with Kate. Nothing, most likely, since they must record millions of such
incidents every night. Still, the lack of real privacy rankled, the more so
because he was sure he was being observed even now. The things that human beings
would do in the name of order never failed to astound him.
Now, all he had to do was remember what had awakened him, and get back to sleep.
Something was most assuredly up, but it had felt that way for weeks. He had
caught the occasional thoughts in the minds of his fellow legislators, and they
were deeply perturbed. This was not limited to the opposition either, for he had
noticed more than a few Expansionist Senators mentally squirming, their thoughts
giving lie to the words issuing from their mouths. Lacking the Alton Gift of
forced rapport, which had given his predecessor such an advantage, Herm made do
with scraps of unguarded thought, and what he mostly heard was more banal or
self-serving than useful.
The halls and conference rooms of the Senate Building were permeated with fear
these days, and Herm had observed long-time allies eyeing one another
suspiciously. There was good reason to be afraid. Opposition to Expansionist
strategies was dangerous, and more than a few Senators had had unexplained
accidents or sudden illnesses in the last few years. Trust and the capacity for
reasonable compromise, the foundation stones of representative government, had
vanished almost completely, replaced by a wariness and paranoia that was
chilling to glimpse in the unguarded minds of his fellows. It made the actions
of people like Senator Ilmurit appear impossibly brave. She had crossed the
aisle with seven other moderates and unwound the tenuously held majority the
Expansionists had achieved with such enormous effort, and not a little treachery
as well.
His eyes itched furiously, and his muscles twitched. It was infuriating, too,
for he knew that he would not have had a vision for any trivial matter. He did
not have the Aldaran Gift very strongly, but when it manifested itself, it was
always important. Twice in the years he had served as Darkover's Senator it had
helped him avoid political traps and betrayals.
He closed his eyes, feeling the tug of exhaustion, and tried to recall the
warning that had awakened him. It was muddled, a collection of voices, shouts of
distress and words he could barely make out. It took him several minutes of
intense concentration to realize that it was not one thing, but two separate
events, shuffled together so it was difficult to distinguish between them.
Two women? Yes, that was right. Who? Neither was his Kate, nor the voices of any
of the female Senators or Deputies he knew. Then he recognized one, the very
familiar voice of Sandra Nagy, the current Premier of the Federation. He had not
known it at first because he was accustomed to her usually pleasant alto, the
one in which she gave addresses which were broadcast throughout the reaches of
the Terran Federation, explaining why taxes would be raised again, or why combat
troops had been used against civilian populations.
Herm suddenly realized that he had had no vision, and no dream either, but
instead the experience of clairaudience, which was the rarest manifestation of
the Aldaran Gift. He had heard the future-if only he could remember the bedamned
words! He tensed, knitting his brow fiercely, willing his mind to cough up some
clarity and sense. Concentrate on Nagy, he told himself, and ignore the other
sounds.
"I cannot permit the functioning of the Federation government to remain at a
halt any longer," Herm heard at last. "Since it is clear that the opposition is
determined to hold the legislature hostage to their own inexplicable and selfish
goals, I have no choice but to dissolve both the Senate and the Chamber of
Deputies until such time as new elections can be held and order restored."
Herm sat stunned for a moment. When was this going to occur? The Aldaran
foresight was never exact, and it rarely offered such useful things as dates or
times. He did not doubt the forehearing, however, but could only try to think
what it would mean for Darkover.
It was not a complete surprise, for it had always been a possibility, under the
constitution of the Federation. No Premier had disbanded the government in more
than a century, since before the Terrans had come to Darkover, but he had read
the history of such events. What he knew did not reassure him. As often as not,
it was a first move to tyranny, oppression, and suffering. And the Federation
had already gone a good way in that direction, with their spy eyes in even the
meanest domicile, all in the name of security. There was an ever present fear of
rebellion which had grown over the past decade until it colored everything. Even
those Senators who were reasonable men and women seemed to have caught the
contagion. As for the Expansionist members, they drank in their imagined
responses to such revolts like fine wine, getting tipsy on vintage visions of
retaliation. Sometimes he almost thought they enjoyed their fever dreams of a
galaxy-wide apocalypse.
Lew Alton had been right all those years before-the Federation was going to hell
in a handcart. The miracle was that it had taken this long. But what should he
do now? And what of the other voice, the less distinct one, the unknown woman
who had cried in his mind?
Run!
