An Enemy of the State

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Meat?” Salli cried, her gaze shifting back and forth between the roast on the table and her husband. “How did you get it?”

Bought it.” Vincen Stafford was smiling. For the first time in two years he was feeling some pride in himself.

“But how? You just can't get meat any more, except in-”

He nodded. “Yeah. The black market.”

“But they don't accept Food Vouchers. And we don't have any money.”

“Yes, we do. I signed up as a pilot for Project Perseus today.”

“You mean that probe ship thing? Oh no, Vin! You can't mean it! It's too dangerous!”

“It's the only thing I know how to do, Salli. And it pays thirty thousand marks a year. They gave me half in advance for signing.”

“But you'll be out there all alone…nobody's ever been out there before.”

“That's why I got such a premium for signing. It's nothing to pilot those one-man ships. All the skill's in the navigation. And that's what I do best. It was made for me! I've got to take it.” The light in his face faded slightly. “Please understand. We need the money…but more than that, I need this job.”

Salli looked up at her husband. She knew he needed the job to feel useful again, to feel he had control over something in his life again, even if it was just a tiny probe ship in the uncharted blackness between the galactic arms. And she knew it would be useless to argue with him. He had signed, he had taken the money, he was going. Make the best of it.

She rose and kissed him.

“Let's get this roast cooking.”

“…AND ONCE AGAIN there's news from Earth about Eric Boedekker, the wealthy asteroid mining magnate. It seems that he has now sold his fabulous skisland estate to a high bidder in one of the most fantastic auctions in memory. As far as anyone can tell, the estate was the last of the Boedekker holdings to be liquidated, and the former owner is now living in seclusion, address unknown.

“Thus, one of the largest fortunes in human history has been completely liquidated. Whether it sits in an account for future use or has been surreptitiously reinvested remains a tantalizing question. Only Eric Boedekker knows, and no one can find him.

“And here on the out-worlds, Project Perseus is proceeding on schedule. A crew for the fleet of ships has been picked from the host of heroic applicants-most of whom were underqualified-and all that is necessary now is completion of the tiny probe ships themselves…”

IT WAS THE SAME old argument, over and over again. Broohnin was sick of it. So was everyone else. LaNague still refused to let them know where it was all heading. He was promising them the full story by the end of the year, but Broohnin wanted it now. So did Sayers and Doc Zack. Even the Flinters looked a little uncertain.

“But what have we done?” Broohnin said. “The Imperium's inflating itself out of business. But Doc says that'll take another ten years. We can't wait that long!”

“The Imperium will be out of business in two,” LaNague said, calmly, adamantly. “There won't be a trace of it left on Throne or on any other out-world.”

“Doc says that's impossible.” Broohnin turned to Zack. “Right, Doc?” Zack nodded reluctantly. “And Doc's the expert. I'll take his word over yours.”

“With all due respect,” LaNague said, “Doc doesn't know certain things that I know, and without that information, he can't make an accurate projection. If he had it, he'd concur with two years or less as a projected time of collapse.”

“Well, give it to me, then,” Zack said. “This is frustrating as hell to sit around and be in the dark all the time.”

“At the end of this year, you'll know. I promise you.”

From the look on Doc Zack's face, that wasn't what he wanted to hear. Broohnin stepped back and surveyed the group, withholding a smile of approval. He saw LaNague's hold on the movement slipping. His rigid rules of conduct, his refusal to let anyone know the exact nature of his plan for revolution, all were causing dissension in the ranks. Which meant that Broohnin had a chance to get back into the front of everything and run this show the way it should be run.

“We fear Earthie involvement, LaNague.” One of the Flinters had spoken. Broohnin had to squint to see whether it was the male or the female. With the bunned hair and red circles on their foreheads, and their robes and weapons belts, they looked like twins. He noticed the swell of the speaker's chest. It had been Kanya.

“Yes,” Sayers said. “I'm sure Earth's planning right now when and how to move in and take over.”

“I'm sure it is,” LaNague said, concentrating his reply on the silent, standing forms of Josef and Kanya. “But Earth will also be projecting a ten-to twelve-year period before the Imperium smothers in its own mark notes. When it crumbles two years from now, they'll be caught off guard. By the time they get organized, their chance will be gone.”

Doc Zack was speaking through clenched teeth. “But what can you do that will cause it to crumble so quickly?”

“You'll know at the end of the year.”

The meeting broke up then, with the frustrated participants leaving separately, at intervals, via different exits. All that had been decided was that the next Robin Hood robbery should be put off for a while until a new device the Flinters had ordered from their homeworld could be smuggled in. The Flinters had made their own arrangements for delivery, which was expected any day. It would give the Merry Men a totally new approach to robbery. Conventional methods were out now, due to the heavy guard that had been placed on anything that even looked like a currency shipment. The imperial Guard had been caught looking the other way due to the long interval between the second and third heists. It appeared they did not intend to be caught again.

Broohnin watched the two Flinters as they stood by the front exit, waiting for their turn to depart. For all the fear they inspired in him, Broohnin found the Flinters infinitely fascinating. He saw them not as people but as weapons, beautifully honed and crafted, staggeringly efficient. They were killing machines. He wished he could own one. Pulling his courage together, he sauntered over to where they stood.

“You two have any plans for the evening?” They looked at him but made no reply. “If not, maybe we could get together over a few drinks. I've got some things I'd like to discuss with you both.”

“It was previously agreed,” Josef said, “that we would not allow ourselves to be seen together outside of the warehouse unless we lived together.”

“Oh, that was LaNague's idea. You know what an old woman he is. Why not come down to the-”

“I'm sorry,” Josef said, “but we have other plans for the evening. Sorry.” He touched his belt and activated a holosuit that covered his Flinter garb with the image of a nondescript middle-aged man. Kanya did the same. They turned and left without so much as a “Next time, perhaps.”

Broohnin watched them stroll down the darkening street. There were no other pedestrians about. At night the streets had become the property of the barbarians of Primus City-the hungry, broke, and desperate, who jumped and stole and ran because there was nothing else left to them, were bad enough; but then there were those who had found themselves beaten down, humbled, and debased by life, who had retreated once too often and now needed proof that they were better than somebody-anybody. They needed to force someone to his or her knees and for just a moment or two see another human being cringe in fear and pain before them. To taste power over another life before they snuffed it out was, in some twisted way, proof that they still had control over their own. Which they didn't.

Broohnin shook his head as he watched the two bland, weak-looking figures walk into the darkness, looking like so much fresh meat for anyone hungry for a bite. Pity the jumper who landed on those two.

On an impulse, he decided to follow them. What did Flinters do in their spare time? Where did they live? He was not long in finding out. Kanya and Josef entered a low-rent apartment building not far from the warehouse district. He watched for a while, saw a third floor window on the east wall fill with light before it was opaqued. Fantasizing for a moment, he idly wondered if weaponry and combat were as much a part of their sex play as the rest of their daily life. He cut off further elaboration on the theme when he noticed a standard size flitter lift off from the roof of the apartment building. As it banked to the right, he could see two figures within, neither one identifiable, but definitely a pair. He wondered…

With no flitter at his disposal, Broohnin was forced to stand helplessly and watch them go. They were probably off to pick up that new device for the next Robin Hood heist. He would have liked to have seen how they smuggled things onto Throne so easily. It was a technique that could prove useful to him some time in the future. As it was, he was stuck here on the street. It was all LaNague's fault, as usual. He should have seen to it that they were all provided with their own personal flitters. But no. Broohnin wasn't allowed to have one because Broohnin was on the dole and, as far as the records showed, could not afford a personal flitter. To be seen riding around in one all the time would attract unwanted attention.

One thing he could do, though, was go into the apartment building and see if Kanya and Josef were still there. He crossed the street, entered, and took the float-chute up to the third floor. From where he had seen the lighted window earlier, he deduced the location of their apartment. Steeling himself, he approached the door and pressed the entry panel. The indicator remained dark, meaning either that no one was within, or that whoever was in did not want to be disturbed.

With a sigh of relief, he turned away and headed for the float-chute. An unanswered door was hardly evidence that Kanya and Josef had been in that flitter, but at least it didn't negate the possibility. The next thing to do was to go up to the flitter pad on the roof and wait. If they returned tonight, perhaps he could get some idea as to where they had been. What he intended to do with the information, he didn't know. Nothing, most likely. But he had no place to go, no one waiting for him anywhere, no one he wanted to be with, and knew no one who wanted to be with him. He might as well spend the night here on the roof as within the four walls of his room on the other side of town.

The wait was not a long one. He had found himself a comfortable huddling place in the corner of the roof behind the building's own solar batteries, discharging now to light the apartment below, and had just settled in for his vigil when landing lights lit the roof pad from above. It was the flitter he had seen earlier, and after it had locked into its slot, the figures of two familiar middle-aged men emerged.

The first one looked carefully around him. Satisfied that there was no one else on the roof, he nodded to the other and they removed two boxes from their craft, one large and rectangular, the other small and cubical. Carrying the larger box between them with the smaller resting atop it, they pushed through the door to the drop-chute and disappeared.

And that was that. Broohnin sat and bitterly questioned what in the name of the Core he was doing there alone on a roof watching two disguised Flinters unload a couple of boxes from their flitter. He knew no more now about their smuggling procedure than he did before. Bored and disgusted, he waited until he was sure the Flinters were safely behind the door to their apartment, then took the drop-chute directly to street level and headed for the nearest monorail stop.

THE WRACKING TOTAL-BODY PARASTHESIA that enveloped him during the lift into real space as his nervous system was assaulted from all sides was an almost welcome sensation. Vincen Stafford had made the first long jump in his probe ship. The nausea that usually attended entering and leaving subspace passed unnoticed, smothered by a wave of exultation. He was alive again. He was free. He was master of reality itself.

After a few moments of silent revelry, he shook himself and got to work, taking his readings, preparing the beacon to be released and activated. It would send out an oscillating subspace laser pulse in the direction of the radio sources in the Perseus arm; in real space it would send a measured radio beep. Stafford considered the latter mode useless since his subspace jumps would take him far ahead of the radio pulses, but if that was the way the people running the brand-new Imperial Bureau of Interstellar Exploration and Alien Contact wanted it, that's the way they would get it.

The subspace laser beacon was a good idea, however. If the target radio sources really did belong to another interstellar race, and that race was advanced enough to have developed subspace technology, the beacons he and his fellow probe pilots would be dropping off in a predictable zigzag pattern would blaze an unmistakable trail through the heavens for anyone with the equipment to follow. Hopefully, some member of that race would plot out the course of one of the probes and send a welcoming party to wait for it when it lifted into real space at the end of one of the jumps.

Stafford thought about that. If the aliens happened to choose his ship to contact, the responsibility would be awesome. The entire future of the relationship between humankind and the aliens could be marred or permanently estranged by some inadvertent bungle on the part of a hapless probe pilot. He didn't want to be that pilot. He could do without the glory of first contact. All he wanted was to do his job, do it well, and get back to Throne and Salli in one piece.

In one piece. That was the crux of the matter. He would be making a lot of jumps…far more in the following months than he would during years as a navigator on the grain runs. Warping down was always a hazard, even for the most experienced spacer. He was tearing open the very fabric of reality, accentuating the natural curve of space to an acute angle, and leaping across the foreshortened interval, reappearing again light years away from his starting point. Probe ships were small, fragile. Sometimes they didn't come out of subspace; sometimes they became lost under the curve of space, trapped forever in featureless, two-dimensional grayness.

Stafford shuddered. That wouldn't happen to him. Other probes had traveled out here between the arms and not come back. But he would. He had to. Salli was waiting.

“THE OLD ‘LITTLE BLACK BOX’ ploy, ay?” Doc Zack said from the corner seat that had become unofficially his whenever they met in the warehouse office.

“Yes,” said LaNague, smiling, “but like no little black box you've ever seen.”

“What's it do?” Sayers asked.

“It's a time machine.”

“Now just a minute,” Zack said. “The Barsky experiments proved time travel impossible!”

“Not impossible-impractical. Barsky and his associates found they could send things back in time, but they couldn't correct for planetary motion in the cosmos. Therefore, the object displaced past-ward invariably wound up somewhere else in space.”

Sayers shook his head as if to clear it. “I remember reporting on that at one time or another, but I can't say I ever fully understood it.”

Broohnin was paying little attention to the conversation. He was more interested in the whereabouts of the larger box the Flinters had unloaded from their flitter last night. They had brought the small one in with them, and that was what had triggered this meaningless discussion of time travel. But where was the big one?

“Let me put it this way,” LaNague was saying. “Everything occupies a locus in time and space, correct? I think we can take that as given. What the Barsky apparatus does is change only the temporal locus; the spatial locus remains fixed.”

Sayers’ eyebrows lifted. “Ah! I see. That's why it ends up in interstellar space.”

“Well, I don't see,” Broohnin snapped, annoyed that his wandering thoughts had left him out. “Why should sending something back in time send it off the planet?”

LaNague spoke as patiently as he could. “Because at any given instant, you occupy a ‘here’ and a ‘now’ along the space/time continuum. The Barsky device changes only the ‘now.’ If we used it to send you back ten years into the past, your ‘now’ would be altered to ‘then,’ but you'd still be ‘here’ in space. And ten years ago, Throne was billions of kilometers away from here. Ten years ago, it hadn't reached this point in space. That's why they could never bring any of the temporally displaced objects back. Barsky theorized that this was what was happening, but it wasn't until the Slippery Miller escape that he could finally prove it.”

Broohnin vaguely remembered the name Slippery Miller, but could not recall any of the details. Everyone else in the room apparently could, however, by the way they were nodding and smiling. He decided not to look like an idiot by asking about it.

“Well, if you've got any ideas of sending me or anyone else back into time with that thing, you can just forget it.” He consciously tried to make it sound as if he were standing up for the group against LaNague. “We're not taking any chances like that for you or anybody.”

LaNague laughed in his face, and there was genuine amusement in the sound rather than derision, but that didn't blunt its sting. “No, we're not planning to send any people back in time. Just some of the Imperium's money.”

IT WAS STRICTLY UNDERSTOOD that after Broohnin had completed his little mission, he was to return the flitter to LaNague. No joy-riding. If he broke one of the air regs, he'd be hauled in, and not only would he have to answer a lot of questions about how a dolee came to be in possession of a nice new sporty flitter, but he might also be linked with LaNague. That was something to be avoided at all costs.

But Broohnin didn't consider this a joy ride. And even if he had, the displeasure of Peter LaNague was hardly a deterrent. He had delivered the Barsky temporal displacer in the tiny black box to Erv Singh on the west coast, and had passed on LaNague's instructions. Erv's next currency run wasn't until the following week; he'd have to wait until that time before he could place the box according to plan. He'd contact Broohnin as soon as everything was set. That done, the rest of the night lay free ahead of Broohnin. He had been approaching the Angus Black imports warehouse when the idea struck him that now was a perfect time to check up on the Flinters. The nature of the other box they had unloaded that night on the roof of their apartment still nagged at him. Something about the way they had handled it pestered him, like an itchy patch of skin out of reach in the middle of his back.

He had a little trouble finding their apartment building from the air, but after following the streets as he had walked them, he reached a familiar-looking roof. And yes, the Flinters’ flitter was still there. Broohnin circled around in the darkness until he found a resting place for his craft on a neighboring roof. He'd give it an hour. If there was no sign of the Flinters by then, he'd call it a night. No use making LaNague wait too long.

He waited the full hour, and then a little bit longer. The extra time spent in watch had not been a conscious decision. He had popped a torportal under his tongue to ease his restlessness in the cramped flitter seat and had nodded off. Only the stimulus of flickering light seeping through the slits between his eyelids roused him to full consciousness. A flitter was rising off the neighboring roof. It was the same one the Flinters had used last night. As it moved away into the darkness, its running lights winked off. Now Broohnin was really interested.

Leaving his own running lights off, he lifted his craft into the air and climbed quickly to a higher altitude than he thought the Flinters would be using. Without their running lights to follow, Broohnin would lose them before they had traveled a few kilometers. His only hope was to get above and keep them silhouetted against the illumination given off by Primus City's ubiquitous gloglobes. As long as they stayed over the urban areas, he could follow above and behind them without being seen. If they moved over open country, he would have to think of something else.

They stayed over the city, however, and headed directly for Imperium Park at its center. Broohnin began to have some trouble over the park since its level of illumination was drastically less than the dwelling areas. It was only by chance that he noticed them setting down in a particularly dense stand of trees. Broohnin chose a less challenging landing site perhaps two hundred meters east of them and sat quietly after grounding his craft, unsure of what to do next.

He desperately wanted to see what two Flinters could be up to in the middle of Imperium Park in the dead of night, but he didn't want to leave the safety of the flitter. If the streets of Primus City were on their way to becoming nighttime hunting grounds, Imperium Park was already far into the jungle stage. Once he stepped out onto the ground, he was fair game for whoever was walking about. Not that Broohnin couldn't handle himself in a fight with one or even two assailants. He carried a vibe-knife and knew how to use it to damaging effect. It was just that nowadays the jumpers hunted in packs in the park, and he had no illusions about his fate should he stumble onto one of those.

He only hesitated briefly, then he was out in the night air, locking the flitter entry behind him. All things considered, the odds were probably in his favor for coming through the jaunt unscathed. The section of the park in which he had landed was on high ground where the underbrush was the thickest. There were no natural paths through here and it would not be considered prime hunting area for any of the packs.

He pushed his way carefully through the brush until he felt he had traveled half the distance to the Flinters, then he got down on his belly and crawled. And crawled. His chest and abdomen were bruised and scratched, and he was about to turn back, thinking he had wandered off course, when his right hand reached out and came in contact with nothing but air. Further tactile exploration brought his surroundings into clearer focus; he was on the edge of a low rocky bluff. Below him and to the right he heard grunting and groaning. Craning his head over the edge, he spied the Flinters’ craft.

A hooded lamp provided faint illumination for the scene, but enough for Broohnin to discern two figures pushing and pulling at a huge slab of rock. With a prolonged agonized chorus of guttural noises from two bodies straining to the limits of their strength, the rock began to move. Intensifying their efforts, the Flinters rolled it up on its edge in one final heave, revealing a rectangular hole. After a panting, laughing pause as they leaned against the up-ended stone, they returned to the flitter and the large box that lay on the ground beside it…the same box Broohnin had seen them unload on the roof the other night.

Each of them removed a small white disk from his or her belt-even with their holosuits deactivated, Broohnin could not tell Kanya from Josef at this distance-and pressed it into a slotted opening in the side of the crate in turn. Then the white disks went back into the weapons belts. Carefully, almost gingerly, they carried the crate to the hole under the rock, placed it within and covered it with a thin layer of dirt. With less effort and fewer sound effects, they toppled the stone back over the hole.

Then the two Flinters did something very strange-glancing once at each other, they stepped away from the rock and stood staring at it. From their postures, Broohnin could not be sure whether he was reading guilt or grief or both. He almost slipped from the bluff in a vain attempt to get a glimpse of their faces. What was going on down there anyway? What was in that crate and why was it being buried in Imperium Park? If security was all they were looking for, there were certainly better places to hide it out on the moors. And why was LaNague having all this done without telling the group?

The questions plagued Broohnin as he returned through the brush to his flitter, and left the front of his mind only long enough for him to make the dash from cover to the flitter and to get into the air as quickly as possible. As he rose into the night, a thought occurred to him: what if LaNague didn't know about that box either?

LANAGUE STOPPED AT THE DOOR to his apartment and rubbed his temples with both hands. Another headache, but a mild one this time. As the plan reached the ignition point, they seemed to be bothering him less frequently, and were less severe when they struck. And the dream…months had passed since it had troubled his sleep. Everything seemed to be falling into line as predicted, everything coming under control.

There were still variables, however. Boedekker was the biggest. What if he balked? LaNague grimaced in annoyance at the thought as he placed his palm against the entry plate which was keyed to him, Kanya, and Josef. The door slid open and he stepped through. Boedekker so far had followed his instructions to the letter, at least as far as LaNague could tell. He had liquidated anything of value that he owned, and other indicators showed that he was following through with the secondary aspects of his part in the play. Boedekker could still go his own way, and that bothered LaNague. The man was out of reach. He didn't want to trust him, but he had no choice.

He let the door slide closed behind him but did not move into the room just yet. He felt good, despite the headache. This buoyancy of mood was a fairly recent development, a slow process over the past year. At first the knowledge that the fate of the out-worlds was falling more and more completely into his hands had weighed on him like half a dozen G's. Billions of people were going to be affected to varying degrees across the light years of Occupied Space. Even Earth would not escape unscathed. The agrarian out-worlds were already on their way into a deep depression, and by the time the Imperium came apart, they'd be back to a barter economy and would hardly notice its demise. But the people on Throne…their entire social structure would be destroyed almost overnight.

Mora's angry words came back to him-what right did he have to do this? The question used to trouble him fiercely, despite his standard answer: self-preservation. But it troubled him no more. It was all a moot point now, anyway. The plan was virtually to the point of no return. Even if Mora could show up and convince him that he had been in error all along, it would be too late. The juggernaut had begun to roll and could not be stopped. Its course could be altered, modified to a degree, its moment of impact adjusted-that was the purpose of LaNague's continued presence on Throne-but no one, not even LaNague, could stop it now. The realization had a strangely exhilarating effect on him.

Odd he should think of Mora now. He had been managing to keep her at the far end of his mind except when making a holo for her or viewing one from her. The communications were too brief, too few, and too long in coming. He missed her. Not as much as he had at first, though. Perhaps he was getting used to life without her…something he had once considered impossible.

