The world little knows or cares the storms through which you have had to pass. It asks only if you brought the ship safely to port .
The first time had been a frantic headlong dive to ease a mutual hunger of desperate dimensions, begun and ended so quickly that it had already become a dim memory. The second was more exploratory, a fruitful search for familiar responses, familiar patterns of give and take. And the third was a loving, leisurely welcome home that left them both drained and content.
“Been too long, Peter,” Mora said.
“Much.”
They huddled in deep-breathing silence for a while, then Peter spoke. “You haven't asked me about the trip.”
“I know. I thought it could wait.”
“Afraid we'd fight again?”
Peter could feel her head nodding in the dark next to him. “I was sure of it. With the new year beginning, I wanted us to enter it in arms instead of at arms.”
He smiled and held his wife closer. “Well, it's here and so are we. And this is the only way to start a new year.”
“You were gone when the Year of the Tortoise began. That was a lonely time. And you won't be here for the Year of the Malak either.”
“But I'm here now and we can discuss the rest in the morning. No talk now.”
Mora fell asleep first, her head on his shoulder. Peter, despite his fatigue, lay awake awhile longer, listening to the rumble of the storm-whipped surf outside. It was so good to be home. So comfortable. So safe. He knew he could not bring himself to leave again. Let someone else take care of things on Throne from now on. He'd had enough. Next Year Day and every other day in between would find him here in his little house on the dunes. Then the dream would stop.
That decision made, he drifted off to sleep.
The first one was a woman. She slipped through the open bedroom door and slinked across the room toward the bed, a large cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms. After peering carefully at his face to be sure that it was him, her eyes lit with maniacal rage and she dumped the contents of her bundle over him. Thousands of orange and white Imperial mark notes fell like a poisonous snow. She turned and called soundlessly over her shoulder, and soon a steady stream of strangers trailed through the door, all with hate-filled eyes, all with bundles and bushels of mark notes that they emptied over him. He could only move his head back and forth. Mora was gone. He had been left alone to face this silent, murderous crowd. And still they came, and the pile of mark notes covered his face, and he could no longer breathe, and he was dying, dying, suffocated by Imperial marks…
Peter awoke in a sitting position, drenched with sweat. It had happened again. The dream had pursued him across half of Occupied Space. That did it. He was through.
“Come on, Daddy! Hurry, please!”
Children, he thought, trudging up the celadon dune in the wake of his seven-year-old daughter. You go away for a year and a half and you don't recognize them when you come back, they've grown so. And they're a little shy with you at first. But by the next day, they treat you like you were never away.
“I'm coming, Laina.” She stood at the top of the dune, slim and sleek and straight and fair, staring seaward, her blond hair streaming in the stiff onshore breeze. Something began to squeeze his larynx and knot the muscles of his jaw as he watched her. She's growing up without me. He continued up the dune, not daring to stop.
The wind slapped at him when he reached the top. The weather did nothing to lighten his mood…one of those gray days with a slippery slate sky dissolving into a molten lead sea, small white clouds like steam obscuring the junction. Another two steps and he could see the beach: Laina hadn't been exaggerating.
“Daddy, it's really a malak, isn't it?”
“So it is!” Peter muttered, staring at the huge blunt-headed mass of fish flesh, inert and lifeless on the sand near the high water mark. “Last time this happened was when I was about your age. Must be at least thirty meters long! Let's go down for a closer look.”
As Laina leaped to run down the dune, Peter scooped her up and swung her to her shoulders, her bare legs straddling the back of his neck. She liked to ride up there-at least she had before he left-and he liked the contact. Needed it.
Sea wind buffeted their ears and salt mist stung their eyes as they approached the decaying form.
“A sieve malak, leviathan class,” he told her, then sniffed the air. “And starting to stink already. Before they were all killed off, there used to be creatures like this on Earth called baleen whales. But whales weren't fish. Our malaks are true fish.”
Laina was almost speechless with awe at the immensity of the creature. “It's so big! What killed it?”
