An Enemy of the State

CHAPTER ONE

A man would die tonight. The thin blond man sat in the darkness and thought about that. Long before his arrival on Throne, he had known that lives would be lost, but he had promised-sworn! — by all he revered that no man would die by his hand or word. And now, tonight, all that had changed.

He had ordered a man's death. No matter that the man was a killer and would be killed before he could kill again. No matter that it was too late to find another way to stop him, or that a life would be saved as a result.

He had ordered a man's death. And that was ugly.

As Kanya and Josef, shadows among shadows, went through their limbering exercises behind him, the blond man sat motionless and gazed out the window before him. It was not a high window. Cities on the out-worlds tended to spread out, not up, and the cities on Throne, oldest of the out-worlds, were no exception. It was night and gloglobes below limned the streets in pale orange light as they released the sunlight absorbed during the day. People were moving in steady streams toward Freedom Hall for the Insurrection Day ceremonies. He and his two companions would soon join them.

The man inhaled deeply, held the air, then let it out slowly, hoping to ease some of his inner tension. The maneuver failed. His personal misho, sitting on the window sill, responded to the tension it sensed coiled like a spring within him and held its trunk straight up from its earthenware container in a rigid chokkan configuration. Turning his head toward the twisting, leaping, gyrating shadows behind him, the man opened his mouth to speak but no words came forth. He suddenly wanted out of the whole thing. This was not in the plan. He wanted out. But that was impossible. A course of action had been started, wheels had been set in motion, people had been placed in sensitive and precarious positions. He had to follow through. It would be years before the plan came to fruition, but the actions of a single man tonight could destroy everything. He had to be stopped.

The blond man swallowed and found his throat dry.

“Time to go.”

The shadows stopped moving.

IN PRE-IMPERIUM DAYS it had been called Earth Hall and the planet on which it sat had been known as Caelum. Came the revolution and “Earth” was replaced by “Freedom,” Caelum renamed Throne, seat of the new Outworld Imperium. The hall's vaulted ceiling, however, remained decorated in the original pattern of constellations as seen from the motherworld, and it was toward those constellations that the climate adjusters pulled the hot fetid air generated by the press of bodies below.

Den Broohnin didn't mind the heat, nor the jostling celebrants around him. His mind was occupied with other matters. He kept to the rear of the crowd, an easy thing to do since everyone else in Freedom Hall was pushing toward the front for a better look at Metep VII. It was Insurrection Day, anniversary of the out-worlds’ break with Earth. Broohnin blended easily with the crowd. He stood an average one-point-eight meters tall and wore his black hair and beard close-cropped in the current Throne fashion. His build was heavy, tending toward paunchy; his one-piece casual suit had a grimy, worn appearance. A single distinguishing feature was a triangular, thumbnail-sized area of scar tissue on his right cheek, which could have resulted from a burn or a laceration; only Broohnin knew it had resulted from the crude excision of a patch of Nolevatol rot by his father when he was five years old.

The good citizens around him did not notice that his attention, unlike theirs, was not on the dais. Metep VII, “Lord of the Outworlds,” was making the annual Insurrection Day speech, the 206th such speech, and Broohnin was certain that this one would be no different from all the others he had suffered through over the years. His attention was riveted instead on one of the ornate columns that lined the sides of Freedom Hall. There was a narrow ledge between the columns and the outer wall, and although he could detect no movement, Broohnin knew that one of his guerrillas was up there preparing to end the career and the life of Metep VII.

Hollowing out the upper section of one of those columns had been no easy task. Constructed of the Throne equivalent of granite, it had taken a high-energy cutting beam three days to carve out a man-sized niche. The huge amphitheater was reserved for rare state occasions and deserted most of the time; still, it had been nerve-wracking to sneak four men and the necessary equipment in and out on a daily basis.

Yesterday morning the chosen assassin had been sealed into the niche, now lined with a thermoreflective epoxy. He had a small supply of food, water, and air. When the Imperial security forces did an infra-red sweep of the hall on Insurrection Day morning, he went unnoticed.

He was out of the niche now, his joints flexing and extending in joyous relief as he assembled his lightweight, long-focus energy rifle. Today had to be the day, he told himself. Metep had been avoiding the public eye lately; and the few times he did appear, he was surrounded by deflectors. But now, on Insurrection Day, he was allowing himself a few minutes out in the open for tradition's sake. And the assassin knew those moments had to be put to use. Metep had to die…it was the only way to bring down the Imperium.

He had no worry for himself. It was Broohnin's contention, and he agreed, that the man who killed Metep would have little fear of official reprisals. The whole Imperium would quickly fall apart and he would be acclaimed a hero at best, or lost in the mad scuffle at worst. Either way, he would come out of the whole affair in one piece-if he could kill Metep before the guards found him.

He affixed a simple telescopic sight. The weapon was compatible with the most up-to-date autosighter, but that idea had been vetoed because of the remote possibility that even the minute amount of power used by such an attachment might set off a sensor and alert the security force to his presence. Sliding into a prone position, he placed the barrel's bipod brace on the edge of the narrow ledge. Metep stood sixty meters ahead of him. This would be easy-no adjustments for distance, no leading the target. The proton beam would travel straight and true at the speed of light.

The assassin glanced down at the crowd. The forward part of his body was visible-barely so-only to those at the far side of the hall, and they were all looking at the dais. Except for one…he had an odd sensation that whenever he glanced at the crowd, someone down there snapped his or her head away. It couldn't be Broohnin-he was at the back of the hall waiting for Metep's death. No, somebody had spotted him. But why no alarm? Perhaps it was a sympathizer down there, or someone who took him for a member of the security force.

Better get the whole thing over with. One shot…that was all it would take, all he would get. Alarms would go off as soon as he activated his rifle's energy chamber and scanners would triangulate his position in microseconds; security forces would move in on him immediately. One shot, and then he would have to scramble back into his niche in the column. But Metep would be dead by then, a neat little hole burned through his brain.

Almost against his will, he glanced again to his right, and again experienced the uncanny sensation that someone on the fringe of the crowd down there had just turned his head away. But he could not pinpoint the individual. He had a feeling it could be one of the people near the wall…male, female, he couldn't say.

Shrugging uncomfortably, he faced forward again and set his right eye into the sight, swiveled ever so slightly…there! Metep's face-fixed smile, earnest expression-trapped in the crosshairs. As he lifted his head from the sight for an instant's perspective, he felt a stinging impact on the right side of his throat. Everything was suddenly red…his arms, his hands, the weapon…all bright red. Vision dimmed as he tried to raise himself from the now slippery ledge, then it brightened into blazing white light, followed by total, eternal darkness.

A woman in the crowd below felt something wet on her left cheek and put a hand up to see what it was. Her index and middle fingers came away sticky and scarlet. Another large drop splattered on her left shoulder, then a steady crimson stream poured over her. The ensuing screams of the woman and others around her brought the ceremony to a halt and sent Metep VII scurrying from the dais.

A telescoping platform was brought in from the maintenance area and raised to the ledge. To the accompaniment of horrified gasps from the onlookers, the exsanguinated corpse of the would-be assassin and his unused weapon were lowered to the floor. The cause of death was obvious to all within view: a hand-sized star-shaped disk edged with five curved blades had whirled into the man's throat and severed the right carotid artery.

As the body was being trucked away, an amplified voice announced that the remainder of the evening's program was canceled. Please clear the hall. Imperial guards, skilled at crowd control, began to herd the onlookers toward the exits.

Broohnin stood fast in the current, his eyes fixed on his fallen fellow guerrilla as the crowd eddied past.

“Who did this?” he muttered softly under his breath. Then louder. “Who did this!”

A voice directly to his right startled him. “We don't know who's behind these assassination attempts, sir. But we'll find them, have no fear of that. For now, though, please keep moving.”

It was one of the Imperial Guard, a young one, who had overheard and misunderstood him, and was now edging him into the outward flow. Broohnin nodded and averted his face. His underground organization was unnamed and unknown. The Imperium was not at all sure that a unified revolutionary force even existed. The incidents-the bombings, the assassination attempts on Metep-had a certain random quality about them that led the experts to believe that they were the work of unconnected malcontents. The sudden rash of incidents was explained as me-tooism: one terrorist act often engendered others.

Still, he kept his face averted. Never too careful. Breaking from the crowd as soon as he reached the cool dark outside, Broohnin headed for Imperium Park at a brisk pace. He spat at the sign that indicated the name of the preserve.

Imperium! he thought. Everything has “Imperium” or “Imperial” before it! Why wasn't everyone else on the planet as sick of those words as he was?

He found his brooding tree and seated himself under it, back against the bole, legs stretched out before him. He had to sit here and control himself. If he stayed on his feet, he would do something foolish like throwing himself into the lake down at the bottom of the hill. Holding his head back against the firmness of the keerni tree behind him, Den Broohnin closed his eyes and fought the despair that was never very far away. His life had been one long desperate fight against that despair and he felt he would lose the battle tonight. The blackness crept in around the edges of his mind as he sat and tried to find some reason to wait around for tomorrow.

He wanted to cry. There was a huge sob trapped in his chest and he could not find a way to release it.

The revolution was finished. Aborted. Dead. His organization was bankrupt. The tools for hollowing out the column had drained their financial reserves; the weapon, purchased through underground channels, had dried them up completely. But every mark would have been well spent were Metep VII dead now.

Footsteps on the path up from the lake caused Broohnin to push back the blackness and part his eyelids just enough for a look. A lone figure strolled aimlessly along, apparently killing time. Broohnin closed his eyes briefly, then snapped them open again when he heard the footsteps stop. The stroller had halted in front of him, waiting to be noticed.

“Den Broohnin, I believe?” the stranger said once he was sure he had Broohnin's attention. His tone was relaxed, assured, the words pronounced with an odd nasal lilt that was familiar yet not readily identifiable. The man was tall-perhaps five or six centimeters taller than Broohnin-slight, with curly, almost kinky blond hair. He had positioned himself in such a manner that the light from the nearest gloglobe shone over his right shoulder, completely obscuring his facial features. A knee-length cloak further blunted his outline.

“How do you know my name?” Broohnin asked, trying to find something familiar about the stranger, something that would identify him. He drew his legs under him and crouched, ready to spring. There was no good reason for this man to accost him in Imperium Park at this hour. Something was very wrong.

“Your name is the very least of my knowledge.” Again, that tantalizing accent. “I know you're from Nolevatol. I know you came to Throne twelve standard years ago and have, in the past two, directed a number of assassination attempts against the life of the current Metep. I know the number of men in your little guerrilla band, know their names and where they live. I even know the name of the man who was killed tonight.”

“You know who killed him, then?” Broohnin's right hand had slipped toward his ankle as the stranger spoke, and now firmly grasped the handle of his vibe-knife.

The silhouette of the stranger's head nodded. “One of my associates. And the reason for this little meet is to inform you that there will be no more assassination attempts on Metep VII.”

In a single swift motion, Broohnin pulled the weapon from its sheath, activated it, and leaped to his feet. The blade, two centimeters wide and six angstroms thick, was a linear haze as it vibrated at 6,000 cycles per second. It had its limitations as a cutting tool, but certainly nothing organic could resist it.

“I wonder what your ‘associates’ will think,” Broohnin said through clenched teeth as he approached the stranger in a half-crouch, waving the weapon before him, “when they find your head at one end of Imperium Park and your body at the other?”

The man shrugged. “I'll let them tell you themselves.”

Broohnin suddenly felt himself grabbed by both arms from behind. The vibe-knife was deftly removed from his grasp as he was slammed back against the tree and held there, stunned, shaken, and utterly helpless. He glanced right and left to see two figures, a male and a female, robed in black. The hair of each was knotted at the back and a red circle was painted in the center of each forehead. All sorts of things hung from the belts that circled their waists and crossed their chests. He felt a sudden urge to retch. He knew what they were…he'd seen holos countless times.

Flinters!

CHAPTER TWO

Metep VII slumped in his high-back chair at the head of the long conference table. Four other silent men sat in similar but smaller chairs here and there along the length of the table, waiting for the fifth and final member of the council of advisers to arrive. The prim, crisp executive image had fallen away from the “Lord of the Outworlds.” His white brocade coat was fastened only halfway up, and his dark brown hair, tinged with careful amounts of silver, was sloppily pushed off his forehead. The sharply chiseled facial features sagged now with fatigue as he rubbed the reddened, irritated whites of his blue eyes. He was one very frightened man.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were paneled with keerni wood; the conference table, too, was constructed of that grainy ubiquitous hardwood. Metep II, designer of this particular room, had wanted it that way. To alter it would be to alter history. And so it remained.

Forcing himself to relax, he leaned back and let his gaze drift toward the ceiling where holographic portraits of his six predecessors were suspended in mid-air. It came to rest on Metep I.

Anyone ever try to kill you? he mentally asked the rugged, lifelike face.

Metep I's real name had been Fritz Renders. A farmer by birth, revolutionary by choice, he had led his ragtag forces in a seemingly hopeless assault against the Earth governorship headquartered here on Throne-then called Caelum-and had succeeded. Fritz Renders had then declared the out-worlds independent of Earth, and himself “Lord of the Outworlds.” That was 206 years ago today, the first Insurrection Day. The rest of the colonials on other planets rose up then and threw out their own overseers. Earth's day of absentee landlordship over her star colonies was over. The Outworld Imperium was born.

It was an empire in no sense of the word, however. The colonials would not stand for such a thing. But the trappings of a monarchy were felt to be of psychological importance when dealing with Earth and the vast economic forces based there. The very name, Outworld Imperium, engendered a sense of permanence and monolithic solidarity. Nominally at least, it was not to be trifled with.

In actuality, however, the Imperium was a simple democratic republic which elected its leader to a lifelong term-with recall option, of course. Each leader took the title of Metep and affixed the proper sequential number, thereby reinforcing the image of power and immutability.

How things had changed, though. The first council meeting such as this had taken place in the immediate post-revolutionary period and had been attended by a crew of hard-bitten, hard-drinking revolutionaries and the radical thinkers who had gravitated to them. And that was the entire government.

Now look at it: in two short centuries the Outworld Imperium had grown from a handful of angry, victorious interstellar colonials into a…business. Yes, that's what it was: A business. But one that produced nothing. True, it employed more people than any other business in the out-worlds; and its gross income was certainly much larger, though income was not received in free exchange for goods or services, but rather through taxation. A business…one that never showed a profit, was always in the red, continually borrowing to make up deficits.

A rueful smile briefly lit Metep VII's handsome middle-aged face as he followed the train of thought to its end: lucky for this business that it controlled the currency machinery or it would have been bankrupt long ago!

