The Day of Their Return

III

Chunderban Desai’s previous assignment had been to the delegation which negotiated an end of the Jihannath crisis. That wasn’t the change of pace in his career which it seemed. His Majesty’s administrators must forever be dickering, compromising, feeling their way, balancing conflicts of individuals, organizations, societies, races, sentient species. The need for skill—quickly to grasp facts, comprehend a situation, brazen out a bluff when in spite of everything the unknown erupted into one’s calculations—was greatest at the intermediate level of bureaucracy which he had reached. A resident might deal with a single culture, and have no more to do than keep an eye on affairs. A sector governor oversaw such vastness that to him it became a set of abstractions. But the various ranks of commissioner were expected to handle personally large and difficult territories.

Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia. Thus he was a natural choice for the special diplomatic team. In his quiet style, he backstopped the head of it, Lord Advisor Chardon, so well that afterward he received a raise in grade, and was appointed High Commissioner of the Virgilian System, at the opposite end of the Empire.

But this was due to an equally natural association of ideas. The mutiny in Sector Alpha Crucis had been possible because most of the Navy was tied up around Jihannath, where full-scale war looked far too likely. After Terra nevertheless, brilliantly, put the rebels down, Merseia announced that its wish all along had been to avoid a major clash and it was prepared to bargain.

When presently the Policy Board looked about for able people to reconstruct Sector Alpha Crucis, Lord Chardon recommended Desai with an enthusiasm that got him put in charge of Virgil, whose human-colonized planet Aeneas had been the spearhead of the revolt.

Perhaps that was why Desai often harked back to the Merseians, however remote from him they seemed these days. In a rare moment of idleness, while he waited in his Nova Roma office for the next visitor, he remembered his final conversation with Uldwyr.

They had played corresponding roles on behalf of their respective sovereigns, and in a wry way had become friends. When the protocol had, at weary last, been drawn, the two of them supplemented the dull official celebration with a dinner of their own.

Desai recalled their private room in a restaurant. The wall animations were poor; but a place which catered to a variety of sophonts couldn’t be expected to understand everybody’s art, and the meal was an inspired combination of human and Merseian dishes.

“Have a refill,” Uldwyr invited, and raised a crock of his people’s pungent ale.

“No, thank you,” Desai said. “I prefer tea. That dessert filled me to the scuppers.”

“The what?—Never mind, I seize the idea, if not the idiom.” Though each was fluent in the other’s principal language, and their vocal organs were not very different, it was easiest for Desai to speak Anglic and Uldwyr Eriau. “You’ve tucked in plenty of food, for certain.”

“My particular vice, I fear,” Desai smiled. “Besides, more alcohol would muddle me. I haven’t your mass to assimilate it.”

“What matter if you get drunk? I plan to. Our job is done.” And then Uldwyr added: “For now.”

Shocked, Desai stared across the table.

Uldwyr gave him back a quizzical glance. The Merseian’s face was almost human, if one overlooked thick bones and countless details of the flesh. But his finely scaled green skin had no hair whatsoever, he lacked earflaps, a low serration ran from the top of his skull, down his back to the end of the crocodilian tail which counterbalanced his big, forward-leaning body. Arms and hands were, again, nearly manlike; legs and clawed splay feet could have belonged to a biped dinosaur. He wore black, silver-trimmed military tunic and trousers, colorful emblems of rank and of the Vach Hallen into which he was born. A blaster hung on his hip.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Oh … nothing.” In Desai’s mind went: He didn’t mean it hostilely—hostilely to me as a person—his remark. He, his whole civilization, minces words less small than we do. Struggle against Terra is just a fact. The Roidhunate will compromise disputes when expediency dictates, but never the principle that eventually the Empire must be destroyed. Because we—old, sated, desirous only of maintaining a peace which lets us pursue our pleasures—we stand in the way of their ambitions for the Race. Lest the balance of power be upset, we block them, we thwart them, wherever we can; and they seek to undermine us, grind us down, wear us out. But this is nothing personal. I am Uldwyr’s honorable enemy, therefore his friend. By giving him opposition, I give meaning to his life.

The other divined his thoughts and uttered the harsh Merseian chuckle. “If you want to pretend tonight that matters have been settled for aye, do. I’d really rather we both got drunk and traded war songs.”

“I am not a man of war,” Desai said.

Beneath a shelf of brow ridge, Uldwyr’s eyelids expressed skepticism while his mouth grinned. “You mean you don’t like physical violence. It was quite an effective war you waged at the conference table.”

