Power

by Laurence M. Janifer

  What sort of ill-conceived closet drama was all this secrecy weaving? “Before it does any—any damage to the Dichtung . . .” Leverett began, and stopped, feeling perfectly absurd, perfectly melodramatic; but...

  “Before that,” Norin said, with perfect sobriety. And Leverett found himself repeating, as if he truly needed reassurance:

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  Norin’s expression changed: in a blink, a savage smile; in another, the firm distance of struck marble once again. “Don’t depend on it,” the old man said. “It can be. It is. When it comes out—”

  He paused, then. After an unbearable time Leverett found his own voice. “When it comes out?”

  “By then,” Norin said, with a rather horrible simplicity, “the Dichtung may be approximately as important as the Confederation of Apache Indian Tribes.”

  “But—”

  Norin allowed him nothing. “Later,” he said. “When it’s time.” He needed no permission and waited for none; he began to turn back to his seat. Leverett flung a hand halfway up in the beginnings of an attempt to stop him, and let the hand fall.

  Gaughlin was saying: “There is always a solution, for men of good will.”

  And of course there was, Leverett told himself, very bleakly indeed. Of course there was. A man of good will—a man, even, of a will occasionally good, and always human—had only to find it. It was at that point that Gaughlin’s plans, of course, .fell short.

  Like, he found himself thinking, Leverett himself. . . .

  3.

  The first thing which strikes our attention is, that the executive authority, with few exceptions, is to be vested in a single magistrate. This will scarcely, however, be considered as a point upon which any comparison can be grounded; for if, in this particular, there be a resemblance to the king of Great Britain, there is not less a resemblance to the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven Mountains, or to the Governor of New York.

  —Alexander Hamilton,

  The Federalist (No. 69).

  4.

  Forman Alpha (as requested) had returned through the private corridor, and was standing as if he expected orders. “All right, all right,” Penn said, with the growing impatience Forman Alpha seemed able to rouse in everybody. “We’re alone, this is no time to stand on ceremony, and I want a report.”

  “You’ve had your report.” Forman Alpha stood without moving, hands clasped behind him, the red square face set in a mask that left him (choice of one, Penn thought) either with no expression at all, or with a very unpleasant one indeed, and his graying hair cut short and smooth, standing up to outline his skull as if he were some sort of ancient warrior. Everybody, Penn reminded himself, had peculiarities; comparatively few people, though, seemed to make of them quite the assortment of irritations of which Forman Alpha seemed honestly, entirely proud. “We spent nearly the entire meeting on that. That was why the meeting was called.”

  Penn, moving restlessly from desk to window painting and back again, tried to make himself sound casual. “You don’t have to remind me. 1 haven’t yet reached the stage of idiot senility at which—” Wasn’t very casual after all, was it? Well, let’s try it once more, then. “I went through the facts at the meeting—”

  “The facts,” Forman Alpha said flatly, “with which I provided the Council.”

  Penn nodded, a bit absently; sooner or later, he told himself, they would get to the point. “Very well,” he said. “But there are other facts.”

  “In my judgment—”

  Judgment? “You have no judgment in this matter,” Penn said, remotely surprised that the man could pink him so easily on such a subject; but no man, he reflected, knows the limits of his own defenses. “I have asked you. Your judgment is not in question; my request carries the force of—”

  “Law,” Forman Alpha said neatly. “Or—very nearly so. At any rate, you appointed me. You are perfectly free to discharge me. I quite realize that; I always have.” He let his mouth curve in a tiny distant smile. “Nevertheless—”

  “Report,” Penn said, and nothing more. The red square face grew a bit redder. A minute of silence passed slowly in the marbled, overdamp Council Room. Forman Alpha’s eyes dropped first.

  “What do you want, then?” he asked, in a tone low enough to be only barely audible.