Walking over to where Pierrot sat on the window sill, he touched the moss at the tree's base and noted that it felt dry. Due for some water soon, probably a root-pruning, too. Soon…he'd get to it soon. The trunk was halfway between chokkan and bankan, which was neutral, but the leaves seemed duller than usual. Closer inspection revealed a few bare inner branches with peeling bark-a sure sign of localized death.

Was something wrong with Pierrot? Or was the tree reflecting some sort of inner rot afflicting LaNague himself? That was one of the drawbacks of having an imprinted misho-there was always a tendency to read too much into its configuration, its color, its state of health. It did prompt introspection, though, and a little of that was never bad. But not now. There were too many other things on his mind.

He broke off the dead wood and threw it into the molecular dissociator that stood in the corner. The appliance was not the extravagance it seemed. LaNague made a point of disintegrating everything that was not part of a normal household's garbage. There was another dissociator at the warehouse in which all debris from production of The Robin Hood Reader and other sundry subversive activities was eventually destroyed. He would not have the revolution tripped up by a wayward piece of refuse.

He turned toward the sink for Pierrot's water and froze as he caught a glimpse of movement in the doorway that led to the bedroom.

“Peter, it's me.”

“Mora!” Conflicting emotions rooted him to the spot. He should have been overjoyed to see her, should have leaped across the room to embrace her. But he wasn't and he didn't. Instead, he felt resentment at her presence. She had no right showing up like this…she was going to interfere…

“But how?” he said when he found his voice.

“I came on a student visa. I'm supposedly going to do research at the U. of O. library. Kanya let me in this morning.” Her brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“I was watching you with Pierrot. He's your only friend here, isn't he?”

“Not really.”

“You look older, Peter.”

“I am.”

“Much older.” Her frown turned into a smile that failed to mask her hurt and concern at his remoteness. “You almost look your age.”

“Where's Laina?”

She drifted toward him, cautiously, as if fearing he'd bolt from her. “With your mother. She's too young to join the Merry Men.”

It took a while for the implications of what she had said to filter through to LaNague's befuddled brain. But when it did: “Oh no! Don't even consider it!”

“I've been considering it since you left.” She moved closer, gently touching his arms with her hands, sending shock waves through him, cracking the paralysis that held him immobile. “I was wrong…this is the only way out for Tolive…for Laina…for our way of life…and the minting's done…the coins are ready to be shipped…”

“No! There's chaos coming to Throne. I don't want you here when everything comes apart. Too dangerous!” He wouldn't want her here even if it were safe.

Mora kissed him gently, tentatively, on the lips. “I'm staying. Now, are we going to stand here and argue, or are we going to catch up on two and a half years of deprivation?”

LaNague replied by lifting her up and carrying her into the adjoining room. He could no longer deny his hunger for her. He'd send her home later.

VINCEN STAFFORD PREPARED TO EJECT another beacon into the starry void. How many was this, now? He'd have to check his records to be exactly sure. It was all becoming so mechanical and routinized-jump, release a beacon, jump, release a beacon, jump…even the jumps themselves seemed to be less traumatic. Was there such a thing as acclimation? He shrugged. He'd never heard of it, but maybe it happened. And if it did or didn't, so what? He was more than halfway to the Perseus arm. If he reached it without being contacted, he could turn back and go home. So far, so good.

There was a buzz behind him. He turned and saw his communicator light flashing. Someone-or something-was trying to contact him. Opening the circuit gave rise to no audio or visual signal. That meant the incoming message was not on the standard frequency. Stafford was liking this less and less every second. Reluctantly, he activated the search mechanism. It would lock in on the frequency of the incoming signal when it located it.

It didn't take long. The vidscreen suddenly lit with a face like nothing Stafford had ever seen. No, wait…there was something vaguely familiar there…the snout, the sharp yellow teeth, the bristly patches of fur around the ears…canine. Yes, that was it. The creature was definitely dogfaced. But not like any dog he ever wanted in the same room with him. He was glad the probe ship was equipped with only flat-screen reception. A holograph of that thing would be downright frightening. No torso features were visible but that was okay.

“Greetings,” the image said in interstellar that was garbled and gutturalized far beyond the capability of a human throat.

“Who-who are you?” Stafford blurted inanely. “Where are you?”

“I am an emissary of the Tark nation”-at least it sounded like “Tark,” a barking sound with a harsh initial consonant-“and my craft is approximately two of your kilometers aft of you.”

“You speak our language.” Stafford was reaching for the aft monitor. He wanted to see what kind of welcoming party had been sent to intercept him. An intensified image of a bulky ovoid filled the screen. At first he thought the emissary had understated the distance, but the readout showed a large mass two kilometers aft. Stafford took another look. That was no peaceful envoy ship. He had no idea what alien weaponry might look like, but he saw all sorts of tubes pointed in his direction and there was a definite feeling about the ship that said it wasn't built for mere information-gathering duties. It reminded him of a Sol-System dreadnought. But then, maybe they were just being careful. In their position, he'd probably come armed to the teeth, too.

“Of course,” the Tark replied. “We've been keeping watch on your race for quite some time. We are not so timid as you: as soon as we had sufficient evidence of an interstellar race in your arm of the galaxy, we investigated.”

“Why didn't you contact us?”

“We saw no need. Your race is obviously no threat to the Tark nation, and you are much too far away to be of any practical use to us.”

“What about trade?”

“Trade? I am not familiar with the term.” He looked down and seemed to be keying a reference into a console to his right.

Stafford couldn't resist prompting him. “An exchange of goods…and knowledge.”

“Yes, I see now.” He-for no good reason, Stafford had automatically ascribed a male gender to the creature-looked up. “Once again, we do not see any purpose in that. Your race does not appear to have anything that interests us sufficiently at this point.” The subject of trade apparently bored the Tark and he turned to another. “Why do you invade Tarkan space? You made certain that we would intercept you. Why?”

“To offer trade with us.”

The Tark gave a sharp, high-pitched yelp. Laughter? Annoyance?” You must understand-we do not trade with anyone. That would involve an exchange, requiring Tarks to give up one thing in order to gain another.”

“Of course. That's what trade is all about.”

“But Tarks are not weak. We do not surrender what we have. If you had something we truly desired, we would take it.”

“You don't understand…” Stafford began to say, but heard his voice trail off into silence. Perspiration had been collecting in his axillae since the comm indicator had buzzed; it was now running down over his ribs. They didn't understand, not at all. And to think that he had dreaded being in the contact ship for fear of unintentionally offending the aliens. This was worse. These creatures seemed devoid of anything approaching a concept of give and take. They were beyond offending.

The face on the screen had apparently come to a decision. “You will shut down your drive mechanism and prepare to be boarded.”

“Boarded! Why?”

“We must be assured that you are not armed and that you pose no threat to the Tark nation.”

“How could I threaten that monstrosity you're riding?” Stafford said, glancing at the aft monitor. “You could swallow me whole!”

“Shut down your drive and prepare for boarding! We will-”

Stafford switched off the volume. He was frightened now and needed to think, something he couldn't do with that growling voice filling the cabin. He felt a sharp tug on the ship and knew that a tractor beam or something very similar had been focused on him. He was being drawn toward the Tark dreadnought. In a brief moment of panic, he stood frozen in the middle of his tiny cabin, unable to act, unable to decide what to do next.

He was trapped. His real space propulsion system was the standard proton-proton drive through a Leason crystal tube, but small. Too small to break free of the tractor beam. Activating it now would only serve to move him through space pulling the dreadnought behind him, and that futile gesture would last only as long as his fuel or the Tark commander's patience. If the latter ran out first, his probe ship might become a target for those banks of weapons which could easily reduce it to motes of spiraling rubble.

There was the warp capacity, of course. It could be used for escape, but not now…not when he was in the thrall of a tractor beam and in such close proximity to a mass as large as the Tark ship. The thought of attempting a subspace drop under those circumstances was almost as frightening as the thought of placing himself at the mercy of the Tarks.

No, it wasn't. A quick look at the canine face that still filled his comm screen convinced him of that. Better to die trying to escape than to place his life in that creature's hands.

He threw himself into the control seat and reached for the warp activator. If the tractor beam and the dreadnought's mass sufficiently disturbed the integrity of the probe ship's warp field, it would be caught between real space and subspace. The experts were still arguing over just what happened then, but the prevailing theory held that the atomic structure of that part of the ship impinging on subspace would reverse polarity. And that, of course, would result in a cataclysmic explosion. It was a fact of life for every spacer. That was why the capacity of the warp unit had to be carefully matched to the mass of the ship; that was why no one ever tried to initiate a subspace jump within the critical point in a star system's gravity well.

He released the safety lock and placed his finger on the activator switch. A cascade of thoughts washed across his mind as he closed his eyes and held his breath…Salli…if the ship blew, at least he'd take the Tarks with him…Salli…was this what had happened to the few probe ships that had been sent this way in the past and were never heard from again?…Salli…

He threw the switch.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mora not only refused to return to Tolive, she insisted on coming along on the next Robin Hood caper. “Give me one good reason,” she said, looking from her husband to Zack, to the Flinters, to Broohnin. “One good reason why I shouldn't go to the mint with you.”

None of them wanted her along, but the non-Kyfhons objected to her presence solely on the basis that she was a woman. They had all come to know Mora well during the past week, and she had charmed every one of them, including Sayers, who was absent today. Even Broohnin's sourness mellowed when she was around. But this was man's work, and although neither Zack nor Broohnin verbalized it internally or externally, each felt that the significance of their mission was somehow diminished if a woman joined them.

The Flinters objected because she was a non-combatant, no more, no less.

LaNague's objection rested on different grounds. Her presence made him feel uncomfortable in some vague way that he found impossible to define. He felt as if he were being scrutinized, monitored, judged. Mora made him feel…guilty somehow. But of what?

“I'm a big girl, you know,” she said when no one accepted her challenge. “And as long as firing a weapon or damaging another person is not involved, I can keep up with the best of you.”

Zack and Broohnin glanced at each other. With the exception of Flint and Tolive, sexual equality was an alien concept on most out-worlds. Men and women had reached the stars as equals, but women had become nest-keepers again as the overall technological level regressed on the pioneer worlds. They would soon be demanding parity with men, but there was no movement as yet. Mora knew this. She obviously chose her words to goad Zack and Broohnin, and to remind the Flinters and her husband of their heritage.

“You'll fly with me,” LaNague said, bringing the dispute to a close. He knew his wife as she knew him. By now each would recognize when the other had reached an intransigent position.

“Good. When do we leave?”

“Now. We've already wasted too much time arguing. And timing is everything today.”

Erv Singh had called Broohnin the day before to report that he had finally been able to place the Barsky box in a vault filled with old currency waiting to be destroyed. He mentioned that the vault was unusually full. LaNague explained the reason for that to his wife as their flitter rose into the air over Primus City.

“The one-mark note has finally been rendered obsolete by inflation; the Treasury Bureau is trying to cut expenses by phasing it out. Supply of the larger denomination bills is being upped. When the good coins started disappearing, that was an early warning sign. But now, even the most obtuse Throner should get the message that something is seriously wrong when small bills are no longer produced.”

They flew toward the dying orange glow of the sun as it leaned heavily on Throne's horizon, over Imperium Park and the surrounding structures that housed the bureaucratic entrails of the Imperium itself, and then over the city's dolee zone, a sector that was expanding at an alarming rate, on to a huge clearing fifty kilometers beyond the limits of Primus City. An impregnable block of reinforced synthestone occupied the middle of that clearing, like an iceberg floating still in a calm sea, nine tenths of its structure below the surface.

LaNague brought his craft to rest in a stand of trees on a hill overlooking the site; the second flitter followed him down. Broohnin emerged first, followed by Zack and the two Flinters. Kanya was carrying an electronic timer of Flinter design, unequaled in precision. She set it on the deck of LaNague's flitter and removed a round white disk from her belt.

“What's that?” Broohnin asked. Something in the man's voice made LaNague turn and look at him. He had worn a bored and dour expression all day. Now he was suddenly full of life and interest. Why?

“A timer,” Kanya said. She did not look up, but concentrated on fitting the disk, which could now be seen to have a red button in its center, into the circular depression atop the timer.

“No…that.” He pointed to the disk.

“That's the trigger for the Barsky box.”

“Do they all look like that? The triggers, I mean.”

“Yes.” Kanya looked up at him. “Why do you ask?”

Broohnin suddenly realized that he was under close scrutiny from a number of sources and shrugged nervously. “Just curious, that's all.” With visible effort, he pulled his eyes away from the trigger and looked at LaNague. “I still don't understand what's going to happen here. Go over it again.”

“For me, too,” Mora said.

“All right.” LaNague complied for his wife's benefit more than Broohnin's, who he was sure knew exactly what was going to happen. He wondered what was cooking in that bright but twisted mind now. “When activated, the Barsky box in the vault will form an unfocused temporal displacement field in a rough globe around itself. Anything encompassed by that field will be displaced exactly 1.37 nanoseconds into the past.”

“That's all?” Mora said.

“That's enough. Don't forget that Throne is not only revolving on its axis and traveling around its primary; it's also moving around the galactic core along with the other star systems in this arm, while the galaxy itself is moving away from the location of the Big Bang. So it doesn't take too long for Throne to move the distance from here to Primus City.”

Mora frowned briefly and chewed on her lower lip. “I'd hate to even begin the necessary calculations.”

“The Flinters have formulae for it. They've been experimenting with the Barsky apparatus as a means of transportation.” LaNague smiled. “Imagine listing an ETA at point B before the time of departure from point A. Unfortunately, they've been unable to bring anything through alive. But they're working on it.”

“But why the timer?” Mora asked.

“Because the box has to be activated at the precise nanosecond that Throne's axial and rotational attitudes come into proper alignment. The Flinters have it pinpointed at sometime between 15.27 and 15.28 today. No human reflex can be trusted to send the signal at just the right instant, so an electronic counter is employed.”

Mora still looked dubious. She pulled her husband away from the flitter.

“It'll work,” LaNague told her, glancing back over his shoulder as he moved and watching Broohnin, whose eyes were fixed again on the white trigger mechanism.

“What if there's someone in the vault?” Mora asked when they were out of earshot.

“There won't be,” LaNague assured her. “The workday is over down there. Everybody's gone.”

“No guards?”

“A few.”

“How do you know where they'll be when you activate the Barsky device? What if one of them gets sucked into the field?”

“Mora,” LaNague said, trying to keep his tone even, “we've only got one device and it has to be activated soon…tonight.”

“Why? Why can't we wait until we're sure no one's going to get killed down there?”

“Because the money in that vault is tagged for destruction. And when they burn it, they're going to burn the Barsky box along with it. We only have one Barsky box.”

“Then let's wait until later…just to be sure.”

“We'll never be sure!” Impatience had passed into exasperation. “We can't see inside the vault, so we can't be sure it's unoccupied. And the device has to be activated between 15.27 and 15.28 tonight or not at all, because proper alignment won't occur again for another three days!”

“Is it so important then? Do you have to get this money out? Why not just forget about it this time.”

LaNague shook his head. “I need one more Robin Hood episode to keep his reputation up and his name before the public eye. And with all currency shipments so heavily guarded now, this is the only way I can make one last big strike.”

Mora's voice rose to a shout. “But somebody could be in that vault!” The others by the flitter turned to look at her.

“Then that's too bad,” LaNague said, keeping his own voice low. “But there's nothing I can do about it.” He turned and strode back toward the flitter. It had happened as he knew it would-Mora was interfering in his work. It hadn't taken her long to get involved. For a while it had actually seemed that she would keep to herself and stay out of his way. But no-that would have been too much to ask! The more he thought about it, the more it enraged him. What right did she-?

He was half the distance to the flitter when he realized that there was a sick cold sphere centered in the heat of his anger, and it was screaming for him to stop. Reluctantly-very reluctantly-he listened. Perhaps there was another way after all.

As he approached Broohnin and the Flinters, he said, “I want you to take the other flitter and strafe the entrance to the mint.”

“With hand blasters?” Broohnin asked, startled.

LaNague nodded. “You're not out to cause damage, but to create a diversion to pull the inside guards toward the entrance and away from the vaults. One pass is all you should need, then head for Primus as fast as you can. By the time they can mobilize pursuit, you should be lost in the dolee sector.”

“Count me out,” Broohnin said. “That's crazy!”

LaNague put on what he felt was his nastiest sneer. “That figures,” he said in a goading tone. “You rant and rave about how everything in my plan is too soft and too gentle, but when we give you a chance for some action, you balk. I should have known. I'll ask the Doc. Maybe he'll-”

Broohnin grabbed LaNague's arm. “No you don't! You don't replace me with a teacher.” He turned to the Flinters. “Let's go.”

As the flitter rose and made a wide circle to the far side of the mint, LaNague felt an arm slip around his back. “Thank you,” Mora said.

“We'll see if this works,” he said, not looking at her.

“It will.”

“It had better.” He felt utterly cold toward Mora. Perhaps she had been right, but that did not lessen his resentment of her interference.

The flitter with Broohnin and the Flinters was out of sight now on the other side of the mint, gaining momentum at full throttle. Suddenly, it flashed into view, a silver dot careening over the barracks straight toward the squat target structure. Alarms were already going off down there, LaNague knew, sending Imperial Guardsmen to their defense positions, and the mint guards into the corridors as the vaults within began to cycle closed automatically. There were small flashes briefly brightening the entranceway to the mint, and then the flitter was gone, racing toward Primus City and anonymity.

LaNague checked the time-it was 15.26. He pressed the trigger in the center of the white disk, arming it. The timer would do the rest.

When the precise nanosecond for firing arrived, the timer pulsed the trigger, which in turn sent a signal to the Barsky box in the vault, activating it. The money in the vault, along with small amounts of synthestone from the walls and floors, abruptly disappeared. The package traveled 1.37 nanoseconds into the past and appeared in the air over Primus City at the exact locus the treasury vault was destined to occupy 1.37 nanoseconds from then.

“…ALTHOUGH OFFICIALS are more tight-lipped than usual, it does appear that the ‘money monsoon’ that occurred earlier this evening consisted of obsolete currency stolen from the vaults of the mint itself. From what we can determine, the mint was briefly harassed by a lone flitter in the early evening hours; guards reported that the money was in the vault before the incident, and discovered to be missing when the vaults were reopened approximately an hour after the flitter had escaped. The particular vault in question is thirty meters underground. The walls were not breached and no tunnel has been found. The rain of one-mark notes carried no white calling cards this time, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Robin Hood has struck again. The Bureau of the Treasury has promised a full and thorough investigation of the matter…”

“MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!” Mora was saying as they sat in the apartment, watching Radmon Sayers on the vid. “That's all you seem to care about in this revolution. There's more to a government-good or bad-than money!”

“Not much. In any government, dictatorial or representational, the politicos spend 95 per cent of their time taking money from one place and shuttling it to another. They extort money from the citizenry and then go about the tasks of passing bills to appropriate to this group, grant to that group, build here, renovate there.”

“But legislation for freedom, rights-”

“That's all decided at the outset, when the government is formed. That's when there's the most freedom; from then on it's a continuous process of whittling down the individual's franchise and increasing the state's. There are exceptions, of course, but they're rare enough to qualify as aberrations. Look back in the Imperium; one, perhaps two, pieces of legislation a year are involved purely with extension or abridgment-usually the latter-of freedom. What the public never realizes is that it really loses its freedom in the countless appropriations passed every day to create or continue the countless committees and bureaus that monitor human activities, to make countless rules to protect us from ourselves. And they all require funding.”

“Money again.”

“Correct. Keep a government poor and you'll keep it off your back. Without the necessary funds, it can't afford to harass you. Give it lots of money and it will find ways to spend it, invariably to your eventual detriment. Let it control the money supply and all the stops are out: it will soon control you! I shouldn't have to tell you this.”

“But what of culture?” Mora spread her fingers in a gesture of frustration. “Whatever culture the out-worlds were beginning to develop is dying now. What are you going to do about that? How does that fit into your plan? How're you going to tie that into economics?”

“I'm not even going to try. I don't want an out-world culture. That connotes homogenization, something the Imperium has been attempting to do. If everyone is the same, it's much easier for a central government to make rules for its subjects. I don't want one out-world culture-I want many. I want human beings to stretch themselves to the limit in every direction. I don't want anyone telling anyone else how to live, how to think, what to wear. I want diversity. It's the only way we'll keep from stagnating as a race. It almost happened to us on Earth. If we had remained on that one little planet, we'd be a sorry lot by now, if any humans at all still existed. But you can't have diversity in a controlled society. If you control the economy, you control lives; you have to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. You have to weed out the oddballs, stifle the innovators. Do that on all the out-worlds and pretty soon you'll have your ‘out-world culture.’ But would you want to participate?”

Mora hesitated before answering, and in the interval the vidphone chimed. LaNague took the call in the next room. He recognized Seph Wolverton's face as it filled the screen.

“News from the probe fleet,” he said without salutation. “Contact made halfway to the Perseus arm. Hostile. Very hostile from the report.”

LaNague felt his stomach lurch. “Who knows?”

“Nobody except you, me, and the man who decoded the subspace call, and he's with us.”

LaNague sighed with minimal relief. It was a bad situation, but it could have been much worse. “All right. Send a message back as prearranged. He's to return directly to Throne, with no further contact until he's in the star system, and even then he's only to identify his craft and answer no questions until he is picked up by an orbital shuttle and brought down for debriefing. See that the probe's message is erased from the comm computer. No one is to know the contents of that message. Clear?”

Wolverton nodded. “Clear.”

LaNague cut the connection and turned to see Mora staring at him from the doorway.

“Peter, what's the matter? I've never seen you so upset.”

“The probes have made contact with a hostile alien culture out toward the Perseus arm.”

“So?”

“If word of this gets to Metep and Haworth and the others, they'll have the one lever they need to keep themselves in power and maybe even save their skins: war.”

“You're not serious!”

