Psychohistorical Crisis

by Unknown Author

  On this bright day he sat in the entertainment room forcing an animated chat with four Hasani money smiths, none of whom would have spoken to a child had he been one of their own people. But they were newly arrived by starship on business with the Ulman’s Adjudicator and felt obliged to humor the man’s son. To remind themselves that he was a mere child, they made allusions to events which they “knew” could mean nothing to Eron. By deliberately talking over his head they felt less demeaned to be caught with a child, unaware that Eron had already collected critical pieces of a puzzle that no one was supposed to be able to fit together. He understood all that they said.

  Why had a cut-rate hyperspace transport line suddenly constructed new berths at Agander’s hyperstation when Gan-derian policy had always been to semi-isolate their planet from the rest of the Ulmat and especially from the interstellar commerce that connected the Ulmat with the heartbeat of the Empire? For reasons of location, the operation couldn’t possibly be profitable. Eron Osa’s young mind had noted this curiosity long before he had connected it to his father.

  He had been spying on his father for years, partly because his father was taciturnly unreadable, partly out of anger. He kept track of the old satyr’s love life but carefully never informed his mother because then his patriarch would find out about his spying and that would precipitate doomsday. He’d probably be packed up and sent off to Star’s End without an allowance.

  Once, directly in the eye of Eron’s spy beam, his father had fought bitterly with Melinesa, his mistress, about sins a grown man should have outgrown, all to Eron’s hidden fascination, especially because she was nude. But when the father then stalked boorishly from her rooms, his uncontrolled anger had appalled Eron: he who carried a gun had no need of anger! Worse, his father’s stupid “honor” had not even allowed the man to grace himself with an apology. What a klutz! Without bothering to ask permission, Eron gleefully forged an eloquent plea for forgiveness in his father’s stead and delivered it at the darkest moonset, dropping the missive in between two buds of a strategically placed star-rosebush where Melinesa would be sure to find it on her morning’s walk. Then he skedaddled away on fast, silent feet. He had an adult (and very secret) flare for the romantic idiom.

  From his voyeur’s viewpoint, Eron had fallen dizzily in love with the elegant Melinesa. She had once kissed him on the forehead during one of their rare meetings in the flesh (a state occasion), smiling into his eyes without even knowing that he knew. From such infatuation it was only a small step to forging his father’s “unforgeable” electro-signature to a youth’s heartfelt blathering—thus earning for his father an undeserved night of reconciled passion. It was the duty of a son to see that his father conformed to the highest standards of behavior with women. Eron believed in poetic exculpation for churlishness; honor be damned.

  Still, it astonished Eron—shook him even—to discover from these mere Hasani that ins father was taking bribes. A Ganderian taking bribes from the Empire! It was unthinkable. Osa Junior bowed his excuses to the moneysmiths, exited through the slit in the drapes, and allowed himself to wander aimlessly through the maze of the Alcazar’s curtained corridors, dancing from slither belt to slither belt, careful to stay four paces behind any other traveler so as not to offend them.

  The long walk gave him time to think—with his fam set at accelerated assimilation. He was faced with a complicated matter of family honor. A full watch passed before he could decide upon his stem moral duty. Then it was another stint out on the Field of the Athletes, marching up and down the field to his inner drums to find the courage to do it. Back inside the Alcazar he touched his personal “kick” in its hidden holster-—the sidearm his father had trained him to use as a five-year-old. No male of Agander felt dressed without his sidearm and his underwear, neither of which it was polite to expose in company. When he was alone in a corridor, he checked the charge because it was unmannerly to check one’s charge in public. Eron was now set to face down his father with the truth.

  A swift bit of sidestepping took him off the belts and to his final destination, a huge bootharium where the Alcazar’s staff sustained ultrawave communication with the stars. A steward led him to a tier of small alcoves, then waited politely as he chose one. It did not matter that Eron was the Adjudicator’s son, he was never allowed to wander around the critical core of the palace without an escort; such were the subtle protocols of Agander, masked as the privilege of honors.

