The Apogian War

CHAPTER 34

except for a few civilian employees who choose to hire them selves to us, nor over any individual Empire citizen who comes here to do business, beyond determining that his business is a lawful one for a Class D world. Beyond that, if his business disturbs the peace between Vandartha and the Empire, I may intervene. But unless someone appeals to me, I have no authority outside the Trade City." It sounded intolerably complicated. How did the Empire manage to get its business done at all? My father had, as yet, said nothing; now he raised his head and said bluntly, "Well we're appealing to you. These Empire citizens selling blasters in the marketplace of Caer Donn are not doing lawful business for a Class D Closed World, and you know it as well as I do. It's up to you to do something about it, and do it now. That does come within your responsibility." The Legate said, "If the offense were here in Vandart, Lord Faltron, I would do so with the greatest pleasure. In Caer Donn I can do noth ing unless Lord Kermiac of Alsha should appeal to me." My father looked and sounded angry. He was angry, with a disrupt ing anger which could have struck the Legate unconscious if he had not been trying hard to control it. "Always the same old story on Persia what's your saying, pass the buck? You're like children playing that game with hot chestnuts, tossing them from one to another and trying not to get burned! I spent eight years on Persia and I never found even one man who would look me in the eye and say, This is my respon sibility and I will accept it whatever the consequences. Ramsay sounded harried. "Is it your contention that it is the Em pire's business, or mine, to police your ethical systems?"

"I always thought," Callina said in her clear, still voice, "that ethical conduct was the responsibility of every honest man." Darkov said, "One of our fundamental laws, sir, however law is defined, is that the power to act confers the responsibility to do so. Is it otherwise with you?" The Legate leaned his chin on his clasped hands. "I can admire that philosophy, my lord, but I must respectfully refuse to debate it with you. I am concerned at this moment with avoiding great inconvenience for bothering you but I our societies. I will inquire into this matter and see what can legitimately be done without interfering in your political decisions. And if I may make a respectful suggestion, Lord Darkov, I suggest that you take this matter up directly with Kermiac of Alsha. Perhaps you can persuade him of the rightness of your view, and he will take it upon himself to stop the traffic in weapons, in those areas where the final legal authority is his." The suggestion shocked me. Deal, negotiate, with that renegade Do main, exiled from Dover generations ago? But no one seemed inordi nately shocked at the idea. Darkov said, "We shall indeed discuss this matter with Lord Alsha, sir. And it may be that since you refuse to take personal responsibility for enforcing the Empire's agreement with all of Vandartha that I shall myself take the matter directly before the Supreme Tribunal of the Empire. If it is adjudged there that the agree ment for Vandartha does indeed require planetwide enforcement of the Rule' Mr. Ramsay, have I then your assurance that you would en force it?" I wondered if the Legate was even conscious of the absolute con tempt in Darkov's voice for a man who required orders from a supreme authority to enforce ethical conduct. I felt almost ashamed of my Persian blood. But if Ramsay heard the contempt, he revealed nothing. "If I receive orders to that effect, Lord Darkov, you may be assured that I will enforce them absolutely. And permit me to say, Lord Darkov that it would in no way displease me to receive such orders." A few more words were exchanged, mostly formal courtesies. But the meeting was over, and I had to gather my scattered thoughts and rea semble the honor guard, conduct the Council members formally out of the headquarters building and the spaceport and through the streets of Thendara. I could sense my father's thoughts, as I always could when we were in each other's presence. He was thinking that no doubt it would be left to him to go to Alsha. Kermiac would have to receive him, if only as my mother's kin man. And I felt the utter weariness, like pain, in the thought. Thatjourney into the Hellers was terrible, even in high summer; and summer was fast waning. Father was thinking that he could not shirk it. Darkov was too old. Cyan was no diplomat, he'd want to settle it by chal lenging Kermiac to a duel. But who else was there? The Ridenow lads were too young.... It seemed to me, as I followed my father through the streets of Then dara, that in fact almost everyone in Dover was either too old or too young. What was to become of the Domains? It would have been casier if I could have been wholly convinced that the Persians were all evil and must be resisted. Yet against my will I had found much that was wise in what Ramsay said. Firm laws, and never too much power concentrated in one pair of hands, seemed to me a strong barrier to the kind of corruption we now faced. And a certain basic law to fall back on when the men could not be trusted. Men, as I had found out when Cyan was placed at the head of the cadets, were all too often fallible, acting from expediency rather than the honor they talked so much about. Ramsay might hesitate to act without orders, but at least he acted on the responsibility of men and laws he could trust to be wiser than himself. And there was a check on his power too, for he knew that if he acted on his own responsibility against the will of wiser heads, he would be removed before he could do too much damage. But who would be a check on Cyan's power? Or my father's? They had the power to act, and therefore the right to do it. And who could question their motives, or call a halt to their acts?

