Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

  The man’s surname was one that the Colonel recognized, one that had long been a distinguished one in the archives of the Imperium. The Colonel had worked with men of that name many years ago. So had his father. Men of that name had pursued his buccaneering grandfather across half the galaxy.

  “Do you know of a world called Hermano?” the man asked. “In the Aguila sector, well out toward the Core?”

  The Colonel searched his memory and came up with nothing. “No,” he said. “Should I?”

  “It’s two systems over from Gran Chingada. The records show that you spent some time on Gran Chingada ninety years back.”

  “Yes, I did. But two systems over could be a dozen light-years away,” said the Colonel. “I don’t know your Hermano.”

  The stranger described it: an ordinary-sounding world, a reasonably pleasant world-shaped world, with deserts, forests, oceans, flora, fauna, climate. One of six planets, and the only habitable one, around a standard sort of star. Apparently it had been colonized by settlers from Gran Chingada some thirty or forty years before. Its exports were medicinal herbs, precious gems, desirable furs, various useful metals. Three years ago, said the stranger, it had ejected the Imperium commissioners and proclaimed itself independent.

  The Colonel, listening in silence, said nothing. But for a moment, only a moment, he reacted as he might have reacted fifty years earlier, feeling the old reflexive stab of cold anger at that clanging troublesome word, independent.

  The stranger said, “We have, of course, invoked the usual sanctions. They have not been effective.” Gran Chingada, itself not the most docile of worlds, had chosen to people its colony-world by shipping it all the hard cases, its most bellicose and refractory citizens, a rancorous and uncongenial crowd who were told upon their departure that if they ever were seen on Gran Chingada again they would be taken to the nearest Velde doorway and shipped out again to some randomly chosen destination that might not prove to be a charming place to live, or even one that was suitable for human life at all. But the Hermano colonists, surly and contentious though they were, had found their new planet very much to their liking. They had made no attempt to return to their mother world, or to go anywhere else. And, once their settlement had reached the point of economic self-sufficiency, they had blithely announced their secession from the Imperium and ceased remitting taxes to the Central Authority. They had also halted all shipments of the medicinal herbs and useful metals to their trading partners throughout the Imperium, pending a favorable adjustment in the general structure of prices and tariffs.

  A familiar image had been ablaze in the Colonel’s mind since the first mention of Hermano’s declaration of independence: the image of a beautiful globe of brilliantly polished silver, formerly flawless, now riven by a dark hideous crack. That was how he had always seen the Imperium, as a perfect polished globe. That was how he had always seen the attempts of one world or another to separate itself from the perfection that was the Imperium, as an ugly crevasse on the pure face of beauty. It had been his life’s work to restore the perfection of that flawless silvery face whenever it was marred. But he had separated himself from that work many years ago. It was as though it had been done by another self.

  Now, though, a little to his own surprise, a flicker of engagement leaped up in him: he felt questions surging within him, and potential courses of action, just as if he were still on active duty. Those medicinal herbs and useful metals, the Colonel began to realize, must be of considerably more than trifling significance to interstellar commerce. And, over and beyond that, there was the basic issue of maintaining the fundamental integrity of the Imperium. But all that was only a flicker, a momentarily renewed ticking of machinery that he had long since ceased to use. The maintenance of the fundamental integrity of the Imperium was no longer his problem. The thoughts that had for that flickering moment sprung up reflexively within him subsided as quickly as they arose. He had devoted the best part of his life to the Service, and had served loyally and well, and now he was done with all that. He had put his career behind him for good.

  But it was clear to him that if he wanted to keep it that way he must be prepared to defend himself against the threat that this man posed, and that it might not be easy, for obviously this man wanted something from him, something that he was not prepared to give.

  The stranger said, “You know where I’m heading with this story, Colonel.”

  “I think I can guess, yes.”

  The expected words came: “There is no one better able to handle the Hermano problem than you.”

  The Colonel closed his eyes a moment, nodded, sighed. Yes. What other reason would this man have for coming here? Quietly he said, “And just why do you think so?”

