David sat behind the desk in the pokey little study and worked his way doggedly through the paperwork. Some work couldn’t be avoided, if you didn’t want to wake up one morning and find they’d finessed everything you owned out from under you. He took a spiteful pleasure in making his signature as indecipherable as possible. Strictly speaking, he should have sealed each paper with wax, and stamped it with his Family ring and crest, but Owen still had the ring, bad cess to the man. David had ordered a new Family ring made for him, but had yet to make up his mind on the final design. By the end, he was just skimming through the papers, to make sure he wasn’t signing his own death warrant. Too many lines of dense print made his eyes ache. Kit sat off to one side, humming tunelessly. Kit liked to sing, but truth be told couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles on it. However, since no one had ever dared tell him that, he remained blissfully unaware that he had a voice like a goose farting in a fog. And David didn’t have the heart to tell him. For the moment Kit was amusing himself by staring unwaveringly at the Steward till the man all but squirmed in his buttoned-down shoes. The SummerIsle made the Steward nervous.
Hell, the SummerIsle made everyone nervous.
David signed the last page with a flourish and sat back in his chair with a theatrical sigh. He studied the Steward glumly as the man shuffled the papers together. The Steward reminded him of his many tutors (none of whom lasted long), who’d struggled with varying degrees of success to implant some useful learning into his rebellious young mind. Not a one of whom had ceased to remind him of his intellectual cousin Owen, the famed if minor historian. Owen was constantly held up as an example of everything David wasn’t and knew he never could be. No surprise, then, that David had despised his elder cousin before they ever met. They weren’t close, even by blood; Owen’s father, Arthur, had a younger brother, Saul. Saul married Elouise, whose sister Margaret was David’s mother. Under normal circumstances, David would have stood no chance at all of ever succeeding to the Family title, but the tainted inheritance of the boost killed a great many Deathstalkers before they ever reached maturity. So when Owen was outlawed, David found himself suddenly in possession of a title and responsibilities he’d never expected or really wanted.
Especially if all he ever got to do as Deathstalker was sign bloody papers.
The Steward finally nodded curtly, declaring himself satisfied for the moment, and David threw his pen out the window before the Steward could change his mind. “So,” he said peevishly, “can I finally go to my dinner now, or is there some scrap of parchment left in the Standing that I haven’t scrawled my name on?”
“That is the last of the documents, my lord,” the Steward said calmly. “But there is still a delegation of peasants waiting to meet you. You did say you would see them, my lord.”
“Did I?” said David, frowning. “I must have been drunk.”
“Let them wait till after dinner,” said Kit. “That’s what peasants are for.”
“No, Kit. If I promised, I promised. Where are they, Steward? Main hall? All right, lead the way. And don’t dawdle, or I’ll kick your ankles.”
The Steward gave him a bow calculated to the inch to be barely acceptable and led the way. David and Kit trailed after him. Kit sniffed loudly as his stomach rumbled.
“For my birthday, let me kill him, David.”
David had to laugh. “Sorry, Kit, but much as I hate to admit it, I need him. He’s the only one here who knows all the ins and out of running a Standing of this size. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Replacing him would be a nightmare. He’s made himself indispensable, and he knows it, the smug bastard.”
“Why are we seeing the peasants? It’s not as if we have to.”
“Yes we do. Or rather, I do. Partly because I want the locals to like me. Owen could never be bothered with them, which was why he had no one to turn to when the Empress outlawed him. That’s not going to happen to me. Then, the more contact and feedback I have with the locals, the less influence the Steward has. I want them looking to me for authority, not him. And finally, of late the peasants have been experimenting with a little local democracy, and I want to encourage them.”
“What the hell for?” said Kit, honestly shocked. “Peasants do as they’re told. That’s why they’re peasants. Allowing them to make decisions for themselves is just asking for trouble. Not least from Lionstone. If she finds out. . .”