  Penn, near his desk, sat down in the great chair that was, at least until the next two elections, his alone. “Everything about the mutiny,” he said. “Who, what, when, where—minute by minute if necessary. You must see how important—” -

  “I don’t need a campaign speech,” the Minister of Defense broke in—trying, Penn thought, to recover his acrid ascendancy. “All right. It began—the Valor was cruising as assigned, in a station some ten million miles inside the orbit of Mars. If you want the exact coordinates—”

  “Oh—get on with it.” Behind the desk, solidly positioned, he asked himself, Informal enough: Penn, old man? Informal enough?

  Forman Alpha heaved what appeared a great impatient sigh. Really—there was every reason in the world for removing the man, excepting only capability. Capability (Penn imagined) had never before come in so unpleasant a package; and the Emperor, who fancied himself a student of history, had at instant recall a great many examples.

  “Oddly enough, the first notion that something was wrong was not the usual broadcast promising loot and power for the crew, picked up by other ships and thus homed in upon before matters became serious. No,” Forman Alpha said, his tone tensing almost as if he were, despite himself, interested, “the first indication was that broadcasting had ceased. Entirely. It was impossible to raise the Valor for her usual check, and no communications of any sort were detectable. That was . . .let me see . . .

  “Thirty-seven hours ago,” Penn supplied, idiotically pleased with his own highly superior memory; well, an Emperor had to be good at something, didn’t he? Besides getting votes?

  “Approximately,” Forman Alpha said, accepting the gift with as much neglect as possible. “Of course, everyone’s first idea was that the ship had run into difficulties, and a highly unusual set of difficulties at that. Its own ID beacons never interrupted their beaming, and that much told us that the ship was still there—” Us? And where were you at the time? Actually in Skywatch HQ? “—and an accident which didn’t so much as graze the beacons and still destroyed all exterior-communications nets was a bit hard even to imagine. Clearly, then, something else was wrong.”

  “The mutiny,” Penn said, tricked into one vain effort, at any rate, to speed the man up; really, he was quite improbable. Almost, if not quite, impossible—a distinction Penn found, twenty times a month, to be unfortunate.

  “Of course Skywatch and the various Services did a check on officers and crew, though there was then no reason to assume any situation of the sort we were to find.” Forman Alpha pursed his lips, nodding, approving of the actions of Skywatch; in a way, Penn told himself, it was nice of the man. “The possibility of making contact with the ship by a coded interference w’ith its own beacon system was discussed, but seemed too complex for an initial attempt; as long as the ship remained in its assigned quadrant, on its assigned path, we could assume that nothing requiring

  so much novel and complicated equipment was indicated.” We! Us! And all that time, Defense Minister, where were you? Sleeping? Reading casually over the latest Mexican porno? Studying financial reports from Thoth? We, indeed! “Until the arrival of some broadcast from the Valor, in other words, or some deviation from its assigned path, there seemed little to do.”

  “All right,” Penn said heavily. “The broadcast.”

  Having reached the point, of course, Forman Alpha brushed a freckled hand through the short-cut, dead-white hair on his skull, and began with no more than “The Council—”

  “The Council had only a summary,” Penn said. “I want every word.”

  “Of course, Sire, you realize the complexity of—”

 
; “Every word,” Penn said. “Now.”

  Forman Alpha, seeming somehow not to submit, bowed nevertheless. “Of course, of course,” he murmured. “A recording was made of the broadcast, and it’s available here, with me.”

  He drew from the inside folds of his drap a packet, and placed it between the pickups of a Six-Through-Eight playback on the desk. Penn, wasting neither words nor time, sliced his hand over the packet, activating the machine. The voice that began immediately had no more than the usual intership clarity, and seemed, in addition, colorless and vacant and perhaps a little slow; yet it was possessed of more force than (Penn imagined) it had any right to own or use. For a brief time Penn found himself trying to keep silent even the slight continuous noise one made in breathing.

  This broadcast is not addressed to the crew of the Valor. I repeat: This broadcast is not addressed to the crew of the Valor.

