The Rebel Worlds

XV

Seated at the pilot board of the gig, Flandry pushed controls to slide aside the housing and activate the view-screens. Space leaped at him. The gloom of Satan and the glitter of stars drifted slowly past as Rommel swung around the planet and tumbled along her invariable plane. Twice he identified slivers of blackness crossing the constellations and the Milky Way: nearby warcraft. But unaided senses could not really prove to him that he was at the heart of the rebel fleet.

Instruments had done that as he drove inward, and several curt conversations once he came in range. Even when Kathryn spoke directly with Hugh McCormac, reserve stood between them. Warned by his communications officer what to expect, the admiral had had time to don a mask. How could he know it wasn’t a trick? If he spoke to his wife at all, and not to an electronic shadow show, she might be under brainscrub, speaking the words that her operator projected into her middle ear. Her own mostly impersonal sentences, uttered from a visage nearly blank, yet the whole of her unsteady, might lend credence to that fear. Flandry had been astonished. He had taken for granted she would cry forth in joy.

Was it perhaps a simple but strong wish for privacy, or was it that at this ultimate moment and ultimate stress she must fight too hard to keep from flying apart? There had been no chance to ask her. She obeyed Flandry’s directive, revealing no secret of his, insisting that the two men hold a closed-door parley before anything else was done; and McCormac agreed, his voice rough and not altogether firm; and then things went too fast — the giving of directions, the study of meters, the maneuvers of approach and orbit matching — for Flandry to learn what she felt.

But while he prepared to go, she came from the cabin to which she had retreated. She seized his hands and looked into his eyes and whispered, “Dominic, I’m prayin’ for both of you.” Her lips brushed across his. They were cold, like her fingers, and tasted of salt. Before he could respond, she walked quickly away again.

Theirs had been a curious intimacy while they traveled hither. The red gift he had given her; the plan he laid out, and that she helped him perfect after she saw he was not to be moved from it; between times, dreamy talk of old days and far places, much reminiscence about little events on Dido — Flandry wondered if man and woman could grow closer in a wedded lifetime. In one aspect, yes, obviously they could; but that one they both shied off from speaking of.

And here came Persei into view and with her, one way or another, an end to everything which had been. The flagship loomed like a moon, mottled with thermostatic paint patterns, hilled with boat nacelles and gun turrets, thrusting out cannon and sensors like crystal forests. Satellite craft glinted around her. Indicator lights glowed on Flandry’s board and his receiver said, “We have a lock on you. Go ahead.”

He started the gravs. The gig left Rommel and surrendered to control from Persei. It was a short trip, but tense on both sides of the gap. How could McCormac be positive this was not a way to get a nuclear weapon inside his command vessel and detonate it? He can’t, Flandry thought. Especially when I wouldn’t allow anyone to come fetch me. Of course that might well have been for fear of being captured by a boarding party, which indeed was partly the case, but just the same — He’s courageous, McCormac. I detest him to his inmost cell, but he’s courageous.

A portal gaped and swallowed him. He sat for a minute hearing air gush back into the housing. Its personnel valves opened. He left the gig and went to meet the half dozen men who waited. They watched him somberly, neither hailing nor saluting.

He returned the stares. The insurrectionists were as marked by hunger and strain as he, but theirs was a less healthy, a sallowing, faintly grubby condition. “Relax,” he said. “Inspect my vessel if you wish. No boobytraps, I assure you. Let’s not dawdle, though.”

“This way … please.” The lieutenant who led the squad started off with rapid, stiff strides. Part of the group stayed behind, to check the boat. Those who walked at Flandry’s back were armed. It didn’t bother him. He had worse dangers to overcome before he could sleep.

They went through metal tunnels and caverns, past hundreds of eyes, in silence hardly broken save for the ship’s pulse and breath. At the end, four marines guarded a door. The lieutenant addressed them and passed through. Saluting in the entrance, he said, “Commander Flandry, sir.”

“Send him in,” replied a deep toneless voice. “Leave us alone but stay on call.”

“Aye, sir.” The lieutenant stood aside. Flandry went by. The door closed with a soft hiss that betokened soundproofing.

Quiet lay heavy in the admiral’s suite. This main room was puritanically furnished: chairs, a table, a couch, a plain rug, the bulkheads and overhead an undraped light gray. A few pictures and animations gave it some personality: family portraits, views from home, scenes of wilderness. So did a chess set and a bookshelf which held both codices and spools, both classics and scientific works. One of the inner doors was ajar, showing an office where McCormac must often toil after his watches. No doubt the bedroom was downright monastic, Flandry thought, the galley and bar seldom used, the—

“Greeting.” McCormac said. He stood large, straight, gaunt as his men but immaculate, the nebula and stars frosty on his shoulders. He had aged, Flandry saw: more gray in the dark hair than pictures recorded, still less flesh in the bony countenance and more wrinkles, the eyes sunken while the nose and chin had become promontories.

