In the constant sociability of our age people shudder at solitude to such a degree that they do not know of any other use to put it to but…as a punishment for criminals .
“Josef dead?” LaNague wanted to scream. The quiet, pensive man who had been with him for nearly five years, who was walking death down to his finger tips and yet so gentle and peace loving at heart, was dead. It was easy to think of Flinters as nothing more than killing machines, living weapons with no personalities, no identities. Yet they were all individuals, philosophically sophisticated, profoundly moral in their own way, human, mortal…
“How?”
Calmly, briefly, Kanya explained it to him, her face on the vidscreen displaying no trace of emotion. Flinters were like that: emotions were not for public display; she would suffer her grief in private later.
“I tried to bring his body back to the warehouse for storage until it could be returned home,” she concluded, “but there was no access. They have the building surrounded-on the street level and in the air, with infra-red monitors every twenty meters. I could not approach without being detected.”
“Poor Josef,” LaNague said, his mind still rebelling at the news of his death. “I'm so sorry, Kanya.” He watched her on the screen. How do you comfort a Flinter? He wished he could put an arm around her, knew there would be no steel or stone beneath his hand, but soft, yielding flesh. He sensed her grief. He wanted to pull her head down to his shoulder and let her cry it out. But that would never happen, even if she were standing next to him. Absolute emotional control was an integral part of Flinter rearing. A being skilled in a hundred, a thousand, ways of killing could not allow emotions to rule, ever.
Kanya was demonstrating that control now as she spoke. “Didn't you hear me? You're trapped. We've got to get you out.”
LaNague shook his head. “I know what's going on outside. I've been watching. I'll wait for them here…no resistance. How's the pilot?”
“He and his wife are safe with Mora.”
“And Broohnin? Is he safe where he can cause no more trouble?”
Kanya's face darkened for an instant; lightning flashed in her eyes. “Not yet. But he will be soon.”
LaNague stiffened involuntarily. “What aren't you telling me, Kanya?”
“Josef is dead because of Broohnin,” she said flatly. “If he had not delayed us at the pilot's apartment, we would have been gone before the squad of Imperial Guard arrived. Even after we were halted in front of the building, if he had followed directions and stood quietly, there would have been no shooting. Josef would be alive and beside me now.”
“Let him go, Kanya. He can only harm himself now. You can settle with him later when your grief is not so fresh.”
“No.”
“Kanya, you pledged yourself to my service until the revolution was over.”
“He must be found immediately.”
LaNague had an uneasy feeling that Kanya was still not telling him everything. “Why? Why immediately?”
“We dishonored ourselves,” she said, her eyes no longer meeting his. “We circumvented your authority by planting a fail-safe device in Imperium Park.”
LaNague closed his eyes. He didn't need this. “What sort of device?” He had a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer.
“A Barsky box.”
Just what he had feared. “How big? What's the radius of the displacement field?”
“Three kilometers.”
“Oh no!” LaNague's eyes were open again, and he could see that Kanya's were once more ready to meet them. “Didn't you trust me?”
“There was always the chance that you might fail, that the Imperium would reassert control, or that Earth would move in faster than anyone anticipated. We had to have a means to ensure final destruction.”
“But a radius that size could possibly disrupt Throne's crust to the point where there'd be global cataclysm!”
“Either way, the Imperium or the Earthie conquerors who replaced it would no longer be a threat.”
“But at a cost of millions of lives! The whole purpose of this revolution is to save lives!”
“And we've co-operated! The device was only to be used in the event of your failure. A new Imperium or an Earth takeover would inevitably lead to an invasion of Flint as well as Tolive. I do not know about your planet, but no one on Flint will ever submit to outside rule. Every single one of us would die defending our planet. That would be a cost of millions of lives! Flinter lives! We prefer to see millions die on Throne. We will never allow anything to threaten our way of life. Never!”
LaNague held up his hands to stop her. “All right! We'll have this out later. What's it all got to do with Broohnin?”
“There were two triggers to the device. Broohnin now has one of them.”
LaNague sat for a long, silent moment. Then: “Find him.”
“I will.”
“But how? He could be anywhere.”
“All the triggers are equipped with tracers in the event they're lost. No matter where he goes, I'll be able to locate him.”
“He's crazy, Kanya. He'll set that thing off just for the fun of it. He's got to be stopped.” After another silence, shorter this time: “Why couldn't you have trusted me?”
“No plan, no matter how carefully wrought, is infallible. You have made miscalculations.”
LaNague's heated response was reflexive. “Where? When? Aren't we right on schedule? Isn't everything going according to plan?”