“Of course I am. Look through history-it's a tried and true method for economically beleaguered regimes to save themselves. It works. Hostile aliens would push humans together out of fear.”

“But hostile aliens are not a war.”

LaNague smiled grimly. “That could be arranged. Again: not the first time it's happened. All Metep and the Council of Five would have to do is send a ‘trade envoy’ with a half-dozen cargo ships out toward the Perseus arm, ostensibly to open peaceful relations. If these aliens are as aggressive as the contact probe pilot seems to think, they'll either try to take possession of whatever enters their sphere of influence, or will feel directly threatened by the approach of human craft-either way, there's bound to be bloodshed. And that's all you need. ‘The monsters are coming! They ambushed unarmed cargo ships in interstellar space. Guard your wives and children.’ All of a sudden we've got to put aside our petty differences, close ranks, and defend humanity. The Imperium may be rotten and teetering, but it's the only government we've got right now, so let's not switch horses in midstream…And so on.” He shut off the torrent of words with visible effort.

Mora stared at her husband. “I've never seen you so bitter, Peter. What's happened to you these past three years?”

“A lot, I suppose.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if I'm still me. But it's opposition to the men who are the Imperium-and after all, the Imperium doesn't have a life of its own; it's just people-that lets you see that there's not much beneath their reach. They'll go to any lengths, including interstellar war, just to save their careers and their places in history. The lives lost, the trauma to future generations, the chaos that would follow…they wouldn't care. It would all fall on the shoulders of the next generation. They'd be out of it by then.”

He lapsed briefly into silence, and finally came to a decision.

“I'm going to send Boedekker his signal. It's a little earlier in the game than I had planned, but I really don't have much choice. I want things in pieces by the time that pilot gets back. And even then, I must see to it that no one connected with the Imperium learns about the aliens in the Perseus arm.”

“It's almost Year Day,” Mora said softly.

“For Tolivians, yes. The Year of the Dragon begins in a few days. I suppose it will be a Dragon year for Throners, too…they'll be feeling his fiery breath soon. Very soon.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Good evening, this is Radmon Sayers. It does not seem possible that there could be anyone watching right now who is not already aware of the catastrophic events that have rocked the length and breadth of Occupied Space today. But just in case someone has been unconscious since the early hours of the morning, I will recap:

“The Imperial mark has crashed. After holding fairly steady for years at an exchange rate of two marks per Solar credit, the Imperial mark began a steady decline at 5.7 hours Throne time. As most of you know, the Interstellar Currency Exchange never closes, but all trading in Imperial marks was suspended at 17.2 hours Throne time this evening when it hit a terrifying low of eighty marks per Solar credit. There is no telling how far its official trade value would have fallen had not trade been suspended.

“The precipitating factors in the selling panic have not yet been pinpointed. All that is known at this time is that virtually every brokerage firm involved with the Exchange received calls this morning from multiple clients, all with sizable accounts in Imperial marks, informing them to sell every mark they possessed, no matter what the going rate happened to be. And so billions of marks were dumped on the market at once. The brokers say that their clients were quite insistent: they wanted no further Imperial marks in their portfolio and were willing to take losses to divest themselves of them. The Exchange authorities have promised a prompt and thorough investigation into the possibility that a conspiracy has been afoot to manipulate the exchange rate for profit. So far, however, no one has been found who has made a windfall profit from the crash.

“In an extemporaneous speech on the vid networks, Metep VII assured the people of Throne and all the other out-worlds that there is nothing to fear. That all we can do is keep calm and have faith in ourselves and in our continued independence from Earth. ‘We've had hard times before and have weathered them,’ Metep said. ‘We shall weather them again…’”

“WAS ERIC BOEDEKKER BEHIND ALL THIS?” Doc Zack asked as LaNague darkened the holovid and Sayers’ face faded from the globe. The inner circle was seated around the vid set in LaNague's apartment.

“Yes. He's been selling everything he owns for the past three years or so, and converting the credit to marks. Thousands of accounts under thousands of names were started during that period, with instructions to the brokers to buy Imperial marks every time their value dipped.”

“And thereby creating an artificial floor on their value,” Zack said.

“Exactly.”

“But for all Eric Boedekker's legendary wealth,” Zack said, “I don't see how even he could buy enough Imperial marks to cause today's crash. I mean, there were hundreds of billions of marks sold today, and as many more waiting to be disposed of as soon as trading on them opens again. He's rich, but nobody's that rich.”

“He had help, although the people involved didn't know they were helping him. You see, Boedekker made sure to call public attention every time he sold off one of his major assets. His financial peers thought he was crazy, but they kept a close eye on him. He had pulled off some major coups in the past and they wanted to know exactly what he was doing with all that accumulated credit. And they found out. You can't keep too many things secret down there on Earth, and the ones who really wanted to know found out that he was quietly, anonymously, buying up Imperial marks whenever he could. So they started buying up marks, too…just to be safe. Maybe Boedekker knew something they didn't; maybe something was cooking in the out-worlds that would bring the Imperial mark up to trading parity with the Solar credit. I sent him the ‘sell’ signal last week and he's been getting ready ever since.”

“Ah, I see!” Zack said. “And when he dumped-”

“-they dumped. From there it was a cascade effect. Everybody who was holding Imperial marks wanted to get rid of them. But nobody wanted to buy them. The Imperial mark is now worth one fortieth of its value yesterday, and would probably be less than a hundredth if trading had not been suspended. It's still overpriced.”

“Brilliant!” Doc Zack was shaking his head in admiration. “Absolutely brilliant!”

“What's so brilliant?” Broohnin said from his reclining position on the floor. For a change, he had been listening intently to the conversation. “Is this the spectacular move you've promised us? So what? What's it done for us?”

Zack held up a hand as LaNague started to reply. “Let me answer him. I think I see the whole picture now, but correct me if I'm wrong.” He turned to Broohnin. “What our friend from Tolive has done, Den, is turn every inhabitant of Throne into a potential revolutionary. All the people who have come to the conclusion that the Imperium is inimical to their own interests and the interests of future generations of out-worlders have been constrained to go on supporting the Imperium because their incomes, either wholly or in part, have depended on the Imperium. That is no longer a consideration. The money the Imperium has been buying their loyalty with has now been reduced to its true value: nothing. The velvet coverings are off; the cold steel of the chains is now evident.”

“But is that fair?” Mora said. She and the Flinters had been silent until now. “It's like cutting off a flitter's power in midair. People are going to be hurt.”

“It would have happened with or without us,” LaNague told her brusquely. “If not now, then later. Boedekker has only allowed me to say when; he didn't really change the eventual outcome.”

“And don't forget,” Zack said more gently, “that the people getting hurt bear a great deal of the blame. They've allowed this to go on for decades. The people of Throne are especially guilty-they've allowed the Imperium to make too many decisions for them, run too much of their lives, buy them off with more and more worthless fiat money. Now the bill's come due. And they've got to pay.”

“Right,” LaNague said. “This could not have happened if out-worlders had refused to allow the Imperium to debase the Imperial mark. If the mark had had something real backing it up-if it had represented a given amount of precious metal or another commodity, and had been redeemable for that, if it had been something more than fancy printed keerni paper, then there would have been no crash, no matter how many Imperial marks Eric Boedekker bought and dumped on the Interstellar Currency Exchange.”

“Why not?” Broohnin said.

“Because they would have real value, intrinsic value. And that's not subject to much speculation. People have been speculating in the mark for years now, watching for fluctuations in exchange rates, taking a little profit here and there, but knowing all the time that it really had no intrinsic value, only what had been decided on by the money lenders and traders.”

“But what does Boedekker get out of all this?” Zack asked. “He doesn't seem like the type to give up his fortune just to ruin the Imperial mark.”

“He gets revenge,” LaNague said, and explained about Liza Kirowicz. “With no direct descendant to hand his fortune to, he lost all desire to keep adding to it. And don't worry-I'm sure he's got plenty of credit left in his Earth accounts, plus I'm sure he probably sold a good number of marks short before the crash.”

“But I still don't see where all the Robin Hood business ties in,” Broohnin said, combing his fingers through the coiled blackness of his beard. “One doesn't lead to the other.”

“There's an indirect connection,” LaNague replied. “We'll let the people of Throne find out what's really happened to them, and then we'll offer them a choice: Metep or Robin Hood.”

“WHAT ARE WE going to do?” Metep VII wandered in a reverberating semicircle around the east end of the conference table, alternately wringing his hands and rubbing them together. His perfect face framed eyes that were red-rimmed and hunted-looking. “I'm ruined! I'm not only broke, I'm now destined to go down in history as the Metep who killed the mark! What are we going to do?”

“I don't know,” Haworth said softly from his seat. Metep stopped his pacing and stared at him, as did everyone else in the room. It was the first time they could remember Daro Haworth without a contingency plan.

“You don't know?” Metep said, stumbling toward him, panic flattening and spreading his facial features. “How can you say that? You're supposed to know!”

Haworth held Metep's gaze. “I never imagined anything like this happening. Neither did anyone else here.” His eyes scanned the room, finding no sympathy, but no protest either. “It was a future possibility, a probability within a decade if we found no new markets for out-world goods. But no one could have predicted this. No one!”

“The Earthies did it,” Krager said. “They're trying to take over the out-worlds again.”

Haworth glanced at the elderly head of the Treasury and nodded. “Yes, I think that's the approach we'll have to take. We'll blame it on Earth. Should work…after all, the Exchange is based on Earth. We can say the Imperial mark has been the victim of a vicious manipulation in a cynical, calculated attempt by Sol System to reassert control over us. Yes. That will help get the anger flowing in some direction other than ours.”

“All right,” Cumberland said, shifting his bulk uneasily in his chair.

“That's the official posture. But what really happened? I think that's important to know. Did Earth do this to us?”

Haworth's head shake was emphatic. “No. First of all, the out-worlds have fallen into debt to Earth over the past few years, and the credit has always been tallied in marks-which means that our debt to them today is only 2 or 3 per cent of what it was yesterday. Earth lost badly on the crash. And second, I don't think anyone in the Sol System government has the ingenuity to dream up something like this, or the courage to carry it through.”

“You think it was just a freak occurrence?”

“I'm not sure what I think. It's all so far beyond the worst nightmare I've ever had…” Haworth's voice trailed off.

“In the meantime,” Krager said sarcastically, “while you sit there in a blue funk, what about the out-worlds-Throne in particular? All credit has been withdrawn from us. There's been no formal announcement, but the Imperium is now considered bankrupt throughout Occupied Space.”

“The first thing to do is get more marks into circulation,” Haworth said. “Immediately. Push the duplicators to the limit. Big denominations. We've got to keep some sort of commerce going.”

“Prices will soar!” Krager said.

“Prices are soaring as we talk. Anyone holding any sort of useful commodity now isn't going to part with it for Imperial marks unless he's offered a lot of them, or unless he's offered something equally valuable in trade. So unless you want Throne back on a barter economy by week's end, you'd better start pouring out the currency.”

“The agrarian worlds are practically on barter now,” Cumberland said. “They'll want no part-”

“Let the agrarian worlds fall into the Galactic Core for all I care!” Haworth shouted, showing emotion for the first time since the meeting had begun. “They're useless to us now. There's only one planet we have to worry about, and that's Throne. Forget all the other out-worlds. They can't reach us, and the sooner we put them out of our minds and concentrate our salvage efforts on Throne, the better we'll be! Let the farmers out there go on scratching their dirt. They can't hurt us. But the people here on Throne, and in Primus City especially…they can cause us real trouble.”

“Civil disorder,” Metep said, nodding knowingly, almost thankfully. Riots he could understand, cope with. But all this economics talk…

“You expect major disturbances?”

“I expect disturbances-just how major they'll be depends on what we do in the next few weeks. I want to try to defuse any riots before they start; but once they start, I want plenty of manpower at our disposal.” He turned to Metep. “We'll need an executive order from you, Jek, ordering withdrawal of all Imperial garrisons from all the other out-worlds. We can't afford to keep them supplied out there anyway, and I want them all gathered tight around us if things get nasty.”

There was a chorus of agreement from all present.

Haworth glanced up and down the table. “It's going to be a long, hot summer, gentlemen. Let's try to hold things together until one of the probe ships makes contact with the aliens in the Perseus arm. That could be our only hope.”

“Any word yet?” Metep said.

“None.”

“What if we never hear anything from them?” Cumberland asked. “What if they never come back?”

“That could be useful, too.”

“FIFTY MARKS FOR A LOAF of bread? That's outrageous!”

“Wait until tomorrow if you think fifty's too much,” the man said laconically. He stood with his back against a blank synthestone wall, a hand blaster at his hip, his wares-unwrapped loaves of bread-spread on a folding table before him. “Probably be fifty-five by then.”

Salli Stafford felt utterly helpless, and frightened. No one had heard from Vin or any of the other probe pilots; no one at Project Perseus knew when they were coming back. Or if they were coming back. She was alone in Primus City and could daily see signs of decay: lengthening, widening cracks in its social foundations. She needed Vin around to tell her that everything would be all right, that he would protect her.

She needed money, too. She had read in one of The Robin Hood Readers that came out just after the bottom had dropped out of the mark that she should immediately pull all her money out of the bank and spend every bit of it. She didn't hesitate. Vin had grown to have unwavering faith in whoever was behind those flyers, and Salli had finally come around to believing in him, too. Especially after that long wait in their old back yard, when she had laughed at Vin's almost childish faith, and then the money had come down. She wasn't going to waste time laughing this time; she was down at the bank first thing the next morning, withdrawing everything that was left from Vin's advance for joining the probe fleet.

That had been a month ago, and it was the smartest thing she had ever done in her life. Within the first three days after the crash of the Imperial mark, fully half the banks in Primus had closed. They didn't fail-the Imperium prevented that by seeing to it that every depositor was paid the full amount of his or her account in nice, freshly minted paper marks-they simply ran out of depositors.

Salli followed up her foresight with shortsightedness that now seemed incredibly stupid. Instead of spending the entire ten thousand marks she had withdrawn on commodities, as The Robin Hood Reader had suggested, she waffled and spent only half. The rest she hid in the apartment. She now saw the error of that-prices had risen anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 per cent in the intervening weeks. Steri-packed vegetables and staples she could have picked up for five marks then-and she had considered that exorbitant-were now going for fifty or sixty, with people thankful they could find them. It was crazy! The four thousand marks she had hidden away then would have bought her fifty thousand marks’ worth of food at today's prices. She cursed herself for not following Robin Hood's advice to the letter. Everyone in Primus now knew from personal experience what he had said back then. Nobody held onto cash any more; it was spent as soon as it was in hand. The only things worth less were Food Vouchers…retailers laughed when you brought them in.

Salli was afraid. What was going to happen when her money ran out? She had called Project Perseus but they had said they could not release Vin's second fifteen thousand until he had returned. She shrugged as she stood there on the street. What was fifteen thousand any more? Nothing!

“You gonna buy, lady?” the man asked, his eyes constantly shifting up and down the street. His legs straddled a large box of currency and he mentally took the measure of every passerby.

“Will you take anything else?”

His eyes narrowed. “Gold, silver, platinum if you've got any. I can let you take it out in trade or I can give you a good bundle of marks depending on what you've got.”

“I-don't have any.” She didn't know what had made her ask. She didn't really want bread. It was being made out in the hinterlands on isolated farms and there were no preservatives being used because there were none to be had. Bread like that went stale too fast to be worth fifty marks to a woman living alone.

He looked her up and down, his gaze seeming to penetrate her clothing. “Don't bother to offer me anything else you've got,” he sneered. “I've got more offers for that every day than I could handle in a lifetime.”

Tears sprang into Salli's eyes as she felt her face redden. “I didn't mean that!”

“Then why did you ask?”

Salli couldn't answer. She had been thinking about the future-the near future, when her money ran out. How was she to get by then? Her employer had told her he couldn't give her a raise, that his business had fallen off to the point where he might have to close up shop and go home.

As she turned away, the man called after her. “Hey, look, I'm sorry, but I've got a family of my own to feed. I've got to fly out and pick this up on my own. The freight unions aren't running till they get more money, you know that.”

Salli knew all that. The vid was full of it-bad news and more bad news. Shipping of goods was at a standstill. Employers were unable to raise wages quickly enough to keep their employees at subsistence level. Salli glanced back over her shoulder and saw that the bread seller had already forgotten her, and was now busy dickering with a man holding up a handful of fresh vegetables.

What was she going to do? Nothing in her life had prepared her for anything like this-she was slowly coming to the realization that her life had prepared her for little more than child rearing. No skill beyond rudimentary mathematics was required of her in the part-time job she was barely holding onto; she could be replaced in minutes. All her childhood had been spent learning to be dependent on men-her father, her brothers, and then Vin. Which was fine until now, when everything was falling apart, and her father and brothers were on the other side of the planet with no way to get to her or she to them. She was suddenly on her own, scared to death, and helpless.

Why am I like this? she thought, then snorted cynically. Why is the world like this? Why isn't Vin's money worth anything?

Vin-the name conjured up a vision of her husband's earnest face, and the worry lines that seemed to have become a part of his features over the past few years. She had never understood what had been plaguing him all this time. He had always acted as a buffer between her and the real world, taking the blows, absorbing them, and allowing only a few vibrations to disturb her. Now he was gone, and so was her insulation. And now she knew first hand the malaise of impotency that had so afflicted his psyche. She felt trapped in a world she had not made. On the surface it was physically similar, but everything had changed. Neither she nor anyone in the street around her had any control over what was happening to them Powerless, all of them.

And yet, we're to blame, she thought. No one out here made this world, but they all sat around idly or looked the other way while it was being made for them. It could have been stopped way back when, before things got too pushed out of shape, too far out of line. But it was too late now. Salli had an eerie feeling that giant forces were swinging back into balance again, impervious now to whatever was thrown up to block their return.

But she would cope. Anger would help her. Anger at the Imperium for causing this. Anger at herself and her society for leaving her so ill-equipped to cope with this or any other challenge outside the security of the nest. How many other women were caught in her situation right now? How many were losing the fight?

Salli wouldn't lose. She was learning fast. Today she would spend every last one of the remaining four thousand marks before they depreciated further. But not all at once. A little here, a little there, with frequent trips back to the apartment, hiding the purchases within her garments while in transit. It wouldn't do to have someone get the idea that she was stocking up on food; that was a sure way of inviting robbery. No, she would buy whatever was available, whatever was the least perishable, and then keep to her apartment, venturing out only for work and for absolute necessities. Yes, Salli would survive and hold out until things got better and Vin got back…she was somehow sure the latter would lead to the former.

And if things ever did get better-she set her mouth in a determined line-something would have to be done to see that this never happened again. She wanted a family, but no child deserved to grow up and face something like this.

Never again! she thought. This must never happen again.

LANAGUE HELD HIS POSITION until the recorder cycled off, then rose and stretched. “There. That ought to do it.” He glanced at Radmon Sayers, who said nothing as he dismantled the vid recorder. The warehouse was empty except for the two of them. “What's the matter, Rad?”

“Nothing,” Sayers replied, removing the recorded spool and handing it to LaNague. “It's just that I don't think this will work.”

“And why not?” LaNague snapped. “They have to be presented with a choice, and in order to make that choice they've got to know what their alternatives are.”

“I still think you could go about this differently. You're placing too much emphasis on these recordings. And frankly, I'm not impressed.”

LaNague bit back a terse reply. It angered him to be questioned at this point. With effort he kept his tone measured. “Do you still doubt me? I had to put up with enough of that from you and the rest before the floor fell out from under the mark. And then all of a sudden I was ‘brilliant,’ a ‘genius.’ When are you going to learn that I have been planning this, preparing it for years. I've had a lot more time to think things out than you or Zack or Metep or anyone on the Council of Five. I've out-thought them all. I know what I'm doing.”

“I don't doubt that,” Sayers replied. “You've proved it over and over again. But that doesn't make you infallible. That doesn't mean you're immune to an error of judgment, a miscalculation, just like the rest of us. Are you beyond a second opinion?”

“Of course I'm-”

“Then here's mine: I think the final phase of your plan is too personally dangerous to you, is subject to too many variables, and rests precariously on the persuasive power of these recordings…which, in my opinion as a professional in this area, is slight.”

“I appreciate your concern,” LaNague said softly after a short pause.

Sayers read his expression. “But you're not going to modify your plans, are you?”

LaNague shook his head. “I'm going to have to go with my record, and that's been too accurate so far to ignore.” He reached within his vest and withdrew a fifty-mark note. “Look at that!” he said, handing it to Sayers.

“What about it?” He glanced down at the face and could see nothing of any great significance.

“Turn it over.”

The reverse side was blank. “Counterfeit!” Sayers cried.

“No. That's the way the mint is releasing them. Not only is the supply of keerni paper getting short, but so's the dye. It's the ultimate ignominy. And fifty marks is now the lowest denomination. It's a mere three months since the crash and already the mark is approximating its true value: that of the paper it's printed on. Three months! None of you believed me when I told you things would happen this fast, so I don't expect any of you to believe me now.” He held up a vid spool. “But this will work-I guarantee it!”

“And if not?”

“It will. That's the end of discussion on the matter. And remember: Mora and the others are to know nothing of this next step until it's past the point of no return. Especially Mora!”

Sayers was about to add further comment when Broohnin's abrupt entry through a side door cut him off.

“Just heard from Seph Wolverton over at the Project Perseus Comm Center,” Broohnin said as soon as he caught sight of them. “That probe ship just popped into the system and is heading for Throne. Seems to be following instructions to the letter.”

LaNague cursed silently. If only he had another month! The Imperium would be gone by then and there would be no one left in power to manipulate the hostile aliens in Perseus into a war threat. But that wasn't to be, and it was probably just as well that the probe returned now when he was able to deal with it personally, rather than leave it to the others. Their narrow vision was disconcerting, their lack of faith discouraging. If left to handle the probe pilot alone, they'd probably botch it.

