, sir. You are a man."

Wheeling about, Kernaldi went among his followers, to and fro, in and out, talking, touching, being what he was. Panthos caught fragmentary phrases. He saw what assurance and order they wrought.

"I think we can overawe the mob and pass through," he told Bokta. "Regardless of what happens, shoot to wound or kill only if there's absolutely no other choice, and only at those directly up against us. When in any doubt whatsoever, hold your fire. Is that clear, Paceman?"

"Yes, sir," Bokta replied. "I wish it wasn't," he muttered. A veteran could get away with such remarks.

Kernaldi herded the Seladorians into line. Bokta deployed the platoon forward, behind, and on either side. The flitters lifted. "Let's go," Panthos said, and led the way.

Up the stairs, where formation got tricky. Over the terrace above. As he expected, the rioters shrank back, right and left. They snarled, some of them screamed, a few threw objects, but they made way for the constables. Smoke reeked. Pale under the sun, flames danced over piles of household treasures. Whirlyblades whickered.

People and platoon surmounted the last level, crossed its defiled greenery, and went up a deserted street. Walls brimmed it with shadow, though heat still sucked on skin. Boots slammed stone. Doorways and windows stood shut. Nobody called from lean-to shops or hovels built out of shards.

The top of Panthos's mind crouched watchful. Underneath, he thought how he longed for a cold beer. And when he got back to Sanusco, there was a girl. . . and then furlough, home. . . .

A rifle barked. He never heard it, nor felt the slug crash through his skull.

Weapons swiveled about. "Hold fire!" the paceman bawled. No telling exactly where behind this crumbling concrete the sniper lurked, or what women and children might be shivering nearby. The optionary had issued his orders.

"O Ultimate —" Kernaldi knelt down by the sprawled body. He closed the eyes.

No further shot came. Probably the killer had laughed and run. "Take him up," Bokta bade after a short while. A Warrior gathered what was left of Panthos and cradled it against his chest. Kernaldi had been calming his flock. The march proceeded.

"Now," Kernaldi said, "the Governance will have to keep us protected."