“Was Josef's death in the plan?”
“If you had trusted me a little more,” he said, hiding the searing pain those words caused him, “we wouldn't have this threat hanging over our heads now.”
“If you hadn't insisted on keeping Broohnin around against the advice of everyone else concerned-”
“We needed him at first. And…and I thought I could change him…bring him around.”
“You failed. And Josef is dead because of it.”
“I'm sorry, Kanya.”
“So am I,” the Flinter woman replied coldly. “But I'll see to it that he causes no further harm.” Her shoulders angled as she reached for the control switch on her vid.
“Don't kill him,” LaNague said. “He's been through a lot with us…helped us. And after all, he didn't actually fire the blast that killed Josef.”
Kanya's face flashed up briefly, inscrutably, then her image faded. LaNague slumped back in his chair. She had a right to hate him as much as she did Broohnin. He was responsible, ultimately, for Josef's death. He was responsible for all of Broohnin's folly, and for his eventual demise at Kanya's hands should she decide to kill him. She could certainly feel justified in exacting her vengeance…Broohnin seemed to be acting like a mad dog.
All his fault, really. All of it. How had he managed to be so stupid? He and Broohnin had shared a common goal-the downfall of the Imperium. He had thought that could lead to greater common ground. Yet it hadn't, and it was too clear now that there had never been the slimmest hope of that happening. There was no true common ground. Never had been.
Never could be.
At first he had likened the differences between Broohnin and himself to the differences between Flinters and Tolivians. Both cultures had started out with a common philosophy, Kyfho, and had a common goal, absolute individual sovereignty. Yet the differences were now so great. Tolivians preferred to back away from a threat, to withdraw to a safer place, to fight only when absolutely necessary: leave us alone or we'll move away. The Flinters had a bolder approach; although threatening no one, they were willing to do battle at the first sign of aggression against them: leave us alone or else. Yet the two cultures had worked well together, now that Tolive had finally decided to fight.
He had once thought a similar rapprochement possible with Broohnin; had at one point actually considered the possibility of convincing Broohnin to surrender himself to the Imperium as Robin Hood, just as LaNague was about to do.
He smiled ruefully to himself. Had he been a fool, or had he deluded himself into believing what was safest and most convenient to believe? In truth, he wished someone-anyone-else were sitting here now in this empty warehouse waiting for the Imperial Guard to break in and arrest him. The thought of giving himself over to the Imperium, of prison, locked in a cell, trapped…it made him shake. Yet it had to be done…one more thing that had to be done…Another part of the plan, the most important part. And he could ask no one else to take his place.
Wouldn't be long now. He slid his chair into the middle of the bare expanse of the warehouse floor and sat, his hands folded calmly before him, presenting an image of utter peace and tranquility. The officers in charge of the search-and-seizure force would be doing their best to whip their men up to a fever pitch. After all, they were assaulting the stronghold of the notorious Robin Hood, and there was no telling what lay in store for them within.
LaNague sat motionless and waited, assuming a completely nonthreatening pose. He didn't want anyone to do anything rash.
“It is utterly imperative that he be taken alive. Is that clear? Every task assigned to the Imperial Guard today has been a catastrophic failure. This is a final chance for the Guard to prove its worth. If you fail this time, there may not be another chance-for any of us!”
Haworth paused in his tirade, hoping he was striking the right chord. He had threatened, he had cajoled; if he had thought tears would work, he'd have somehow dredged them up. He had to get across to Commander Tinmer the crucial nature of what they were about to do.
“If the man inside is truly Robin Hood, and the warehouse is his base of operations-and all indications are that it may very well be-he must be taken alive, and every scrap of evidence that links him with Robin Hood must be collected and brought in with him. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: he must be taken alive, even at the risk of Guard lives.”
Lacking anything more to say, or a clearer, more forceful way of saying it, Haworth let Tinmer, who had taken personal command of the Robin Hood capture mission, fade from the screen. He turned to Metep and found him deep in drugged sleep in his chair, an empty gas vial on the floor beside him.
Haworth shook his head in disgust as he found his own chair and sank into it. Metep VII, elected leader of the Out-world Imperium, was falling apart faster than his domain. And with good reason. He, Haworth, and the other powers within the Imperium had spent their lives trying to mold out-world society along the lines of their own vision, no matter how the clay protested. And had been largely successful. After establishing a firm power base, they had been on the verge of achieving a level of control at which they could influence virtually every facet of out-world life. It was a heady brew, that kind of power. One taste led to a craving for more…and more.
