Rise of the Terran Empire Read online

  "I'm not saying anything I haven't often before," Story pursued. "I simply have a—well, I won't call it a prospect of making you see reason. Let's say I feel it my duty to keep trying to persuade you till the last minute."

  "My duty is not that I listen. I told you and told you, me, if the independents join up with the Seven, or with the Home Companies either, that is truly the end of the League, because we Independents is the last properly spiritous members of it." Van Rijn leaned back, glass to lips, and gazed at the mighty simulacrum above him. Night had fallen on the scene, the moons hung in frost halos and Saturn's shadow began to creep across the rings. No stars had appeared. He sighed. "We was born too late, though. If I had been at the Council of Hiawatha, what I could have warned them!"

  "They made a perfectly logical decision," Story said.

  Van Rijn nodded. "Ja. That was the deadly part of it."

  Not until long afterward would historians appreciate the irony of the meeting having gathered where it did. At the time, if there was any conscious symbolism in the choice of site, it expressed optimism. After all, the O'Neill colonies had not only given man his first dwellings in space, the burgeoning of wholly new industries within them had been of primary importance in a revival of free enterprise. So thoroughgoing did that revival become, in ways of thinking and living as well as in economics, that, together with the alloying of formerly disparate Terrestrial societies, a whole civilization can be thought to have come freshly into existence—the Technic. After the development of the hyperdrive, man's explosive expansion away from Sol made the artificial worldlets obsolete. Yet they continued faithfully orbiting around their Lagrangian points, in Luna's path but sixty degrees ahead or behind, and were not abandoned overnight. In particular, Hiawatha and its companion Minnehaha still housed substantial working populations when the Polesotechnic League called the most fateful of its executive sessions.

  The problem it faced was manifold. Quite naturally, most governments resented it. Although its constitution made it simply a mutual-help association, it wielded more strength than any single state. It hampered as well as humiliated governments when it gave them no part in decisions which deeply affected domestic trade; when its hard credit displaced their fiat money; when their attempts at regulation were covertly subverted or openly scorned. Nor was this a mere matter of officialdom hankering for power. Many grudges were genuine. No system that mortals devise is perfect; all break their share of lives. A poor boy or girl or nonhuman might rise to living like a god and controlling forces that would have been beyond the imagination of mythmakers. Efficient underlings could do very well for themselves. But those would always exist who did not have the special abilities or the plain luck. Most were not too unhappy at becoming routineers; some were poisonously embittered. More important, perhaps, was that large percentage of mankind which never really wanted to be free. Of this, a majority yearned for security, which political candidates promised to get for them. A more active minority wanted solidarity behind exciting causes, and thought that everybody else should desire the same thing.

  The League had its own troubles. Sheer scale and diversity of undertakings, the overwhelming rate of information flow, were undermining administration of the larger companies. The concept of free contract was being increasingly abused, as in the establishment of indentures. Reckless exploitation of societies and natural resources was waxing. Ominous was the introduction of modern technologies to backward races without careful prior consideration—irresponsibly, for a quick credit, regardless of whether it was desirable to have such cultures loose with things like spaceships and nuclear weapons.

  A parliament was finally elected in the Commonwealth that was pledged to thoroughgoing reforms; and its jurisdiction was still the League's greatest market and source of manpower. In the "thousand days" it passed an astonishing number of radical new laws and, what counted, began enforcing them as well as a good many old ones.

  Therefore the Polesotechnic League called a Grand Council at Hiawatha to discuss what to do.

  It enacted several resolutions which founded more humane and farsighted policies than hitherto. Where it unknowingly came to grief was in the question raised by the measures in the Commonwealth. These included a central banking commission, floors and ceilings on interest rates, income tax, an antitrust rule, compulsory arbitration of certain kinds of disputes, loans by the state to distressed enterprises, subsidies to industries deemed critical, production quotas, and much else.

  A few hotheads among the delegates talked about resorting to arms, but were shouted down. While members of the League had occasionally overturned difficult local governments, the League itself was not in the business of government. The decision to be made was: Should it boycott the Commonwealth until the recent legislation was repealed, or should it acquiesce within the Solar System?

  Acquiescence won. A boycott would be immensely expensive, would ruin several members if they weren't underwritten and badly hurt the rest. It would also create an unpleasant image of saber-toothed greed versus the altruistic statesman. In vain did some speakers argue that in the long run it is best to stand firm by one's principles, and that the principle which gave the League its sole meaning and justification was liberty. Opponents retorted that liberty demands frequent compromises and, on a less exalted plane, so does common sense; the laws were not totally bad, they actually had various features desirable from a mercantile point of view; and in any case, by remaining on the scene the League companies would stay influential and could work for modifications.

