Psychohistorical Crisis

11

THE WAY STATION AT RAGMUK, LATE 14,790 GE

The Wars Across the Marche have not gone in our favor. After two centuries of ferocity our defense has collapsed. We lament our defeat. With sorrow we concede that the Thousand Suns Beyond the Helmar Rift have been conquered. Helmarian signatures have been forced upon the Treaty of Sanahadra, giving up all Helmarian rights in exchange for sworn fealty to emperors whose hubris first rules the Galaxy and then claims a universe.

But we, the soldiers of the shrouded bases, are unanimous in our desire to continue the struggle for independence. We cannot violate the terms of Sanahadra without dooming our people (those who have been spared) and so duty demands that we honor the treaty no matter what our feelings. Yet we are the soldiers who were not at Sanahadra to surrender. We have not signed the treaty and we will not sign the treaty. Though it takes us countless millennia, we shall be the Auditor General of the Peace. We are the Overseer. We reavow the promise made by our forebears to defend the Helmarian virtues forever against whatever fate an emperor shall impose upon us. We weep tears of fire that will, from the humiliation of Sanahadra, forge a new choice of weaponry. Peace can be as sharp as any sword. Peace shall be our new definition of war.

—From The Hidden Document of Reaffirmation, 7981 GE

This was the third leg of their journey. Already Hiranimus Scogil (alias Murek Kapor) and his student Eron Osa had spent fifty-four watches aboard the cramped cargo ship. Now they had docked for change of crew and exchange of cargo at a cometary station some 570 microleagues from the star Ragmuk of the Thousand Suns, which was only a member of the Thousand Suns by ancient Imperial Decree, lying, as it did, on the wrong side of the Helmar Rift. Still to come were four more stops and thirty-six more watches of jumping along the Main Arm just to get as far as Sewinna. Then they were going to have to debark and shop for a transfer to the Periphery. Hiranimus was already feeling the need for money sticks he didn’t have.

Their hyperfreighter’s nature was to spurt and then linger, taking on passengers only as a sideline. The Skipper’s frugal choice of supply station at the interplanetary rim of the Ragmuk System was designed in the interest of energy conservation—the station was moving almost at rest relative to the velocity of their starting jump, and it was high in its star’s gravity well, a piece of citified home built into a tundra of ice and sludge.

Ragmuk had been settled these seven millennia past, not by Helmarians but by Imperial troops of the Stars&Ship laying out a forward base at the beginning of the Wars Across the Marche. Previous to the wars it had been a slumbering Military Resupply Outpost, lacking government colonial subsidies and too poor to support any kind of thriving colony on its own. But it was high ground to the Imperial General Staff: it looked outward over a roil of new stars across the Helmar Rift toward the original Thousand Suns. This was the observation point from which suddenly attentive warrior-emperors had measured the panoramic threat of the Helmarian people. To a true Helmarian the constellation which included Ragmuk was called the Dangling Blade.

Hiranimus Scogil was Helmarian, a peculiar loyalty.

He hit the oval door of the cabin with a shoulder, intending to unjam its stuck hydraulic hinges—not even the basic luxury of a robodoor here. He poked his head inside, ducking the pipes, looking for his charge. Their cabin was “shelf space” on one of the catwalks that circled the motors. It was about arm-wide and held only two skinny bunks, one on top of the other. “Wake up, Eron. The Skipper has granted us a watch worth of leave with the callous admonition that if we aren’t reboarded in time, the ship will depart without us— taking our baggage with it.”

“I can pack,” said Eron sleepily. “Nothing I can’t carry on my back.”

“No, we leave our stuff here. Just stay close to ship’s dock and watch the time. I’ll be leaving you alone for a stint. Business.”

He had schemes on his mind that needed attention, and he felt that the boy was old enough to wander alone. Nevertheless, when the youth was loose in the terminal, Hiranimus didn’t go about his affairs right away but kept the boy under a watchful, if distant, eye. He relaxed. Eron seemed to be fine, a spirited sightseer with his nose plastered to a viewport, drinking in the line of berthed hyperships tethered to the great pier that rose pallidly against its astral background. Ragmuk itself was no brighter than a minor star.