  It is addressed to you, members and riders of the Comity; to you, who speak of freedom, and who ignore it; who speak of freedom, and maintain slavery;

  who speak of freedom, and hold power in hard fists.

  Let it be known that true freedom is neither dead nor lost, but lives again on this ship, as soon it will live throughout the worlds. Let it be known that the people themselves shall rule, and that no despot shall maintain over them a slavish and degrading power. Let it be known that true independence and true liberty are reborn this day, upon this ship; for we are power in ourselves, and need no other. We are—

  “What?” Penn said explosively. “What does he mean?”

  Forman Alpha had, casually, a reply ready, if not very much of a helpful one. “Apparently,” he said smoothly, “he means what he says. And what that means, Sire, I’m afraid I can’t tell.”

  “Words, words . . . and no more than that. But—”

  “We’re missing the speech, Sire,” Forman Alpha said. “If you’ll pardon me—” He touched one point of the playback. The flat voice in the room stopped. He touched another, waited, and then touched both at once.

  “But—” Penn began, and was silent. To listen, to hear; perhaps, he thought without conviction, perhaps to understand.

  —need no other. We are responsible solely to ourselves.

  It is this condition which we intend to bring as a gift to the peoples of the Comity. Their freedom, and a responsibility solely to themselves.

  The officers of this ship have either aided in this decision and its necessary embodiment in act, or will be heard no more. Their names—our names—are not important. It is what we do—officers and linemen, both—which has importance.

  One ship cannot rule the Comity, nor can it stand against the Armed Services. But one ship may make a beginning. Other ships will follow.

  Nor are we entirely powerless. Your reign is over, rulers of the Comity. We may be destroyed but the cost will be heavy; and through this broadcast we shall create more ships, more seeds of freedom, which will not be destroyed.

  If ships move against us, we shall die. But we shall not die alone.

  We hold in pawn not the lives of ships, but the lives of cities. We hold in pawn the life of Thoth.

  If a squadron moves against us, rulers of the Comity, we shall—before our own destruction—destroy the city of Thoth upon Mars. Of all that city nothing will be left but the drift of ashes—as of all your rule nothing, now, is left but ashes.

  Freedom has come into the worlds. It shall not easily be lost again.

  After some seconds, “Freedom,” Penn said, in an absolutely blank tone, his eyes neither narrowed nor unfocused.

  Forman Alpha came very near to a shrug. “That was all,” he said. “The broadcast ended, and we’ve been unable to raise the Valor since.”

  Penn sat, his eyes gone shut, trying not to display any true or strong emotion. “Jefferson—Churchill—Hitler—Trotsky—Auvade—it sounds like all of them at once,” he said very slowly. “And none of them; there’s no sense in it at all.”

  “There may be some.”

  Penn’s eyes opened; he stared directly across the desk. “Thoth?” he asked. “Their beacons tell us they’ve taken up a new station, an orbit passing near to Thoth, actually a watching-orbit over Mars—”

  “Certainly,” Forman Alpha said with impatience. “That, Sire, is the only other bit of news in thirty-seven—thirty-seven, did you say? I thought so— thirty-seven hours.”

  “No sense in it at all.” Penn heard himself murmur the words, and shut his mouth deliberately. Forman Alpha raised his eyebrows, in the manner of a man surprised at having to display the obvious.

  “And yet—”

  “Oh, yes,” Penn said wearily. “And yet—Thoth can be destroyed. I quite understand that. We can’t let this leak out ... so much I knew before, but I know it more strongly now. Having heard it all. Why—it’s simply incredible. The idiot might start a panic. . .”

  Forman Alpha was smiling, Penn saw, actually smiling. “I doubt he’d mind that,” the Minister of Defense said.

  Penn, trying still to clear his head, to think, to decide, shut his eyes again and opened them; nothing had changed. “No, of course not,” he said. “Rabble-rousers, all the men I mentioned. Jefferson . . . speechifyers, you see. Anything to get the people stimulated—to rouse them to action—to ... Of course, you’re right: a panic might be the-fastest way to get recruits.” And that was suddenly too fast for Forman Alpha.