The single word in his mind rang like a great bell, blotting out all other
considerations for a moment. Hermes-Gabriel Aldaran was afraid, and he felt no
shame in confessing it to himself. He half rose off the uncomfortable stool,
then sank back again. There were eyes watching him, and while it might be days
or even weeks before any human eyes studied the record of this particular
moment, he must be careful not to behave in a manner that would draw attention
to his actions. He had Kate and the children to think of.
He went over the remembered words again, feeling more and more frustrated. When
was she going to make this devastating announcement? What good did it do him to
have foreknowledge if he lacked any clue as to whether the foreseen events would
occur tomorrow or next week! Herm made himself consider the immediate situation
as calmly and objectively as he was able. A handful of worlds were simmering on
the edge of rebellion, and when the Premier disbanded the legislature, at least
one of them would use it as an excuse to try to break with the Federation. He
understood that, but he could not be sure that Nagy did. Her advisory council
was made up almost entirely of the more extreme voices in the Party, those who
sincerely believed that they knew better how to run the lives of everyone on
Federation planets than their native peoples did themselves.
And what would the dissolution of the legislature mean for the governors, kings,
and other ruling bodies of the member planets? Without representation, they
would lose their voices completely. Would she suspend the Federation
Constitution and institute martial law? Herm rubbed the short beard around his
mouth reflectively. No, she would not go that far-at least not immediately.
&
nbsp; Instead, she and her cronies would wait for some planet to rebel, and use that
as an excuse to declare a state of emergency. This was the logical course.
Had troops already been deployed to those planets regarded as either dangerous
or potentially disloyal? Herm did not know, and there was no way he could gain
access to the files where such information might exist without arousing
immediate suspicion. He had better assume that portions of the Fleet were in
place or on their way, just to be safe. Hadn't there been something about some
war games in the Castor sector? He scratched his head and flogged his weary
brain to remember. Yes, it was Castor. There were two worlds there which he
would focus on, if he were some Expansionist strategist looking for trouble.
Satisfied for the instant that he had theorized as well as he could without any
real information, Herm tried to analyze his own situation. Where did he stand?
He was the unaligned Senator of a Protected Planet, and not an overt threat to
anyone. He had been careful to cultivate an unthreatening personality, and this
had served him well enough during his years. But Herm knew the tenor of the
Expansionist mind well enough to realize that if you were not their ally, you
were regarded as an enemy. He had seen some of his friends in the Senate
destroyed by scandals that he knew were trumped up, and he did not want to wait
around to find out if he would become the latest victim. That was unlikely,
because Darkover was not an important world. But he had Kate and the children to
consider, not just his own Aldaran hide. And once the Senate was disbanded, he
would no longer have the immunity of his office to protect him and his family.
He could be arrested then, or worse. If only he were not so weary and was able
to think with a clear head. Instead, he was just plain scared, and was
attempting to resist the impulse to flee.
Herm decided that he had to try to discover when Sandra Nagy was actually going
to drop her political bomb, before he did anything more. He rose from the stool
and padded across to the household terminal, knowing that at least this action
would not arouse much attention from the spy eyes in the walls. He was in the
habit of accessing the newsfeeds several times a day, and even at night if he
couldn't sleep, as he was now. Indeed, it was such a typical thing that it might
allay suspicion rather than otherwise.
He pressed his hand against the glassy surface of the comlink and waited. For
several seconds nothing happened and his heart began to beat a bit faster,
fearing that he was too late, and that events had rushed beyond his control,
that he would be denied access and a goon squad of Expansionist bully boys would
come knocking at the door. Then he scolded himself silently. The system had been
sluggish for weeks now, due to power blackouts that occasionally blinded half a
continent for hours at a time.
Everything on the planet-from voting to food ordering-was dependent on these
electronic links. But the shortsightedness of the Expansionists had blocked the
funds for improvements, and now the system was beginning to fall apart. It was,
Herm knew, symptomatic of all that was wrong in the Federation. Infrastructures
were decaying, and no one was able to get a bill through the legislature to do
anything about it. The population kept increasing, but the services that
supported the people were deteriorating, because the funds needed were being
spent on armaments, on the construction of military ships and the training of
troops. It was folly, and he knew that he was not the only one who was aware of
it. Unfortunately, no one wanted to hear his voice, or those of others who
suggested that spending on defense over basic needs was unsupportable.
