Traitor's Sun

  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