His gaze remained fixed on the portrait of Metep I, who in his day had known everyone in the entire government by face and by name. Now…the current Metep was lucky if he knew who was in the executive branch alone. It was a big job, being Metep. A high-pressure job, but one with enough power and glory to suit any man. Some said the position had come to hold more power than a good man would want and an evil man would need. But those were the words of the doom-and-gloomers who dogged every great man's heels. He had power, yes, but he didn't make all the decisions. All the civilized out worlds, except for a few oddball societies, sent representatives to the legislature. They had nominal power…nuisance value, really. The real power of the out-worlds lay with Metep and his advisers on the Council of Five. When Haworth arrived, the true decision-makers of the Imperium would all be in this one room.

All in all, it was a great life, being Metep. At least until recently…until the assassination attempts had started. There had been one previous attempt on a Metep-back when the legal tender laws were being enforced by Metep IV-but that had been a freak incident; a clerk in the agriculture bureau had been passed over at promotion time and laid all blame on the presiding Metep.

What was going on here and now was different. Tonight was the third attempt in the past year. The first two had been bombs-one in his private flitter, and then another hidden in the main entrance from the roof pad of the palatial estate occupied by every Metep since III. Both had been found in time, thank the Core. But this third attack, the one tonight…this one had unnerved him. The realization that a man had been able to smuggle an energy weapon into Freedom Hall and had actually been in position to fire was bad enough. But add to that the manner in which he was stopped-his throat sliced open by some grotesquely primitive weapon-and the result was one terrified head of state.

Not only was some unknown, unheralded group trying to bring his life to an end, but another person or group, equally unknown and unheralded, was trying to preserve it. He did not know which terrified him more.

Daro Haworth, head of the Council of Five, entered then, bringing the low hum of conversation around the table and Metep VII's reverie to an abrupt halt. Born on Derby, educated on Earth, he was rumored in some quarters to wield as much power on Throne and in the Imperium as the Metep himself. That sort of talk irked Metep VII, whose ego was unsteady of late. But he had to admit that Haworth possessed a deviously brilliant mind. Given any set of rules or regulations, the man could find a loophole of sufficient size to slip through any program the Metep and his council desired. Moved by neither the spirit nor the letter of any constitutional checks and balances, he could find ways to make almost anything legal-or at least give it a patina of legality. And in those rare instances when his efforts were thwarted, he found the legislature more than willing to modify the troublesome law to specification. A remarkable man.

His appearance, too, was remarkable: deeply tanned skin set against hair bleached stark white, a decadent affectation he had picked up during his years on Earth and never lost. It made him instantly identifiable.

“Afraid I don't have anything new to tell you on that dead assassin, Jek,” Haworth said, sliding into the chair directly to the Metep's right. Like all members of the Council of Five, he called Metep VII by the name his parents had given him forty-seven standard years ago: Jek Milian. Other cronies who had known him way back when and had helped him reach his present position used it, too. But only in private. In public he was Metep VII-to everyone.

“Don't call him an ‘assassin.’ He didn't succeed so he's not an assassin.” Metep straightened in his chair. “And there's nothing new on him?”

Haworth shook his head. “We know his name, we know where he lived, we know he was a dolee. Beyond that, it's as if he lived in a vacuum. We have no line on his acquaintances, or how he spent his time.”

“Damn dolees!” was muttered somewhere down the table.

“Don't damn them,” Haworth said in his cool, cultured tones. “They're a big vote block-keep a little money in their pockets, give them Food Vouchers to fill their bellies, and there'll be no recall…ever. But getting back to this would-be assassin. We will get a line on him; and when we do, it will be the end of the group behind these assassination attempts.”

“What about that thing that killed him?” Metep asked. “Any idea where it came from? I've never seen anything like it.”

“Neither have I,” Haworth replied. “But we've found out what it is and it's nothing new. Couple of thousand years old, in fact.” He hesitated.

“Well?” The entire table was listening intently.

“It's a shuriken, used on old Earth before the days of atmospheric flight.” A murmur arose among the other four councilors. “A relic of some sort?” Metep said.

“No. It's new…manufactured only a few years ago.” Again the hesitation, then: “And it was manufactured on Flint.”

Silence, as deep and complete as that of interstellar space, enveloped the table. Krager, a short, crusty, portly old politico, broke it.

“A Flinter? Here?”

“Apparently so,” Haworth said, his delicate fingers forming a steeple in front of him on the table. “Or somebody trying to make us think there's a Flinter here. However, judging by the accuracy with which that thing was thrown, I'd say we were dealing with the real thing.”

Metep VII was ashen, his face nearly matching the color of his jacket. “Why me? What could a Flinter possibly have against me?”

“No, Jek,” Haworth said in soothing tones. “You don't understand. Whoever threw the shuriken saved your life. Don't you see that?”

What Metep saw was a colossal reversal of roles. The man who thought himself the gamemaster had suddenly become a pawn on a board between two opposing forces, neither identified and both totally beyond his control. This was what was most disturbing: he had no control over recent events. And that, after all, was why he was Metep-to control events.

He slammed his palm down on the table. “Never mind what I see! There's a concerted effort on out there to kill me! I've been lucky so far, but I'm not supposed to be relying on luck…I'm supposed to be relying on skilled security personnel. Yet two bombs were planted-”

“They were found,” Haworth reminded him in a low voice.

“Yes, found.” Metep VII lowered his voice to match the level of his chief adviser's. “But they shouldn't have been planted in the first place! And tonight tops everything!” His voice began to rise. “There should have been no way for anyone to get an energy weapon into Freedom Hall tonight-but someone did. There should have been no way for him to set up that weapon and sight in on me-but he did. And who stopped him before he could kill me?” His eyes ranged the table. “Not one of my security people, but someone, I'm now told, from Flint! From Flint! And there shouldn't even be a Flinter on Throne without my knowing about it! My entire security setup has become a farce and I want to know why!”

His voice had risen to a scream by the time he finished and the Council of Five demonstrated concerned respect for his tantrum by pausing briefly in absolute silence.

Haworth was the first to speak, his tone conciliatory, concerned. “Look, Jek. This has us frightened as much as you. And we're as confused as you. We're doing our best to strengthen security and whip it into shape, but it takes time. And let's face it: we're simply not accustomed to this type of threat. It's never been a problem before.”

“Why is it a problem now? Why me? That's what I want to know!”

“I can't answer that. At least not yet. In the past, we've always been able to funnel off any discontent in the direction of Earth, always been able to point to Sol System and say, ‘There's the enemy.’ It used to work beautifully. Now, I'm not so sure.”

“It still works.” Metep VII had regained his composure now and was again leaning back in his chair.

“To a certain extent, of course it does. But apparently there's someone out there who isn't listening.” Haworth paused and glanced at the other members of the council. “Somebody out there thinks you're the enemy.”

CHAPTER THREE

Nimble fingers ran through his hair, probed his clothes and shoes. Finding him void of further weaponry, they released him. “That's Josef to your right”-the male figure bowed almost imperceptibly at the waist-“and Kanya to your left”-another bow. “Kanya is personally responsible for the death of your assassin back there in Freedom Hall. I'm told her skill with the shuriken is without parallel.”

It's over was the only thought Broohnin's mind could hold at that moment. If Metep was able to hire protection of this caliber, then all hope of killing him was gone.

“How did he do it?” Broohnin said when he was finally able to speak. “What did he have to pay to get Flinters here to do his dirty work for him?”

The blond man laughed-Broohnin still could not make out any facial features-and there was genuine amusement in the sound.

“Poor Den Broohnin! Can't quite accept the fact that there are people other than himself who do not have a price!” The voice took on a sterner tone after a brief pause. “No, my petty revolutionary, we are not here at Metep's bidding. We are here to destroy him. And by ‘him’ I do not mean the man, but everything he represents.”

“Lies!” Broohnin said as loudly as he dared. “If that was true you wouldn't have interfered tonight!”

“How can a man who has built up such an efficient little terrorist group right under the noses of the Imperial Guard be so naïve about the Imperium itself? You're not dealing with a monarchy, my friend, despite all the showy trappings. The Outworld Imperium is a republic. There's no royal bloodline. Metep VII's term is for life, granted, but when he's gone his successor will be elected, just as he was. And should Metep VII be assassinated, a temporary successor will be in his place before the day is out.”

“No! The Imperium will collapse! The people-”

“The people will be terrified!” the stranger said in harsh, clipped tones. “Your ill-conceived terrorism only serves to frighten them into clamoring for sterner laws and harsher measures against dissent. You only end up strengthening the very structure you wish to pull down. And it must cease immediately!”

The stranger paused to allow his words to penetrate. Then: “The only reason you remain alive at this point is because I have some small use for certain members of your organization. I am therefore giving you a choice: you may fit yourself into my plan or you may return to Nolevatol. Should you choose the former, you will meet me in the rearmost booth of the White Hart Tavern on Rocklynne Boulevard tomorrow night; should you choose the latter, you will be on an orbital shuttle by that time. Choose to oppose me and you will not survive one standard day.”

He gave a short, quick bow and strolled back the way he had come. The Flinters disappeared into the darkness with a whisper of sound and Broohnin was suddenly alone once more under his tree. It was as if nothing had happened. As if the entire exchange had been a hallucination.

He had a sudden urge to move, to get where the lights were bright and there were lots of people around. Thoughts swirled through his consciousness in a confused scramble as his pace graduated from a walk to a loping run from the park. There were Flinters on Throne…they were here to bring down the Imperium…that should have been a cause for rejoicing, but it wasn't. Reinforcements had arrived but they might as well be aliens from another galaxy as Flinters.

No one knew anything for sure about Flinters beyond the fact that every member of their culture went about heavily armed and was skilled in the use of virtually every weapon devised by man throughout recorded history. They kept to themselves on their own little world and were rumored to hire out occasionally as mercenaries. But no one could ever document where or when. No traders were allowed to land on Flint-all commerce was conducted from orbit. The Flinters had no relations with Earth and did not recognize the Imperium as the legitimate government of anything. A sick society, by all accepted standards, but one that had proven viable and surprisingly unaggressive.

Broohnin slowed his pace as he reached the well-lit commercial district. Only a few people dawdled about. Even here in Primus, seat of the Imperium and capital of the most cosmopolitan of the out-worlds, people went to bed early. News of an attempted assassination on Metep had driven them off the streets even sooner. Dolees were an exception, of course. Excitement of any sort stimulated them, and since they had nothing ahead of them the next day, they could stay out to all hours if they wished. Sometimes that meant trouble. Violent trouble. An unfortunate outsider, or even one of their own, could be beaten, vibed, or blasted for a few marks or just to alleviate the bleakness of their everyday existence.

On any other night Broohnin would have felt uneasy to be weaponless as he passed through knots of bored young dolees. The possibility that a Flinter might be watching him from the shadows erased all other fears, however. The youths ignored him, anyway. He was on the dole himself, sheltered and warmed by rent and clothing allowances, fed via Food Vouchers. And he was scruffy enough to pass for one of them. When he finally reached his side-street, one-room flat, he sealed the door behind him and flopped on the thin pneumatic mattress in the corner. And began to shake.

He was no longer faceless. Playing the guerrilla, the unseen terrorist, striking from the shadows and running and striking again was exciting, exhilarating. He could remain a shadow, an anonymous symbol of revolt. He could go down to the public vid areas and mingle with the watchers as reports of his latest terrorist acts were replayed in all their holographic splendor.

But that was over now. Someone knew his name, where he came from, and all he had done. And what one man could learn, so could others.

Flinters! He couldn't get over it. Why was Flint involving itself in the overthrow of the Imperium? Its attitude toward interplanetary matters had always been strict noninvolvement. Earth and the rest of Occupied Space could fall into the galactic core for all Flint cared. Why were Flinters here now?

And that other one…the blond man. He was no Flinter. His accent hovered on the brink of recognition, ready to fall into place. But not yet. That was not what was bothering Broohnin, however. The most deeply disturbing aspect of the scene back in Imperium Park was the realization that the blond man seemed to be in command of the Flinters. And nobody tells Flinters what to do. They have utter contempt for all would-be rulers and barely recognize the existence of the rest of humanity…with the possible exception of the residents of the planet Tolive-

Tolive! Broohnin rose to a sitting position. That was the blond man's accent-he was a Tolivian! And that was the connection between him and the Flinters. Outworld history lessons from his primary education trickled back to him as the associations multiplied.

The key was Kyfho, a staunchly individualistic, anarchocapitalist philosophy born on Earth before the union of the Eastern and Western Alliances. Its adherents became outcasts on the crowded collectivist motherworld, forming tight, tiny enclaves in an attempt to wall out the rest of the world. An impossible task. The all-pervasive world government seeped through every chink in their defenses and brought the movement to near extinction.

The interstellar colonization program saved it. Any sufficiently large group of prospective colonists meeting the given requirements of average age and rudimentary skills was given free transportation one way to an Earth-class planet. It was understood that there would be no further contact with Earth and no rescue should the colony run into trouble. A sink-or-swim proposition. Earth had its hands full managing the awesome mass of its own population, the solar system colonies, and its own official star colonies. It could afford neither the talent nor the expense of playing guardian to a host of fledgling interstellar settlements.

The response was overwhelming. The followers of every utopian philosophy on Earth sent delegations to the stars to form the perfect society. Splinter colonies, as they came to be known, were sent off in every direction. Wherever an exploration team had discovered an Earth-class planet, a splinter group was landed. Tragically and predictably, many failed to survive a single turn around the primary. But a significant percentage hung on and kept on, making mankind an interstellar race in the truest sense.

The program served two purposes. It gave divergent philosophies a chance to test their mettle…if they thought they had the answers to humanity's social ills, why not form a colonial group, migrate to a splinter world, and prove it? The program's second purpose directly benefited the newly unified Earth state by unloading a host of dissidents on the stars, thereby giving it some time to consolidate its global reach. The plan worked beautifully. The troublemakers found the offer irresistible and Earth once more became a nice place for bureaucrats to live. It was such an easy and efficient solution…but one that Earth would pay for dearly in the future.

By the time the splinter colony program was getting started, the Kyfho adherents had mitosed into two distinct but cordial factions. Each applied separately for splinter colony status and each was approved. The first group, composed of rationalists and intellectual purists, was a quiet, introspective lot, and named its planet Tolive. The second group wound up on a harsh, rocky planet called Flint. Its members had been raised for the most part in the Eastern Alliance and had somehow blended Kyfho with remnants of old Asian cultures; each adherent had become an army unto him-or herself.

Like most splinter colonies, both groups had major problems and upheavals during their first century of existence, but both survived with their own form of the Kyfho philosophy intact. It had been that philosophy which kept both planets aloof when the rest of the splinter colonies joined Earth in the establishment of an out-world trade network, and subsequently spared them the necessity of joining in the revolution that broke Earth's resultant economic stranglehold on those very same out-worlds. Neither Tolive nor Flint had taken any part in the formation of the Outworld Imperium and had ignored it during its two centuries of existence.

But they were not ignoring it now, as Den Broohnin was well aware. Flint and Tolive were actively involved in bringing down the Imperium. Why? There would always be a philosophical link between the two cultures, a bond that the rest of the out-worlds could neither share nor understand. Perhaps it was something in that very philosophy which was bringing them into the fray. Broohnin knew nothing about Kyfho…did not even know what the word meant.

