The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  We hobbled across the dark yard and entered the darker woods. This wasn’t a sparse, well-spaced tundra forest—these trees were wild boreal. Instead of demure carpet moss, you got angry snarls of underbrush; instead of don’t-bother-the-neighbors bluebarrels, there were cactus-pines thorned up for war, reaching out to strangle each other with as many branches as possible. It all added up to show we were in the south half of the island…just a fraction warmer year-round, but enough to shift the ecology from tightly contained order to every-bush-for-itself chaos.

  The only route forward was a game trail, narrow enough that Ramos and I had a devil of a time walking two abreast. Lucky for us, we didn’t need to go a long way—just over a ridge and down to a creek gully where Ramos had her skimmer waiting.

  In the dark, the skimmer was blessed near invisible—not just camouflaged but chameleoned, its hull perfectly mimicking the nearby terrain. No identification markings either…which was mildly illegal, in a Class II misdemeanorly way. Ramos carried me to the back hatch, which opened as we reached it.

  “Get in, get in!” cackled a voice from inside. Exactly the voice I’d heard in a junior-school play, when Lynn’s ten-year-old Barry got cast to play an old man: cartoonish, nasal, enthusiastically cracking every other syllable. The old-man voice people use in dirty jokes.

  “Faye Smallwood,” Ramos said, “this is Ogodda Unorr. Our getaway driver.”

  “Call me Oh-God,” he grinned. “As soon as I start driving, you’ll know why.”

  The man was a Freep. A native of the Divian Free Republic: the closest habitable planet to Demoth, a mere six light-years away. The Free Republic started much like Demoth—a Divian billionaire bought a planet and commissioned a custom-engineered race so he could create his own utopia. This particular utopia was intended to be staunchly libertarian but had too much wired-in greed to maintain any higher principles; it nose-dived into dog-eat-dog anarchy for three centuries after its founding, then calcified into a corporate oligarchy run by rich trade barons. Cartel capitalism. The Freep plutocracy chanted the mantra of “free markets” while making sure their markets were only free for those who played the right game.

  By the looks of it, the Freep driving the skimmer had got himself out of the game by joining the navy—he wore black fatigues, faded and gone shiny in places, but still recognizable as a uniform of the Explorer Corps. The uniform had several circular spots darker than the surrounding cloth: places where insignia must have been sewn on. Oh-God’s badges were gone now, leaving no sign of his rank or ship assignment. He must be that rarity, an Explorer who’d lived long enough to retire.

  I looked at Oh-God more closely. Yes, he was old. Cracking ancient. Like all Freeps, he was short, stocky, and cylindrical…a chest-high tree stump with arms. His skin was pale orange at this moment, the way all Freeps go orange on Demoth. Back on their home planet, Freep skins can chameleon all the way to black, a tactic for shutting out the barrage of ultraviolet that comes from the smaller of their two suns; but on Demoth, especially on a winter-spring night in Great St. Caspian, the UV was too weak to demand pigment protection.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Oh-God said. “Stop gawking and get yourself belted in, missy. We don’t want to hang around here.”

  His voice still had that all-over-the-octave cackle, as if he was intentionally parodying his own age. Except that Divian voices get lower in their senior years, not higher. Then the truth struck me: Ogodda Unorr was an Explorer. And like all Explorers, he’d have some physical quirk that made his fellows edge away in disdain. Oh-God must have become an Explorer by virtue of that odd voice—a grating, googly, whistly voice that had marked him as different his whole life.

  Ramos buckled me into place beside Oh-God and took the next seat herself. The skimmer was rising even before she had her safety belts fastened—a whisper-silent vertical ascent followed by the breakneck whip of acceleration as we bolted forward just above the treetops.

  I’d never ridden in a skimmer that made so precious little sound. It must have been running state-of-the-art stealth engines—maybe even military grade. Looking at Oh-God’s control panel, I saw a slew of other quaint additions to the usual equipment…including a readout labeled radar fuzz. RADAR FUZZ = nano on the skimmer’s hull, dutifully (and illegally) making the craft invisible to groundcontrol traffic stations: a Class IV misdemeanor that often got argued up to a felony, “willful disregard for the safety of others.”