  The alcove was decorated by a flying flight of frothy-headed messenger birds, a furred avian imported by Agander’s original settlers. A replica of the messenger bird stood at the center of the alcove on one long chromium leg, ready to lay a gleaming Personal Capsule. But it was not interstellar distances Eron had to span—he only wanted access to his father in the tower-office above the bootharium. At a gesture the replica shifted weight to its other leg, revealing a visi-plate. “My dad,” he stated in answer to the implied question. The visiplate needed no further codes or information. It had recognized him and was able to deduce his purpose.

  The elder Osa showed displeasure at the disturbance. “Eron, Eron... I told you we will have an answer by tomorrow. The school will reply and they will accept you—your tutor, bless him, has seen to that. And why aren’t you with him now?”

  “I’m on assignment.”

  “And playing hooky, as usual?”

  Tm finished. I have to see you now.”

  “Eron, I'm preparing for a very important meeting. No.” Eron paused, assessing his father’s many vulnerabilities. Which one could he activate that was good enough to get him admitted to his father’s office? “Sir, I’ve been investigating Vanhosen. It’s not a good school. I don’t like it. I want something better. I won’t go!”

  His father froze. “You will! That’s nonsense. You and your school games! You get up here this inaminl I haven’t got time for this!”

  The steward who had escorted him into the vast bootharium was already receiving his new instructions when Eron emerged from the alcove; Osa’s disobedient son now had no choice about where he was to go next—exactly where he had intended to go. Smiling, Eron followed his “custodian” to the levitation stage, preparing his confrontational speech while the verticule floated them gently up into the tower.

  He had no intention to discuss his schooling. Immediately upon facing his father he proposed to catch his pater-felon unaware by directly launching into higher matters of honesty and bribery! His tutor had trained him to a keen edge. He was only twelve but he felt well prepared to outfox his father in any philosophical contest—especially when his father was positioned on such morally weak ground. A son had to let it be known that he was disgraced to have such a parent!

  The senior Osa swiveled as they arrived. He had been pacing beside his desk. Before he finished his turn he was already moving forward, his glare dismissing the steward. He did not speak. His commanding authority demanded that no one speak until he, Adjudicator Osa, spoke first. Only then did he fire off his tirade about education and the necessity of attending a good school. It was futile to interrupt him. He did not spare in his description of the toothed demons who awaited little boys who neglected their studies. “It’s Vanhosen! It’s been arranged! I could send you here to school on Agander And how would you like that?

  The elder Osa had guessed right; Eron shuddered at the threat even while he stood against his father’s blast* He opened his mouth to reply...

  But the father got there first. Tm sending you to the best school on Mowist! Mowist is the central power of the Ul-mat, the hub that joins us with Empire. Great Space, .child, the mistakes you make now will be exacting payment from your hide for the rest of your life! Mistakes can kill or cripple you! If you don’t get your education while you are still a suckling youth, you’ll be wandering around like a famless beggar by the time you are manhighi”

  Eron was humiliated now, mainly angry because he had been unable to launch a thrust powerful enough to redirect his father’s surpri
se attack. This man was so frustrating! “Vanhosen is a pimple on the Galaxy!” he half threatened, half whined. “If I go there I will have to pay! It’ll give me hide-pimples for the rest of my life.” He glared back into the blazing eyes of a daddy. How could he get off this subject and launch his attack?

  But his silly pout had set his father to ranting and raving again. Eron ranted back, trying to hold his own but aware that he was losing every exchange. The ancient Imperial weaponry decorating the walls mocked him, for these were the weapons that had once vanquished Agander. He could still deliver his low blow—the details of the bribes his father had taken—but it began to seem less tactically wise to escalate this row about the mere details of a schooling into a war over treason. Something choked the words in his mouth—r-fear.