Or was it something else? The blond stranger seemed to have eyes everywhere. Perhaps he knew some secret plans of Metep and his Council of Five that would explain the sudden appearance of Flinters and Tolivians on Throne. Something big must be in the wind to make them reverse their centuries-old policy of noninvolvement.

Broohnin dimmed the light and lay back on the mattress. He was not going to leave Throne, that was certain. Not after all the effort he had invested in Metep's downfall. Nor was he going to risk being killed by some bizarre Flinter weapon.

No, he was going to be at the White Hart tomorrow night and he was going to be all ears. He was going to agree to any conditions the blond man wanted and was going to play along as long as it seemed to suit his own purposes. For if nothing else, Den Broohnin was a survivor.

CHAPTER FOUR

“What are these things?”

“Flyers. Nobody seems to know where they came from but they're all over the city. I thought they'd amuse you.” After Metep had the courtesy of first look, Haworth passed other copies of the flyer across the table to the rest of the Council of Five. The mood around the table had relaxed considerably since Metep's outburst. Expressions of deep concern for his safety had mollified the leader and it was decided to lower further his already low public profile.

“Robin Hood, eh?” Krager said, smiling sardonically as he glanced over the flyer. He looked to Haworth. “Wasn't he…?”

An old Earth myth, right,” Haworth replied with a nod. “He robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.”

“I wonder which of the rich he plans to rob?”

“Not me, I hope,” Bede, the slim Minister of Transportation, said with a laugh. “And what's this little insignia top and bottom?

Looks like an omega with a star in it. That supposed to mean something?”

Haworth shrugged. “Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. If this is some revolutionary group, it might mean the Last Revolution or something equally dramatic. ‘The Last Revolution of the Star Colonies.’ How does that sound?”

“It doesn't sound good,” Metep said. “Especially when they appear on the night of an assassination attempt.”

“Oh, I doubt there's a link,” Haworth said slowly. “If there were, the flyers would have been printed up in advance proclaiming your death. This mentions nothing about death or disaster. Probably a bunch of Zem addicts, but I'm having security check it out anyway.”

Bede's brow was furrowed. “Isn't omega also the ohm, symbol for resistance? Electrical resistance?”

“I believe it is,” Krager said. “Perhaps this Robin Hood group-it may be one man for all we know-considers itself some sort of resistance or revolutionary group, but the message in this flyer is totally economic. And well informed, too. Look at that price index. Sad but true. It takes 150 current marks to buy now what 100 marks bought back in the 115th year. That's a lot of inflation in eighty years.”

“Not really,” Haworth said, looking up from the notes before him on the table.

“That's Earthie talk,” Krager said, an ill-concealed trace of annoyance in his tone. “The Earthies are used to inflation by now-”

“Earth has recently brought her economy under control and-”

“-but we out-worlders are still suspicious of it.” The older man had raised his voice to cut off Haworth's interjection and had perhaps put unnecessary emphasis on the word “we.” Haworth's Earth-gained education still raised hackles in certain quarters of the Imperium.

“Well, we'd all better get used to it,” Haworth said, oblivious to any implied slur, “because we're all going to be living with it for a long time to come.”

Amid the mutterings up and down the table, Metep VII's voice broke through. “I take it, then, the new economic projections are in and that they're not good.”

“Not good at all,” Haworth said. “This downtrend is not one of the cyclic episodes the out-world economy has experienced from time to time in the past half dozen decades. We are in a slow, steady decline in exports to Earth with no slackening of our import growth rate. I don't have to tell any of you how serious that is.”

They all knew. Knew too well.

“Any bright ideas on how we can turn it around-besides more inflation?” It was Krager speaking, and his tone had yet to return to neutral.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. But I'll get to that later. Those of you who have kept up-to-date know that we're caught in the middle of two ongoing trends. Earth's rigid population controls are paying off at last; their demand for grain and ore is decreasing, and at a faster rate than anyone expected. Outworld populations on the other hand, are expanding beyond our ability to keep up technologically. So our demand for Sol system hardware keeps growing.”

“The answer is pretty obvious, I think,” Metep VII said with bland assurance. “We've got to pump a lot more money into our own technical companies and make them more competitive with Earth's.”

“How about an outright subsidy?” someone suggested.

“Or an import tax on Earth goods?” from another.

Haworth held up his hands. “This has to be a backdoor affair, gentlemen. A subsidy will have other industries wailing for some of the same. And an import tax will upset the whole economy by sending technical hardware prices into orbit. Jek's right, however. We have to pump money into the right industries, but discreetly. Very discreetly.

Krager again: “And where do we get it?”

“There are ways.”

“Not by another tax, I hope. We're taking an average of one out of every three marks now-seven out of ten in the higher brackets. You saw what happened on Neeka when we announced that surcharge. Riots. And that dead girl. Not here on Throne, thank you!”

Haworth smiled condescendingly. “Taxes are useful, but crude. As you all know, I prefer adjustments in the money supply. The net result is the same-more revenue for us, less buying power for them-but the process is virtually undetectable.”

“And dangerous.”

“Not if handled right. Especially now while the Imperial mark still has some strength in the interstellar currency markets, we can shove a lot more currency out into the economy and reap the benefits before anyone notices. The good citizens will be happy because they'll see their incomes go up. Of course prices will go up faster, but we can always blame that on unreasonable wage demands from the guilds, or corporate profiteering. Or we can blame it on Earth-out-worlders are always more than ready to blame Earth for anything that goes wrong. We have to be careful, of course. We have to prime the pump precisely to keep inflation at a tolerable level.”

“It's at 6 per cent now,” Krager said, irritated by Haworth's didactic tone.

“We can push it to 10.”

“Too dangerous!”

“Stop your nonsensical objections, old man!” Haworth snarled. “You've been living with 6 per cent inflation-causing it, in fact! — for years. Now you balk at 10! Who are you play-acting for?”

“How dare-” Krager was turning red and sputtering.

“Ten per cent is absolutely necessary. Any less and the economy won't even notice the stimulus.”

Metep VII and the rest of the Council of Five mulled this dictum. They had all become masters of economic manipulation under Haworth's tutelage, but 10 per cent…that marked the unseen border of monetary no-man's land. It was double-digit inflation, and there was something inherently terrifying about it.

“We can do it,” Haworth said confidently. “Of course, we have Metep IV to thank for the opportunity. If he hadn't rammed through the legal tender laws eighty years ago, each out-world would still be operating on its own currency instead of the Imperial mark and we'd be helpless. Which brings me to my next topic.”

He opened the folder before him, removed a sheaf of one-mark notes, and dropped them on the table.

“I'd like to take the legal tender laws one step further.”

Metep VII picked up one of the marks and examined it. The note was pristine, bright orange and fresh out of the duplicator, with the satin gloss imparted by the specially treated keerni wood pulp used to make it, still unmarred by fingerprints and creases. Intricate scrollwork was printed around the perimeter on both sides; a portrait of Metep I graced the obverse while a large, blunt “I” dominated the reverse. Different polymer sheets had been tried and discarded when the legal tender laws were introduced during the last days of Metep IV's reign, but the keerni paper held up almost as well and was far cheaper. He lifted the bill to his nose-smelled better, too.

“You're not thinking of going totally electronic like Earth, I hope,” he asked Haworth.

“Exactly what I'm thinking. It's the only way to truly fine-tune the economy. Think of it: not a single financial transaction will be executed without the central computer knowing about it. We talk of subsidizing certain industries? With a totally electronic monetary system we can allot so much here, pull away just enough there…it's the only way to go when you're working with interstellar distances as we are. And it's worked for Earth.”

Metep VII shook his head with deliberate, measured slowness. Here was one area of economic knowledge in which he knew he excelled over Haworth.

“You spent all that time on Earth, Daro,” he said, “and got all that fine training in economic administration. But you've forgotten the people you're dealing with here. Outworlders are simple folk for the most part. They used to barter exclusively for their needs until someone started hammering coins out of gold and silver or whatever else was considered valuable on that particular colony. Metep IV damn near had a full-scale revolt on his hands when he started to enforce the legal tender laws and make the Imperial mark the one and only acceptable currency in the out-worlds.”

He held up a one-mark note. “Now you want to take even this away and change it to a little blip in some computer's memory? You intend to tell these people that they will no longer be allowed to have money they can hold and count and pass back and forth and maybe bury in the ground somewhere?” Metep VII smiled briefly, grimly, and shook his head again. “Oh no. There's already a maniac fringe group out there trying to do away with me. That's more than enough, thank you. If we even hinted at what you suggest, I'd have every man and woman on the out-worlds who owns a blaster coming after me.” He lifted a copy of The Robin Hood Reader in his other hand. “The author of this would be predicting my death rather than a tax refund. No, my friend. I have no intention of being the only Metep overthrown by a revolution.”

He rose from his seat and his eyes came level with Haworth's. “Consider that idea vetoed.”

Haworth looked away and glanced around the table for a hint of support. He found none. Metep had veto power at council meetings. He also knew out-world mentality-that was how he became Metep. The matter was, for all intents and purposes, closed. He looked back to Metep VII, ready to frame a graceful concession, and noticed a puzzled expression on the leader's face. He was holding the two sheets of paper-the mark note in his left hand, The Robin Hood Reader in his right-staring at them, rubbing his thumbs over the surface of each.

“Something wrong, Jek?” Haworth asked.

The Metep raised each sheet in turn to his nose and sniffed. “Have there been any thefts of currency paper?” he asked, looking up and fixing Krager with his stare.

“No, of course not. We guard the blank paper as well as we guard the printed slips.”

“This flyer is printed on currency paper,” Metep VII stated.

“Impossible!” Krager, who was Minister of the Treasury, reached for one of the flyers on the table. He rubbed it, sniffed it, held it up to gauge the glare of light off its surface.

“Well?”

The old man nodded and leaned back in his formfitting chair, a dumbfounded expression troubling his features. “It's currency paper all right.”

Nothing was said for a long time. All present now realized that the author of the flyer that had been so easily dismissed earlier in the meeting was no fevered radical sweating in a filthy basement somewhere in Primus City, but rather a man or a group of men who could steal currency paper without anyone knowing. And who showed utter disdain for the Imperial mark.

CHAPTER FIVE

The White Hart had changed drastically. The thin blond man whose name was Peter LaNague noticed it as soon as he entered. The decor was the same: the rich paneling remained, the solid keerni bar, the planked flooring…these were as inviolate as the prohibition against women customers. During the five standard years since he had last visited Throne and had supped and drunk in the White Hart, there had been no physical alterations or renovations.

The difference was in the mood and in the level of sound. The regulars didn't realize it, but there was less talk around the bar these days. No one except LaNague, after a five-year hiatus, noticed. The diminution of chatter, the lengthening of pauses, both had progressed by tiny increments over the years. It was not just that the group's mean age had progressed and that familiarity had lessened what they had left to say to one another. New faces had joined the ranks while some of the older ones had faded away. And yet the silence had crept along on its inexorable course.

The process was less evident in the non-restricted bars. The presence of women seemed to lift the mood and add a certain buoyancy to a room. The men wore different faces then, responding to the opposite sex, playing the game of being men, of being secure and confident, of having everything under control.

But when men got together in places where women could not go, places like the White Hart, they left the masks at home. There was little sense in trying to fool each other. And so a pall would seep through the air, intangible at first, but palpable by evening's end. Not gloom. No, certainly not gloom. These were not bad times. One could hardly call them good times, but they certainly weren't bad.

It was the future that was wrong. Tomorrow was no longer something to be approached with the idea of meeting it head on, of conquering it, making the most of it, using it to add to one's life. Tomorrow had become a struggle to hold one's own, or if that were not possible, to give up as little as possible as grudgingly as possible with as tough a fight as possible.

All men have dreams; there are first-order dreams, second-order dreams, and so on. For the men at the bar of the White Hart, the dreams were dying. Not with howls of pain in the night, but by slow alterations in aspiration, by a gradual lowering of sights. First-order dreams had been completely discarded, second-order dreams were on the way…maybe a few in the third-order could be preserved, at least for a little while.

There was the unvoiced conviction that a huge piece of machinery feeding on hope and will and self-determination, ceaselessly grinding them into useless power, had been levered into motion and that no one knew how to turn it off. And if they were quiet they could, on occasion, actually hear the gears turning.

LaNague took a booth in a far corner of the room and sat alone, waiting. He had been a regular at the bar for a brief period five years ago, spending most of his time listening. All the intelligence gathered by the investigators Tolive had sent to Throne over the years could not equal the insight into the local social system, its mood, its politics, gathered in one night spent leaning against the bar with these men. Some of the regulars with long tenures gave him a searching look tonight, sensing something familiar about him, and sensing too that he wanted to be alone.

If LaNague had judged the man correctly-and he hoped he had-Den Broohnin would walk through the front door momentarily. He would have to be handled carefully. Reason would be useless. Fear was the key: Just the right amount would bring him into line; too much and he would either run or attack like a cornered animal. A dangerous man, an explosive man, his cooperation was imperative if the plan was to maintain its schedule. But could his berserker tendencies be controlled? LaNague didn't know for sure, and that bothered him.

He reviewed what he knew about Broohnin. A native of Nolevatol's great farm lands, he had grown up with little education, spending most of his daylight hours trying to pull a crop from the alien soil of his family's farm. Friction between the boy and his father began and grew and culminated in young Den Broohnin fleeing the family farm-but only after beating his father senseless. He somehow made it to Throne where years on the streets of Primus toughened and seasoned him in the ways of city life.

Somewhere along the line he had come to the conclusion that the Imperium must fall and that he was the one to bring it down-by any means. For Broohnin the murder of the reigning Metep seemed the most direct way to accomplish this. That course of action had to be stopped, for it threatened to ruin all of LaNague's plans.

When Broohnin entered, the already low level of chatter at the bar lowered further as it does when any outsider ventures near an insular group such as this. He knew his uneasiness showed. His lips were tight behind his beard as his eyes scanned the room. He spotted a blond stranger waving from the corner. Conversation gradually returned to its previous level.

With every muscle in his body tense and ready to spring at the first sign of danger, Broohnin stalked warily to the booth and slid in opposite LaNague.

He was now truly seeing the stranger for the first time. He had spoken to a shadowy wraith last night; the figure before him now was flesh and blood…and not exactly an imposing figure. A thin, angular face with an aquiline nose dividing two green eyes, intense, unwavering, all framed with unruly almost kinky, blond hair. Long neck, long limbs, long tapered fingers, almost delicate. Alarmingly thin now without the bulk of last night's cloak, and dressed only in a one-piece shirtsuit and a vest, all dark green.

“Where are your friends?” Broohnin asked as his eyes roamed the room.