He swigged from his tankard. Desai saw that he was already a little tipsy. “I imagine the next phase will also be quiet,” he went on. “Ungloved force hasn’t worked too well lately. Starkad, Jihannath—no, I’d look for us to try something more crafty and long-range. Which ought to suit your Empire, khraich? You’ve made a good thing for your Naval Intelligence out of the joint commission on Talwin.” Desai, who knew that, kept silence. “Maybe our turn is coming.”

Hating his duty, Desai asked in his most casual voice, “Where?”

“Who knows?” Uldwyr gestured the equivalent of a shrug. “I have no doubt, and neither do you, we’ve a swarm of agents in Sector Alpha Crucis, for instance. Besides the recent insurrection, it’s close to the Domain of Ythri, which has enjoyed better relations with us than with you—” His hand chopped the air. “No, I’m distressing you, am I not? And with what can only be guesswork. Apologies. See here, if you don’t care for more ale, why not arthberry brandy? I guarantee a first-class drunk and—You may suppose you’re a peaceful fellow, Chunderban, but I know an atom or two about your people, your specific people, I mean. What’s that old, old book I’ve heard you mention and quote from? Rixway?”

“Rig-Veda,” Desai told him.

“You said it includes war chants. Do you know any well enough to put into Anglic? There’s a computer terminal.” He pointed to a corner. “You can patch right into our main translator, now that official business is over. I’d like to hear a bit of your special tradition, Chunderban. So many traditions, works, mysteries—so tiny a lifespan to taste them—”

It became a memorable evening.

Restless, Desai stirred in his chair.

He was a short man with a dark-brown moon face and a paunch. At fifty-five standard years of age, his hair remained black but had receded from the top of his head. The full lips were usually curved slightly upward, which joined the liquid eyes to give him a wistful look. As was his custom, today he wore plain, loosely fitted white shirt and trousers, on his feet slippers a size large for comfort.

Save for the communication and data-retrieval consoles that occupied one wall, his office was similarly unpretentious. It did have a spectacular holograph, a view of Mount Gandhi on his home planet, Ramanujan. But otherwise the pictures were of his wife, their seven children, the families of those four who were grown and settled on as many different globes. A bookshelf held codices as well as reels; some were much-used reference works, the rest for refreshment, poetry, history, essays, most of their authors centuries dust. His desk was less neat than his person.

I shouldn’t go taking vacations in the past, he thought. God knows the present needs more of me than I have to give.

Or does it? Spare me the ultimate madness of ever considering myself indispensable.

Well, but somebody must man this post. He happens to be me.

Must somebody? How much really occurs because of me, how much in spite of or regardless of? How much, and what, should occur? God! I dared accept the job of ruling, remaking an entire world—when I knew nothing more about it than its name, and that simply because it was the planet of Hugh McCormac, the man who would be Emperor. After two years, what else have I learned?

Ordinarily he could sit quiet, but the Hesperian episode had been too shocking, less in itself than in its implications. Whatever they were. How could he plan against the effect on these people, once the news got out, when he, the foreigner, had no intuition of what that effect might be?

He put a cigarette into a long, elaborately carved holder of landwhale ivory. (He thought it was in atrocious taste, but it had been given him for a birthday present by a ten-year-old daughter who died soon afterward.) The tobacco was an expensive self-indulgence, grown on Esperance, the closest thing to Terran he could obtain hereabouts while shipping remained sparse.

The smoke-bite didn’t soothe him. He jumped up and prowled. He hadn’t yet adapted so fully to the low gravity of Aeneas, 63 percent standard, that he didn’t consciously enjoy movement. The drawback was the dismal exercises he must go through each morning, if he didn’t want to turn completely into lard. Unfair, that the Aeneans tended to be such excellent physical specimens without effort. No, not really unfair. On this niggard sphere, few could afford a large panoply of machines; even today, more travel was on foot or animal back than in vehicles, more work done by hand than by automatons or cybernets. Also, in earlier periods—the initial colonization, the Troubles, the slow climb back from chaos—death had winnowed the unfit out of their bloodlines.

Desai halted at the north wall, activated its transparency, and gazed forth across Nova Roma.

Though itself two hundred Terran years old, Imperial House jutted awkwardly from the middle of a city founded seven centuries ago. Most buildings in this district were at least half that age, and architecture had varied little through time. In a climate where it seldom rained and never snowed; where the enemies were drought, cold, hurricane winds, drifting dust, scouring sand; where water for bricks and concrete, forests for timber, organics for synthesis were rare and precious, one quarried the stone which Aeneas did have in abundance, and used its colors and textures.

