“METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT!…”
LaNague ignored it, expecting this kind of response. It was naïve, it was shortsighted, it was all too typical. It was why history repeated itself, over and over. What he had not expected was to be raised on this idiotic throne. He felt ridiculous and naked, like an oversized blaster target. For that feeling was back; the feeling that he was going to die.
He brushed it off again. It was just that he hadn’t heard from Kanya, which meant that Broohnin could still be loose with the trigger to the big Barsky box. If activated, it would mean instant death for LaNague and everyone in sight.
He looked around at the undulating mass of upturned faces, all joyous, all filled with unhoped-for hope, all sensing that they were midwives at the birth of something new. Just what it might be, they didn’t know, but it had to be better than what they had been living through recently.
Not all faces were smiling, however. He spotted Haworth looking up at him, his right hand pressed against his forehead – injured, perhaps? – a look of utter concentration on his face, his left eye squinted closed. The crowd seemed to be ignoring him despite his outlandish appearance. Metep had held the title and was therefore the power in the Imperium as far as the public was concerned. Only a few knew Haworth as the real decision-maker.
LaNague looked away from the chief adviser, back toward the huge expanse of the crowd stretching to the far end of Freedom Hall and out into the growing darkness beyond. As his head moved, however, he caught a glint at Haworth’s wrist out of the corner of his eye, and realized what the man was doing.
Pointing below, LaNague rose to his feet and shouted, “Daro Haworth!” The remote directional microphones, automatically trained on the seat’s occupant, Metep or not, amplified it to a “DARO HAWORTH!” that shook the walls.
Silence descended on Freedom Hall like a muffling cloak as Haworth was immediately grabbed and his arms pinned to his sides by a familiar middle-aged male figure.
“Release him,” LaNague said, his voice still amplified, but not to such a degree now that he was speaking in a more subdued tone. “And give him room.”
The crowd either would not or could not move away from Haworth. They kept pawing at him, shoving him.
“Give him room, please,” LaNague said from almost directly above the scene. When the crowd around Haworth still did not move back, he nodded to the middle-aged man who then touched a hand to his belt. The holosuit flickered off and suddenly there was a Flinter female in full battle regalia beside Haworth. And just as suddenly there was a circle of empty space around Haworth as people backed away. Kanya had returned.
“Go ahead, Mr. Haworth,” LaNague said in a soft voice audible to the end of Freedom Hall. “Kill me. That’s what you were about to do, wasn’t it? Do it. But bring your blaster out into the open so everyone can watch. When this mock trial was over and I was found guilty – the verdict was never in doubt, was it? – I was to be executed. But you were going to let someone else do the actual deed. Now that won’t be necessary. The pleasure is yours alone. Do it.”
LaNague felt dizzy standing there six meters in the air, watching a man with artificially darkened skin and artificially whitened hair pull a blaster from his sleeve and point it in his direction. But he had to stand fast, hoping Haworth would miss if he fired, that Kanya would be able to ruin his aim. Hoping above all that he would be able to face Haworth down. The scene was being played to every operating vid set on the planet, and being recorded for replay on all the other out-worlds. Metep, slumped useless and ruined in the prisoner’s dock, had already been made to look like a fool. All that was left now was Haworth, who had to be faced and disgraced, otherwise he might become a rallying point for the few royalists who would remain active in the wake of the revolution.
Haworth looked as frightened as LaNague felt. And although the weapon was pointed upward, he was not sighting on his target. Instead, his head swiveled back and forth, oscillating between the flesh and blood Flinter beside him, to the silent, fearful, hostile ring of faces that enclosed him.
LaNague’s voice became a booming whisper. “Now, Mr. Haworth. Now, or drop it.”
With an agonized groan or equal parts fear and frustration, Haworth swung the blaster away from LaNague and placed the lens at the end of the barrel against his forehead. Members of the crowd behind him winced and ducked, fully expecting the back of his head to explode over them. Haworth glanced quickly about and saw that only Kanya was standing within reach of him. She had the ability to snatch the weapon from his hand before he could fire, but she did not move.
Neither did Haworth. Even the perfunctory courtesy of forcible restraint from committing suicide was to be denied him. He was on his own, completely. No one was going to pull the trigger for him, no one was going to prevent him from pulling it himself. It was all up to him. As centerpiece in the grim tableau, with all Throne – and soon all of the out-worlds – watching, he stood naked, stripped of all pretense, split from throat to pubes with all his innards steaming and reeking in the air for everyone to see.
An utterly miserable and despairing sob broke from his lips as he let his arm slump to his side and the blaster fall unused to the floor. Kanya scooped it up immediately. As she led him away, the chant began again.
“METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT!”
LaNague sat down heavily in the chair to take the weight off his suddenly wobbly knees. As he gathered his thoughts, gathered his strength, and hoped that he had been looking death in the eye for the last time that day, he heard the chant falter. Looking up, he saw the crowd dividing down the middle. Like a vibe-knife through a haunch of raw meat, a wedge of a dozen or so Flinters was cleaving a path toward the dais. Watching the group move closer, he saw that someone was shielded within that wedge: Mora.