“Could've died of old age out at sea and drifted in, but I don't see much evidence of the scavengers having been at it. Probably got confused by the storm last night and wound up beached. I read somewhere that all the insides get crushed when a malak is beached…killed by its own weight.”
“Must eat a whole lotta other fish to make it grow so big.”
“Actually it doesn't eat other fish at all.” He walked her closer to the huge mouth that split the head, their approach stirring up a flight of scale-winged keendars from their feast on the remains. “See those big plates of hairy bone along the upper jaw…looks like a comb? That's the sieve. As they swim along, these malaks strain sea water through their sieve and eat all the tiny animals they trap in the hairs. Mostly it's stuff called plankton.”
He let Laina down on the sand so she could run up for a closer look. She wasn't long-the stench from the cavernous maw was too strong to allow a leisurely inspection.
“What's plankton?” she asked as she returned to his side. “I never heard of that before.”
“Let's go back up on the dune where the smell isn't so bad and I'll tell you all about it.”
Hand in hand they plodded through the damp, yielding blue granules to a point overlooking the waterline, yet beyond the carcass's fulsome stench, and watched the screaming, circling keendars for a quiet moment.
“Still interested in plankton?” Receiving a nod, Peter spoke in a slow, almost reminiscent manner, gearing his explanation to a child's mind, yet keeping it up at a level where Laina would have to reach a bit.
“Plankton is the basic food of the sea. It's billions of tiny little creatures, some plants, some animals, but all very, very tiny. They gather in huge batches out at sea, some just drifting others wiggling a little whip-like arm called a flagellum to push them here and there.
“All they really do is live and die and provide food for most of the ocean. They probably think they know just where they're going, never realizing that all the time the entire plankton patch is being pushed about at the whim of wind and current. They get gobbled up by huge sieve malaks that can't see what they're eating, and the plankton don't even know they've been eaten till it's over and done with.”
“Poor plankton!” Laina said, concern showing in her face.
“Oh, they're happy in their own way, I suppose. And while the malaks are cutting huge swaths out of their ranks, they just go on whipping the old flagella about and having a grand time. Even if you tried to tell them of the malaks and other sea creatures that constantly feed off them, they wouldn't believe you.”
“How come you know so much about plankton?”
“I've studied it up close,” Peter said, thoughts of Earth flashing through his mind.
Laina eyed the long baleen combs on the malak's jaw. “Glad I'm not a plankton.”
“If I have my way,” Peter said, putting his arm protectively around his daughter, “you never will be.” He stood up and gave the inert leviathan one last look. “But it's nice to know that malaks die, too. Let's go. Your mother'll have the morning soup ready and we don't want cold soup.”
Backs to the ocean, they walked along the blue dune toward the house, wind spasms allowing a murmur or two of small talk to drift back to the beach where keendars were crying the sound that had given them their name and pecking morsels from the malak's landward eye, glazed and forever sightless.
“You're going back, aren't you,” Mora said as they sat in the Ancestor Grove under Peter's great-grandfather tree. He hadn't told her of his pre-dawn resolution to stay, and was glad. The light of day quickly revealed the many flaws in plans that had seemed so simple and forthright in the darkness. He had to go back. There was no other way.
“I must.” Leaning against the tree, a much larger version of Pierrot, gave him the strength to say it. On the day of his great-grandfather's death, a hole had been dug into the root ball of this tree and the coffinless remains interred there. Throughout the remainder of the following year, the tree had absorbed nutrients from the decomposing body, incorporating them into itself, growing taller on the unique organic fertilizer. The seeds that formed on the tree's branches the following spring were saved until the birth of the next LaNague child. And on that day, the day of Peter LaNague's birth, two of those seeds were planted-one in the Ancestor Grove, and one in an earthenware pot that would remain cribside as the child grew.