  And indeed this proved to be true. Regulatory commissions soon turned into creatures of the industries they regulated—and discouraged (at first) or stifled (later) all new competition. This was much aided by a tax structure heavily weighted against the middle class. After a while, the great bankers were not just handling money, they were creating it, with a vested interest in inflation. Union leaders, with enormous funds to invest, fitted cozily into the system; if you did not enroll, you did not work, and the leaders and the managers between them set the conditions under which you must work. Antitrust actions penalized efficient management to the satisfaction of the less enterprising. Likewise did quotas, tariffs, wage and price limits, preferential contract policies. A set of ineffective but self-perpetuating welfare programs helped produce the votes useful for maintaining the corporate state.

  For that is what the Commonwealth became. No longer distinct from politicians or bureaucrats, the magnates of the Home Companies gained a powerful say in decisions about matters far removed from finance or engineering. Their natural allies became the heads of various other constituencies—geographical, cultural, professional—which were thus brought under ever closer governmental control.

  Meanwhile, companies which did not have an originally strong position in the Commonwealth found themselves being more and more squeezed out. Accordingly, they concentrated on developing markets beyond its borders. They were involved in the declarations of independence of several colony planets, some of whose politics they then gradually took over. Certain of them began to make cooperative agreements, limiting competition among themselves, to the exclusion of the rest of the League. Thus, by slow stages, were born the Seven In Space.

  Lesser companies, fearful of being engulfed, avoided joining either side, and formed no organization of their own. They were the independents.

  By no means did the Council of Hiawatha produce these results overnight. In fact, the period which came immediately after seemed, if anything, more dominated by capitalists than before. It was the most expansive, most brilliant time which Technic civilization would ever know. At home, remedies applied to the body politic took hold quite gradually, and their side effects were still slower to become obvious. On the stellar frontier, discovery followed discovery, triumph followed triumph; each year told of an evil conquered, a fortune made; if strife ran high, likewise did hope. The tree was growing, ever leafing, though a snake gnawed its roots. Thus was it often before on
Earth, in the age of the Chun-Chiu, the age of the Delian alliance, the age of the Renaissance.

  But when a century had passed—

  "Well, never mind stale history," Story said. "We're alive now, not then. Will you join the Seven in making a peace effort?"

  "Join." Van Rijn tugged his goatee. "You mean take orders from you and not ask rude questions."

  "We'll try to consult, of course. But with communications as slow as they are, compared to the speed with which a crisis can build up, we must have a clear chain of command."

  Van Rijn shook his head. "No, always I am too hungry for feedback."

  Story made a chopping gesture. "Do you want to cut yourself off entirely from whatever congress makes the peace?"

  "It is not sure there will be a congress, and double not sure what tune it will dance to . . . . Ah, here comes my appetizers. You will be surprised, Freeman, at how much I can bite all by myself."

  X

  Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen was in the Arcadian Hills, hunting, when word reached her. Though she had felt guilty about leaving Starfall at a time of crisis—domestic as well as foreign, with more and more of the Traver class in an uproar—a brief escape from its atmosphere was like spring water going through a dried-out throat.

  Her hounds had gotten on the track of a cyanops. Their baying resounded down forest vaults, a savage plainsong in green cathedral dimness. She bounded in pursuit of the noise. Her hands parted branches and scanty underbrush, her feet overleaped fallen trees, her lungs drank breath after sweet-scented breath, her eyes beheld high boles, overarching branches rich with leaves, sunflecks in shadow, the brilliant wings of a nidiflex, her body rejoiced. After her bounded half a dozen men from the ancestral estate at Windy Run. Otherwise the wilderness was hers alone.

  She sped up a slope and came out onto a meadow along the top of a cliff. The light of Maia was almost blinding on the low lobate yerb, studded with tiny white wildflowers, that covered this open ground. Beyond, she saw further hills, rank upon arrogant rank, and in the distance the solitary peak of Cloudhelm, its snows veiled in mist. The dogs had the cyanops cornered at the edge. A rangy, heavy-jawed, dun-coated breed raised by folk in these parts, they knew better than to attack iron-gray scales and raking claws. But since they could, together, pull the big herpetoid down if they must, it had lumbered from them. Now it stood its ground and hissed defiance.

  "Oh, good!" Sandra exulted. She unslung her rifle and approached with care. A hasty shot might hit a dog or merely madden the beast. It was hard to kill except by a bullet straight through one of those eerily innocent-looking blue eyes.

  The portable phone at her belt buzzed.

  She stopped dead. The clamor of hounds and men dropped out of her awareness. Via relay satellite, the phone leashed her to the New Keep and nowhere else. It buzzed again. She unclipped the small flat box and brought it near her face. "Yes?"

  A voice rattled forth: "Andrew Baird, Your Grace"—her appointed vice executive whom she had left in charge during her absence. "We have received word from Admiral Michael"—Michael Falkayn, her second in command of the little Hermetian navy. "They've detected a substantial fleet bound this way under hyperdrive, apparently from the general direction of Mogul. Distance is still too great for anything but simple code signals. The strangers have sent none so far, nor responded to any of ours."

  It was as if a machine spoke for Sandra, free of the dread that shocked through her: "Get every unit into space that isn't already, and have them report to him for duty. Alert every police and rescue corps. Keep me informed of developments as they occur. 'Twill take me . . . about ninety minutes to reach my car, and another hour to fly to you." Not pausing to hear his goodbye, she put the phone back on her belt and swung about. Her men stood in a bunch; their gaze upon her was troubled. As if sensing something, the hounds grew less noisy.

