Psychohistorical Crisis

31

GOOD-BYE TO ASINIA PEDAGOGIC, 14,798 GE

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

—Cicero of Old Rith

Asinia Pedagogic wasn’t a pressure cooker so much as the fact that Eron’s curiosity made it so, month after month. Today he had hardly finished coaxing a Nasrilian poem out of Poetaster before he had to solve a set of difficult problems in stability analysis. His late-watch meeting with Reinstone wasn’t going to go away, and he had to skip lunch and ride his program into polishing its poem. Poetaster was wonderful with words but cavalier about making sense. Eron acted as editor. Poets always needed editors! It was important that Reinstone be left with the illusion that it was Eron who was writing the poems. Reinstone, who hated machines, even the fam he couldn’t do without, would have been heartbroken to learn the truth.

Poetaster was Eron’s experiment in pretend-psychohistory. He would reduce a particular poetic tradition into its memes and conventions and philosophical values and set up his program to write poetry in that tradition. If the poetry came out wrong, he adjusted the decision matrix. He figured he had succeeded whenever Reinstone couldn’t tell the difference.

But this evening old Reinstone was too excited to even read the Nasrilian poem, and when Reinstone was too excited to read a poem, that was excitement indeed!

“You’ve been noticed! I promise on the sword of Dramal

0Ot to tell them about your series of practical jokes on dignified professors!”

“I didn’t—”

“Yes, you did. Now let’s talk about what is important. You are being investigated by the powers that be!”

Eron Osa had almost forgotten the friendly little Capsule from Rigone a few months past. He didn’t know Second Rank Hahukum Konn by name or reputation but immediately after Reinstone’s revelation, he found out what an effect that name had on his professors. The Lyceum at Splendid Wisdom was investigating one of their students as a candidate! Nothing seemed to please a professor more than to have one of his students recognized as a genius. It was all very embarrassing. Even Sledge forgot his antipathy to the psychohistorians and was volubly impressed and pleased.

But Second Rank Konn wasn’t calling him to Splendid Wisdom. He had some kind of project going on Old Rith!

It was eighty thousand leagues from Faraway to Sol by the major hubs through Lakgan and Kupi Sai but only six thousand leagues longer if he doglegged through Agander, so Eron took the long way to get fifty watches with his parents. His sponsors didn’t seem to mind the extra expense or time. In fact, Konn seemed enthusiastic to accommodate the detour through the Ulmat if only Eron would bring him back more data about the Horezkor dreadnought at Mowist. With that directive came a budget for expensive photographic equipment and a personal introduction to the director of the Emperor Daigin-the-Jaw Memorial War Museum. This time Eron crawled over the old battleship with his calibration camera snooping in places the tourists never went. It was a thrill. From Mowist he took the hypershuttle home. His parents knew he was coming but not when.

Agander from orbit—the same blue-green and white streaked ball against the spectacular collapsing clouds of space that it had been the hour he left—jogged him to remember his decision never to return. The bravado of boys! He was exuberant to be back! He spent his first day on the continent seeing the sights that Mama Osamin had not allowed him to see when he was three and they had been traveling with his father, notably the Marvelous Fountain in the Capital’s Central Park. He found one tiny boy begging his mother to let him shoot up the stem of the fountain in a bubble capsule. She was too afraid, so Eron volunteered to take the tyke. They had the cramped knees-hung-from-their-ears ride of their lives!

He noticed what only a farman would notice: how richty green the vegetation grew and the delicious smell it gave to the air. How easy it had been to get used to the thick, gray-green leaves of Faraway, how easy to fall into the habit of wearing the loose Faraway jacket, unarmed. He listened to the public chatting, shocked. His speech had changed. Vm a farman even here! He could see it in the suspicious eyes of the Ganderians he met, especially while he was goggling at the fountain they took for granted.

The hotel obligingly manufactured him a new ensemble, light green, with large pockets folded across his breast and fan-pleated lapels. He still had his blaster, salvaged from some back drawer in his room at Asinia and thrown in with the books he didn’t want to leave behind. The holster no longer fit him, but finding a stylish holster on Agander was hardly a problem. The old swagger came back, unnoticeable among all the other swaggers. Strange how comfortable Agander made him feel, and how quickly the old accent returned. Agander would always be home.