“All right,” LaNague said through a sigh. “Tell Wolverton to do all he can to keep the ship's presence in the system a secret. It can't remain a secret forever. The closer it moves, the more monitors it will alert. But we, at least, will have the most time to prepare.”

“Why don't we just find a way to blow it out of the sky?” Broohnin said with a grin. “That'll solve the problem very nicely, I think.”

LaNague paused for an instant, horrified by the realization that the very same solution had already occurred to him. He had discarded it, naturally, but the idea that his mind might even briefly follow a line of thought similar to Den Broohnin's was chilling.

“We have to get to him first,” LaNague said, ostensibly deaf to Broohnin's suggestion. “We have to meet him, spirit him away, and see to it that nobody from the Imperium knows where to find him. After there's no more Imperium, he can tell all of Occupied Space what he found out toward the Perseus arm.”

“That sounds like a tall order,” Sayers said.

“Don't worry,” LaNague told him. “I'll see that it's done. Just leave it to me. I'll take care of everything. As usual.”

Wafting briefly through his mind as he spoke was the thought that he sounded like a stranger to himself. He was acting like a pompous ass, impatient, intolerant of any challenge to his notions, of any opinion that deviated from his own. The thought became a question: were these symptoms of some occult malignancy devouring him from within, endangering not only himself, but the revolution and all who had worked for it? He brushed it away like an annoying insect. Nonsense. The revolution was secure. Victory was at hand. Nothing could stop him now. Nothing!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

From this far out, Throne looked like any other Earth-class planet; blue, brown, swirled with white. Not too impressive, but it was home. And Salli was there. Vincen Stafford wondered what was going on planetside. Something was wrong, that was certain. He didn't know what it was, and he didn't known how big it was, but something tricky was going on. How else to explain the crazy orders he had received?

Part one of the instructions had been logical-return directly to Throne at top speed, stop for nothing; use tight beam to signal comm center immediately upon arrival in Throne System. No problem. That's what he had expected to be told, and was exactly what he wanted to do. One encounter with the Tarks was quite enough, thank you.

The remaining instructions were the crazy ones. After notifying the comm center of his presence in the system, he was to proceed with all haste to Throne and establish an orbit that would pass over Throne latitude eighty degrees north and longitude ninety degrees east. At no time-this was repeated and doubly emphasized-was he to have further contact with anyone. Anyone. No matter who tried to contact him, he was neither to answer nor to listen. He was not to identify himself to anyone else. The Project Perseus Comm Center knew who he was and that was all that mattered. He would be met in orbit by a shuttle and taken down for debriefing.

Something was up, but he couldn't imagine what. Were they afraid he'd cause a panic down below by telling scare stories about the Tarks? They should know him better than that! Maybe they were just being careful, but the precautions seemed extraordinary. Why?

He shrugged. The orders had come from Project Perseus Comm Center…his boss. Not his worry. Not his to reason why. He just wanted to get his feet planted firmly on Throne, find Salli, and celebrate the bonus due him for being the contact ship…an extra twenty thousand marks. They could do a lot of living on that.

It would be good just to be home again.

He slipped into Throne's gravitational field on a flat trajectory early the next morning, ship's time. The retros slowed him enough to allow the delicate but intractable fingers of the planet's gravity to wrap around the ship and hold it at arm's length. He had plotted the approach carefully during the three days since his arrival in the system, and now he smiled as he made the final minor course adjustments. Perfect! The probe ship's orbit would pass right over the desired coordinates with hardly a second's drift. He hadn't spent all those years in navigation school for nothing!

A small blip showed on his screen. He cued the image intensifier to home in on it and…there it was. An orbital shuttle, rising to meet him. He upped the intensity. Funny…no Imperial markings. But that sort of went with all the other craziness. If the Project Perseus heads were being so secretive about his return, it wasn't all that strange to bring him down to the surface in an unmarked craft.

The comm indicator flashed again. It had been doing that repeatedly for the past day and a half. But like a good soldier, he had followed orders and steadfastly ignored it. At first there had been a strong temptation to disconnect the light, but he had decided against it. Let it flash. Who cared. He was going home.

“STILL NO ANSWER from that ship?” Haworth asked.

The tiny face on the vidscreen in his hand wagged back and forth. “None, sir.”

“Is there any sign that the ship may be out of control? Is the flight pattern erratic? Could the pilot be hurt?”

“If he's hurt, sir, I'd love to see him fly when he's well. The ship seems to have a definite course in mind. His communicator console could be malfunctioning, but with all the fail-safes built in, it seems unlikely, unless there's major damage. And the ship handles like an undamaged craft. I don't know what to tell you, sir.”

“Why weren't we aware of his presence in the system sooner?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“You're paid to know,” Haworth gritted. “What good are you if you don't know!”

The insolence in the shrug was apparent even on the miniscule screen. “Not much, I guess.” His smile was insolent, too. No one seemed to have any respect any more.

“We'll find out soon enough,” Haworth said, passing over the veiled insult-he'd deal with the man later. His name was Wolverton. He wouldn't forget. “Send a shuttle up there immediately and bring that pilot directly to me. I'll debrief him personally. And then we'll get to the bottom of all this.”

“There's already a shuttle on the way. You should know that, sir.”

Haworth felt a brief, deep chill. “Why? How should I know?”

“You sent it yourself.” The man glanced down at something off screen. “I've got the message right here from the shuttle. Said it was under direct orders from you to intercept the probe in orbit and bring the pilot to you.”

“I gave no such order. Stop that shuttle!”

“I don't know if we can do that, sir. It looks like it's already made contact.”

“Then intercept it before it lands.” He looked at the man's laconic expression and suddenly came to a decision. “No. Never mind. I'll arrange that myself.” With no warning, he broke the circuit and began punching in the code for the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard. If he had to scramble a fleet of interceptors, he'd do it. He had to interrogate that probe pilot.

THE MAN WHO CAME through the lock was not with the Imperial Guard. He was dressed in Lincoln green hose, a leather jerkin, and a feathered cap. And he held a blaster.

“Quick! Through here. We're taking you down.” He spoke without moving his lips.

Stafford hesitated. “What's going-”

“Move!”

It was suddenly clear to Stafford just whom he was dealing with. The drawings had been flashed on the vid often enough: this was either Robin Hood himself or one of his Merry Men. A closer look revealed a barely perceptible shimmer along the edges of the man's form, a sure sign of a holographic disguise.

“Are you Robin Hood?” he asked, already moving toward the hatch. Despite the menacing presence of the blaster, he did not feel threatened. In fact, the blaster gave him good excuse to go along.

“You'll find out later. Hurry!”

Stafford ducked through the lock and was propelled along a narrow corridor into an even narrower cubicle with a single seat.

“Strap yourself in,” the figure said. “We may have a rough ride ahead.” The door slid shut and Stafford knew he was locked in. There was a jolt that signaled release of the probe from the shuttle, and increasing drag toward the rear of the cubicle as the craft picked up speed. Stafford decided to strap himself in. He had ridden many a shuttle, but could not remember any that could accelerate like this one.

“WE LOST THEM,” Commander-in-chief Tinmer said flatly. There was enough of an edge of anger in his tone to warn Haworth against too much abuse. The man was looking for someone to lash out at, someone to trip his hammer. Haworth decided to let him save his wrath for the interceptor pilots who had evidently flubbed their mission. And besides, Haworth wanted the commander on his side.

“How is that possible?” he said, employing concerned disappointment to mask his growing rage at the incompetence that confronted him at every turn.

“For one thing, that shuttle was not exactly a standard model. It must have had a special drive or something because it pulled a few tricks that left our men sitting up there like hovercraft. Some of the men think it's the same craft we've chased before on suspicion of smuggling-they were never able to catch that one either. Anyway, the ship went down in the western hinterlands and we've got search teams out now. But even if we find it, there'll be no one on board.”

Haworth closed his eyes in a moment of silent agony. How could this be happening to him? Everything was going wrong. He opened his eyes.

“Find that pilot. It is absolutely imperative that we contact him and find out what he knows. Get the identification number of the probe, check with the Project Perseus center to get the pilot's name and address. Track him down, bring him to me, and no more mistakes. I don't care if you have to mobilize every Imperial Guardsman under your command and send them all out beating bushes and going door to door. That man must be found!”

The commander stiffened visibly. “Everything that can be done will be done.”

“See to it, Tinmer.”

Daro Haworth stared at the screen after it had gone dark. He knew they would never find the pilot. The guardsmen who would be used for the search were worse than useless. Primus City and the surrounding garrisons were swollen with them; they were bored, inactive, and the less duty they were given, the less they wanted. At least they were assured of shelter and food and clothing, more than could be said for most of the civilian population now. It was costing a fortune to support them, but they had to be kept on ready…martial law was no longer an if, but a when. And that when was drawing nigh.

He had thought the time had come yesterday when the dolee section of Primus had its first food riot. By the Core, that had been frightening! It took him back to his student days on Earth when he had almost been caught in one of those frequent outpourings of unfocused rage. If the fellow student with him hadn't been an Earthie, and hadn't developed a sixth sense for the riots, and hadn't pulled him into a building…he didn't allow his imagination to venture into the possibilities of what would have happened to a well-dressed out-worlder trapped in the middle of that frenzied torrent of humanity. But yesterday's riot had been broken up by a few low-flying troop transports from the garrison out by the mint, and by a few well-placed warning blasts.

Next time would not be so easy. With Food Vouchers being refused everywhere, the dolees were starving. The legislative machinery couldn't raise their allotments fast enough to keep up with prices. And with all the people on the dole now, the mint was hard-pressed to put out currency fast enough to meet the demand. Haworth had heard of runaway inflation but had never thought he'd see it. Nothing he had read could even come close to the reality, however. Nothing. It was like a grossly obese dog chasing its tail…futility leading to fatality.

That's why the guardsmen had to take priority. The dolees had been the big power block before with their votes, but votes were no longer important. Blasters were going to be the legislature soon, and Haworth wanted to keep the men who had them happy. Keep them happy, keep them fed, keep them ready to run around and shoot their toys to keep the mobs in line. They weren't good for much else.

They'd certainly never find that pilot. The brazenness of the abduction-if in fact it really was an abduction-along with the perfect timing and daring escape maneuvers…all pointed to Robin Hood. It fit his modus operandi. And it was clear now that Robin Hood was more than an economic gadfly and tax rebel; he was steadily revealing himself as a full-fledged revolutionary. No mere wild-eyed bomb-thrower, but a crafty conspirator who had anticipated all the ills that had befallen the Imperium and had taken advantage of them. How had he seen it coming? How had he known? Unless…

Ridiculous! No one man could kill the Imperial mark! Not even Robin Hood!

If only they could capture him. That would be a boon to the Imperium's cause. Take Robin Hood out of the picture-or even better, keep him in the picture and turn him to the Imperium's advantage-and perhaps something could be salvaged. Haworth knew he'd like to sit down and have a long discussion with Robin Hood, whoever he was…find out where he was getting his funds, what his final goals were. It would be the most fascinating conversation he had ever had in his life, he was certain. And after it was over, it would be an even greater pleasure to kill Robin Hood.

“ARE YOU ROBIN HOOD? I mean, the Robin Hood?”

LaNague smiled, warmed by the glow of awe and open admiration in the other man's face. “We never really decided who was actually Robin Hood. It's been a group effort, really.”

“But you seem to be in charge. Was the Robin Hood idea yours?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then you're him.” The pilot thrust out his hand. “I'm proud to meet you.”

LaNague grasped and shook the proferred hand in the age-old ceremony of greeting and good will, then watched the probe pilot as he walked around in a tight circle, taking in the interior details of the Angus black warehouse. The man was short, slight, and dark, with an appealing boyish face, now filled with wonder.

“So this is the center of operations…this is where you plan all those raids and put out The Robin Hood Reader… never thought I'd ever see it.” He turned to LaNague. “But why am I here?”

LaNague put a hand on his shoulder and guided him toward the back office. “To keep you out of Haworth's hands. Once he gets hold of you he'll turn your information into a war scare to keep the out-worlds in line behind the Imperium. And especially to keep the people of Throne looking to the Imperium as protector from whatever might be coming out of the sky, rather than as culprit for all the misery they're suffering. We can't allow that to happen. Things are too close to the end point.”

Stafford's mouth opened to reply as he entered the back office ahead of LaNague, and remained open but silent when he saw the occupants of the room. The two Merry Men who had shuttled him down from his probe ship had retreated to this office soon after depositing him in the warehouse. They were gone now, replaced by two black-robed figures.

“Flinters!” Stafford squinted his eyes to detect a telltale shimmer along their outlines.

“Those aren't holosuits,” LaNague told him. He was watching Stafford's reactions closely. “Does it bother you that Robin Hood is associated with Flinters?”

Stafford hesitated, then: “Not really. It shows you mean business…that you aren't just playing games and looking for attention.” He finally tore his eyes from Kanya and Josef and looked at LaNague. “Does this mean that I'm a prisoner?”

“A guest,” LaNague said. “You'll be kept comfortable and well treated for the next few weeks, but we must keep you out of Haworth's hands.”

Stafford's features slackened. “But I won't tell him anything! If you say he's going to use the information to keep himself in power, I'll see that he doesn't get it.”

“I'm afraid you can't guarantee that,” LaNague said with a weary smile. “Haworth knows you know something, and a simple injection is all it will take to have you answering in minute detail every question he asks. I know you may mean well, but Haworth is quite ruthless.”

“But my wife-”

“We'll bring her here and set up quarters for the two of you. We'll do anything we can to make your stay as pleasant as possible.”

“But I must stay,” Stafford said. There seemed to be a catch in his voice. He turned away and slumped into a chair, staring at the floor.

“You all right?” LaNague asked.

Stafford's voice was low. “For some reason, I thought things were going to be different. When I saw Merry Men operating the shuttle, I figured Metep and all the rest were on the way out, that things were going to be different now. Better. But they're not. And they never will be, will they?”

“I don't understand.”

“I mean, you're going to set yourself up as another Metep, aren't you?”

“Of course not!”

“Then let me go home.”

“I can't. You don't seem to understand that I-”

“All I understand,” Stafford said, rising to his feet and gesturing angrily, “is that I had it better under Metep VII. I could walk the streets. I could sleep in my home. I can't do that now!”

“You wouldn't be able to do it if Haworth found you, either,” LaNague replied. “Think of that.”

“The only thing I'm thinking is that I'm a prisoner and you're my jail keeper. Which makes you no better than anyone else in the Imperium. In fact, it makes you worse.”

The words struck LaNague like so many blows. He mentally fought the implications, but finally had to accept them: he had put aside everything he believed in, his entire heritage, in order to further the revolution.

Above all else: Kyfho… Adrynna's words came back to him …forget Kyfho in your pursuit of victory over the enemy, and you will become the enemy…worse than the enemy, for he doesn't know he is capable of anything better.

“The enemy…me,” he muttered, feeling weak and sick. Stafford looked at him questioningly. “You wouldn't understand,” he told him. He glanced at Kanya and Josef and saw sympathy there, but no help. It was his battle, one that could only be won alone.

So close…so close to victory that victory itself had become his cause. How had he let that happen? Was this what power did to you? It was horrifying. He had always felt himself immune to that sort of lure…above it. Instead, he had placed himself above all others, ready and willing to subject their personal desires to his ultimate vision-the very reason for which he so loathed the Imperium!

When had he begun to yield? He couldn't say. The onset had been so insidious he had never noticed the subtle changes in perspective. But he should have realized something was wrong that day by the mint when he had been willing to risk the lives of some of the guards inside rather than delay activating the Barsky box. Since when had a Robin Hood caper meant more than a human life? He should have known then. He was embracing the “can't make an omelet without breaking eggs” attitude that had brought the out-worlds to the brink of ruin. Ends had never justified means for him in the past. Why had he let them do so now?

If not for Mora that day, he might have killed someone. And life was what his whole revolution was about…letting life grow, allowing it to expand unhindered, keeping it free. The revolution he had originally envisioned was for everyone on all the out-worlds, not just a few. And if his revolution was to be everyone's, it had to be for the men in the Imperial Guard, too. They had to have their chance for a new future along with everybody else. But dead men weren't free; neither was a probe pilot locked up in a warehouse.

He wanted to run, to kick down the doors, and flee into the night. But not to Mora-anywhere but to Mora. He felt so ashamed of himself now, especially after the way he had been treating her, that he couldn't bear the thought of facing her…not until he had made things right.

“You can leave,” he said, his voice barely audible as he leaned back against the office doorframe.

Stafford took an uncertain step forward. “What? You mean that?”

LaNague nodded, not looking at him. “Go ahead. But be warned: Primus City is not as you left it. It's night out there now, and the streets belong to whoever feels strong enough or desperate enough to venture onto them. You won't like it.”

“I've got to get to my wife.”

LaNague nodded again, stepping away from the doorway. “Find her. Bring her back here if you wish, or take your chances out there. I leave the choice up to you. But remember two things: the Imperium is looking everywhere for you, and we offer you and your wife safety here.”

“Thank you,” Stafford said, glancing between LaNague and the two Flinters. Hesitantly at first, and then with growing confidence, he walked past LaNague, across the warehouse floor, and out the side door. He only looked back three times before he was out of sight.

LaNague was silent for a while, gathering his thoughts. The next steps would have to be moved up, the schedule accelerated. “Follow him,” he told Kanya and Josef. “Make sure he's left with a choice. If a few Imperial Guardsmen should get hold of him, let him go with them if that's what he wants. But if he decides he'd prefer to stay with us, then see to it that they don't get in his way.”

The Flinters nodded, glad for an opportunity to do something besides sit and wait. They adjusted their holosuits to the middle-aged male images, and started for the door.

“One thing,” LaNague said as they were leaving. “Don't bring him back here. Take him and his wife to my apartment. Under no circumstances bring him back here.”

LaNague could see no expression through the enveloping holograms, but knew the Flinters must have looked puzzled.

“Trust me,” he said. The words tasted stale on his tongue.

They were not gone long when Broohnin entered. “Where's the probe pilot?” he asked, his head swiveling back and forth in search of Stafford.

“Gone.” LaNague had taken over the seat Stafford had vacated.

“Where'd you hide him?”

“I let him go.”

It took a moment for the truth of that statement to register on Broohnin. At first he reacted as if to an obvious and rather silly attempt at humor, then he looked closely into LaNague's face.

“You what?”

“I don't believe in imprisoning a man completely innocent of any wrongdoing.”

The small amounts of facial skin visible above Broohnin's beard and below his hairline had turned crimson. “You fool! You idiot! Are you insane? What he knows could ruin everything-you said so yourself!”

“I realize that,” LaNague said. An icy calm had slipped over him. “I also realize that I cannot allow one unpleasant fact to overcome a lifetime's belief.”

“Belief?” Broohnin stormed across the office. “We're talking about revolution here, not belief!” He went to the desk and started rifling through the drawers.

“What do you believe in, Broohnin? Anything?”

Pulling a hand blaster from a drawer, Broohnin wheeled and pointed the lens directly at LaNague's face. “I believe in revolution,” he said, his breathing ragged. “And I believe in eliminating anyone who gets in the way of that belief!”

LaNague willed his exterior to complete serenity. “Without me, there is no revolution, only a new, stronger Imperium.”

After a breathless pause that seemed to go on forever, Broohnin finally lowered the blaster. Without a word, he stalked to the far exit and passed through to the street.

LaNague lifted his left hand and held it before his eyes. It was trembling. He could not remember being exposed to the raw edge of such violent fury before. He let the hand fall back to his lap and sighed. It would not be the last. Before this thing was over, he might well come closer to even greater physical danger. He might even die. But there was no other way.

He heaved himself out of the chair and toward the disheveled desk. Time to move.

“WHY DON'T YOU calm down?” Metep VII said from his formfitting lounger as he watched Daro Haworth pace the floor. There was an air of barely suppressed excitement about the younger man that had grown continually during the few moments he had been present in the room.

“I can't! We've just heard from the municipal police commissioner. They've had a tip on the whereabouts of Robin Hood.”

“We've been getting those ever since the first currency heist. They've all been phony. Usually someone with a grudge on somebody else, or a prankster.”

“The commissioner seems to think this is the real thing,” Haworth said. “The caller gave the location of a warehouse he says is the center of all the Robin Hood activities. Says we'll find Robin Hood himself there along with enough evidence to convince a dead man that he's the genuine article.” Haworth's hands rubbed together as if of their own will. “If only it's true! If only it's true!”

Metep coughed as he inhaled a yellow vapor from the vial in his hand. He had always liked the euphorogenic gases, but appeared to be using them with greater frequency and in greater quantities lately, especially since the recall talk had started. The calls for votes of confidence in the legislature recently had only compounded his depression. “I'm not so sure the commissioner is the right man to oversee such a project. After all, the municipal police lately have been-”

“I know that,” Haworth snapped. “That's why I've told them to wait until Tinmer, our illustrious commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard, can arrive with reinforcements and redeem himself after bungling the capture of that orbital shuttle this morning.”

“Let's hope so,” Metep said. “Speaking of the shuttle incident, you still have men out looking for that pilot?”

“Of course. I've also got them waiting at his apartment here in the city just in case he shows up looking for his wife.” Haworth smiled. “Wouldn't that be nice: Robin Hood himself, and our elusive probe pilot in hand before daybreak. That would change everything!”

VINCEN STAFFORD HAD NEVER SEEN the streets of Primus dark before. Gloglobes had always kept the shadows small and scarce. But someone had decided to smash every globe up and down the street, and no one had bothered to replace them. As he walked on, the intersections he crossed gave dark testimony to the fact that this was not the only street to be victimized so. Every street was dark, lined with useless pedestals supporting dim, dark shattered fragments.

