The Stars, Like Dust

All of Aratap's philosophy could not completely wipe out the feeling of regret within him. For a while he had not been himself, but his father over again. He, too, these last weeks had been leading a squadron of ships against the enemies of the Khan.

But these were degenerate days, and where there might have been a rebellion world, there was none. There were no enemies of the Khan after all; no worlds to gain. He remained only a Commissioner, still condemned to the soothing of little troubles. No more.

Yet regret was a useless emotion. It accomplished nothing.

He said, "So you are right. There is no rebellion world."

He sat down and motioned Biron into a seat as well. "I want to talk to you."

The young man was staring solemnly at him, and Aratap found himself gently amazed that they had met first less than a month ago. The boy was older now, far more than a month older, and he had lost his fear. Aratap thought to himself, I am growing completely decadent. How many of us are beginning to like individuals among our subjects? How many of us wish them well?

He said, "I am going to release the Director and his daughter. Naturally, it is the politically intelligent thing to do. In fact, it is politically inevitable. I think, though, that I will release them now and send them back on the Remorseless. Would you care to pilot them?"

Biron said, "Are you freeing me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You saved my ship, and my life as well."

"I doubt that personal gratitude would influence your actions in matters of state."

Aratap was within a hair of laughing outright. He did like the boy. "Then I'll give you another reason. As long as I was tracking a giant conspiracy against the Khan, you were dangerous. When that giant conspiracy failed to materialize, when all I had was a Linganian cabal of which the leader is dead: you were no longer dangerous. In fact, it would be dangerous to try either you or the Linganian captives.

"The trials would be in Linganian courts and therefore not under our full control. They would inevitably involve discussion of the so-called rebellion world. And though there is none, half the subjects of Tyrann would think there might be one after all, that where there was such a deal of drumming, there must be a drum. We would have given them a concept to rally round, a reason for revolt, a hope for the future. The Tyrannian realm would not be free of rebellion this side of a century."

"Then you free us all?"

"It will not be exactly freedom, since none of you is exactly loyal. We will deal with Lingane in our own way, and the next Autarch will find himself bound by closer ties to the Khanate. It will be no longer an Associated State, and trials involving Linganians will not necessarily be tried in Linganian courts hereafter. Those involved in the conspiracy, including those in our hands now, will be exiled to worlds nearer Tyrann, where they will be fairly harmless. You yourself cannot return to Nephelos and need not expect to be restored to your Ranch. You will stay on Rhodia, along with Colonel Rizzett."

"Good enough, " said Biron, "but what of the Lady Artemisia's marriage?"

"You wish it stopped?"

"You must know that we would like to marry each other. You said once there might be some way of stopping the Tyrannian affair."

"At the time I said that I was trying to accomplish something. What is the old saying? 'The lies of lovers and diplomats shall be forgiven them.' "

"But there is a way, Commissioner. It need only be pointed out to the Khan that when a powerful courtier would marry into an important subject family, it may be motives of ambition that lead him on. A subject revolt may be led by an ambitious Tyrannian as easily as by an ambitious Linganian."

Aratap did laugh this time. "You reason like one of us. But it wouldn't work. Would you want my advice?"

"What would it be?"

"Marry her yourself, quickly. A thing once done would be difficult to undo under the circumstances. We would find another woman for Pohang."

Biron hesitated. Then he put out a hand. "Thank you, sir."

Aratap took it. "I don't like Pohang particularly, anyway. Still, there is one thing further for you to remember. Don't let ambition mislead you. Though you marry the Director's daughter, you will never yourself be Director. You are not the type we want."

Aratap watched the shrinking Remorseless in the visiplate and was glad the decision had been made. The young man was free; a message was already on its way to Tyrann through the sub-ether. Major Andros would undoubtedly swell into apoplexy, and there would not be wanting men at court to demand his recall as Commissioner.

If necessary, he would travel to Tyrann. Somehow he would see the Khan and make him listen. Given all the facts, the King of Kings would see plainly that no other course of action was possible, and thereafter he could defy any possible combination of enemies.