  “Because you are uniquely fitted to deal with it.”

  Of course. Of course. They always said things like that. The Colonel felt a prickling sensation in his fingertips. It was clear now that he was in a duel with the Devil. Smiling, he said, making the expected response, “You say this despite knowing that I’ve been retired from the Service for forty years.” He gestured broadly: the villa, the display of souvenirs of a long career, the garden, the river, the dunes beyond. “You see the sort of life I’ve constructed for myself here.”

  “Yes. The life of a man who has gone into hiding from himself, and who lives hunkered down and waiting for death. A man who dies a little more than one day’s worth every day.”

  That was not so expected. It was a nasty thrust, sharp, brutal, intended to wound, even to maim. But the Colonel remained calm, as ever. His inner self was not so easily breached, and surely this man, if he had been briefed at all properly, knew that.

  He let the brutality of the words pass unchallenged. “I’m old, now. Hunkering down is a natural enough thing, at my age. You’ll see what I mean, in a hundred years or so.”

  “You’re not that old, Colonel. Not too old for one last round of service, anyway, when the Imperium summons you.”

  “Can you understand,” the Colonel said slowly, “that a time comes in one’s life when one no longer feels an obligation to serve?”

  “For some, yes,” said the stranger. “But not for someone like you. A time comes when one wishes not to serve, yes. I can understand that. But the sense of obligation—no, that never dies. Which is why I’ve come to you. As I said, you are uniquely fitted for this, as you will understand when I tell you that the man who has made himself the leader of the Hermano rebellion is a certain Geryon Lanista.”

  Lanista?

  It was decades since the Colonel had last heard that name spoken aloud. It crashed into him like a spear striking his breast. If he had not already been sitting, he would have wanted now to sink limply into a seat.

  He controlled himself. “How curious. I knew a Geryon Lanista once,” he said, after a moment. “He’s long dead, that one.”

  “No,” said the stranger. “He isn’t. I’m quite sure of that.”

  “Are we talking about Geryon Lanista of Ultima Thule in the San Pedro Cluster?” The Colonel was struggling for his equilibrium, and struggling not to let the struggle show. “The Geryon Lanista who was formerly a member of our Service?”

  “The very one.”

  “Well, he’s been dead for decades. He killed himself after he bungled the Tristessa job. That was probably long before your time, but you could look it all up. He and I handled the Tristessa assignment together. Because of him, we failed in a terrible way.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “And then he killed himself, before the inquiries were even starting. To escape from the shame of what he had done.”

  “No. He didn’t kill himself.” Profoundly unsettling words, spoken with quiet conviction that left the Colonel a little dizzied.

  “Reliable sources told me that he did.”

  Calm, the Colonel ordered himself. Stay calm.

  “You were misinformed,” the visitor said, in that same tone of deadly assurance. “He is very much alive and
well and living on Hermano under the name of Martin Bauer, and he is the head of the provisional government there. The accuracy of our identification of him is beyond any doubt. I can show him to you, if you like. Shall I do that?”

  Numbly the Colonel signalled acquiescence. His visitor drew a flat metal case from a pocket of his tunic and tapped it lightly. A solido figure of a man sprang instantly into being a short distance away: a stocky, powerfully built man, apparently of middle years, deep-chested and extraordinarily wide through the shoulders, a great massive block of a man, with a blunt-tipped nose, tight-clamped downturned lips, and soft, oddly seductive brown eyes that did not seem to be congruent with the bulkiness of his body or the harshness of his features. The face was not one that the Colonel remembered having seen before, but time and a little corrective surgery would account for that. The powerful frame, though, was something that no surgery, even now when surgery could achieve almost anything, could alter. And the eyes—those strange, haunted eyes—beyond any question they were the eyes of Geryon Lan-ista.

  “What do you think?” the visitor asked.

  Grudgingly the Colonel said, “There are some resemblances, yes. But it’s impossible. He’s dead. I know that he is.”