The typical structure was a block, two or three stories tall, topped by a flat deck which was half garden—the view from above made a charming motley—and half solar-energy collector. Narrow windows carried shutters ornamented with brass or iron arabesques; the heavy doors were of similar appearance. In most cases, the gray ashlars bore a veneer of carefully chosen and integrated slabs, marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite, materials more exotic than that; and often there were carvings besides, friezes, armorial bearings, grotesques; and erosion had mellowed it all, to make the old part of town one subtle harmony. The wealthier homes, shops, and offices surrounded cloister courts, vitryl-roofed to conserve heat and water, where statues and plants stood among fishponds and fountains.

The streets were cramped and twisted, riddled with alleys, continually opening on small irrational plazas. Traffic was thin, mainly pedestrian, otherwise groundcars, trucks, and countryfolk on soft-gaited Aenean horses or six-legged green stathas (likewise foreign, though Desai couldn’t offhand remember where they had originated). A capital city—population here a third of a million, much the largest—would inevitably hurt more and recover slower from a war than its hinterland.

He lifted his eyes to look onward. Being to south, the University wasn’t visible through this wall. What he saw was the broad bright sweep of the River Flone, and ancient high-arched bridges across it; beyond, the Julian Canal, its tributaries, verdant parks along them, barges and pleasure boats upon their surfaces; farther still, the intricacy of many lesser but newer canals, the upthrust of modern buildings in garish colors, a tinge of industrial haze—the Web.

However petty by Terran standards, he thought, that youngest section was the seedbed of his hopes: in the manufacturing, mercantile, and managerial classes which had arisen during the past few generations, whose interests lay less with the scholars and squirearchs than with the Imperium and its Pax.

Or can I call on them? he wondered. I’ve been doing it; but how reliable are they?

A single planet is too big for single me to understand.

Right and left he spied the edge of wilderness. Life lay emerald on either side of the Flone, where it ran majestically down from the north polar cap. He could see hamlets, manors, water traffic; he knew that the banks were croplands and pasture. But the belt was only a few kilometers wide.

Elsewhere reared worn yellow cliffs, black basalt ridges, ocherous dunes, on and on beneath a sky almost purple. Shadows were sharper-edged than on Terra or Ramanujan, for the sun was half again as far away, its disc shrunken. He knew that now, in summer at a middle latitude, the air was chill; he observed on the tossing tendrils of a rahab tree in a roof garden how strongly the wind blew. Come sunset, temperatures would plunge below freezing. And yet Virgil was brighter than Sol, an F7; one could not look near it without heavy eye protection, and Desai marveled that light-skinned humans had ever settled in lands this cruelly irradiated.

Well, planets where unarmored men could live at all were none too common; and there had been the lure of Dido. In the beginning, this was a scientific base, nothing else. No, the second beginning, ages after the unknown builders of what stood in unknowable ruins …

A world, a history like that; and I am supposed to tame them?

His receptionist said through the intercom, “Aycharaych,” pronouncing the lilting diphthongs and guttural ch’s well. It was programmed to mimic languages the instant it heard them. That gratified visitors, especially nonhumans.

“What?” Desai blinked. The tickler on his desk screened a notation of the appointment. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He popped out of his reverie. That being who arrived on the Llynathawr packet day before yesterday. Wants a permit to conduct studies. “Send him in, please.” (By extending verbal courtesy even to a subunit of a computer, the High Commissioner helped maintain an amicable atmosphere. Perhaps.) The screen noted that the newcomer was male, or at any rate referred to himself as such. Planet of origin was listed as Jean-Baptiste, wherever that might be: doubtless a name bestowed by humans because the autochthons had too many different ones of their own.

The door retracted while Aycharaych stepped through. Desai caught his breath. He had not expected someone this impressive.

Or was that the word? Was “disturbing” more accurate? Xenosophonts who resembled humans occasionally had that effect on the latter; and Aycharaych was more anthropoid than Uldwyr.

One might indeed call him beautiful. He stood tall and thin in a gray robe, broad-chested but wasp-waisted, a frame that ought to have moved gawkily but instead flowed. The bare feet each had four long claws, and spurs on the ankles. The hands were six-fingered, tapered, their nails suggestive of talons. The head arched high and narrow, bearing pointed ears, great rust-red eyes, curved blade of nose, delicate mouth, pointed chin and sharply angled jaws; Desaii thought of a Byzantine saint. A crest of blue feathers rose above, and tiny plumes formed eyebrows. Otherwise his skin was wholly smooth across the prominent bones, a glowing golden color.

