The Rebel Worlds

McCormac swallowed. After a moment: “You’re a remarkable fellow, Commander. How old are you?”

“Half your age. And yet I have to tell you the facts of life.”

“Why should I heed you,” McCormac asked, but subduedly, “when you serve that abominable government? When you claim to have ruined my cause?”

“It was ruined anyway. I know how well your opposition’s Fabian strategy was working. What we hope to do — Kathryn and I — we hope to prevent you from dragging more lives, more treasure, more Imperial strength down with you.”

“Our prospects weren’t that bad. I was evolving a plan—”

“The worst outcome would have been your victory.”

“What? Flandry, I … I’m human, I’m fallible, but anyone would be better on the throne than that Josip who appointed that Snelund.”

With the specter of a smile, because his own fury was dying out and a measure of pity was filling the vacuum, Flandry replied: “Kathryn still accords with you there. She still feels you’re the best imaginable man for the job. I can’t persuade her otherwise, and haven’t tried very hard. You see, it doesn’t matter whether she’s right or wrong. The point is, you might have given us the most brilliant administration in history, and nevertheless your accession would have been catastrophic.”

“Why?”

“You’d have destroyed the principle of legitimacy. The Empire will outlive Josip. Its powerful vested interests, its cautious bureaucrats, its size and inertia, will keep him from doing enormous harm. But if you took the throne by force, why shouldn’t another discontented admiral do the same in another generation? And another and another, till civil wars rip the Empire to shreds. Till the Merseians come in, and the barbarians. You yourself hired barbarians to fight Terrans, McCormac. No odds whether or not you took precautions, the truth remains that you brought them in, and sooner or later we’ll get a rebel who doesn’t mind conceding them territory. And the Long Night falls.”

“I could not disagree more,” the admiral retorted with vehemence. “Restructuring a decadent polity—”

Flandry cut him off. “I’m not trying to convert you either. I’m simply explaining why I did what I did.” We need not tell you that I’d have abandoned my duty for Kathryn. That makes no difference any more — interior laughter jangled — except that It would blunt the edge of my sermon. “You can’t restructure something that’s been irreparably undermined. All your revolution has managed to do is get sophonts killed, badly needed ships wrecked, trouble brewed that’ll be years in settling — on this critical frontier.”

“What should I have done instead!” McCormac disputed. “Leave my wife and myself out of it. Think only what Snelund had already done to this sector. What he would do if and when he won back to Terra. Was there another solution but to strike at the root of our griefs and dangers?”

“ ‘Root’ — radix — you radicals are all alike,” Flandry said. “You think everything springs from one or two unique causes, and if only you can get at them, everything will automatically become paradisical. History doesn’t go that way. Read some and see what the result of every resort to violence by reformists has been.”

“Your theory!” McCormac said, flushing. “I … we were faced with a fact.”

Flandry shrugged. “Many moves were possible,” he said. “A number had been started: complaints to Terra, pressure to get Snelund removed from office or at least contained in his scope. Failing that, you might have considered assassinating him. I don’t deny he was a threat to the Empire. Suppose, specifically, after your friends liberated you, you’d gotten together a small though efficient force and mounted a raid on the palace for the limited purposes of freeing Kathryn and killing Snelund. Wouldn’t that have served?”

“But what could we have done afterward?”

“You’d have put yourself outside the law.” Flandry nodded. “Same as I’ve done, though I hope to hide the guilt I don’t feel. Quite aside from my personal well-being, the fact would set a bad precedent if it became public. Among your ignorances, McCormac, is that you don’t appreciate how essential a social lubricant hypocrisy is.”

“We couldn’t have … skulked.”

“No, you’d have had to do immediately what you and many others now have to do regardless — get out of the Empire.”

“Are you crazy? Where to?”

Flandry rose once more and looked down upon him. “You’re the crazy man,” he said. “I suppose we are decadent these days, in that we never seem to think of emigration. Better stay home, we feel, and cling to what we have, what we know, our comforts, our assurances, our associations … rather than vanish forever into that big strange universe … even when everything we cling to is breaking apart in our hands. But the pioneers worked otherwise. There’s room yet, a whole galaxy beyond these few stars we think we control, out on the far end of one spiral arm.

“You can escape if you start within the next several hours. With that much lead, and dispersal in addition, your ships ought to be able to pick up families, and leave off the men who don’t want to go. Those’ll have to take their chances with the government, though I imagine necessity will force it to be lenient. Set a rendezvous at some extremely distant star. None of your craft will likely be pursued much past the border if they happen to be detected.

“Go a long way, McCormac, as far as you possibly can. Find a new planet. Found a new society. Never come back.”

The admiral raised himself too. “I can’t abandon my responsibilities,” he groaned.

“You did that when you rebelled,” Flandry said. “Your duty is to save what you can, and live the rest of your life knowing what you wrought here. Maybe the act of leading people to a fresh begi

McCormac blinked hard.

“Never come back,” Flandry repeated. “Don’t think of recruiting a barbarian host and returning. You’d be the enemy then, the real enemy. I want your word of honor on that. If you don’t give it to me, and to Kathryn, she won’t be allowed to rejoin you, whatever you may do to me.” I lie like a wet rag. “If you do give it, and break it, she will not pardon you.

“In spite of your behavior, you are an able leader. You’re the one man who can hope to carry the emigration off, in as short a while as you have to inform, persuade, organize, act. Give me your word, and Kathryn will ride back in my gig to you.”

McCormac covered his face. “Too sudden, I can’t—”

“Well, let’s thresh out a few practical questions first, if you like. I’ve pondered various details beforehand.”

“But — I couldn’t—”

“Kathryn is your woman, all right,” Flandry said bitterly. “Prove to me that you’re her man.”

She was waiting at the airlock. The hours had circled her like wolves. He wished that his last sight of her could be without that anguish and exhaustion.

“Dominic?” she whispered.

“He agreed,” Flandry told her. “You can go to him.”

She swayed. He caught her and held her. “Now, now,” he said clumsily, nigh to tears. He stroked the bright tousled hair. “Now, now, it’s ended, we’ve won, you and I—” She slumped. He barely kept her from falling.

With the dear weight in his arms, he went to sickbay, laid her down and administered a stimulol injection. Color appeared in seconds, her lashes fluttered, the green eyes found him. She sat erect. “Dominic!” she cried. Weeping had harshened her voice. “’Tis true?”

“See for yourself,” he smiled. “Uh, take care, though. I gave you a minimum shot. You’ll have a stiff metabolic price to pay as is.”