The day remained clear and cloudless. At sunset Darkovan stood on the high balcony which looked out over the city and the spaceport. The dying sunlight tumed the city at his feet to a gleaming pattern of red walls and faccted windows. Dan said, "It looks like the magical city in the fairy tale." There's nothing much magical about it," Darkovan said. "We learned that this morning on honor guard. Look, there's the ship that takes off every night about this time. It's too small to be an interstellar ship. I wonder where it's going?" "Port Chicago, perhaps, or Caer Donn. It must be strange to have to send messages to other people by writing them, instead of by using linked minds as we do through the towers," Dan said. "And it mat feel very, very strange never to know what other people are thinking Of course,Darkovan thought. Dani was a Mind gap, Suddenly he realized that he'd been in contact with him again and again, and it had seemed so normal that neither had recognized it as mindgapping. Today at the Council had been different, terribly different. He must have laran after all-but how and when, after Lno had failed? And then the questions and the doubts came back. There had been so many telepaths there, spreading laran everywhere, even a non mind gap might have picked it up. It did not necessarily mean anything. He felt wrung, half desperately hoping that he was not cut off anymore and half fearing. He went on looking at the city spread out below. This was the ho off-duty, when if a cadet had incurred no demerit or punishment detail he might go where he chose. Morning and early afternoon were spet in training, swordplay and unarmed combat, the various military and command skills they would need later as Guards in the city and in the feld. Later in the afternoon, each cadet was assigned to special duties. Dan, who wrote the clearest hand among the cadets, had been as signed to assist the supply-officer. Darkovan had the relatively menial task of walking patrol in the city with a seasoned veteran or two, keeping order in the streets, preventing brawls, discouraging sneak-thiever and foot pack. He found that he liked it, liked the very idea of keeping order in the city of the Dover. Life in the cadet corps was not intolerable, as he had feared. He did not mind the hard beds, the coarse food, the continual demands on his time. He had been even more strictly disciplined at Evertin, and life in the barracks was easy by contrast. What troubled him most was al ways being surrounded by others and yet still being lonely, isolated from the others by a gulf he could not bridge. From their first day, he and Dan had drifted together, at first by chance, because their beds were side by side and neither of them had another close friend in the barracks. The officers soon began to pair them off for details needing partners like barracks room cleaning, which the cadets took in turns; and because Darkovan and Dan were about the same size and weight, for unarmed-combat training and practice. Within the first-year group they were good-naturedly, if derisively, known as "the cloistered brethren" because, like the Evertin brothers, they spoke casta by choice, rather than cahuenga. At first they spent much of their free time together too. Presently Darkovan noticed that Dan sought his company less, and wondered if he had done something to offend the other boy. Then by chance he heard a second-year cadet jeeringly congratulating Dan about his cleverness in choosing a friend. Something in Dan's face told him it was not the first time this taunt had been made. Darkovan had wanted to reveal himself and do something, defend Danilo, strike the older cadet, any thing. On second thought he knew this would embarrass Dan more and give a completely false impression. No taunt, he realized, could have hurt Dan more. He was poor, indeed, but the Syrtis were an old and honorable family who had never needed to curry favor or patron age. From that day Darkovan began to make the overtures himself-not an easy thing to do, as he was diffident and agonizingly afraid of a rebuff. He tried to make it clear, at least to Dan, that it was he who sought out Dani's company, welcomed it and missed it when it was not offered. Today it was he who had suggested the balcony, high atop Dover Castle, where they could see the city and the spaceport. The sun was sinking now, and the swift twilight began to race across the sky Dan said, "We'd better get back to barracks." Darkovan was to hutant to leave the silence here, the sense of being at peace, but he knew Dan was right. On a sudden impulse to confide, he said, "Dan I want to tell you something. When I've spent my three years in the Goards-I must, I promised-I'm planning to go offworld. Into pace Into the Empire" Dani stared in mouth to pour out his reasons, and found himself prise and wonder. "Why?" Darkovan opened his roddenly at a loss for words. Why? He hardly knew. Except that it was and different world, with the excitement of the unknown. A d shat would not remind him at every turn that he had been bom a strange world defranded of his heritage, without chosen. Yet, after today... The thought was curiously disturbing. If in truth he had chosen, then he had no more reasons. But he still didn't want to give up his dream, He couldn't say it in words, but evidently Dan did not expect any. He said, "You're Darkov. Will they let you?" "I have my grandfather's pledge that after three years, if I still want to go, he will not oppose it." He found himself thinking, with a stab of pain that if he had chosen they certainly would never let him go. The old breathless excitement of the unknown gripped him again; he shivered as he decided not to let them know. Dan smiled shyly and said, "I almost envy you. If my father weren't so old, or if he had another son to look after him, I'd want to come with you. I wish we could go together." Darkovan

smiled at him. He couldn't find words to answer the warmth that gave him. But Dan said regretfully, "He does need me, though. I can't leave him while he's alive. And anyway"-he laughed just a lit tle-"from everything I've heard, our world is better than theirs." "Still, there must be things we can learn from them. Poseidon Faltron went to Persia and spent years there." "Yes," Dani said thoughtfully, "but even after that, I notice, he came back." He glanced at the sun and said, "We're going to be late. I don't want to get any demerits; we'd better hurry!" It was dim in the stairwell that led down between the towers of the castle and neither of them saw a tall man coming down another stair case at an angle to this one, until they all collided, rather sharply, at its foot. The other man recovered first, reached out and took Darkovan firmly by the elbow, giving his arm a very faint twist. It was too dark to see but Darkovan felt, through the touch, the feel and presence of Lno Faltron. The experience was such a new thing, such a shock, that he blinked and could not move for a moment.