Now it was all being taken away. And Jek Milian, so at home in his powerful role as Metep, was suffering acute withdrawal. The Imperium had gradually stolen control of the out-worlds from the people who lived on them, and now that control was, in turn, being stolen from it. Everything was going crazy. Why? Had it all been circumstance, or had it been planned this way? Haworth bristled at the idea that some individual or some group had been able to disrupt so completely everything he had striven to build. He wanted to believe that it had all been circumstance-needed to believe it.
And yet…there was a feather-light sensation at the far end of his mind, an ugly worm of an idea crawling around in the dark back there that whispered conspiracy… events had followed too direct a pattern…conspiracy… situations that should have taken years to gestate were coming to term in weeks or months…conspiracy… and every damaging event or detrimental situation consistently occurring at the worst possible time, always synergistically potentiating the ill effect of the previous event…conspiracy…
If it were conspiracy, there was only one possible agent: the man who had mocked the Imperium, derided it, made it look foolish time after time, and eluded capture at every turn-Robin Hood.
And it was possible-just possible-that the man or men known as Robin Hood would be in custody tonight. That bothered him a little. Why now? Why, when it looked as if all was lost, did they get a tip on the whereabouts of Robin Hood? Was this yet another part of the conspiracy against the Imperium?
He slammed his hand against the armrest of his chair. That was not a healthy thought trend. That sort of thinking left you afraid to act. If you began to see everything as conspiracy, if you thought every event was planned and calculated to manipulate you, you wound up in a state of paralysis. No…Robin Hood had finally made a mistake. One of his minions had had a falling out with him or had become otherwise disaffected and had betrayed him. That was it.
Tonight, if all went right, if the Imperial Guard didn't make fools of themselves again-he shook his head here, still unwilling to believe that the probe pilot had slipped through their fingers twice in one day-he would face Robin Hood. And then he would know if it had all been planned. If true, that very fact could be turned to the Imperium's advantage. He would not only know whom and what he was fighting against and how they had managed to get the best of him, but he would have undeniable proof that the blame for the current chaos did not lie with the Imperium. He would have a scapegoat-the Imperium badly needed one.
Robin Hood was his last chance to turn aside the tide of rage welling up around the Imperium. He had apparently lost the probe pilot as a possible source of distraction. Only Robin Hood was left to save them all from drowning. And only if taken alive. Dead, he was a martyr…useless.
The doors blew open with a roar that reverberated through the empty warehouse. Imperial Guardsmen charged in through the clouds of settling dust and fanned out efficiently in all directions. So intent were they on finding snipers and booby traps that LaNague went temporarily unnoticed. It wasn't long before he became the center of attention, however.
“Who are you?” said someone who appeared to be an officer. He aimed his hand weapon at the middle of LaNague's forehead as he spoke, making this the second time in one day he had been at the wrong end of a blaster.
“The name is LaNague. Peter LaNague. And I'm alone here.” He held his palms flat against his thighs to keep his hands from shaking, and worked at keeping his voice steady. He refused to show the terror that gnawed at him from within.
“This your place?”
“Not exactly. I lease it.”
An excited young guardsman ran up to the first. “This is the place, sir. No doubt about it!”
“What've you found?”
“High speed duplicators, stacks of various issues of The Robin Hood Reader, and boxes full of those little cards that were dropped with the money. Plus a dozen or so holosuits. Should we try one on to see what kind of image we get?”
“I doubt that will be necessary,” the officer said, then turned to LaNague. The other members of the unduly large assault force were slowly clustering around as their commander asked the question that was on everyone's mind: “Are you Robin Hood?”
LaNague nodded. His throat was tight, as if unwilling to admit it. Finally: “I go by that name now and then.”
An awed murmur rustled through the ranks of the guardsmen like wind through a forest. The officer silenced his command with a quick, angry glare.
“You are under arrest for crimes against the Imperium,” he told LaNague. “Where are the rest of your followers?”
LaNague looked directly into the officer's eyes. “Look around you.”
He did, and saw only his own troops, each struggling to peek over the other's shoulder or to push his way to the front for a glimpse of the man who was Robin Hood. And suddenly the meaning was clear.
“To your posts!” the commander barked. “Start packing up the evidence immediately!”
After the duty assignments were given, the officer turned the task of overseeing the warehouse end of the operation to a subordinate while he took personal command of a squad of Guard to lead LaNague back to the Imperium Complex.
In a state of self-induced emotional anesthesia, LaNague allowed himself to be led away. Fighting off a sudden awful feeling that he would never return, he cast a final backward glance and saw that every guardsman in the building had stopped what he was doing to watch Robin Hood's exit.