He was not alone on the street. There were dark forms huddled in doorways and skulking in the deeper shadows. He was also aware of other pedestrians ahead of him and behind; not many, but enough to make him feel that he could at least count on some help should there be any trouble.

As Stafford walked on, he had the distinct impression that he was under scrutiny. But by whom? He could detect no one following him. Soon the sensation passed, replaced by a gnawing fear.

Robin Hood had been right. This was not the Primus City he had left a year ago. That city had been bright and lively-dingy on the edges, true, but nothing like this. The streets were choked with litter; ground-effect vehicles were virtually absent from view, and only one or two flitters crossed the night sky. After walking two kilometers, he gave up hope of ever seeing a taxi. He'd have to try the monorail.

As he entered the business district of town, he was in for an even greater shock. A number of the stores stood dark and empty, their fronts smashed open, their insides either stripped of their contents or gutted by fire. The ones that were intact but closed had left their lights on. Stafford peered into the window of one and saw a man sitting conspicuously under a light in a chair against the rear wall of the store. A short-range, wide-beam blaster rifle rested across his knees. When he noticed that Stafford did not move on immediately, he lifted the weapon and cradled it in his arms. Stafford moved on.

Only one store on this street was open. Before he had left on his probe ship mission, every store would be open and busy this early in the evening. Tonight the lights from the front of the open store-a food store-shone out on the street like a beacon. People were clustered around the front of it, waiting to get in. Some carried luggage cases, other shopping bags, some nothing.

Drawn by the light and by other people, Stafford decided to take a quick look to see what the attraction was. As he approached, he noticed armed guards on either side of the doorway, and more inside. On closer inspection, he could see that many of the customers were armed, too.

Since he was not interested in getting through the door, he found it easy to push through the press to the window. A careful, squinting inspection revealed only one product for sale in the market: flour. The center of the floor was stacked with transparent cylinders of it. Stafford gauged their probable weight at fifty kilos each. One by one, people were being allowed to go to the pile, heft a cylinder to a shoulder, and exit through the rear.

But first they had to pay. At a counter to the left, an armed man was counting bundles of currency, stacking it, then dumping it into a bin behind him when the proper amount was reached. The bin was half full; another toward the rear was completely full, and an empty one waited. An armed guard stood over them. Customers were allowed into the store one at a time; a guard frisked them, removed their weapons at the door, and returned at the exit. There was a strong family resemblance between the guards and the storekeeper-father and sons, most likely.

Fascinated, Stafford watched the strange procession for a while, watched the customers empty sacks and satchels of currency onto the counter, watched the second bin behind the man grow full. And then two men were allowed to enter at once. Both were empty-handed. The first caused a stir at the counting table when he produced a handful of what looked like old silver marks, extinct from general circulation for half a generation. The storekeeper studied them, weighed them on a scale, and placed them in an autoanalyzer one at a time. Apparently satisfied with their metal content, he nodded to the two men. Each claimed a cylinder and exited through the rear.

“Nice what a little silver can do these days,” said a man beside him at the window. Stafford stepped back for a better look at the speaker. He saw a shabbily dressed man of average build with greasy hair who was giving his flight jumper an appraising glance. There was a bulge under the man's coat that probably meant a weapon, and an overloaded suitcase in his left hand from which a few stray marks protruded at the seam.

“What are they charging for that flour in there?” Stafford asked.

The man shrugged and glanced through the window. “Around ten thousand marks, I'm told.” He saw Stafford's jaw swing open. “A bit expensive, I know-a whole day's pay-but I'll be glad to get it at all, what with the surface and air transport unions on strike again.”

“Strike? Again?”

“I don't blame them though,” the man said, seeming to look right through Stafford as he continued speaking in a tremulous monotone. “I wouldn't want to get paid by the week, either. They say they're going to stay out until they get daily pay. Otherwise, it's not worth working.” Without warning, tears began to slip down his cheeks and he began to cry. “It's not really worth working, anyway. The money loses value faster than you can spend it…and nobody cares any more…we're all just putting in our time…used to like my job at the bureau…used to like my house…and my family…nothing matters now 'cause I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep any of them…”

Embarrassed by the display of naked despair, Stafford pushed away from the window and out to the open sidewalk with a single worrisome thought in his mind: Salli! Where was she? How could she have survived this insanity on her own? She could be dead of starvation by now! His only hope was that she had somehow got to her family, or they to her. He never should have left her on her own. He broke into a run. He had to get back to the apartment.

There was a monorail station at the next intersection. The gloglobes that usually surrounded it were shattered like all the rest he had passed, but he did see a light at the top of the platform where the ticket booth would be. On his way to the float-chute, he passed half a dozen loitering men who eyed him with little interest. He quickened his pace and was about to hop into the chute when something stopped him. Pausing at the threshold, he thrust out a hand-no breeze. There was supposed to be an updraft. The sound of derisive laughter made him turn.

“Almost got him!” The loiterers had known the chute wasn't operating but had chosen to wait and see if he fell down the shaft. Stafford took the stairs two at a time up to the platform and gave a crosstown station as his destination to the man in the ticket booth.

“Fifteen hundred,” a voice rasped from atop the blasterproof compartment.

Stafford gulped. “Marks?”

“No, rocks!” the man within snarled.

Stafford turned and walked slowly down the stairs. He had a grand total of forty marks in his pocket. He'd have to walk. It would be a long trek, and he was already weary-a year in a probe ship, despite artificial gravity and a conscientious exercise program, had left him out of condition and short on stamina-but it was the only way.

First, however, he would have to pass through the knot of six or seven idle men blocking the end of the stairway.

“Nice suit you've got there,” said the one in front. “I rather think it would fit me better than you.” He smiled, but there was nothing friendly about the grimace.

Stafford said nothing. He glanced around and saw no one he could call upon for help.

“Come on, now. Just take it off and give it to us-and whatever money you've got on you, too-and we'll only rough you up a little. Make us chase you and we'll have to hurt you.” He glanced up to the monorail platform ten meters above. “We may try and see if you can really fly in that fancy flight suit.”

“I–I have no money,” Stafford said in as stern a voice as he could manage. “I didn't even have enough for a ticket.”

The man's smile faded. “No one who runs around in that sort of outfit is broke.” He started up the steps toward Stafford. “Look like you want to do this the hard way.”

Stafford vaulted over the railing and landed on the ground running-and collided head-on with a darkened gloglobe pedestal. Before he could regain his feet, they were upon him, fists and feet jabbing at his face, his groin, his kidneys.

Suddenly the weight on him lessened, the blows became less frequent, and then stopped. Using the pedestal for support, he struggled to his feet, gasping. When the agony caused by the brutal pummeling subsided to a bearable level, he opened his eyes and looked around.

It was as if there had been an explosion during the assault on him and he had been ground zero. His attackers were strewn in all directions, either sprawled flat on the pavement, slumped on piles of debris, or slung over the stairway railing. Someone or something had pulled them off him and hurled them in all directions, battering them unmercifully in the process. No one was moving-wait-the one who had done all the talking was slowly lifting his head from the ground. Stafford limped over to see if there was to be more trouble. No…apparently not. The man grunted something unintelligible through a bloody, ruined mouth, then slumped down again, unconscious.

Stafford turned and lurched away, gradually forcing his headlong gait into some semblance of a trot. He could only guess at what had happened, but after seeing two Flinters back at Robin Hood's warehouse and knowing of Robin Hood's concern for his safety, it seemed reasonable to assume that he had acquired two incredibly efficient bodyguards. He just hoped that they stuck with him past Imperial Park and to his apartment.

After that, he'd no longer need them. He hoped.

The journey through the city became a blur of surreal confusion as his legs and arms became leaden and the very air seared his lungs. But he persisted despite the physical agony, for the mental agony of not knowing what he might find at home was greater. He moved through a city that had lost all resemblance to the place where he had dwelt for years, past people who were not like any he had ever known. There were times when he wondered through the haze of his oxygen-starved brain if he had landed on the wrong planet.

Finally, he found himself before the entrance to his own apartment building, gasping, weak, nauseated. The door was still keyed to his palm, for it opened when he pushed against it. Inside was an oasis of light and warmth, shelter from the dark, silent storm raging behind him. As he trudged to the float-chute, he thought he caught a hint of movement behind him, but saw nothing when he turned, only the entry door slowly sliding closed.

The chute was operating, further testimony to the wisdom of some ancient designer's insistence on decentralized power; each building had its own solar energy collectors and amplifiers. The anti-grav field was a physical joy for Stafford at this moment-he would have spent the rest of the night in the chute if he had not been so frightened for Salli. The fifth floor was his. He grasped a rung and hauled himself out into the real world of weight and inertia.

The door to his apartment was to the right and slid open when it recognized his palm. He saw Salli sitting in a chair straight ahead of him, watching the vid. She gasped and rose to her feet when she saw him, but did not come forward. So Stafford went to her.

“You're all right?” he asked, slipping his arms slowly, hesitantly around her. Her coolness puzzled him. “How did you possibly survive all this alone?”

“I managed.” Her eyes kept straying away from his.

“What's the matter?”

Salli's gaze had come to rest at a point over his right shoulder. He turned. Two members of the Imperial Guard were approaching from the inner corner of the room, weapons drawn.

“Vincen Stafford?” said the one in the lead. “We've been waiting for you. You're under arrest for crimes against the Imperium.”

“WE'VE GOT THE PILOT, SIR.”

It was all Haworth could do to keep from shouting with joy. But he had to maintain his bearing. After all, this was just a callow trooper on the screen. “Very good. Where is he?”

“Here at his apartment with us.”

“You mean you haven't brought him to the Complex yet?” He heard his voice rising.

“We were told to call you directly as soon as he was in custody, sir.” True-he had demanded that. “All right. How many with you now?”

“Just one other.”

“Did he resist at all?”

“No, sir. He just walked in and we arrested him.”

Haworth considered the situation. As much as he wanted to interrogate that pilot, he doubted the wisdom of allowing a pair of unseasoned Imperial Guards to escort him in. Who'd have ever thought he'd be stupid enough to return to his own apartment?

“Wait there until I send an extra squad to back you up. I don't want any slip-ups.”

“Very well, sir.” The guardsman didn't seem to mind. He didn't want any slip-ups either.

Haworth arranged for the extra squad to go to Stafford's apartment, then he turned to Metep and clapped his hands.

“This is the night! We've already got the pilot, and within the hour Robin Hood will be in custody, too!”

“What's taking so long with Robin Hood?” Metep asked. His words were slurred from the excess inhalant in his system.

“I'm not leaving a single thing to chance with him. All the city maps have been combed for any possible underground escape route. Every building around the warehouse is being taken over by Imperial Guards; every street is being blocked; even the air space over that building is being sealed off. When we finally close the trap, not even an insect will get through unless we let it. This is it, Jek! Tonight we start getting things under control again.”

Metep VII smiled foggily and put the open end of the vial to his nose again. “That's nice.”

THE DOOR CHIMED and one of the two Imperial Guardsmen approached it warily. It was much too early for the backup squad to arrive. The viewer set in the door revealed two rather plain-looking middle-aged men on the other side. They kept shuffling around, turning their heads back and forth. “

We know you're in there, Mr. Stafford, and we want our money.” The guardsman wasn't sure which one of them spoke. They kept wandering in and out of the range of the viewer.

“Go away! Stafford is under arrest.”

There was laughter on the other side. “Now that's a new one!”

“It's true. This is a member of the Imperial Guard speaking.”

More laughter. “We'll have to see that to believe it!”

The guard angrily cycled the door open. “Now do you-”

He was suddenly on the floor and a figure was vaulting through the door, a stunner aimed at the other guard's head. There was no sound from the attacker, the guard, or the weapon, but the guard closed his eyes and joined his comrade on the floor.

“If you wish to go with them, you may,” said the bland-looking male invader in a female voice as the pistol was holstered. “We are only here to give you a choice. Someone is offering you and your mate a safe place if you want it. Otherwise, you may wait until they regain consciousness.”

“We'll go with you,” Stafford said without hesitation.

“Vin!” It was Salli.

He turned to her. “It's all right. We'll be safer with them than with anybody else. I know who they are.”

Salli made no reply. She merely clung to him, looking physically exhausted and emotionally drained. She watched as the two newcomers closed the apartment door and arranged the two guardsmen neatly on the floor.

BROOHNIN FLOATED IN THE CHUTE, holding his position with a foot and a hand each hooked into a safety rung. Popping his head into the hall, he took a quick look up and down, then arched back into the chute. He had no idea what lay on the other side of Stafford's apartment door, but he had to go through. He had to be sure Stafford had not told what he knew-would never tell what he knew.

As he prepared to thrust himself into the hall, he heard the whisper of a door cycling open…it came from the direction of Stafford's apartment. Broohnin had two options: he could let go of the rungs and float up to the next floor, or he could step out and confront whoever it was.

He chose the latter. If nothing else, he'd have surprise and a drawn weapon on his side. Placing his right foot flat against the rear wall of the chute, he gave a kick and catapulted himself into the hall.

Broohnin almost vomited when he saw Stafford's escort. The holosuit images were all too familiar to him. But it was too late to do anything but act.

“Stop right there!” he said, pointing the blaster at the middle of the pilot's chest. “Another step and he dies!”

They stopped. All four of them-the pilot, a woman, and the two Flinters flanking them. “What is wrong with you, Broohnin?” said a male voice that appeared to be coming from the left: Josef's voice. “There's a squad of Imperial Guard on its way here now. Let us by without any further trouble.”

“I'll let three of you by,” Broohnin said warily, watching the Flinters for any sign of movement. He was far enough away that no one could reach him before he fired, and he was too close to miss if he did. He had to play this scene very carefully. There would be time for only one blast; the Flinters would be on him after that. The blast would have to kill the pilot, and then Broohnin would have to drop his weapons immediately. There was a chance they'd let him live then, and return to LaNague, who would do nothing, as usual. But at least the pilot would be dead. The thing he had to be absolutely sure not to do was to hit one of the Flinters with the blast, because there was no telling what the other one would do when he or she got hold of him.

“What do you mean, ‘three’?” It was Kanya's voice.

“The pilot's got to die.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” Josef said. “He's decided to stay with us. We're taking him back to LaNague.”

“I don't care what he's decided or where you're taking him. He could change his mind and walk out again…or Metep could publicly offer him a huge reward if he turns himself in.” Broohnin shook his head. “No…can't risk it. He could ruin everything. You know that.”

Broohnin didn't realize what had happened until it was too late. While he was talking, the Flinters had edged closer and closer to Stafford and his wife. Then, with one quick sideward step from each, they had placed themselves in front of the couple, completely eclipsing Broohnin's intended target.

“Don't do that! Move aside!”

“Best to give us the weapon, Broohnin,” Kanya said. Moving in unison, they began to approach him, one slow step after another.

“I'll fire!” he said, aching to retreat but finding himself rooted to the floor. “I'll kill you both, and then him!”

“You might kill one of us,” Josef said. “But that would be the last thing you would do. Ever.”

The blaster was suddenly snatched out of his hand. He saw it in Kanya's, but the exchange had been a complete blur. He hadn't seen her move.

“Quickly, now,” Josef said, turning to Stafford and his wife and motioning them toward the drop-chute. “The backup squad will be here any time now.”

As Stafford passed, Kanya handed him Broohnin's blaster. “Put this in your waistband and forget about it unless we tell you to use it.”

“What about me?” Broohnin asked, fearing the answer more than he had feared anything in his life.

Kanya and Josef merely glanced his way with their expressionless holosuit faces, then followed the pilot and his wife down the chute. Broohnin hurried after them. If Imperial Guardsmen were on their way, he didn't want to be caught here and have to explain the pilot's empty apartment. He was right behind them when they all pushed their way out to the street and came face to face with the backup squad as it debarked from a lorry flitter. The squad leader recognized Stafford immediately-no doubt his features had been drummed into their brains since his escape earlier in the day.

“What's going on here?” he yelled and readied the blaster rifle he had been cradling in his arms. “Where are the others? Who are these?”

Kanya and Josef edged toward the front of their group. Josef's voice was low but audible to the rest of the civilians. “Be calm, stand quiet, let us handle everything. There's only six of them.”

“I asked you a question!” the squad leader said to anyone who would listen. “Where are the two Imperial Guardsmen who are supposed to be with you?”

“I assure you we don't know what you mean,” Josef said. “We are not with these others.”

The squad leader leveled his blaster at Josef as the other five members of his squad arrayed themselves behind him. “Show me some identification. It had better be perfect or we're all going upstairs to find out what's going on here.”

Broohnin felt panic welling up within him, shutting off his air, choking him. This was it-they were either going to be killed or wind up Metep's prisoners. One was as bad as the other. He had to do something. He saw Stafford standing just ahead and to his left, his arms folded cautiously across his chest. His wife was clinging to his left arm and his attention was on her. Peeking out from under his right elbow was the butt of Broohnin's confiscated blaster.

Without thinking, without a conscious effort on his part, Broohnin's hand reached out and snatched at the weapon. He had to have it. It was floating debris on a storm-tossed sea, a chance for survival. No guarantee that it would carry him to safety, but it seemed to be all he had right now.

Stafford spun reflexively as he felt the weapon pulled from his waistband and grabbed for it. “Hey!”

Now was as good a time as any to get rid of the damn pilot, so Broohnin squeezed the trigger as soon as his finger found it. But Stafford's reflexes were faster. He thrust Broohnin's arm upward and Salli screamed as the beam flashed upward, striking no one.

Josef was not so lucky. At the sound of the scream and the sight of a blaster held high and firing, the squad leader responded by pressing his own trigger. There was a brief glare between the guardsman and Josef, illuminating the features of the former, briefly washing away the holosuit effect of the latter. Josef fell without a sound, a few of the accouterments on his weapons belt detaching with the impact, seeming to pop right out of his body as they passed through the holosuit image and landed on the pavement.

Everyone dropped then, including Broohnin. Kanya was the exception. She dove into the midst of the squad of guardsmen and began to wreak incredible havoc-punching, kicking, swirling, dodging, making it impossible for them to fire at her for fear of blasting a fellow guardsman. Broohnin found himself in sole possession of his blaster again. Stafford had rolled on top of his wife and both had their hands clasped protectively and uselessly over their heads. He was about to put an end to the pilot's threat once and for all when something on the pavement caught his eye.

A white disc with a small red button at its center lay beside Josef's inert form. Broohnin could not tell how badly the Flinter was hurt, or even if he were still alive, because of the camouflaging effect of the holosuit. There was no pool of blood around him, but then there seldom was much bleeding from a blaster wound due to the cauterizing effect of the heat. Deciding to risk it, he crawled over to Josef on his belly, reached for the disc, then began to crawl away. A glance over his shoulder revealed that Kanya had just about disposed of the entire squad, so he rose to his feet and sprinted in the other direction, into the safety of the darkness down the street.

With the disc in his left hand and the blaster in his right, Broohnin ran as fast as his pumping legs would carry him, through back alleys, across vacant lots, changing streets, altering direction, but always heading away from the center of town, away from Imperium Park and the Imperium Complex that surrounded it. He no longer needed LaNague or the Flinters or anyone else. The destruction of the Imperium was clutched in his left hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Josef dead?” LaNague wanted to scream. The quiet, pensive man who had been with him for nearly five years, who was walking death down to his finger tips and yet so gentle and peace loving at heart, was dead. It was easy to think of Flinters as nothing more than killing machines, living weapons with no personalities, no identities. Yet they were all individuals, philosophically sophisticated, profoundly moral in their own way, human, mortal…

“How?”

Calmly, briefly, Kanya explained it to him, her face on the vidscreen displaying no trace of emotion. Flinters were like that: emotions were not for public display; she would suffer her grief in private later.

“I tried to bring his body back to the warehouse for storage until it could be returned home,” she concluded, “but there was no access. They have the building surrounded-on the street level and in the air, with infra-red monitors every twenty meters. I could not approach without being detected.”

“Poor Josef,” LaNague said, his mind still rebelling at the news of his death. “I'm so sorry, Kanya.” He watched her on the screen. How do you comfort a Flinter? He wished he could put an arm around her, knew there would be no steel or stone beneath his hand, but soft, yielding flesh. He sensed her grief. He wanted to pull her head down to his shoulder and let her cry it out. But that would never happen, even if she were standing next to him. Absolute emotional control was an integral part of Flinter rearing. A being skilled in a hundred, a thousand, ways of killing could not allow emotions to rule, ever.

Kanya was demonstrating that control now as she spoke. “Didn't you hear me? You're trapped. We've got to get you out.”

LaNague shook his head. “I know what's going on outside. I've been watching. I'll wait for them here…no resistance. How's the pilot?”

“He and his wife are safe with Mora.”

“And Broohnin? Is he safe where he can cause no more trouble?”

Kanya's face darkened for an instant; lightning flashed in her eyes. “Not yet. But he will be soon.”

LaNague stiffened involuntarily. “What aren't you telling me, Kanya?”

“Josef is dead because of Broohnin,” she said flatly. “If he had not delayed us at the pilot's apartment, we would have been gone before the squad of Imperial Guard arrived. Even after we were halted in front of the building, if he had followed directions and stood quietly, there would have been no shooting. Josef would be alive and beside me now.”

“Let him go, Kanya. He can only harm himself now. You can settle with him later when your grief is not so fresh.”

“No.”

“Kanya, you pledged yourself to my service until the revolution was over.”

“He must be found immediately.”

LaNague had an uneasy feeling that Kanya was still not telling him everything. “Why? Why immediately?”

“We dishonored ourselves,” she said, her eyes no longer meeting his. “We circumvented your authority by planting a fail-safe device in Imperium Park.”

LaNague closed his eyes. He didn't need this. “What sort of device?” He had a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer.

