The roll was being called with droning fatality to Harlan’s chances. I wanted to break the connection so I wouldn’t have to watch. I was halfway to my feet to shut it off when there was a commotion at the Hall doors. They burst open suddenly to a scene of struggling guards.
“I am Jokan. I have the right to enter. STANNALL!” a voice rang out above the scuffling and shouting.
“Let Jokan advance,” Stannall bellowed with more power to his voice than I imagined he’d have.
Jokan ran up the aisle. He spared no time for ceremonial bowing. Catching Stannall by the arm, he spoke softly and urgently. The First Councilman’s eyes widened with disbelief. He backed up, his hand reaching behind him for the support of the table. Jokan stopped speaking, his face grim. Stannall stared at him. He managed to ask a question to which Jokan only nodded slowly and gravely. You could see the effort with which Stannall drew himself erect.
“I have grave news. The gravest. I must speak of something I never thought would be said of a Lotharian. I must speak of treachery so abominable that the words gag in my throat.” Stannall’s voice did choke, before he gathered strength and volume and venom. “There has been no war on Tane,” he declared in a tight, measured way. “And furthermore there are now no more Tane on their two silent planets. Why? Because they have been taken by the Mil.”
A concerted gasp of horror rang throughout the Hall.
“How, you may well ask, did the Mil get the Tane? How did they, for that matter, penetrate so far in from our Perimeter Patrol? Because the Patrol has been withdrawn from the Tane sector.
“There is only one man who has the power to do that. I accuse Gorlot,” and Stannall’s finger pinioned the traitor, “of the highest, most gruesome treachery. I accuse him of the foulest . . .” and here Stannall was drowned out by the savage roar that came up from the very floor of the Hall. There was a mass stampede toward the traitor.
Jokan had leaped to Gorlot’s side during Stannall’s denunciation. His weapon was pointed at the man’s throat. Ironically enough, it was Harlan who kept Gorlot from being torn apart alive by the hysterical Councilmen. It was Harlan who brought the mob under control and back in their seats while guards formed a tight ring around Gorlot.
It was Harlan who called squadron outposts along the Perimeter to report their positions. It was he who reassigned them and called up additional units from the spaceport to rush to unprotected areas. It was Harlan who kept his head, the man they considered unsafe to trust with their government.
But it was Stannall who recalled the business of the day long enough to insist on a re-vote which was dispatched with unanimous haste. Harlan was again Regent!
CHAPTER TWELVE
I HAD A SAMPLING OF the general reaction to this startling news from the three people in the room with me. Linnana started to weep hysterically, throwing herself at Jessl’s feet and imploring him to take her to the Vaults where she would be safe from the Mil. She evidently supposed the Mil to be on their way from Tane to Lothar although this had not even been hinted. Ittlo cursed monotonously, alternating his curses with “How did he do it? How could he do it?” This was substantially what Jessl wanted to know.
First he managed to calm Linnana by reminding her that the inner network of alarms gave them a full day’s warning before the Mil could possibly land on Lothar. There was no possibility of Gorlot’s tampering with those sentinels. She continued to weep quietly, falling into a little lump on a chair, until I thought to have her go with Ittlo and get quantities of the stimulating beverage. I had a feeling we’d need it.
With something to do, both Ittlo and Linnana were in better shape. The door flung open and Fara came racing in, her eyes wide in her white face.
“I had to come, I had to come. Maxil will be so upset,” she pleaded with me.
Jessl and I exchanged looks. She was, of course, quite right. True, I didn’t realize that tradition would require a sixteen-year-old boy to be on the flagship of the fleet that would undoubtedly meet the Mil the next time they came thundering down on Tane.
Her concern for this crisis and its effect on the boy was instinctive and creditable to the unselfishness of her devotion to him. I felt ashamed. All I had considered was the fact that Gorlot was finally exposed and Harlan vindicated.
“Help me get to him,” Fara cried, looking first to me, then to Jessl, gesturing at the pandemonium in the Council Hall.
