An Enemy of the State

by Wilson, F. Paul

  He released the safety lock and placed his finger on the activator switch. A cascade of thoughts washed across his mind as he closed his eyes and held his breath…Salli…if the ship blew, at least he'd take the Tarks with him…Salli…was this what had happened to the few probe ships that had been sent this way in the past and were never heard from again?…Salli…

  He threw the switch.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When two coins are equal in debt-paying value but unequal in intrinsic value, the one having the lesser intrinsic value tends to remain in circulation and the other to be hoarded or exported.

  Gresham's Law (original version)

  Bad money drives out good.

  Gresham's Law (popular version)

  Mora not only refused to return to Tolive, she insisted on coming along on the next Robin Hood caper. “Give me one good reason,” she said, looking from her husband to Zack, to the Flinters, to Broohnin. “One good reason why I shouldn't go to the mint with you.”

  None of them wanted her along, but the non-Kyfhons objected to her presence solely on the basis that she was a woman. They had all come to know Mora well during the past week, and she had charmed every one of them, including Sayers, who was absent today. Even Broohnin's sourness mellowed when she was around. But this was man's work, and although neither Zack nor Broohnin verbalized it internally or externally, each felt that the significance of their mission was somehow diminished if a woman joined them.

  The Flinters objected because she was a non-combatant, no more, no less.

  LaNague's objection rested on different grounds. Her presence made him feel uncomfortable in some vague way that he found impossible to define. He felt as if he were being scrutinized, monitored, judged. Mora made him feel…guilty somehow. But of what?

  “I'm a big girl, you know,” she said when no one accepted her challenge. “And as long as firing a weapon or damaging another person is not involved, I can keep up with the best of you.”

  Zack and Broohnin glanced at each other. With the exception of Flint and Tolive, sexual equality was an alien concept on most out-worlds. Men and women had reached the stars as equals, but women had become nest-keepers again as the overall technological level regressed on the pioneer worlds. They would soon be demanding parity with men, but there was no movement as yet. Mora knew this. She obviously chose her words to goad Zack and Broohnin, and to remind the Flinters and her husband of their heritage.

  “You'll fly with me,” LaNague said, bringing the dispute to a close. He knew his wife as she knew him. By now each would recognize when the other had reached an intransigent position.

  “Good. When do we leave?”

  “Now. We've already wasted too much time arguing. And timing is everything today.”

  Erv Singh had called Broohnin the day before to report that he had finally been able to place the Barsky box in a vault filled with old currency waiting to be destroyed. He mentioned that the vault was unusually full. LaNague explained the reason for that to his wife as their flitter rose into the air over Primus City.

  “The one-mark note has finally been rendered obsolete by inflation; the Treasury Bureau is trying to cut expenses by phasing it out. Supply of the larger denomination bills is being upped. When the good coins started disappearing, that was an early warning sign. But now, even the most obtuse Throner should get the message that something is seriously wrong when small bills are no longer produced.”

  They flew toward the dying orange glow of the sun as it leaned heavily on Throne's horizon, over Imperium Park and the surrounding structures that housed the bureaucratic entrails of the Imperium itself, and then over the city's dolee zone, a sector that was expanding at an alarming rate, on to a huge clearing fifty kilometers beyond the limits of Primus City. An impregnable block of reinforced synthestone occupied the middle of that clearing, like an iceberg floating still in a calm sea, nine tenths of its structure below the surface.

  LaNague brought his craft to rest in a stand of trees on a hill overlooking the site; the second flitter followed him down. Broohnin emerged first, followed by Zack and the two Flinters. Kanya was carrying an electronic timer of Flinter design, unequaled in precision. She set it on the deck of LaNague's flitter and removed a round white disk from her belt.

  “What's that?” Broohnin asked. Something in the man's voice made LaNague turn and look at him. He had worn a bored and dour expression all day. Now he was suddenly full of life and interest. Why?

  “A timer,” Kanya said. She did not look up, but concentrated on fitting the disk, which could now be seen to have a red button in its center, into the circular depression atop the timer.

  “No…that.” He pointed to the disk.

  “That's the trigger for the Barsky box.”

  “Do they all look like that? The triggers, I mean.”

  “Yes.” Kanya looked up at him. “Why do you ask?”

  Broohnin suddenly realized that he was under close scrutiny from a number of sources and shrugged nervously. “Just curious, that's all.” With visible effort, he pulled his eyes away from the trigger and looked at LaNague. “I still don't understand what's going to happen here. Go over it again.”

  “For me, too,” Mora said.

  “All right.” LaNague complied for his wife's benefit more than Broohnin's, who he was sure knew exactly what was going to happen. He wondered what was cooking in that bright but twisted mind now. “When activated, the Barsky box in the vault will form an unfocused temporal displacement field in a rough globe around itself. Anything encompassed by that field will be displaced exactly 1.37 nanoseconds into the past.”

  “That's all?” Mora said.

  “That's enough. Don't forget that Throne is not only revolving on its axis and traveling around its primary; it's also moving around the galactic core along with the other star systems in this arm, while the galaxy itself is moving away from the location of the Big Bang. So it doesn't take too long for Throne to move the distance from here to Primus City.”