  “Hot,” I said, pointing a wobbly finger toward the read-out. “Bad.”

  “Aww, missy,” Oh-God wheedled back, “I only turn it on in emergencies. Like now. If there’s Admiralty scum on the prowl, you don’t want them seeing us, do you?”

  He’d got me there. But this skimmer still had Smuggler written all over it. Silent and undetectable, big enough to haul a bumper load of questionable goods from Great St. Caspian halfway around the world without paying transport tax or trade-region import fees.

  Oh-God might have left the Free Republic, but he hadn’t abandoned their “free enterprise” mentality.

  Three minutes later, we were flying along another creek gully, making no sound but the occasional whip of brush against the skimmer’s undercarriage. Taking a deep breath, I mustered my best enunciation to ask, “What now?”

  “If I were you,” Ramos replied, “I’d scream like a banshee to your civilian police. Report you were kidnapped, and the perpetrators are now lying unconscious, ready to be arrested. I’ll gladly testify to what I saw.”

  “Or,” Oh-God said, “you could get a bunch of boyos with blunt instruments, to go back and conduct your own interrogation. All private-like.”

  Ramos chuckled. “Oh-God disdains subtlety.”

  “Subtlety’s fine, it’s police I hate,” the Freep corrected her. “Not cuz I’ve done anything wrong,” he added quickly. “Just on general principles. Always coming up with rules and regulations to hamper an honest businessman.” He jinked the skimmer up over a rock outcrop, then bellied it down again close to the dirt.

  Something scraped loudly against the lower fuselage. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Hands are cold tonight.”

  “Then warm them up!” Ramos growled. “What’s the point of stealth equipment if you make noise hitting things?” She gave me a “See what I have to put up with?” look. “Officially,” she told me, “Oh-God is a hunting guide. That’s why he needs all these gadgets for skulking. In case your local deer ever develop radar.”

  “You never know,” Oh-God said. “Demoth’s already got beasties with sonar.”

  Ramos smiled. “If you get dragged in front of a judge, you stick with that story.” She turned back to me. “Unofficially, Oh-God does a lot of things I don’t want to know about. But he survived fifty years as an Explorer, and he’s still loyal to the Corps. Whenever something noteworthy happens on Demoth, he passes on a report which eventually lands on my desk. That’s why I came here in the first place—I’m interested in political assassinations. All those proctors getting killed.”

  “What does that have to do with Explorers?” I asked. It was getting easier to speak, even though the words still sounded too thick.

  “Nothing directly,” Ramos answered. “But if the killings were just the start of a bigger mess, someone in the Admiralty ought to be interested.”

  “Like the dipshits?” I asked.

  “Those pukes,” Oh-God said. He jerked the skimmer sharply to the right, not to avoid an obstacle but just for emphasis. He was the worst kind of driver: someone who talks with his hands. “You gotta recognize the difference between the High Council of Admirals—the inner circle who run the dipshits—and our Festina here. She may wear a gray uniform, but she’s not a real admiral.”

  “Thanks so much,” Ramos told him.

  “It’s true,” Oh-God insisted. “Who ever heard of a lieutenant admiral? They jury-rigged that title just for you.” He turned to me, both hands off the controls. “See, she got the council in hot water with the League of Peop
les…”

  “Do you mind?” Ramos said, shoving his hands back toward the steering yoke. “We’re in the middle of a heroic rescue here. It’ll look bad if we wrap Faye around a tree.”

  “Won’t look bad,” Oh-God muttered. “The antidetection nanites’11 automatically camouflage the crash site. Won’t see nothing at all.”

  “That’s not comforting!” Ramos snapped. She glanced at me. “We should be clear of the dipshits’ jamming field by now. Do you want to call the police?”

  “If we call the cops,” I said, “it’ll raise merry hell. Don’t you care about embarrassing the Admiralty?”

  “I’m not the one who brought on the embarrassment,” Ramos answered grimly. “If the High Council authorized gratuitous criminal acts, they should get barbecued.”