He rented a sturdy flighter to take him to Agander’s Great Island, skimming over the familiar sea and roaring up into the familiar clouds for a loop-the-loop. Then he crossed over the beaches and was back in heaven with the pyre-trees blooming on the sunward side of the hills. The hills grew in height until... he passed over True City... then swept around the twenty-six-century-old ruin of the windwall, still there. As he wheeled through the familiar gap, the Ulman’s summer Alcazar gradually peeked out from behind the mountain. His father, the Adjudicator, was probably up there in his tower, working. Worried, too, Vll bet. He was probably wondering why his son was returning. Another school expulsion? Eron laughed. He had a hard time remembering why he had been so angry at his father. Success was mellowing, 'the older you got, the finer the grade of the buffing sandpaper. Youth was rough but life patiently rubbed you down to a polish.

In the Alcazar no one recognized him. He had grown too much. Or perhaps it was the Faraway mustache he was loath to depilate. He recognized them—he had a secret file on most of them—but he fell into the outsider game just to see how long it would last. He rode the belts directly to his destination, the huge bootharium under his father’s suite where the Ulman managed his communications. The steward politely blocked his way, knee-length red coat and high collar unchanged in all these years.

“Your business, sir?”

“I’m here to meet with the Adjudicator Osa.”

“May I set up an appointment for you? He’s busy at the moment, sir.”

“Jorgi, you’re as stiff-necked as you ever were.”

The steward went into shock, speechless.

Eron smiled. “I’m Eron, the brat. How do you like my mustache?”

Recognition of the mischievous smile overwhelmed the steward’s dignity. “The Devil from Space! Eron?” There was a moment of doubt, then full recognition and accusation. “Have you been expelled again?” And finally resignation and a return of the dignity. “Shall I prepare your father for bad news?”

The replica of the colorfully furred messenger bird with the frothlike yellow collar was still standing in its alcove ready to lift a long leg and lay a Personal Capsule. Eron had never before realized the incredible bad taste of this object. It had always been a part of his life, taken for granted.

He smiled, teasing Jorgi. “I’m on probation.” At the man’s stricken look, Eron softened. “It’s probation at the Lyceum on Splendid Wisdom. All expenses paid. Standard procedure for a new student of the Lyceum. I’ve been doing well. I ex* pect to do better.”

“Then shall I prepare your father for good news?”

“Yes.”

An unwanted tear appeared in Joigi’s eye. “This way, sir.'* He was escorted to the levitation stage, where the verticulce floated them gently up into the tower. The brass door swung open and the steward announced him. Eron felt the same queasiness in his knees that he always had. He wanted to speak but could not. Osa Senior’s commanding authority de manded, as always, that no one speak until he, Ajudicator Osa, spoke first.

“A mustache. Are you hiding from us?”

The steward interrupted. “He says he has good news, m\ sir.”

“I didn’t ask you.” The graying Osa turned back to Eron with steely eyes.

“I think mustaches are a requirement of the Splendid Wisdom civil service, Dad ”

“Impudent as ever.” The Adjudicator stood up. He walked around his formidable desk and gave Eron the once-over of an Imperial High General, inspecting a trooper of whom he expected perfection. “You’ve gone soft, I see. Come with me to the armory. You need some blaster practice. Can you still hit a target?”

“Never could. I always missed you, didn’t I?”

They spent a few inamins down in the underground armory blasting away and having their reflexes and aim measured by robot time&motion machines. The Adjudicator took on the role of “refreshing” his son with a grim seriousness. Eron was suddenly four years old again and bravely firing his first lethal blaster to exact instructions. It concentrated the mind not to have a margin for error. He did much better than he had at four.

“Slow but acceptable,” grudged Osa Senior.

“I beat you,” kvetched Eron, who belonged to the zenoli club at Asinia and had the reflexes to cut off his father’s draw with a preemptive blast.

“No excuses. I’m past my prime.” The elder Osa sauntered over to the encrypted armory vault, did a little magic, and a new weapon appeared: a blaster, beautifully engraved with the word “Eron” set in a sixtyne of different alphabets along the handle. He took Eron’s old weapon and entrusted it to the bowels of the vault, handing Eron the new weapon at the same time. “This is the adult model. It doesn’t die at one meter; it will kill a man up to full range.”

Great Space, he trusts met It was an old ritual between father and son. “Only in the defense of the honor of Agander he replied while he holstered the blaster. That was the age-old reply. He felt himself transmogrifying back into a Ganderian. He felt proud. He loved his father. He felt gratitude. But another voice was telling him that he had to get off this planet!