“Outside.” The stranger, who already held a dark ale, signaled the barman, who brought the tray he had been holding aside. He placed before Broohnin a small glass of colorless, potent liquor made from hybrid Throne corn with a water chaser beside it.

Broohnin ran the back of his hand across his mouth in an attempt to conceal his shock: this was what he drank, just the way he drank it. Any hope he had held of dealing with this man on an equal footing had been crushed beyond repair by that one little maneuver. He was completely outclassed and he knew it.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“I certainly hope so. I want you to be in such complete and total awe of my organization and my approach to a…change…that you'll drop your own plans and join me.”

“I don't see that I have much choice.”

“You can go back to Nolevatol.”

“That's hardly a choice. Neither is dealing with your Flinter friends.” He lifted his glass. “To a new order, or whatever you have in mind.”

The stranger hoisted his ale mug by the handle, but did not drink. He waited instead until Broohnin had swallowed his sip of liquor, then made his own toast.

“To no order.”

“I'll drink to that,” Broohnin said, and took another burning pull from his glass while the other quaffed half a mugful. That particular toast appealed to him. Perhaps this wouldn't turn out too badly after all.

“LaNague is the name,” the stranger said. “Peter LaNague.” He brought out a small cube and laid it on the table. “The Flinters gave me this. It creates a spheroid shell that distorts all sound waves passing through its perimeter. Radius of about a meter. It's quite unlikely that anyone here would be much interested in our conversation, but we'll be discussing some sensitive matters, and with all the assassination attempts lately”-a pause here, a disapproving twist of the thin lips-“I don't want some overzealous citizen accusing us of sedition.”

He pressed the top of the cube and suddenly the chatter from the bar was muted and garbled. Not a single word was intelligible.

“Very handy,” Broohnin said with an appreciative nod. He could think of dozens of uses immediately.

“Yes, well, the Flinter society is obsessed with the preservation of personal privacy. Nothing really new technologically. Only the pocket size is innovative. Now…”

“When does the Imperium fall?” Broohnin's interjected question was half facetious, half deadly earnest. He had to know.

LaNague answered with a straight face. “Not for years.”

“Too long! My men won't wait!”

“They had better wait.” The words hung in the air like a beckoning noose. Broohnin said nothing and kept his eyes on his glass as he swirled the colorless fluid within. The moment passed and LaNague spoke again.

“Most of your men are Throners, I believe.”

“All but myself and one other.”

“A very important part of my plan will require a group such as yours. It will help if they're natives. Will they co-operate?”

“Of course…especially if they have no other choice.”

LaNague's head moved in a single, quick, emphatic shake. “I'm not looking for that kind of cooperation. I called you here because you seem to be an intelligent man and because we are both committed to bringing the Outworld Imperium to an end. You've developed an underground of sorts-an infrastructure of dedicated people and I don't think they should be denied the chance to play a part. But you and they must play according to my plan. I want to enlist your aid. The plan requires informed, enthusiastic participation. If that is beyond you and your cohorts, then you'll not participate at all.”

Something was wrong here. Broohnin sensed it. Too much was being withheld. Something did not ring true, but he could not say where. And there was an air of-was it urgency? — about the slight man across the table from him. Under different circumstances he would have played coy and probed until he had learned exactly what was going on. But this fellow had Flinters at his beck and call. Broohnin wanted no part of any games with them.

“And just what is this plan of yours? What brings a Tolivian to Throne as a revolutionary?”

LaNague smiled. “I'm glad to see I didn't underestimate your quickness. The accent gave me away, I suppose?”

“That, and the Flinters. But answer the question.”

“I'm afraid you're not in a position of confidence at this point. Be secure in the knowledge that the stage is being set to bring down the Imperium with a resounding crash-but without slaughter.”

“Then you're a dreamer and a fool! You can't smash the Imperium without taking Metep and the Council of Five out of the picture. And the only way those fecaliths will be moved is to burn a few holes in their brain pans. Then see how fast things fall apart! Anything else is wasted time! Wasted effort! Futility!”

As he spoke, Broohnin's face had become contorted with rage, saliva collecting at the corners of his mouth and threatening to fly in all directions. His voice rose progressively in volume and by the end of his brief outburst he was shouting and pounding on the table. He caught himself with an effort, suddenly glad LaNague had brought the damper box along.

The Tolivian shook his head with deliberate slowness. “That will accomplish nothing but a changing of the guard. Nothing will be substantially different, just as nothing is substantially different now from the pre-Imperium days when Earth controlled the out-worlds.”

“You forget the people!” Broohnin said, knowing he sounded as if he were invoking an ancient god. “They know that everything's gone wrong. The Imperium's only two centuries old and already you can smell the rot! The people will rise up in the confusion following Metep's death and-”

“The people will do nothing! The Imperium has effectively insulated itself against a popular revolution on Throne-and only on Throne would a revolution be of any real significance. Insurgency on other worlds amounts to a mere inconvenience. They're light years away and no threat to the seat of power.”

“There's no such thing as a revolution-proof government.”

“I couldn't agree more. But think: more than half-half! — the people on Throne receive all or a good part of their income from the Imperium.”

Broohnin snorted and drained his glass. “Ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous-but true.” He began ticking off points on the fingers of his left hand: “Dolees, retirees, teachers, police and ancillary personnel, everyone in or connected to the armed forces”-then switched to his right-“Sanitary workers, utility workers, tax enforcers/collectors, prison officials and all who work for them, all the countless bureaucratic program shufflers…” He ran out of fingers. “The list goes on to nauseating length. The watershed was quietly reached and quietly passed eleven standard years ago when 50 per cent of Throne's population became financially dependent on the Imperium. A quiet celebration was held. The public was not invited.”

Broohnin sat motionless, the rim of his glass still touching his lower lip, a slack expression on his face as LaNague watched him intently. Finally, he set the glass down.

“By the Core!” The Tolivian was right!

“Ah! The light!” LaNague said with a satisfied smile. “You now see what I meant by insulation: the state protects itself from being bitten by becoming the hand that feeds. It insinuates itself into the lives of as many of its citizens as possible, always dressed in the role of helper and benefactor but always leaving them dependent on it for their standard of living. They may not wind up loving the state, but they do wind up relying on it to increasing degrees. And chains of economic need are far harder to break than those of actual physical slavery.”

Broohnin's voice was hoarse. “Incredible! I never thought-”

“The process is not at all original with the Outworld Imperium, however. States throughout history have been doing it with varying degrees of success. This one's been slyer than most in effecting it.”

As he turned off the sound damper and signaled the waiter for another round, the conversation drifting over from the bar became mildly intelligible. After the drinks had been delivered and the shield was operating again, LaNague continued.

“The Imperium has concentrated its benefits on the citizenry of Throne to keep them in bovine somnolence. The other out-worlds, with Flint and Tolive as notable exceptions, get nothing but an occupation force-‘pardon me, defense garrison’ is what it's called, I believe. And why this disparity? Because outraged citizens on other planets can be ignored; outraged Throners could bring down the Imperium. The logical conclusion: to bring down the Imperium, you must incite the citizens of Throne to outrage against the state. Against the state! Not against a madman who murders elected officials and thus creates sympathy for the state. He then becomes the enemy instead of the state.”

Broohnin slumped back in his seat, his second drink untouched before him, a danse macabre of conflicting emotions whirling across his mind. He knew this was obviously a crucial moment. LaNague was watching him intently, waiting to see if he would accept an indirect approach to felling the Imperium. If he still insisted on a frontal assault, there would be trouble.

“Have I made myself clear?” LaNague asked, after allowing a suitable period of brooding silence. “Do you still think killing Metep will bring down the Imperium?”

Broohnin took a long slow sip of his drink, his eyes fixed on the glass in his hand, and hedged. “I'm not sure what I think right now.”

“Answer honestly, please. This is too important a matter to cloud with face-saving maneuvers.”

Broohnin's head shot up and his gaze held LaNague's. “All right-no. Killing Metep will not end the Imperium. But I still want him dead!”

“Why? Something personal?” LaNague appeared struck by Broohnin's vehemence.

“No…something very general. He's there!”

“And is that why you want the Imperium overthrown? Because it's there?”

“Yes.” Silence followed.

“I'll accept that,” LaNague said after a moment's consideration. “And I can almost understand it.”

“What about you?” Broohnin asked, leaning forward intently. “Why are you here? And don't tell me it's something personal-you've got money, power, and Flinters behind you. The gnomes of Tolive wouldn't get involved in something like this unless there was some sort of profit to be made. What's their stake? And how, by the Core, are we going to pull this off?”

LaNague inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of the “we” from Broohnin, then reached into his vest and withdrew three five-mark notes.

“Here is the Imperium's insulation. We will show the higher-ups and all who depend on it just how thin and worthless it really is. Part of the work has already been done for me by the Imperium itself.” He separated the oldest bill and handed it to Broohnin. “Read the legend in the lower right corner there.”

Broohnin squinted and read stiltedly: “‘Redeemable in gold on demand at the Imperial Treasury.’ “

“Look at the date. How old is it?”

He glanced down, then up again. “Twenty-two years.” Broohnin felt bewildered, and simultaneously annoyed at being bewildered.

LaNague handed over the second bill. “This one's only ten years old. Read its legend.”

“ ‘ This is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the Imperial Treasury.’” Broohnin still had no idea where the demonstration was leading.

The third bill was handed over. “I picked this one up today-it's the latest model.”

Broohnin read without being prompted. “‘This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.’” He shrugged and handed back all three mark notes. “So what?”

“I'm afraid that's all I can tell you now.” LaNague held up the oldest note. “But just think: a little over two standard decades ago this was, for all intents and purposes, gold. This”-he held up the new bill-“is just paper.”

“And that's why you're trying to topple the Imperium?” Broohnin shook his head in disbelief. “You're crazier than I am!”

“I'll explain everything to you once we're aboard ship.”

“Ship? What ship? I'm not going anywhere!”

“We're going to Earth. That is, if you want to come.”

Broohnin stared as the truth hit him. “You're not joking, are you?”

“Of course not.” The tone was testy. “There's nothing humorous about going to Earth.”

“But why would-” He stopped short and drew in a breath, narrowing his eyes. “You'd better not be bringing Earthies into this! If you are, I'll wring your neck here and now and not an army of Flinters will save you!”

LaNague's face reflected disgust at the thought of complicity with Earth. “Don't be obscene. There's a man on Earth I must see personally. The entire success or failure of my plan may hinge on his response to a certain proposal.”

“Who is he? Chief Administrator or some other overgrown fecalith?”

“No. He's well known, but has nothing to do with the government. And he doesn't know I'm coming.”

“Who is he?”

“I'll tell you when we get there. Coming?”

Broohnin shrugged. “I don't know…I just don't know. I've got to meet with my associates tonight and we'll discuss it.” He leaned forward. “But you've got to tell me where all this is leading. I need something more than a few hints.”

Broohnin had noted that LaNague's expression had been carefully controlled since the moment he had entered the tavern. A small repertoire of bland, casual expressions had played across his face, displayed for calculated effect. But true emotions came through now. His eyes ignited and his mouth became set in a fierce, tight line.

“Revolution, my dear Broohnin. I propose a quiet revolution, one without blood and thunder, but one which will shake this world and the entire out-world mentality such as no storm of violence ever shall. History is filled with cosmetic revolutions wherein a little paint is daubed on an old face or, in the more violent and destructive examples, a new head set on an old body.

Mine will be different. Truly radical…which means it will strike at the root. I'm going to teach the out-worlds a lesson they will never forget. When I'm through with the Imperium and everything connected with it, the people of the out-worlds will swear to never again allow matters to reach the state they are in now. Never again!”

“But how, damn you?”

“By destroying these”-LaNague threw the mark notes on the table-“and substituting this.” He reached into another pocket of his vest and produced a round metal disk, yellow, big enough to cover a dead man's eye, and heavy-very heavy. It was stamped on both sides with a star inside an ohm.

THE CIRCLE WAS TO MEET at the usual place tonight. Broohnin always referred aloud to the members of his tiny revolutionist cadre as “my associates.” But in his mind and in his heart they were always called “the Broohnin circle.” It was a varied group-Professor Zachariah Brophy from Outworld University; Radmon Sayers, an up-and-coming vidcaster; Seph Wolverton, a worker with the communications center; Gram Hootre in the Treasury Department; Erv Singh at one of the Regional Revenue Centers. There were a few fringe members who were in and out as the spirit moved them. The first two, Zack and Sayers, had been out lately, protesting murder as a method; the rest seemed to be going along, although reluctantly. But then, who else did they have?

There was only one man on the rooftop: Seph Wolverton.

“Where are the others?

“Not coming,” Seph said. He was a big-boned, hard-muscled man; a fine computer technician. “No one's coming.”

“Why not? I called everyone. Left messages. I told them this was going to be an important meeting.”

“You've lost them, Den. After last night, they're all convinced you're crazy. I've known you a long time now, and I'm not so sure they're wrong. You took all our money and hired that assassin without telling us, without asking our approval. It's over, Den.”

“No, it's not! I started this group! You can't push me out-”

“Nobody's pushing. We're just walking away.” There was regret in Seph's voice, but a note of unbending finality, too.

“Listen. I may be able to work a new deal. Something completely different.” Broohnin's mind was racing to stay ahead of his tongue. “I made a contact tonight who may be able to put a whole new slant on this. A new approach to stopping the Imperium. Even Zack and Sayers won't want to miss out.”

Seph was shaking his head. “I doubt it. They're-”

“Tell them to give it a chance!”

“It'll have to be awfully good before they'll trust you again.”

“It will be. I guarantee it.”

“Give me an idea what you're talking about.”

“Not yet. Got to take a trip first.”

Seph shrugged. “All right. We've got plenty of time. I don't think the Imperium's going anywhere.” He turned without saying good-by and stepped into the drop-chute, leaving Broohnin alone on the roof. He didn't like Seph's attitude. He would have much preferred angry shouts and raised fists. Seph looked at him as if he had done something disgusting. He didn't like that look.

Broohnin looked up at the stars. Whether he wanted to or not, it appeared he would be going to Earth with LaNague. There was no other choice left to him, no other way to hold on to the tattered remnants of “the Broohnin circle.” He would use LaNague to pull everyone back together, and then take up again where he had left off. Once he got a feel for LaNague he was sure he could find ways to maneuver him into a useful position.

Off to Earth…and why not? Who could pass up a free trip like that anyway? Few out-worlders ever got there. And right now he was curious enough about what was going on in that Tolivian head to go just about anywhere to find out.

CHAPTER SIX

Vincen Stafford hung lazily suspended alongside the Lucky Teela with only a slim cord restraining him from eternity. As Second Assistant Navigator, the fascinating but unenviable duty of checking out all the control module's external navigation equipment fell to him. The job required a certain amount of working familiarity with the devices, more than the regular maintenance crew possessed. Only someone in the Navigator Guild would do. And since Stafford had the least seniority imaginable-this was his first assignment from the guild-he was elected.