Scogil refocused on his own concerns and went looking for an ultrawave terminal. On a station whose whole rationale was interstellar traffic, sending a message to the Oversee would be as easy as praying. But a reply? Directives to lower agents like Scogil came down from mobile relay ships staffed by a priesthood of aides who weren’t in direct communication with the Oversee themselves. The Fortresses, wherever they were, had maintained such strict ultrawave silence for sixty-eight centuries that they had simply vanished Into Helmarian mythology.

One could report to the Overseer in elaborate code, one could warn them of an emergency—but the communication was all one way. The Overseers accepted Personal Capsules but never sent one out. Two-way handshaking was taboo. It was a conversation with a God who often left you to answer your own questions, who answered obliquely if he answered at all, and then only at a time when he felt it auspicious, all transcribed into the runes of some cabalistic ritual that you might or might not be able to decipher. If you wanted a twoway conversation you talked to a lower priest. Cumbersome but safe. In wartime such a convoluted procedure, if maintained, would prove dangerously slow.

Back on Agander or Mowist, where prolonged transmissions might have attracted attention, Scogil had not dared pursue matters to the point of clarification. He was used to having the authority of the final judgment himself, the doubt of the lonely decision, the act based on incomplete analysis. It left questions; he was anxious to address incomplete concerns. It was much safer to do that out here where a high level of dispatches was normal. But he really didn’t expect to get answers until he was recalled to a Fortress himself. What he needed now was an immediate bundle of cash sticks.

Hiranimus found an ultrawave utility three floors above the main deck of the station inside the office of a small freight brokerage. They warned him about local hyperspace storms kicking up a ruckus but plugged his cash stick into the connector anyway. Being out in nowhere’s boondocks seemed to have its disadvantages.

Behind a privacy barrier he made his interstellar connection—but the handshaking went out of time/phase. Ultrawave always went on the kibosh when the handshake tried to acknowledge the message before it was sent. A storm. It was a nuisance. The more the autocorrect tried to mitigate the storm by probabilizing a region of space, the more the message fluttered in time, and vice versa. He waited and tried again. During the second attempt the timing stayed on but locked onto the noise—even a clutch of error-correction algorithms he had stored in his fam could make no sense of the garbled reply.

Then—when he did get through—it was because a second agent far above the storm had taken the call and was rerouting... That roboclerk took the Galaxy’s own languorous time about tracking down his (new) boss. The ultrawave charges were gulping his limited funds. Scogil’s mood turned rancid. His contact, after being reached, was also in bad humor having been interrupted from some vital activity he did not want to discuss. Because of the transmission difficulties the conversation proceeded at a high-redundancy, low-information rate full of frustrating pauses. Ultrawave, because of its probabilistic “speed” of transmission, could deliver packets to Personal Capsules far better than it could modulate a handshaking conversation. That he needed handshaking meant that he had to go through a very low-level contact.

He came out of the ultrawave communication booth in a chastised and angry mood. How could he have created such a mess? It seemed that his contacts had misunderstood almost everything he had sent them from Agander and Mowist. Or else they had forwarded his requests to the Oversee, and, in its own good time, for its own inscrutable reasons, the top Smythosians had made other plans for him. The Ragmuk System was a ridiculously inconvenient place from which to change one’s whole itinerary.

Secure ultrawave channels did not seem to be a good medium for subtle verbal argumentation. The logic was lost when passed through secondaries to shadow men whose priority was hiding. The devious scheme hastily plotted on Agander had unraveled spectacularly. So much for assumptions made during a high state of enthusiasm! They didn’t trust a man as young as he. Chary dunderheads! No wonder they’d had to pull out of the Ulmat. Or, he thought, maybe the right man hadn’t yet received his proposal. If ever. He had to laugh because he had already used the credit he wasn’t going to get.

In any event, the Oversee would not approve his plans in time, and, at least on the lower levels, his shadowy bosses were disputing even his right to make plans. Scogil noted sourly his reassignment to Coron’s Wisp where his youthful enthusiasm for the cause could be kept under restraint, and under budget. Nothing he had suggested had been accepted. No response; just orders. That’s what the ultrawave exchange had been about. Duty. Return for instructions and retraining. They would arrange a blind pickup.