After an instant’s hesitation, Desai said, “Ah … welcome, Honorable. I hope I can be of service.” They shook hands. Aycharaych’s was warmer than his. The palm had a hardness that wasn’t calluses. Avian, the man guessed. Descended from an analog of flightless birds.

The other’s Anglic was flawless; the musical overtone which his low voice gave sounded not like a mispronunciation but a perfection. “Thank you, Commissioner. You are kind to see me this promptly. I realize how busy you must be.”

“Won’t you be seated?” The chair in front of the desk didn’t have to adjust itself much. Desai resumed his own. “Do you mind if I smoke? Would you care for one?” Aycharaych shook his head to both questions, and smiled; again Desai thought of antique images, archaic Grecian sculpture. “I’m very interested to meet you,” he said. “I confess your people are new in my experience.”

“We are few who travel off our world,” Aycharaych replied. “Our sun is in Sector Aldebaran.”

Desai nodded. “M-hm.” His business had never involved any society in that region. No surprise. The vaguely bounded, roughly spherical volume over which Terra claimed suzerainty had a diameter of some 400 light-years; it held an estimated four million stars, whereof half were believed to have been visited at least once; approximately 100,000 planets had formalized relations with the Imperium, but for most of them it amounted to no more than acknowledgment of subordination and modest taxes, or merely the obligation to make labor and resources available should the Empire ever have need. In return they got the Pax; and they had a right to join in spatial commerce, though the majority lacked the capital, or the industrial base, or the appropriate kind of culture for that—Too big, too big. If a single planet overwhelms the intellect, what then of our entire microscopic chip of the galaxy, away off toward the edge of a spiral arm, which we imagine we have begun to be a little acquainted with?

“You are pensive, Commissioner,” Aycharaych remarked.

“Did you notice?” Desai laughed. “You’ve known quite a few humans, then.”

“Your race is ubiquitous,” Aycharaych answered politely. “And fascinating. That is my heart reason for coming here.”

“Ah … pardon me, I’ve not had a chance to give your documents a proper review. I know only that you wish to travel about on Aeneas for scientific purposes.”

“Consider me an anthropologist, if you will. My people have hitherto had scant outside contact, but they anticipate more. My mission for a number of years has been to go to and fro in the Empire, learning the ways of your species, the most numerous and widespread within those borders, so that we may deal wisely with you. I have observed a wonderful variety of life-manners, yes, of thinking, feeling, and perceiving. Your versatility approaches miracle.”

“Thank you,” said Desai, not altogether comfortably. “I don’t believe, myself, we are unique. It merely happened we were the first into space—in our immediate volume and point in history—and our dominant civilization of the time happened to be dynamically expansive. So we spread into many different environments, often isolated, and underwent cultural radiation … or fragmentation.” He streamed smoke from his nose and peered through it. “Can you, alone, hope to discover much about us?”

“I am not the sole wanderer,” Aycharaych said. “Besides, a measure of telepathic ability is helpful.”

“Eh?” Desai noticed himself switch over to thinking in Hindi. But what was he afraid of? Sensitivity to neural emissions, talent at interpreting them, was fairly well understood, had been for centuries. Some species were better at it than others; man was among those that brought forth few good cases, none of them first-class. Nevertheless, human scientists had studied the phenomenon as they had studied the wavelengths wherein they were blind …

“You will see the fact mentioned in the data reel concerning me,” Aycharaych said. “The staff of Sector Governor Muratori takes precautions against espionage. When I first approached them about my mission, as a matter of routine I was exposed to a telepathic agent, a Ryellian, who could sense that my brain pattern had similarities to hers.”

Desai nodded. Ryellians were expert. Of course, this one could scarcely have read Aycharaych’s mind on such superficial contact, nor mapped the scope of his capacities; patterns varied too greatly between species, languages, societies, individuals. “What can you do of this nature, if I may ask?”

Aycharaych made a denigrating gesture. “Less than I desire. For example, you need not have changed the verbal form of your interior dream. I felt you do it, but only because the pulses changed. I could never read your mind; that is impossible unless I have known a person long and well, and then I can merely translate surface thoughts, clearly formulated. I cannot project.” He smiled. “Shall we say I have a minor gift of empathy?”