The Remorseless was only a gleaming dot now, scarcely distinguishable from the stars that were beginning to surround it now that they were emerging from the Nebula.

Rizzett watched the shrinking Tyrannian flagship in the visiplate. He said, "So the man let us got You know, if the Tyranni were all like him, damned if I wouldn't join their fleet. It upsets me in a way. I have definite notions of what Tyranni are like, and he doesn't fit. Do you suppose he can hear what we say?"

Biron set the automatic controls and swiveled in the pilot's seat. "No. Of course not. He can follow us through hyperspace as he did before, but I don't think he can put a spy beam on us. You remember that when he first captured us all he knew about us was what he overheard on the fourth planet. No more."

Artemisia stepped into the pilot room, her finger on her lips. "Not too loudly," she said. "I think he's sleeping now. It won't be long before we reach Rhodia, will it, Biron?"

"We can do it in one Jump, Arta. Aratap had it calculated for us."

Rizzett said, "I've got to wash my hands."

They watched him leave, and then she was in Biron's arms. He kissed her lightly on forehead and eyes, then found her lips as his arms tensed about her. The kiss came to a lingering and breathless end. She said, "I love you very much," and he said, "I love you more than I can say." The conversation that followed was both as unoriginal as that and as satisfying.

Biron said after a while, "Will he marry us before we land?"

Artemisia frowned a little. "I tried to explain that he's Director and captain of the ship and that there are no Tyranni here. I don't know though. He's quite upset. He's not himself at all, Biron. After he's rested, I'll try again."

Biron laughed softly. "Don't worry. He'll be persuaded."

Rizzett's footsteps were noisy as he returned. He said, "I wish we still had the trailer. There isn't room here to take a deep breath."

Biron said, "We'll be on Rhodia in a matter of hours. We'll be Jumping soon."

"I know." Rizzett scowled. "And we'll stay on Rhodia till we die. Not that I'm complaining overloud; I'm glad I'm alive. But it's a silly end to it all."

"There hasn't been any ending," said Biron softly.

Rizzett looked up. "You mean we can start allover? No, I don't think so. You can, perhaps, but not I. I'm too old and there's nothing left for me. Lingane will be dragged into line and I'll never see it again. That bothers me most of all, I think. I was born there and lived there all my life. I won't be but half a man anywhere else. You're young; you'll forget Nephelos."

"There's more to life than a home planet, Tedor. It's been our great shortcoming in the past centuries that we've been unable to recognize that fact. All planets are our home planets."

"Maybe. Maybe. If there had been a rebellion world, why, then, it might have been so."

"There is a rebellion world, Tedor."

Rizzett said sharply, "I'm in no mood for that, Biron."

"I'm not telling a lie. There is such a world and I know its location. I might have known it weeks ago, and so might anyone in our party. The facts were all there. They were knocking at my mind without being able to get in until that moment on the fourth planet when you and I had beat down Jonti. Do you remember him standing there, saying that we would never find the fifth planet without his help? Do you remember his words?"

"Exactly? No."

"I think I do. He said, 'There is an average of seventy cubic light-years per star. If you work by trial and error, without me, the odds are two hundred and fifty quadrillion to one against your coming within a billion miles of any star. Any star!' It was at that moment, I think, that the facts got into my mind. I could feel the click."

"Nothing clicks in my mind," said Rizzett. "Suppose you explain a bit."

Artemisia said, "I don't see what you can mean, Biron."

Biron said, "Don't you see that it is exactly those odds which Gillbret is supposed to have defeated? You remember his story. The meteor hit, deflected his ship's course, and at the end of its Jumps, it was actually within a stellar system. That could have happened only by a coincidence so incredible as to be not worth any belief."

"Then it was a madman's story and there is no rebellion world."

"Unless there is a condition under which the odds against landing within a stellar system are less incredible, and there is such a condition. In fact, there is one set of circumstances, and only one, under which he must have reached a system. It would have been inevitable."