He still had no idea where in the Galaxy his old school was located. He had once been sure that the Fortresses were around here somewhere, perhaps in the Rift, perhaps in the darker recesses between the Thousand Suns. After all, they were Helmarian—but maybe the rumor was true that they weren’t located anywhere in Helmarian space. Maybe the forge of his Smythosian soul was thousands of leagues off the galactic plane. It might be hidden on some lost planet tossed into the darkness a billion years ago by eccentric binary parents. He’d never seen its sky. For all he knew, it might be smack in the middle of some provincial capital.

At least, face-to-face, his old mentors would have to listen to his objections about this new assignment of theirs. Face-to-face they’d have to talk back—if you could call a virtual confrontation with an immortal mask, worn by a carousel of mortal men, a face-to-face anything. If they wanted to bind him, they’d have to be convincing. He’d have to see the math. Or... he’d have to be eloquent enough to sway them.

Where in Space was Coron’s Wisp? His orders only mentioned a five-star pentad system with one habitable planet around each star. Twenty-seven Wisps were mentioned in his fam’s huge database—but no Coron’s Wisp. It must be a very minor place. Was it just another Ulmat to be abandoned tomorrow? For all their calls for more operatives to work at the heart of the Empire, they didn’t seem anxious to send a seasoned man anywhere near Splendid Wisdom, nor had anyone been willing to support his clever plot to place Eron Osa as an unknowing mole inside the Pscholar’s Fellowship. Too dangerous a plan for cautious cowards?

Worse, they did not take seriously the scholarship he had promised the Osa boy. Those funds he needed now l What was he going to tell Eron? He had hauled the boy out onto the adventure of his life and there wasn’t going to be a scholarship, nor even a fam upgrade. Nor funds to continue the trip to Faraway. So... a conflict of integrity. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Was he supposed to abandon a twelve-year-old child?

He would take the boy to Faraway. Scogil was Helmarian and bound by Helmarian ethics even if they contradicted Helmarian orders. He laughed again. He would be able to claim that he had been stranded for lack of cash. The Galaxy was a big place, so they said—an easy maze in which to get lost for a few months. He had no intention of disobeying orders, but there was no help for it—he would be delayed. He would turn up after he had squared his commitment to Eron. How? He didn’t know. Damn, Damn, and Spacedamn!

He hoofed it back aboard the hyperfreighter in a frenzied effort to get their baggage all together and off ship. No use going on without a full money stick. He had to stuff Eron’s book under his arm, his hands full. Where was that boy? The insanity of it—carrying books on an interstellar voyage! What would these children think of next! With baggage decked and book in hand, he made a frantic appeal to the jwrser for the return of credit that the purser was loath to refund on such short notice. But the purser connected him with a waiting couple who seemed as frantic to leave Rag-inuk behind as he was to stay, and so he was able to sell—at a profit—the last legs of their passage.

What now? In all of the vast concourse he couldn’t spot a seat He chose an out-of-the-way comer to sit (on the book) With their baggage in sight. With Eron nowhere in view, he had time to think. The heavens wheeled across the station’s observation domes. Problem number one: they needed a destination. Perhaps his little exchange had provided funds (enough to get Eron safely into the nearest friendly port. He jaeeded a friend right now. Thank the stars for friends! When normal channels of authority don’t function to one’s desire, backtrack and call on a friend. But which friend? After the isolation of Agander, did he still have any friends? And did he have a friend who could laugh at life’s impetuous blunders!

It was gloomy thinking. Family? Good people but no possible help there. To find powerful friends he had to hark back to those good-bad old seminary semesters when he had been training in secret as a Smythosian, interminable hours and watches and months of grind whose main reward had been the promise of high adventure. Gadzac was as good a friend as he’s ever had—but he was too conservative. Nels was reserved but could always be tapped for a loan if Hiranimus made his case look desperate enough.

How about the triumvirate? Mendor and Jaisy and Hiranimus. They had spent endless watches debating—and mathematically probing—the small changes they could make in the fabric of a society, changes with the potential to avalanche into galactic significance. Jaisy was gone somewhere on assignment. Mendor was far above Scogil’s social class. But what was Mendor up to now? Certainly Mendor Glatim still operated from Neuhadra of the Thousand Suns, which no more belonged to the original Thousand Suns than did Ragmuk. How could that mild boy who loved his luxuries have walked away from the setup he had been destined to inherit? He’d be there—if luck and probability were the same thing. Hiranimus cringed to think of reducing his friendship with Mendor to a machination to get his hands on Glatim money, but it looked like his best option.

