Traitor's Sun (12 page)

“Precisely, Mikhail. Many of the Senators and the rest were appointed, just as I was, by kings and governors and oligarchs. And those hereditary or appointed positions have long been a thorn in the side of the Expansionists, one they appear to have plucked out for the moment. I think the Premier’s action was ill-considered, and likely will have consequences that she will regret later. Sandra Nagy does not realize that she has set the fox loose in the henhouse, but she has. Probably she believes she has control of the Party, and when she discovers otherwise, it will be rather too late.” Lew had been gloomily predicting all manner of dire things for the Federation for as long as Mikhail had known him, and appeared to take some grim satisfaction in what had now happened.

“Then she must be a fool! Does she think that worlds like Darkover will comply with this transparent plan?”

“Not being privy to the most recent thoughts of Sandra Nagy, I cannot say, Mik. I knew her years ago, when she was an appointee on the Trade Board. She is canny and extremely clever politically, but has little if any moral sense. I never liked her, but I had a certain respect for her cunning. I am saddened that my worst fears about the Federation seem about to be realized, but I find I am less disheartened than I expected.”

“What does it mean for Darkover?” Mikhail did not particularly care what happened to the Federation, which remained an abstract conglomeration of places he had never seen or, in many cases, even heard of. No matter how much Marguerida or Lew told him about it, it remained more imaginary than real in his mind. More to the point, after he had received the great matrix stone, he had realized that he would never be able to travel off-world, as he had longed to when he was younger. So, although he remained interested and even curious, Mikhail had discovered that it pained him to talk about faraway planets he would never see. He was envious that Marguerida had traveled so extensively, and sometimes he even resented his wife’s travels a little, enough that that feeling shamed him a good deal.

Lew shook his head. “I cannot guess. The Terranan might imagine we can be brought to our knees by the removal of their technologies, by closing the port and withdrawing.”

“That’s ridiculous—we’ve never had any use for their technology! It would probably be a blessing for us if they left.”

Lew gave a gruff chuckle, a slight growling noise in his throat, like a bear trying to laugh and failing. “Bodies politic are rarely logical, Mikhail.”

“Then how can they function?”

His father-in-law looked thoughtful for a moment. “They run on ideals and power struggles—often political movements are born of ideals, but deteriorate into power struggles, megalomania and the dissolution of the very ideals which gave birth to the political movement in question. Here, I believe, the ideal is that everyone in the Federation will be alike—without diversity—and that it is possible to achieve consensus by decree. The Expansionists believe that this can be achieved by everyone agreeing to do it their way, the Expansionist way. And since they have experienced strong opposition, they are seeking to force their ‘ideals’ down people’s throats.”

Mikhail frowned over this. His mind felt soggy, but he was glad of this distraction, this unwieldy problem to focus on, however poorly. “I am not sure I understand you. Do you mean to say that these people really believe that they can coerce entire planets to give up their customs, to be just like Terra? That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in ages.”

“I know—it sounds impossible. But I don’t think you have any idea of how powerful the effect of propaganda can be on a populace, because Darkover has never experienced the effect of constant newsfeeds, which only tell what the government wishes its citizens to know. It has happened over and over in human history, like some recurring nightmare.”

“Tell me.” Over his father-in-law’s shoulder, he watched Donal come to attention, and knew his paxman was listening intently. He felt a flutter of pleasure, the better for being completely unexpected. Donal had wisely chosen to make Danilo Syrtis-Ardais his model, and realized already that his task was much more than merely guarding the person of Mikhail Hastur. With time and experience, Donal would become a wise advisor. Oddly, this notion comforted Mikhail more than he would have thought possible.

Lew Alton made a kind of grunting noise, a familiar prelude to the conveying of information. Oddly, the ordinari ness of the sound, and the anticipation of the words to follow soothed Mikhail’s frayed nerves. At least this was the same. “First, someone in power announces things are going to hell in a handcart, and that the reason is the fault of some group or tribe or opposition party. Morals are decaying, or parents are not rearing their children properly. They propose that the answer lies in reformation, in everyone behaving according to some ideal that suits their notions of a good society. They demand conformity, and anyone who does not submit is regarded as a potential enemy, if not an outright traitor. It has happened in our own times, on places like Benda V, about thirty years ago, for instance.”