"Well?"

"You remember the Autarch's reasoning. The engines of Gillbret's ship were not interfered with, so the power of the hyperatomic thrusts, or, in other words, the lengths of the Jumps, were not changed. Only their direction was changed in such a way that one of the five stars in an incredibly vast area of the Nebula was reached. It was an interpretation which, on the very face of it, was improbable."

"But the alternative?"

"Why, that neither power nor direction was altered. There is no real reason to suppose the direction of drive to have been interfered with. That was only assumption. What if the ship had simply followed its original course? It had been aimed at a stellar system, therefore it ended in a stellar system. The matter of odds doesn't enter."

"But the stellar system it was aimed at-"

"-was that of Rhodia. So he went to Rhodia. Is that so obvious that it's difficult to grasp?"

Artemisia said, "But then the rebellion world must be at home! That's impossible."

"Why impossible? It is somewhere in the Rhodian System. There are two ways of hiding an object. You can put it where no one can find it, as, for instance, within the Horsehead Nebula. Or else you can put it where no one would ever think of looking, right in front of their eyes in plain view.

"Consider what happened to Gillbret after landing on the rebellion world. He was returned to Rhodia alive. His theory was that this was in order to prevent a Tyrannian search for the ship which might come dangerously close to the world itself. But then why was he kept alive? If the ship had been returned with Gillbret dead, the same purpose would have been accomplished and there would have been no chance of Gillbret's talking, as, eventually, he did.

"Again, that can only be explained by supposing the rebellion world to be within the Rhodian System. Gillbret was a Hinriad, and where else would there be such respect for the life of a Hinriad but in Rhodia?"

Artemisia's hands clenched spasmodically. "But if what you say is true, Biron, then Father is in terrible danger."

"And has been for twenty years," agreed Biron, "but perhaps not in the manner you think. Gillbret once told me how difficult it was to pretend to be a dilettante and a good-for-nothing, to pretend so hard that one had to live the part even with friends and even when alone. Of course, with him, poor fellow, it was largely self-dramatization. He didn't really live the part. His real self came out easily enough with you, Arta. It showed to the Autarch. He even found it necessary to show it to me on fairly short acquaintance.

"But it is possible, I suppose, to really live such a life completely, if your reasons are sufficiently important. A man might live a lie even to his daughter, be willing to see her terribly married rather than risk a lifework that depended on complete Tyrannian trust, be willing to seem half a madman-"

Artemisia found her voice. She said huskily, "You can't mean what you're saying!"

"There is no other meaning possible, Arta. He has been Director over twenty years. In that time Rhodia has been continually strengthened by territory granted it by the Tyranni, because they felt it would be safe with him. For twenty years he has organized rebellion without interference from them, because he was so obviously harmless."

"You're guessing, Biron," said Rizzett, "and this kind of a guess is as dangerous as the ones we've made before."

Biron said, "This is no guess. I told Jonti in that last discussion of ours that he, not the Director, must have been the traitor who murdered my father, because my father would never have been foolish enough to trust the Director with any incriminating information. But the point is-and I knew it at the time-that this was just what my father did. Gillbret learned of Jonti's conspiratorial role through what he overheard in the discussions between my father and the Director. There is no other way in which he could have learned it.

"But a stick points both ways. We thought my father was working for Jonti and trying to enlist the support of the Director. Why is it not equally probable, or even more probable, that he was working for the Director and that his role within Jonti's organization was as an agent of the rebellion world attempting to prevent a premature explosion on Lingane that would ruin two decades of careful planning?

"Why do you suppose it seemed so important to me to save Aratap's ship when Gillbret shorted the motors? It wasn't for myself. I didn't, at the time, think Aratap would free me, no matter what. It wasn't even so much for you, Arta. It was to save the Director. He was the important man among us. Poor Gillbret didn't Understand that."

Rizzett shook his head. "I'm sorry. I just can't make myself believe all that."