  Mora frowned briefly and chewed on her lower lip. “I'd hate to even begin the necessary calculations.”

  “The Flinters have formulae for it. They've been experimenting with the Barsky apparatus as a means of transportation.” LaNague smiled. “Imagine listing an ETA at point B before the time of departure from point A. Unfortunately, they've been unable to bring anything through alive. But they're working on it.”

  “But why the timer?” Mora asked.

  “Because the box has to be activated at the precise nanosecond that Throne's axial and rotational attitudes come into proper alignment. The Flinters have it pin-pointed at sometime between 15.27 and 15.28 today. No human reflex can be trusted to send the signal at just the right instant, so an electronic counter is employed.”

  Mora still looked dubious. She pulled her husband away from the flitter.

  “It'll work,” LaNague told her, glancing back over his shoulder as he moved and watching Broohnin, whose eyes were fixed again on the white trigger mechanism.

  “What if there's someone in the vault?” Mora asked when they were out of earshot.

  “There won't be,” LaNague assured her. “The workday is over down there. Everybody's gone.”

  “No guards?”

  “A few.”

  “How do you know where they'll be when you activate the Barsky device? What if one of them gets sucked into the field?”

  “Mora,” LaNague said, trying to keep his tone even, “we've only got one device and it has to be activated soon…tonight.”

  “Why? Why can't we wait until we're sure no one's going to get killed down there?”

  “Because the money in that vault is tagged for destruction. And when they burn it, they're going to burn the Barsky box along with it. We only have one Barsky box.”

  “Then let's wait until later…just to be sure.”

  “We'll never be sure!” Impatience had passed into exasperation. “We can't see inside the vault, so we can't be sur
e it's unoccupied. And the device has to be activated between 15.27 and 15.28 tonight or not at all, because proper alignment won't occur again for another three days!”

  “Is it so important then? Do you have to get this money out? Why not just forget about it this time.”

  LaNague shook his head. “I need one more Robin Hood episode to keep his reputation up and his name before the public eye. And with all currency shipments so heavily guarded now, this is the only way I can make one last big strike.”

  Mora's voice rose to a shout. “But somebody could be in that vault!” The others by the flitter turned to look at her.

  “Then that's too bad,” LaNague said, keeping his own voice low. “But there's nothing I can do about it.” He turned and strode back toward the flitter. It had happened as he knew it would—Mora was interfering in his work. It hadn't taken her long to get involved. For a while it had actually seemed that she would keep to herself and stay out of his way. But no—that would have been too much to ask! The more he thought about it, the more it enraged him. What right did she—?

  He was half the distance to the flitter when he realized that there was a sick cold sphere centered in the heat of his anger, and it was screaming for him to stop. Reluctantly—very reluctantly—he listened. Perhaps there was another way after all.

  As he approached Broohnin and the Flinters, he said, “I want you to take the other flitter and strafe the entrance to the mint.”

  “With hand blasters?” Broohnin asked, startled.

  LaNague nodded. “You're not out to cause damage, but to create a diversion to pull the inside guards toward the entrance and away from the vaults. One pass is all you should need, then head for Primus as fast as you can. By the time they can mobilize pursuit, you should be lost in the dolee sector.”

  “Count me out,” Broohnin said. “That's crazy!”

  LaNague put on what he felt was his nastiest sneer. “That figures,” he said in a goading tone. “You rant and rave about how everything in my plan is too soft and too gentle, but when we give you a chance for some action, you balk. I should have known. I'll ask the Doc. Maybe he'll—”

  Broohnin grabbed LaNague's arm. “No you don't! You don't replace me with a teacher.” He turned to the Flinters. “Let's go.”

  As the flitter rose and made a wide circle to the far side of the mint, LaNague felt an arm slip around his back. “Thank you,” Mora said.

  “We'll see if this works,” he said, not looking at her.

  “It will.”

  “It had better.” He felt utterly cold toward Mora. Perhaps she had been right, but that did not lessen his resentment of her interference.

  The flitter with Broohnin and the Flinters was out of sight now on the other side of the mint, gaining momentum at full throttle. Suddenly, it flashed into view, a silver dot careening over the barracks straight toward the squat target structure. Alarms were already going off down there, LaNague knew, sending Imperial Guardsmen to their defense positions, and the mint guards into the corridors as the vaults within began to cycle closed automatically. There were small flashes briefly brightening the entranceway to the mint, and then the flitter was gone, racing toward Primus City and anonymity.

  LaNague checked the time—it was 15.26. He pressed the trigger in the center of the white disk, arming it. The timer would do the rest.

  When the precise nanosecond for firing arrived, the timer pulsed the trigger, which in turn sent a signal to the Barsky box in the vault, activating it. The money in the vault, along with small amounts of synthestone from the walls and floors, abruptly disappeared. The package traveled 1.37 nanoseconds into the past and appeared in the air over Primus City at the exact locus the treasury vault was destined to occupy 1.37 nanoseconds from then.