“Harlan will bring Maxil back here, I’m sure,” I said encouragingly. “And I don’t think anyone could get through to him right now. Look.”
Fara and Jessl turned to the hectic picture on the panel. Harlan, Stannall and Maxil were easing themselves out of the Hall, all the while directing various agitated groups of Councilmen. The comic relief was supplied by the secretary. He was trying to keep his unwieldy table of tablets from being upset in the push and shove. He kept jumping up and down on one leg, weeping in distress at the ghastly news he must record.
Ittlo’s questions, “How did he do it? How could he do it?” were answered in the course of the next few violent days. But there were a lot of other questions that were never adequately answered.
The perfidy toward the gentle Tane who had so recently been reviled as expendable savages shocked Lotharians of all degrees out of their petty squabbles and united them once more in their ancient crusade against the Mil.
“How could he do it?” was answered by the blazing personal ambition of the man Gorlot, who had correctly assessed the greed of barons and patrol dissidents, seizing upon the unrest of the time to implement his scheme. There were many who had wanted the Tane planets as their own playgrounds, or for their business monopolies. They were not especially interested in having the Tane there. They gave Gorlot the support he needed in Council when he needed it, in return for his extravagant promises of large grants when his colonization reforms went through. His choices of squadron leaders were promoted through rigged military boards and the incumbents thrown out, moved up, or liquidated in one manner or another. In return for their explicit, blind obedience, Gorlot substituted in all key Perimeter positions the incompetent men who had formerly been denied promotion. The few who went along only far enough to get suspicious of Gorlot’s ultimate goal or who found out inadvertently were silenced. Some ended up as mental cases, others as complete paralytics doomed to a short and useless life in the thrall of cerol, conscious but unable to blurt out the frightful truths held locked in their brains.
Gorlot had withdrawn the Perimeter defenses on the Tane sector, creating a funnel down which the Mil, encouraged by the lack of resistance, headed toward their new prey. The routine engagements Gorlot reported during his period as Regent were actually those few Mil ships he had had to destroy to control. Some of the men supposedly in cerol shock from Tane attacks had been captured by the Mil. Frantic appeals, like the case of the rhyming trader, had been put down to the ever-mounting toll of mental health. I wondered how Gorlot, once the Tanes’ planets were stripped, planned to turn back the Mil the next time they approached the funnel. Or would the Mil know they had had all the life those two ill-fated planets bore? Would Gorlot have risked a Mil raid on Lothar? My private opinion was yes, he would have dared, particularly if he could be the hero of the occasion. Perhaps he meant ultimately to discard the “weakened line” of Harlan and start a new dynasty, the vigorous “line of Gorlot.”
The real miracle in the affair was Jokan’s role. He had started back for the north and staged a realistic crash in the mountains as planned. The men who rescued him were patrollers on leave. They recognized Jokan as the man who had been experimenting on Ertoi with the crystals. These crystals had enabled the Ertoi to keep the Mil off their planets long before the Alliance. The sonic vibrations of the crystals were powerful enough to disrupt the cellular construction of the Mil and reduce them to a battered jelly. The Ertoi were a much older race than the Lotharians. Thanks to the magnetic storms with which their planet abounded they had early found a means of defending themselves
against the depredations of the Mil.
Jokan had worked for several years on a project to incorporate similar electromagnetic crystals on every Lotharian ship. Laboratory tests had proved that the crystals were effective if the Mil victim could be encircled. It was this new weapon that had given Harlan the hope that Lothar might seriously consider attacking the Mil home planet. However, there was as yet no adequate way to shield humans against the effect of the crystals. A man, because of his relatively denser cell composition, could stand a much higher frequency than the Mil. But man still suffered from the vibrations emanating from this weapon.