Although finished with the checklist, he made no move to return to the lock where he could remove his gear and regain his weight. Instead he floated free and motionless, his eyes fixed on the ring of cargo pods encircling the control module…a gently curving necklace of random, oddly shaped stones connected by an invisible thread, reflecting distant fire.

The out-world-to-Earth grain run was ready to move. The area here at the critical point in the gravity well of Throne's star was used as a depot for Earth-bound exports from many of the agricultural worlds. The cargo pods were dropped off and linked to each other by intersecting hemispheres of force. When the daisy chain was long enough to assure sufficient profit from the run, the control module and its crew were linked up and all was set to go.

This run would not be completely typical, however. There were two passengers bound for Earth aboard. Unusual. Few if any out-worlders outside the diplomatic service had contact with Earth. The diplomats traveled in official cruisers, all others traveled any way they could. The two passengers within had to be wealthy-passage to Earth, even on a grain run, was not booked cheaply. They didn't look rich, those two…one dark of clothing, beard, and mood, the other blond and intense and clutching a small potted tree under his arm. An odd pair. Stafford wondered-

He realized he was wasting time. This was his maiden voyage in a navigational capacity and he had to be in top form. It had taken a long time for the guild to find him this post. After spending the required six standard years in intense encephaloaugmented study until he had become facile in every aspect of interstellar flight-from cosmology to subspace physics, from the intricacies of the proton-proton drive to the fail-safe aspects of the command module's thermostat-he was ready for the interstellar void. Unfortunately the void was not ready for him. The runs were not as frequent as they used to be and he had spent an unconscionably long time at the head of the list of applicants waiting for an assignment.

Vincen Stafford did not ask much of life. All he wanted was a chance to get in between the stars and earn enough to support himself and his wife. Perhaps to put away enough to eventually afford a home of their own and a family. No dreams of riches, no pot of gold.

When he had almost despaired of ever being assigned, word had come; he was now officially a spacer. His career had begun. He laughed inside the helmet as his cord reeled him toward the Teela's lock. Life was good. He had never realized how good it could be.

“WHY THE BUSH? You carry it around like you're related to it.”

“It's not a bush,” LaNague said. “It's a tree. And one of my best friends.”

If the remark was meant to be amusing, Broohnin did not find it so. He was edgy, fidgety, feeling mean. The Lucky Teela had dropped in and out of subspace three times in its course toward Earth, accompanied by the curious, much-investigated but little-explained wrenching nausea each time.

LaNague did not seem to mind, at least outwardly, but for Broohnin, who had not set foot on an interstellar ship since fleeing Nolevatol, each drop was an unnerving physical trial, causing the sweat to pour off him as his intestines tried to reach the outside world through both available routes simultaneously. In fact, the entire trip was a trial for Broohnin. It reminded him of that farmhouse on Nolevatol where he grew up, a tiny island of wood in the middle of a sea of grain, no one around but his mother, his brother, and that idiot who pretended to be a father. He had often felt like this on the farm…trapped, confined, with nothing outside the walls. He found himself wandering the corridors of the control ship incessantly, his palms continually moist, his fingers twitching endlessly as if possessed of a life of their own. At times the walls seemed to be closing in on him, threatening to crush him to currant jelly.

When his mental state reached that stage-when he could swear that if he looked quickly, without warning, to his right or left he could actually catch a trace of movement at the edges of the walls, always toward him, never away-he popped a couple of Torportal tablets under his tongue, closed his eyes, and waited. They dissolved rapidly, absorbed through the sublingual mucosa and into the venous circulation almost immediately. A few good pumps of his heart and the active metabolite was in his brain and at work on the limbic system, easing the tension, pushing back the walls, allowing him to sit still and actually carry on a coherent conversation…as he was doing now.

He wondered how LaNague could sit so calmly across the narrow expanse of the tight little cabin. Space was precious on these freight runs: the chairs on which they sat, the table on which LaNague's tree stood, all had sprung from the floor at the touch of an activator plate; the bed folded down from the wall when needed; all identical to Broohnin's quarters across the hall. A common-use toilet and washroom were located down the corridor. Everything was planned for maximal usage of available space, which meant that everything was cramped to a maddening degree. Yet LaNague seemed unperturbed, a fact which would have infuriated Broohnin to violence were he not presently in a drugged state. He wondered if LaNague used any psychotropics.

“That's Pierrot,” LaNague was saying, indicating the tree which stood almost within Broohnin's reach on the table afterward and between them. “He started as a misho many years ago and is now a stunted version of the Tolivian equivalent of the flowering mimosa. He shows he's comfortable and at ease now by assuming the bankan position.”

“You talk like it's a member of the family or something.”

“Well…” LaNague paused and a hint of a mischievous smile twisted his lips upward. “You might say he is a member of my family: my great-grandfather.”

Not sure of just how he should take that, Broohnin glanced from LaNague to the tree. In its rich brown, intricately carved fukuro-shiki-bachi earthenware container, it stood no taller than the distance from the tip of a man's middle finger to the tip of his elbow. The foliage consisted of narrow, five-fingered fronds, spread wide and lined with tiny leaves, all displayed in a soft umbrella of green over its container. The trunk was gently curved to give an overall picture of peace and serenity.

A thought occurred to Broohnin, a particularly nasty one that he found himself relishing more and more as it lingered in his mind. He knew he was physically superior to LaNague, and knew there were no Flinters aboard. There was no further reason to fear the Tolivian.

“What would you do if I uprooted your precious little tree and broke it into a pile of splinters?”

LaNague started half out of his chair, his face white. When he saw that Broohnin had not yet made an actual move toward Pierrot, he resumed his seat.

“I would mourn,” he said in a voice that was dry and vibrated with-what? Was it fear or rage? Broohnin couldn't tell. “I might even weep. I would burn the remains, and then…I don't know. I'd want to kill you, but I don't know if I would do it.”

“You won't allow Metep to be killed, but you'd kill me because of a stinking little tree?” Broohnin wanted to laugh in the other man's face, but the coldness in LaNague's voice gave him pause. “You could get another.”

“No. I couldn't. There is only one Pierrot.”

Broohnin glanced over to the tree and was startled by the change in its appearance. The finger-like fronds had pulled close together and the trunk was now laser-beam straight.

“You've startled Pierrot into the chokkan configuration,” LaNague said reproachfully.

“Perhaps I'll break you into splinters,” Broohnin replied, turning away from the disturbing little tree that changed shape as mood dictated, and focusing again on LaNague. “You've no Flinters to do your dirty work now…I could do it easily…break your back…I'd enjoy that.”

He was not saying this merely to frighten LaNague. It would feel good to hurt him, damage him, kill him. There were times when Broohnin felt he must destroy something, anything. Pressure built up inside him and fought madly for release. Back on Throne, he would wander through the dimmest areas of the dolee zones when the pressure reached unbearable levels, and woe to the poor Zemmelar addict who tried to assault him for the few marks he had. The ensuing scuffle would be brief, vicious, and unreported. And Broohnin would feel better afterward. Only the Torportal in his system now kept him from leaping at LaNague.

“Yes, I believe you would,” LaNague said, totally at ease. “But it might be a good idea to wait until the return trip. We're on our way to Sol System, don't forget. You'd be taken into custody here and turned over to the Crime Authority once we reached the disengagement point. And the Crime Authority of Earth is very big on psycho-rehabilitation.”

The inner rage abruptly dissolved within Broohnin, replaced by shuddering cold. Psycho-rehab started with a mindwipe and ended with a reconstructed personality.

“Then I'll wait,” he said, hoping the remark did not sound as lame as he felt. There followed a protracted, uncomfortable pause-uncomfortable, it seemed, only for Broohnin.

“What's our first step once we get to Earth?” he asked, forcing himself to break the silence. The whole idea of a trip to Earth to lay groundwork for a revolution in the out-worlds bothered him. Bothered him very much.

“We'll take a quick trip to the southern pole to confirm personally a few reports I've had from contacts on Earth. If those prove true-and I'll have to see with my own eyes before I believe-then I'll arrange a meeting with the third richest man in Sol System.”

“Who's that?”

“You'll find out when we meet him.”

“I want to know now!” Broohnin shouted and sprang from his chair. He wanted to pace the floor but there was no room for more than two steps in any direction. “Every time I ask a question you put me off! Am I to be a part of this or not?”

“In time you will be privy to everything. But you must proceed in stages. A certain basic education must be acquired before you can fully understand and effectively participate in the workings of my plan.”

“I'm as educated as I need to be!”

“Are you? What do you know about out-world-Sol System trade?”

“Enough. I know the out-worlds are the bread basket for Sol System. It's grain runs like the one we're on right now that keep Earth from starving.”

“Kept Earth from starving,” LaNague said. “The need for an extraterrestrial protein source is rapidly diminishing. She'll soon be able to feed her own and these grain runs will become a thing of the past before too long. The out-worlds will no longer be Earth's bread basket.”

Broohnin shrugged. “So? That'll just leave more for the rest of us to eat.”

LaNague's laugh was irritating in its condescension. “You've a lot to Learn…a lot to learn.” He leaned forward in his chair, his long-fingered hands slicing the air before him as he spoke. “Look at it this way: think of a country or a planet or a system of planets as a factory. The people within work to produce something to sell to other people outside the factory. Their market is in constant flux. They find new customers, lose old ones, and generally keep production and profits on an even keel. But every once in a while a factory makes the mistake of selling too much of its production to one customer. It's convenient, yes, and certainly profitable. But after a while it comes to depend on that customer too much. And should that customer find a better deal elsewhere, what do you think happens to the factory?”

“Trouble.”

“Trouble,” LaNague said, nodding. “Big trouble. Perhaps even bankruptcy. That's what's happening to the out-worlds. You-I exclude Tolive and Flint because neither of those two planets joined the out-world trade network when Earth was in command, preferring to become self-supporting and thus sparing ourselves dependency on Sol-System trade-you members of the Outworld Imperium are a large factory with one product and one customer. And that customer is learning how to live without you. Before too long you'll all be up to your ears in grain which everyone is growing but no one will be buying. You won't be able to eat it fast enough.”

“Just how long is ‘before too long’?”

“Eighteen to twenty standard years.”

“I think you're wrong,” Broohnin said. Although he found the idea of a chaotic economic collapse strangely appealing, he could not buy it. “Sol System has always depended on the out-worlds for food. They can't produce enough of their own, so where else can they get it?”

“They've developed a new protein source…and they're not feeding as many,” LaNague said, leaning back in his chair now.

The pollution in the seas of Earth had long ago excluded them from ever being a source of food. What could be grown on land and in the multilevel warehouse farms was what humanity would eat. Yet as the population curve had continued on its ever-steepening upward climb, slowing briefly now and then, but moving ever upward, available land space for agriculture shrank. As the number of hungry mouths increased and took up more and more living space, Earth's Bureau of Farms was strained to its utmost to squeeze greater and greater yields out of fewer and fewer acres. The orbiting oneils helped somewhat, but the crush of people and the weight of their hunger surpassed all projections. Synthetic foods that could be processed in abundance were violently rejected; palatable staples could not be supplied in sufficient quantities.

And so the out-world trade network was formed. The colonies were recruited and made over into huge farms. Since a whole ring of grain pods could be dropped in and out of subspace almost as cheaply as one, the out-world-Sol System grain runs were begun and it appeared that a satisfactory solution had at last been found.

For a while, it worked. Came the out-world revolution and everything changed. Sol System still received grain from the out-worlds, but at a fair market price. Too broke to start settling and developing new farm colonies, Earth turned inward and began setting its own house in order.

First step was genetic registry. Anyone discovered to have a defective, or even potentially defective, genotype-this included myriad recessive traits-was sterilized. Howls and threats of domestic revolution arose, but the Earth government was not to be moved this time. It gave the newly formed Bureau of Population Control police powers and expected it to use them.

An example was made of Arna Miffler: a woman with a genotype previously declared free of dangerous traits. She was young, childless, single, and idealistic. She began a campaign of protest against the BPC and its policies, a successful one in its early stages, one that was quickly gathering momentum. At that time, the BPC re-examined Arna Miffler's genotype and discovered a definite trait for one of the rare mucopolysaccharide disorders. She was arrested at her home one night and led off to a BPC clinic. When released the next morning, she was sterile.

Lawyers, geneticists, activists who came to her aid soon learned that their own genotypes, and those of their families, were undergoing scrutiny. As some of Arna's supporters here and there were dragged off to BPC clinics and sterilized, the protest movement faltered, then stalled, then died. It was quite clear that the Bureau of Population Control had muscle and was not afraid to use it. Resistance was reduced to a whisper.

It rose to a scream again when the next step was announced: reproduction was to be limited to the status quo. Two people were only allowed to engender two more new people. A male was allowed to father two children and no more; a female was allowed to deliver or supply ova for two children and no more. After the live birth of the second child, each was to report for voluntary sterilization.

The option for sterilization after fathering or mothering a second child was about as voluntary as Earth's voluntary tax system: comply or else. The genotype of every newborn was entered into a computer which cross-analyzed each parent's genetic contribution. Once the analysis indicated the existence of a second child derived from a certain genotype, that individual's number was registered and he or she was immediately located and escorted to the nearest BPC clinic, where a single injection eliminated forever the possibility of producing another viable gamete.

The BPC looked on this approach as a masterful compromise. Each citizen was still allowed to replace himself or herself via a child, something many-too many-considered an inalienable right. But no more than self-replacement was permitted. Fathering or mothering a child was a capital offense, the male or the female parent being chosen for death by lot in order to “make room” for the newborn child.

The population thus decreased by attrition. Death from disease, although rare, still whittled away at the numbers. Accidental deaths did the same at a faster rate. Children who died after birth-even if they were only seconds old-could not be replaced. The one-person/one-child rule was adhered to dogmatically. Special tax incentives were offered to those who would submit to sterilization before giving rise to new life, higher taxes levied on those who insisted on reproduction.

It worked. After two centuries of harsh controls, the motherworld's population was well into an accelerating decline. There were still food riots now and again in a megalopolis, but nowhere near as frequently as before. There was breathing space again; not much, but after what the planet had been through, it seemed like wide open spaces.

“Sol System is rapidly approaching a break-even point,” LaNague was saying, “where its population will be such that the existing farm land, the oneils, and the new protein source will be sufficient to feed everyone. That's when it will stop importing grain from the out-worlds. That's when the Imperium will fall apart. What we do in the next few days, weeks, and years will decide whether anything is to be saved at all.”

Broohnin said nothing as he stood by his chair and considered what he had been told. LaNague made sense, much as he hated to admit it. Everything was going to fall apart one way or another. That seemed certain now. The two men could at least agree on that point.