“I’ve never heard of that planet.” There were several hundred members in the Federation, and Mikhail had only read extensively about twenty or thirty. But although he was quite well-informed for someone who had never left Darkover, it always made Mikhail feel terribly ignorant when a planet was mentioned he knew nothing about. It was rather silly, since there were so many planets in the Federation, and even widely traveled people like Marguerida and Lew did not know about all of them.

“I’m not surprised, since it is a pretty out-of-the-way place. Here is what happened, as well I can recall. The Orthodox high priest announced he had had a vision from God, that the only way to save the planet from utter destruction was to wage a holy war against all members of the Church of Elan, which were the rivals of the Orthodoxy, and had become very powerful on Benda. They were accused of everything from poisoning the grain to murdering Orthodox babies and drinking their blood. And since the media was controlled by the Orthodox, this resulted in a planet-wide bloodbath. About sixty million people were slaughtered in a three-month period—men, women, children.”

Mikhail was stunned. “But didn’t the Federation intervene? I mean, I thought that was something they were supposed to do in . . . such situations?”

“Yes, I know. The taxes collected from the planets of the Federation are supposed to be used to maintain the Spaceforce, so that they can keep events like this from ever happening. However the real function of the Force is to keep Terran coffers full, to see that trade is not disrupted, that taxes are collected, and that resources continue to flow to Terra. They did not intervene because it was decided that it was a planetary matter, not a Federation one. So for the past three decades, as far as I know, Benda has been a theocracy where everyone spies on everyone else, and you can be executed for belching during services. These, I understand, take up at least four hours of every day. Needless to say, this has created great economic hardship, because if you are stuck in church, you can hardly be tending your fields or selling your goods, can you? And the loss of all those poor folks who belonged to the Church of Elan did not help either, since they were productive members of the community.”

“Sixty million? That is three times more than the entire population of Darkover!” Mikhail stared at Lew, unable to quite believe what he had just heard. “And no one tried to fight back?”

“Mikhail, anyone who risked that was going to die.” He sighed again, seeing the incomprehension in Mikhail’s eyes. “I know—you cannot really grasp this sort of thing because it is beyond your experience. Darkover is a very special world, and one of the wisest things Regis ever did was to keep us out of the Federation except as a Protected Planet.”

“When I was younger, I always thought he did it to keep people like my mother happy, or at least quiet!” Mikhail let himself chuckle softly at the ridiculous thought of Regis making so momentous a decision just to appease Javanne Hastur. She was never quiet, and now she would come to Comyn Castle and make his life miserable. He did not feel he had the strength to stand up to her intrigues and passions just now.

Lew nodded, as if he understood what Mikhail was thinking perfectly well. “He felt it was potentially too costly, that Darkovan culture would not survive if we embraced Terranan values completely. The plain truth is that we don’t need the Federation. What do you think would happen if there was no longer a Federation presence here, Mik?”

“As far as I can see, if the Federation pulls out there would not be any more Big Ships, and the hospital at HQ would cease to exist. The Terranan would not pay us for the lease on the spaceport any longer. Not that they have been any too consistent with the payment in recent years.” After a moment’s reflection, he added, “And Marguerida would no longer be able to procure coffee at exorbitant cost for her occasional pleasure. It is a shame that we have never been able to cultivate the plant on Darkover.” Mikhail had never taken to coffee, but he knew his wife loved the strange, bitter stuff. “None of that seems too earth shattering to me.”

Lew chuckled. “That is a fairly good assessment of the impact, since the Federation controls the spaceways. There are quite a number of inter-system trading companies, but between the stars, one must have the technology of the Big Ships, and only the Terranan have that and guard it jealously. As for the other, the lease is about to end, and Belfontaine was trying to jigger Regis into concessions, as he should. It is part of his job.”