“A Barsky box.”

Just what he had feared. “How big? What's the radius of the displacement field?”

“Three kilometers.”

“Oh no!” LaNague's eyes were open again, and he could see that Kanya's were once more ready to meet them. “Didn't you trust me?”

“There was always the chance that you might fail, that the Imperium would reassert control, or that Earth would move in faster than anyone anticipated. We had to have a means to ensure final destruction.”

“But a radius that size could possibly disrupt Throne's crust to the point where there'd be global cataclysm!”

“Either way, the Imperium or the Earthie conquerors who replaced it would no longer be a threat.”

“But at a cost of millions of lives! The whole purpose of this revolution is to save lives!”

“And we've cooperated! The device was only to be used in the event of your failure. A new Imperium or an Earth takeover would inevitably lead to an invasion of Flint as well as Tolive. I do not know about your planet, but no one on Flint will ever submit to outside rule. Every single one of us would die defending our planet. That would be a cost of millions of lives! Flinter lives! We prefer to see millions die on Throne. We will never allow anything to threaten our way of life. Never!”

LaNague held up his hands to stop her. “All right! We'll have this out later. What's it all got to do with Broohnin?”

“There were two triggers to the device. Broohnin now has one of them.”

LaNague sat for a long, silent moment. Then: “Find him.”

“I will.”

“But how? He could be anywhere.”

“All the triggers are equipped with tracers in the event they're lost. No matter where he goes, I'll be able to locate him.”

“He's crazy, Kanya. He'll set that thing off just for the fun of it. He's got to be stopped.” After another silence, shorter this time: “Why couldn't you have trusted me?”

“No plan, no matter how carefully wrought, is infallible. You have made miscalculations.”

LaNague's heated response was reflexive. “Where? When? Aren't we right on schedule? Isn't everything going according to plan?”

“Was Josef's death in the plan?”

“If you had trusted me a little more,” he said, hiding the searing pain those words caused him, “we wouldn't have this threat hanging over our heads now.”

“If you hadn't insisted on keeping Broohnin around against the advice of everyone else concerned-”

“We needed him at first. And…and I thought I could change him…bring him around.”

“You failed. And Josef is dead because of it.”

“I'm sorry, Kanya.”

“So am I,” the Flinter woman replied coldly. “But I'll see to it that he causes no further harm.” Her shoulders angled as she reached for the control switch on her vid.

“Don't kill him,” LaNague said. “He's been through a lot with us…helped us. And after all, he didn't actually fire the blast that killed Josef.”

Kanya's face flashed up briefly, inscrutably, then her image faded. LaNague slumped back in his chair. She had a right to hate him as much as she did Broohnin. He was responsible, ultimately, for Josef's death. He was responsible for all of Broohnin's folly, and for his eventual demise at Kanya's hands should she decide to kill him. She could certainly feel justified in exacting her vengeance…Broohnin seemed to be acting like a mad dog.

All his fault, really. All of it. How had he managed to be so stupid? He and Broohnin had shared a common goal-the downfall of the Imperium. He had thought that could lead to greater common ground. Yet it hadn't, and it was too clear now that there had never been the slimmest hope of that happening. There was no true common ground. Never had been.

Never could be.

At first he had likened the differences between Broohnin and himself to the differences between Flinters and Tolivians. Both cultures had started out with a common philosophy, Kyfho, and had a common goal, absolute individual sovereignty. Yet the differences were now so great. Tolivians preferred to back away from a threat, to withdraw to a safer place, to fight only when absolutely necessary: leave us alone or we'll move away. The Flinters had a bolder approach; although threatening no one, they were willing to do battle at the first sign of aggression against them: leave us alone or else. Yet the two cultures had worked well together, now that Tolive had finally decided to fight.

He had once thought a similar rapprochement possible with Broohnin; had at one point actually considered the possibility of convincing Broohnin to surrender himself to the Imperium as Robin Hood, just as LaNague was about to do.

He smiled ruefully to himself. Had he been a fool, or had he deluded himself into believing what was safest and most convenient to believe? In truth, he wished someone-anyone-else were sitting here now in this empty warehouse waiting for the Imperial Guard to break in and arrest him. The thought of giving himself over to the Imperium, of prison, locked in a cell, trapped…it made him shake. Yet it had to be done…one more thing that had to be done…Another part of the plan, the most important part. And he could ask no one else to take his place.

Wouldn't be long now. He slid his chair into the middle of the bare expanse of the warehouse floor and sat, his hands folded calmly before him, presenting an image of utter peace and tranquility. The officers in charge of the search-and-seizure force would be doing their best to whip their men up to a fever pitch. After all, they were assaulting the stronghold of the notorious Robin Hood, and there was no telling what lay in store for them within.

LaNague sat motionless and waited, assuming a completely nonthreatening pose. He didn't want anyone to do anything rash.

“IT IS UTTERLY IMPERATIVE that he be taken alive. Is that clear? Every task assigned to the Imperial Guard today has been a catastrophic failure. This is a final chance for the Guard to prove its worth. If you fail this time, there may not be another chance-for any of us!”

Haworth paused in his tirade, hoping he was striking the right chord. He had threatened, he had cajoled; if he had thought tears would work, he'd have somehow dredged them up. He had to get across to Commander Tinmer the crucial nature of what they were about to do.

“If the man inside is truly Robin Hood, and the warehouse is his base of operations-and all indications are that it may very well be-he must be taken alive, and every scrap of evidence that links him with Robin Hood must be collected and brought in with him. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: he must be taken alive, even at the risk of Guard lives.”

Lacking anything more to say, or a clearer, more forceful way of saying it, Haworth let Tinmer, who had taken personal command of the Robin Hood capture mission, fade from the screen. He turned to Metep and found him deep in drugged sleep in his chair, an empty gas vial on the floor beside him.

Haworth shook his head in disgust as he found his own chair and sank into it. Metep VII, elected leader of the Outworld Imperium, was falling apart faster than his domain. And with good reason. He, Haworth, and the other powers within the Imperium had spent their lives trying to mold out-world society along the lines of their own vision, no matter how the clay protested. And had been largely successful. After establishing a firm power base, they had been on the verge of achieving a level of control at which they could influence virtually every facet of out-world life. It was a heady brew, that kind of power. One taste led to a craving for more…and more.

Now it was all being taken away. And Jek Milian, so at home in his powerful role as Metep, was suffering acute withdrawal. The Imperium had gradually stolen control of the out-worlds from the people who lived on them, and now that control was, in turn, being stolen from it. Everything was going crazy. Why? Had it all been circumstance, or had it been planned this way? Haworth bristled at the idea that some individual or some group had been able to disrupt so completely everything he had striven to build. He wanted to believe that it had all been circumstance-needed to believe it.

And yet…there was a feather-light sensation at the far end of his mind, an ugly worm of an idea crawling around in the dark back there that whispered conspiracy… events had followed too direct a pattern…conspiracy… situations that should have taken years to gestate were coming to term in weeks or months…conspiracy… and every damaging event or detrimental situation consistently occurring at the worst possible time, always synergistically potentiating the ill effect of the previous event…conspiracy…

If it were conspiracy, there was only one possible agent: the man who had mocked the Imperium, derided it, made it look foolish time after time, and eluded capture at every turn-Robin Hood.

And it was possible-just possible-that the man or men known as Robin Hood would be in custody tonight. That bothered him a little. Why now? Why, when it looked as if all was lost, did they get a tip on the whereabouts of Robin Hood? Was this yet another part of the conspiracy against the Imperium?

He slammed his hand against the armrest of his chair. That was not a healthy thought trend. That sort of thinking left you afraid to act. If you began to see everything as conspiracy, if you thought every event was planned and calculated to manipulate you, you wound up in a state of paralysis. No…Robin Hood had finally made a mistake. One of his minions had had a falling out with him or had become otherwise disaffected and had betrayed him. That was it.

Tonight, if all went right, if the Imperial Guard didn't make fools of themselves again-he shook his head here, still unwilling to believe that the probe pilot had slipped through their fingers twice in one day-he would face Robin Hood. And then he would know if it had all been planned. If true, that very fact could be turned to the Imperium's advantage. He would not only know whom and what he was fighting against and how they had managed to get the best of him, but he would have undeniable proof that the blame for the current chaos did not lie with the Imperium. He would have a scapegoat-the Imperium badly needed one.

Robin Hood was his last chance to turn aside the tide of rage welling up around the Imperium. He had apparently lost the probe pilot as a possible source of distraction. Only Robin Hood was left to save them all from drowning. And only if taken alive. Dead, he was a martyr…useless.

THE DOORS BLEW OPEN with a roar that reverberated through the empty warehouse. Imperial Guardsmen charged in through the clouds of settling dust and fanned out efficiently in all directions. So intent were they on finding snipers and booby traps that LaNague went temporarily unnoticed. It wasn't long before he became the center of attention, however.

“Who are you?” said someone who appeared to be an officer. He aimed his hand weapon at the middle of LaNague's forehead as he spoke, making this the second time in one day he had been at the wrong end of a blaster.

“The name is LaNague. Peter LaNague. And I'm alone here.” He held his palms flat against his thighs to keep his hands from shaking, and worked at keeping his voice steady. He refused to show the terror that gnawed at him from within.

“This your place?”

“Not exactly. I lease it.”

An excited young guardsman ran up to the first. “This is the place, sir. No doubt about it!”

“What've you found?”

“High speed duplicators, stacks of various issues of The Robin Hood Reader, and boxes full of those little cards that were dropped with the money. Plus a dozen or so holosuits. Should we try one on to see what kind of image we get?”

“I doubt that will be necessary,” the officer said, then turned to LaNague. The other members of the unduly large assault force were slowly clustering around as their commander asked the question that was on everyone's mind: “Are you Robin Hood?”

LaNague nodded. His throat was tight, as if unwilling to admit it. Finally: “I go by that name now and then.”

An awed murmur rustled through the ranks of the guardsmen like wind through a forest. The officer silenced his command with a quick, angry glare.

“You are under arrest for crimes against the Imperium,” he told LaNague. “Where are the rest of your followers?”

LaNague looked directly into the officer's eyes. “Look around you.”

He did, and saw only his own troops, each struggling to peek over the other's shoulder or to push his way to the front for a glimpse of the man who was Robin Hood. And suddenly the meaning was clear.

“To your posts!” the commander barked. “Start packing up the evidence immediately!”

After the duty assignments were given, the officer turned the task of overseeing the warehouse end of the operation to a subordinate while he took personal command of a squad of Guard to lead LaNague back to the Imperium Complex.

In a state of self-induced emotional anesthesia, LaNague allowed himself to be led away. Fighting off a sudden awful feeling that he would never return, he cast a final backward glance and saw that every guardsman in the building had stopped what he was doing to watch Robin Hood's exit.

FINALLY! FINALLY SOMETHING had gone right!

“And there's proof?” Haworth said. “Incontestable proof?”

Tinmer beamed as he spoke. “Ten times more than any jury could want.”

“He'll never see a jury. But how do we know he's the Robin Hood, not just one of his lackeys? I'm sure he gave you a good story as to why he happened to be there.”

“Not at all. He admitted it. Said straight out he was Robin Hood.”

The elated tingle of victory that had been coursing along every nerve fiber in Haworth's body suddenly slowed, faltered.

“Freely?”

“Yes! Said his name was Peter LaNague and that he had authored the flyers and planned the raids. According to the census computer, though, he doesn't exist. None of his identity factors match with anyone on Throne.”

“Which means he's from one of the other out-worlds.”

“Or Earth.”

Haworth doubted that, especially now that he remembered a certain weapon used to save Metep VII's life almost five years ago, about the same time The Robin Hood Reader began to appear. A weapon made on Flint. Things were fitting together at last.

“Check with the other planets-the ones still speaking to us. And with Earth.” Haworth knew the replies would all be negative, but decided to keep Tinmer busy.

“You going to interrogate him now?”

Haworth hesitated here. The prisoner probably expected to be hustled into the Complex and immediately filled with drugs to make him talk. Let him wait instead, Haworth thought. Let him spend the night in one of those claustrophobic cells wondering when the interrogation would begin. He'd lie awake wondering while Haworth caught up on some much needed rest.

“Throw him in maximum security and tell your men not to be too rough on him. I want him able to talk in the morning.”

“That won't be a problem.” Tinmer's expression was grim and dour. “They've been treating him like a visiting dignitary, like a V.I.P., like…like an officer!”

Haworth again felt a twinge of anxiety, a chill, as if someone had briefly opened and closed a door to the night air. It wasn't right for the Guard to give the man who had outrun and outfoxed them all these years such treatment. They should hate him, they should want to get even. Apparently they didn't. Inappropriate behavior, to be sure. But why did it bother him so? He broke the connection and slowly turned away from the set.

Haworth didn't bother attempting to rouse Metep to tell him the news. Tomorrow he'd be in much better shape to deal with it. He was tired. It had been a long, harrowing day and fatigue was beginning to get the best of him. There was no chance for Robin Hood…no…stop calling him that. He was Peter LaNague now. He had a name just like everybody else; time to start de-mythifying this character. There was no chance for Peter LaNague to escape from the max-sec area. What Haworth needed now was sleep. A dose of one of the stims would keep him going, but beyond cosmetics he didn't approve of artificial means to anything where his body was concerned. The closest he got to a drug was the alpha cap he wore at night. It guaranteed him whatever length of restful slumber he desired, taking him up and down through the various levels of sleep during the set period, allowing him to awaken on schedule, ready to function at his peak.

Despite his fatigue, Daro Haworth's step was light as he strode toward his temporary quarters in the Imperium Complex. Members of the Council of Five and other higher-ups had been moved into the Complex last month, ostensibly to devote all their efforts to curing the ills that afflicted the Imperium, but in reality to escape the marauding bands wandering the countryside, laying siege to the luxury homes and estates occupied by the Imperium's top-level bureaucrats. He would not mind the cramped quarters at all tonight. For tomorrow evening, after six hours under the cap, he'd be fresh and ready to face Ro-No! Peter LaNague.

AFTER AN HOUR IN THE CELL, LaNague had to admit that it really wasn't so bad. Perhaps his quaking terror at the thought of prison had been an overreaction. Everything had been routine: the trip to the Imperium Complex and the walk to the maximum security section had been uneventful; the recording of his fingerprints, retinal patterns, and the taking of skin and blood samples for genotyping had all gone smoothly. Only his entry into the max-sec cell block had held a surprise.

The prison grapevine was obviously better informed than even the established news media. The public was as yet completely unaware of his capture, but as soon as he set foot on the central walkway between the three tiers of cells, a loud, prolonged, raucous cheer arose from the inmates. They thrust their arms through the bars on their cages, stretching to the limit to touch him, to grab his hand, to slap him on the back. Most could not reach him, but the meaning was clear: even in the maximum security section of the Imperium Complex, the area on Throne most isolated from the daily events of the world outside, Robin Hood was known…and loved.

Not exactly the segment of Throne society I've been aiming at, LaNague thought as he took his place in a bottom tier solo cell, watching the bars rise from the floor and ooze down from the ceiling, mechanical stalagmites and stalactites in a manmade cave. They met and locked together in front of him at chest level.

After his escort departed, LaNague was bombarded with questions from all directions. He answered a few, evaded most, remaining completely unambiguous only about identifying himself as Robin Hood, which he freely admitted to anyone who asked. Feigning fatigue, he retired to the rear of his cell and lay in the wall recess with his eyes closed.

Silence soon returned to the max-sec block as the celebrity's arrival was quickly accepted and digested. Conversation was not an easy thing here. Max-sec was reserved for psychopaths, killers, rapists, and habitually violent criminals…and now for enemies of the state. These breeds of criminal had to be isolated, separated from the rest of the prisoners as well as the rest of society. Each was given a solitary cell, a synthestone box with five unbroken surfaces, open only at the front where bars closed from above and below like a gaptooth grin, separating them from the central walkway and from each other.

There was no chance of escape, no hope of rescue. LaNague had known that when he called in the tip that led to his arrest. The walls were too thick to be blown without killing those inside. There was only one exit from the section and it was protected by a close mesh of extremely tight ultrasonic beams. No human going through one bank of those beams could maintain consciousness long enough to take two steps. And there were five banks. Should there be any general disturbance in the max-sec block, another system would bathe the entire area with inaudible, consciousness-robbing sound, forcing a half-hour nap on everyone.

LaNague didn't want to get out just yet anyway. He had to sit and hope that Metep and the Council of Five would play into his hands…and hope that Sayers would be able to play one of those recordings on the air…and hope that the populace would respond. So many variables. Too many, perhaps. He had shredded the out-worlders’ confidence in the Imperium, now he had to mend it, but in a different weave, a different cut, a radical style. Could he do it?

Somewhere inside of him was a cold knot of fear and doubt that said no one could do it.

LaNague had almost dozed off-he had a talent for that, no matter what the circumstances-when he heard footsteps on the walkway. They stopped outside his cell and he peered cautiously out of his recess toward the bars. One of the prison guards stood there, a flat, square container balanced on his upturned palm. LaNague gently eased his left hand into his right axilla, probing until he found the tiny lump under the skin. He desperately hoped he would not have to squeeze it now.

“You hungry?” the guard said as he caught sight of LaNague's face in the darkness of the recess.

Sliding to the floor and warily approaching the front of the cell, LaNague said, “A little.”

“Good.” The guard tapped a code into the box attached to his waist, a code LaNague knew was changed three times a day. The central bar at the front of his cell suddenly snapped in two at its middle, the top half rising, the bottom sinking until about twenty centimeters separated the ends. After passing the container through the opening, the guard tapped his box again and the two bars approximated and merged again.

It was a food tray. LaNague activated the heating element and set it aside. “I would have thought the kitchen was closed.”

“It is.” The guard smiled. He was tall, lean, his uniform ill-fitting. “But not for you.”

“Why's that?” LaNague was immediately suspicious. “Orders from on high?”

The guard grunted. “Not likely! No, we were all sitting around thinking what a dirty thing it was to put someone like you in with these guys-I mean, most of them have killed at least one person; and if not, it wasn't for not trying. They'd kill again, too, given the chance. We can't even let them near each other, let alone decent people. A guy like you just doesn't belong here. I mean, you didn't kill anybody-or even hurt anybody-all these years. All you did was make the big boys look stupid and spread the money around afterwards so everybody could have a good time. We don't think you belong here, Mr. Robin Hood, and although we can't do much about getting you out of max-sec, we'll make sure nobody gives you any trouble while you're in here.”

“Thank you,” LaNague said, touched. “Do you always second-guess your superiors this way?”

After a moment of thought: “No, come to think of it. You're the first prisoner I ever gave a second thought to. I always figured you-you know, Robin Hood-were crazy. I mean, dropping that money and all. I never got any. My sister did once, but I work the night shift so l never had a chance. Did read that flyer of yours though…that really seemed crazy at the time, but from what I've seen lately, I know you're not crazy. Never were. It's everybody else that's crazy.”

He seemed surprised and somewhat abashed at what he had just said. He gestured to the tray, which had started to steam. “Better eat that while it's hot.” As LaNague turned away, the guard moved closer to the bars and spoke again. “One more thing…I'm not supposed to do this, but-” He thrust his open right hand between the bars.

LaNague grasped it and shook it firmly. “What's your name?”

“Steen. Chars Steen.”

“Glad to know you, Steen.”

“Not as glad as I am to know you!” He turned and quickly strode toward the exit at the end of the walkway.

LaNague stood and looked at the tray for a while, moved by the small but significant gesture of solidarity from the guards. Perhaps he had touched people more deeply than he realized. Sitting down before the tray, he lifted the lid. He really wasn't hungry, but made himself eat. After all, it was a gift.

He managed to swallow a few bites, but had to stop when Mora drifted through his mind. Since his arrest he had been doing his best to fend off the thought of her, but lost the battle now. She would be learning of his capture soon, hopefully not from the vid. Telling her beforehand would have been impossible. Mora would have done everything in her power to stop him; failing that, she would have tried to be arrested along with him, despite the way he had been treating her.

A short spool had been left explaining everything…a rotten way to do it, but the only way. With his appetite gone, he scraped the remaining contents of the tray into the commode and watched them swirl away, then crawled back into the recess and forced himself to sleep. It was better than thinking about what Mora was going through.

“HOW COULD YOU let him do it?” Mora's voice was shrill, her gestures frantic as she twisted in her seat trying to find a comfortable position. There was none. Her mind had been reeling from the news about Josef-now this!

“How could I stop him?” Radmon Sayers said defensively as he stood before her in the LaNague apartment. He had waited until the pilot and his wife had fallen asleep in the other room, then had put on the spool and let LaNague explain it himself.

“Someone else could have gone! One of his loyal”-she hated herself for the way she snarled the word-“followers could have taken his place! No one in the Imperium knows what Robin Hood looks like!”

“He didn't feel he could allow anyone else to be placed in custody as the most wanted man in the out-worlds. And frankly, I respect that decision.”

Mora sank back in her chair and nodded reluctantly. It was unfair of her to castigate Sayers, or to call into question the courage of any of the Merry Men. She knew Peter-although with the way he had been behaving since her arrival on Throne, perhaps not as well as she had thought. But he had never been good at asking favors of anyone, even a simple favor that was due him. He preferred to take care of it himself and get it out of the way rather than impose on anyone. So the idea of asking someone else to risk his life posing as Robin Hood would have been completely beyond him.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbled through a sigh. “It's just that I had the distinct impression he had someone else in mind as the public's Robin Hood.”

“That may have been a calculated effect for your benefit.”

“Maybe. What are we supposed to do now?”

Sayers fished in his pocket and came up with three vid spools. “We wait for an opportunity to play one of these over the air.”

“What's on them?” Mora asked, rising from her seat.