Neuhadra would add a roundabout into their jump-path to Faraway, an awkward jag off the Main Arm’s commercial routes. Its location above the galactic plane, well away from conventional Helmarian space, had been the main reason it had not been settled until the eightieth century when it became irresistibly attractive to the refugees displaced by the Wars Across the Marche. The Imperial victors had uprooted the Helmarians en masse—from Sanahadra, alone, almost half the population. This detour to an extremity of the Thousand Suns seemed like a good risk to Scogil. Mendor was wealthy enough to indulge a friend who had never before asked of him a favor.

Wealthy wasn’t an adequate word to describe Mendor’s situation. The Glatim family was in the meteoroid deflection business. Inhabited planets were seldom threatened by rogue objects big enough to destroy a civilization—maybe once in ten-twenty million years—but in an empire of thirty million worlds, even such improbable business came up frequently enough to require expert service. And the peoples of a doomed planet faced with a millions-to-one unplanned catastrophe don’t quibble about price—nor do they easily trust inexperienced would-be saviors. And when you are in the meteoroid deflection business, what do you do to keep in practice? You deliver comets to countless water-starved worlds and make a stick on every barrel of water! The Glatim clan was very wealthy.

Scogil looked up and down the main deck of the Ragmuk Station. Speaking of rogue planetesimals, where in Space was that Eron Osa kid? Scogil waited patiently, honing his new plan, but as rendezvous time approached and Eron was still nowhere about, he began to panic. He checked out rest rooms. He inquired of passersby; had they seen a small enthusiastic boy? Finally he approached security, who seemed quite familiar with the problem of lost passengers. They automatically tracked every transient.

The man looked up from the screen of his search engine, grinning. “He’s in the Heart’s Well Antiquarian Bookstore, sixth level down.”

“I might have known.” Scogil grimaced.

This bookstore was one of those collector’s dreams that fill up the quiet chinks of the Galaxy by hoarding mankind’s treasures in inaccessible places. Prices are right when customers are few. For the mundane there were compact templates from which an antique could be vitalized. The store had racks of templates for books and readers, millions of templates—but by the nature of the universe there were always antiques for which no template existed. The back of tiie room was lined with shelves of books boxed in helium. A sign announced that they might be perused for a small fee. The owner seemed to favor the rarest of the rare—books that didn’t have to be matched to a reading machine.

“I’m not late!” announced Eron loudly when he noticed Scogil’s approaching scowl. “We have lots of time left.” He returned his gaze to the pop-up hologram in front of him. The large book from which it emerged was printed on fine cellomet and seemed to contain hidden quantronics to generate holo illustrations when the pages were turned by hand. Eron was sitting with a large man of elaborately tattooed face who obviously loved books but who now turned to smile at Scogil.

The bookstore owner? His pattern of tattoos jogged something in the databases of Scogil’s fam. Of course, with a hundred quadrillion humans in the Galaxy there was no certain way to identify the origins of a single man from his facial characteristics but—a Scav from Splendid Wisdom out here? running a stall?

“We’ve had a change of plans, Eron. Our ship will be leaving without us. I’m thinking of side-legging it to an out-of-the-way stray star above the Rift. You’ve probably never heard of Neuhadra. I have friends there.”

The tattooed man spoke with sudden interest. “You know these parts?”

‘The Helmar Rift Region is a lot of stars to cover for one young man, but I was bom a Helmarian with a zest for geography.”

‘This is my friend,” announced Eron. “Rigone.”

“From Splendid Wisdom?” queried Scogil.

The man nodded, and Eron continued his introduction enthusiastically. “We were fighting over a book, so we decided to be friends if we had that much in common. He’s smart. He knows more about books than I do.” That honest statement of someone else’s superiority didn’t set well with Eron so he added, “He’s older than me and has had a head start”

Scogil’s fascination with Splendid Wisdom was an old one dating from his childhood. He had never before met a citizen of Splendid Wisdom, though there might be a trillion on the planet and two more trillion who worked off planet within the Imperialis star system. “You’re a long way from home.”