“Don’t underrate that. I wish I had it in the degree you seem to.” Inwardly: I mustn’t let myself fall under his spell. He’s captivating, but my duty is to be cold and cautious.

Desai leaned forward, elbows on desk. “Forgive me if I’m blunt, Honorable,” he said. “You’ve come to a planet which two years ago was in armed rebellion against His Majesty, which hoped to put one of its own sons on the throne by force and violence or, failing that, lead a breakaway of this whole sector from the Empire. Mutinous spirit is still high. I’ll tell you, because the fact can’t be suppressed for any length of time, we lately had an actual attack on a body of occupation troops, for the purpose of stealing their weapons. Riots elsewhere are already matters of public knowledge.

“Law and order are very fragile here, Honorable. I hope to proceed firmly but humanely with the reintegration of the Virgilian system into Imperial life. At present, practically anything could touch off a further explosion. Were it a major one, the consequences would be disastrous for the Aeneans, evil for the Empire. We’re not far from the border, from the Domain of Ythri and, worse, independent war lords, buccaneers, and weird fanatics who have space fleets. Aeneas bulwarked this flank of ours. We can ill afford to lose it.

“A number of hostile or criminal elements took advantage of unsettled conditions to debark. I doubt if my police have yet gotten rid of them all. I certainly don’t propose to let in more. That’s why ships and detector satellites are in orbit, and none but specific vessels may land—at this port, nowhere else—and persons from them must be registered and must stay inside Nova Roma unless they get specific permission to travel.”

He realized how harsh he sounded, and began to beg pardon. Aycharaych broke smoothly through his embarrassment. “Please do not think you give offense, Commissioner. I quite sympathize with your position. Besides, I sense your basic good will toward me. You fear I might, inadvertently, rouse emotions which would ignite mobs or outright revolutionaries.”

“I must consider the possibility, Honorable. Even within a single species, the ghastliest blunders are all too easy to make. For instance, my own ancestors on Terra, before spaceflight, once rose against foreign rulers. The conflict took many thousand lives. Its proximate cause was a new type of cartridge which offended the religious sensibilities of native troops.”

“A better example might be the Taiping Rebellion.”

“What?”

“It happened in China, in the same century as the Indian Mutiny. A revolt against a dynasty of outlanders, though one which had governed for considerable tune, became a civil war that lasted for a generation and killed people in the millions. The leaders were inspired by a militant form of Christianity—scarcely what Jesus had in mind, no?”

Desai stared at Aycharaych. “You have studied us.”

“A little, oh, a hauntingly little. Much of it in your esthetic works, Aeschylus, Li Po, Shakespeare, Goethe, Stargeon, Mikhailov … the music of a Bach or Richard Strauss, the visual art of a Rembrandt or Hiroshige … Enough. I would love to discuss these matters for months, Commissioner, but you have not the time. I do hope to convince you I will not enter as a clumsy ignoramus.”

“Why Aeneas?” Desai wondered.

“Precisely because of the circumstances in which it finds itself, Commissioner. How do humans of an especially proud, self-reliant type behave in defeat? We need that insight too on Jean-Baptiste, if we are not to risk aggrieving you in some future day of trouble. Furthermore, I understand Aeneas contains several cultures besides the dominant one. To make comparisons and observe interactions would teach me much.”

“Well—”

Aycharaych waved a hand. “The results of my work will not be hoarded. Frequently an outsider perceives elements which those who live by them never do. Or they may take him into their confidence, or at least be less reserved in his presence than in that of a human who could possibly be an Imperial secret agent. Indeed, Commissioner, by his very conspicuousness, an alien like me might serve as an efficient gatherer of intelligence for you.”

Desai started. Krishna! Does this uncanny being suspect—? No, how could he?

Gently, almost apologetically, Aycharaych said, “I persuaded the Governor’s staff, and at last had a talk with His Excellency. If you wish to examine my documents, you will find I already have permission to carry out my studies here. But of course I would never undertake anything you disapprove.”

“Excuse me.” Desai felt bewildered, rushed, boxed in. Why should he? Aycharaych was totally courteous, eager to please. “I ought to have checked through the data beforehand. I would have, but that wretched attempt at guerrilla action—Do you mind waiting a few minutes while I scan?”

“Not in the slightest,” the other said, “especially if you will let me glance at those books I see over there.” He smiled wider than before. His teeth were wholly nonhuman.