Finally! Finally something had gone right!
“And there's proof?” Haworth said. “Incontestable proof?”
Tinmer beamed as he spoke. “Ten times more than any jury could want.”
“He'll never see a jury. But how do we know he's the Robin Hood, not just one of his lackeys? I'm sure he gave you a good story as to why he happened to be there.”
“Not at all. He admitted it. Said straight out he was Robin Hood.”
The elated tingle of victory that had been coursing along every nerve fiber in Haworth's body suddenly slowed, faltered.
“Freely?”
“Yes! Said his name was Peter LaNague and that he had authored the flyers and planned the raids. According to the census computer, though, he doesn't exist. None of his identity factors match with anyone on Throne.”
“Which means he's from one of the other out-worlds.”
“Or Earth.”
Haworth doubted that, especially now that he remembered a certain weapon used to save Metep VII's life almost five years ago, about the same time The Robin Hood Reader began to appear. A weapon made on Flint. Things were fitting together at last.
“Check with the other planets-the ones still speaking to us. And with Earth.” Haworth knew the replies would all be negative, but decided to keep Tinmer busy.
“You going to interrogate him now?”
Haworth hesitated here. The prisoner probably expected to be hustled into the Complex and immediately filled with drugs to make him talk. Let him wait instead, Haworth thought. Let him spend the night in one of those claustrophobic cells wondering when the interrogation would begin. He'd lie awake wondering while Haworth caught up on some much needed rest.
“Throw him in maximum security and tell your men not to be too rough on him. I want him able to talk in the morning.”
“That won't be a problem.” Tinmer's expression was grim and dour. “They've been treating him like a visiting dignitary, like a V.I.P., like…like an officer!”
Haworth again felt a twinge of anxiety, a chill, as if someone had briefly opened and closed a door to the night air. It wasn't right for the Guard to give the man who had outrun and outfoxed them all these years such treatment. They should hate him, they should want to get even. Apparently they didn't. Inappropriate behavior, to be sure. But why did it bother him so? He broke the connection and slowly turned away from the set.
Haworth didn't bother attempting to rouse Metep to tell him the news. Tomorrow he'd be in much better shape to deal with it. He was tired. It had been a long, harrowing day and fatigue was beginning to get the best of him. There was no chance for Robin Hood…no…stop calling him that. He was Peter LaNague now. He had a name just like everybody else; time to start de-mythifying this character. There was no chance for Peter LaNague to escape from the max-sec area. What Haworth needed now was sleep. A dose of one of the stims would keep him going, but beyond cosmetics he didn't approve of artificial means to anything where his body was concerned. The closest he got to a drug was the alpha cap he wore at night. It guaranteed him whatever length of restful slumber he desired, taking him up and down through the various levels of sleep during the set period, allowing him to awaken on schedule, ready to function at his peak.
Despite his fatigue, Daro Haworth's step was light as he strode toward his temporary quarters in the Imperium Complex. Members of the Council of Five and other higher-ups had been moved into the Complex last month, ostensibly to devote all their efforts to curing the ills that afflicted the Imperium, but in reality to escape the marauding bands wandering the countryside, laying siege to the luxury homes and estates occupied by the Imperium's top-level bureaucrats. He would not mind the cramped quarters at all tonight. For tomorrow evening, after six hours under the cap, he'd be fresh and ready to face Ro-No! Peter LaNague.
After an hour in the cell, LaNague had to admit that it really wasn't so bad. Perhaps his quaking terror at the thought of prison had been an overreaction. Everything had been routine: the trip to the Imperium Complex and the walk to the maximum security section had been uneventful; the recording of his fingerprints, retinal patterns, and the taking of skin and blood samples for genotyping had all gone smoothly. Only his entry into the max-sec cell block had held a surprise.
The prison grapevine was obviously better informed than even the established news media. The public was as yet completely unaware of his capture, but as soon as he set foot on the central walkway between the three tiers of cells, a loud, prolonged, raucous cheer arose from the inmates. They thrust their arms through the bars on their cages, stretching to the limit to touch him, to grab his hand, to slap him on the back. Most could not reach him, but the meaning was clear: even in the maximum security section of the Imperium Complex, the area on Throne most isolated from the daily events of the world outside, Robin Hood was known…and loved.
Not exactly the segment of Throne society I've been aiming at, LaNague thought as he took his place in a bottom tier solo cell, watching the bars rise from the floor and ooze down from the ceiling, mechanical stalagmites and stalactites in a manmade cave. They met and locked together in front of him at chest level.