  “…ALTHOUGH OFFICIALS are more tight-lipped than usual, it does appear that the ‘money monsoon’ that occurred earlier this evening consisted of obsolete currency stolen from the vaults of the mint itself. From what we can determine, the mint was briefly harassed by a lone flitter in the early evening hours; guards reported that the money was in the vault before the incident, and discovered to be missing when the vaults were reopened approximately an hour after the flitter had escaped. The particular vault in question is thirty meters underground. The walls were not breached and no tunnel has been found. The rain of one-mark notes carried no white calling cards this time, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Robin Hood has struck again. The Bureau of the Treasury has promised a full and thorough investigation of the matter…”

  “MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!” Mora was saying as they sat in the apartment, watching Radmon Sayers on the vid. “That's all you seem to care about in this revolution. There's more to a government—good or bad—than money!”

  “Not much. In any government, dictatorial or representational, the politicos spend 95 per cent of their time taking money from one place and shuttling it to another. They extort money from the citizenry and then go about the tasks of passing bills to appropriate to this group, grant to that group, build here, renovate there.”

  “But legislation for freedom, rights—”

  “That's all decided at the outset, when the government is formed. That's when there's the most freedom; from then on it's a continuous process of whittling down the individual's franchise and increasing the state's. There are exceptions, of course, but they're rare enough to qualify as aberrations. Look back in the Imperium; one, perhaps two, pieces of legislation a year are involved purely with extension or abridgment—usually the latter—of freedom. What the public never realizes is that it really loses its freedom in the countless appropriations passed every day to create or continue the countless committees and bureaus that monitor human activities, to make countless rules to protect us from ourselves. And they all require funding.”

  “Money again.”

  “Correct. Keep a government poor and you'll keep it off your back. Without the necessary funds, it can't afford to harass you. Give it lots of money and it will find ways to spend it, invariably to your eventual detriment. Let it control the money supply and all the stops are out: it will soon control you! I shouldn't have to tell you this.”

  “But what of culture?” Mora spread her fingers in a gesture of frustration. “Whatever culture the out-worlds were beginning to develop is dying now. What are you going to do about that? How does that fit into your plan? How're you going to tie that into economics?”

  “I'm not even going to try. I don't want an out-world culture. That connotes homogenization, something the Imperium has been attempting to do. If everyone is the same, it's much easier for a central government to make rules for its subjects. I don't want one out-world culture—I want many. I want human beings to stretch themselves to the limit in every direction. I don't want anyone telling anyone else how to live, how to think, what to wear. I want diversity. It's the only way we'll keep from stagnating as a race. It almost happened to us on Earth. If we had remained on that one little planet, we'd be a sorry lot by now, if any humans at all still existed. But you can't have diversity in a controlled society. If you control the economy, you control lives; you have to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. You have to weed out the oddballs, stifle the innovators. Do that on all the out-worlds and pretty soon you'll have your ‘out-world culture.’ But would you want to participate?”

  Mora hesitated before answering, and in the interval the vidphone chimed. LaNague took the call in the next room. He recognized Seph Wolverton's face as it filled the screen.

  “News from the probe fleet,” he said without salutation. “Contact made halfway to the Perseus arm. Hostile. Very hostile from the report.”

  LaNague felt his stomach lurch. “Who knows?”

  “Nobody except you, me, and the man who decoded the subspace call, and he's with us.”

  LaNague sighed with minimal relief. It was a bad situation, but it could have been much worse. “All right. Send a message back as prearranged. He's to return directly
to Throne, with no further contact until he's in the star system, and even then he's only to identify his craft and answer no questions until he is picked up by an orbital shuttle and brought down for debriefing. See that the probe's message is erased from the comm computer. No one is to know the contents of that message. Clear?”

  Wolverton nodded. “Clear.”

  LaNague cut the connection and turned to see Mora staring at him from the doorway.

  “Peter, what's the matter? I've never seen you so upset.”

  “The probes have made contact with a hostile alien culture out toward the Perseus arm.”

  “So?”

  “If word of this gets to Metep and Haworth and the others, they'll have the one lever they need to keep themselves in power and maybe even save their skins: war.”

  “You're not serious!”

  “Of course I am. Look through history—it's a tried and true method for economically beleaguered regimes to save themselves. It works. Hostile aliens would push humans together out of fear.”

  “But hostile aliens are not a war.”

  LaNague smiled grimly. “That could be arranged. Again: not the first time it's happened. All Metep and the Council of Five would have to do is send a ‘trade envoy’ with a half-dozen cargo ships out toward the Perseus arm, ostensibly to open peaceful relations. If these aliens are as aggressive as the contact probe pilot seems to think, they'll either try to take possession of whatever enters their sphere of influence, or will feel directly threatened by the approach of human craft—either way, there's bound to be bloodshed. And that's all you need. ‘The monsters are coming! They ambushed unarmed cargo ships in interstellar space. Guard your wives and children.’ All of a sudden we've got to put aside our petty differences, close ranks, and defend humanity. The Imperium may be rotten and teetering, but it's the only government we've got right now, so let's not switch horses in midstream…And so on.” He shut off the torrent of words with visible effort.