“Good day.” Flandry felt a moment’s awe and inadequacy wash over him. He dismissed it with a measure of cold enjoyment.

“You might have saluted, Commander,” McCormac said quietly.

“Against regulations,” Flandry replied. “You’ve forfeited your commission.”

“Have I? Well—” McCormac gestured. “Shall we sit down? Would you care for refreshment?”

“No, thanks,” Flandry said. “We haven’t time to go through the diplomatic niceties. Pickens’ fleet will be on you in less than 70 hours.”

McCormac lowered himself. “I am aware of that, Commander. We keep our scouts busy, you know. The mustering of that much strength could not be concealed. We’re prepared for a showdown; we welcome it.” He glanced up at the younger man and added: “You observe that I give you your proper rank. I am the Emperor of all Terran subjects. After the war, I plan on amnesty for nearly everyone who misguidedly opposed me. Even you, perhaps.”

Flandry sat down too, opposite him, crossed ankle over knee, and grinned. “Confident, aren’t you?”

“It’s a measure of your side’s desperation that it sent you in advance to try negotiating, with what you claim is my wife for a hostage.” McCormac’s mouth tightened. Momentarily, the wrath in him struck forth, though he spoke no louder. “I despise any man who’d lend himself to such a thing. Did you imagine I’d abandon everyone else who’s trusted me to save any individual, however dear? Go tell Snelund and his criminals, there will be no peace or pardon for them, though they run to the ends of the universe; but there are ways and ways to die, and if they harm my Kathryn further, men will remember their fate for a million years.”

“I can’t very well convey that message,” Flandry replied, “seeing that Snelund’s dead.” McCormac half rose. “What Kathryn and I came to let you know is that if you accept battle, you and your followers will be equally dead.”

McCormac leaned over and seized Flandry by the upper arms, bruisingly hard. “What is this?” he yelled.

Flandry snapped that grip with a judo break. “Don’t paw me, McCormac,” he said.

They got back on their feet, two big men, and stood toe to toe. McCormac’s fists were doubled. The breath whistled in and out of him. Flandry kept hands open, knees tense and a trifle bent, ready to move out of the way and chop downward. The impasse lasted thirty mortal seconds.

McCormac mastered himself, turned, stalked a few paces off, and faced around again. “All right,” he said as if being strangled. “I let you in so I could listen to you. Carry on.”

“That’s better.” Flandry resumed his chair arid took out a cigaret. Inwardly he shook and felt now frozen, now on fire. “The thing is,” he said, “Pickens has your code.”

McCormac rocked where he stood.

“Given that,” Flandry said redundantly, “if you fight, he’ll take you apart; if you retreat, he’ll chivvy you to pieces; if you disperse, he’ll snatch you and your bases in detail before you can rally. You haven’t time to recode and you’ll never be allowed the chance. Your cause is done, McCormac.”

He waved the cigaret. “Kathryn will confirm it,” he added, “She witnessed the whole show. Alone with her, you’ll soon be able to satisfy yourself that she’s telling the truth, under no chemical compulsions. You won’t need any psych tests for that, I hope. Not if you two are the loving couple she claims.

“Besides, after talking to her, you’re welcome to send a team over who’ll remove my central computer. They’ll find your code in its tapes. That’ll disable my hyperdrive, of course, but I don’t mind waiting for Pickens.”

McCormac stared at the deck. “Why didn’t she come aboard with you?” he asked.

“She’s my insurance,” Flandry said. “She won’t be harmed unless your side does something ridiculous like shooting at my vessel. But if I don’t leave this one freely, my crew will take the appropriate measures.”

Which I trust, dear Hugh, you will interpret as meaning that I have trained spacehands along, who’ll speed away if you demonstrate bad faith. It’s the natural assumption, which I’ve been careful to do nothing to prevent you from making. The datum that my crew is Woe, who couldn’t navigate a flatboat across a swimming pool, and that heesh’s orders are to do nothing no matter what happens … you’re better off not receiving that datum right at once. Among other things, first I want to tell you some home truths.

McCormac lifted his head and peered closely. With the shock ridden out, his spirit and intelligence were reviving fast. “Your hostage?” he said from the bottom of his throat.

Flandry nodded while kindling his cigaret. The smoke soothed him the least bit. “Uh-huh. A long story. Kathryn will tell you most of it. But the upshot is, though I serve the Imperium, I’m here in an irregular capacity and without its knowledge.”

“Why?”