After his escort departed, LaNague was bombarded with questions from all directions. He answered a few, evaded most, remaining completely unambiguous only about identifying himself as Robin Hood, which he freely admitted to anyone who asked. Feigning fatigue, he retired to the rear of his cell and lay in the wall recess with his eyes closed.
Silence soon returned to the max-sec block as the celebrity's arrival was quickly accepted and digested. Conversation was not an easy thing here. Max-sec was reserved for psychopaths, killers, rapists, and habitually violent criminals…and now for enemies of the state. These breeds of criminal had to be isolated, separated from the rest of the prisoners as well as the rest of society. Each was given a solitary cell, a synthestone box with five unbroken surfaces, open only at the front where bars closed from above and below like a gaptooth grin, separating them from the central walkway and from each other.
There was no chance of escape, no hope of rescue. LaNague had known that when he called in the tip that led to his arrest. The walls were too thick to be blown without killing those inside. There was only one exit from the section and it was protected by a close mesh of extremely tight ultrasonic beams. No human going through one bank of those beams could maintain consciousness long enough to take two steps. And there were five banks. Should there be any general disturbance in the max-sec block, another system would bathe the entire area with inaudible, consciousness-robbing sound, forcing a half-hour nap on everyone.
LaNague didn't want to get out just yet anyway. He had to sit and hope that Metep and the Council of Five would play into his hands…and hope that Sayers would be able to play one of those recordings on the air…and hope that the populace would respond. So many variables. Too many, perhaps. He had shredded the out-worlders’ confidence in the Imperium, now he had to mend it, but in a different weave, a different cut, a radical style. Could he do it?
Somewhere inside of him was a cold knot of fear and doubt that said no one could do it.
LaNague had almost dozed off-he had a talent for that, no matter what the circumstances-when he heard footsteps on the walkway. They stopped outside his cell and he peered cautiously out of his recess toward the bars. One of the prison guards stood there, a flat, square container balanced on his upturned palm. LaNague gently eased his left hand into his right axilla, probing until he found the tiny lump under the skin. He desperately hoped he would not have to squeeze it now.
“You hungry?” the guard said as he caught sight of LaNague's face in the darkness of the recess.
Sliding to the floor and warily approaching the front of the cell, LaNague said, “A little.”
“Good.” The guard tapped a code into the box attached to his waist, a code LaNague knew was changed three times a day. The central bar at the front of his cell suddenly snapped in two at its middle, the top half rising, the bottom sinking until about twenty centimeters separated the ends. After passing the container through the opening, the guard tapped his box again and the two bars approximated and merged again.
It was a food tray. LaNague activated the heating element and set it aside. “I would have thought the kitchen was closed.”
“It is.” The guard smiled. He was tall, lean, his uniform ill-fitting. “But not for you.”
“Why's that?” LaNague was immediately suspicious. “Orders from on high?”
The guard grunted. “Not likely! No, we were all sitting around thinking what a dirty thing it was to put someone like you in with these guys-I mean, most of them have killed at least one person; and if not, it wasn't for not trying. They'd kill again, too, given the chance. We can't even let them near each other, let alone decent people. A guy like you just doesn't belong here. I mean, you didn't kill anybody-or even hurt anybody-all these years. All you did was make the big boys look stupid and spread the money around afterwards so everybody could have a good time. We don't think you belong here, Mr. Robin Hood, and although we can't do much about getting you out of max-sec, we'll make sure nobody gives you any trouble while you're in here.”
“Thank you,” LaNague said, touched. “Do you always second-guess your superiors this way?”
After a moment of thought: “No, come to think of it. You're the first prisoner I ever gave a second thought to. I always figured you-you know, Robin Hood-were crazy. I mean, dropping that money and all. I never got any. My sister did once, but I work the night shift so l never had a chance. Did read that flyer of yours though…that really seemed crazy at the time, but from what I've seen lately, I know you're not crazy. Never were. It's everybody else that's crazy.”
He seemed surprised and somewhat abashed at what he had just said. He gestured to the tray, which had started to steam. “Better eat that while it's hot.” As LaNague turned away, the guard moved closer to the bars and spoke again. “One more thing…I'm not supposed to do this, but-” He thrust his open right hand between the bars.
LaNague grasped it and shook it firmly. “What's your name?”
“Steen. Chars Steen.”
“Glad to know you, Steen.”
“Not as glad as I am to know you!” He turned and quickly strode toward the exit at the end of the walkway.