The Tolivian mimosa, it had been learned, possessed a unique ability to imprint on a human being. A seedling-called a misho-in constant exposure to a growing child will become attuned to that particular child, sensitive to and reflective of his or her moods. The art of branch and root pruning, necessary to limit the tree's size, is carefully taught as the child grows. Raising a child with a personal misho was a common practice on Tolive, but hardly universal. Mora's family considered it a silly custom and so she was never given her own tree, and now could never have one since codevelopment was necessary for imprinting. She could never understand the indefinable bond between her husband and Pierrot, nor the growing bond between Laina and her own misho, but she could see that it seemed to add an extra dimension to each of them and felt poorer for never having experienced it herself.
Peter looked at his wife in the midday light. She hadn't changed, not in the least. The deep, shining, earthy brown of her hair caught the gold of the Tolivian sun and flung it back. The simple shift she wore did little to hide the mature curves enclosed within. She appeared at ease as she reclined against him, but he knew that was a facade.
“The gloves ready?” he asked, making small talk.
“A hundred pairs. They've been ready for a long time.” She looked away as she spoke.
“And the coins?”
“Being minted as fast as possible. But you know that.”
Peter nodded silently. He knew. He had seen the reports around the house.
Mora was a supervisor at the mint. The star-in-the-ohm design was hers, in fact.
“You could still get out of it,” she said abruptly, twisting toward him. “I could. But would you want to live with me if I did?”
“Yes!”
“I don't think I'd be good company.”
“I don't care. You know how I feel. This revolution is all a huge mistake. We should just sit back and let them all rot. We've no obligation to them. They built the fire-let them burn!” Mora was not alone in her opinion; quite a few Tolivians were uncomfortable with the idea of fomenting a revolution.
“But we'll burn, too, Mora. And you know that. We've been over this a thousand times, at least. When the Imperium economy crumbles-and it's already started to-they'll go looking for ways to bolster the mark. The only way for a bankrupt economy to do that is to find a huge new market, or to confiscate a hoard of gold and silver and use it to make its currency good again. Tolive is known to be the largest hoarder of precious metals in Occupied Space. They'll come to us and they won't be asking, they'll be demanding-with the full force of the Imperial Guard ready to back up any threat they care to make.”
“With Flint on our side we could hold them off.” Mora said eagerly. “And then the Imperium will fall apart on its own. All we have to do is hold them off long enough!”
“And then what? With the Imperium gone, Earth will step in and take over the out-worlds without a single energy bolt being fired. With everything in chaos, Earth will act as if it's doing everyone a favor. But this time they'll make sure none of the out-worlds gets free again. This time they'll not allow maverick planets like Tolive and Flint to remain aloof. And with our own resources already drained by a drawn-out battle with the Imperium, we'll have no chance at all against the forces Earth will array against us. There must be a revolution now if there's to be a free Tolive for Laina.”
“You don't know that Earth'll take us over!” Mora said, warming to their habitual argument. “You want to cut all the out-worlds free of the Imperium so they can go their own ways. But do you have the right to do that? Do you have the right to cut people free like that? A lot of them won't want it, you know. A lot of people are scared to death of freedom. They want somebody hanging over them all the time, wiping their noses when they're sad, paddling their rumps when they diverge from the norm.”
“They can have it, if they wish! They can set up their own little authoritarian enclaves and live that way if it pleases them. I don't care. Just don't include me, my family, my planet, or anybody else who thinks that's no way to live! We have a right to try to preserve a place for the safety and growth of the people, ideas, and things we value!”
Despite her anguish, Mora could not bring herself to disagree with him then, for she believed what he believed, and valued what he valued. Tears came to her eyes as she pounded her small fists futilely against the ground at the base of the tree.
“But it doesn't have to be you! Somebody else can go! It doesn't have to be you!”
Wrapping his arms around her, Peter held her close, his lips to her ear, aching to tell her what she wanted to hear, but unable to. “It has to be me. The Charter, the Sedition Trust, they've all been LaNague family projects for generations. And it so happens that the destruction of the Imperium, which we all knew would someday be necessary, has fallen to me.”
He rose and pulled her gently to her feet, keeping his arm around her. “I'll walk you home. Then I've got to go see the Trustees.”
Mora was quiet for a while as they walked through the sun-dappled tranquillity of the Ancestor Grove. Then: “You should stop by the Ama Cooperative on your way to the Trustees. Adrynna's been sick.”