“Dad, did you ever worry about that fam you bought me?” “It was expensive. You were the one who complained.”

“It was a discontinued prototype.”

“That I didn’t know. It was supposed to offer more than I could afford, and not cheaply even then. Did it work out?” “Probably. I’ll never know, but something gave me the edge that made me Lyceum material. I checked up on my fam after I’d learned a little physics—every spymaster needs a little physics to make sense out of his data. The model was discontinued because it had undocumented hooks that were beyond state of the art* But I had some friends who knew how to link into those hooks.”

“You had your fam modified!” exclaimed Osa Senior in horror.

“I’ll never know. I never noticed the difference. Sometimes I think I have a very ordinary mind—and then I have these flashes of insight that keep me up all night.”

“That must be your father’s genes.”

“You’re not that bright!”

“In that case it must be the genes we had inserted at conception.”

“You gengineered me? I didn’t give you permission!” “Well, I inherited a muta from my grandmother and I

didn’t want you to have it—so, while we were deleting, your mother and I added a few things you might find useful. All galactic standard. Nothing that hasn’t been tested and approved millennia ago.”

“What, for instance?”

“I don’t remember. There was one group of genes that allows for fast modification of dendritic rewiring... a couple that should double the speed of fam interaction... better telomere control... things like that. Stop complaining; your nose doesn’t hide your chin the last I looked.”

Eron’s homecoming was over soon enough. Because his detour had swung him out to Mowist, far to the rimside of Kupi Sai, that major hub was no longer in line with Sol. After testing alternate routes, none of them with good connections, his travel weasel chose to send him on from Mowist through a minor hub in the Sprinkling between the Persean and Orion arms. The shipbuilders of Ankor preferred speed to size and consequently ran their ships with crewmates bred to two-thirds normal weight and provided only small (if luxurious) cabins. That didn’t allow for much passenger intermingling. Between Mowist and Ankor, Eron had solo time to digest his reunion.

... taking his father on a walk to the crumbling windwall beyond the Alcazar which had been his boyhood refuge from his father. They talked about everything, but what he remembered during the first hyperjump to Ankor was the image of his father throwing flat stones off the windwall for the joy of watching them fly into the wind.

And when the ship’s silver teabot brought his morning wakeup drink...

... still sneaky, of course he had sneaked off to have tea and cakes with Melinesa. He remained madly in love with her, a child’s crush he wasn’t going to bother to outgrow. She had been very Ganderian about his approach, Agander being a planet where older women couldn’t resist the flatter-ings of young men.

Nothing to do but sleep. Space could be boring. He lifted his hand to signal the console—the ship had a nice collection of Ganderian music...

... worst shock was taking his parents to the Lower Islands for a music festival and picnic and, later, dinner at the most expensive restaurant he could reserve—on Konn’s expense account—and finding out that parents and son had grown up on the same music. He danced wildly with his mother to “Fireflame,” a romantic song that reminded her nostalgically of her lost youth when she had been the ripe mistress of the elder Ulman. He didn’t even know she knew that song! It was about defiance! She told him a mother’s secret, that she often played the piece alone in her room on the violer she’d molded with her family’s own resin and sound recipe. And he’d always thought she only owned a violer for the decorative way it hung on the wall! “Fire-flame” was a song that moved his emotions like no farman song ever could. Watching his mother react in the same way boggled his mind. In the black domain between Mow-ist and Ankor he found himself considering a historical theme he had never heeded before—the rich musical tradition of Agander had never changed over the centuries. Murek Kapor wouldn’t have been so slow to notice! Eron filed his observation under the study he was doing on social stasis.

At Ankor in the Sprinkling, among vast racks of sleek hyperships, he nearly lost his books to another star when his roboweasel grabbed the opportunity to revise his transfer to Sol via a more optimal five-sun zigzag. Sol was located off the major commercial routes and not easy to reach—but not inaccessible, either, because there were always tourists curious enough to pay homage to the remnants of the homeworld or see firsthand the canals of Mars and the wispy ruins of its ancient architectural masterpieces, primitive man’s most famous terraforming fiasco. It was a long trip. Between Ankor and Untu and Tau Masai and Alphacen and Sol, Eron had plenty of time to forget his past on Agander and fall into a wondering about his future.

What was Second Rank Hahukum Konn doing on Rith? Some secret and high-powered psychohistorical project? Eron’s imagination ran wild. He was going to be let in on the secrets of the Fellowship!