Imperial Stars 3-The Crash of Empire (43 page)

So this was the fruit of Souldancer luck! Ramnis used his stick to clear a way and squeeze inside. It began to rain again, the gentlest of showers, but he was protected now; he might even light a firestick. Perhaps the flame would also help purify this putrid air!

He opened the packet, popped at a firestick, and it caught—WHOOMP! The force of the fireball blew Senator Ramnis from the passage into the flank of his horse, who whinnied in terror. At the sound of a second, greater explosion the mare reared and pulled her reins free, prevented from galloping off only by the shaking of the earth beneath her hooves.

There must have been a third detonation, so titanic that the senator's senses failed him. Ramnis found himself spread-eagled against the trunk of a tree, watching as a large section of hilltop tipped inwards and sank. A squarish crater was formed. Mammoth trees swayed from the vertical, groaned, and toppled, crashing together. The rain-misted air grew thick with flying dirt, leaves, and shards of bark, while pale flames belched in syncopation with rumbles from underground.

The soft rain rinsed the air and beat back intermittent gouts of fire. The worst was over. The senator coughed, stood forward and brushed his mired garrick. Embedded among the central roots of one tumbled forest giant was a thing of metal, once rectangular, perhaps larger and certainly more elaborate than a bedframe. Those lumps—could they be axles? Was this the relic of an ancient Portlandish road machine? Ramnis stumbled close. The vehicle had had a body once, but it had rusted, leaving just this skeleton, through which he could see . . .

Yes, indeed. The archetypal Black Box.

A week later, and a thousand kloms away, Ramnis faced a tall polychromatic statue. U Gyi's game had grown increasingly subtle, and the senator deliberated before raising his staff of office to smash the plaster image of the false god. As the object tumbled, the watchers melted away. The skies darkened. Lightning strobed as the roof opened. Among these distractions Ramnis was clearheaded enough to notice the floor was elevating, carrying him story by story into low clouds.

Light blitzed around the senator; then the brilliance faded and the glow grew constant. It had a source. Strong winds tore at the fog and he found himself treading up a long, wide hall towards a tiny U Gyi, seated on his throne. The god's guards, genetically tailored to monkey-size, fell in and flanked him as he approached.

"What an unexpected surprise," U Gyi said, patting his damp forehead with an embroidered sleeve.

"That I'm still alive?" the senator asked.

"Oh, dear. I was afraid you'd be tiresome about that airplane episode. If you expect me to apologize—"

"Nice place you've got here," Ramnis remarked. "I suppose you'd like to keep it."

"Ah? Ah! A threat! You'd risk war?"

"No, and yet in my travels I've made some discoveries—here, I've come to give you this."

Ramnis set the black box on the steps before U Gyi's throne. The godling tried and failed to mask his curiosity. "Very well, what is it?"

"A weapon. Harmless without its power source. The ancients of Portland used it to defend their city. It worked against the Yooth of Califerni, the Albartian Canucks—against everyone except the Dhuini, who turned out to be immune."

"The founders of the Empire of Dhuinunn!"

"The same. Their descendants inhabit the dominion of Yain. Your Divinity, has it occurred to you that they might harbor ambitions to revive their Empire?"

The tiny godling's finger rummaged thoughtfully in one of his oversized ears. "I suspect everyone of everything, and I am often right."

"And perhaps you've noticed that the folk of Yain are absolutely incapable of humor? Not once during my stay among them could I get one to smile—but I'm trying your patience. Your Divinity, this box contains a weapon known as the Buzz of Joy. This weapon can render any of us helpless with laughter. Any of us, that is,
except
the people of Yain, whose scientists are busy right now trying to find this thing I'm about to give you—"

"Indeed! And why am I your beneficiary?"

"Because you're clever enough to discover the principle behind this Buzz, and reverse it. I urge you to do so. If the elders of the Dominion of Yain have fielded archaeologists, then they've hired physicists and neurologists as well, and those others might soon make an independent discovery."

U Gyi smiled a toothy smile. "
Reverse
it? I've heard of people rendered helpless with laughter, but never helpless with gloom!"