It was a new voice that spoke. "You may as well. It is true." The Director was standing just outside the door, tall and somber-eyed. It was his voice and yet not quite his voice. It was crisp and sure of itself.

Artemisia ran to him. "Father! Biron says-"

"I heard what Biron said." He was stroking her hair with long, gentle motions of the hand. "And it is true. I would even have let your marriage take place."

She stepped back from him, almost in embarrassment. "You sound so different. You sound almost as if-"

"As if I weren't your father." He said it sadly. "It will not be for long, Arta. When we are back on Rhodia, I will be as you knew me, and you must accept me so."

Rizzett stared at him, his usually ruddy complexion as gray as his hair. Biron was holding his breath.

Hinrik said, "Come here, Biron."

He placed a hand on Biron's shoulder. "There was a time, young man, when I was ready to sacrifice your life. The time may come again in the future. Until a certain day I can protect neither of you. I can be nothing but what I have always seemed. Do you understand that?"

Each nodded.

"Unfortunately," said Hinrik, "damage has been done. Twenty years ago I was not as hardened to my role as I am today. I should have ordered Gillbret killed, but I could not. Because I did not, it is now known that there is a rebellion world and that I am its leader."

"Only we know that," said Biron.

Hinrik smiled bitterly. "You think that because you are young. Do you think Aratap is less intelligent than yourself? The reasoning by which you determined the location and leadership of the rebellion world is based on facts known to him, and he can reason as well as you. It is merely that he is older, more cautious; that he has grave responsibilities. He must be certain.

"Do you think he released you out of sentiment? I believe that you have been freed now for the same reason you were freed once before-simply that you might lead him farther along the path that leads to me."

Biron was pale. "Then I must leave Rhodia?"

"No. That would be fatal. There would seem no reason for you to leave, save the true one. Stay with me and they will remain uncertain. My plans are nearly completed. One more year, perhaps, or less."

"But Director, there are factors you may not be aware of. There is the matter of the document-"

"For which your father was searching?"

"Yes."

"Your father, my boy, did not know all there was to know. It is not safe to have anyone in possession of all the facts. The old Rancher discovered the existence of the document independently in the references to it in my library. I'll give him credit. He recognized its significance. But if he had consulted me, I would have told him it was no longer on Earth."

"That's exactly it, sir. I am certain the Tyranni have it."

"But of course not. 1 have it. I've had it for twenty years. It was what started the rebellion world, for it was only when I had it that I knew we could hold our winnings once we had won."

"It is a weapon, then?"

"It is the strongest weapon in the universe. It will destroy the Tyranni and us alike, but will save the Nebular Kingdoms. Without it, we could perhaps defeat the Tyranni, but we would only have exchanged one feudal despotism for another, and as the Tyranni are plotted against, we would be plotted against. We and they must both be delivered into the ashcan of outmoded political systems. The time for maturity has come as it once came on the planet Earth, and there will be a new kind of government, a kind that has never yet been tried in the Galaxy. There will be no Khans, no Autarchs, Directors, or Ranchers."

"In the name of Space," roared Rizzett suddenly, "what will there be?"

"People."

"People? How can they govern? There must be some one person to make decisions."

"There is a way. The blueprint I have, dealt with a small section of one planet, but it can be adapted to all the Galaxy."

The Director smiled. "Come, children, I may as well marry you. It can do little more harm now."

Biron's hand tightly enclosed Artemisia's and she was smiling at him. They felt the queer inward twinge as the Remorseless made its single precalculated Jump.

Biron said, "Before you start, sir, will you tell me something about the blueprint you mention, so that my curiosity will be satisfied and I can keep my mind on Arta?"

Artemisia laughed and said, "You had better do it, Father. I couldn't bear an abstracted groom."

Hinrik smiled. "I know the document by heart. Listen."

And with Rhodia's sun bright on the visiplate, Hinrik began with those words that were older-far older-than any of the planets in the Galaxy save one:

"'We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America...'"