“Yes, by all means,” Desai mumbled, and slapped fingers across the information-retriever panel.

Its screen lit up. An identifying holograph was followed by relevant correspondence and notations. (Fakery was out of the question. Besides carrying tagged molecules, the reel had been deposited aboard ship by an official courier, borne here in the captain’s safe, and personally brought by him to the memory bank underneath Imperial House.) The check on Aycharaych’s bona fides had been routine, since they were overworked on Llynathawr too, but competently executed.

He arrived on the sector capital planet by regular passenger liner, went straight to a hotel in Catawrayannis which possessed facilities for xenosophonts, registered with the police as required, and made no effort to evade the scanners which occupation authorities had planted throughout the city. He traveled nowhere, met nobody, and did nothing suspicious. In perfectly straightforward fashion, he applied for the permit he wanted, and submitted to every interview and examination demanded of him.

No one had heard of the planet Jean-Baptiste there, either, but it was in the files and matched Aycharaych’s description. The information was meager; but who would keep full data in the libraries of a distant province about a backward world which had never given trouble?

The request of its representative was reasonable, seemed unlikely to cause damage, and might yield helpful results. Sector Governor Muratori got interested, saw the being himself, and granted him an okay.

Desai frowned. His superior was both able and conscientious: had to be, if the harm done by the rapacious and conscienceless predecessor who provoked McCormac’s rebellion was to be mended. However, in a top position one is soon isolated from the day-to-day details which make up a body of politics. Muratori was too new in his office to appreciate its limitations. And he was, besides, a stern man, who in Desai’s opinion interpreted too literally the axiom that government is legitimatized coercion. It was because of directives from above that, after the University riots, the Commissioner of Virgil reluctantly ordered the razing of the Memorial and the total disarmament of the great Landfolk houses—two actions which he felt had brought on more woes, including the lunacy in Hesperia.

Well, then, why am I worried if Muratori begins to show a trifle more flexibility than hitherto?

“I’m finished,” Desai said. “Won’t you sit down again?”

Aycharaych returned from the bookshelf, holding an Anglic volume of Tagore. “Have you reached a decision, Commissioner?” he asked.

“You know I haven’t.” Desai forced a smile. “The decision was made for me. I am to let you do your research and give you what help is feasible.”

“I doubt if I need bother you much, Commissioner. I am evolved for a thin atmosphere, and accustomed to rough travel. My biochemistry is similar enough to yours that food will be no problem. I have ample funds; and surely the Aenean economy could use some more Imperial credits.”

Aycharaych ruffled his crest, a particularly expressive motion. “But please don’t suppose I wish to thrust myself on you, waving a gubernatorial license like a battle flag,” he continued. “You are the one who knows most and who, besides, must strike on the consequences of any error of mine. That would be a poor way for Jean-Baptiste to enter the larger community, would it not? I intend to be guided by your advice, yes, your preferences. For example, before my first venture, I will be grateful if your staff could plan my route and behavior.”

A thawing passed through Desai. “You make me happy, Honorable. I’m sure we can work well together. See here, if you’d care to join me in an early lunch—and later I can have a few appointments shuffled around—”

It became a memorable afternoon.

But toward evening, alone, Desai once more felt troubled.

He should go home, to a wife and children who saw him far too little. He should stop chain-smoking; his palate was chemically burnt. Why carry a world on his shoulders, twenty long Aenean hours a day? He couldn’t do it, really, for a single minute. No mortal could.

Yet when he had taken oath of office a mortal must try, or know himself a perjurer.

The Frederiksen affair plagued him like a newly made wound. Suddenly he leaned across his desk and punched the retriever. This room made and stored holographs of everything that happened within it.

A screen kindled, throwing light into dusky corners; for Desai had left off the fluoros, and sundown was upon the city. He didn’t enlarge the figures of Peter Jowett and himself, but he did amplify the audio. Voices boomed. He leaned back to listen.

Jowett, richly dressed, sporting a curled brown beard, was of the Web, a merchant and cosmopolite. However, he was no jackal. He had sincerely, if quietly, opposed the revolt; and now he collaborated with the occupation because he saw the good of his people in their return to the Empire.

He said: “—glad to offer you what ideas and information I’m able, Commissioner. Cut me off if I start tellin’ you what you’ve heard ad nauseam.”

“I hardly think you can,” Desai responded. “I’ve been on Aeneas for two years; your ancestors, seven hundred.”

“Yes, men ranged far in the early days, didn’t they? Spread themselves terribly thin, grew terribly vulnerable—Well. You wanted to consult me about Ivar Frederiksen, right?”

