The Rebel Worlds

VI

The star Virgil is type F7, slightly more massive than Sol, half again as luminous, with a higher proportion of ultraviolet in its emission. Aeneas is the fourth of its planets, completing an orbit in 1.73 standard years at an average distance of 1.50 astronomical units and thus receiving two-thirds the irradiation that Terra gets. Its mean diameter is 10,700 kilometers, its mass 0.45 Terra, hence gravity on the surface equals 0.635 g. This suffices to retain a humanly breathable atmosphere, comparable on the lowest levels to Denver Complex and on the highest to the Peruvian altiplano. (You must bear in mind that a weak pull means a correspondingly small density gradient, plus orogenic forces insufficient to raise very tall mountains.) Through ages, water molecules have ascended in the thin air and been cracked by energetic quanta; the hydrogen has escaped to space, the oxygen that has not has tended to unite with minerals. Thus little remains of the former oceans, and deserts have become extensive.

The chief original inducement to colonize was scientific; the unique races on the neighbor planet Dido, which itself was no world whereon a man would want to keep his family. Of course, various other kinds of people settled too; but the explorer-intellectuals dominated. Then the Troubles came, and the Aeneans had to survive as best they could, cut off, for generations. They adapted. The result was a stock more virile and gifted, a society more patriotic and respectful of learning, than most. After civilization returned to the Alpha Crucis region, Aeneas inevitably became its local leader. To the present day, the University of Virgil in Nova Roma drew students and scholars from greater distances than you might expect.

Eventually the Imperium decided that proper organization of this critical sector demanded an end to Aenean independence. Intrigue and judicious force accomplished it. A hundred years later, some resentment lingered, though the ordinary dweller agreed that incorporation had been desirable on the whole and the planet supplied many outstanding men to the Terran armed services.

Its military-intellectual tradition continued. Every Aenean trained in arms — including women, who took advantage of reduced weight. The old baronial families still led. Their titles might not be recognized by the Imperial peerage, but were by their own folk; they kept their strongholds and broad lands; they furnished more than their share of officers and professors. In part this was due to their tendency to choose able spouses, regardless of rank. On its upper levels, Aenean society was rather formal and austere, though it had its sports and holidays and other depressurizing institutions. On its lower levels there was more jollity, but also better manners than you could find on Terra.

Thus a description, cataloguing several facts and omitting the really significant one: that to four hundred million human beings, Aeneas was home.

The sun was almost down. Rays ran gold across the Antonine Seabed, making its groves and plantations a patchwork of bluish-green and shadows, burning on its canals, molten in the mists that curled off a salt marsh. Eastward, the light smote crags and cliffs where the ancient continental shelf of Ilion lifted a many-tiered, wind-worn intricacy of purple, rose, ocher, tawny, black up to a royal blue sky. The outer moon, Lavinia, was a cold small horn on top of that mass.

The wind was cold too. Its whittering blent with the soft roar of a waterfall, the clop of hoofs and creak and jingle of harness as horses wound along a steep upward trail. Those were Aenean horses, shaggy, rangy, their low-gravity gait looking less rapid than it was. Hugh McCormac rode one. His three sons by his first wife accompanied him. Ostensibly they had been hunting spider wolves, but they hadn’t found any and didn’t care. The unspoken real reason had been to fare forth together across this land that was theirs. They might not have another chance.

A vulch wheeled into view, wings across heaven. John McCormac lifted his rifle. His father glanced behind. “No, don’t,” he said. “Let it live.”

“Save death for the Terries, hey?” asked Bob. At nine years of age — 16 standard — he was a bit loud about his discovery that the universe wasn’t quite as simple as they pretended in school.