Sudden fear jolted him. “She's dying?”
“No. She recovered. But still, she's old and who knows…? She may not be here when you get back.”
“I'll stop in first thing this afternoon.”
Peter was consistently struck by the smallness of the Ama Cooperative whenever he visited it, probably because all his impressions of the asymmetrical collection of squat buildings where the teachers of Kyfho dwelt were gathered during his childhood. He was announced via intercom from the courtyard and granted immediate entry. Everyone knew who he was and knew his time on the planet was short. He found his ama, his lifelong intellectual guide and philosophical mentor, in her room, gazing out the window from her low chair.
“Good day, Ama Adrynna,” he said from the doorway.
She swiveled at the sound of his voice, squinting in his direction. “Come into the light where I can have a good look at you.” Peter obliged, moving toward the window, where he squatted on his haunches next to her. She smiled, cocking her head left, then right. “So it's you after all. You've come to say good-by to your old ama.”
“No. Just hello. I'm on my way to the Trustees and thought I'd stop in and see you. Heard you've been sick or something like that.”
She nodded. “Something like that.” She had aged considerably but had changed little. Her hair, completely white now, was still parted in the middle and pulled down each side of her face in two severe lines. The face was tightly wrinkled, the mouth a mobile gash, the body painfully lean. Yet her eyes were still the beacons of reason and unshakable integrity that had inspired him throughout his youth and continued to fuel him to this day.
He had seen little of her in the past decade. As a member of the amae, Adrynna spent her days teaching and defining the Kyfho philosophy, and he had progressed beyond the stage where he relied on her counsel. He had taken what she had taught him and put it to use. Yet a large part of whatever he was and whatever he would be derived from the years he had spent at her knee. Tolive, the out-worlds, humanity, and Peter LaNague would be so much poorer when she was gone.
“The Trustees, eh?” Adrynna continued, her eyes narrowing. “The Sedition Trust is now your plaything, Peter. Whatever the Trustees think or say or do means nothing now that the revolution mechanism has been set in motion. Only the man in charge on Throne has the final say. And that man is you, Peter. For many generations, countless Tolivians have denied their heirs a single ag by willing all their possessions to the Sedition Trust upon their deaths. Their beliefs, their fortunes, the products of their lives ride to Throne with you, Peter LaNague.”
“I know.” No one had to tell him. The burden of that knowledge weighed on him every day. “I won't fail them, Adrynna.”
“What you mean by failure and what I mean by failure may be two different things. You know the quote by that old Earthie writer, Conrad, about bringing ships to port? Then you know that he was not talking about Tolive. This world cares about the storms through which you'll have to pass. Our concern for your mission is not limited to its success. We will want to know how you succeeded. We will want to know what moral corners you had to cut, and will want ‘None’ for an answer.”
“You taught me well. You must know that.”
“I only know one thing,” the old woman said in a voice ringing with her fierce conviction, “and that is that the revolution must be conducted in accordance with the principles of Kyfho if it is to have any real meaning. There must be no bloodshed, no violence unless it is defensive, no coercion! We must do it our way and our way alone! To do otherwise is to betray centuries of hardship and struggle. Above all else: Kyfho. Forget Kyfho in your pursuit of victory over the enemy, and you will become the enemy…worse than the enemy, for he doesn't know he is capable of anything better.”
“I know, Adrynna. I know all too well.”
“And beware the Flinters. They may be Kyfhons, but they follow a degraded version of the philosophy. They have embraced violence too tightly and may overreact. Watch them, as we will watch you.”
He nodded, rose, and kissed her forehead. It was hardly a comforting thought to know that his actions would be under such close scrutiny. But it was hardly a new thought, either-it had come with the territory.
The Trustees were his next stop: three people who, like many before them, had been elected guardians of the fund begun by the LaNague family in the early days of the colony. There being no government to speak of on Tolive, the matter of undermining a totalitarian state had been left to the efforts of individuals, and would be backed by that fund: the Sedition Trust. No one had envisioned an Out-world Imperium then-it had always been assumed that Earth would be the target of the Trust. And until recently, the job of Trustee-decided by votes from all contributors-had been a simple bookkeeping task. Now it was different. Now they held the purse strings on the revolution.