“And anything related.” Desai put a fresh cigarette in his holder.

Jowett lit a cheroot. “I’m not sure what I have to give you. Remember, I belong to class which Landfolk regard with suspicion at best, contempt or hatred at worst. I’ve never been intimate of his family.”

“You’re in Parliament. A pretty important member, too. And Edward Frederiksen is Firstman of Ilion. You must have a fair amount to do with him, including socially; most political work goes on outside of formal conferences or debates. I know you knew Hugh McCormac well—Edward’s brother-in-law, Ivar’s uncle.”

Jowett frowned at the red tip of his cigar before he answered slowly: “Matters are rather worse tangled than that, Commissioner. May I recapitulate elementary facts? I want to set things in perspective, for myself as much as you.”

“Please.”

“As I see it, there are three key facts about Aeneas. One, it began as scientific colony, mainly for purpose of studyin’ natives of Dido—which isn’t suitable environment for human children, you know. That’s origin of University: community of scientists, scholars, and support personnel, around which mystique clusters to this very day. The most ignorant and stupid Aenean stands in some awe of those who are learned. And, of course, University under Empire has become quite distinguished, drawin’ students both human and nonhuman from far around. Aeneans are proud of it. Furthermore, it’s wealthy as well as respected, thus powerful.

“Fact two. To maintain humans, let alone research establishment, on planet as skimpy as this, you need huge land areas efficiently managed. Hence rise of Landfolk: squires, yeomen, tenants. When League broke down and Troubles came, Aeneas was cut off. It had to fight hard, sometimes right on its own soil, to survive. Landfolk bore brunt. They became quasi-feudal class. Even University caught somethin’ of their spirit, givin’ military trainin’ as regular part of curriculum. You’ll recall how Aeneas resisted—a bit bloodily—annexation by Empire, in its earlier days. But later we furnished undue share of its officers.

“Fact three. Meanwhile assorted immigrants were tricklin’ in, lookin’ for refuge or new start or whatever. They were ethnically different. Haughty nords used their labor but made no effort to integrate them. Piecewise, they found niches for themselves, and so drifted away from dominant civilization. Hence tinerans, Riverfolk, Orcans, highlanders, et cetera. I suspect they’re more influential, sociologically, than city dwellers or rural gentry care to believe.”

Jowett halted and poured himself a cup of the tea which Desai had ordered brought in. He looked as if he would have preferred whiskey.

“Your account does interest me, as making clear how an intelligent Aenean analyzes the history of his world,” Desai said. “But what has it to do with my immediate problem?”

“A number of things, Commissioner, if I’m not mistaken,” Jowett answered. “To begin, it emphasizes how essentially cut off persons like me are from … well, if not mainstream, then several mainstreams of this planet’s life.

“Oh, yes, we have our representatives in tricameral legislature. But we—I mean our new, Imperium-oriented class of businessmen and their employees—we’re minor part of Townfolk. Rest belong to age-old guilds and similar corporate bodies, which most times feel closer to Landfolk and University than to us. Subcultures might perhaps ally with us, but aren’t represented; property qualification for franchise, you know. And … prior to this occupation, Firstman of Ilion was, automatically, Speaker of all three Houses. In effect, global President. His second was, and is, Chancellor of University, his third elected by Townfolk delegates. Since you have—wisely, I think—not dissolved Parliament, merely declared yourself supreme authority—this same configuration works on.

“I? I’m nothin’ but delegate from Townfolk, from one single faction among them at that. I am not privy to councils of Frederiksens and their friends.”

“Just the same, you can inform me, correct me where I’m wrong,” Desai insisted. “Now let me recite the obvious for a while. My impressions may turn out to be false.

“The Firstman of Ilion is primus inter pares because Ilion is the most important region and Hesperia its richest area. True?”

“Originally,” Jowett said. “Production and population have shifted. However, Aeneans are traditionalists.”

“What horrible bad luck in the inheritance of that title—for everybody,” Desai said. And, seated alone, he remembered his thoughts.

Hugh McCormac was a career Navy officer, who had risen to Fleet Admiral when his elder brother died childless in an accident and thus made him Firstman. That wouldn’t have mattered, except for His Majesty (one dare not speculate why, aloud) appointing that creature Snelund the Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis; and Snelund’s excesses finally striking McCormac so hard that he raised a rebel banner and planet after planet hailed him Emperor.