He thought about his studies of history. However reluctantly they had begun,
they were now almost an obsession. His love of history was one of the few
pleasures outside his family that he had, an escape from the dreadful present he
was living through. For some reason he found himself remembering the tale of a
great empire which had existed on Terra just before the age of space travel, a
nation that covered most of what had been called Asia and Europe. For half a
century it had devoted itself to preparations for a war that never came, and
finally it had collapsed into bits and pieces, bankrupted by its own fear.
Perhaps the Expansionist movement would run the same course. This thought gave
him cold comfort while he waited.
At last the terminal blinked into life. He scrolled the most recent newsfeeds,
scanning the words rapidly, looking for any clues that might tell him how much
time he had. He ignored reports of food shortages, yet another water riot in the
Indonesian islands, the arrival of the Governor of Tau Ceti III for a state
visit, and several other items. Ah, here it was, a terse tidbit buried at the
end of the most recent feed. The Premier had announced a major speech before the
combined houses three days hence. So, that was how much time he had to get as
far away as he could. Not much, but enough. It felt right, down in his bones,
just as Lew had said it would. And clever as he was, he had always kept a means
of escape open.
For an instant all he could think of was that he was, at last, going to go back
to Darkover-immediately. A wave of relief made him grin at the flashing screen.
But, in all likelihood, he was not coming back, and that presented a fresh set
of problems. He must take Kate and the children with him. That was simple
enough, except that she would have questions about why they were abandoning
their home. And he could hardly tell her the truth, for that would alert the
monitors in the walls.
Hermes sighed. Life as a bachelor had been much simpler, but less satisfactory.
Kate was an intelligent woman; she would just have to trust him because she
would know he was thinking of their best interests. He spent a futile moment
worrying over uprooting the children, and then forced it out of his mind. They
were young and adaptable, and it was more important to keep them from harm than
to worry about anything else. Later, out of reach of constant surveillance, he
would explain things. It was not something he looked forward to. She would tear
a strip off his hide for not finding some way of telling her earlier and it was
probably less than he deserved.
With a grunt, he keyed a program into the comlink, one that had been placed
there years before. A message popped up on the screen, with all the correct
codes, telling him to return to Darkover immediately. He suppressed a grin,
knowing it for a clever fraud, and hoping that the information ferrets had never
discovered its existence. It certainly looked official, and if no one examined
it too closely, it should allow him to remove himself and his family from
danger.
Herm looked at it, tried to appear startled, scratching his head fretfully and
muttered. Then, with a pleasure he had difficulty concealing, he keyed in
another program. There was a further delay, and sweat puddled under his arms and
ran down his sides. Then, almost magicially, he found an open passage across
> Federation space booked on the first departing ship, in perfect order. It
allowed him to use his privileged position to usurp the first available cabin,
in the first class section of a Big Ship.
He derived a grim pleasure from using his trapdoor. These days, with the
Expansionist restrictions, it sometimes took months to book passage, unless one
had friends in the right places. But as a Senator he could still pull rank, even
though he knew it meant that he would almost certainly disrupt some complete
stranger's travel plans. He calmed his conscience by remembering it would likely
discomfort some Expansionist party loyalist, since these were the people
permitted travel for the most part.
The link scrolled and made a faint and not unpleasant humming noise as it
worked. After several minutes a display came up, a routing with a transfer to
Vainwal. The system accepted it without query, and he had the booking arranged.
They had six hours to get their things together and go to the port. It was not a
great deal of time, and he prayed that Katherine would not argue too much.
He allowed his shoulders to slump a little, exhausted from the tension of his
efforts. As he relaxed, he heard the voices in his dream return, and realized
that he still had not thought about the second one, the unknown voice, fainter
than Nagy's. Frustrated, he struggled to hear it. Herm forced himself to take
several deep breaths, to create some patience when what he most desired was
action. He had only deciphered half the puzzle, and the second voice was likely
as important as the first. He must not be hasty. It was hard. Focus,
particularly when he was tired, was a difficult discipline. He shut his eyes and
balled his fists, willing his mind to bring back the faint, distant words. There
was nothing for a moment, and then a flood of images danced across his eyelids.
He saw sheets of paper with neat lines on them, and then a bottle of ink fell
over, spreading across the pages. Something has happened to Regis!
The words made him tremble. Herm forced himself to remain seated for a minute,
calming his mind as well as he could. Perhaps his false message from Darkover
was truer than he had imagined. He had no idea whose voice it was, reaching
through time and space, across untold lightyears, to find him in dream and rouse