As soon as he recognized her, LaNague started his seat into descent. By the time it reached the floor of the diadem, Mora was standing there, waiting for him. She leaped to his side in the chair, and as they embraced, the chair began to climb the pedestal again.
At that point, the crowd within and without Freedom Hall dissolved into a veritable frenzy of jubilation. None of LaNague’s carefully calculated ploys to win support from the people of Throne could even approach the impact of seeing him and his wife embrace on the diadem throne. All present had seen Mora on the vid; most were there in response to her plea. And now they saw her together with her man and felt that had played a part in reuniting the couple. They were cheering for themselves as well as for Robin Hood and his gutsy wife.
“I love you,” LaNague whispered close to Mora’s ear. “I never stopped. I just… went away for a while.”
“I know,” she said in a voice as soft as the body he clutched against him. “And it’s good to have you back.”
Gradually, the cheers organized into the bothersome chant: “METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT! METEP EIGHT!”
Would they never tire of calling for a new Metep? As he looked down into the thousands of hopeful eyes, the thousands of happy, trusting faces, he knew that the past five years had all been a prelude. Now the real work began. He had to take all the horrors these people had experienced and wash them away; he had to convince them that although it could happen again, it need not; that there was another way… a better way. Doing that might prove more difficult than the revolution itself.
He had to convince all these good people that he was not the new Metep. More, he had to convince them that they did not want another Metep. Ever again.
EPILOGUE
Still one more thing, fellow citizens: a wise and frugal government, which shall refrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
He threw the clothes into the shipping canister with sharp, angry motions. Had they been objects made of
something less pliant than cloth they would have shattered or bounced off to the other side of the room. A full standard year ago he had been brought to the Imperium Complex a prisoner; he had remained within the Complex after the revolution of his own accord. Now he was leaving. Leaving Throne altogether, in fact. For good.
By the window, Pierrot's trunk was in a constant state of slow, confused flux. The tree appeared healthy, with new growth a lighter green against the dark of the old. The trunk was now held in a neutral position, balancing LaNague's joyous anticipation of returning to To-live against his anger at the piece of news he had just received.
A long year, this last one, and ultimately frustrating. It had begun so well in Freedom Hall, telling the assembled multitudes there and all the millions watching on the vid that a new Metep was not the answer, that the Imperium was dead and should gratefully be allowed to remain so. The enthusiastic cheers that greeted this were repeated when LaNague broached his idea that the out-worlds band together within a totally new structure, one of unique design, with many-doored walls and no roof – an alliance that would allow each member planet to pursue its own course in whatever direction its inhabitants desired, and yet still feel a part of the whole of humanity. In the bright afterglow of Metep's downfall, anything and everything seemed possible.
A call was sent to all the sibling out-worlds: the Imperium is dead… send us someone you trust to help form a new organization, a new alliance – a Federation. And while the people of Throne awaited the arrival of the representatives, the task of restoring social and economic stability was begun.
Muscle was provided by the planet Flint. For the first – and assuredly the last – time in out-world history, Flinters became a common sight on the streets of another planet. They were especially visible on the streets of Primus City. And when there were none in view, it was highly possible that an innocent-looking civilian was actually a holographic patina under which lurked an armed Flinter, ready to strike if attacked.
Such tactics were necessary. Too many street gangs had formed during the holocaust; too many had come to think of the streets they roamed as their own private preserves, had become accustomed to taking whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. They had to be dealt with… sometimes harshly. Gang members either learned that violence was no longer a means to anything on Throne, or died trying to prove otherwise. The word was out: peace or else.
Soon, there was peace.
Coincident with the Flinter efforts, Tolive took on the massive task of correcting the economic chaos that was the underlying cause of the social upheaval. Freighterloads of gold and silver coins, minted on Tolive and stamped with the now familiar star-in-the-ohm insignia that had become so intimately associated with Robin Hood, were delivered to Throne. Exchange rates were established for trading the new coins for the worthless paper marks glutting the economy. Someday the Tolivians hoped to be paid back, at least partially. There was no hope of full reimbursement, ever. But this was the price they were willing to pay. They were, in effect, buying a secure future for their way of life. To their minds, it was money well spent.
The effect of a new, stable medium of exchange was almost miraculous. Within days, the transport unions were back to work, raw materials were reaching manufacturers, staple commodities were flowing into the cities. Gone were demands for daily and twice-daily pay periods, gone was the fearful drive to spend whatever one had as soon as it was in hand, gone the urge to hoard. Old businesses reopened, and a few new ones started up, all looking for workers. During the holocaust it had been futile to manufacture or offer a product for sale – if it wasn't stolen first, the money received in exchange would be depreciating in buying power so rapidly that it became a losing proposition even to consider any sort of commerce. Now, it was different.