"Isn't that what we call depression? Your Divinity, I see two armies stalemated in the field: ours rolling on the ground in paroxysms of glee, while the forces of Yain stand, sighing at the futility of existence, too listless to advance. Will you help maintain the balance of powers? Once you've built a Buzz of Gloom—"

"I could use it anywhere, against anyone!"

Ramnis shook his head. "I doubt it. The Buzz of Joy bred a folk incapable of humor. You might use the Buzz of Gloom, but if you do, in time you'll endow the world with a race of irrepressible jokesters, people incapable of taking things seriously, people who laugh at pretentious gods and senators—"

U Gyi turned pink. "People, in other words, very like yourself!"

Ramnis bowed. "Myself, at my worst. Your Divinity, forgive me, but I
do
hope this evens the score between us. Let us be allies again, lest in our squabbles we ignore our foes—for in Yain and elsewhere, our poor excuse for democracy has subtle enemies."

U Gyi pursed his lips. "Your absence unsettled many of my erstwhile friends. I begin to think it's bad luck to kill senators. Very well, Senator Ramnis, you have my promise, and my thanks for your thoughtful gift. Return to your kingdom with my blessing, and know that I shall try to be a better god in the future."

Two years later, when the governor of Yain took his battle-armored, tingler-wielding militia into the field, the scene was not altogether as Senator Ramnis had imagined. Yain's secret weapon, the Buzz of Joy, intersected U Gyi's Buzz of Gloom, creating a neutral zone. In that zone the forces of four dominions clashed with those of only one, the self-styled Second Empire of Dhuinunn, which collapsed later that afternoon. Once more the forces of righteousness prevailed, a little weary, perhaps, of staving off the enemies of representative democracy two or three times a decade. Sometime soon, somebody would unearth the ultimate something . . .

But for now, thanks to Senator Ramnis's Souldancer luck: so far, so good.

". . . the idea that an authoritarian political system must collapse because it cannot provide a decent life for its citizenry can only occur to a democrat. When we reason this way about the Soviet empire, we are simply ascribing democracy's operational rules and attitudes to a totalitarian regime. But these rules and attitudes are signally abnormal, and, as I said earlier, very recent and probably transitory. The notion that whoever holds political power must clear out because his subjects are discontented or dying of hunger or distress is a bit of whimsy that history has tolerated few times in real life. Although they are forced by the current fashion to pay lip service to this cumbersome idea, nine out of ten of today's leaders are careful not to put it into practice; they even indulge themselves in the luxury of accusing the only true democracies now functioning of constantly violating the precept. But then, how could totalitarian rulers break a social contract they've never signed?

"As things stand, relatively minor causes of discontent corrode, disturb, unsettle, paralyze the democracies faster and more deeply than horrendous famine and constant poverty do the Communist regimes . . ."

Jean Francois Revel,
How Democracies Perish.

Most of the ancient writers on political science believed that cycles were inevitable. Societies grow, flourish, and decay, as do most other organisms. Some societies last longer than others, but all are doomed to eventual collapse.

This view was accepted well into the Renaissance and after. The notion of progress, of continual growth and improvement, onward and upward
per omnia seculae seculorum
, is quite recent.

It is also unproved.

There was going to be a war.

The Neutral Zone wasn't part of the Republic, not yet, but we sent patrols into it all the time. Our scout teams let us know if any invaders or bandits were near our borders, and the presence of our forces intimidated most troublemakers. Equally important, the patrols protected the people who lived between us and the barbarian kingdoms. Everyone deserves some security in this life; that's why governments exist.

The people in this commune hadn't had any safety. The raiders had encircled them and attacked, overrunning the hamlet before it could defend itself. A few of the local folks had died fighting, but it didn't look as if they'd drawn blood. Footprints showed that the attackers had marched north, taking the survivors with them—as slaves, or worse.

"They were Weyler's men," Colonel Washington said, holding up an arrow he'd found. "See the tip, Mr. Secretary? And the 'feathers'? Nobody else makes arrows like this."

