Rebellious Stars

by Issac Asimov

  “So find a better reason to hate the Tyranni. Don’t think it is enough to replace one set of rulers by another; that the simple change brings freedom.”

  Biron pounded a fist into his cupped palm. “All this objective philosophy is fine. It is very soothing to the man who lives apart. But what if it had been your father who was murdered?”

  “Well, wasn’t it? My father was Director before Hinrik, and he was killed. Oh, not outright, but subtly. They broke his spirit, as they are breaking Hinrik’s now. They wouldn’t have me as Director when my father died; I was just a little too unpredictable. Hinrik was tall, handsome, and, above all, pliant. Yet not pliant enough, apparently. They hound him continuously, grind him into a pitiful puppet, make sure he cannot even itch without permission. You’ve seen him. He’s deteriorating by the month now. His continual state of fear is pathetically psychopathic. But that—all that—is not why I want to destroy Tyrannian rule.”

  “No?” said Biron. “You have invented an entirely new reason?”

  “An entirely old one, rather. The Tyranni are destroying the right of twenty billion human beings to take part in the development of the race. You’ve been to school. You’ve learned the economic cycle. A new planet is settled”—he was ticking the points off on his fingers—“and its first care is to feed itself. It becomes an agricultural world, a herding world. It begins to dig in the ground for crude ore to export, and sends its agricultural surplus abroad to buy luxuries and machinery. That is the second step. Then, as population increases and foreign investments grow, an industrial civilization begins to bud, which is the third step. Eventually, the world becomes mechanized, importing food, exporting machinery, investing in the development of more primitive worlds, and so on. The fourth step.

  “Always the mechanized worlds are the most thickly populated, the most powerful, militarily—since war is a function of machines—and they are usually surrounded by a fringe of agricultural, dependent worlds.

  “But what has happened to us? We were at the third step, with a growing industry. And now? That growth has been stopped, frozen, forced to recede. It would interfere with Tyrannian control of our industrial necessities. It is a shortterm investment on their part, because eventually we’ll become unprofitable as we become impoverished. But meanwhile, they skim the cream.

  “Besides, if we industrialized ourselves, we might develop weapons of war. So industrialization is stopped; scientific research is forbidden. And eventually the people become so used to that, they lack the realization even that anything is missing. So that you are surprised when I tell you that I could be executed for building a visisonor.”

  He looked up, and his voice was earnest, almost pleading. “You can pilot a ship. I cannot. Isn’t that strange? You talk about my scientific ability, yet I cannot pilot a simple one-man space gig. But you can, and it follows then that you must leave Rhodia.”

  There was no mistaking the pleading, but Biron frowned coldly. “Why?”

  Gillbret continued, speaking rapidly: “As I said, Artemisia and I have discussed you and arranged this. When you leave here, proceed directly to her room, where she is waiting for you. I have drawn a diagram for you, so that you won’t have to ask your way through the corridors.” He was forcing a small sheet of metallene upon Biron. “If anyone does stop you, say that you have been summoned by the Director, and proceed. There will be no trouble if you show no uncertainty—”

  “Hold on!” said Biron. He was not going to do it again. Jonti had chevied him to Rhodia and, consequently, succeeded in bringing him before the Tyranni. The Tyrannian Commissioner had then chevied him to Palace Central before he could feel his own secret way there and, consequently, subjected him, nakedly unprepared, to the whims of an unsteady puppet. But that was all! His moves, henceforward, might be severely limited, but, by Space and Time, they would be his own. He felt very stubborn about it.

  He said, “I’m here on what is important business to me, sir. I’m not leaving.”

  “What! Don’t be a young idiot.” For a moment the old Gillbret was showing through. “Do you think you will accomplish anything here? Do you think you will get out of the Palace alive if you let the morning sun rise? Why, Hinrik will call in the Tyranni and you will be imprisoned within twenty-four hours. He is only waiting this while because it takes him so long to make up his mind to do anything. He is my cousin. I know him, I tell you.”