LaNague stood and looked at the tray for a while, moved by the small but significant gesture of solidarity from the guards. Perhaps he had touched people more deeply than he realized. Sitting down before the tray, he lifted the lid. He really wasn't hungry, but made himself eat. After all, it was a gift.
He managed to swallow a few bites, but had to stop when Mora drifted through his mind. Since his arrest he had been doing his best to fend off the thought of her, but lost the battle now. She would be learning of his capture soon, hopefully not from the vid. Telling her beforehand would have been impossible. Mora would have done everything in her power to stop him; failing that, she would have tried to be arrested along with him, despite the way he had been treating her.
A short spool had been left explaining everything…a rotten way to do it, but the only way. With his appetite gone, he scraped the remaining contents of the tray into the commode and watched them swirl away, then crawled back into the recess and forced himself to sleep. It was better than thinking about what Mora was going through.
“How could you let him do it?” Mora's voice was shrill, her gestures frantic as she twisted in her seat trying to find a comfortable position. There was none. Her mind had been reeling from the news about Josef-now this!
“How could I stop him?” Radmon Sayers said defensively as he stood before her in the LaNague apartment. He had waited until the pilot and his wife had fallen asleep in the other room, then had put on the spool and let LaNague explain it himself.
“Someone else could have gone! One of his loyal”-she hated herself for the way she snarled the word-“followers could have taken his place! No one in the Imperium knows what Robin Hood looks like!”
“He didn't feel he could allow anyone else to be placed in custody as the most wanted man in the out-worlds. And frankly, I respect that decision.”
Mora sank back in her chair and nodded reluctantly. It was unfair of her to castigate Sayers, or to call into question the courage of any of the Merry Men. She knew Peter-although with the way he had been behaving since her arrival on Throne, perhaps not as well as she had thought. But he had never been good at asking favors of anyone, even a simple favor that was due him. He preferred to take care of it himself and get it out of the way rather than impose on anyone. So the idea of asking someone else to risk his life posing as Robin Hood would have been completely beyond him.
“I'm sorry,” she mumbled through a sigh. “It's just that I had the distinct impression he had someone else in mind as the public's Robin Hood.”
“That may have been a calculated effect for your benefit.”
“Maybe. What are we supposed to do now?”
Sayers fished in his pocket and came up with three vid spools. “We wait for an opportunity to play one of these over the air.”
“What's on them?” Mora asked, rising from her seat.
“Your husband…making an appeal to the people of Throne to choose between Metep and Robin Hood.”
“Are they any good? Will they convince anyone?” She didn't like the expression on Sayers’ face.
“I can't say.” He kept his eyes on the spools in his hand. “A lot of the public's acceptance will depend on the fact that he's been identified as Robin Hood. The news bulletins should be breaking just about now, although hardly anybody's watching. But all of Throne will know by breakfast.”
“Play one for me.”
“There's three, one for each of the contingencies he thought possible.”
“Play them all.”
Sayers plugged them into the apartment holovid set, one after another. Mora watched with growing dismay, an invisible hand making a fist with her heart in the middle, gripping it tighter and tighter until she was sure it must stop beating. Peter's messages to the people of Throne were beautifully precise and well reasoned. They pointed out the velvet-gloved tyranny of the Imperium, and the inevitable consequences. No one living in the economic holocaust engulfing Throne could deny the truth of what he said. He appealed on the grounds of principle and pragmatism. But there was some vital element missing.
“He's doomed,” Mora said in a voice that sounded as hollow as she felt. The third spool had just finished throwing out its holographic image of Peter LaNague, alias Robin Hood, sitting at a desk and calmly telling whoever might be listening to rise up and put an end to the Out-world Imperium once and for all.
Sayers puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly. “That's what I told him when we recorded these. But he wouldn't listen.”
“No…of course he wouldn't. He expects everyone in the galaxy to respond to pure reason, now that he's finally got their attention.” She gestured toward the vid set. “A Tolivian or a Flinter would understand and respond fiercely to any one of those spools. But the people of Throne?”
She went to the window. Pierrot sat on the sill, drooping heavily over the edge of his pot in the morose kengai configuration. She had watered the tree, spoken to it, but nothing she did brought it upright again. She looked beyond to the dark empty streets awaiting dawn, and thought about Peter. He had become a different man since leaving Tolive-cold, distant, preoccupied, even ruthless. But those spools…they were the work of a fool!
“Why didn't he listen to you, or check with me, or take somebody's advice? Those spools are dry, pedantic, didactic, and emotionally flat. They may get a good number of people nodding their heads and agreeing in the safety of their homes, but they won't get them out in the street, running and shaking their fists in the air and screaming at the tops of their lungs for an end to Metep and his rotten Imperium.” She whirled and faced Sayers. “They won't work!”