The hope and feeling of security engendered by the hard currency went a long way toward restoring a sense of normalcy. Tomorrow was no longer feared, but eagerly anticipated. Myriad problems needed attending, however. Despite the resurgence of industrial activity, there remained a huge body of unemployed, many of them former employees of the Imperium. The dole was temporarily maintained for their sake, and those able were put to work cleaning up the debris of the breakdown. As new businesses sprang up to tend to the tasks no longer being done by the Imperium's endless arrays of bureaus, the former government workers gradually found places for themselves.
Throne was undergoing an amazing transformation. Someone had answers; someone was in charge again and everything was going to be all right. The people were ready to follow Robin Hood anywhere, do anything he said, just as long as they didn't have to go through that again. LaNague found no comfort in their blind devotion. Had he been a different sort of man, he could have forged the out-worlds into a totalitarian regime the likes of which human history had never seen. Throners especially were so vulnerable during the aftermath that they would have done anything he asked as long as he kept food on the shelves and the monorails on schedule. It was sad. It was terrifying.
The representatives from the other out-worlds finally began arriving, in an uncertain trickle at first, then in a steady stream. LaNague gathered them all together in Freedom Hall and presented them with a blueprint for a new alliance, a charter for a commonality of planets that would provide a nucleus for defining the goals and common interests of the member worlds, yet would stay out of all planetary and interplanetary affairs as long as aggression was not involved. The Out-world Federation, as LaNague called it, would serve mainly as a peace-keeping force and would be strictly bound by the limits of the charter, a document written, rewritten, and refined by generations of the LaNague family.
No planet could initiate force against another planet without risking immediate reprisals by the Federation Defense Force. The Federation would be a voluntaristic organization; member planets would pay dues and would have a voice in Federation policy – a tiny voice, for the charter put strict limits on what the organization could do; in turn, they would receive the full protection of the Defense Force. Planets not wishing to join could go it alone, but could not expect any aid from the Federation at any time.
Only one internal requirement was mandated of every planet: all inhabitants of said planet, who were not fugitives from justice, must be free to emigrate at will. A planet could place whatever restrictions it wished on ingress, but free egress with all legally acquired possessions was an absolute necessity for membership. Penalties for infringement of this rule ranged from fines to expulsion.
Beyond containing the aggressive tendencies of its more acquisitive members, and protecting the free movement of trade between all the planets in its jurisdiction, the charter left the Federation with little to do. Unless someone somewhere initiated force against a member planet or its citizens, the Federation merely stood by and watched humanity go about its business. Many of the representatives found this sort of radical noninterventionism profoundly disturbing. It was something completely beyond their experience, beyond their education, as alien as the Tarks had seemed when news of their existence was announced. In the minds of many representatives, the form of government envisioned in the LaNague Charter was simply not enough. It didn't really… govern.
And that's when the trouble began.
LaNague realized now that he should have seen it coming. Even Broohnin foresaw it when LaNague had visited him in the hospital where he was recovering from the not-quite fatal beating Kanya had administered to him. After reading through the charter, Broohnin had laughed derisively.
“I always said you were a dreamer, LaNague! They'll cut this thing to pieces the minute you turn your back! They'll hack away at it, bit by bit by bit until you won't recognize it. They won't be able to keep their hands off it!”
LaNague hadn't believed him then; he was sure the out-worlds had learned their lesson. He was wrong. A significant percentage of the representatives who appeared intelligent turned out to be ineducable in certain areas of life. There followed a battle that took up th
e remainder of the year, between the purists who wanted the charter accepted as it was, reactionaries who wanted significant changes, and centrists who proposed a compromise – leave the charter as is, but attach an emergency clause to be activated only in times of crisis to give the Federation special powers to deal with an unexpected and grave threat to the member planets.
Despite LaNague's months of pleading, cajoling, threatening, warning, and begging, word had just come through that the charter had been accepted in toto – with the emergency clause firmly attached by an overwhelming majority of the representatives. The Out-world Federation, which many were now calling the LaNague Federation, had been born. Throne was to be renamed Federation Central, and a new era was beginning for the out-worlds.
Peter LaNague's anger was fading to despondence now as he continued to pack. He had sent word to the representatives that he wanted his name completely expunged from the violated version of the charter. He disowned it and the Federation itself, and would have no further contact with anyone connected with the organization. The new president of the General Council sent his regrets, but said that as far as everyone was concerned, it was still the LaNague Charter.
Privately, LaNague knew he might one day change his mind, but for now he was too angry, too discouraged. All those years… all that work… had it all been for nothing? He saw the emergency clause as a ticking bomb sitting under the charter and the organization it guided, a constant temptation to all the Daro Haworths and would-be Meteps of the future.
The vidphone chimed. It was Broohnin. With his beard gone, he looked almost handsome, his features marred only by the triangular scar on his cheek and the leering smile twisting his lips.