Inferno: A Chronicle of a Distant World (The Galactic Comedy)

by Mike Resnick

  "I will discuss it with my fellow committee members," said Cartright, "but I do not think that they will accept it."

  "Then I will fire them and hire some who will," said Barioke. "In fact, I will start today by getting rid of the two moles."

  "On what grounds, may I ask?"

  "Arthur," said Barioke, "we want nothing more than to live in harmony with your race. You have given us money and education, you opposed Labu's illegal reign, you have always acted in our best interests." The jason paused, and his face seemed just a little more alien to Cartright. "But the moles are parasites. They bring nothing to Faligor. They do not work for Faligor's good, but for their own. We cannot give them the same rights as jasons and Men, or they will soon have an economic stranglehold on the planet." He stared at Cartright. "Labu was insane, but he had one good idea: get rid of the moles."

  "You yourself invited them back, and have set up a commission to pay them damages," noted Cartright.

  "I was mistaken," replied Barioke. "In fact, I dissolved the commission three days ago. I will not force them to leave by executive order, as Labu did, but if they are to stay, it cannot be as citizens of Faligor but as resident aliens. They must pay higher taxes, they must never be without their passports, they must receive permission to travel from one city to another. All this must be incorporated into our constitution, Arthur."

  "Do you want these restrictions on all aliens, or just the moles?"

  "On any aliens that the president considers to have a detrimental influence on Faligor."

  "I'll speak to the committee," said Cartright.

  "Please do."

  "Is that all?"

  "No," said Barioke. "There is one more thing we must address."

  "Yes?"

  "We are a poor planet, Arthur, and Labu's reign has destroyed our economy. I would be a poor president indeed if I allowed us to be plundered any farther."

  "Is someone trying to plunder us, Mr. President?"

  "Not consciously, perhaps, but yes, someone is," answered Barioke. "Our constitution must make it clear that it is a criminal offense for any Man or mole who resides upon Faligor and carries a Faligorian passport to possess any investments or bank accounts on any other world. We cannot allow you to make your money here and invest it elsewhere."

  "Does this law apply to jasons as well?" asked Cartright, who like everyone else was aware of Barioke's huge accounts on Talisman.

  "No jason would consider removing his money from Faligor," answered Barioke. "This law will apply only to naturalized citizens."

  "Since no jason would consider it, we might as well include them too," said Cartright. "Just in case one of them should consider it in the future."

  Barioke shook his head. "I have no personal objection, Arthur," he said. "But various members of the legislature might take offense at such language, and we want the constitution to pass unanimously." He paused and stared at Cartright coldly. "I think you had better word it just as I said."

  Cartright sighed. "Yes, Mr. President."

  "Good," said Barioke, rising from his chair. "I am glad to have you back on the team, Arthur."

  "Thank you, sir," said Cartright, who could not bring himself to reply that he was glad to be back on the team.

  "I know you and I disagree on many issues," continued Barioke, "but we both want what is best for Faligor. I am sure we can continue working together. This committee needs Men on it."

  Tokens, you mean, thought Cartright.

  "I am sorry I don't have more time to spend with you," said Barioke, walking him to the door, "but I have a meeting scheduled with my military advisors." He grimaced. "This Krakanna and his schoolchildren have actually had the audacity to print and distribute a newspaper containing the most slanderous lies about me. I've been too busy trying to rebuild the government to pay him any attention, but this latest exploit is intolerable. I won't rest until he has been arrested, tried and executed." He paused and forced a smile to his golden lips. "But that needn't concern you, Arthur. Just keep working on the constitution. You will find that I have ways of thanking my friends for jobs well done."

  Cartright left the office, knowing that he would never present Barioke with the constitution the president wanted, and wondering just how he rewarded his enemies.

  22.

  Dear Susan:

  As you must have guessed from my recent letters, things are not working out here. During the past three years, Barioke has proven to be everything you said he was. I was as blind to it initially as the rest of the populace: we were so glad to have someone, anyone, other than Gama Labu that we virtually turned over the whole world to him, without quite remembering why we had had such high hopes for Labu in the first place.

  His approach is totally different from Labu's, and no one will ever accuse him of being a madman, but I have a horrible fear that the body count will be even higher under Barioke than under Labu. More than a million Labu "supporters" have been executed—and as you and I both know, the only true Labu supporters were the soldiers that he paid.

  I served on the constitution committee for a few months, although it was clear to me early on that Barioke wanted a document that was a constitution in name only. Evidently, while my committee continued to work on the document, he created a committee of his cronies to write a constitution as well, and that is the one that has been ratified. Essentially, it gives Barioke the freedom to loot, plunder and kill as he pleases, with the full force of the law behind him. (I am reminded that neither Hitler nor Bland ever officially broke the law, either. They killed the lawmakers and rewrote the laws.)

  For example, two weeks ago the teachers at Sabare University went on strike after he cut their pay and raised the salaries of the military. He had almost three hundred of them shot down in the street, and then announced that our new constitution makes it a capital crime to strike against any government-owned institution. And except for the small shops and markets, the government—which means William Barioke—owns just about everything else.