He’ll outgrow that, McCormac thought. He’s a good boy. They all are, like their sisters. How could they help being, with Ramona for mother? “I don’t hold with killing anything unnecessarily,” he said. “That isn’t what war is about.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Colin put in. He was the oldest. Since he would therefore be the next Firstman, family custom had kept him from joining the service. (Hugh McCormac had only succeeded when his elder brother was caught in a sand hell and died childless.) Perhaps his planetographic researches in the Virgilian System had not satisfied every inborn impulse. “You weren’t here, Father, when the revolution reached Nova Roma. But I saw crowds — plain, kindly citizens — hound Snelund’s political police down the streets, catch them, string them up, and beat them to death. And it felt right. It still does, when you think what they’d done earlier.”

“Snelund himself’ll be a while dyin’, if I catch him,” John said hotly.

“No!” McCormac snapped. “You’ll not sink yourself to his ways. He’ll be killed as cleanly as we kill any other mad dog. His associates will have fair trials. There are degrees of guilt.”

“If we can find the lice,” Bob said. McCormac thought of the wilderness of suns and worlds where his life had passed, and said, “Probably most will succeed in disappearing. What of it? We’ll have more urgent work than revenge.”

They rode silent for a while. The trial debouched on one of the steplike plateaus and joined a paved road to Windhome. Soil lay deep, washed down from the heights, and vegetation flourished, in contrast to a few dwarf bushes on the eroded slopes. Trava decked the ground almost as luxuriantly as it did the seabed. Mainly it was fire trava here, the serrated leaves edged with scarlet; but the sword kind bristled and the plume kind nodded. Each type was curling up for the night as temperature dropped, to form a springy heat-conserving mat. Trees grew about, not only the low iron-hard native sorts but imported oak, cedar, and rasmin. The wind carried their fragrances. Some ways to the right, smoke blew from a farmer’s stone cottage. Robotized latifundia weren’t practical on Aeneas, and McCormac was glad of that; he felt in his bones that a healthy society needed yeomen.

Colin clucked to his horse and drew alongside. His sharp young face looked unhappy. “Father—” He stopped.

“Go ahead,” McCormac invited.

“Father … do you think … do you really think we can pull it off?”

“I don’t know,” McCormac said. “We’ll try like men, that’s all.”

“But — makin’ you Emperor—”

McCormac felt anew how pitifully little chance he’d had to speak with his nearest, since his rescuers brought him home: too much to do, and each scant hour when something wasn’t clamoring for attention, the body toppled into sleep. He had actually stolen this one day.

“Please don’t imagine I want the job,” he said. “You haven’t been on Terra. I have. I don’t like it. I was never happier than when they reassigned me back where I belong.”

Imperial routine, passed over his mind. Rotate careerists through a series of regions; but in the end, whenever feasible, return them to the sectors they came from. Theory: they’ll defend their birthhomes more fiercely than some clutch of planets foreign to them. Practice: when revolt erupted, many Navy personnel, like civilians, discovered that those homes meant more to them than a Terra most of them had never seen. Problem: if I win, should I discontinue the practice, as Josip doubtless will if his admirals win?

“But why, then?” Colin asked.

“What else could I do?” McCormac replied.

“Well … freedom—”

“No. The Empire is not so far decayed that it’ll allow itself to be broken apart. And even if it were, I wouldn’t. Don’t you see, it’s the single thing that stands between civilization — our civilization — and the Long Night?

“As for armed protest, it might stimulate policy changes, but the Imperium could not pardon the ringleaders. That’d invite everybody with a grudge to start shooting, and spell the end as clearly as partition would. And besides—” McCormac’s knuckles stood white where he grasped the reins — “it wouldn’t get Kathryn back, if any hope remains of that.”

“So you aim to preserve the Empire, but take it over,” Colin said quickly. His desire to guide his father’s thoughts off his stepmother’s captivity was so obvious that McCormac’s heart writhed. “I’m with you. You know that. I honestly think you’d give it new life — the best Emperor we’ve had since Isamu the Great, maybe since Manuel I himself — and I’m layin’ not just me, but my wife and son on the board for you — but can it be done?” He waved at the sky. “The Empire’s that huge!”