  “No doubt you want him to be, Colonel. I can understand that, yes. But this is the man. Believe me. You are looking at your old colleague Geryon Lanista.”

  How could he say no to that? Surely that was Lanista, here before him. Surely. Surely. An altered Lanista, yes, but Lanista all the same. What was the use of arguing otherwise? Those eyes—those freakishly wide shoulders—that barrel of a chest—

  But there was no way that Lanista could be alive.

  Clinging to a stubborn certainty that he was beginning not to feel was really solid the Colonel said, “Very well: the face is his. I’ll concede that much. But the image? Something out of the files of fifty years ago, tarted up with a few little tweaks here and there to make him look as though he’s tried recently to disguise himself? What’s here to make me believe that this is a recent image of a living man?”

  “We have other images, Colonel.” The visitor tapped the metal case again, and there was the stocky man on the veranda of an imposing house set within a luxurious garden. Two small children, built to the same stocky proportions as he, stood beside him, and a smiling young woman. “At his home on Hermano,” said the visitor, and tapped the case again. Now the stocky man appeared in a group of other men, evidently at a political meeting; he was declaiming something about the need for Hermano to throw off the shackles of the Imperium. He tapped the case again—

  “No. Stop. You can fake whatever scene you want. I know how these things are done.”

  “Of course you do, Colonel. But why would we bother? Why try to drag you out of retirement with a bunch of faked images? Sooner or later a man of your ability would see through them. But we know that this man is Geryon Lanista. We have all the necessary proof, the incontrovertible genetic data. And so we’ve come to you, as someone who not only has the technical skills to deal with the problem that Lanista is creating, but the personal motivation to do so.”

  “Incontrovertible genetic data?”

  “Yes. Incontrovertible. Shall I show you the genomics? Here: look. From the Service files, sixty years back, Geryon Lanista, his entire genome. And here, this one, from the Gran Chingada immigration records, approximately twenty years old, Martin Bauer. Do you see?”

  The Colonel glanced at the images, side by side in the air and identical in every respect, shook his head, looked away. The pairing was convincing, yes. And, yes, they could fake anything they liked, even a pair of gene charts. There wasn’t all that much difficulty in that. But to fake so much—to go to such preposterous lengths for the sake of bamboozling one tired old man—no, no, the logic that lay at the core of his soul cried out against the likelihood of that.

  His last resistance crumbled. He yielded to the inescapable reality. Despite everything he had believed all these years, this man Martin Bauer was Geryon Lanista. Alive and well, as this stranger had said, and conspiring against the Imperium on a planet called Hermano. And the Service wanted him to do something about that.

  For an instant, contemplating this sudden and disastrous turn of events, the Colonel felt something that wasn’t quite fear and not quite dismay—both of them feelings that he scarcely understood, let alone had ever experienced—but was certainly a kind of discomfort. This had been a duel with the Devil, all right, and the Devil had played with predictably diabolical skill, and the Colonel saw that here, in the very first moments of the contest, he had already lost. He had not thought to be beaten so easily. He had lived his life, he had put in his years in the Service, he had met all dangers with bravery and all difficulties with triumphant ingenuity, and here, as the end of it all approached, he had come safely to rest in the harbor of his own invulnerability on this idyllic golden world; and in a moment, with just a few quick syllables, this cold-eyed stranger had ripped him loose from all of that and had tumbled him back into the remorseless torrents of history. He ached to refuse the challenge. It was within the range of possibility for him to refuse it. It was certainly his right to refuse it, at his age, after all that he had done. But—even so—even so—

  “Geryon Lanista,” the Colonel said, marveling. “Yes. Yes. Well, perhaps this really is him.” There was a touch of hoarseness in his tone.— ”You know the whole story, Lanista and me?”

  “That goes without saying. Why else would we have come to you?”