“Your husband…making an appeal to the people of Throne to choose between Metep and Robin Hood.”

“Are they any good? Will they convince anyone?” She didn't like the expression on Sayers’ face.

“I can't say.” He kept his eyes on the spools in his hand. “A lot of the public's acceptance will depend on the fact that he's been identified as Robin Hood. The news bulletins should be breaking just about now, although hardly anybody's watching. But all of Throne will know by breakfast.”

“Play one for me.”

“There's three, one for each of the contingencies he thought possible.”

“Play them all.”

Sayers plugged them into the apartment holovid set, one after another. Mora watched with growing dismay, an invisible hand making a fist with her heart in the middle, gripping it tighter and tighter until she was sure it must stop beating. Peter's messages to the people of Throne were beautifully precise and well reasoned. They pointed out the velvet-gloved tyranny of the Imperium, and the inevitable consequences. No one living in the economic holocaust engulfing Throne could deny the truth of what he said. He appealed on the grounds of principle and pragmatism. But there was some vital element missing.

“He's doomed,” Mora said in a voice that sounded as hollow as she felt. The third spool had just finished throwing out its holographic image of Peter LaNague, alias Robin Hood, sitting at a desk and calmly telling whoever might be listening to rise up and put an end to the Outworld Imperium once and for all.

Sayers puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly. “That's what I told him when we recorded these. But he wouldn't listen.”

“No…of course he wouldn't. He expects everyone in the galaxy to respond to pure reason, now that he's finally got their attention.” She gestured toward the vid set. “A Tolivian or a Flinter would understand and respond fiercely to any one of those spools. But the people of Throne?”

She went to the window. Pierrot sat on the sill, drooping heavily over the edge of his pot in the morose kengai configuration. She had watered the tree, spoken to it, but nothing she did brought it upright again. She looked beyond to the dark empty streets awaiting dawn, and thought about Peter. He had become a different man since leaving Tolive-cold, distant, preoccupied, even ruthless. But those spools…they were the work of a fool!

“Why didn't he listen to you, or check with me, or take somebody's advice? Those spools are dry, pedantic, didactic, and emotionally flat. They may get a good number of people nodding their heads and agreeing in the safety of their homes, but they won't get them out in the street, running and shaking their fists in the air and screaming at the tops of their lungs for an end to Metep and his rotten Imperium.” She whirled and faced Sayers. “They won't work!”

“They're all we've got.”

Mora saw the three spools sitting in a row beside the vid set. With one swift motion she snatched them up, hurled them into the dissociator in the corner, and activated it.

Sayers leaped forward, but too late. “No!” He stared at her in disbelief. “Do you realize what you've done? Those were the only copies!”

“Good. Now we'll have to think of something else.” She paused. It had been necessary to destroy the spools. As long as they remained intact, Sayers would have felt duty-bound to find a way to broadcast them. But with them now gone beyond any hope of retrieval, he was free to act on his own-and to listen to her. Mora had already concocted a variation on Peter's basic plan. But she would need help-Flinter help. With Josef dead and Kanya gone she knew not where, Mora would have to turn to other Flinters. They were available, filtering down in a steady stream over the past few weeks, setting up isolated enclaves, waiting for the time when their services would be needed. Mora knew where to find them.

HE WAS ALMOST THERE. Gasping for breath, Broohnin stopped on a rise and looked back at the dim glow that was Primus City. Last year it would have lit up half the sky at this distance, but with gloglobes fast becoming an endangered species on its streets, the city was a faint ghost of its former self. He sat down for a moment and scanned the terrain behind him, watching for any sign of movement as his lungs caught up to his body.

After a long moment of intense scrutiny, he was satisfied. His eyes were adjusted to the darkness and he saw no one on his trail, not even an animal. He had come a long way; his muscles were protesting as much now as they had on the Earth jaunt. He had allowed himself to get soft again…but he had to push on. A little farther out from the city and he'd feel safe.

The trigger was still in his hand, although the activating button was locked. No problem there…not many small locks could stand for long against his years of experience in bypassing them. He bet it wasn't even a true lock…the trigger was most likely protected by a simple safety mechanism. When he reached a spot he considered safe, he was sure he could release it with a minimum of ado.

Heaving himself again to his feet, he forced his protesting muscles onward. Not far now. Not too much longer. Then it was good-by Imperium. He had originally planned to hold the trigger back, use it as a trump card in his continuing battle with LaNague. But that was out of the question now. Somewhere along the path of his flight from Primus he had stopped to rest in an all-night tavern near the city limits. He could have used an ale but there was none to be had. As it was, nearly all of his cash went for a small wedge of cheese anyway. It was in the tavern that he learned of Robin Hood's arrest.

At first he thought it was a hoax or a mistake, but the face that filled the projection field of the tavern's holovid was LaNague's. Caught him red-handed, they said, and were holding him under heavy guard in the Imperium Complex. Broohnin had rushed out of the tavern then, continuing his flight from Primus at full speed.

The revolution was over. Without LaNague to direct things, it would sputter and stall and die. Broohnin hated to admit it, but the ugly truth wouldn't go away: only LaNague had the power to marshal the various forces necessary to bring the tottering Imperium all the way down. Only he had the authority to command the Flinters and who-knew-what-other resources. Only he knew what the final phase of the revolution was to be.

Broohnin had nothing except the trigger for the giant Barsky box he had seen buried in Imperium Park. That would be enough to literally decapitate the Imperium by sending Imperium Park and the entire Imperium Complex surrounding it to some unspecified point in time and space. Wherever it ended up, Broohnin was sure it would be far from Throne. Everyone within the Complex-Metep, the entire Council of Five, all the myriad petty bureaucrats-along with a few early risers in the park, would vanish without a trace, without warning.

He had an urge to stop where he was, find the way to release the trigger, and activate the box now. But that might mean a less than completely satisfactory result. He had to wait until mid-morning when the Complex was acrawl with all the lice that kept the huge bureaucracy functioning. To destroy the Imperium Complex before then was to risk missing a key person, perhaps Metep himself.

He'd have to wait, and wait out here, far from the city. Much as he would have loved to see the Complex and all it represented flash from view and existence, he preferred to keep a safe distance between himself and the event, and stroll into Primus later to see the open pit where the Imperium had been.

He smiled as he thought of something else: he would also be looking at the spot where Peter LaNague had been.

HAWORTH AWAKENED with a start. The vidphone had activated the auto shut-off in his alpha cap, thrusting him immediately up to consciousness. He pulled it off and leaned over to activate the receiver. He would accept the call once he saw who was on the other end.

“Daro!” It was Jek. Metep VII had finally come out of his stupor. “Daro, you there?”

Haworth keyed in his transmitter so Metep could see and hear his chief adviser. “Yes, Jek, I'm here. What is it?”

“Why wasn't I told of the Robin Hood capture immediately?” His manner was haughty, his voice cold. He was in one of his Why-wasn't-I-consulted-first moods, a recurrent state of whenever he felt that Haworth and the council were making too many independent decisions. Fortunately, they were short lived.

“You were sitting not two meters away from me when the word came.” He kept his tone light but drove his point home quickly and cleanly: “Trouble was, you weren't conscious.”

“I should have been awakened! It had been a long day and I was dozing, waiting for the news. I should have been told immediately!”

Haworth looked closely at Metep's image. This was not the anticipated reaction. A quick comment about Jek's overindulgence in one gas or another was usually sufficient to deflate him, eliciting a nervous laugh and a change of subject. But this was something new. He seemed to have puffed up his self-importance beyond the usual level, to a point where he was impervious to casual barbs. That worried Haworth.

“Well, that's not important,” he said easily. “What really matters is…”

“It is important. It is of paramount importance that Metep be kept apprised of all developments, especially where enemies of the state are concerned. I should have been awakened immediately. Precious time has already been wasted.”

“I'm sorry, Jek. It won't happen again.” What's he been sniffing now? Haworth wondered. Acts like he thinks he's really running things! “I'm going to get the interrogation procedures started as soon as I've had some breakfast. After we've learned all we can from him, we'll have a quiet little trial and have done with him.”

“We can't wait that long!” Metep said, his vocal pitch rising, his lips twitching. “He must be tried and convicted today! And in public. I've already made arrangements for proceedings in Freedom Hall this afternoon.”

The same odd sensation that Haworth had experienced last night upon learning that the prisoner had freely admitted to being Robin Hood, and again when told of the deferential treatment given him by the Guard, came over him again. He could almost hear the crash, feel the vibrations as giant tumblers within some huge, unseen cosmic lock fell into place one by one.

“No! That's the worst thing you could do. This man has already become some sort of folk hero. Don't give him the extra exposure.”

Metep sneered. “Ridiculous. He's a common criminal and his own notoriety will be used against him.” His face suddenly softened and he was the old Jek Milian again. “Don't you see, Daro? He's my last chance to save my reputation! We have evidence aplenty that he's Robin Hood; we just have to manufacture a little more to link him to Earth and blame him for this runaway inflation that's ruining everything. He'll get us all off the hook.”

“I'm calling a meeting of the council,” Haworth said. “I can't let you do this.”

“I thought you'd say that!” Hard lines formed in Metep's features once more. “So I did that myself. If you think you can get enough votes to override me, you're wrong!” His face faded away.

BROOHNIN AWOKE COLD AND STIFF with the light. After an instant of disorientation, he remembered his circumstances. He had been running on stims the past few days, and had left the city with none on him. The crash had come before dawn, and now the sun glowered hazily from its mid-morning perch in the sky.

Pulling himself erect, he immediately reached for the trigger. Wouldn't be long now. Everything had gone wrong and got pushed off the track. But now everything was going to be set right. A brief inspection in the light of day showed the safety mechanism to be of rudimentary construction, geared more toward the prevention of accidental firing than determined tampering. Easy to circumvent it. He'd just have to-

The trigger disappeared from his hands in a blur of motion. Broohnin whirled around as best he could from a sitting position, pulling his blaster out as he moved. That too was torn from his grasp as soon as it cleared his belt. When he saw who was behind him, all his sphincters let go in an uncontrolled rush.

Kanya dropped the trigger device and blaster at her feet and struck him across the face, sending him reeling into the dirt. As he tried to scramble to his feet and run away, she tripped him and knocked him sprawling again. Each time Broohnin caught a glimpse of her face it was the same: expressionless, emotionless, with neither anger nor mercy in her eyes, only cold, intense concentration. And silent. She uttered no sound as she hovered over him like an avenging angel of death.

With each attempt to rise, she would knock him flat again, bruising a new area of his body with unerring accuracy. He pleaded with her at first, but she might as well have been deaf. He gave that up soon. And when he gave up trying to escape her, she began to lift him up and hurl him against the ground or a boulder or a tree trunk. Always hurting him, always damaging him, always increasing the agony a little more each time. Yet never enough to cause him to lose consciousness. He became a broken-stringed marionette in the hands of a mad puppeteer, hurled limply from stage right to stage left.

Soon his eyes were swollen shut, and even if he had wanted to look at Kanya, he would have been unable to. And still the systematic beating continued. When he had seen her drop the blaster before she hit him the first time, Broohnin had been afraid Kanya intended to beat him to death. Now he was afraid she wouldn't.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

One look at the expressions on the faces around the table and Haworth knew he was wasting his time. The members of the council were disposed toward Jek in the first place, not only because he was the current Metep, but because they considered him one of their own. Haworth had always been an outsider. They were as frightened and confused as Jek, and he had their ear. So the Council of Five-sans Daro Haworth-was squarely behind Metep VII. He considered turning at the doorway and leaving them to approve Metep's proposal blindly, but forced himself to enter. He had to try. He had spent too many years clawing his way up to his present position to let everything go without a fight.

“Now that we're all here,” Metep said as soon as Haworth had crossed the threshold, “the question will be brought to a vote.” He wasn't even going to wait until Haworth was seated.

“Isn't there going to be any discussion?”

“We have discussed it,” Metep said, “and we've decided, all of us, that a speedy public trial is the only sensible course. Documents are at this moment being prepared to show incontrovertible proof of Robin Hood's link with Earth. We'll show that Earth hired him and financed him, and even show that it was his theft of millions upon millions of Imperial marks that sparked the whole inflation spiral. And to demonstrate to the people that I am still their leader-a strong leader-I will personally conduct the trial.”

Haworth sat down before answering. “Did it ever occur to any of you that this may be exactly what he wants you to do?”

Over rumbling comments of “Ridiculous!” and “Absurd!” Metep said, “No man in his right mind would turn himself over to us for trial. And I think you'll have to admit that this Robin Hood fellow-LaNague, isn't it? — is hardly insane. Nor is he stupid.”

“Nor is he Robin Hood.” The chatter stopped. Haworth had their attention now.

“He admits to it!”

Haworth smiled. “Very well: I'll admit to it, too, But that doesn't mean I'm Robin Hood. And one of Robin Hood's so-called Merry Men could have volunteered to stand in for him. Remember, we don't have a single physical characteristic by which to identify Robin Hood. I'm willing to bet this man Peter LaNague is a fraud. I'm willing to bet he's been planted here just to make fools of us, to make us convict him and sentence him in public; and then he'll come up with evidence to prove that he wasn't even on Throne when the raids occurred. Keep in mind that there's no verifiable identity for the prisoner. We can't even prove he's someone called Peter LaNague, let alone Robin Hood!”

He watched their faces as they considered his words. He had been speaking calmly, softly, hiding his inner tension. He didn't believe a word of what he had just said, but he knew he had to stop the public trial and was throwing out every suspicious thought that popped into his head, anything that would muddy the water and keep the council members confused. He personally believed the man who called himself LaNague to be Robin Hood, and for that reason wanted him kept out of the public eye.

“But we need him to be Robin Hood!” Metep said into the ensuing silence. “He must be Robin Hood! It's the only way we can salvage anything!” His tone became plaintive. “The trial will draw attention from us to him. Discontent will focus on him and Earth. That will give us time-”

“No trial,” Haworth said firmly. “Interrogate him quietly, execute him secretly, then announce that he has been released due to conflicting evidence and that the search for the real Robin Hood continues. No public trial is going to give us breathing room of any consequence.”

“But that leaves us where we are now,” Metep said through quivering lips. “Don't you understand? They're out there getting ready to recall me! And when they kick me out, you'll all go with me!”

“You can declare martial law due to the economic crisis,” Haworth said into Metep's growing hysteria. “They can't recall you then.”

“But I don't want to be known as the only Metep who had to call out the Guard to stay in office! If I have to, I will, certainly. But the trial-”

“The trial is a trap!” Haworth was on his feet, shouting. It was a release of the pressure that had been building within him since Metep had awakened him this morning. It was also a last resort. “Can't you get it through those neutronium skulls of yours that we're dealing with a genius here? I know for certain in my mind that Robin Hood-whoever he is-is responsible for everything bad that has happened to us. I don't know how he did it, I don't know why, I don't know what his next move is, but I am certain a public trial is just what he expects of us. Don't do it! Let me interrogate him for a few days. The right combination of drugs will start him talking and then we'll know everything-perhaps even the identity of the real Robin Hood.”

He paused for breath, watching their impassive faces. “Look…I'll compromise: when I'm done with him you can have your little show if you still want it. But let me break him first.”

“It must be now. Today.” From Metep's tone, Haworth knew he was beyond persuasion. “All in favor?” Metep said, raising his right hand and not bothering to look around the table. The other four members of the council raised their hands.

Haworth wheeled and stalked toward the door. “Then it's on your heads! I'll have no part of it!”

“Where do you think you're going?” Metep asked in a flat, cold voice.

“Off this planet before you send it up in smoke!”

“Earth, perhaps?” Krager said, his lined face beaming gleefully in the wake of Haworth's defeat.

“You are under house arrest,” Metep said. “You will be confined to your Complex quarters until the trial, at which time you will be escorted to Freedom Hall with the rest of us. I knew you'd try to run out on us and cannot allow it. It is crucial that we keep up appearances of unity.”

“You can't do that!”

Metep smiled wanly as he pressed a stud on the table top. “Can't I?” The outer door cycled open and two guardsmen entered. “Take him.”

* * *

BY THE TIME the guard stopped in front of the cell, LaNague had the lump in his right axilla trapped between his thumb and forefinger, ready to squeeze.

“Well,” the guard said-this one was as portly as Steen had been lean, “the fecaliths on top must want to get you out of the way real bad, Mr. Robin Hood.”

LaNague's fingers tightened on the lump. “What makes you say that?”

“They scheduled your trial for this afternoon…in Freedom Hall. It's all over the vid.”

“Is that so?” LaNague released the lump, actually a pea-sized wad of jelly encased in an impermeable membrane, and relaxed. It was all he could do to keep from laughing aloud and doing a jig around the cell. He had dreaded the thought of squeezing that little packet, and now it looked as if he wouldn't have to. It contained a neuroleptic substance that would leak out into the surrounding subcutaneous fat when the membranes was ruptured. From there via the bloodstream it would eventually find the way to its only active site in the body, the Broca area in the left hemisphere of his brain, where it would cause a membrance dysfunction in the neurons there, effectively paralyzing his language function for two weeks. He would be incapable of verbalizing any of his thoughts; any questions asked verbally would be perceived as incoherent sound; written questions would be seen as a meaningless jumble of marks, beyond comprehension; anything he tried to write would come out the same way. The condition was known as total receptive and expressive aphasia. LaNague would be rendered incapable of giving his interrogators truth or fiction, no matter what drugs they pumped into him.

“I swear by the Core, it's the truth!” the guard said. “Never seen anybody brought to trial so fast. They're really going to make an example of you, I'm sorry to say.”

“You don't think they should?”

The guard shook his head. “You had the right idea all along, from what I can tell. But how'd you know all this was going to happen?”

“History,” LaNague said, refraining with an effort from quoting Santayana. “This has all happened before on Earth. Most of the time it ended in ruin and temporary stagnation. Occasionally it gave rise to monstrous evil. I was hoping we'd avoid both those roads this time.”

“Looks like you're not going to be around to have much say either way,” the guard said resignedly.

“What's your name?”

“Boucher. Why?”

“You could help me.”

Boucher shook his head. “Don't ask me to get you out, because I couldn't, even if I decided to risk it. It's just not possible.” He smiled. “You know, I could lose this job just for talking to you about it. Not that it would matter much. The money I get doesn't buy enough food for me to feed my kids. If it wasn't for the stuff I sneak out of the kitchen a couple of times a week, we'd starve. Imagine that-I'm getting paid a thousand marks an hour and I'm losing weight! And they missed paying us yesterday. If that happens again, we're going to start demanding twice-a-day pay periods or we'll walk. Then there'll be trouble! But no, I can't get you out. Even if I gave you my blaster, they'd stop you. They'd let you kill me before they'd let you out.”

“I don't want that kind of help. I just want you to see that I get to the trial alive.”

Boucher laughed. “No one's going to kill you, at least not until they give you the death sentence!” He sobered abruptly. “Look, I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean-”

“I know you didn't. But I'm quite serious about that. Someone may try to see that I don't get to trial…ever.”

“That's-”

“Just do this one favor for me. Get some of the other guards you know and trust, and keep careful watch. After all, I'm not asking anything more than what the Imperium pays you to do: guard a prisoner.”

Boucher's eyes narrowed. “All right. If it'll make you feel better, I'll see to it.” He walked away, glancing back over his shoulder every few paces and shaking his head as if he thought the infamous Robin Hood might be crazy after all.

LaNague wandered the perimeter of his cell. Adrenalin was pounding through his system, causing his heart to race, his underarms and palms to drip perspiration. Why? Everything was going according to plan. Why this feeling of impending doom? Why this shapeless fear that something was going to go terribly wrong? That he was going to die?

He stopped and breathed slowly and deeply, telling himself that everything was all right, that it was a stress reaction due to the swift approach of the trial. Everything would come to a head at the trial once Sayers played the designated tape sometime today, beaming Robin Hood's pre-recorded message out to the people. LaNague would then know if he had wasted the last five years. If he had, the Imperium would see to it that he had no further years left to waste.

TWELVE OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH, Mora thought. Even if the building down there were loaded with armed guards on full alert, twelve Flinters would be more than enough. As it was, according to Sayers, only a few unarmed and unsuspecting security personnel would be scattered throughout the three floors of the broadcasting station. No problem taking over.

That wasn't what filled her with dread. It was her own part in the little escapade about to be launched. Could she measure up? Maybe she shouldn't have destroyed Peter's spools. Maybe she had been overly critical of them. After all, Peter had been so right all along, why shouldn't he be right now? Mora clenched her teeth and closed her eyes in silent determination. Don't think like that! She had to follow through with this. She had burned her bridges, and the only way left was straight ahead. Peter had been wrong about those tapes and only she had had the courage to do something about them.

She glanced around at the impassive faces of the six robed figures crowded into the tiny flitter cabin with her. Six more hovered in the flitter behind. All were in full ceremonial battle dress, fully aware that their appearance alone was a most effective weapon.

The tension was making her ill. She wasn't used to this. Why did everyone else look so calm? Come to think of it, she looked calm, too. All her turmoil was sealed under her skin. She wondered if the Flinters beside her were equally knotted up inside. Probably not. No one could feel like this and be a Flinter.

It was time. The two craft swooped down to the roof of the broadcast station and the Flinters poured out of their flitters and through the upper entrance Sayers had arranged to leave open. They all had their assignments and would make certain that Mora had a clear path to her destination.

Sayers himself was in his studio on the second floor doing a well-publicized news special on Robin Hood. He had given her specific directions on how to reach his studio. The Flinters had cleared the way and no one questioned her presence in the building. She swung out of a drop-chute, turned left. There was a Flinter at the door to the studio, motioning her forward. This was it. Sayers was inside waiting to put her before millions of Throners. Her mind was suddenly blank. What was she going to say? Peter's very life depended on what she would be doing in the next few minutes.