But as for saving something? He and LaNague would be at odds on that score. Broohnin wanted nothing spared in the final collapse.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A drop of blood formed at the puncture site after the needle was removed from LaNague's thumb. The technician dabbed it away and smeared the area with stat-gel to halt any further bleeding. “That should do it, sir. But let's just run a little check to make sure.” She tapped a few numbers into the console on her left, then pointed to a small funnel-like opening at the front of the console. “Put your thumb in there.”

LaNague complied and a green light flashed on the counter. “Works?”

The technician nodded. “Perfectly. You are now an official part of the Sol-System credit network.”

“I may not appear so on the surface,” LaNague said with a wry twist to his mouth, “but inside I am filled with boundless ecstasy.”

Broohnin watched the technician smile. It was a nice smile; she was a pretty girl. And LaNague's remark went right by her. Broohnin turned back to the huge transparent plate that made up the greater part of the outer wall of the way station. Earth hung outside.

The Lucky Teela had completed its last subspace jump ahead of schedule and had emerged north of the rotating disk of planets, gas giants, and debris that made up Sol System. The grain pods were deposited in orbit around Earth and the two passengers transferred to the Bernardo de la Paz, an orbiting depot for people and freight run by the Lunarians. People seemed to be scarce at the moment: except for a group of vacationers outward bound for Woolaville on the winter border of Mars’ northern ice cap, Broohnin and LaNague had most of the way station to themselves.

LaNague's first step had been to establish credit for himself before their descent to the planet below. He had given a pile of Tolivian ags to the station's exchequer official in order to establish a balance in Earth's electronic monetary system. The silver coins had been eagerly accepted, converted into Solar credits, and entered into the computer network. A coded signature device had been implanted into the subcutaneous fat pad of his right thumb with an eighteen-gauge needle. As long as his balance lasted, he could buy anything legally available on Earth. A light on consoles similar to the one beside the pretty technician would flash red when he exhausted it.

“Ingenious little device, wouldn't you say?” LaNague remarked, admiring his thumb as he joined Broohnin at the viewing wall. “I can't even feel it in there.”

Broohnin tore his eyes away from the planet below. “What's so ingenious? All I have to do is cut off your thumb and I'm suddenly as rich as you are.”

“They're ahead of you there, I'm afraid. The little device is sensitive to extreme alterations in blood flow…I imagine that's why they asked me if I had Raynaud's disease. Even a tourniquet left in place too long will deactivate it.”

Broohnin returned his attention to the view wall. As ever, LaNague was unflappable: he had already considered and discarded the possibility of someone cutting his thumb off. Someday, Broohnin promised himself, he would find a way to break that man. The only time he had been able to pierce the Tolivian's shield was when he had threatened his damned miniature tree. And even that was out of reach now in the quarantine section of the way station. But someday he would get through. Someday…

Right now he stood transfixed by the motherworld whirling outside the window.

“Think of it,” LaNague said at his shoulder. “Down there is where humanity first crawled out of the slime and started on its trek to the stars.”

Broohnin looked and saw something like a blue Nolevatol thornberry, mottled brown with rot and streaked with white mold. He wanted to jump.

LANAGUE'S THUMB WAS QUICKLY PUT to good use after they shuttled down to the Cape Horn spaceport. Their luggage was stored, a two-man flitter rented. It was only after they were airborne and headed further south that Broohnin realized the precariousness of his position.

“Think you're pretty smart, don't you?” he told LaNague. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Your thumb. It makes you rich and me penniless. You're free to move, I have to follow. You wanted it that way.” He felt rage growing within him even as he spoke.

“Never thought of it, actually.” LaNague's face was guileless. “I just couldn't see opening two accounts when we're only going to be here for a day or so. Besides”-he held up his right thumb-“this is not freedom. It's the exact opposite. The Earth government has used these implants and the electronic credit network to enslave its population more effectively than any regime in human history.”

“Don't try to change the subject-”

“I'm not. Just think what that implant does to me. Every time I use it-to rent this flitter, to buy a meal, to rent a room-my name, the amount of money I spent, what I spent it on, the place of purchase, the time of purchase, all go into the network.” He thrust his thumb toward Broohnin's face. “And this is the only legal money on the entire planet! Coins and paper money have been outlawed-to use any leftovers is illegal. Even barter is illegal. Do you know what that means?”

Surprised by LaNague's vehemence, Broohnin fumbled for an answer.

“I-”

“It means your life is one big holovid recording to anyone who wants to know and has connections. It means that somewhere there's a record of every move you make every day of your life. Your entertainment tastes can be deduced from where you spend your leisure time, your sexual preferences from any devices you might buy, your taste in clothes, your favorite drink, your confidences, your infidelities!”

LaNague withdrew his hand and lay his head back into the upper portion of the padded seat. His eyes closed as he visibly relaxed. After a while he exhaled slowly but kept his lids shut, basking in the dying rays of the sinking sun as they played off the sharp planes of his face.

Finally: “If you really want, I'll set up a small credit balance for you when we get to the peninsula.”

“Forget it,” Broohnin replied, hating the meekness he heard in his voice. “Where are we going?”

LaNague opened his eyes. “I punched in a course for the South Pole, but we'll never reach it. They'll stop us long before we get near it.”

The flitter took them across Drake Passage, over the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and along the western shore of the Weddell Sea. The concepts of “east” and “west” steadily lost meaning as they traveled toward the point where even “south” held no meaning, where every way was north.

Darkness swallowed them as they cut through the cold air above the monotonous white wastes of the Edith Ronne Ice Shelf. When all around him had become featureless darkness, Broohnin finally admitted to himself that he was frightened. He doubted either of them could survive an hour down there in that cold and wind if the flitter went down.

“This was a stupid idea,” he muttered.

“What was?” LaNague, as usual, seemed unperturbed.

“Renting this flitter. We should have taken a commercial flight. What if we have a power failure?”

“A commercial flight wouldn't take us where we have to go. I told you before-I have to see this new protein source myself before I'll really believe it exists.”

“What protein are you going to find on an ice cap? Everything's frozen!” This trip was becoming more idiotic by the minute.

“Not everything, I'll bet,” LaNague said, craning his neck forward as he scanned the sky through the observation bubble. He pointed upward and fifteen degrees off the flitter's port bow. “Look. What do you think those are?”

Broohnin saw them almost immediately. Three long, narrow ellipses of intensely bright light hung in the black of the sky, motionless, eerie.

“How high you think they are?” LaNague asked.

Broohnin squinted. They looked very high, almost fixed in the sky. “I'd say they were in orbit.”

“You're right. They're in a tight polar orbit.”

“Orbiting lights?”

“That's sunlight.”

“By the Core!” Broohnin said in a breathy voice. He knew what they were now-mirrors. Orbiting solar reflectors were almost as old in practice as they were in concept. They had been used by wealthy snow belt cities in the pre-interstellar days to reduce the severity of their winter storms. But the advent of weather modification technology had made them obsolete and most of them had been junked or forgotten.

“I've got it!” he said. “Someone's melted enough ice to be able to plant crops at the South Pole!”

LaNague shook his head. “Close, but not quite. I doubt if there's enough arable soil under the ice to plant a crop. And if there were, I certainly wouldn't feel impelled to see it with my own eyes. What I've-”

The traffic control comm indicator on the console flashed red as a voice came through the speaker.

“Restricted zone! Restricted zone! Turn back unless you have authorized clearance! Restricted zone! Restricted-”

“We going to do it?” Broohnin asked.

“No.”

He fumbled with the knobs on the console. “Can't we turn it off then?” The repetitious monotone of the recorded warning was getting on his nerves. When the volume control on the vid panel did nothing to lessen the droning voice, Broohnin raised his hand to strike at the speaker. LaNague stopped him.

“We'll need that later. Don't break anything.”

Broohnin leaned back and bottled his growing irritation. Covering his ears with his hands, he watched the solar mirrors fatten in the middle, growing more circular, less ellipsoid. As the flitter continued southward, they became almost too bright to look at.

The cabin was suddenly filled with intolerably bright light, but not from the mirrors. A police cutter was directly above them, matching their air speed. The voice from the traffic control comm finally cut off and a new one spoke.

“You have violated restricted air space. Proceed 11.2 kilometers due south and dock in the lighted area next to the sentry post. Deviation from that course will force me to disable your craft.”

LaNague cleared the preprogrammed course and took manual control of the flitter. “Let's do what the man says.”

“You don't seem surprised.”

“I'm not. This is the only way to get to the South Polar Plateau without getting blasted out of the air.”

The cutter stayed above them all the way to the sentry station and remained hovering over their observation bubble even after they had docked.

“Debark and enter the sentry station,” the voice said from the speaker. Without protest, LaNague and Broohnin broke the seal on the bubble, stumbled to the ground, and made a mad dash through the icy wind to the door of the station. The sentry joined them a moment later. He was young, personable, and alone. Broohnin considered the odds to be in their favor, but LaNague no doubt had other ideas.

IT WAS MUCH ROOMIER in the cab of the sentry's cutter. Broohnin stretched out his legs and started to doze.

“Keep awake!” LaNague said, nudging him. “I want you to see this, too.”

Broohnin struggled to a more upright sitting position and glared at the Tolivian. He felt tired, more irritable than usual, and didn't like anyone nudging him for any reason. But his annoyance faded quickly as he remembered LaNague's masterful handling of the sentry.

“Are all Earthies that easy to bribe?” he asked.

There was no humor in LaNague's smile. “I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Those two coin tubes I gave him were full of Tolivian ags, and each ag contains one troy ounce of.999 fine silver. With silver coins, that sentry can operate outside the electronic currency system. The official exchange rate is about six solar credits per ag, but the coins are each worth ten times that in the black market. And believe me, Earth's black market is second to none in size and diversity.”

Broohnin remembered the way the sentry's eyes had widened at the sight of the silver coins. The man had looked as if he were about to lick his lips in anticipation. He had hardly seemed to hear LaNague as he explained what he wanted in return for the coins.

“Black market prices are higher,” Broohnin said. “Why bother with it?”

“Of course they're higher. That's because they've got something to sell. Look: all prices and wages are fixed on Earth, all goods are rationed. Whatever makes it to the market at the official price disappears in an instant, usually into the hands of friends and relatives of the people with political connections. These people sell it to black marketeers, who sell it to everyday people; the price goes up at each stop along the way.”

“That's my point-”

“No. You've missed the point. The price of a three-dimensional display module for a home computer is ‘X’ Solar credits in the government-controlled store; it's a fixed bargain price, but the store never has any. So what good is a fixed price? The black marketeer, however, has plenty of them, only he wants ‘doubleX’ Solar credits for each. It's an axiom of Kyfhon economics: the more rigidly controlled the economy, the bigger and better the black market. Earth's economy is run completely from the top, therefore there's hardly a thing you cannot buy in Earth's black market. It's the biggest and best there is!

“The black market here also means freedom from surveillance. You can buy anything you want without leaving a record of what, where, and when. Of course the sentry was easy to bribe. It costs him nothing to let us take this ride, and look what he got in return.”

The sentry had not come along. There was no need to. He had searched them for weapons and cameras; finding none, he had sealed them into the cutter and programmed a low-level reconnaissance flight into the craft's computer. The two out-worlders would get a slow fly-by of the area that interested them, with no stops. Anyone monitoring the flight would detect nothing out of the ordinary-a routine fence ride. The chance of the cutter's being stopped with the out-worlders aboard was virtually nil. The sentry was risking nothing and gaining a pocketful of silver.

The solar mirrors were now almost perfect circles in the night sky, intolerably bright. LaNague pointed to a soft glow ahead on the horizon.

“That's it. That's got to be it.”

The glow grew and spread left and right until most of the horizon ahead of them was suffused with a soft yellow haze. Suddenly they were upon it and in it and sinking through wispy clouds of bright mist. When those cleared, they could see huge fields of green far below them. A sheer wall of ice was behind them, swinging away to each side in a huge crystal arc.

“By the Core,” Broohnin said softly. “It's a huge valley cut right out of the ice!”

LaNague was nodding excitedly. “Yes, a huge circular cut measuring thirty kilometers across if my reports are correct-and they haven't failed me yet. But the real surprise is below.”

Broohnin watched as their slow descent brought them toward the floor of the valley. The fine mist that layered over the top of the huge manmade depression in the South Polar Plateau diffused the light from the solar mirrors, spreading it evenly through the air. Acting as a translucent screen, it retained most of the radiant heat. The valley was one huge greenhouse. Looking down, Broohnin saw that what had initially appeared to be a solid carpet of green on the valley floor was actually a tight grove of some sort of huge, single-leafed plants. Then he saw that the plants had legs. And some were walking.

“It's true,” LaNague whispered in a voice full of wonder. “The first experiments were begun centuries ago, but now they've finally done it.”

“What? Walking plants?”

“No. Photosynthetic cattle.”

They were like no cattle Broohnin had ever seen. A vivid bice green all over, eight-legged, and eyeless, they were constantly bumping into and rubbing against each other. He could discern no nose, and the small mouth seemed suited only to sucking water from the countless rivulets that crisscrossed the valley floor. The body of each was a long tapered cylinder topped by a huge, green, rear-slanting rhomboidal vane averaging two meters on a side. All the vanes, all the countless thousands of them, were angled so their broad surfaces presented toward the solar mirrors for maximum exposure to the light…like an endless becalmed regatta of green-sailed ships.

“Welcome to Emerald City,” LaNague said in a low voice.

“Hmmmm?”

“Nothing.”

They watched in silence as the sentry's cutter completed its low, slow circuit of the valley, passing at the end over herds of smaller green calves penned off from the rest of the herd, held aside until they were large enough to hold their own with the adults. The cutter rose gently, leaving the valley hidden beneath its lid of bright mist.

“Didn't look to me like one of those skinny things could feed too many people,” Broohnin remarked as the wonder of what they had seen ebbed away.

“You'd be surprised. The official reports say that even the bones are edible. And there are more hidden valleys like that one down here.”

“But what's the advantage?”

“They don't graze. Do you realize what that means? They don't take up land that can be used for growing food for people; they don't eat grains that can be fed to people. All they need is water, sunlight, and an ambient temperature of 15 to 20 degrees.”

“But they're so thin!”

“They have to be if they're going to be photosynthetic. They need a high surface-area-to-mass ratio to feed themselves via their chlorophyll. And don't forget, there's virtually no fat on those things-what you see is what you eat. As each green herd reaches maturity, they're slaughtered, the derived protein is mixed with extenders and marketed as some sort of meat. New ones are cloned and started on their way.”

Broohnin nodded his understanding, but the puzzled expression remained on his face. “I still don't understand why it's being kept a secret, though. This is the kind of breakthrough I'd expect Earth to be beating its chest about all over Occupied Space.”

“It doesn't want the out-worlds to know yet. Earth realizes that those green cows down there could spell economic ruin for the out-worlds. And the longer they keep the out-worlds in the dark about them, the worse shape they'll all be in when grain imports are completely cut off.”

“But why-?”

“Because I don't think Earth has ever given up hope of getting the out-worlds under its wing again.” “You going to break the news?”