  Why do the people support him? I don't know. Perhaps we used up most of our energy and most of our martyrs opposing Gama Labu—or perhaps they're willing to settle for anything after Labu. He wiped out a generation of jasons, including almost all of the intellectuals, and what's left simply can't seem to mount any effective opposition to his successor.

  Oh, there are a few jasons, here and there, who oppose his rule, though I hardly find them comforting. The most persistent—and dangerous—of them all is James Krakanna, who is still hiding out in the forests around the Hills of Heaven. His typical "soldier" is a 12-year-old jason subadult, armed with a laser or sonic rifle that weighs half as much as the subadult does. It's absolutely terrifying to think of these children, totally without family or discipline, wandering the countryside, robbing the locals of food, being unable to differentiate friend from foe and firing at anything that moves. They fight for this radical leader who time and again has spoken out against the most basic democratic principles.

  The crazy part is that the people out in the countryside continue to give Krakanna aid and comfort. He and his "army" have been living off the land for close to two years now, and no one has turned him in yet, even though there is evidence that he and some of his advisors—whether children or adult, I don't know—have spent an occasional evening in the locals' homes. Barioke has his flaws, Lord knows, but there is at least a chance we can work with him and control some of his worst impulses. There seems to be absolutely nothing anyone can do to moderate Krakanna's actions, or make him bring in his impoverished, rag-tag army for assimilation and retraining.

  He has launched a number of attacks against the government, most of them successful. He has wiped out two expeditionary forces sent to hunt him down, and though not an Enkoti himself, has received vigorous support from them by making almost all Enkoti territory from the mountains to about fifty miles west of Romulus and Remus unsafe for any member of the government.

  These attacks have not been
without their share of casualties among Krakanna's forces. I have seen the torn, twisted bodies of jason children on the battlefields, and I cannot help but wonder what kind of monster sends children out to fight his battles. They're practically babies, Susan, and yet he keeps sending them out to face Barioke's army.

  Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there are the remnants of Labu's army. Once they found out that Barioke's declared amnesty was false and that he was in fact executing anyone who had anything to do with Labu's government, the army—what was left of it, anyway—began gathering in the Great Northern Desert. Rumor has it that their leader is General Sibo Dushu, the very same officer who led the retreat when Talisman mounted its first counter-attack. They haven't presented much of a threat yet, but you can be sure that they won't surrender or trust Barioke's word. And, since they are in Bolimbo country, they are being supplied with food, money and even weapons by the Bolimbo, who have no reason to love President Barioke. He has excluded them—in fact, he has excluded everyone except the Rizalli—from serving on his cabinet.

  So that's the situation. Left to his own devices—and I don't see anything standing in his way except Dushu's army or Krakanna's children, neither of which constitutes an improvement—I think there is every likelihood that Barioke will kill more of his own people, coldly, methodically, but legally, than Labu ever did. The economy is still in a shambles, most of the moles who have come back are considering leaving once more, and the farms lie fallow and untended, for there are so many opposing forces here that most farmers are afraid that they'll be killed, or at least looted, by one side or the other if they work their fields.

  Once again I find myself wondering how such a promising world, filled with such decent, hard-working, and trusting inhabitants could find itself in this situation. Is it simply that Faligor expended all its energy and resources surviving the Labu era, that there's simply no energy, no will left to oppose Barioke's abuses? Or is there something inherent in the jasons. They don't seem like sheep to me, but possibly I'm prejudiced.

  Are they born victims? I have to believe they aren't, simply because I, too, welcomed both Labu and Barioke with open arms, and I know that Men aren't born victims. I keep asking myself what a planet of Men would do in this situation. I've gone through the history books looking for answers, but I can't seem to find an analagous situation. Yes, the Germans welcomed Hitler, but they were suffering from economic ruin caused by the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, the Romans accepted Caligula, but he did not hold an elective office and did not overthrow an existing government; indeed, during his four-year reign, he was officially declared a god. Conrad Bland? He was an executioner gone mad, but he never attempted to control a world; his specialty was destroying them.

  I cannot find an example of a prosperous, well-run nation, bound by laws, happily welcomed anything resembling a Gama Labu. In every such case, it was a world or a society on the ropes, an economy in such chaos that people willingly (or occasionally unwillingly) gave up some or all of their rights in exchange for the promise of prosperity and stability. That, I might add, is not the promise Labu gave them, not really . . . but it is the promise Barioke made when he was reinstalled, so perhaps that much is understandable. It is when you put the two of them together, back to back, that you wonder if this entire world isn't somehow mad.

  And yet I persist in believing that it is not, that it was a chain of unique circumstances that led to the current situation. Bobby lost the election because he was too close to Men, too much like us, and because he refused to take his opposition seriously—and the nature of his flaws logically led to an opponent who opposed his tilt toward Man and the Republic. If Bobby wanted to be a human, and many jasons think he did, then the opposition would naturally court other races and empires. If Bobby thought our legal principles were paramount, then the opposition would of course challenge each and every one of them. If Bobby was born a sitate and spent his money profligately, then his opposite number would be born a peasant and would not only save his own money, but would be inclined to plunder from a seemingly bottomless planetary treasury. It may well be that, under the circumstances, a William Barioke was inevitable.