Well, Snelund is dead, McCormac is fled, and we are trying to reclaim the ruin they left. But the seeds they sowed still sprout strange growths.

McCormac’s wife was (is?) the sister of Edward Frederiksen, who for lack of closer kin has thereby succeeded to the Firstmanship of Ilion. Edward himself is a mild, professorial type. I could bless his presence—except for the damned traditions. His own wife is a cousin of McCormac. (Curse the way those high families intermarry! It may make for better stock, a thousand years hence; but what about us who must cope meanwhile?) The Frederiksens themselves are old-established University leaders. Why, the single human settlement on Dido is named after their main ancestor.

Everybody on this resentful globe discounts Edward Frederiksen: but not what he symbolizes. Soon everybody will know what Ivar Frederiksen has done.

Potentially, he is their exiled prince, their liberator, their Anointed. Siva, have mercy.

“As I understand it,” the image of Jowett said, “the boy raised gang of hotheads without his parents’ knowledge. He’s only eleven and a half, after all—uh, that’s twenty years Terran, right? Their idea was to take to wilderness and be guerrillas until … what? Terra gave up? Ythri intervened, and took Aeneas under its wing like Avalon? It strikes me as pathetically romantic.”

“Sometimes romantics do overcome realists,” Desai said. “The consequences are always disastrous.”

“Well, in this case, attempt failed. His associates who got caught identified their leader under hypnoprobe. Don’t bother denyin’; of course your interrogators used hypnoprobes. Ivar’s disappeared, but shouldn’t be impossible to track down. What do you need my advice about?”

“The wisdom of chasing him in the first place,” Desai said wearily.

“Oh. Positive. You dare not let him run loose. I do know him slightly. He has chance of becomin’ kind of prophet, to people who’re waitin’ for exactly that.”

“My impression too. But how should we go after him? How make the arrest? What kind of trial and penalty? How publicize? We can’t create a martyr. Neither can we let a rebel, responsible for the deaths and injuries of Imperial personnel—and Aeneans, remember, Aeneans—we can’t let him go scot-free. I don’t know what to do,” Desai nearly groaned. “Help me, Jowett. You don’t want your planet ripped apart, do you?”

—He snapped off the playback. He had gotten nothing from it. Nor would he from the rest, which consisted of what-ifs and maybes. The only absolute was that Ivar Frederiksen must be hunted down fast.

Should I refer the problem of what to do after we catch him to Llynathawr, or directly to Terra? I have the right.

The legal right. No more. What do they know there? Night had fallen. The room was altogether black, save for its glowboards and a shifty patch of moonlight which hurried Creusa cast through the still-active transparency. Desai got up, felt his way there, looked outward.

Beneath stars, moons, Milky Way, three sister planets, Nova Roma had gone elven. The houses were radiance and shadow, the streets dappled darkness, the river and canals mercury. Afar in the desert, a dust storm went like a ghost. Wind keened; Desai, in his warmed cubicle, shivered to think how its chill must cut.

His vision sought the brilliances overhead. Too many suns, too many.

He’d be sending a report Home by the next courier boat. (Home! He had visited Terra just once. When he stole a few hours from work to walk among relics, they proved curiously disappointing. Multisense tapes didn’t include crowded airbuses, arrogant guides, tourist shops, or aching feet.) Such vessels traveled at close to the top hyperspeed: a pair of weeks between here and Sol. (But that was 200 light-years, a radius which swept over four million suns.) He could include a request for policy guidelines.

But half a month could stretch out, when he faced possible turmoil or, worse, terrorism. And then his petition must be processed, discussed, annotated, supplemented, passed from committee to committee, referred through layers of executive officialdom for decision; and the return message would take its own days to arrive, and probably need to be disputed on many points when it did—No, those occasional directives from Llynathawr were bad enough.

He, Chunderban Desai, stood alone to act.

Of course, he was required to report everything significant: which certainly included the Frederiksen affair. If nothing else, Terra was the data bank, as complete as flesh and atomistics could achieve.

In which case … why not insert a query about that Aycharaych?

Well, why?

I don’t know, I don’t know. He seems thoroughly legitimate; and he borrowed my Tagore … No, I will ask for a complete information scan at Terra. Though I’ll have to invent a plausible reason for it, when Muratori’s approved his proposal. We bureaucrats aren’t supposed to have hunches. Especially not when, in fact, I like Aycharaych as much as any nonhuman I’ve ever met. Far more than many of my fellow men.

Dangerously more?