“No.”

They flew in silence through the polar darkness for a while, each man digesting what he had just seen.

“I imagine that once the word gets out,” LaNague said finally, “and it should leak within a few standard years, the Earthies will move the herds into the less hospitable desert areas where they can probably expect a faster growth rate. Of course, the water requirement will be higher because of increased evaporation. But that's when Earth's need for imported grain will really begin to drop…she'll be fast on her way to feeding all her billions on her own.”

The lights of the sentry station appeared ahead.

“Speaking of all these billions,” Broohnin said, “where are they? The spaceport wasn't crowded, and there's nothing below but snow. I thought you told me every available centimeter of living space on Earth was being used. Looks like there's a whole continent below with no one on it. What kind of residue you been giving me?”

“The coast of the South Polar continent is settled all around, and the Antarctic Peninsula is crowded with people. But from what I understand, inland settlements have been discouraged. It's possible to live down there,” he said, glancing at the featureless wastes racing by below the cutter. “The technology exists to make it habitable, but not without extensive melting of the ice layers.”

Broohnin shrugged. He managed to make it a hostile gesture. “So?”

“So, a significant ice melt means significant lowland flooding and there are millions upon millions of people inhabiting lowlands. A few thousand square kilometers of living space down here could result in the loss of millions elsewhere in the world. Not a good trade-off. Also, 80 per cent of Earth's fresh water is down there. So Antarctica remains untouched.”

The cutter slowed to a hover over the sentry station, then descended. As they prepared to debark, LaNague turned to Broohnin.

“You want to see billions of people, my friend? I'll show you more than you ever imagined. Our next stop is the Eastern Megalopolis of North America. By the time we're through there, you'll crave the solitude of the cabin you occupied on the trip in from the out-worlds.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“You sure you know where you're going?”

“Exactly. Why?”

“It's not the type of neighborhood I'd expect to see the ‘third richest man in Sol System’ in.”

“You're right. This is a side trip.”

The press of people was beyond anything Broohnin had ever imagined. They were everywhere under the bleary eye of the noonday sun, lining the streets, crowding onto the pavement until only the hardiest ground-effect vehicles dared to push their way through. There were no fat people to be seen, and the streets themselves were immaculate, all a part of the ethics of starvation wherein everything must be recycled. The air was thick with the noise, the smell, the presence of packed humanity. And even behind the high, cheap, quickly poured apartment walls that canyonized the street, Broohnin was sure he could feel unseen millions.

“I don't like it here,” he told LaNague.

“I told you you wouldn't.”

“I don't mean that. There's something wrong here. I can feel it.”

“It's just the crowds. Ignore it.”

“Something is wrong!” he said, grabbing LaNague's arm and spinning him around.

LaNague looked at him carefully, searchingly. “What's bothering you?”

“I can't explain it,” Broohnin said, rubbing his damp palms in fearful frustration. There was sweat clinging to his armpits, his mouth felt dry, and the skin at the back of his neck was tight. “Something's going to happen here. These people are building toward something.”

LaNague gave him another long look, then nodded abruptly. “All right. I know better than to ignore the instincts of a former street urchin. We'll make this quick, then we'll get out of here.” He looked down at the locus indicator disk in his palm, and pointed to the right. “This way.”

They had returned to the tip of the South American continent and dropped off their flitter at the Cape Town Spaceport. From there a stratospheric rammer had shot them north to the Bosyorkington Spaceport, which occupied the far end of Long Island, formerly called the Hamptons. Three hundred kilometers west northwest from there by flitter brought them to the putrescent trickle that was still called the Delaware River, but only after carrying them over an endless, unbroken grid of clogged streets with apartments stretching skyward from the interstices. Everything looked so carefully planned, so well thought-out and laid out…why then had Broohnin felt as if he were descending into the first ring of Hell when their flitter lowered toward the roof of one of the municipal garages?

LaNague had purchased a locus indicator at the spaceport. They were big sellers to tourists and people trying to find their roots. It was a fad on Earth to locate the exact spot where a relative had lived or a famous man had been born or had died, or a historical event had occurred. One could either pay homage, or relive that moment of history with the aid of holograms or a sensory-cognitive button for those who were wired.

“What are we looking for if not your rich man?” Broohnin asked impatiently. The tension in the air was making it difficult to breathe.

LaNague did not look up from his locus indicator. “An ancient ancestor of mine-man named Gurney-used to live in this area in the pre-stellar days. He was a rebel of sorts, the earliest one on record in my family. A lipidlegger. He defied his government-and there were many governments then, not just one for all Earth as there is now-out of sheer stubbornness and belligerence.” He smiled at a private thought. “Quite a character.”

They walked a short distance further to the north. There seemed to be fewer people about, but no less tension. LaNague didn't seem to notice.

“Here we are,” he said, his smile turning to dismay as he looked around, faced with the same monotonous façades of people-choked apartments that had oppressed them since leaving the municipal garage.

“Good. You found it. Let's go,” Broohnin said, glancing about anxiously.

“This used to be a beautiful rural area,” LaNague was saying, “with trees and wildlife and mist and rain. Now look at it: solid synthestone. According to my coordinates, Gurney's general store used to be right here in the middle of the street. This whole area used to be the Delaware Water Gap. How-”

A sound stopped him. It was a human sound, made by human voices, but so garbled by the overlapping of so many voices that no words were distinguishable. Its source was untraceable…it came from everywhere, seamlessly enveloping them. But the emotion behind the sound came through with unmistakable clarity: rage.

All around them, people began to flee for their homes. Children were pulled off the street and into apartment complex doorways that slid shut behind them. LaNague dove for the door of a clothing store to their left but it zipped closed before he could reach it and would not open despite his insistent pounding. As Broohnin watched, the storefront disappeared, fading rapidly to a blank surface identical to the synthestone of the apartment walls around it. LaNague appeared to be trying to gain entry to a solid wall.

“What's going on?” Broohnin yelled as the din of human voices grew progressively louder. He could not localize the source to the north of them, approaching rapidly.

“Food riot,” LaNague said, returning to Broohnin's side. “Sounds like a big one. We've got to get out of here.” He pulled a reference tablet the size of a playing card from his vest pocket and tapped in a code. “The garage is too far, but there's a Kyfhon neighborhood near here, I believe.” The surface of the tablet lit with the information he had requested. “Yes! We can make it if we run.”

“Why there?”

“Because nobody else will be able to help us.”

They ran south, stopping at every intersection while LaNague checked his locus indicator. The bustling stores they had passed only moments before had disappeared, glazed over with holograms of blank synthestone walls to hide them from the approaching mob. Only a rioter intimately familiar with this particular neighborhood would be able to locate them now.

“They're gaining!” Broohnin said breathlessly as they stopped again for LaNague to check their coordinates. After nearly two decades of living on Throne, his muscles had become acclimated to a gravitational pull approximately 5 per cent less than Earth's. The difference had been inconsequential until now because his activity had been limited to sitting, dozing, and strolling. Now he had to run. And he felt it.

LaNague, who weighed about seven kilos less on Earth than he did on Tolive, found the going easy. “Not much further. We should be-”

The mob rounded the corner behind them then and rushed forward with a roar. An empty, hapless g-e vehicle parked at the side of the street slowed their momentum for a moment as a number of rioters paused to tear it to pieces. The strips of metal pulled from the vehicle were used to assault any store windows they could find behind their holographic camouflage. The windows were tough, rubbery, and shatterproof. They had to be pierced and torn before entry could be gained.

LaNague and Broohnin stood transfixed with fascination as they watched a clutch of rioters attack what seemed to be a synthestone wall, their makeshift battering rams and pikes disappearing into it as if no wall existed. And none did. With a sudden shout, those in the forefront pushed their way into the wall image and disappeared. They must have found the hologram projector controls immediately because the camouflage evaporated and the crowd cheered as the wall became a storefront again…a furniture outlet. Its contents were passed out to the street bucket-brigade style and smashed with roars of approval.

“That's not food!” Broohnin said. “I thought you called this a food riot.”

“Just a generic term. Nobody riots for food any more. They just riot. Theories have it that the crowding makes a certain type of person go temporarily berserk every so often.”

And then the crowds began to move again. Blind, voracious, swift, deadly.

Broohnin found his fear gone, replaced by a strange exhilaration. “Let's join them!” The carnage, the howling ferocity of the scene had excited him. He wanted a chance to break something, too. He always felt better when he did.

“They'll tear you to pieces!” LaNague said, shoving him into motion away from the mob.

“No, they won't! I'll be one of them!”

“You're an out-worlder, you fool! They'll see that immediately. And when they're through with you, nobody'll be able to put you back together again. Now run!”

They ran. The mob was not after them in particular, but it followed them. Nor was the riot confined to a single street. As they passed various intersections, LaNague and Broohnin could see extensions of the crowd to the right and left. Fires had been set and smoke began to thicken in the air.

“Faster!” LaNague shouted. “We could get ringed in! We're dead if that happens!”

It was unnecessary advice. Broohnin was running at maximum effort. His muscles screaming in protest as the smoke put an extra burden on his already laboring lungs. LaNague had slowed his pace to stay with him and yell encouragement. Broohnin resented the ease with which the skinny Tolivian loped beside him. If worse came to worse, he would throw LaNague to the mob which was now only a scant hundred meters behind them, and gaining.

“Not much further!” LaNague said. “Don't quit now!” He glanced down at the indicator in his palm. “That should be it straight ahead!”

Broohnin saw nothing different at first, then noticed that the street after the next intersection was a different color…yellow…and there were still people in the street-children-playing. There were men on the corners. Women, too. And they were all armed.

The Kyfhons stood in small placid groups, watching the two fleeing out-worlders with mild interest. Except for the long-range blasters slung across their shoulders and the hand blasters on their hips, they looked like all the other Earthies seen since landfall. It was only when it became obvious that LaNague and Broohnin were going to cross onto the yellow-colored pavement that they sprang to life.

A dozen blasters were suddenly pointed in their direction. Broohnin glanced at the children who had stopped playing-some of the older ones had small hand blasters drawn and ready, too. LaNague swung out his arm and slowed Broohnin to a walk, then trotted ahead of him. The Tolivian held his hands in front of him, out of Broohnin's sight. He seemed to be signaling to the group of Kyfhons on the right-hand corner. They glanced at each other and lowered their weapons. One stepped forward to have a quick conversation. There were brief nods, then LaNague turned to Broohnin.

“Hurry! They'll give us sanctuary.”

Broohnin quickly followed LaNague onto the yellow pavement. “Where do we hide?” His words were barely audible between gasping respirations.

“We don't. We just lean against the wall over here in the shade and catch our breath.”

“We're not getting off the street?”

LaNague shook his head. “That would mean entering someone's home. And that's asking too much.”

The mob surged forward, its momentum constant, irresistible, spilling out of the confines of the narrow street and into the intersection. The Kyfhons had reslung or reholstered their weapons and now stood in clusters, eying the onrushing wave of humanity in attitudes of quiet readiness.

Although LaNague seemed calm beside him, Broohnin was unable to relax. He leaned back with his palms flat against the wall, panting, ready to spring away when he had to. And he was sure he'd have to soon. That mob was rolling and it wasn't going to be stopped by a few adults and kids with blasters. It was going to tear through here, yellow pavement or no, and destroy everything in its path.

As it happened, Broohnin was only half right. The mob did not stop, but neither did it pour into the Kyfhon street. It split. After filling the intersection, half of the rioters turned to the right, half to the left. Not a single foot crossed onto the yellow pavement.

Den Broohnin could only stare.

“Told you we'd be safe,” LaNague said with a smug air.

“But why? There's not enough firepower in this street to even nick a mob like that, let alone stop it!”

LaNague looked up at the overhanging buildings. “Oh, I wouldn't say that.”

Broohnin followed his gaze. The roofs, and every window at every level, were lined with Kyfhons, and each of them was armed. Looking back to the mob that was still surging and dividing at the end of the street, he saw not the slightest hint of reluctance or hesitation in the rioters as they skirted the yellow pavement. It seemed to be taken for granted that this neighborhood was untouchable. But how-?

“Over the years, I imagine a lot of rioters died before people got the message,” LaNague said, answering the unspoken question. “It's called ‘a sense of community’-something that's been long forgotten on Earth, and even on the out-worlds. We Kyfhons are set apart from others by our attitudes and values. We form a close-knit family…even to the point of having secret hand signals so we can recognize each other. I used one to gain sanctuary today.” He gestured toward the mob that was finally beginning to thin. “We're not interested in traffic with people who don't share our values, and so we're driven together into neighborhoods like this one, or to planets like Tolive and Flint. But it's a self-imposed exile. Our ghetto walls are built from the inside.”

“But does the Crime Authority allow-”

“The Crime Authority is not allowed in here! The motto of Eastern Sect Kyfhons is ‘A weapon in every hand, freedom on every side.’ They police their own streets, and have let it be known for centuries that they protect their own. Public temper tantrums like the one that almost ran us over are not tolerated on their streets. The word has long been out: Do what you will to your own community, but risk death if you harm ours.”

Broohnin had finally caught his breath and now pushed himself away from the wall. “In other words, they get away with murder.”

“It's called self-defense. But there are other reasons they're left alone. For instance: didn't you wonder why there were no Crime Authority patrols in the air trying to quell the riot? It's because life is still a surplus here. If a few rioters get killed, that's fewer mouths to feed. The same logic applies to any rioters foolish enough to invade neighborhoods like this.

“As for criminals who might belong to the Kyfhon communities, the justice meted out here against their own kind is swifter and often harsher than anything that goes on in the Crime Authority prisons. And finally, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, you must remember that these people grow up learning how to fight with every part of their body and with every weapon known to man.” LaNague smiled grimly. “Would you want to walk in here and try to arrest someone?”

“They're like a bunch of Flinters,” Broohnin muttered, glancing around and feeling the same uneasiness he had experienced in Throne's Imperium Park steal over him again.

“They are!” LaNague said, laughing. “They just never moved to Flint. After all, Flinters are just Eastern Sect purists in ceremonial garb who have a planet all to themselves. Just as Tolivians are Western Sect Kyfhons with their own planet.”

“Where do these Western Sect types keep themselves on Earth?”

LaNague's smile faltered. “Most of them are gone. We-they never took to violence too well. They were gobbled up-destroyed. Tolive is just about the only place left where Western Sect Kyfho is practiced.” He turned away. “Let's go.”

After speaking briefly to a small knot of the adults on the corner, obviously thanking them, he moved toward the now deserted street, motioning Broohnin to follow.

“Come. Time to see the rich man.”

THEY WERE THREE KILOMETERS up in the cloud-cluttered sky, heading southeast at full throttle. The Bosyorkington megalopolis had been left behind, as had the coastal pile-dwelling communities and the houseboat fleets. Nothing below now but the green algae soup they still called the Atlantic Ocean.

“He live on a boat?”

LaNague shook his head.

