Balance of Power

by Stableford, Brian

  Whereas the worshippers of a different kind of deity would have murdered Verheyden and his companions on the spot, the worshippers of Ak’lehr’s god—Y’su—made him welcome. When they discovered that he had knowledge which they lacked—and proved it to them—they were in no doubt as to the reason why he had been washed up on their shores: he was Ilah’y’su, a messenger of god. Such became his title...and, of course, it was after him that Jan Verheyden’s ship was named.

  And so Bernhard Verheyden had begun a career of miracles. He had come to the aid of a metal-working industry which had been stretched to the limit of its resources for generations with the blast-furnace and with electroplating. He had shown the priesthood the limitations of their ideographic language and had introduced a phonetic variety of their own tongue as well as English. He had shown them electricity and the internal combustion engine. For ten or twelve years he had been active, traveling all over the heartland of the empire, building the machines that he wanted to give to the empire, working with blacksmiths and craftsmen. Then he had realized that progress was too slow this way, that there were not enough hours in the day, and that the knowledge he passed on was being disseminated far too slowly and narrowly. He had retired to Ak’lehr, to the college where the church trained its elite. He had taken to writing and teaching, making sure that what he knew would still be available to the empire after his death. And he had brought up his family. He had tried to give them not only his knowledge, but also his purpose—the mission which had become obsessive in his own mind and which had been made sacred by the priests of Y’su. They had inherited it without any of the reservations that Bernhard Verheyden may have had. He had protected them from doubt with the fierceness of his indoctrination. He had protected them, too, from the sedition that had occasionally been preached by his companions, who had cooperated in his work in the interests of making a good living for themselves, but who had never quite believed in it. Jan said little about those other men, and I dared not press him too hard.

  Rome was not build in a day, and neither was Ak’lehr. Papa Verheyden died with his revolution hardly begun. The seeds he had sown were beginning to bear fruit, but very slowly.

  The metal-working industry had absorbed many of the lessons which he had to teach them, but their sights were not set as high as his—there was no way they could be. Production of iron and steel rose greatly, but the greater part of the metal went to the making of swords and tools and guns in great profusion. The priorities of the industry were largely set by the military, who were quick to see the advantage of cannon, but slow to appreciate the benefits of the steam engine. And so, though the seeds were planted, the industrial revolution remained in embryo. The priests played games with electricity, and made toys. But the time would come. It was only a matter of positive feedback...and once the loop was fully sealed, the growth would be exponential.

  Verheyden had not been able to reproduce himself in his children. That was inevitable. Growing up in an alien culture they had inevitably become much more a part of that culture than their father could have. They had gone into various walks of life armed with all the advantages their father’s knowledge could give them, but with limited vision. Only Piet and Anna had made the capital city their permanent home, and teaching their life’s work. Jan had become a shipbuilder, Charles a builder of dams and canals, Christian an agronomist. These three younger brothers had lost a good deal of the sense of power which had obsessed their father and their elder brother. They were more modest in their ambitions, however strongly they still held on to the sense of mission that had been instilled into them. They believed in their father without really trying to emulate him. They had their own concerns and interests to look after, their own more limited lives.

  All this I learned at second hand during the voyage up the coast of Delta in Ilah’y’su. It was an image seen through a murky glass—filtered through Jan’s conversation with Mariel’s aid. As we stopped at various ports I got glimpses of the empire, but we were never still for more than a couple of hours. Jan had business dealings to attend to, but he wasted not a second. He was in a hurry to get us back to Ak’lehr—to get us, in fact, off his hands. Being a younger brother has its privileges—one being that you can always pass the buck. Jan was determined that we weren’t going to be his problem. He didn’t know what our arrival really signified, and he was pleased—once I’d soothed his initial fears—to stop thinking about it. Piet could do the hard worrying and the decision-making.

  I looked forward to meeting Piet with more than a little trepidation. I would have been interested to meet Bernhard Verheyden, because I had confidence that I would have been able to talk to him. We could have understood one another and the situation. We need not necessarily have been able to find any measure of agreement, and in the end Bernhard Verheyden might have come to see me as a threat to his plans that must be destroyed, but there would have been a certain common perspective. With Piet there was no such guarantee. I remembered James Wildeblood and the inheritors of his legacy of intrigue and control. The son could hardly have the mind of the father—he would be an echo of it, and so much more difficult to deal with because of it.

  Comparing Verheyden and Wildeblood, I was disposed to meditate on the fact that such men were a natural product of the colony program. It is hardly surprising that the star-worlds should attract and produce empire-builders though Earth has seen none for centuries. All of Earth’s empires are not only already built but already falling into ruins; every last one in the grip of terminal decay. Attica, like Wildeblood, still had virtually all of its history in front of it. Even the Ak’lehrian Empire was but recently emerged from prehistory. But on Wildeblood there had never been any doubt that the empire would be a human one. It would never come into bitter conflict with the Salamen because there was nothing to fight over. The lands where the terrestrial forms of the aliens lived were of no use or interest to the human population. On Attica, things were different. When the colony had landed, it had seemed that a sensible balance could be easily achieved and maintained. The colony would take Lambda for its own, while the aliens would keep Delta. Not for three centuries would there even be the possibility of conflict.