  He intensified the contretemps in a safer way, mocking Vanhosen by comparing it to Kerkorian. His sudden left hook was a hit. Ah! Instantly he took advantage of his father’s stagger by lauding Kerkorian’s rival, Splendid Wisdom’s Lyceum. A right hook. Another hit. That excited Eron into a rally of blows; he called upon his fam to supply the qualifications for a long list of schools far superior to the best that Mowist could offer, something Eron had researched assiduously. In a Galaxy of thirty million settled solar systems, that was easy. He was able to denigrate Vanhosen until it began to sound like a prefam nursery.

  “All right, all right,” said a calmer Osa Senior. He stared down quizzically at his son’s slight figure. “So...you’ve been studying the scholastic scene? Serious study! What a change!” Sarcasm. “Yes, there are better schools than Van-hosen,” he agreed with the grayness of ashes. “They are also expensive. Even getting you to Mowist is expensive. Do you realize how many people live and die on the planet of their birth simply because it is too expensive for them to leave it? You complain about your fam—you call it ‘junk,* you arrogant little beast—and do you know what I had to pay to get my hands on one of such ‘inferior’ quality? And do you know how expensive it is to send you off to school so that... Oh, Space it! You are going to Vanhosen. And,” he commanded, “you are going to do well. Or I will wring your neck. Now get out of here!”

  It was during this speech that Eron understood why his father had been taking those bribes all these years. He was in need of money for his son! Sons were even more expensive than mistresses! The revelation shocked Eron speechless. Still, he couldn’t abandon his defiance. “I’ll never go to Vanhosen!” He was as close to tears as he could get without shaming himself. Later, he didn’t remember leaving his father’s office or dropping down the verticule or renting a {lighter to retreat into the hills, for he didn’t become conscious of his surroundings again until he was among the remnants of yesteryear’s Agander.

  The rented flighter he left somewhere down below. He drove his wilting body to keep on running. He ran atop a crumbling windwall, his hair wild in the steady wind. Nothing seemed reasonable at the present moment The ruins overlooked a sun-drenched valley hundreds of kilometers across and...fifty meters straight down a talus slope. The wall that took the impact of his young feet had been struggling with twenty-six centuries of neglect and could hardly be considered safe. Pieces of it had been fainting into the waiting abyss for the past millennium.

  His fam began to deliver to him probability-of-accident data in bright visual overlay, images of a gust-blown body

  inducing a rock-slide tumble. In days of yore, standing here, he would have been picked up by the wind and blown away; the eons of decay had ruined the windwall’s ability to amplify mountain breezes up to gale strength. The ruin had once been the feeder of a power plant, Agander’s way of coping with the now almost forgotten collapse of Empire. When fusion power is gone, there is always the wind and the water.

  In a laggardly response to his fam’s warning, the boy stopped running. But his energy wouldn’t contain itself. He stayed in one place on the wall—dancing the jig, his shirt flapping in the wind. He stared out over the valley. The Alcazar was almost invisible in the green expanse of forest. Only bits of the spire that communicated with the stars were apparent through the haze. To the left he could see the eraser marks where an ancient city had once been laid out—before Time changed its mind. He was still determined to defy his father. It was a point of honor now not to go to Vanhosen.

  He couldn’t talk to his mother about his decision. And he could only dream about confiding to Melinesa his innermost needs. None of his friends would understand. There was only that strange alien farman he could trust To trust his tutor upset the boy because no Ganderian really trusted any farman, but nevertheless Eron trusted him. It wasn’t as if Murek was his friend. He didn’t know what or who Murek was—except that his tutor was better than any school Eron had ever attended.

  He didn’t even know where Murek Kapor lived—somewhere in the True City that served the Ulman of the Alcazar discreetly from behind the hills—because he had never needed that information. But just the thought of going there tonight triggered his fam into supplying a map and pictures. Ah, Kapor owned an apartment by the Sacred Park. In a black tower. He could reach it shortly after nightfall.