  "I must return immediately." She rinsed her mouth from her canteen before she started down into the forest at a long, energy-conserving lope. Two hunters tarried to call off the pack. The cyanops stared after them, not understanding the fortune which had saved its life.

  Sandra's eastbound flight kept her near the Palomino River, which shone like a saber drawn across the lowlands. They were an agrarian property of the Runeberg domain. At the present season, the summer green of pastures was fading; but even from her altitude, the herds that grazed them were majestic. Opulent grainfields mingled with orchards and groves. Houses belonging to Follower families in charge of various sections stood snug beneath their red tiles, amidst their gardens. Afar she glimpsed the mansion of the Runebergs themselves. She had visited there and remembered well its gracious rooms, ancestral portraits, immensity of tradition, and children's laughter for a sign that new life was ever bubbling up from beneath these things.

  Not for the first time, a moment's wistfulness touched her. To be born into the Kindred, the thousand families who headed the domains . . . Her descent went back as far as theirs; her forebears had also been among the first passengers from Earth. It was almost an accident that the early Tamarins had not founded a corporation to tame a particular part of this world. Instead, they had mostly been scientists, technicians, consultants, explorers, teachers: free lances.

  Too late to change, she thought. When the constitution of an independent Hermes was written, it specified that the chief executives would be of Tamarin birth but that the Tamarins should have no domain: a lonely glory.

  I could have refused election, she recalled. Why didn't I? Well, pride, and . . . and Pete was there, my consort, to help me. But supposing he'd not been . . . well, had I refused, I'd have become like any other Tamarin who's not made Grand Duke or Duchess, I'd have had my living to earn as best I could—a Traver in all but name and, yes, in having a vote. Defensively, as if an accuser from that class confronted her in yet another public debate: And what's so bad about Traver status? Comes the word not simply from travailleur, worker, descendant of latecomers, a hireling or an unaffiliated businessman?

  I might have joined a family of the Kindred by marrying into it. That would have been best. She could have gotten the in-between degree of Follower in the same way, merging her bloodline with one that held entailed shares making it a junior partner in a domain. But she would always have been embarrassed to address with certain courtesies the high-ranking people who had been her childhood playmates. To be of the Kindred, though—not necessarily serene on a landed estate; quite likely in some other of the industrial, scientific, cultural, or public service undertakings of a corporation—yes, thus she could strike roots deep into her planet, and know how securely her children would belong.

  The car phone projected Eric's image. "Mother!" he cried. "You've heard . . . Listen, I just have, and—"

  "Get off the circuit," she interrupted. "Baird may be calling me at any minute." Because he was betrothed and she hoped for grandchildren, she took time to add: "You might make sure Lorna gets to a safe place. I daresay you'll insist on being at the Keep."

  "Right. I . . . I'll stand by in the Sapphire Office." His countenance vanished.

  The wind of her speed roared around the car's canopy. Sandra straightened in her seat. No use wishing she were different from what she was. And did she really wish it, anyway? Somebody had to hold the reins of the state. If only because of experience, she could probably do so better than anyone else. Hang on, she thought ahead of her. I'm coming.

  Starfall appeared on the horizon, at first a darkness along the bright sheet of Daybreak Bay; then as she slipped downward it became the buildings, streets, parks, quays, monuments she had loved of old. Yonder stood the Mayory in red brick dignity, nearby lifted the slim spire of St. Carl's Church, the Hotel Zeus soared above Phoenix Boulevard, flowers flaunted themselves like banners around Elvander's statue in Riverside Common, traffic was dense and terrace cafés busy at Constitution Square, she actually identified Jackboot Lane where stood the Ranger's Roost tavern that had seen her drink and talk and sing in her youth like generations
before her . . . . Pilgrim Hill stood ahead. A police car hung above Signal Station. Sandra flashed it her name and made for the ducal parking roof. The thought that all this might go out in a burst of radioactive flame was unendurable.

  The Insignia Room was large and austere, ornamented only with the devices of the Kindred on its walls. They were colorful, but a thousand of them crowded together soon became featureless in the mind. On this high floor, windows gave on sky, long evening light, a glimpse of ocean, an ornithoid winging by. Yet as Sandra sat behind her desk, the chamber felt small, warm, dear, against the darkness at its far end.

  A three-dimensional comscreen occupied half that wall. It was as if cold radiated from the scene it held, deep into human marrow. The Baburite whose outlines posed before her did not seem dwarfish or bizarre—rather, the eidolon of something gigantic and triumphant. The picture showed a bit of a compartment aboard its ship, which hung in synchronous orbit above the city and sent down a tight beam. The fittings and furnishings were too alien for her fully to see. Behind and around the being loomed reddish dusk wherein dim shapes stirred.

  "Hear us well," a vocalizer said for it. "We represent the Imperial Band of Sisema and the united race.