He did keep strange company. Of course, young Linton had always been a great friend of the Herculian natives— those dusky but humanoid, deliberately backwards and un- technological inhabitants whose rude culture seemed hardly to have been disturbed or even ruffled by the coming of Imperial Expeditionary Forces two hundred years ago. As a boy he had striven and rode and hunted with the younger sons of native princelings on Barnassa and Omphale; as a man, however, such conduct was unbecoming to a former officer of flag rank in His Magnificence’s Imperial Space Navy.
Ubiquitous government spies, ever sensitive to reflect the currents and eddies of Official thought, wasted no time once it was seen that Linton was mixing with decidedly unwholesome company. Simply because he and Gundorm Varl frequented native winehouses of this or that political persuasion, he became reported through devious bypaths as a secret member of almost each and every one of the Cluster’s ten thousand and one different secret (and seditious) political cults and religiously revolutionary societies. Of course, it was too much for even the low mentality of a Provincial Administrator, to swallow his simultaneous adherence to thirty-six totally different and furiously partisan political persuasions: but they did begin to read his mail and monitor his communicator. His luggage, even, was searched while he was out of his public-house on an all-night binge with Gundorm Varl and a few old school friends of his boyhood. No evidence of an incriminatory nature was discovered (of course), but it was noticed—and noted—that he had disposed of (probably sacriligiously sold) his ribands and medals and all the Imperial honors he had won during Naval service. Official jaws tightened at this information.
Then the crowning discovery.
He had been seen by a government spy in the company of Sharl the Yellow-Eyed, a known major agent for the exiled and rebellious Kahani of Valadon, who was herself known to be intriguing with the most powerful and treacherous of all petty monarchs among the Outworlds beyond the Imperial border, the Arthon of Pelaire.
Steps must be taken.
Thus, and without further delay, Raul Linton, late of the Imperial Naval Service but now of no visible means of support and known to be mixing with dubious company, was Sent For by the Border Administrator.
In the ancient tradition of governments, they had done exactly the wrong thing. The worst possible thing. And, although hardly anyone in the Hercules Cluster could have been expected to know it, at this early juncture, the history of a thousand stars was forever changed because of this act.
TWO
SO RAUL WENT TO SEE the Border Administrator, Dykon Mather, who sat him down and proffered cigarels and Vegan brandy, and chatted with him in a friendly but vague manner before suddenly unleashing a barrage of pointed, weighted questions.
Raul sat, quietly, with cold but hooded eyes, as his inquisitor explored his actions, point by point, question by question. Why did he snub and ignore invitations from His Own Kind? Why was he mingling with all sorts of dubious people—servitors, shamans, native princelings, rabble-rousers, expositors of this or that curious and undoubtedly seditious cult, philosophy, religion, or political persuasion? Was he aware he had been seen in very questionable and probably treasonable company? What were his plans? Did he intend to resume his Naval career? Or return to Barnassa, to the life of a gentleman farmer? Or would he follow the Linton tradition, and request a government job? If so, why did he delay?
All of this Raul endured with a quiet half-smile, and when the Administrator had run out of questions at last, he replied. In a twenty minute monolog, he poured out all the wrath and indignation, sarcasm and bitterness, that had been storing up in his heart from that unforgotten day there on the bridge of the scoutship when he had watched Darogir burn to death in eight terrible minutes.
His phrases were well-chosen stinging commentaries on prying, spying Officialdom, withering retorts and sarcasms aimed at stuffy, tradition-blinded policies. His remarks savored of treason, but hovered just short of it. Oddly, although bitter, his tirade was Impersonal. There was no malice in his words, but a world-weary disillusionment and disappointment. The polite conventions of “civilization” had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. He was a man from whom the blindfolds had been stripped—a man who saw clearly the obscenities usually masked behind genteel fictions.
In brief, he tore the Administrator’s self-esteem to tatters, punctured beyond repair his ego, slapped his fat face with stinging, merciless criticism, and littered the office with toppled, shattered idols all too obviously clay-footed. Dykon Mather gaped, his face crimsoning.
“In Arion’s Name, Commander, are you a revolutionary?”
“Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help,” Raul said coldly. “Do you think I’ve won the freedom of my own mind, only to hand it over to mouth the catch-phrases of some blind ism or osophy? I think for myself—and speak for my own thoughts, no one else’s.”
“But such words are plainly treasonable! Don’t you owe your allegiance to the Imperator—”
“I owe allegiance to myself. Freedom of ideas is the first obligation of a man.”
Dykon Mather waved this aside impatiently.
“You talk republicanism!”
“I said don’t be an idiot. Republicanism went out with the United Systems. I talk common sense. I’m no more of a republican than I am an anarchist or a theocrat—”
Mather pounced on that.
“But you are reported to have talked theocracy with—”
“Oh, kak on that! I’ve discussed stabilism with a war-bard from Dorrhea and plenum mechanics with a neospace-drive technic from Aldebaran and Vuudhistic philosophy with the younger son of a Kahan from Argastral And that doesn’t prove I’m going to become a stabilist or a mathematical theorist or a convert to Vuudhana. Of which of these loathsome criminalities am I accused?”
Mather puffed. “We accuse you of nothing. We’re just inquiring—”
“Inquire ahead. But let me ask you something. Do you—really and truly—think war ever accomplishes anything? Do you think the last war accomplished anything—besides the deliberate murder of sixteen billion poor Vruu Kophe spider-men, and several hundred thousand humans on Darogir who wished to remain neutral out of sympathy with the Vruu Kophe cause—and were vaporized with a nitrogen bomb barrage for all their neutrality?”
“Well, I’m not—”
“And something else. Do you know what intelligent government is? Have you ever seen it in operation? Do you really think the government in this Cluster is intelligent?” Raul took a long drink of the cold brandy while Dykon Mather stammered and huffed.
“If you feel this way,” the Administrator said, trying a different tack, “then don’t you feel a man of your experience and background and training owes it to his Cluster to enter the government and bring some intelligence to it?”
Raul set down his goblet with a clack on the polished wood of the Administrator’s desk.
“How—by seeking to become Commissioner of my home-world, and having my hands tied on every improvement I want to make by Imperial Policy, or Provincial Regulations, or Viceregal Instructions? Perhaps I should join your group of yes-sir-you-certainly-are-right-sir robots and spend my life initialing acts and decrees I know to be blind, stubborn idiocy.”