I'm doing this for you, Peter, she thought as she crossed the threshold. Neither of us is the same person we were when this began, but right or wrong, this is my way of saying I still believe in you.

IT WAS MIDDAY WHEN BOUCHER RETURNED, hurrying down the walkway, carrying something in his hand.

“You married?” he shouted from half the length of the corridor.

Filled with an unstable mixture of curiosity and dread, LaNague hesitated. “Yes,” he finally managed to say. “Why?”

“Because somebody who says she's your wife is on the vid!” Boucher said, urging his bulky frame into a trot. “And is she going to be in trouble!” He puffed up to LaNague's cell and held out a hand-sized vid set. It was a flat screen model and Mora's face filled the viewplate.

LaNague watched with growing dismay as Mora sent out a plea for all those who had come to believe in Robin Hood to come to his aid. She was saying essentially what LaNague himself had said on the second pre-recorded spool-the one to be played for the trial contingency-but not the way he had said it. Her appeal was rambling, unfocused, obviously unrehearsed. She was ruining everything.

Or was she?

As LaNague listened, he realized that although Mora was speaking emotionally, the emotion was clearly genuine. She was afraid for her man and was making an appeal to any of his friends who might be listening to help him now when he needed them. Her eyes shone as she spoke, blazing with conviction. She was reaching for the heart as well as the mind, and risking her life to do it. Her message was for all Throners; but most of all, for her husband.

As she paused briefly before beginning her appeal again, Boucher glanced at LaNague, his voice thick. “That's some woman you've got there.”

LaNague nodded, unable to speak. Turning his face away, he walked to the far corner of his cell and stood there, remembering how he had so bitterly resented Mora's very presence on Throne, his cold rejection of the warmth, love, and support she had offered. Through the thousand tiny insults and affronts he had heaped on her during the past few months, she had remained true to him, and truer than he to the cause they shared. He remained in the corner until he could breathe evenly again, until the muscles in his throat were relaxed enough to permit coherent speech, until the moisture welling in his eyes had receded to a normal level. Then he returned to the bars to watch and listen to the rest of Mora's appeal.

THEY MAY HAVE confined him to quarters, but at least he wasn't incommunicado. He had turned to the vid to see what Sayers would be saying to the public on his Robin Hood news special; but instead of the vidcaster's familiar face in the holofield, there was a strange woman calling herself Robin Hood's wife, pleading for revolution. He immediately tried to contact the studio, but no calls were being taken through the central circuits at the building. Checking a special directory, he found a security code to make the computer patch him through to the control booth in Sayers’ studio.

A technician took the call. He did not look well. Although he recognized Daro Haworth immediately, it seemed to have little effect on him.

“What is going on over there? I want that transmission cut immediately! Immediately! Do you hear?”

“I can't do that, sir.”

“Unless you want this to be the last free day of your life,” Haworth screamed, “you will cut that transmission!”

“Sir…” The technician adjusted the angle on his visual pickup to maximum width, revealing a number of black-cloaked figures with red circles painted on their foreheads and weapons belts across their chests arrayed behind him. “Do you see my predicament?”

Flinters! Was Robin Hood a Flinter? “How did they get in?”

The technician shrugged. “All of a sudden they were here with the woman. Radmon seemed to be expecting them.”

Sayers! Of course he'd be involved!

“What about security? Didn't anyone try to stop them?”

The technician glanced over his shoulder, then back to Haworth. “Would you? We got an alarm off immediately but no one's showed up yet.”

At that point, one of the Flinters leaned over and broke the connection. Shaken, but still functioning, Haworth immediately stabbed in the code to Commander Tinmer over at the Imperial Guard garrison. The commander answered the chime himself, and his expression was far from encouraging.

“Don't say it!” he said as soon as he recognized Haworth. “I've been personally trying to muster a force big enough to retake the broadcast station ever since we received the alarm.”

“You've had plenty of time!”

“We're having some minor discipline problems here. The men are letting us know how unhappy they are with the way their pay has been handled recently. There's been a delay here and there in the currency shipments due to breakdowns in machinery over at Treasury, and the men seem to think that if the pay can be late, they can be late.” His sudden smile was totally devoid of humor. “Don't worry. The problem's really not that serious. Just some flip talk and sloganeering. You know…‘No pay, no fight’…that sort of thing.”

“What are they doing instead of obeying orders?”

Tinmer's smile died. “Instead of scrambling to their transports as ordered, most of them are still in their barracks watching that whore on the vid. But don't worry. We'll straighten everything out. Just need a little more time, is all. I-”

Haworth slammed his fist viciously against the power plate, severing the connection. He now saw the whole plan. The final pieces had just angled into place. But there was no attendant rush of triumph, only crushing depression. For he could see no way of salvaging the Imperium and his place within it. No way at all, except…

He pushed that thought away. It wasn't for him.

Gloom settled heavily. Haworth had devoted his life to the Imperium, or rather to increasing its power and making that power his own. And now it was all slipping away from him. By the end of the day he would be a political nonentity, a nobody, all his efforts of the past two decades negated by that man down in max-sec, that man who called himself Robin Hood.

It no longer mattered whether or not he was actually Robin Hood. The Imperium itself had identified him as such and that was good enough for the public. They were ready to follow him-Haworth could sense it. No matter if he were the true mastermind behind the colossal conspiracy that had brought the Imperium to its present state, or just a standin, the public knew his face and he would live in the battered and angry minds of all out-worlders as Robin Hood.

Or die…

The previously rejected thought crept back into focus. Yes, that was a possible way out. If the proclaimed messiah were dead, the rabble would have no one to follow, no rallying point, no alternative to Metep and the Imperium. They would be enraged at his death, true, but they would be leaderless…and once again malleable.

It just might work. It had to work. But who to do it? Haworth could think of no one he could trust who could get close enough, and no one close enough he could trust to do it. Which left Haworth himself. The thought was repugnant-not the idea of killing, per se, but actually doing it himself. He was used to giving orders, to having others take care of unpleasant details. Trouble was, he had run out of others.

He went to a locked compartment in the wall and tapped in a code to open it. After the briefest hesitation, he withdrew a small blaster, palm-sized with a wrist clamp. He had bought it when civil disorder had threatened, when street gangs had moved out to the more affluent neighborhoods, oblivious to the prestige and position of their victims. He never dreamed it would be used for something like this.

Hefting the lightweight weapon in his hand, Haworth almost returned it to the compartment. He'd never get away with it. Still…with an abrupt motion, he slammed the door shut and clamped the blaster to his right wrist.

As far as he could see, there was no choice. Robin Hood had to die if Haworth's life was to retain any meaning, and an opportunity to kill without being seen might come along. The tiny blaster could be angled in such a way that he could appear to be scratching the side of his face while sighting in on the target. With caution, and a great deal of luck, he could get away with it.

If he didn't get away with it-if he killed LaNague but was identified as the assassin, he would no doubt be torn to pieces on the spot. Haworth shrugged to no one but himself. It was worth the risk. If Robin Hood lived, the goals Haworth had pursued throughout his life would be placed far beyond his reach; if he killed him and was discovered, Haworth's very life would be taken from him. He could not decide which was worse.

Allowed to run its conclusion, the Robin Hood plan would mean the end of everything Haworth had worked for. He would lose the power to shape the future of out-world civilization as he saw fit. He would be reduced from a maker of history to a footnote in history. Without ever standing for election, he had become a major guiding power within the Imperium…and perhaps should take some blame for guiding it into its current state. But he could fix everything-he was sure of it! All he needed was a little more time, a little more control, and a lot less Robin Hood.

THERE WERE FULLY a dozen guards escorting LANAGUE to Freedom Hall. He noticed Boucher in the lead and Steen among them, even though it wasn't his shift. The prisoners on max-sec all shouted encouragement as he was led away. So did the remaining guards.

“Boucher told me what you said about someone trying to kill you,” Steen whispered as they marched through the tunnel that passed under the Complex and surfaced at the private entrance to Freedom Hall. “I think you're crazy but decided to come along anyway. Lots of crazy people around these days.”

LaNague could only nod. The eerie feeling that he would never leave Freedom Hall alive was stealing over him again. Attributing it to last-minute panic didn't work. Nothing shook it loose, not even his fervent disbelief in premonitions of any sort.

His escort stopped in a small antechamber that opened onto the dais at the end of the immense hall. The traditional elevated throne for Metep, a diadem-like structure with a central pedestal six meters high, had been set up center stage with five seats in a semicircle around it at floor level. To the right of it, closer to LaNague, a makeshift dock had been constructed, looking like a gallows.

All for me, he thought.

Although he could catch only meager glimpses of it between the heads of his escort, it was the crowd that caught and held LaNague's attention. There were people out there. Lots of them. More people than he ever thought could possibly squeeze into Freedom Hall. A sea of humanity lapping at the dais. And from what he could gather, there were thousands more outside the building, trying to push their way in. All were chanting steadily, the various pitches and timbres and accents merging into a nondescript roar, repeating over and over:

“…FREE ROBIN!..FREE ROBIN!..FREE ROBIN!..”

When the Council of Five finally made its appearance, its members looked distinctly uneasy as they glanced at the unruly crowd surging against the bulkhead of Imperial Guard, three men deep at all points and fully armed, that separated them from their loyal subjects. Haworth came in last, and LaNague had the impression that he was under some sort of guard himself. Had the chief adviser been threatened, or had he decided to skip the public trial and been overruled? Interesting.

The noise from the crowd doubled at sight of the council, the two words of the chant ricocheting off the walls, permeating the air. And it trebled when Metep VII, dressed in his ceremonial finest for the vid cameras sending his image to the millions of Throners who could not be here, was led in and rode his throne up the pedestal to the top of the diadem.

All six of the Imperium's leaders appeared disturbed by the chant, but in different ways. The council members were overtly fearful and looked as if nothing would please them more than to be somewhere else, the farther away the better. Metep VII, however, looked annoyed, angry, suitably imperious. He was taking the chant as a personal affront. Which, of course, it was.

When his seat had reached the top of the diadem's central pedestal, Metep spoke. Directional microphones focused automatically on him and boomed his amplified voice over the immense crowd within, and out to the throngs surrounding Freedom Hall and choking the streets leading to it.

“There will be silence during these proceedings,” he said in a voice that carried such confidence and authority that the crowd quieted to hear what he had to say. “Any observers who cannot conduct themselves in a manner suitable to the gravity of the matter at hand will be ejected.” He looked to his left. “Bring out the prisoner.”

As LaNague was led to the dock, the crowd rustled and rippled and surged like the waters of a bay raised to a chop by a sudden blast of wind. People were pushing forward, craning their necks, climbing on each other's shoulders for a look at the man who had made it rain money. The Imperial Guardsmen assigned to crowd control had their hands full, but even they managed a peek over their shoulders at the dock.

There were a few cheers, a few short-lived, disorganized chants of “Free Robin!” but mostly a hushed awe. LaNague looked out on the sea of faces and felt a horrific ecstasy jolt through him. They were for him-he could feel it. But they were so strong, so labile…they could wreak terrible damage if they got out of control. Much would depend on pure luck from here on in.

“The prisoner's name is Peter LaNague, and he has freely admitted to being the criminal known as Robin Hood. He is to be tried today for armed robbery, sedition, and other grievous crimes against the state.”

The crowd's reaction was spontaneous: multiple cries of “No!” merged smoothly and quickly into a single, prolonged, deafening, “NOOOOO!”

Metep was overtly taken aback by the response, but with a contemptuous toss of his head he pressed on, fumbling only on the first word when he spoke again.

“Due to the extraordinary nature of the crimes involved, the trial will be held before a tribunal consisting of Metep and the Council of Five, rather than the traditional jury. This is in accordance with the special emergency powers available to the Imperium during times of crisis such as these.”

“NOOOOO!” Clenched fists shot into the air.

Metep rose in his seat. From the docket, LaNague could see that the man was clearly furious, his regal mien chipping, cracking, flaking off.

“You admire Robin Hood?” he said to the crowd in a voice that shook with anger. “Wait! Just wait! Before we are through here today, we will have presented irrefutable evidence that this man who calls himself Robin Hood is in truth an agent of Earth, and an enemy of all loyal out-worlders!”

The “Nooooo!” that rose from the audience then was somewhat diminished in its resonance and volume, due not to a lessening of conviction in the crowd, but to the fact that many people in the hall had begun to laugh.

“And the penalty for this”-there was a touch of hysteria in Metep's voice as it climbed toward a scream; sensing it, the crowd quieted momentarily-“is death!”

If Metep VII had expected utter silence to follow his pronouncement, he was to be bitterly disappointed. The responding “NOOOOOOO!” was louder and longer then any preceding it. But the crowd was not going to limit itself to a merely verbal outburst this time. Like a single Gargantuan mass of protoplasm leaving the primordial sea for the first time, it flowed toward the dais shouting, “FREE ROBIN! FREE ROBIN!” The Imperial Guardsmen could do no more than give ground gracefully, pushing with the sides of their blaster rifles against the incredible mass of humanity that faced them, retreating steadily rearward despite their best efforts.

“Order!” Metep shrieked from his pedestal. “Order! I will have the Guard shoot to kill the first man to set foot on the dais!”

On hearing this, one of the guardsmen backed up toward the diadem throne and looked up at Metep, then back to the crowd. With obvious disgust, he raised his blaster rifle over his head, held it there momentarily, then hurled it to the floor in front of him.

That did it. That was the chink in the dam. Within the span of a single heartbeat, the rest of the guardsmen threw down their own weapons, leaving nothing between the crowd and the dais. Most of them joined in the forward rush, shouting “FREE ROBIN!” along with everybody else.

The crowd divided spontaneously, part surging toward Metep's throne, the rest rushing in LaNague's direction. He knew their intent was to rescue him, but he was frightened all the same. Their movements were so wild and frantic that he feared they would unintentionally wash over and trample him to death.

They didn't. Their laughing faces surrounded the dock, calling his name, tearing the side railings away with bare hands, pulling him from the platform and hoisting him onto their shoulders.

A much grimmer scene was being played at center stage as the other half of the crowd-the angry half-stormed the diadem throne. The members of the Council of Five on the lower level were completely ignored as they scattered in all directions. The crowd wanted only one man, the man who represented the Imperium itself: Metep VII. Seeing his angry subjects approaching him, Metep had wisely locked his seat into position at the top of the pedestal. All attempts to start his descent failed until someone thought of shaking him loose.

The diadem throne was a huge, gaudy structure with considerable mass. But the crowd, too, was huge and considerably determined. At first the thone moved imperceptibly as the group on one side pushed while the other pulled, both quickly reversing their efforts. Soon the entire structure was swaying back and forth, with Metep VII, bereft of every shred of dignity, clutching desperately to his seat to the accompaniment of wild laughter from below. And when he finally decided to start his seat back down the pedestal, it was too late. He suddenly lost his grip and tumbled screaming to the waiting crowd below. The roar of human voices that arose then was deafening.

LaNague's immediate concern was that the crowd would beat Metep without mercy. Fortunately, that was not to be. Metep's scrambling efforts to maintain purchase on the rocking throne had been comedic enough to raise the general mood of his tormentors, averting a potentially ugly confrontation. He was hauled by his arms and his legs like so much baggage to the dock that had just been vacated by his former prisoner, while LaNague was carried shoulder-top to the now empty throne. The seat had reached floor level by this time and LaNague was thrust into it. Someone reversed the controls and it began to ascend the pedestal again, this time with a new occupant. As he rode toward the top of the diadem, a new chant arose from below:

“METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT!..”

LaNague ignored it, expecting this kind of response. It was naïve, it was shortsighted, it was all too typical. It was why history repeated itself, over and over. What he had not expected was to be raised on this idiotic throne. He felt ridiculous and naked, like an oversized blaster target. For that feeling was back; the feeling that he was going to die.

He brushed it off again. It was just that he hadn't heard from Kanya, which meant that Broohnin could still be loose with the trigger to the big Barsky box. If activated, it would mean instant death for LaNague and everyone in sight.

He looked around at the undulating mass of upturned faces, all joyous, all filled with unhoped for hope, all sensing that they were midwives at the birth of something new. Just what it might be, they didn't know, but it had to be better than what they had been living through recently.

Not all faces were smiling, however. He spotted Haworth looking up at him, his right hand pressed against his forehead-injured, perhaps? — a look of utter concentration on his face, his left eye squinted closed. The crowd seemed to be ignoring him despite his outlandish appearance. Metep had held the title and was therefore the power in the Imperium as far as the public was concerned. Only a few knew Haworth as the real decision-maker.

LaNague looked away from the chief adviser, back toward the huge expanse of the crowd stretching to the far end of Freedom Hall and out into the growing darkness beyond. As his head moved, however, he caught a glint at Haworth's wrist out of the corner of his eye, and realized what the man was doing.

Pointing below, LaNague rose to his feet and shouted, “Daro Haworth!” The remote directional microphones, automatically trained on the seat's occupant, Metep or not, amplified it to a “DARO HAWORTH!” that shook the walls.

Silence descended on Freedom Hall like a muffling cloak as Haworth was immediately grabbed and his arms pinned to his sides by a familiar middle-aged male figure.

“Release him,” LaNague said, his voice still amplified, but not to such a degree now that he was speaking in a more subdued tone. “And give him room.”

The crowd either would not or could not move away from Haworth. They kept pawing at him, shoving him.

“Give him room, please,” LaNague said from almost directly above the scene. When the crowd around Haworth still did not move back, he nodded to the middle-aged man who then touched a hand to his belt. The holosuit flickered off and suddenly there was a Flinter female in full battle regalia beside Haworth. And just as suddenly there was a circle of empty space around Haworth as people backed away. Kanya had returned.

“Go ahead, Mr. Haworth,” LaNague said in a soft voice audible to the end of Freedom Hall. “Kill me. That's what you were about to do, wasn't it? Do it. But bring your blaster out into the open so everyone can watch. When this mock trial was over and I was found guilty-the verdict was never in doubt, was it? — I was to be executed. But you were going to let someone else do the actual deed. Now that won't be necessary. The pleasure is yours alone. Do it.”

LaNague felt dizzy standing there six meters in the air, watching a man with artificially darkened skin and artificially whitened hair pull a blaster from his sleeve and point it in his direction. But he had to stand fast, hoping Haworth would miss if he fired, that Kanya would be able to ruin his aim. Hoping above all that he would be able to face Haworth down. The scene was being played to every operating vid set on the planet, and being recorded for replay on all the other out-worlds. Metep, slumped useless and ruined in the prisoner's dock, had already been made to look like a fool. All that was left now was Haworth, who had to be faced and disgraced, otherwise he might become a rallying point for the few royalists who would remain active in the wake of the revolution.

Haworth looked as frightened as LaNague felt. And although the weapon was pointed upward, he was not sighting on his target. Instead, his head swiveled back and forth, oscillating between the flesh and blood Flinter beside him, to the silent, fearful, hostile ring of faces that enclosed him.

LaNague's voice became a booming whisper. “Now, Mr. Haworth. Now, or drop it.”

With an agonized groan or equal parts fear and frustration, Haworth swung the blaster away from LaNague and placed the lens at the end of the barrel against his forehead. Members of the crowd behind him winced and ducked, fully expecting the back of his head to explode over them. Haworth glanced quickly about and saw that only Kanya was standing within reach of him. She had the ability to snatch the weapon from his hand before he could fire, but she did not move.

Neither did Haworth. Even the perfunctory courtesy of forcible restraint from committing suicide was to be denied him. He was on his own, completely. No one was going to pull the trigger for him, no one was going to prevent him from pulling it himself. It was all up to him. As centerpiece in the grim tableau, with all Throne-and soon all of the out-worlds-watching, he stood naked, stripped of all pretense, split from throat to pubes with all his innards steaming and reeking in the air for everyone to see.

An utterly miserable and despairing sob broke from his lips as he let his arm slump to his side and the blaster fall unused to the floor. Kanya scooped it up immediately. As she led him away, the chant began again.

“METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT!”

LaNague sat down heavily in the chair to take the weight off his suddenly wobbly knees. As he gathered his thoughts, gathered his strength, and hoped that he had been looking death in the eye for the last time that day, he heard the chant falter. Looking up, he saw the crowd dividing down the middle. Like a vibe-knife through a haunch of raw meat, a wedge of a dozen or so Flinters was cleaving a path toward the dais. Watching the group move closer, he saw that someone was shielded within that wedge: Mora.

As soon as he recognized her, LaNague started his seat into descent. By the time it reached the floor of the diadem, Mora was standing there, waiting for him. She leaped to his side in the chair, and as they embraced, the chair began to climb the pedestal again.

At that point, the crowd within and without Freedom Hall dissolved into a veritable frenzy of jubilation. None of LaNague's carefully calculated ploys to win support from the people of Throne could even approach the impact of seeing him and his wife embrace on the diadem throne. All present had seen Mora on the vid; most were there in response to her plea. And now they saw her together with her man and felt that had played a part in reuniting the couple. They were cheering for themselves as well as for Robin Hood and his gutsy wife.

“I love you,” LaNague whispered close to Mora's ear. “I never stopped. I just…went away for a while.”

“I know,” she said in a voice as soft as the body he clutched against him. “And it's good to have you back.”

Gradually, the cheers organized into the bothersome chant: “METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT!”

Would they never tire of calling for a new Metep? As he looked down into the thousands of hopeful eyes, the thousands of happy, trusting faces, he knew that the past five years had all been a prelude. Now the real work began. He had to take all the horrors these people had experienced and wash them away; he had to convince them that although it could happen again, it need not; that there was another way…a better way. Doing that might prove more difficult than the revolution itself.

He had to convince all these good people that he was not the new Metep. More, he had to convince them that they did not want another Metep. Ever again.