  “Recruits?”

  After all, Penn told himself, it was a fact better known to an elective than to an appointive-elective statesman. “Someone,” he said very tiredly, “will be found to agree with any statement, no matter what it is. Someone, somewhere, will flock to any imaginable banner—whether or not it makes sense.”

  “But—recruits—”

  “Enough to do damage,” Penn said, seeing very clearly the beginnings of the next stir and cycle of events—which he was bound, in oath and position, to prevent. “Not enough to do as he says—destroy the Comity. No. But: five people would be enough to do serious damage, you see.”

  Forman Alpha was back at attention; was it a game he played with himself? Penn wondered. Or was it the only manageable manner of the man in any relation at all? “One,” the Defense Minister said, “if he controls that ship over Thoth.”

  “One,” Penn repeated. “But—”

  He stopped at Forman Alpha’s nod; somewhere be-

  hind the stone-still red face was the smallest gleam of satisfaction. “Exactly,” the face said. “Young Norm. It’s hardly to be believed.”

  “The boy is mad,” Penn said flatly.

  Forman Alpha nodded once more. “We shall have to think so,” he said. “If we decide to—”

  “The Valor must be destroyed,” Penn said. “That much is clear; that much we cannot blink.”

  “Then we must think so: the boy is mad. Norin’s son.” Forman Alpha spoke slowly, as if he timed, tasted, turned in bronze his words. “Norin’s son. And yet. . .1 wonder. . .”

  Penn took, almost automatically, almost without irritation, the demanded cue. “What?”

  “I wonder what Norin thinks,” Forman Alpha said, as slowly, suddenly his face screwed sidewise in a spastic, incredible grin; and in a blink relaxed. “Our Norin, I mean,” he said. “There are, after all, more than one.”

  5.

  That all men are bom to equal rights is clear. Every being has a right to his own, as moral, as sacred, as any other has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But to teach that all men are bom with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French Revolution. For honor’s sake, Mr. Taylor, for truth and virtue’s sake, let American philosophers and politicians despise it.

  —John Adams,

  in a letter to John Taylor.


  6.

  Leverett was a fool, Norin thought: worried about the Dichtung, and no more. Why, if the worlds were all to end tomorrow, Leverett’s concern would be the safety of the chamber, and nothing more; which was unfair, he knew; but Norin knew as well that Isidor Norin was an aging man, and now and again he allowed himself a privilege or two, jerked flopping from age’s storehouse. No, it was no good discussing the thing with Leverett—and who else was in the chamber? Why had he come there, save to comfort his old man’s soul, whatever name one called it by, with the old, familiar sights and sounds? Gaughlin, hopeless; Wright, too old, too fat for thought any longer. Why do they keep on? Norin wondered. Why does Penn keep them on?

  Though it was hardly fair (once again) entirely to blame Penn; Gaughlin’s beloved populace, the Valor’s charmed peoples, bore some share of that great windbag of a weight. And . . . well, who else was there?

  Norin began a list, too rapidly for anyone but an old man familiar with more of the various Dichtung groups, over the years, than most: Wells (bluff-and-hearty; take the story, misunderstand it, and find some use out of it for his bloody-be-damned “white-collars”); Riesinger (the careful analyst: three months understanding anything, three years putting it to work: “Precisely what do you mean by that, sir?); Aarlberg (nothing wrong with Vladimir Aarlberg —and nothing right with him, either); Greene (with a daughter of his own working as an analyst in Thoth!); Grendon (whose brother was a Space Marshal—oh, wonderful, wonderful); Vyabor-Shu (if you understood how his mind worked; Norin didn’t, and suspected at sour moments that Vyabor-Shu didn’t either); Demeuth. . . .

  Useless. The Hall half empty and more, Gaughlin droning earnestly on, and no one, really, no one better than Demeuth in whom, however briefly and however tinily, to confide?