“She won’t do anything, as long as the food keeps coming,” David said calmly. “The Empire relies on what we produce, and she knows it. As to why I’m encouraging the peasants, I admire their bravery, and I understand their need for a little personal independence. And it amuses me to think of Lionstone fuming helplessly. Besides, encouraging local democracy will keep the underground off our backs. Don’t worry, Kit, I know what I’m doing. Encouraging the peasants and undermining the Steward’s authority means I get to hear things I might otherwise not. No one’s going to catch me napping like they did Owen.”
The meeting went well. The peasants bowed respectfully to David and to Kit, said all the right things, and put forward a few modest proposals. David pretended to consider them for a moment and then gave his approval. Local democracy was alive and well on Virimonde, the Steward was quietly fuming, and as far as David was concerned, all was well with the world. He liked to see the peasants happy and the Steward unhappy. He was, at heart, a man of simple pleasures. The peasants bowed again, satisfyingly deeply, and left, happy and smiling. David allowed himself to think of dinner again. And that was when the Steward sprang his little surprise.
“What do you mean, more business?” snapped David. “I’ve signed everything that doesn’t move, and talked to everything that does. Whatever’s left can wait until after I’ve eaten, digested, and had a little nap.”
“I’m afraid not, my lord,” said the Steward, unruffled. “There has been a communication from the Empress herself, concerning her plans for the future of Virimonde. Plans which, I regret to say, will render your assurances to the peasants both redundant and meaningless.”
David looked sharply at the Steward. This was the first time he’d heard of any plans for Virimonde’s future. Especially from the Empress. He hadn’t thought Lionstone even knew where Virimonde was. And as Lord of the planet and its people, he should have been contacted well in advance of any plans. And there had been something in the Steward’s tone he hadn’t liked at all. Something almost smug, and knowing. David scowled at the Steward, and sank back into his chair. If this was something the Steward didn’t think he’d approve of, he wanted to know what it was right now.
“All right, Steward, put it on the main screen. Let’s see what the Iron Bitch has to say for herself.”
The Steward nodded serenely and moved over to activate the viewscreen controls. The screen lit up on the wall before David and Kit, and the nightmare began. Lionstone provided the voice-over, but the images on the screen were clear enough on their own. Virimonde was to become a completely automated world—one huge factory, from pole to pole. The towns and the villages and the great fields would vanish under miles-long sheds, with the livestock contained in pens, stacked hundreds high. Animals would be born in the cloning bays, live short, artificially fattened lives, and die in the attached slaughterhouses, without ever once seeing the outside world. Fed through tubes, lobotomized to keep them calm, slaughtered by machines. No more need for the countryside. No more need for farms or farmers. The computers would run everything. The peasants would be rounded up, transported to other worlds, and found useful work in factories. The projected meat production would rise thousands fold in the first year alone, and would pay for itself in ten years or less.
And that was Lionstone’s plan for Virimonde a future with no place in it for human hands. The final scene on the viewscreen was a computer simulation of what the new world would look like. A landscape of endless sheds and factories, with thick black smoke belching up from the slaughterhouse incinerators, as bones and hooves and other nonessentia
ls were melted down to make glue. Nothing would be wasted in the automated world. The screen went blank as the message ended, and the Steward coughed politely to remind them he was still there.
“Any questions, my lord?”
“Is she out of her tiny mind?” said David. “Does she really think I’ll stand for this? You can’t just destroy an entire world and its culture! The people here have traditions of service that go back centuries!”
“They’re just peasants,” said the Steward calmly. “Their duty and purpose is to serve, here or elsewhere, as the Empress commands. This new method of raising livestock will be much more efficient. I have the projected figures for the next ten years, if you’d care to see them.”
“Stuff the figures! What she’s planning is wrong. This is a human world, not some offshoot from Snub.”
“You should be proud, my lord. Virimonde is to be the first such planet, the prototype. Once its worth has been proved here, all other food-producing worlds will be transformed accordingly. Your present wealth will be greatly magnified.”