“Then where're you taking us?” Broohnin demanded, his gaze flicking between the map projected on the flitter's vid screen and the rows of altocumulus clouds they were stringing like a needle through pearls. “There's nothing out here but water. And we'll never reach the other side.”

LaNague checked the controls. “Watch up ahead.”

Broohnin looked down toward the ocean.

“No,” LaNague told him. “Ahead. Straight ahead.”

There was nothing straight ahead but clouds. No. there was something-they speared into a patch of open air, and there it was, straight ahead as LaNague had said: a sprawling Tudor mansion with a perfect lawn and rows of English hedges cut two meters high and planted in devious, maze-like patterns. All floating three kilometers in the sky.

“Ah!” LaNague said softly at Broohnin's side. “The humble abode of Eric Boedekker.”

CHAPTER NINE

Eric Boedekker's home sat in a shallow, oblong, six-acre dish rimmed with batteries of anti-aircraft weapons. The general public looked on the skisland estates as mere toys for the obscenely rich, totally devoid of any practical value. The general public was wrong, as usual.

“Looks like a fort,” Broohnin said as they glided toward it.

“It is.”

Members of the uppermost layers of Earth's upper-upper class had long ago become regular targets of organized criminal cartels, political terrorists, and ordinary people who were simply hungry. Open season was declared on the rich and they were kidnapped and held for ransom at an alarming rate. The electronic currency system, of course, eliminated the possibility of monetary ransom, and so loved ones were held captive and returned in exchange for commodities useful in the black market, such as gold, silver, beef.

Huge, low-floating skislands had long been in use as vacation resorts, guaranteeing the best weather at all times, always staying ahead of storms and winter's chill. Seeing the plight of the very rich, an enterprising company began constructing smaller skislands as new homes for them, offering unparalleled security. The skisland estates could be approached only by air, and were easily defensible against assault.

There were a few drawbacks, the major one being the restriction from populated areas, which meant any land mass on the planet. Huge gravity-negating fields were at work below the skislands and no one knew the effects of prolonged exposure to the fields on human physiology. No one was volunteering, either. And so the skislands were all to be found hovering over the open sea.

A holographic message was suddenly projected in front of LaNague's flitter. Solid-looking block letters told them to approach no further, or risk being shot from the sky. A vid communication frequency was given if the occupants wished to announce themselves. LaNague tapped in the frequency and spoke.

“This is Peter LaNague. I desire a personal meeting with Eric Boedekker on a matter of mutual interest.”

There was no visual reply, only a blank screen and a curt male voice. “One moment.” After a brief pause, the voice spoke again. “Audience denied.”

“Tell him I bring word from Flint,” LaNague said quickly before the connection could be broken, then turned to Broohnin with a sour expression. “‘Audience denied’! If it weren't so vital that I see him, I'd-”

A bright crimson light began blinking on and off from the roof of a squat square structure to the left of the main buildings. The male voice returned, this time with a screen image to go with it…a young man, slightly puzzled, if his expression was a true indicator.

“You may land by the red flasher. Remain in your flitter until the escort arrives to take you inside.”

THEY WALKED IDLY about the great hall of the reconstructed Tudor mansion, waiting for Boedekker to appear. After being carefully scanned for anything that might conceivably be used as a weapon, they had been deposited here to await the great man's pleasure.

“He doesn't appear to be in much of a hurry to see you,” Broohnin said, staring at the paintings framed in the gold leaf ceiling, the richly paneled walls, the fireplace that was functional but unused-nobody on Earth burned real wood any more.

LaNague appeared unconcerned. “Oh, he is. He's just trying hard not to show it.” He ambled around the hall, thin arms folded across his chest, studying the collection of paintings which seemed to favor examples of the satyr-and-nymph school of art.

“Boedekker's probably one of your heroes, isn't he?” Broohnin said, watching LaNague closely for a reaction. He saw one he least expected.

LaNague's head snapped around; his thin lips were drawn into an even thinner line by anger. “Why do you say that? Are you trying to insult me? If you are-”

“Even I've heard of Eric Boedekker,” Broohnin said. “He singlehandedly controls the asteroid mining industry in Sol System. He's rich, he's powerful, he's big business…everything you Tolivians admire!”

“Oh. That.” LaNague cooled rapidly. He wasn't even going to bother to reply. Broohnin decided to push him further.

“Isn't he the end product of all the things you Tolivians yammer about-free trade, free economy, no restrictions whatsoever? Isn't he the perfect capitalist? The perfect Tolivian?”

LaNague sighed and spoke slowly, as if explaining the obvious to a dim-witted child. It irked Broohnin, but he listened.

“Eric Boedekker never participated in a free market in his life. He used graft, extortion, and violence to have certain laws passed giving him and his companies special options and rights of way in the field of asteroid mineral rights. He used the Earth government to squash most of the independent rock jumpers by making it virtually impossible for them to sell their ore except through a Boedekker company. Nothing you see around you was earned in a free market. He doesn't eliminate his challengers in the marketplace by innovations or improvements; he has his friends in the government bureaus find ways to put them out of business. He's a corruptor of everything a Tolivian holds dear! He's an economic royalist, not a capitalist.”

LaNague paused to catch his breath, then smiled. “But there's one Earth law even he hasn't been able to circumvent, despite every conceivable scheme to do so: the one person/one child law.”

“I would think that'd be the easiest to get around.”

“No. That's the one law that can have no exceptions. Because it affects everyone, applies to everyone the same. It has been held as an absolute for as long as any living human can remember. If you allowed one person to have one extra child-no matter what the circumstances-the entire carefully structured, rigidly enforced population control program would fall apart once word got out.”

“But he has two children…doesn't he? What's he want another for?”

“His first born was a son, another Eric, by his second wife. When they were in the process of dissolving their marriage, they fought over custody of the child. With Boedekker pulling the strings, there was no chance that the wife would keep the boy, even though by Earth law he was rightfully hers because she had him by intrauterine gestation. In a fit of depression, the woman poisoned herself and the child.

“He fathered a second child, a girl named Liza, by his third wife. Liza was gestated by extrauterine means to avoid potential legal problems should the third marriage break up-which it did. She grew to be the pride of his life as he groomed her to take over his mining empire-”

“A girl?” Broohnin said, surprise evident on his face. “In charge of Boedekker Industries?”

“The pioneer aspects of out-world life have pushed women back into the incubator/nest-keeper role, and it'll be a while before they break out of it again. But on Earth it's different. Anyway, Liza met a man named Frey Kirowicz and they decided to become out-worlders. It was only after they were safely on Neeka that she sent her father a message telling him what he could do with Boedekker Industries. Eric tried everything short of abducting her to get her back.

And eventually he might have tried that had she not been accidentally killed in a near-riot at one of the Imperial garrisons on Neeka.”

“I remember that!” Broohnin said. “Almost two years ago!”

“Right. That was Eric Boedekker's daughter. And now he has no heir. He's been trying for an exemption from the one person/one child rule ever since Liza ran off, but this is something his money and power can't buy him. And he can't go to the out-worlds and father a child because the child will then be considered an out-worlder and thus forbidden to own property in Sol System. Which leaves him only one avenue to save his pride.”

Eric Boedekker entered at the far end of the room. “And what avenue is that, may I ask?” he said.

“Revenge.”

Like most Earthies, Eric Boedekker was clean-shaven. Broohnin judged his age to be sixty or seventy standards, yet he moved like a much younger man. His attire and attitude were typical of anyone they had seen since their arrival from the out-worlds. Only his girth set him apart. The asteroid mining magnate's appetite for food apparently equaled his appetite for power and money. He took up fully half of an antique love seat when he sat down, and gestured to two other chairs before the cold fireplace.

“Neither of you appears to be a Flinter,” he said when Broohnin and LaNague were seated across from him.

“Neither of us is,” LaNague replied. “I happen to be a Tolivian and have been in contact with representatives from Flint.”

“May I assume that Flint has changed its mind in regard to my offer last year?”

“No.”

“Then we have nothing further to discuss.” He began to rise from the seat.

“You wanted the Outworld Imperium crushed and destroyed, did you not?” LaNague said quickly. “And you offered the inhabitants of Flint an astonishingly large sum if they would accomplish this for you, did you not?”

Boedekker sat down again, his expression concerned, anxious. “That was privileged information.”

“The Flinters brought the offer to a group with which I am connected,” LaNague said with a shrug. “And I'm bringing it back to you. I can do it for you, but I don't want your money. I only want to know if you still wish to see the Outworld Imperium in ruins.”

Boedekker nodded twice, slowly. “I do. More than anything I can think of. The Imperium robbed me of my only surviving child. Because of it, I have no heir, no way to continue my line and the work I've begun.”

“Is that all? You want to bring down a two-hundred-year-old government because of an accident?”

“Yes!”

“Why didn't you try to bring down the Earth government when your first child died?”

Boedekker's eyes narrowed. “I blamed my wife for that. And besides, no one will ever bring the Earth bureaucracy down…one would have to use a planetary bomb to unravel that knot.”

“There must be more to it than that. I'll have to know if I'm to risk my men and my own resources-a lot of my plan depends on you.”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me.”

“Do you have any children?”

“One. A daughter.”

Boedekker's expression showed that he was as surprised as Broohnin. “I didn't think revolutionaries had families. But never mind…you should then be able to understand what it's like to groom a child all her life for a position and then have her run off to be a farmer on the edge of nowhere!”

“A daughter isn't a possession. You disowned her?”

“She didn't care! She kept saying.” His voice drifted off.

“She tried for a reconciliation?” Boedekker nodded. “She wanted me to come out and visit her as soon as they had a place of their own.” Tears began to well in his eyes. “I told her she'd be dead and buried out there before I ever came to visit.”

“I see,” LaNague said softly.

“I want to see that pompous ass, Metep, and his rotten Imperium dead and forgotten! Buried like my Liza!”

Broohnin watched and marveled at how LaNague had turned the conversation to his advantage. He was the guest of an extraordinarily powerful man, yet he was in complete control of the encounter.

“Then it shall be done,” LaNague replied with startling offhandedness. “But I'll need your cooperation if I'm to succeed. And I mean your full cooperation. It may cost you everything you own.”

It was Boedekker's turn to shrug. “I have no one I wish to leave anything to. When I die, my relations will war over Boedekker Industries, break it up and run home with whatever pieces they can carry. I'll be just as happy to leave them nothing at all. BI was to be my monument. It was to live long after I was gone. Now.”

“I'm offering you the downfall of the Imperium as your monument. Interested?”

“Possibly.” He scrutinized LaNague. “But I'll need more than grandiose promises before I start turning my holdings over to you. Much, much more.”

“I don't want your holdings. I don't want a single Solar credit from you. All you'll have to do is make certain adjustments in the nature of your assets, which need never leave your possession.”

“Intriguing. Just what kind of adjustments do you have in mind?”

“I'll be glad to discuss them in detail in private,” LaNague said with a glance at Broohnin. “I don't wish to be rude, but you haven't reached the point yet where you can be privy to this information.”

Broohnin shot to his feet. “In other words, you don't trust me!”

“If you wish,” LaNague replied in his maddeningly impassive voice.

It was all Broohnin could do to keep from reaching for the Tolivian's skinny throat and squeezing it until his eyes bulged out of their sockets. But he managed to turn and walk away. “I'll find my own way out!”

He didn't have to. An armed security woman was waiting on the other side of the door to the great hall. She showed him out to the grounds and left him to himself, although he knew he was constantly watched from the windows.

It was cold, windy, and clear outside the house, but Broohnin found his lungs laboring in the rarefied air. Yet he refused to go back inside. He had to think, and it was so hard to think through a haze of rage.

Walking as close to the edge as the meshed perimeter fence would allow, he looked out and down at the clouds around the skisland. Every once in a while he could catch a glimpse of the ocean below through a break. Far off toward the westering sun he could see a smudge that had to be land, where people like him were jammed so close together they had to go on periodic sprees of violence-short bursts of insanity that allowed them to act sane again for a while afterward. Broohnin understood. Understood perfectly.

He looked back at the mansion and its grounds, trying to imagine the incomprehensible wealth it represented. He hated the rich for having so much more than he did. Another glance in the direction of the megalopolis that had so recently endangered his life and he realized he hated the poor, too…because he had always found losers intolerable, had always felt an urge to put them out of their misery.

Most of all, he hated LaNague. He would kill that smug Tolivian on the way back. Only one of them would return to the out-worlds alive. When they made their first subspace jump he'd-

No, he wouldn't. The Flinters would be awaiting LaNague's return. He had no desire to try to explain the Tolivian's death at his hands to them.

He cooled, and realized he didn't trust LaNague. There were too many unanswered questions. If Tolive and Flint were going to be spared in the coming economic collapse as LaNague said they would, why were they involved in the revolution? Why didn't they just sit back and refuse to get involved as they had in the past, and just let things take their course?

And then there was the feeling that LaNague was maneuvering him toward something. It was all so subtle that he had no idea in which direction he was being nudged…but he felt the nudge. If LaNague was in such complete control of everything, why was he spending so much time with Broohnin? What did he have in mind for him?

“Mr. LaNague awaits you at the flitter dock.”

Broohnin spun sharply at the sound of the voice behind him. It was the same female guard who had led him out. “Something wrong?” she asked. He ignored her and began walking toward the dock.

“You'll be taking the Penton amp; Blake back alone,” LaNague told him.

Broohnin was immediately suspicious. “What about you?”

“I'm taking the Adzel back to Tolive. I've business to attend to there before I return to Throne.”

Both men sat staring out the view wall of the Bernardo de la Paz way station as the globe of Earth passed above them. LaNague had retrieved his tree from the quarantine section and sat with it on his lap. “And what am I to do until then?”

“You'll be contacted shortly after your return.”

“By Flinters?”

LaNague smiled at Broohnin's concern, but it was not a jeering grimace. He seemed relaxed, at ease, almost likable. The thought of returning to his home world seemed to have changed him into a different person.

“Flinters make up only a small part of my force on Throne. And they must stay out of sight.” He turned toward Broohnin and spoke in a low voice. “Have you ever heard of Robin Hood?”

“Does he live in Primus City?”

LaNague's laughter was gentle and full of good humor. “In a way, yes! You'll become intimate friends, I think. And if all goes well, people will come to think of you and he as one and the same.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Broohnin found this new, easygoing side of LaNague disconcerting, and harder to deal with than the dour, reserved, omniscient conspiratorial mastermind he had been traveling with since their departure from Throne. Which was real?

“All in good time.” He rose to his feet. “My ship leaves before yours. Have a good trip. I'll see you again on Throne.”

Broohnin watched the Tolivian stroll away with his damned tree under his arm. It was obvious that LaNague thought he was going to use him. That was okay. Broohnin would be quite happy to play along for a while and wait for his chance. He'd let LaNague live as long as he was useful. When the time was right, Broohnin would step in and take over again. And then he would settle with LaNague once and for all.