“A fish out of water,” admitted Rigone, grinning with wrinkles that proved that he was indeed older than Eron. “I have to wear blinders to tolerate this giddy space stuff,” he lamented unhappily. “I’m on a quest You know—finding the grain-of-sand-on-the-shores-of-time sort of thing.”

“Searching for the frozen messiah from Rith?” That was the most notorious of the mythological quests.

“Nothing so exotic. Just an Emperor's pebble. I’m new at the game. All that I’ve found out so far is that the Crafters of Ragmuk must be well hidden. I’m now off to what I hope are happier beaches.”

This man needed a history lesson. “There are no Helmar-ian Crafters on Ragmuk,” said Scogil emphatically.

“Oh? Wasn’t Ragmuk once the Imperial capital of the Helmar Rift?”

“Most Helmarians aren't Helmarian—they are the descendants of immigrants brought in by the imperium after the Wars Across the Marche. It was Imperial policy to dilute the Helmarian culture and to make it more tractable. Ragmuk was the center of Imperial power, the home of a hated viceroy. Not Helmarian. Not even originally colonized by Helmarians. The Crafters avoid the place like the plague.”

“The Emperors made many enemies,” said Eron gravely. “I have a book that’s stand-up-your-hairs reading. I only have eleven thousand years to go.”

“Do you suppose I might be in need of a local guide?” laughed a chagrined Rigone.

“Only if your purposes are benevolent. The citizens of Splendid Wisdom sometimes arouse suspicion in this region of space. Questioners are sometimes mischievously misdirected!”

“My purposes aren’t political. I once had the honor of being trained by a wandering Crafter in the deft art of fam alteration. Just enough to get by. And I have. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and will eventually get a man into big trouble for which more knowledge is the only cure”

“And you are now touring the Thousand Suns, starting with the old Imperial capital. You’re looking for a skilled Crafter to teach you more?”

“Yes.”

“That could take a lifetime of beachcombing.”

“Without a guide, yes,” said Rigone ruefully.

“Fam alteration is illegal,” said Scogil gravely. “A desecration of a man’s mechanical soul.”

Rigone smiled around his tattoos. “But tolerated.”

“On Splendid Wisdom ?” The Helmarian was incredulous.

“Consider the case of the struggling Lyceum student.”

“The Lyceum?” asked Scogil with narrowing eyes.

Rigone laughed again. “I’m a simple barkeep on the Olibanum.” Strangers in far places have a way of blabbering about themselves in ways that would never occur to them at home. “Students like to relax in my place. The pressure on them to succeed is horrible. Sometimes they are in desperate need of help. Sometimes I’m in need of a few extras.”

“So you soup up their fams?”

“Mostly I’m a fraud. I have a few impressive tricks that my clients find very useful. The Crafter who taught me was very good. I’ve never made a mistake or damaged a mind— yet. That’s suicide. But there are dramatic limitations to my skills, and I’m afraid my equipment isn’t state of the art.”

“If you haven’t yet damaged any minds, why are you in trouble?”

“You mean, why am I in need of a Crafter?”

“It’s your story.”

“Profitable sins have a way of growing up to be larger than life—charming toddler into teen, that sort of nightmare. On my undeserved reputation one of the Fellowship’s most powerful psychohistorians has asked me to upgrade his fam. I dare not refuse him. With my limitations I dare not comply.”

“But they have the best fam alteration labs in the universe!” protested Scogil.

“This Pscholar has enemies, or thinks he has enemies. He trusts no one at the Lyceum.”

“And he trusts you ?”

Rigone laughed again, an angelic laugh. “Well, he knows I’m a petty criminal. Perhaps he believes in honor among fellow miscreants?”

“Will you upgrade my fam?” asked Eron eagerly.

“See?” said Rigone. “People fall all over themselves to trust me.” He turned to the boy and tilted the youth’s head to peer at his fam. “Ah, made on Faraway.” Most people in the Galaxy thought that it was the magician scientists of Faraway who had invented the fam. “And why would you want a Faraway fam upgraded?”