  That leads to the next question: given Barioke, was Gama Labu also inevitable? How can a madman, a fluke to begin with, be inevitable?

  The answer, I think, is not that Labu himself was inevitable, but the circumstances that led to his usurpation of power made an overthrow of the government inevitable. You have a young, strong, new society that has just had its first election, and finds itself with a corrupt, bigoted ruler on its hands. They've had no experience with voting rulers out of office, and they've progressed so rapidly that a five-year presidential term seems like an eternity, so naturally somebody, somewhere, was going to consider forcefully removing Barioke from office. Who better to do so than the man in charge of the military? At least he does so with the knowledge that the army won't oppose him. And because it's a bloodless coup, and he promises the people that he has no intention of ruling but will arrange for a new election, of course they welcome him with open arms. That the head of the military took over makes sense; that the head of the military happened to be Gama Labu was the fluke.

  After Labu's abuses, after the torture and slaughter, the mindless killings, the near-deification not only of Labu but of Conrad Bland, the greatest genocidal maniac in human history, of course the people were thrilled to welcome Labu's replacement, whoever it might be. I was just as happy to welcome Barioke as everyone else. Who else had any experience in running the planet? And why shouldn't we have assumed that he'd spent his years in exile dwelling upon his failed presidency and the reasons for his overthrow? His initial speech even addressed the subject: he knew he'd made mistakes, and he would learn from them. He knew that if he could be deposed once for abusing his power, it could happen again. He knew he was on probation of a kind. He'd already stockpiled millions of Republic credits in his account at Talisman, so how much more could he want?

  That leaves only the question of why no one, or almost no one, has opposed him. I don't know! I do know that he's firmly entrenched, and that his military is totally loyal to him. The only way to remove him from power that I can see is through revolution. No other planet will involve itself in our affairs, barring a crazed impulse on Barioke's part to attack one of our neighbors—and he knows what happened when Labu did it—so I think if he falls, it will be at the hands of either Sibo Dushu or James Krakanna. One of them is a Labu loyalist who proved incompetent to lead his ships into battle and has had no experience in land wars, and the other is a teacher with a handful of children at his disposal.

  Further, even if one or the other should manage to overthrow Barioke, I'm not sure we'd be any better off. We certainly don't want to be ruled by a Labu loyalist, one who might even consider recalling Labu himself from Domar; and Krakanna is a radical who sees children as nothing but cannon fodder.

  More and more often, I find myself thinking back to that first day I landed on Faligor. It was such a beautiful, tranquil world, and it held such promise, and I cannot help but wonder: was it always destined to become such a charnel house? Did we merely hasten the process, or did we cause it. If we had left it alone, if Bobby were sitting in the dirt today, making judgments in front of his mummified ancestors, would Faligor be better off? Would Gama Labu be killing his countrymen by twos and threes and fives, rather than hundreds and thousands?

  Is the flaw in them, or in my vision?

  I have done everything I can to convince myself that everything that happened was inevitable, and I think it was, with one exception: it was not inevitable that we landed here and attempted to turn it into a paradise. Nowhere is it written in the Book of Fate that Arthur Cartright had to impose his values on a peaceful, happy people who never knew or cared that he existed until the day he decided to shape their society to his vision of utopia.

  I wish I were a religious man, because I feel the need to ask forgiveness of someone, and I cannot face th
e jasons to ask for theirs.

  Love,

  Arthur

  23.

  Unlike his predecessor, when William Barioke got angry, he didn't rant and rave and cry for blood. He became even more quiet, more distant, more in control of himself. He never raised his voice and he never lost his temper—but woe betide the jason who had caused his wrath.

  He summoned his cabinet in the middle of the night, and when the last of them arrived, bleary-eyed and worried—for members of his cabinet had been known to be executed for failing to obey the law as interpreted by the president—he stood before them, waving a sheet of paper.

  "I have just been informed that the Republic has cut off all aid to Faligor," he said in cold, measured tones. "They have ordered all their ships to avoid landing here, and they will not allow any Faligorian ship to land on any Republic world."

  "What is the cause of this betrayal of our friendship and good will?" demanded one of his aides, quite certain that the president was about to tell them, but wanting to get his own outrage on record first.

  "They claim to have a list of some 643 documented abuses of the rights of individual jasons and moles, and they have accused the government of misappropriating funds," replied Barioke.

  This caused considerable uneasiness among the cabinet members. The logical response would be to jump up and steadfastly deny the charges, but since everyone knew them to be true, and in fact an understatement, they simply sat still, waiting for the president's next words.

  "These charges were made and documented by James Krakanna," continued Barioke. He spoke very softly, very slowly, but in the total silence of the room no one had any difficulty hearing him. "This schoolteacher and his ragtag followers have ceased to become an irritant, and are now a serious threat to our government." The president paused and looked from one cabinet member to the next. "I want Krakanna dead and his followers all killed or in prison within a month. I will accept no excuses." Barioke walked to the door. "I will leave the details to you, and I strongly advise you not to fail me."