Pat felt cold. He wished for his weapons, for anyweapon. The old man was going to his death witha smile on his face, gladness in his heart. He rose,still a bit weak, paced the small cell. He had nodoubt in his mind that he'd be next, and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. Helooked around for a weapon. There were only thetwo homespun blankets on the rock ledges whichserved as cots. Otherwise the room was bare. Hewas dressed in shirt, beltless pants, underwear,and the soft, comfortable slip-on shoes he favored.A shoe was not heavy enough to make a weapon.He had only his hands. He resolved to use them when they came for him. He would not submitcalmly, without a struggle, to the injection, or whatever they used, to send a man into a littlesleep and then on that "journey to Zede."
When the door opened he was standing with his back against the wall next to it. The door opened outward and he held his breath, waiting for apriest to step inside.
"Pat?" That soft, throaty voice, and then she steppedinto the cell, Corinne. She'd changed from the longpurple gown into a neat coverall singlet, belted atthe waist. He lowered his hands. She saw him,turned to him and smiled.
"I told them to bring you to me immediatelywhen they had finished," she said. She shivered. "Idid not
intend to have them put youhere." She knew, and she accepted it. What kind ofwoman was she? He was looking at her with new eyes. "There was an old man here. He was being sent to Zede."
She looked down, and her face saddened. "Soon,such measures will no longer be necessary. Wewill be able to educate them out of their superstitions."
"Corinne, just who is 'we'?" "Not here," she said. She turned and left thecell, and he followed. There were no guards, nopriests. They came out into a stone corridor, madea turn, and were back at the apartment whereshe'd stabbed the syringe into his neck. Inside, shesat down. He stood facing her.
"I won't offer you a drink," she said, with afunny little grin. "I don't think I could stand another of yourdrinks." "Pat, it was necessary. We're so close now. Wehad to know what chance there was of your being
followed here, and, knowing you, I don't thinkwe'd have gotten the whole truth without the drugs.There's no lasting ill effect." "As there was with the dexiapherzede?" "I didn't know that the side effects were so terrible. I swear that to you." "And yet you kept me pumped full of it for sevenand a half days." She looked down.
"Why didn't you just tell me you wanted tocome here to Dorchlunt?" "I wasn't sure of you, Pat. And it was so vitalthat I get the diamond here. I couldn't go back toZede II with you with the diamond aboard. They would have—" She paused.
"The diamond is here?" She nodded. "Who are they, and what would they have donewith the diamond?"
She sighed again. "Pat, it's a long story. Perhapswe had better have that drink."
"I'll do it, and I'll stay carefully beyond yourreach," he said, moving to the bar to pour thatvery good Taratwo brandy. He sat on the arm ofthe sofa. She was curled into a chair, legs partiallyunder her.
"When my brother was fifteen he went to ZedeII on a government scholarship to continue hisstudy of ancient history. He did his thesis on theZedeian war of a thousand years ago. He was quitethe young prodigy, astounding the learned professors with his skill in writing, and with his ability to retain knowledge, so they opened the archives to him, gave him free run. He discovered a government file tucked away in crates of documents whichhad once been classified top secret, but were thenso old that secrecy didn't matter. Most of themwere just dry statistics—the accounts of interestabout the war had long since been removed andfiled elsewhere—but my brother was, and is, avery thorough man. He found one encoded document and spent weeks with the computers breaking the code."
Pat eased himself down onto the sofa. Apparently she was going to take a long time getting up to present-day events.
"You know the background of the Zedeian war?"
"In summary, yes."
"There's more tradition still alive on the Zedeworlds than in the rest of the UP," she said. "Theirlegends are more explicit, for example. I've readthe books of Zedeian myths and legends. They refer, not too specifically, and sometimes in fanciful, symbolic language, to the original world, tothe Old Earth."
"Yes, I've heard of some of those myths. Seriousscholars discount them, because, after all, the Zede worlds were settled by the same people who settled the original UP planets."
"But the Zedeians, at least the traditionalists,insist that the Zede worlds were settled separately,and only later, after thousands of years, mergedwith the growing UP."
"Well, whatever," Pat said.
"The Zedeian myths state that before the nuclear war on Old Earth, Earth was split by rivalrybetween two philosophies, or beliefs, or forms ofgovernment—that part is not quite clear. TheZedeians, even back in the dark beginnings of theirhistory, had a tradition of militarism. They saythat they are the descendants of the greatest raceof warriors ever produced on Old Earth, and thatwas the feeling that led, in part, to the war."
"Makes sense," Pat said. "Delusions of grandeur."
"Ah?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "They hadfought the vastly more populous UP to a standstillbefore the UP used planet reducers."
"OK, I'll concede that they're fighters," Pat said.
"And more scientific advancesstill come fromthe Zede worlds than from the rest put together,"she said.
"I'd have to see figures on that."
"No matter. Before the UP began to use planetreducers the Zedeians had been working on a new,very
powerful weapon. When it became apparentthat they would have to surrender they loaded allthe scientists and technicians who had been working on that weapon onto a colonization ship—"
"Ah, ha," Pat said.
"Yes. It's still there. Up there." She glanced upward. "Their mission was to lose themselves inspace. They traveled, however, in a predetermineddirection, the direction least likely to attract pursuit. Toward the core. That way, if, somehow, theZedeians averted total defeat, ships could look forthem, and find them. They were ordered to continue to work on the weapon, and they were very close to having it perfected. If they ironed out thelast flaws in it, they were to arm the six ship'slaunches—"
"Six launches against the UP battle fleets?"
"—and return to rescue the Zede Empire."
"Let me do some guessing," Pat said. "Theyfound only this one poor, barren planet. They werenot too excited about it, but they'd gone just aboutas far toward the core as they could go. They putthe ship in orbit and continued to work on theweapon, and one of the experiments, or something,went wrong, disabling the ship, leaving them no choice but to land on the planet and make the bestof it."
Corinne nodded. "You've seen this world. It doesnot have the capacity to support a normal population, and the Zedeian scientists had few resources. It takes numbers, large numbers, to build a technological civilization. The planet would not support such numbers, so the scientists set up a systemwhich has lasted for a thousand years. They limitedpopulation growth by birth control, at first, andthen—and believe me, Pat, this is none of ourdoing—they had to resort to euthanasia of the old."
"Justifying it as sending the individual to hishard-earned reward, heaven on Zede. How did the priests, or the scientists, get such a hold on them?"
"All of the ship's information, all data, books,tapes, everything, was destroyed in the explosionand fire. There was left only one set of books,books on the superstitions and religions of OldEarth. There are twelve volumes, and even the present-day priests believe them to be the originalvolumes brought out from Old Earth. We've datedthe material, however, and it's obvious that thebooks have been reproduced several times, becausethe existing ones are less than two thousand years old. However, the material seems to be authentic. My brother was ecstatic. He said they were, to his knowledge, the only surviving bit of printed material from Old Earth."