“Who cares about that?” said David, sticking his face right into the Steward’s. “Where’s the fun in ruling over one big factory? No, this obscenity will never happen here. Not as long as I’m Lord.”
“What can you do to stop it?” said Kit. “I mean, she’s the Empress. She makes the decisions. You argue about it too much, and she might declare you a traitor, just like Owen.”
“She wouldn’t really destroy a whole planet,” said David. “Would she?”
“Almost certainly,” said Kit. “It wasn’t that long ago she outlawed the planet Tannim, and had the whole planet scorched. Remember?”
David scowled. He remembered. Billions of people had died, a civilization gone up in flames, at the Empress’s command. “That was over politics. This is business.”
Kit shrugged. “Same thing, as often as not.”
“Yeah,” said David. “I know where this is coming from. Why she chose to start with my world. It’s because I’m a Deathstalker, and Owen’s had such a triumph on Mistworld. She can’t get at him, so she takes it out on me, the childish bitch. No, Kit, there’s no way I’m going to let her get away with this.”
“What can you do?” said Kit, reasonably.
“Nothing, I’m afraid, my lord,” said the Steward. His voice was deferential, as always, but David was sure he could see a dark satisfaction in the man’s eyes. “The Empress has never had much time for sentiment, and I doubt she will be swayed by any protest you might make. As I understand it, the transformation of food planets is part of a process to ensure an uninterrupted flow of food for the Empire during the projected future war with the aliens. As such, this becomes a matter of security, and is therefore not open to question. By anyone.”
“You knew about this!” said David. He grabbed the Steward by the shirtfront with both hands and slammed him back against the wall. “She couldn’t have brought her plans this far without consulting you first! She needed facts and figures, the kind only you had access to. Talk to me, damn you!”
“He can’t talk,” said Kit calmly. “You’re throttling him. Ease up, David, and let’s hear what he has to say. We can always kill him later.”
David let go of the Steward, and stepped back a pace, breathing heavily. The Steward put a hand to his throat as his breath returned, and glared at David, his servility discarded. “The Empress was kind enough to consult with me, yes. I did my best to be useful to her, as was my duty. You weren’t informed until now because you had nothing useful to add to the discussion. And because we expected precisely this kind of infantile behavior from you. There is nothing you can do, my lord. Nothing at all.”
“I can talk to the Company of Lords,” said David. “And Parliament, if need be. I’m not the only one with a personal stake in this. No other Lord will stand for this happening to one of their planets. Where’s the fun in being a Lord, without people to Lord it over? This new efficiency would leave us nothing more than factory managers. Tradespeople! No, the Lords will never accept this. Dammit, I came here for peace and relaxation, not to oversee the transformation of this world into one big battery farm! Get out of my sight, Steward. I’m sick of looking at you.”
The Steward bowed coldly and left. David leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily. Kit looked at him thoughtfully.
“Can we really stop her?” he said mildly. “If she makes this a matter of security . . .”
“Well, to start with I’ll send her a reply to this message that will make her ears burn. She thinks she can pressure me just because I haven’t been a Lord long. We have to stop her, Kit. These plans would undermine every Lord’s position. She’s trying to take away our power, in return for more money. Well, she’s miscalculated this time. Being a Lord has nothing to do with credits in a bank. Our peasants have always been loyal to us first, and only through us to the Empress. They’ve always been a potential army we could use to defend ourselves against Imperial aggression. Damn, this goes farther than I thought. This is a blow against the fundamental rights and powers of all Lords! With our planets controlled by computers, and our peasants scattered in factories on a dozen worlds, we’d have no real power base at all. If she gets away with this, Lionstone could break the power of the Lords once and for all.”
“Not all Lords,” said Kit. “Only those Families whose fortunes are tied to people and places. Other Clans, such as the Wolfes, draw their wealth and prestige from technology these days.”