As if at a signal, Virgil went down. The Aenean atmosphere held no twilight worth mentioning. Alpha and Beta Crucis blazed forth, then almost instantly thousands more and the frosty bridge of the Milky Way. The land mass on the right became utterly black, but Lavinia silvered the sea bottom under the left-hand cliffs. A tad-mouse piped into the mordant wind.

McCormac said: “The revolution has to have a leader, and I’m its choice. Let’s have no false modesty. I control the Cabinet on the principal world of this sector. I can prove by the record I’m the top Naval strategist the Empire has. My men know I’m strict about things that matter, compassionate about the rest, and always try to be fair. So do a hundred planets, human and nonhuman. It’d be no service to anyone if I claimed different.”

“But how—” Colin’s voice trailed off. Moonlight glimmered along his leather jacket and off his silver-mounted saddle.

“We’ll take control of this sector,” McCormac told him. “That’s largely a matter of defeating the Josipist forces. Once we’ve done it, every significant community in a ten-parsec radius will come over to us. Afterward … I don’t like the idea myself, but I know where and how to get barbarian allies. Not the few Darthan ships I’ve already engaged; no, really wild warriors from well outside the border. Don’t worry. I won’t let them plunder and I won’t let them settle, even if they’ll swear allegiance. They’ll be hirelings paid from tax monies.

“The whole Imperial fleet can’t ever come against us. It has too many other duties. If we work fast and hard, well be in shape to throw back whatever does attack.

“Beyond that — I can’t predict. I’m hoping we’ll have a well-governed region to show. I’m hoping that will underline our message: an end to corruption and tyranny, a fresh start under a fresh dynasty, long-overdue reforms … What we need is momentum, the momentum of a snowball. Then all the guns in the Empire can’t stop us: because most of them will be on our side.”

Why a snowball? jeered his mind. Who knows snow on Aeneas, except a thin drift in polar winter?

They rounded a cluster of trees and spied the castle. Windhome stood on what had once been a cape and now thrust out into air, with a dizzying drop beneath. Lights glowed yellow from its bulk, outlining dark old walls and battlements. The Wildfoss River brawled past in cataracts.

But McCormac did not see this immediately. His eyes had gone to the flat Antonine horizon, far below and far away. Above a last greenish trace of sunset, beneath a wan flicker of aurora, burned pure white Dido, the evening star.

Where Kathryn worked, xenologist in its jungles, till that time I met her, five years ago (no, three Aenean years; have I really been so long in the Empire that I’ve forgotten the years of our planet?) and we loved and were married.

And you always wished for children of your own, Kathryn, dyuba, and we were going to have them, but there were always public troubles that ought to be settled first; and tonight — He thanked his iron God that the sun of Llynathawr was not visible in those latitudes. His throat was thick with the need to weep. Instead, he spurred his horse to a gallop.

The road crossed cultivated fields before it reached Windhome’s portal. A caravan of itinerants had established itself on the meadow in front. Their trucks were parked aside, lost in gloom; light from the castle fell only on gaily striped tents, fluttering flags, half-erected booths. Men, women, children, packed around campfires, stopped their plangent music and stamping dances to give the lord of the manor a hail as he rode by. Tomorrow those tatterdemalion wanderers would open their carnival … and it would draw merrymakers from a hundred kilometers around … though the fist of the Imperium was already slamming forward.

I don’t understand, McCormac thought. Horseshoes rang in the courtyard. A groom caught his reins. He jumped to the ground. Guards were about, the new-come Navy personnel and the liveried family retainers strutting with jealous glances at each other. Edgar Oliphant hurried from the keep. Though McCormac, as Emperor, had raised him to admiral, he hadn’t yet bothered to change the captain’s star on either shoulder. He had merely added a brassard in the Ilian colors to the tunic that snugged around his stocky form.

“Welcome back, sir!” he exclaimed. “I was ’bout to dispatch a search party.”