Yet Adrynna, in her offhanded manner that cut as quick and true as a vibe-knife, had pointed out something Peter had overlooked. The revolution as it was set up was really a one-man operation. Peter LaNague would make the moment-to-moment decisions and adjust its course as he went along. With the Trustees light years away, Peter LaNague was the revolution.
Adrynna must have had the most say in his being chosen as the agent provocateur-an ama knew her student better than a parent knew a child. Of course, out of deference to the founding family of the Sedition Trust, the same family that had spent generations honing a charter for a new organization which would rise from the ashes of the revolution, a LaNague would always have first consideration for the task if he or she were willing…and capable…and of the necessary fiber. The task was rife with possibilities for abuse-from simple malfeasance to outright betrayal of the cause-and could not be entrusted to someone merely because of lineage.
Peter LaNague had apparently met all the criteria. And when offered the job, had accepted. He had been working as a landscaper, a task that kept his hands busy but had allowed his mind long periods in which to roam free. He had known the call was coming and had developed myriad ideas on how to assault the Imperium's weak points. Circumstances, the Neeka incident, and Boedekker's subsequent proposal to the Flinters had narrowed him down to a devious strategy that would strike at the heart of the Imperium. It had all been so clean and simple then, so exciting in the planning stage. Now, in the midst of the sordid details of actually bringing the plan to fruition, he found he had lost all of his former enthusiasm. He wanted it over and done with.
All three Trustees were waiting for him when he arrived at the two-story structure that sat alone on the great northwestern plain of Tolive's second-largest continent, the building people called “Sedition Central.” It was to these men and this building that the Flinters had come with news of what Eric Boedekker had offered them in exchange for the Imperium's demise. Peter LaNague's life had been radically altered by that information.
After greetings and drink-pouring, Peter and the Trustees seated themselves in an open square. Waters, senior Trustee, brought the talk around to business.
“We've all heard your report and agree that the killing of the assassin was justified and unavoidable.”
“If there had been another way, I would have tried it,” Peter said. “But if we hadn't moved immediately, he would have murdered Metep. It was a life for a life.”
“And the agreement with Boedekker? He's actually staking his fortune on you?”
Peter nodded. “He's risking little. The necessary conversions merely change the nature of his assets. They never leave his control.”
“But if you're successful, he'll be ruined,” said Connors, the most erudite of the Trustees. “He must know that! He certainly didn't reach his present position by taking this kind of risk!”
“He doesn't care about his present position. He wanted to build a monolithic financial empire and center it around his family. But he's lost his family, and the Earth government won't let him start another. My plan gives him the opportunity to use his own empire to destroy another empire, the one that destroyed the last hope of his dream becoming reality. He agreed.”
“Then that's it,” Waters said. “It's all set.”
“Yes…yes, I think so.”
“What about this Broohnin you mention?” It was Silvera, youngest of the three and an eminent architect before she became a Trustee. “He worries me.”
“Worries me, too,” Peter said. “But I think-I hope-I've dazzled him enough to keep him off balance for a while.”
“He does sound dangerous,” Connors added. “Violent, too.”
“He's a wild card-as dangerous as they come and as unpredictable. But I can't bring the revolution through in the necessary time period without his contacts. I don't like him, I don't trust him, but without his co-operation there can be no revolution.”
The three Trustees considered this in silence. Only Connors had further comment.
“Is your five-year limit that strict? Can't we afford a year or two extra to slip our own people into sensitive positions?”
“Absolutely not!” Peter replied, shaking his head vigorously. “The economic situation is going to deteriorate rapidly on its own. If we allow seven, or even six years before we bring the house down, there may be nothing left to salvage. We figure that twenty years from now the Imperium, even if left alone, will be in such disarray that Earth could move in unchallenged. What we need is quick collapse and quick reconstruction before Earth is able to make its move. We can do it on a five-year schedule. On a seven-year schedule, I doubt we could move fast enough to keep the Earthies out.” He held up the fingers of his right hand. “Five years. No more. And only four are left.”