Jokan’s patrollers mentioned that all the ships they had seen or served on recently were now equipped with the crystal resonators. There was considerable secrecy attached to these installations. Jokan was deemed the permissible exception. He had, after all, been instrumental in their development. But Jokan had not known that the installation of the crystals was so widespread. He was immediately concerned and questioned the men closely. What he learned was enough to send him back to Lothar to make his desperate and successful attempt to get to the Tane planets. He had left word at his apartment of his intentions, believing me soon to arrive safely there.
The patrollers had also told him they had been in maneuvers off Tane, using the crystals on Mil type transports, driving the ships toward Tane. There had been several of these “war games,” combined with expeditions on the Tanes in which the “rebellious” Tanes were herded into cantonments to await punishment for their “offenses” against Lothar.
I don’t know where Gorlot was taken immediately after the fiasco at the Council Hall because it had to be a well-kept secret. The palace was mobbed by endless throngs and deputations, screaming for possession of the traitor. Numerous attempts to invade the palace by force to seize Gorlot were repulsed.
Fara’s concern for Maxil was just. He returned from the Council Hall in grim silence. He made continual appearances on the balcony overlooking the great Square, reassuring the people that the Mil were not lurking in the clouds above, ready to swoop down and depopulate Lothar. With a sternness astonishing for his relative youth, he assured them of punishment for the traitor. The only reason for a delay in dealing with Gorlot was to discover how far-reaching his plans had been. However, it became necessary late that night to bring Gorlot from his prison and show him to the frenzied mobs before they could be made to disperse.
Someone had started a rumor that he had been rescued or was going to be rescued. What group of zealots might do such a mad thing no one ever said. But Maxil showed them a Gorlot, manacled with ship-anchor chains, bruised and bloodied, quite a different man from that morning.
The enflamed people had to be satisfied with effigies of Gorlot which were burned, tortured, dismembered, tied to Mil Rocks all over the planet, thousands of times throughout the night. Vengeance was easy to accomplish by pointing fingers at those who had enjoyed Gorlot’s favor during the past ten months.
Maxil proved himself a true descendant of Warlords, carrying himself with great dignity during his trying personal appearances. I appeared with him, as did Fara, Stannall, Jokan and Jessl. But I think it was Fara’s presence that steadied him most. Once Stannall recognized this, at my insistence, there was no longer any problem about Fara remaining in the Warlord’s suite.
I think all the arrogance and imperiousness went out of Maxil that day. The glamorous trappings, the little dignities and privileges that went with his position had been brutally torn aside to show him the ugly mechanics underneath. It was a frightening initiation into manhood.
The Regent and the First Councilman seemed to be on strings, in and out, back and forth. Jessl stayed with Maxil but apart from one public appearance with Maxil, Jokan was not in evidence. He joined us very late that night as Jessl and I sat up, listening to the disturbed sleep of the new Warlord, far too keyed up to rest ourselves. The noise from the streets was still audible. I was, as usual, eating. I’ll say that for my participation in events that day: it was I who remembered that people had to eat occasionally, particularly people under stress. And I made everyone have dinner, including Stannall and Harlan.
Jessl took one look at his half-brother and did not offer food. He poured him a full cup of a potent patrol brew. Jokan showed every minute of the forty sleepless hours of his trip to and from Tane. He was no longer the debonair man-of-the-world, playboy and wit. Jokan was too dead-tired to play any role. He had lost the last of his few illusions. Jessl and I waited as he drank, his legs sprawled out from the chair, his chin on his chest, one arm limp over the back of the chair, the other cradling the tumbler against his cheek between gulps.
“You know Jessl,” he said finally, “I circled those damned planets and I quartered them. I went to every sacred grove on both Tanes. They were fenced round with forcers. Only the forcers were off and there wasn’t anyone around. Used to be, there was always someone in a grove.
“And quiet? You’ve never been on such a quiet world. Those Tanes were always making some kind of noise, that silly croon of theirs. You always heard it. But there was always some kind of noise. I tell you, it was the weirdest thing I ever felt. And those burned-out acres where the Mil ships had landed. You could smell them. It made me sick. I was sick until I couldn’t stand and crawled back to the ship on my hands and knees.”