Flandry spoke with the same chill steadiness as he regarded the other: “For a number of reasons, including that I’m Kathryn’s friend. I’m the one who got her away from Snelund. I took her with me when I went to see what the chance was of talking you out of your lunacy. You’d left the Virgilian System, but one of your lovely barbarian auxiliaries attacked and wrecked us. We made it down to Dido and marched overland to Port Frederiksen. There I seized the warship from which the code was gotten, the same I now command. When I brought it to Llynathawr, my men and I kept Kathryn’s presence secret. They think the cosmos of her too, you see. I lured Governor Snelund on board, and held him over a drain while she cut his throat. I’d have done worse, so’d you, but she has more decency in a single DNA strand than you or I will ever have in our whole organisms. She helped me get rid of the evidence because I want to return home. We tossed it on a meteorite trajectory into the atmosphere of an outer planet. Then we headed for Satan.”

McCormac shuddered. “Do you mean she’s gone over to your side — to you? Did you two—”

Flandry’s cigaret dropped from lips yanked into a gorgon’s lines. He surged up and across the desk, laid hold of McCormac’s tunic, batted defending hands aside with the edge of his other palm and numbing force, shook the admiral and grated:

“Curb your tongue! You sanctimonious son of a bitch! If I had my wish, your pig-bled body would’ve been the one to burn through that sky. But there’s Kathryn. There’s the people who’ve followed you. There’s the Empire. Down on your knees, McCormac, and thank whatever smug God you’ve taken on as your junior partner, that I have to find some way of saving your life because otherwise the harm you’ve done would be ten times what it is!”

He hurled the man from him. McCormac staggered against a bulkhead, which thudded. Half stunned, he looked upon the rage which stood before him, and his answering anger faded.

After a while, Flandry turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said in a dull voice. “Not apologetic, understand. Only sorry I lost my temper. Unprofessional of me, especially when our time is scant.”

McCormac shook himself. “I said I’d listen. Shall we sit down and begin over?” Flandry had to admire him a trifle for that.

They descended stiffly to the edges of their chairs. Flandry got out a new cigaret. “Nothing untoward ever happened between Kathryn and me,” he said, keeping his eyes on the tiny cylinder. “I won’t deny I’d have liked for it to, but it didn’t. Her entire loyalty was, is, and forever will be to you. I think I’ve persuaded her that your present course is mistaken, but not altogether. And in no case does she want to go anyplace but where you go, help in anything but what you do. Isn’t that an awesome lot to try to deserve?”

McCormac swallowed. After a moment: “You’re a remarkable fellow, Commander. How old are you?”

“Half your age. And yet I have to tell you the facts of life.”

“Why should I heed you,” McCormac asked, but subduedly, “when you serve that abominable government? When you claim to have ruined my cause?”

“It was ruined anyway. I know how well your opposition’s Fabian strategy was working. What we hope to do — Kathryn and I — we hope to prevent you from dragging more lives, more treasure, more Imperial strength down with you.”

“Our prospects weren’t that bad. I was evolving a plan—”

“The worst outcome would have been your victory.”

“What? Flandry, I … I’m human, I’m fallible, but anyone would be better on the throne than that Josip who appointed that Snelund.”

With the specter of a smile, because his own fury was dying out and a measure of pity was filling the vacuum, Flandry replied: “Kathryn still accords with you there. She still feels you’re the best imaginable man for the job. I can’t persuade her otherwise, and haven’t tried very hard. You see, it doesn’t matter whether she’s right or wrong. The point is, you might have given us the most brilliant administration in history, and nevertheless your accession would have been catastrophic.”

“Why?”

“You’d have destroyed the principle of legitimacy. The Empire will outlive Josip. Its powerful vested interests, its cautious bureaucrats, its size and inertia, will keep him from doing enormous harm. But if you took the throne by force, why shouldn’t another discontented admiral do the same in another generation? And another and another, till civil wars rip the Empire to shreds. Till the Merseians come in, and the barbarians. You yourself hired barbarians to fight Terrans, McCormac. No odds whether or not you took precautions, the truth remains that you brought them in, and sooner or later we’ll get a rebel who doesn’t mind conceding them territory. And the Long Night falls.”

“I could not disagree more,” the admiral retorted with vehemence. “Restructuring a decadent polity—”

Flandry cut him off. “I’m not trying to convert you either. I’m simply explaining why I did what I did.” We need not tell you that I’d have abandoned my duty for Kathryn. That makes no difference any more — interior laughter jangled — except that It would blunt the edge of my sermon. “You can’t restructure something that’s been irreparably undermined. All your revolution has managed to do is get sophonts killed, badly needed ships wrecked, trouble brewed that’ll be years in settling — on this critical frontier.”

“What should I have done instead!” McCormac disputed. “Leave my wife and myself out of it. Think only what Snelund had already done to this sector. What he would do if and when he won back to Terra. Was there another solution but to strike at the root of our griefs and dangers?”