  4

  THE AGENT OF THE OVERSEE, 14,790 GE

  ... surprising countermeasures used by the Second Empire Pscholars to restabilize the local long-range politics in the isolated stellar region of the Ulmat are not traditional and suggest that our interference has been detected... unorthodox mathematics... Within sixty years there is a fifty percent probability of...unless...Recommend stealthy abandonment of the Ulmat Offensive... Our lack of effective operatives on Splendid Wisdom can no longer be tolerated.

  —Overseer Inspectorate HICode Report Red-75

  Dated Version: 14,790y/02m/92w/3h/10i

  Author: SeliCom

  It was fatal for a seditionist to let his identity find its way into the data’ banks of Splendid Wisdom’s Second Empire, and so Hiranimus Scogil guarded his true name behind aliases and his true biology behind genetic masks—not a particularly difficult task in a Galaxy of multitudes so vast that the roving proctors of the Empire chose to maintain order by ignoring individuals in favor of management by statistical aggregate. This slim youth of twenty-five did not even exist in any High database, not on Splendid Wisdom or in any Sector Central. But as Murek Kapor...

  Most people carried their fam at the base of the neck or as a collar or headpiece and thought of it simply as an auxiliary information source that communicated with their brain via tuned probe when they needed fast data or detailed graphics or heavy-duty analytical faculties. Scogil’s was different. His unique “familiar” had been modified to hold a second personality.

  After four years, Hiranimus Scogil half believed he was Murek Kapor, a star-wandering tutor who had found a comfortable position in the highlands of Agander’s Great Island, teaching genteel mathematics to the precocious Osa boy. He chafed, not pleased that the Ulmat’s Oversee Group had cursed him with a complacent cover persona more inclined to observation than action. We become what we do. He chafed as a mere observer. It wasn’t enough to monitor a plan whose script had been computed a 150 years ago. A field agent also needed to be responsive. All successful plans are fine-tuned on the battlefield.

  This Murek Kapor thing was annoyingly capable of overriding Scogil’s more daring initiatives* if not his thoughts. Scogil could overwhelm this parasite in cases of dire emergency, even in cases of whim, but such an effort was far too exhausting to be carried out on a daily basis—it was easier to leave “him” in control. And Kapor was the kind of character who couldn’t even imagine adding a faster spin to the Galaxy; he was a viewer of life, reluctant to commit to the hurly-burly, an earnest wretch whose seriousness extended no further than an interest in his afternoon walks.

  What better place to stroll, today, than down a slope of ruins among the thrust of pyre-trees rooted in stones and rubble so rounded by age and redolent with ferns that no one any longer remembered their ancient purpose? Naturally, grumbled Hiranimus Scogil to himse
lf, his damn Kapor. identity was content to take his damn strolls alone.

  He pushed his way under a carmine pyre-branch—and emerged into a spectacularly tranquil copse. Delightful. It surprised him. Sometimes Scogil had to admit to himself that he was beginning to enjoy these walks, too; damn, damn, and Spacedamn, it was becoming easier and easier to fall into Kapor’s demoralizing habit of contentment.

  This hallowed ground, in the middle of the True City, was thought to be too sacred to build upon. Few Ganderians could agree on the reasons. Kapor wasn’t the type even to ask but Scogil liked to keep his mind busy by fitting every curious detail of this culture into its psychohistorical context. After all, he was a trained Smythosian even if he had been drafted for less demanding fieldwork because he hadn’t qualified as a theoretician.

  Over the years he must have walked through this park a hundred times but he had never been able to learn much about its antiquity. A surreptitious dig-and-dating had allowed him to place the catastrophe nine thousand years ago, at a time when the First Empire had already spread itself across half the Galaxy, a date in good agreement with the results of the Esfo-Naifin cultural analysis. Didn’t that date place the Conquest near the great campaigns of Emperor Daigin-the-Jaw? Some drastic shock of confidence—it can't happen here— had been dealt to Agander’s pride by their defeat.

  By now normal dispersion and immigration should have weakened the reverberations to a whisper below the noise level, but not here. Agander’s high isolation index seemed to dominate the important equations. Ganderian culture had been frozen in time at a moment of profound loss.