“They're all we've got.”
Mora saw the three spools sitting in a row beside the vid set. With one swift motion she snatched them up, hurled them into the dissociator in the corner, and activated it.
Sayers leaped forward, but too late. “No!” He stared at her in disbelief. “Do you realize what you've done? Those were the only copies!”
“Good. Now we'll have to think of something else.” She paused. It had been necessary to destroy the spools. As long as they remained intact, Sayers would have felt duty-bound to find a way to broadcast them. But with them now gone beyond any hope of retrieval, he was free to act on his own-and to listen to her. Mora had already concocted a variation on Peter's basic plan. But she would need help-Flinter help. With Josef dead and Kanya gone she knew not where, Mora would have to turn to other Flinters. They were available, filtering down in a steady stream over the past few weeks, setting up isolated enclaves, waiting for the time when their services would be needed. Mora knew where to find them.
He was almost there. Gasping for breath, Broohnin stopped on a rise and looked back at the dim glow that was Primus City. Last year it would have lit up half the sky at this distance, but with gloglobes fast becoming an endangered species on its streets, the city was a faint ghost of its former self. He sat down for a moment and scanned the terrain behind him, watching for any sign of movement as his lungs caught up to his body.
After a long moment of intense scrutiny, he was satisfied. His eyes were adjusted to the darkness and he saw no one on his trail, not even an animal. He had come a long way; his muscles were protesting as much now as they had on the Earth jaunt. He had allowed himself to get soft again…but he had to push on. A little farther out from the city and he'd feel safe.
The trigger was still in his hand, although the activating button was locked. No problem there…not many small locks could stand for long against his years of experience in bypassing them. He bet it wasn't even a true lock…the trigger was most likely protected by a simple safety mechanism. When he reached a spot he considered safe, he was sure he could release it with a minimum of ado.
Heaving himself again to his feet, he forced his protesting muscles onward. Not far now. Not too much longer. Then it was good-by Imperium. He had originally planned to hold the trigger back, use it as a trump card in his continuing battle with LaNague. But that was out of the question now. Somewhere along the path of his flight from Primus he had stopped to rest in an all-night tavern near the city limits. He could have used an ale but there was none to be had. As it was, nearly all of his cash went for a small wedge of cheese anyway. It was in the tavern that he learned of Robin Hood's arrest.
At first he thought it was a hoax or a mistake, but the face that filled the projection field of the tavern's holovid was LaNague's. Caught him red-handed, they said, and were holding him under heavy guard in the Imperium Complex. Broohnin had rushed out of the tavern then, continuing his flight from Primus at full speed.
The revolution was over. Without LaNague to direct things, it would sputter and stall and die. Broohnin hated to admit it, but the ugly truth wouldn't go away: only LaNague had the power to marshal the various forces necessary to bring the tottering Imperium all the way down. Only he had the authority to command the Flinters and who-knew-what-other resources. Only he knew what the final phase of the revolution was to be.
Broohnin had nothing except the trigger for the giant Barsky box he had seen buried in Imperium Park. That would be enough to literally decapitate the Imperium by sending Imperium Park and the entire Imperium Complex surrounding it to some unspecified point in time and space. Wherever it ended up, Broohnin was sure it would be far from Throne. Everyone within the Complex-Metep, the entire Council of Five, all the myriad petty bureaucrats-along with a few early risers in the park, would vanish without a trace, without warning.
He had an urge to stop where he was, find the way to release the trigger, and activate the box now. But that might mean a less than completely satisfactory result. He had to wait until mid-morning when the Complex was acrawl with all the lice that kept the huge bureaucracy functioning. To destroy the Imperium Complex before then was to risk missing a key person, perhaps Metep himself.
He'd have to wait, and wait out here, far from the city. Much as he would have loved to see the Complex and all it represented flash from view and existence, he preferred to keep a safe distance between himself and the event, and stroll into Primus later to see the open pit where the Imperium had been.
He smiled as he thought of something else: he would also be looking at the spot where Peter LaNague had been.
Haworth awakened with a start. The vidphone had activated the auto shut-off in his alpha cap, thrusting him immediately up to consciousness. He pulled it off and leaned over to activate the receiver. He would accept the call once he saw who was on the other end.
“Daro!” It was Jek. Metep VII had finally come out of his stupor. “Daro, you there?”
Haworth keyed in his transmitter so Metep could see and hear his chief adviser. “Yes, Jek, I'm here. What is it?”