“ ‘Root’ — radix — you radicals are all alike,” Flandry said. “You think everything springs from one or two unique causes, and if only you can get at them, everything will automatically become paradisical. History doesn’t go that way. Read some and see what the result of every resort to violence by reformists has been.”

“Your theory!” McCormac said, flushing. “I … we were faced with a fact.”

Flandry shrugged. “Many moves were possible,” he said. “A number had been started: complaints to Terra, pressure to get Snelund removed from office or at least contained in his scope. Failing that, you might have considered assassinating him. I don’t deny he was a threat to the Empire. Suppose, specifically, after your friends liberated you, you’d gotten together a small though efficient force and mounted a raid on the palace for the limited purposes of freeing Kathryn and killing Snelund. Wouldn’t that have served?”

“But what could we have done afterward?”

“You’d have put yourself outside the law.” Flandry nodded. “Same as I’ve done, though I hope to hide the guilt I don’t feel. Quite aside from my personal well-being, the fact would set a bad precedent if it became public. Among your ignorances, McCormac, is that you don’t appreciate how essential a social lubricant hypocrisy is.”

“We couldn’t have … skulked.”

“No, you’d have had to do immediately what you and many others now have to do regardless — get out of the Empire.”

“Are you crazy? Where to?”

Flandry rose once more and looked down upon him. “You’re the crazy man,” he said. “I suppose we are decadent these days, in that we never seem to think of emigration. Better stay home, we feel, and cling to what we have, what we know, our comforts, our assurances, our associations … rather than vanish forever into that big strange universe … even when everything we cling to is breaking apart in our hands. But the pioneers worked otherwise. There’s room yet, a whole galaxy beyond these few stars we think we control, out on the far end of one spiral arm.

“You can escape if you start within the next several hours. With that much lead, and dispersal in addition, your ships ought to be able to pick up families, and leave off the men who don’t want to go. Those’ll have to take their chances with the government, though I imagine necessity will force it to be lenient. Set a rendezvous at some extremely distant star. None of your craft will likely be pursued much past the border if they happen to be detected.

“Go a long way, McCormac, as far as you possibly can. Find a new planet. Found a new society. Never come back.”

The admiral raised himself too. “I can’t abandon my responsibilities,” he groaned.

“You did that when you rebelled,” Flandry said. “Your duty is to save what you can, and live the rest of your life knowing what you wrought here. Maybe the act of leading people to a fresh beginning, maybe that’ll console you.” I’m sure it will in time. You have a royal share of self-righteousness. “And Kathryn. She wants to go. She wants it very badly.” He caught McCormac’s gaze. “If ever a human being had a right to be taken from this civilization, she does.”

McCormac blinked hard.

“Never come back,” Flandry repeated. “Don’t think of recruiting a barbarian host and returning. You’d be the enemy then, the real enemy. I want your word of honor on that. If you don’t give it to me, and to Kathryn, she won’t be allowed to rejoin you, whatever you may do to me.” I lie like a wet rag. “If you do give it, and break it, she will not pardon you.

“In spite of your behavior, you are an able leader. You’re the one man who can hope to carry the emigration off, in as short a while as you have to inform, persuade, organize, act. Give me your word, and Kathryn will ride back in my gig to you.”

McCormac covered his face. “Too sudden, I can’t—”

“Well, let’s thresh out a few practical questions first, if you like. I’ve pondered various details beforehand.”

“But — I couldn’t—”

“Kathryn is your woman, all right,” Flandry said bitterly. “Prove to me that you’re her man.”

She was waiting at the airlock. The hours had circled her like wolves. He wished that his last sight of her could be without that anguish and exhaustion.

“Dominic?” she whispered.

“He agreed,” Flandry told her. “You can go to him.”

She swayed. He caught her and held her. “Now, now,” he said clumsily, nigh to tears. He stroked the bright tousled hair. “Now, now, it’s ended, we’ve won, you and I—” She slumped. He barely kept her from falling.

With the dear weight in his arms, he went to sickbay, laid her down and administered a stimulol injection. Color appeared in seconds, her lashes fluttered, the green eyes found him. She sat erect. “Dominic!” she cried. Weeping had harshened her voice. “’Tis true?”

“See for yourself,” he smiled. “Uh, take care, though. I gave you a minimum shot. You’ll have a stiff metabolic price to pay as is.”

She came to him, still weary and shaken. Their arms closed. They kissed for a long time.

“I wish,” she said brokenly, “I almost wish—”

“Don’t.” He drew her head into the curve of his shoulder.

She stepped back. “Well, I wish you everything good there’ll ever be, startin’ with the girl who’s really right for you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Have no worries on my score. It’s been worth any trouble I may have had,” and ever will have. “Don’t delay, Kathryn. Go to him.”

She did. He sought the conn, where he could see the boat carry her off and await McCormac’s technicians.