McCormac achieved a laugh. “Good cosmos, do you think my boys and I can get lost on our ancestral lands?”

“N-no. No, sir. But ’tis, well, if you’ll ’scuse me, sir, ’tis foolish for you to run loose with not a single security escort.”

McCormac shrugged. “I’ll have to endure that later, on Terra. Leave me my privacy a while.” Peering closer: “You’ve something to tell me.”

“Yes, sir. Word came in two hours ago. If the admiral, uh, the Emperor will come with me?”

McCormac tried to give his sons a rueful look. He was secretly not sorry to have his awareness taken from the orbit into which it had fallen — again.

The ancient dignity of the Firstman’s office had vanished of recent weeks in a clutter of new gear: communication, computation, electronic files and scanners. McCormac sank into a chair behind his battered desk; that at least was familiar. “Well?” he said.

Oliphant closed the door. “The initial report’s been confirmed by two more scouts,” he said. “The Imperial armada is movin’. ’Twill be here inside three days.” It made no difference whether he meant the standard period or the 20-hour rotation of Aeneas.

McCormac nodded. “I didn’t doubt the first crew,” he said. “Our plans still stand. Tomorrow, 0600 Nova Roma time, I board my flagship. Two hours later, our forces depart.”

“But are you certain, sir, the enemy won’t occupy Aeneas?”

“No. I would be surprised, though, if he did. What gain? My kinfolk and I won’t be around to seize. I’ve arranged for the enemy to learn that when he arrives. What else can he make a prize of on Aeneas, till the fighting’s past? Whoever wins in space can mop up the planets soon enough. Until then, why commit strength badly needed elsewhere, to grip a spearwasp’s nest like this world? If he does occupy, then he does. But I expect hell leave the Virgilian System the instant he discovers we aren’t trying to defend it, we’re off to grab the real trophy — Satan.”

“Your screenin’ forces, however—” Oliphant said dubiously.

“Do you mean protection for offplanet bases like Port Frederiksen? A light vessel each, mostly to guard against possible casual destructiveness.”

“No, sir. I’m thinkin’ of your interplanetary patrols. What effect ’ull they have?”

“They’re just Darthan mercenaries. They have no other purpose than to mislead the enemy, gaining time for our fleet,” McCormac said. Have I really not made it clear to him before now? What else have 1 overlooked since the avalanche hit me? — No, it’s all right, he’s simply been too engaged with administrative details on the ground, “A few vessels posted in local space, with orders to attack any Josipist craft they may spot. Those’ll be scouts, of course, weakly armed, easily defeated. The survivors among them will carry the news back. I know Pickens’ style of thinking. He’ll be convinced we intend to make a fight of it at Virgil, and proceed ultra-cautiously, and therefore not detect us on our way off to Beta Crucis.” Oh, good old Dave Pickens, who always brought flowers for Kathryn when we invited you to dinner, must I indeed use against you the things I learned when we were friends?

“Well, you’re the Emperor, sir.” Oliphant gestured at the machines hemming them in. “Plenty of business today. We handled it how we could in Staff, but some items seem to require your attention.”

“I’ll give them a look-over right away, before eating,” McCormac said. “Stay available afterward, in case I need to consult.”

“Aye, sir.” Oliphant saluted and left. McCormac didn’t retrieve the communications at once. Instead, he went out on a balcony. It opened on the cliff and the rich eastern bottomlands. Creusa, the inner moon, was about due to rise. He filled his lungs with dry chill and waited.

Nearly full, the satellite exploded over the horizon. The shadows it cast moved noticeably; and as it hurtled, he could watch the phase change. Drowned in that living white light, the Antonine appeared to get back its vanished waters. It was as if phantom waves ran across those reaches and surf beat once more on the foot of Windhome ness.

You used to say that, Kathryn. You loved these moments best, in the whole year of our world. Dyuba, dyuba, will you ever see them again?