  The odd prickling in the Colonel’s fingertips began to give way to an infuriating trembling. “Well, then—”

  He looked across the table and it seemed to him that he saw a softening of those icy eyes, even a hint of moisture in them. An upwell-ing of compassion, was it, for the poor old man who had been so cruelly ensnared in the sanctity of his own home? But was that in any way likely, coming from this particular man, who had sprung from those ancestors. Compassion had never been a specialty of that tribe. Perhaps they are making them softer nowadays, the Colonel thought, yet another example of the general decadence of modern times, and felt renewed pleasure in the awareness that he was no one’s ancestor at all, that his line ended with him. And then he realized that he was wrong, that there was no compassion in this man at all, that those were simply the jubilant self-congratulatory tears of triumph in the other man’s eyes.

  “We can count on you?” the visitor asked.

  “If you’ve been lying to me—”

  “I haven’t been lying,” said the visitor, saying it in a flat offhanded way that conveyed more conviction than any number of passionate oaths might have done.

  The Colonel nodded. “All right. I give in. You win. I’ll do what I can do,” he said, in a barely audible voice. He felt like a man who had been marched to the edge of a cliff and now was taking a few last breaths before jumping off. “Yes. Yes. There are, I hardly need to say, certain practical details that we need to discuss, first—”

  There was something dreamlike about finding himself making ready for a new assignment after so many years. He wouldn’t leave immediately, of course, nor would the journey to Hermano be anything like instantaneous. The maintenance of the villa during his absence had to be arranged for, and there was the background information of the Hermano situation to master, and certain potentially useful documents to excavate from the archives of his career, and then he would have to make the long overland journey to Elsinore, down on the coast, where the nearest Velde doorway was located. Even after that he still would have some traveling to do, because Gran Chingada and its unruly colony-world Hermano, both of them close to the central sector of the galaxy, were beyond the direct reach of Velde transmission. To complete his journey he would have to shift over to the galaxy’s other and greater teleportation system, the ancient and unfathomable one that had been left behind by the people known as the Magellanics.

  He had not expected ever to be jaunting across the universe again. The visit t
o Duud Shabeel, two decades before, had established itself in his mind as the last of all his travels. But plainly there was to be one more trip even so; and as he prepared for it, his mind went back to his first journey ever, the one his ferocious fiery-eyed grandfather had taken him on, in that inconceivably remote epoch when he was ten years old.

  He had lived on Galgala even then, though not in the highlands but along the humid coast, where liquid gold came bubbling up out of the swamps. His grandfather had always had a special love for Galgala, the planet that had ruined the value of gold for the entire galaxy. Gold was everywhere there, in the leaves of the trees, in the sands of the desert, in the stones of the ground. Flecks of gold flowed in the veins of Galgala’s native animals. Though it had been thousands of years since the yellow metal had passed as currency among humankind, the discovery of Gal-gala had finished it for all eternity as a commodity of value. But the old pirate who had engendered the Colonel’s father was a medieval at heart, and he cherished Galgala for what its gold might have meant in the days when the whole of the human universe was just the little blue world that was Earth. He had made it his headquarters during his privateering career, and when he was old he had gone there to dwell until the end of his days. The Colonel’s father, who in his parsimonious pinch-faced way claimed only the honorary title of Captain, was in the Service then, traveling constantly from world to world as need arose and only rarely coming to rest, and, not knowing what to do with the boy who would some day become the Colonel, had sent him to Galgala to live with his grandfather.

  “It’s time you learned what traveling is like,” the old man said one day, when the boy who would become the Colonel was ten.

  He was already tall and sturdy for his age, but he was still only ten, and his grandfather, even then centuries old—no one knew exactly how old he was, perhaps not even he himself—rose up and up beside him like a great tree, a shaggy-bearded tree with furious eyes and long black coils of piratical hair dangling to his shoulders and horrendous jutting cheekbones sharp as blades. The gaunt, bony old man had spent the many years of his life outside the law, the law that the Captain and later the Colonel would serve with such devotion, but no one in the family ever spoke openly of that. And although he had finally abandoned his marauding ways, he still affected the showy costume of his trade, the leather jerkin and the knee-high boots with the tapered tips and the broad-brimmed hat from which the eternally black coils of his long hair came tumbling superabundantly down.