“Why wasn't I told of the Robin Hood capture immediately?” His manner was haughty, his voice cold. He was in one of his Why-wasn't-I-consulted-first moods, a recurrent state of whenever he felt that Haworth and the council were making too many independent decisions. Fortunately, they were short lived.
“You were sitting not two meters away from me when the word came.” He kept his tone light but drove his point home quickly and cleanly: “Trouble was, you weren't conscious.”
“I should have been awakened! It had been a long day and I was dozing, waiting for the news. I should have been told immediately!”
Haworth looked closely at Metep's image. This was not the anticipated reaction. A quick comment about Jek's overindulgence in one gas or another was usually sufficient to deflate him, eliciting a nervous laugh and a change of subject. But this was something new. He seemed to have puffed up his self-importance beyond the usual level, to a point where he was impervious to casual barbs. That worried Haworth.
“Well, that's not important,” he said easily. “What really matters is…”
“It is important. It is of paramount importance that Metep be kept apprised of all developments, especially where enemies of the state are concerned. I should have been awakened immediately. Precious time has already been wasted.”
“I'm sorry, Jek. It won't happen again.” What's he been sniffing now? Haworth wondered. Acts like he thinks he's really running things! “I'm going to get the interrogation procedures started as soon as I've had some breakfast. After we've learned all we can from him, we'll have a quiet little trial and have done with him.”
“We can't wait that long!” Metep said, his vocal pitch rising, his lips twitching. “He must be tried and convicted today! And in public. I've already made arrangements for proceedings in Freedom Hall this afternoon.”
The same odd sensation that Haworth had experienced last night upon learning that the prisoner had freely admitted to being Robin Hood, and again when told of the deferential treatment given him by the Guard, came over him again. He could almost hear the crash, feel the vibrations as giant tumblers within some huge, unseen cosmic lock fell into place one by one.
“No! That's the worst thing you could do. This man has already become some sort of folk hero. Don't give him the extra exposure.”
Metep sneered. “Ridiculous. He's a common criminal and his own notoriety will be used against him.” His face suddenly softened and he was the old Jek Milian again. “Don't you see, Daro? He's my last chance to save my reputation! We have evidence aplenty that he's Robin Hood; we just have to manufacture a little more to link him to Earth and blame him for this runaway inflation that's ruining everything. He'll get us all off the hook.”
“I'm calling a meeting of the council,” Haworth said. “I can't let you do this.”
“I thought you'd say that!” Hard lines formed in Metep's features once more. “So I did that myself. If you think you can get enough votes to override me, you're wrong!” His face faded away.
Broohnin awoke cold and stiff with the light. After an instant of disorientation, he remembered his circumstances. He had been running on stims the past few days, and had left the city with none on him. The crash had come before dawn, and now the sun glowered hazily from its mid-morning perch in the sky.
Pulling himself erect, he immediately reached for the trigger. Wouldn't be long now. Everything had gone wrong and got pushed off the track. But now everything was going to be set right. A brief inspection in the light of day showed the safety mechanism to be of rudimentary construction, geared more toward the prevention of accidental firing than determined tampering. Easy to circumvent it. He'd just have to-
The trigger disappeared from his hands in a blur of motion. Broohnin whirled around as best he could from a sitting position, pulling his blaster out as he moved. That too was torn from his grasp as soon as it cleared his belt. When he saw who was behind him, all his sphincters let go in an uncontrolled rush.
Kanya dropped the trigger device and blaster at her feet and struck him across the face, sending him reeling into the dirt. As he tried to scramble to his feet and run away, she tripped him and knocked him sprawling again. Each time Broohnin caught a glimpse of her face it was the same: expressionless, emotionless, with neither anger nor mercy in her eyes, only cold, intense concentration. And silent. She uttered no sound as she hovered over him like an avenging angel of death.
With each attempt to rise, she would knock him flat again, bruising a new area of his body with unerring accuracy. He pleaded with her at first, but she might as well have been deaf. He gave that up soon. And when he gave up trying to escape her, she began to lift him up and hurl him against the ground or a boulder or a tree trunk. Always hurting him, always damaging him, always increasing the agony a little more each time. Yet never enough to cause him to lose consciousness. He became a broken-stringed marionette in the hands of a mad puppeteer, hurled limply from stage right to stage left.
Soon his eyes were swollen shut, and even if he had wanted to look at Kanya, he would have been unable to. And still the systematic beating continued. When he had seen her drop the blaster before she hit him the first time, Broohnin had been afraid Kanya intended to beat him to death. Now he was afraid she wouldn't.