I noticed that he wasn’t exaggerating. The knees of his now disheveled flying suit were torn and mud-caked.
“Jessl, if I hadn’t been there,” he continued, miserably, his eyes filling with tears, “I wouldn’t’ve believed a man, a Lotharian who knows what the Mil do, who’s been brought up to kill the rotting species, could conceive such a scheme.” He shook his head and drained the rest of his cup, holding it out for Jessl to refill.
“Didn’t you find any Tanes?” asked Jessl hopefully.
Jokan shook his head slowly from side to side, from side to side. “A whole race of gentle natural people who never hurt anyone, who didn’t suspect treachery in others until it must have been too late. A whole race wiped out. By one man. One man.”
Draining his cup again, Jokan flung it viciously against the wall. It clattered and bounced noisily onto the carpeting. Jokan sat there looking at the battered cup with narrowed eyes. Jessl reached for another tumbler, filled it and passed it over to his brother. He and I watched until Jokan drank himself into a complete stupor. Then we put him to bed.
I went to sleep in the final hours of that night, listening to the dull rumble of public frenzy which showed few signs of dying down from sheer inertia. There was no less noise than there had been the previous night with Eclipse festival going full blast. But there was a different feel in the air now . . . a feeling of hate so strong it smelled, so tense it pressed against you like heavy fog and made breathing difficult.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN I AWOKE AT MY usual hour the next morning, I felt oddly refreshed by the short sleep and curiously alert. I was up well before Linnana this morning, I thought with a grin. She didn’t even appear when I drew my own bath. In a way it was a pleasure to be alone, feeling as I did, and I hummed to myself as I bathed. Gorlot had done his worst and it had backfired on him. The yoke of apprehension was lifted from the back of my neck. Somehow, to me at any rate, the Mil did not seem as terrifying as Gorlot had.
I threw on a robe and walked out onto my balcony. The gardens lay below me, trampled and battered by yesterday’s surging mobs. Beyond, the city was preternaturally quiet, the way New York could be, early Sunday mornings. A sudden muted drone caught my attention and I located the sound from the trail the ship made as it needled upward into the greenish morning sky. The trail was barely thinning when another roar split the air and a second, a third, a fourth line of smoke spurted upward. I watched this exodus for some time before the knock on the door roused me.
Harlan came in and motioned to me to stay on the balcony where he joined me. There were circles under his eyes and fatigue lines drawing down the corners of his mouth.
But his step was quick and his voice firm.
“Good morning to you, Regent Harlan,” I said and gave him a full court curtsey.
“Very graceful,” he grinned back and gave me a hand to steady my rising. “I didn’t hope to find you up. But I took a chance. Jokan is far beyond wakening.”
“He was very tired last night,” I tendered.
“He was also very drunk,” Harlan remarked, teasing me. “Hardly blame him. Wish I had the chance.”
I could think of nothing witty or apt to say because Harlan’s very masculine presence disturbed me.
He leaned against the wall, facing me, folding his arms across his chest, regarding me with disconcerting directness.
“What is all the activity at the spaceport?” I asked, nervously gesturing at the smoke trails.
Harlan didn’t bother to glance over his shoulder. “Sending out replacements and technicians for the Perimeter. Have to replace nearly every man Gorlot appointed with someone competent. He did a thorough job of removing, permanently or temporarily, every able man in Patrol unsympathetic to him.”
“You are afraid the Mil are coming back in force.”
Harlan frowned at me intensely. “There is always that possibility.”
“It’s what everyone seems to fear.”
“Well, they might. Gorlot gave the Mil a wide-open field with Tane. What’s to prevent them from assuming that the entire section isn’t wide open? Especially since we’ve always maintained such a vigil.”
Harlan moved to the balcony railing, looking out over the battered gardens. Then he turned back to me, leaning against the iron support.
“Have either Jessl or Jokan been after you? About your origin?” he asked anxiously.
“Jessl calls me the lady of mystery,” I laughed lightly.
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