Connors persisted: “Couldn't we use Broohnin's organization without him?”
“Possibly. But that could be risky. We might be suspected of collusion with the Imperium. If that happened, we'd get no cooperation at all. Broohnin has valuable contacts in most of the trade guilds, in the Imperial communications centers, in the Treasury itself. Plus, there's a minor vid personality and a professor at the University of the Out-worlds who might prove useful. They're peripherally associated with Broohnin's group, not necessarily out of approval of his methods, but because he's the only resistance they've got. I need Broohnin to reach them.”
“I see then we have no choice,” Connors said resignedly. “But it feels wrong, and that bothers me.”
“You're not alone.”
Despite her best efforts to stanch them, tears were brimming and spilling over Mora's lower eyelids. She faced away from the smooth, flat expanse of the spaceport grid and the orbital shuttle patiently waiting on it.
“I don't want you to go,” she said against her husband's chest. “Something's going to happen, I know it.”
“The Imperium's going to come crashing down,” Peter said with all the confidence he could muster. “That's what's going to happen.”
“No. To you. Something bad. I can feel it. Let somebody else go.”
“I can't.”
“You can!” She lifted her head and looked at him. “You've done your share-more! All the groundwork is laid. It's just a matter of time from now on. Let somebody else finish it!”
Peter shook his head sadly. There was nothing in Occupied Space he wanted more than to stay right where he was. But that couldn't be.
“It has to be me, Mora. It's my plan. I've got to handle it, I've got to be there myself.”
“There must be some other person you can trust!” Mora's tears were drying in the heat of growing anger. “Surely you don't think you're the only one capable of overseeing the revolution. You can't tell me that!”
“I must know! I can't sit light years away and entrust this to someone else. It's too delicate. The future of everything we've worked for is at stake. I can't walk away. I want to-but I cannot.”
“But you can walk away from me-and from Laina. Is that so much easier?”
“Mora, please-that's not fair.”
“Of course it's not fair! And it's not fair that your daughter won't see you for years now. Maybe never again! She was so upset about your leaving again that she wouldn't even come down to the spaceport! And as for my having a husband-” She pulled free of his arms.
“Mora!”
“Maybe Laina had the right idea!” She was backing away from him as she spoke. “Maybe we both should have stayed home and let you come here all by yourself. We're both second place in your life now anyway.” She swung around and began walking away.
“Mora!” Peter heard his voice break as he called after his wife. He started to follow her but stopped after two steps. She was beyond gentle reasoning now. They were two stubborn people who shared a life as fierce in its discord as in its lovemaking. He knew from long experience that it would be hours before the two of them could carry on a civil conversation…and there were no hours left to him on Tolive. There were complex interstellar travel connections to be made and he had to leave now. If he tarried too long, his arrival on Throne could be delayed as long as a standard month.
He watched her until she rounded a bend in the corridor, hoping she would look back, just once. She never did.
Peter LaNague entered the boarding tube that would drop him at the waiting shuttle. Dealing with Den Broohnin, keeping the Flinters in line, masterminding a revolution that still hinged on too many variables, that if successful would significantly alter the course of human history…none of these disturbed his wah as much as an argument with that stubborn, hot-tempered, and occasionally obnoxious creature called Mora, who could make his life so miserable at times, and yet make it all so worthwhile. He would never understand it.
It helped somewhat when he glimpsed her standing on the observation tower, gripping the railing with what he knew must be painful intensity, watching the shuttle, waiting for lift-off. It helped, but it failed to loosen the knot that had tightened to the fraying point in the center of his chest, nor did it lighten the lead cast that sat where his stomach had been.
He could not allow himself to dwell on Mora, nor on Laina. They were a part of his life that had to be completely walled off if he were to function effectively on Throne. As the shuttle rose toward the stars, he cast Mora as Fortunato, played Montresor himself, and began the brickwork.
It hurt.