  Bernhard Verheyden had altered all that. He had tipped the balance of power and tipped it dramatically. There was a possibility that it could never be recovered.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ak’lehr was crowded.

  It was a city of contrasts. It had its fine stone buildings—its masterpieces of architecture whose shells would last for thousands of years as reminders to posterity of the achievements made by the Ore’l in the very cradle of their civilization. Had it consisted only of these stone terraces and palaces and neat square shops and dwelling places it would have been a well-planned, attractive city, open and pleasant. But it did not. Everywhere there was a vertical wall there were parasitic growths of wood and loose brick extending as high as mechanical possibility permitted. For every stone-walled shop there were a thousand street stalls. For every stone dwelling, neatly enclosed by its high wall, there were a thousand shanties and another thousand families without shelter of any kind. There were tents and lean-tos pitched in every blind alley, and in every street but the main thoroughfares (which were kept clear by the army) there was a constant battle to invade the space in the center—the no-man’s-land where men and animals walked. There were people living in the streets in every state of abject poverty and despair.

  People flock from rural areas into cities because that’s the way that wealth flows. As a population explodes upon the land it must equalize by migration, and hope is where the city is. A city gathers a population as vast as it can contain. It attracts thieves and honest men alike, in such profusion that its beautiful buildings—the core which will become its echo and its memory in centuries to come—become a skeleton of respectability overgrown by a flesh of squalor. Inside the armored doors and the spiked gates there were neat gardens and pleasant houses. Outside, the poor divided up the
pavements among themselves, distributing their excreta as convenience demanded. A maze of city walls enclosed two different worlds. Where men can only walk or ride there can be no suburban sprawl. Everything is piled together into one gigantic ant heap.

  The men of the city—I say “men” because the Ore’l were not so different as to make the term seem strange—presented a complete cross-section of cultural types. The poorest dressed in loincloths, with only their light fur to protect them against cold nights. There were many dressed like the sailors of Ilah’y’su in short skirts and jackets of various kinds. Some wore robes of various designs and color schemes, but the robes were invariably simple, like monkish habits rather than the classical togas of Earth. Curiously—or so it seemed to me—the priests of the city did not wear such robes, but light tunics of a very frail fabric which was often frayed or torn. Most carried satchels of some kind. The various ranks of the army were distinguished by insignia painted on the leathery jackets that they wore; the various ranks of the priesthood by decorations added to the hems and seams of the frail garments.

  There are places on Earth now where similar cities still exist—civilizations stillborn because the resources of their various lands were long since plundered by better-established empires. But the Earthly ant heap cities are cities without a future. Ak’lehr still bad its future in hand and all its hopes were possibilities.

  As we made our way through the streets from the docks eyes turned to watch us from everywhere. We had an armed escort of soldiers, who were armed with rifles instead of the crossbows which Jan’s crew carried for “protection” against forest savages and dissident tradesmen. Rumors of our coming had flown ahead of us, though not too far. We were hot news. More messengers of god.

  Or....

  No doubt, if circumstances seemed to warrant it, Piet and the leaders of the church could think of another way to account for us.

  In one of the largest buildings in the very center of Ak’lehr—in an enclave that was virtually a city within a city, where the poor thronged the streets by day but were excluded by night—we were presented to the divine king, Ir’is’hesh, son of Ir’ha’ra. The presentation was formal—a mere ritual. The king glanced down at us from his throne, to recognize our presence and to give us his provisional blessing. We did not approach within twenty meters. Once the formality was over we were whisked away, leaving the king to disappear into the House of Ir’ha’ra, returning to his godlike isolation. We were taken to another building, equally impressive and much more extensive than the palace—the temple of Y’su and the college that had grown around and behind it.

  Here there was no ceremony. We were taken directly to Piet Verheyden. He received us in his own quarters. Anna and Christian were also there.

  Piet was about thirty-three. He was tall, thin-framed, with the same light brown eyes and muddily fair hair as Jan. His voice was rather harsh, as though he had some minor injury or infection in his throat.

  Anna was clearly stamped from the same mold. Though shorter she had the same kind of build and the same set to her features, but her eyes were hazel rather than brown. She wore her hair cut short, in the same style as Piet’s, and this enhanced the resemblance considerably. Jan, in fact, looked the odd one of the three because his hair grew longer and his skin was tanned and coarse by comparison.

  But Christian was something altogether different. He was short and sturdy, his features much more rounded. His eyes, his complexion and his hair were all much darker than those of his kindred. His oddness was accentuated by an old wound which had left a crescent-shaped scar around the line of the outer orbit of his right eye. There was no solid evidence, but the idea formed in my mind immediately that Christian was the child of a different father.