  “Barbecued?” Oh-God snorted. “It’ll never happen, missy. The damned admirals’11 bribe everyone to keep this quiet.” He patted my knee with a clumsy hand. “If you don’t know how much to ask for, I can recommend someone to be your negotiating agent.” He winked. “I know people.”

  I hate it when Divian subspecies wink. With their eyelids moving from the bottom up, it doesn’t look sly, it looks creepy.

  “Oh-God’s right,” Ramos said. “Gouging money out of the Admiralty may be the only revenge you can get, Faye. Taking this mess public may sound attractive, but you’ll never touch the admiral who actually ordered this fiasco. The High Council are masters of deniability.” She shrugged. “Still, your government could use this as leverage to wangle favors out of the fleet. Negotiate some lucrative naval supply contracts for local industry…if you don’t mind taking dirty money and addicting your economy to antiproductive Admiralty handouts. Anyway: you’re the victim here. It’s your choice how to play this.”

  I didn’t want to play anything—not till I understood what was going on. “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” I said. “Do you represent the Explorer Corps? Or the Admiralty? Or who?”

  “She’s the Vigil is who she is,” Oh-God replied. “Your basic steely-eyed watchdog. She’s what-you-call scrutinizing the fleet.”

  “Actually,” Ramos corrected him, “I scrutinize the Technocracy. Admiral Seele scrutinizes the fleet.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “Yes, it’s confusing. Half the time, I don’t know what I should be doing. But Oh-God is right; I do fill a role something like your Vigil.”

  I didn’t bother speaking; I could see she was already sorting things around in her mind, getting set to lay out a full explanation.

  “Long before I was bora,” Ramos said, “two shrewd old admirals set up spy networks to monitor the Admiralty and all the planets of the Technocracy—to watch for trouble that the fleet or planetary leaders might try to cover up. This is a dangerous universe, Faye, and our settlements are more tenuous than we like to admit. Some of our most prosperous worlds are actually so hostile to human life, thousands could die from a single missed supply shipment. Someone has to take responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen. Someone has to root out any corruption or incompetence that jeopardizes our people.”

  “Doesn’t the Technocracy do that?” I asked. “And each planetary government?”

  Oh-God made the Freep sound for disgust, half hiss, half whistle—the noise a Divian’s stomach makes just before throwing up. “Planetary governments? You’re spoiled here on Demoth, missy. Most other worlds have governments with their heads jammed nose high up their butts…or they’ve sold out to some blind-assed bunch of robber barons who think they can buy their way free of any problem. Here, you’ve got the Vigil for a sanity check. Out in the rest of the galaxy, there’s whole planets facing economic collapse, or ecological catastrophe, or coups and peasant rebellions, but the powers-that-be are dangling their dobbies in complete denial. Someone has to blow the whistle to tell the rest of the Technocracy when there’s a crisis coming; and that means us merry band of watchers. Old Chee’s spy network. Now working for our beloved Festina.”

  Ramos grimaced. “You’re such a suck-up. Did you treat Chee this way too?”

  “Nah. I plied him with illegal booze and tobacco. In exchange for which, he funneled me some great military equipment. How do you think I outfitted this skimmer?”

  “Good thing we’re constantly on the watch for corruption.” Ramos turned back to me. “Chee was one of the admirals who founded this spy network. Two years ago, he died, and I inherited command. Part of a complicated deal with the High Council, aimed at appeasing the League of Peoples. I caught the council indulging in dirty tricks, and the admirals had to make an act of contrition to the League. Next thing I knew, I was elevated to Lieutenant Admiral and spy master.”

  “Shows how much she had them over a barrel,” Oh-God cackled. “Those pukes would far rather dismantle the network, or put some gutless flunky in charge, dancing to their own tune. But us intelligence operatives were mostly former Explorers, and fucked if we’d take orders from some Admiralty asshole. We’d turn independent first. So the council had to go with Festina and hope maybe they could control her more than old Chee. Fat chance.”

  He laughed snortingly, and the skimmer bobbed in time with his chuckles. Whisk, whisk, whisk, bushes brushing our underbelly. Oh-God, Oh-God, Oh-God, I thought.

  “You’re driving is off tonight,” Ramos observed.