  Biron said, “And if so, what is that to you? Why should you be so concerned about me?” He was not going to be chevied. He would never again be another man’s fleeing marionette.

  But Gillbret was standing, staring at him. “I want you to take me with you. I’m concerned about myself. I cannot endure life under the Tyranni any longer. It is only that neither Artemisia nor I can handle a ship or we would have left long ago. It’s our lives too.”

  Biron felt a certain weakening of his resolve. “The Director’s daughter? What has she to do with this?”

  “I believe that she is the most desperate of us. There is a special, death for women. What should be ahead of a Director’s daughter who is young, personable, and unmarried, but to become young, personable, and married? And who, in these days, should Be the delightful groom? Why, an old, lecherous Tyrannian court functionary who has buried three wives and wishes to revive the fires of his youth in the arms of a girl.”

  “Surely the Director would never allow such a thing!”

  “The Director will allow anything. Nobody waits upon his permission.”

  Biron thought of Artemisia as he had last seen her. Her hair had been combed back from her forehead and allowed to fall in simple straightness, with a single inward wave at shoulder level. Clear, fair skin, black eyes, red lips! Tall, young, smiling! Probably the description of a hundred million girls throughout the Galaxy. It would be ridiculous to let that sway him.

  Yet he said, “Is there a ship ready?”

  Gillbret’s face wrinkled under the impact of a sudden smile. But, before he could say a word, there came a pounding at the door. It was no gentle interruption of the photobeam, no tender little sound of knuckles on plastic. It was the clang of metal, the overpowering thunder of the weapon of authority.

  It was repeated, and Gillbret said, “You’d better open the door.”

  Biron did so, and two uniforms were in the room. The foremost saluted Gillbret with abrupt efficiency, then turned to Biron: “Biron Farrill, in the name of the Resident Commissioner of Tyrann and of the Director of Rhodia, I place you under arrest.”

  “On what charge?” demanded Biron.

  “On that of high treason.”

  A look of infinite loss twisted Gillbret’s face momentarily. He looked away. “Hinrik was quick this once; quicker than I had ever expected. An amusing thought!”

  He was the old Gillbret, smiling and indifferent, eyebrows a little raised, as though inspecting a distasteful fact with a faint tinge of regret.

  “Please follow me,” said the guard, and Biron was aware of the neuronic whip resting easily in the other’s hand.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Biron’s throat was growing dry. He could have beaten either of the guards in fair fight. He knew that, and he itched for the chance. He might even have made a satisfactory showing against both together. But they had the whips, and he couldn t have lifted an arm without having them demonstrate the fact. Inside his mind he surrendered. There was no other way.

  But Gillbret said, “Let him take his cloak, men.”

  Biron, startled, looked quickly toward the little man and retracted that same surrender. He knew he had no cloak.

  The guard whose weapon was out clicked his heels as a gesture of respect. He motioned his whip at Biron. “You heard milord. Get your cloak and snap it up!”

  Biron stepped back as slowly as he dared. He retreated to the bookcase and squatted, groping behind the chair for his nonexistent cloak. And as his fingers clawed at the empty space behind the chair, he waited tensely for Gillbret.

&
nbsp; The visisonor was just a queer knobbed object to the guards. It would mean nothing to them that Gillbret fingered and stroked the knobs gently. Biron watched the muzzle of the whip intensely and allowed it to fill his mind. Certainly nothing else he saw or heard (thought he saw or heard) must enter.

  But how much longer?

  The armed guard said, “Is your cloak behind that chair? Stand up!” He took an impatient step forward, and then stopped. His eyes narrowed in deep amazement and he looked sharply to his left.

  That was it! Biron straightened and threw himself forward and down. He clasped the guard’s knees and jerked. The guard was down with a jarring thud, and Biron’s large fist closed over the other’s hand, grasping for the neuronic whip it contained.

  The other guard had his weapon out, but for the moment it was useless. With his free hand, he was brushing wildly at the space before his eyes.