“It’s not good enough. I want to be a supergenius\” Rigone sighed. “That’s what they all say to me. Youth!” Scogil was beginning to wonder...was there a possible deal here? What if the Oversee refused to authorize an “upgrade” to Eron’s fam knowing a little Cloun-style emotional control was to be thrown in? Helmarian ethics again. But an illegal upgrade done out of sight... under the eye of a Crafter who knew how to stay on the right side of the unacceptable? Hmmm. It could be done. He gazed at Rigone thoughtfully. “Where are you off to next?” A little shepherding was in order.

“I’ve been thinking that Sanahadra might be my best bet.” Scogil scowled the slightest discouragement “Not really. Sanahadra was once the center of the Helmarian culture, but since the Dispersion it has taken on a distinctly Imperial flavor. The Helmarians there try to maintain their identity but... They’re strong on showing off the ruins, that sort of filing; you know what I mean.” Scogil paused deliberately to let doubt sink in. He had time enough before baiting his hook. “You’ll have fun searching. To cover the Thousand Suns one-at-a-time makes you a man of leisure.”

“Ah.” Rigone was suddenly reminded that he was in a hurry. “Do you have suggestions I might find useful? How about Haparal? It’s near Ragmuk, right at the bottom of the Rift. I might even adventure a side jump to Lakgan.”

“Is Lakgan around here!” shouted Eron.

Scogil ignored his student. “Yes, you might consider Haparal ... but that was a long time ago.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic. I’ve always been impressed by Haparal’s story. Faraway takes the credit for developing the fam but, I believe, the Crafters of Haparal did the spadework. Wasn’t it the Crafters of Haparal who developed new kinds of quantum-state erotic stimulators for the vicelords of Lakgan? Basically it was they who created the fam—even if they didn’t know it.”

Scogil nodded without encouragement. Lakgan and the Thousand Suns had been—still were—stellar neighbors. And Old Lakgan had been wealthy enough to hire any number of Helmarians as lackeys. The Crafters of Haparal were still good—but Scogil wasn’t going to say so. It wasn’t really a crime to bamboozle a citizen of Splendid Wisdom just a little bit. But he’d have to make his reluctance sound real.

During the latter years of Imperial decline, decadent Lakgan had needed new gimmicks to keep its trade of wealthy hedonists returning; too many customers were being frightened away from a sector of space that was slipping beyond the protection of the Stars&Ship. More and more it was necessary for Lakgan to field its own navy... and to finance it.

Anticipating taxes from a rejuvenated pleasure trade, the monocled warlord of Lakgan dispatched an insignificant underling to Haparal to threaten die Crafters into delivering what had already been paid for. The underling dutifully returned with the first prototypes of the fam, an unimpressive musical instrument that crudely played delightful emotions directly into the brain. He demonstrated it, experimentally, on his immediate superiors. Thus was bom a supernova of galactic brilliance, Cloun-the-Stubbom—faded now, but still remembered by the three million solar systems he had dazzled.

They all knew the story and so it did not need to be repeated. “I’m afraid that Haparal is past its noon of glory,” Scogil commented carefully. “Talent follows the sun. After the False Revival, Faraway went looking for the kind of talent that had almost defeated it. Where better to recruit than Haparal? The Crafters have always been wandering tinkers. Faraway gets the credit for developing the fam because so many Helmarians moved to Faraway, a good crowd of them from Haparal.”

“So where is the fam tech right now?”

“You’re really interested in fam technology, eh? You might

try Neuhadra. Young Eron and I are off to Neuhadra as soon as we can connect with a starship jumping in the right direction. She’s a lively world known for her pure strain of Crafter. Would you care to tag along? Your company would be welcome.”

Rigone took on the slightly glazed look of a man furiously scanning his fam database. When he connected with the coordinates, a touch of surprise crossed his tattooed face. “Is Neuhadra even in the Thousand Suns? From that height the Galaxy mast look like just another galaxy!” He was trying to make a joke.

Scogil smiled as he brought out his hook hidden in the bait. “It might be off the main swirl but it is certainly the best place for you to start. I can supply you with introductions to a few people in the fam trade. There are bigger centers but none so easy-going as a person such as yourself might need. There aren’t many who know their quantum-state electronics better than the Crafters of Neuhadra.”