  “Gotta get me some gloves.” He pulled both hands off the steering yoke and held them in front the dashboard’s heating vent. Ramos slapped his shoulder; Oh-God grumbled but took the wheel again.

  “Anyway,” Ramos said in a long-suffering voice, “I took over Chee’s spy network two years ago. Watchdogging planetary governments. I didn’t know the first thing about what I was doing, but Chee had acquired plenty of good deputies. They still run most of the show…which makes me feel guilty for letting them do all the work. I’ve stayed shackled to my desk for two full years, trying to learn how to be a backroom strategist; but it’s killing me.” She ran a hand through her hair. “And it’s killing me to find I want to get out into unfamiliar territory again, poke my nose where it’s not wanted, feel that rush of adrenaline. I hated being an Explorer…and I hated how people saw it as an exciting profession when the whole point was to avoid the slightest hint of excitement.” She sighed. Deeply. “But I miss it. I may be suicidally stupid, but I miss it.”

  She looked away from us all, off into the blackness of the night. “So here I am, doing the next best thing to Exploration. When I heard about your proctors getting murdered, I just blurted, ‘I’ll investigate that myself’…then barreled out of the office too fast for anyone to stop me. Which led to this mildly daring rescue, and putting my life in the hands of a Freep madman.”

  “Ahh, you love it, missy,” Oh-God said affectionately. “And any idjit could see you weren’t suited to go planet-down on a desk. You’ve got Explorer deep in your blood.”

  “Not to mention written all over my face,” Ramos muttered.

  “So,” Admiral Ramos said, turning brisk all of a sudden, “did the dipshits say how long they’d been on Demoth?”

  “They told me…” My mouth still wasn’t going over all the hurdles. “They told me the local base commander had reported the Sperm-tube, and they were sent to check it out.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Ramos agreed, “but who knows if they were telling the truth? Suppose they arrived earlier: before the assassinations.”

  “Suppose they did the assassinations themselves,” Oh-God suggested. “They might have used Admiralty funds to buy robots and reprogram them…because those High Council pukes have some scheme going—”

  “No,” Ramos interrupted, “the High Council definitely can’t send a hit team to assassinate anyone. The League of Peoples has a flawless track record for preventing killers from traveling planet-to-planet. Flawless. The League never makes exceptions, and never makes mistakes. But if the High Council sent a team of not-quite-homicidal dipshits here on some mission and something unexpected drove them over the edge…�
�

  She stopped and shook her head. “I don’t know. Dipshits are self-centered morons, but they’re trained to avoid murder. More than trained—they’re methodically indoctrinated. And what’s so important on Demoth that’s worth killing for?”

  A peacock-colored tube, I thought, that saved my life and thumbed its nose at Admiralty physics. The dipshits had been willing to turn me into a vegetable, just to find out what I knew. How much more would they do?

  But I didn’t say that out loud; I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, wondering if I was feeling brave enough to use my link-seed. Nope. “Which one of these dials is the radio?” I asked, pointing at the skimmer’s controls. “It’s time to call the cops.”

  The next few minutes got tricky. Protection Central wanted to know where I was, so they could send an escort to ferry me home. Oh-God, on the other hand, had no intention of giving the police a glimpse of his skimmer, considering how they might raise a stink over its “emergencies-only” customizations. In the end, the Explorers let me out at a park station in the Black Tickle Wilderness Preserve, where four bemused forest rangers said sure, they’d protect me till the cops arrived. Ramos promised to contact me soon, then flew off into the night.

  Twenty minutes later, a fleet of six police skimmers picked me up and proceeded to the house where I’d been held captive. I half expected the place to be empty, with all evidence of my presence cleaned up; but the Mouth and Muscle were exactly where we’d left them, still out cold. Even better, the detective team found recording equipment the dipshits had used to log my “interrogation” …good hard evidence that made the police captain’s eyes shine with harsh glee. His name was Basil Cheticamp, rail-thin with glassy cheeks of hypoglycemic pink, but he was a cop through and through.

  “They think they can come in here…” Cheticamp muttered under his breath. “Those navy pricks think they can come to our planet…”