"I know, Colonel." I took the arrow and studied it, not because I could learn anything from it, but because I wanted to stall. The arrow was a hand-turned wooden dowel, given its point on a pre-Collapse pencil sharpener. The feathers had been cut from old soft-drink cans, and laced to the shaft with sinew.

"Maybe Weyler's bully-boys didn't do this," I said. I was clutching at straws. "Other bandits might have bought the arrows from him, or taken them as booty."

"That's possible, sir," Washington said. His tone said he put more faith in the Easter Bunny, and he was right. Nobody sells weapons these days; the buyers are liable to turn around and kill you with them. If anyone had defeated and robbed some of Weyler's men, our spies would have heard.

Just the same, I wanted to believe that the raiders were nomads. The Republic might ignore that, but if they were locals, we would soon be at war with them—and I didn't want to see the Republic fall into another war. That may sound like an odd attitude for a Secretary of War, but my attitude was the reason I'd joined the Structuralist Party and accepted this post.

"Colonel!" One of Washington's scouts signaled us from the edge of an orchard. "We've got something, sir."

Washington and I walked into the orchard. It was a straggling, threadbare clump of apple trees. There was a large empty patch in the center of the grove, and a carved wooden pole had been driven into the dirt.

"A pagan war totem," Washington said in distaste. He pulled it from the ground, looked it over and handed it to me. "And these are Weyler's marks."

"So they are." Triple flames were carved in the soft wood, the same symbol Weyler's men paint on their chests and leather shields. The top of the pole had been carved into the nightmare shape of an Alien's head.

The face mocked us. Human civilization had folded up at its first contact with other worlds, it seemed to say. What made us think we could revive civilization? Weyler had chosen that symbol deliberately, to remind us how fragile our culture was, and how certain he was of ultimate victory.

I couldn't delay forever. We would have to go home and inform the Legislature. They would debate, but in the end they would declare war. I wish I could say I was entirely unhappy at the prospect.

The Legislature meets once a month, in the Forum Building: a barnlike structure which can seat up to five hundred people. It cost us a lot to build the Forum, both in material and work hours, but nobody begrudges the expense. A government body has to meet somewhere—and as anyone in the Republic can tell you, this is
our
government.

That doesn't always make it pleasant.

I was sitting on the stage, rather than on the main floor with the other Legislators. Colonel Washington stood at the podium in front of the speaker's chair, where he was winding up his testimony. He stood at parade rest, seemingly unfazed by the hostile faces in the amphitheater. "By the time the burial detail had finished tending to the dead villagers, the sun was setting. We scouted the area, determined that no hostile forces remained nearby, and made camp. The next day we returned to Northfort. That's all."

The questioning began at once, as several legislators rose to their feet. The speaker pointed her gavel at one of them. "The chair recognizes Gwen Parsons."

"Thank you, Madam Ryan." The leader of the Expansion Party gave the speaker a polite nod—solely out of deference to her position. Kate Ryan is the leader of my party, and the EPs don't like the fact that we outnumber them three to two.

At the moment Parsons seemed pleased, as well she might. I had gone on this scouting trip as an observer, but my actions—or lack of them—could give the Expansionists the leverage they needed to take control of the government.

Parsons faced the Colonel and raised her voice. "Colonel, by your estimate the raiders took over fifty captives. What became of them?"

Washington's brown face remained inscrutable. "This was obviously a slaving raid. The only possible conclusion is that the villagers were taken to Weyler's territory."

"Why didn't you pursue the raiders?" Parsons demanded. The acid in her voice surprised me at first. Aside from being one of the Founders, and the man who helped defeat the Aliens, he's the head of our militia. The Expansionists favor the use of military force to extend our domain; Parsons couldn't want to offend the Colonel.

My surprise lasted perhaps two seconds. Parsons wasn't attacking Colonel Washington; she was after
me
—and the Structuralists, through me.

"I had several reasons for not giving pursuit." Washington said. "By my estimate, the raiders had a full day's start on us. By the time we could have caught up with them, they would have been deep within Weyler's territory. I had a force of eight scouts, one automatic rifleman, and a limited supply of ammunition. I would have faced forty raiders, in addition to probable reinforcements. A rescue attempt would have been suicide."