  Gillbret’s high-pitched laugh sounded. “Anything bothering you, Farrill?”

  “Don’t see a thing,” he grunted, and then, “except this whip I’ve got now.”

  “All right, then leave. They can’t do anything to stop you. Their minds are full of sights and sounds that don’t exist.” Gillbret skipped out of the way of the writhing tangle of bodies.

  Biron wrenched his arms free and heaved upward. He brought his arm down solidly just below the other’s ribs. The guard’s face twisted in agony and his body doubled convulsively. Biron rose, whip in hand.

  “Careful,” cried Gillbret.

  But Biron did not turn quickly enough. The second guard was upon him, bearing him down again. It was a blind attack. What it was that the guard throught he was grasping, it was impossible to tell. That he knew nothing of Biron at the moment was certain. His breath rasped in Biron’s ear and there was a continuous incoherent gurgle bubbling in his throat.

  Biron twisted in an attempt to bring his captured weapon into play and was frighteningly aware of the blank and empty eyes that must be aware of some horror invisible to anyone else.

  Biron braced his legs and shifted weight in an effort to break loose, quite uselessly. Three times he felt the guard’s whip flung hard against his hip, and flinched at the contact.

  And then the guard’s gurgle dissolved into words. He yelled, “I’ll get you alii” and the very pale, almost invisible shimmer of the ionized air in the path of the whip’s energy beam made its appearance. It swept wide through the air, and the path of the beam intersected Biron’s foot.

  It was as though he had stepped into a bath of boiling lead. Or as if a granite block had toppled upon it. Or as it it had been crunched off by a shark. Actually, nothing had happened to it physically. It was only that the nerve endings that governed the sensation of pain had been universally and maximally stimulated. Boiling lead could have done no more.

  Biron’s yell tore his throat raw, and he collapsed. It did not even occur to him that the fight was over. Nothing mattered but the ballooning pain.

  Yet, though Biron did not know it, the guard’s grip had relaxed, ana minutes later, when the young man could force his eyes open and blink away the tears, he found the guard backed against the wall, pushing feebly at nothing with both hands and giggling to himself. The first guard was still on his back, arms and legs spreadeagled now. He was conscious, but silent. His eyes were following something in an erratic path, and his body quivered a little. There was froth on his lips.

  Biron forced himself to his feet. He limped badly as he made his way to the wall. He used the butt of the whip and the guard slumped. Then back to the first, who made no defense either, his eyes moving silently to the very moment of unconsciousness.

  Biron sat down again, nursing his foot. He stripped shoe and stocking from it, and stared in surprise at the unbroken skin. He chafed it and grunted at the burning sensation. He looked up at Gillbret, who had put down his visisonor and was now rubbing one lean cheek with the back of his hand.

  “Thank you,” said Biron, “for the help of your instrument.”

  Gillbret shrugged. He said, “There 11 be more here soon. Get to Artemisias room. Please! Quickly!”

  Biron realized the sense of that. His foot had subsided to a quiet quiver of pain, but it felt swollen and puffy. He put on a stocking and tucked the shoe under his elbow. He already had one whip, and he relieved the second guard of the other. He stuffed it precariously within his belt.

  He turned at the door and asked, with a sense of crawling revulsion, “What did you make them see, sir?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t control it. I just gave them all the power I could and the rest depended on their own complexes. Please don’t stand there talking. Do you have the map to Artemisia’s room?”

  Biron nodded and set off down the corridor. It was quite empty. He could not walk quickly, since trying to do so made his walk a hobble.

  He looked at his watch, then remembered that he had somehow never had the time to adjust it to Rhodian local chronometry. It still ran on Standard Interstellar Time as used aboard ship, where one hundred minutes made an hour and a thousand a day. So the figure 876 which gleamed pinkly on the cool metal face of the watch meant nothing now.

  Still, it had to be well into the night, or into the planetary sleeping period, at any rate (supposing that the two did not coincide), as otherwise the halls would not be so empty and the bas-reliefs on the wall would not phosphoresce unwatched. He touched one idly as he passed, a coronation scene, and found it to be two-dimensional. Yet it gave the perfect illusion of standing out from the wall.