“You’re right,” said David slowly. “This would hit the older, more traditional Families, who tend to oppose the Empress, while strengthening the position of the newer Clans, who tend to support her. Damn, this is complicated. Levels within bloody levels. Oh hell, I can’t think any more about this now. I can feel a really bad headache hovering over me.”
“Let’s go to dinner,” said Kit. “The world always looks better after a good meal.”
“To hell with dinner, I need a drink. Lots of drinks. Let’s go to the tavern in town, and see Alice and Jenny.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Kit.
High in orbit above Virimonde, unbeknownst to most of those below, the Imperial starcruiser Elegance. Her master, General Shaw Beckett, sat unhappily in his private quarters, drumming the fingers of one hand upon the armrest of his chair. If truth be told, he had no appetite for his present mission, but the Empress’s orders had been clear and quite specific, and as a good soldier he would do as he was told. It wasn’t the first time he’d followed orders he’d had no taste for, and he doubted it would be the last. Life was like that, more often than not, under the reign of Lionstone XIV, the Iron Bitch.
Beckett was a large man, and extremely fat, and his chair groaned slightly under him with every impatient movement. All of his invited guests were late, but there was nothing he could do to hurry them. Too much concern might appear as weakness, and this would be a bad group to appear weak in front of. They’d take advantage. Beckett looked testily about his quarters. He felt like throwing things, but there was nothing easily to hand that didn’t have some personal or sentimental value. Beckett liked to surround himself with personal items when he traveled, a little bit of home in a strange place. And if a General wasn’t entitled to a few home comforts in his quarters, he’d like to know who was.
He thought about this to keep from thinking about other things. There was a great deal in the near future that he preferred not to think about until he had to.
The door chimed politely, announcing his first visitor. Beckett growled “Enter,” and the door slid open to reveal Lord Valentine Wolfe, in all his morbid glory. He was dressed in exquisitely cut clothes of eye-blinding white, topped by a long black cloak with a scarlet interior. His long thin face was white as bone, save for the heavily mascaraed eyes and his wide crimson smile. A mane of jet black hair fell to his shoulders, with heavily oiled and scented ringlets. He carried a long-stemmed rose in one hand, its petals a deep purple, almost fleshy. The stem had v
icious thorns that made Beckett wince just to look at them. Valentine stood posed in the doorway a moment, so Beckett could appreciate the spectacle, and then he drifted casually forward into Beckett’s quarters. The door slid shut behind him, and Beckett felt a brief but very real twinge of unquiet, as though he was now trapped in a room with a deadly predator. As, in a very real sense, he was.
Valentine looked unhurriedly about him, taking in the various points of interest with his dark-lined eyes, and then dismissed them all with the merest twitch of one painted eyebrow. The Wolfe stopped before Beckett and bowed formally. Beckett nodded curtly in return, but didn’t bother to get up. It took a lot of effort to heave all his bulk up out of a chair, and he was damned if Valentine Wolfe was worth it. He gestured at an empty chair with one fat hand, and Valentine sank languorously into it.
“Greetings and salutations, dear General. You’ve done amazing things with your quarters. I don’t like them. But then, my tastes aren’t often appreciated by others.”
Beckett snorted. “Possibly because you’re a drug-soaked degenerate who’s so far gone you probably have to flip a coin to decide which way up you are.”
“Possibly,” said Valentine. “Can I interest you in a little something, General?”
“You can not,” said Beckett firmly. “I have no interest in clouding my mind with chemicals when there’s work to be done.”
“Such a narrow attitude,” Valentine said easily, delicately sniffing his rose and briefly worrying a petal with his teeth. “I’ve often found that the right substances, in the proper proportions and combinations, can be a positive boon to a man’s thoughts, leading to greater clarity and comprehension. Many the insight I’ve been granted, while all around remained lost in darkness. If you could only see the things I’ve seen, dear General, and the wonders that have been revealed to me. I ride my expanded consciousness like an unbridled horse, trampling lesser souls beneath me. However, for the moment I am entirely at your service, and just dying to hear all about our mission here.”