  After the introductions we were offered food and drink, which we accepted gratefully. Life aboard the ship had been far too much like life aboard the New Hope, and the food only a little better. Now we enjoyed a meal meant not only to nourish but also to provide enjoyment. I noticed that Jan sat on our side of the table—it was as though he were being required to take some kind of responsibility for us. It was Jan who told most of our story to Piet and the others—Nieland and I interrupted occasionally to correct misleading impressions, or to confirm statements which Jan made, but we made few long speeches on our own account. Mariel, engaged in the business of scanning them minutely, said absolutely nothing. It was not until the meal was completely finished that any real dialogue began.

  “I must apologize for Charles’ absence,” said Piet. “I’m afraid that I don’t know when he’ll return. He is supervising the building of a dam in the far southwest. Reports suggest that it isn’t going well. There’s a panic throughout that region because of an epidemic of some kind. We’re even having trouble keeping the roads open.”

  “It might be as well to keep the roads closed,” I observed. “It’s roads that spread diseases.”

  Piet laughed. It was the laugh of an experienced man of the world when he hears something naively amusing. “There are always diseases in the south. It’s largely a matter of hygiene. The towns along the roads have little to fear.”

  “From what I’ve seen of the city,” I said, “hygiene is a big problem even here.”

  Piet frowned. “We have excellent hospitals,” he said. “Our influence here has advanced medical practice from stupid superstition to standards which are extremely high. It’s true that the sewage system can’t cope with the problem at present, but it’s only a matter of a few years and tighter controls on the scavengers that flock through our gates. I assure you that we can cope. Our domestic medical problems are being defeated, slowly but surely. As for sickness out of the southern swamps...they’re hot climate diseases. They only thrive in the outlying districts.

  “In any case, all this is beside the point. I’d rather discuss your plans. You came here to study the Ore’l?”

  “To make contact,” I affirmed. “Or, since contact has already been made, to study the results of the association. We must report back to Earth on the state of affairs that exists on both Lambda and Delta.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Reason?” I parried.

  “Why does Earth want to know what is happening here? Didn’t you abandon us more than a hundred years ago?”

  “There has been a long gap between contacts,” I admitted. “But Earth did not ‘abandon’ any of the colonies. That was never the UN’s intention. It was a matter of supplying the necessary help at the correct times. Time had to elapse for the problems of each individual colony to materialize, for the specific kinds of aid required to become clear.”

  “And what kind of aid did you bring?” he asked.

  “A laboratory equipped for ecological analysis and for the genetic modification of both species originally brought from Earth and those native to Attica.”

  “Genetic modification of the colonists?” said Christian, incredulously.

  “Hardly,” I replied. “That’s too complex—not to mention illegal. Modification of plants...the development of strains resistant to various forms of parasitic attack. The only organisms we can actually build are viruses...though we can build single genes or groups of genes to produce specific proteins into most lower animals and plants. Engineering people is a problem of an entirely different order. Basically we eradicate pests and help crops negotiate metabolic bottlenecks. It’s a subtle form of ecological management, but we’re often represented to the vulgar viewpoint as ratcatchers. With our help, the colony should be able to overcome all the difficulties that have hit its food supply.”

  “And you think that you arrived at the right moment?” said Piet.

  “No,” I said. “We might have done more had we arrived earlier. But we did not realize, on Earth, that the colonies would be so badly crippled by the difficulties of co-adaptation. The UN made a mistake in the general pattern of its thinking.”

  “A hundred years,” said Piet, sarcastically. “A little mistake of a few decades
, a few generations.”

  “Earth has problems too,” I said. “Problems which are much more difficult to solve. We may have underestimated yours...but we’ve never been able to underestimate our own. Yes, help should have come sooner. You have a right to be bitter. But all the colonies had to take their place on a scale of priorities. Men suffered in the colony here for lack of support...but they also suffered on Earth. They still are suffering. And they’re bitter, too. They’re bitter now because help is being sent out to the colonies, just as the colonists have been bitter because such resources as there were fifty years ago were being used on Earth. And the Lambda colony has survived. Some didn’t.”

  “The Lambda colony was determined to survive,” said Piet, with a sneer in his voice. “So determined that it very nearly didn’t. It drove out the one man who could have saved it. If things had been different perhaps it wouldn’t have needed your help at all.”

  The element of doublethink in Piet’s logic was clear. He was bitter because Earth hadn’t sent aid to Attica earlier. He was also bitter because the colony had ungraciously rejected his father, who would have brought it through its time of trouble without need of aid from Earth. But human minds can accommodate much more contradictory ideas with ease. There was nothing remarkable about it.

  “It appears to me,” I said, trying to sound anything but sarcastic, “that you’re in an ideal position now to offer aid to the colony. You’ve done a great deal here to help the Ore’l...you’ll go down in history as their benefactors. You could write yourself a place in colony history, too...as the people who secured the future of two continents.”

  I hadn’t really intended to put the cat among the pigeons quite so soon. But Piet had seemed bent on cutting right to the heart of the matter and he had dragged me right along with him.