  It was sufficiently unusual for him to stop momentarily in order to examine the effect. Then he remembered and hurried on.

  The emptiness of the corridor struck him as another sign of the decadence of Rhodia. He had grown very conscious of all these symbols of decline now that he had become a rebel. As the center of an independent power, the Palace would always have had its sentries and its quiet wardens of the night.

  He consulted Gillbret’s crude map and turned to the right, moving up a wide, curving ramp. There might have been processions here once, but nothing of that would be left now.

  He leaned against the proper door and touched the photosignal. The door moved ajar a bit, then opened wide.

  “Come in, young man.”

  It was Artemisia. Biron slipped inside, and the door closed swiftly and silently. He looked at the girl and said nothing. He was gloomily conscious of the fact that his shirt was tom at the shoulder so that one sleeve flapped loosely, that his clothes were grimy and his face welted. He remembered the shoe he was still carrying, dropped it and wriggled his foot into it.

  Then he said, “Mind if I sit down?”

  She followed him to the chair, and stood before him, a little annoyed. “What happened? What’s wrong with your foot?”

  “I hurt it,” he said shortly. “Are you ready to leave?”

  She brightened. “You’ll take us, then?”

  But Biron was in no mood to be sweet about it. His foot still twinged and he cradled it. He said, “Look, get me out to a ship. I’m leaving this damn planet. If you want to come along, I’ll take you.”

  She frowned. “You might be more pleasant about it. Were you in a fight?”

  “Yes, I was. With your father’s guards, who wanted to arrest me for treason. So much for my Sanctuary Right.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too. It’s no wonder the Tyranni can lord it over fifty worlds with a handful of men. We help them. Men like your father would do anything to keep in power; they would forget the basic duties of a simple gentleman—Oh, never mind!”

  “I said I was sorry, Lord Rancher.” She used the title with a cold pride. “Please don’t set yourself up as judge of my father. You don’t know all the facts.”

  “I’m not interested in discussing it. We’ll have to leave in a hurry, before more of your father’s precious guards come. Well, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s all right.” Biron’s surliness canceled out an
y meaning to his apology, but, damn it, he had never been hit by a neuronic whip before and it wasn’t fun. And, by Space, they had owed him Sanctuary. At least that much.

  Artemisia felt angry. Not at her father, of course, but at the stupid young man. He was so young. Practically a child, she decided, scarcely older than herself, if that.

  The communicator sounded and she said sharply, “Please wait a minute and we’ll go.”

  It was Gillbret’s voice, sounding faintly. “Arta? All right at your end?”

  ‘He’s here,” she whispered back.

  “All right. Don’t say anything. Just listen. Don’t leave your room. Keep him there. There’s going to be a search of the Palace, which there’s no way of stopping. I’ll try to think of something, but, meanwhile, don’t move.” He waited for no reply. Contact was broken.

  “So that’s that,” said Biron. He had heard also. “Shall I stay and get you into trouble, or shall I go out and give myself up? There’s no reason to expect Sanctuary anywhere on Rhodia, I suppose.”

  She faced him in a rage, crying in a choked whisper, “Oh, shut up, you big, ugly fool.”

  They glared at each other. Biron’s feelings were hurt. In a way, he was trying to help her too. There was no reason for her to be insulting.

  She said, “I’m sorry,” and looked away.

  “That’s all right,” he said coldly, without meaning it. “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

  “You don’t have to say the things you do about my father. You don’t know what being Director is like. He’s working for his people, whatever you may think.”

  “Oh, sure. He has to sell me to the Tyranni for the sake of the people. That makes sense.”

  “In a way, it does. He has to show them he’s loyal. Otherwise, they might depose him and take over the direct rule of Rhodia. Would that be better?”

  “If a nobleman can’t find Sanctuary—”

  “Oh, you think only of yourself. That’s what’s wrong with you.”