Mikhail found himself amused at the memory of the excuses for the lateness of the payments that had been offered. “Regis told me that Belfontaine had suggested that when the lease is renewed, that Darkover should pay the Federation for maintaining a base, instead of them paying us. He got a big kick out of it.” It hurt to remember that, but it touched his heart at the same time. It made him remember Regis’ smile—his smile had always been one of his greatest assets.

“That’s true enough, and I will never forget the look on Belfontaine’s face when I had the pleasure of telling him the answer was a definite no. But, Mikhail, what economic effect would the Terranan leaving have on us?”

“Well, not much, I believe. The Trade City would certainly lose considerable business, and the pleasure houses would not be happy. Lady Marilla’s pottery would not be exported any longer, but the Aillard and Ardais Domains would survive. We haven’t really developed much trade, have we? I suppose that is why the Terranan want us to be a member world instead of a protected one, so they can market their products. We don’t produce enough food to export, and we don’t have enough metal to build ships or other things. Marguerida says that the sand up in the Dry Towns would be useful for silicon-based technologies, but somehow I can’t imagine a factory in Shainsa. Besides, if I understand the process correctly, it would need a lot of water, and there isn’t any to spare in that region.”

“No, there is not. And that is one major problem with adopting Terran ways—the impact on the ecology would be tremendous and devastating. You have never seen a manufacturing world, but I have. The air is thick with smoke and foul smells, and the people live in wretchedness. We don’t have slums on Darkover—you don’t even know what that means, do you? Believe me, Mik, the poorest family on Darkover lives better than many people on advanced worlds. We are a marginal world, for which we should be thankful, because if we had more obvious resources, we would be more attractive to interlopers. Our timber would be hewn, exported to places we never heard of, our crops taken to feed people on other planets, and when the land would no longer support our populace, because the rivers were full of silt, we would either be abandoned or forced to pay enormous prices for food from other planets.”

“You mean this has happened?”

“Absolutely. I know of at least two planets which have been almost destroyed by the greed of the corporations that owned them, then left to struggle along with a ruined ecosystem, where the population can hardly feed itself. And since I left the Senate, there have likely been several more.”

“I find that hard to believe. Why? I mean, it seems very shortsighted.”

“Exactly. The Federation has kept going through expansion, by finding new planets to exploit. This has been the policy for the last hundred years, give or take a decade. But in the last fifty, only a handful of habitable worlds have been discovered—the rest were places where establishing a new colony would either be prohibitively expensive, or so unattractive that the only way to get people there was to ship them out and force them to live there, which is quite costly. But the basic idea is that restraint is unnecessary. This is the foundation of the Expansionist philosophy, which is that unlimited growth is not only possible, but is also desirable. They remain blind to the actuality, which is that there are fewer and fewer habitable planets to be had in this region of space. And because the worlds they are exploiting are farther and farther away from the center of the Federation, the governing of these places becomes more and more difficult, demanding more and more resources to maintain contact, longer and longer journeys between worlds, with greater and greater cost to haul the raw materials home to Terra. So they want the member worlds to surrender everything they have, and be taxed for it as well. The home world, and a few other planets have become parasites on the rest of the Federation.”

“Taxed to send their food to Terra?” Mikhail knew he was tired, but he was not sure he had understood his father-in-law.

“Yes.”

“But, Lew, that is insane. Why would anyone pay to have their wheat sent somewhere else?”

“By using the media to convince the population that they derive some benefit from being taxed and starved at the same time.”

“But what possible benefit . . . ?”

“They are persuaded that by being taxed to support the Spaceforce, they are being protected from some imaginary enemy—aliens that are destined to appear in the skies and conquer them. They do not see that the real enemy has become the Federation itself. There are, at present, weapons that can reduce a planet to molten slag in hours, things created to defend against this phantom race, which are actually being used to keep the member worlds in line. The only thing that keeps the whole situation from dissolving into chaos is that the expense of such things is enormous—sending a fleet of ships to destroy a planet costs a great deal, not to mention that it is poor policy. It is very hard to keep the knowledge of something that monumental out of the newsfaxes, and it tends to make other worlds more anxious, rather than more obedient. The Federation has become rather like a big bully, kicking smaller children around just because it can. And, until now, the existence of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies has acted as a restraint on such insane undertakings.”