“And dangerous.”
“Not if handled right. Especially now while the Imperial mark still has some strength in the interstellar currency markets, we can shove a lot more currency out into the economy and reap the benefits before anyone notices. The good citizens will be happy because they'll see their incomes go up. Of course prices will go up faster, but we can always blame that on unreasonable wage demands from the guilds, or corporate profiteering. Or we can blame it on Earth – out-worlders are always more than ready to blame Earth for anything that goes wrong. We have to be careful, of course. We have to prime the pump precisely to keep inflation at a tolerable level.”
“It's at 6 per cent now,” Krager said, irritated by Haworth's didactic tone.
“We can push it to 10.”
“Too dangerous!”
“Stop your nonsensical objections, old man!” Haworth snarled. “You've been living with 6 per cent inflation – causing it, in fact! – for years. Now you balk at 10! Who are you play-acting for?”
“How dare–” Krager was turning red and sputtering.
“Ten per cent is absolutely necessary. Any less and the economy won't even notice the stimulus.”
Metep VII and the rest of the Council of Five mulled this dictum. They had all become masters of economic manipulation under Haworth's tutelage, but 10 per cent… that marked the unseen border of monetary no-man's land. It was double-digit inflation, and there was something inherently terrifying about it.
“We can do it,” Haworth said confidently. “Of course, we have Metep IV to thank for the opportunity. If he hadn't rammed through the legal tender laws eighty years ago, each out-world would still be operating on its own currency instead of the Imperial mark and we'd be helpless. Which brings me to my next topic.”
He opened the folder before him, removed a sheaf of one-mark notes, and dropped them on the table.
“I'd like to take the legal tender laws one step further.”
Metep VII picked up one of the marks and examined it. The note was pristine, bright orange and fresh out of the duplicator, with the satin gloss imparted by the specially treated keerni wood pulp used to make it, still unmarred by fingerprints and creases. Intricate scrollwork was printed around the perimeter on both sides; a portrait of Metep I graced the obverse while a large, blunt “I” dominated the reverse. Different polymer sheets had been tried and discarded when the legal tender laws were introduced during the last days of Metep IV's reign, but the keerni paper held up almost as well and was far cheaper. He lifted the bill to his nose – smelled better, too.
“You're not thinking of going totally electronic like Earth, I hope,” he asked Haworth.
“Exactly what I'm thinking. It's the only way to truly fine-tune the economy. Think of it: not a single financial transaction will be executed without the central computer knowing about it. We talk of subsidizing certain industries? With a totally electronic monetary system we can allot so much here, pull away just enough there… it's the only way to go when you're working with interstellar distances as we are. And it's worked for Earth.”
Metep VII shook his head with deliberate, measured slowness. Here was one area of economic knowledge in which he knew he excelled over Haworth.
“You spent all that time on Earth, Daro,” he said, “and got all that fine training in economic administration. But you've forgotten the people you're dealing with here. Out-worlders are simple folk for the most part. They used to barter exclusively for their needs until someone started hammering coins out of gold and silver or whatever else was considered valuable on that particular colony. Metep IV damn near had a full-scale revolt on his hands when he started to enforce the legal tender laws and make the Imperial mark the one and only acceptable currency in the out-worlds.”
He held up a one-mark note. “Now you want to take even this away and change it to a little blip in some computer's memory? You intend to tell these people that they will no longer be allowed to have money they can hold and count and pass back and forth and maybe bury in the ground somewhere?” Metep VII smiled briefly, grimly, and shook his head again. “Oh no. There's already a maniac fringe group out there trying to do away with me. That's more than enough, thank you. If we even hinted at what you suggest, I'd have every man and woman on the out-worlds who owns a blaster coming after me.” He lifted a copy of The Robin Hood Reader in his other hand. “The author of this would be predicting my death rather than a tax refund. No, my friend. I have no intention of being the only Metep overthrown by a revolution.”
He rose from his seat and his eyes came level with Haworth's. “Consider that idea vetoed.”
Haworth looked away and glanced around the table for a hint of support. He found none. Metep had veto power at council meetings. He also knew out-world mentality – that was how he became Metep. The matter was, for all intents and purposes, closed. He looked back to Metep VII, ready to frame a graceful concession, and noticed a puzzled expression on the leader's face. He was holding the two sheets of paper – the mark note in his left hand, The Robin Hood Reader in his right – staring at them, rubbing his thumbs over the surface of each.
“Something wrong, Jek?” Haworth asked.
The Metep raised each sheet in turn to his nose and sniffed. “Have there been any thefts of currency paper?” he asked, looking up and fixing Krager with his stare.
“No, of course not. We guard the blank paper as well as we guard the printed slips.”
“This flyer is printed on currency paper,” Metep VII stated.
“Impossible!” Krager, who was Minister of the Treasury, reached for one of the flyers on the table. He rubbed it, sniffed it, held it up to gauge the glare of light off its surface.
“Well?”
The old man nodded and leaned back in his form-fitting chair, a dumbfounded expression troubling his features. “It's currency paper all right.”
Nothing was said for a long time. All present now realized that the author of the flyer that had been so easily dismissed earlier in the meeting was no fevered radical sweating in a filthy basement somewhere in Primus City, but rather a man or a group of men who could steal currency paper without anyone knowing. And who showed utter disdain for the Imperial mark.
V
I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
Albert Camus
The White Hart had changed drastically. The thin blond man whose name was Peter LaNague noticed it as soon as he entered. The decor was the same: the rich paneling remained, the solid keerni bar, the planked flooring… these were as inviolate as the prohibition against women customers. During the five standard years since he had last visited Throne and had supped and drunk in the White Hart, there had been no physical alterations or renovations.
The difference was in the mood and in the level of sound. The regulars didn't realize it, but there was less talk around the bar these days. No one except LaNague, after a five-year hiatus, noticed. The diminution of chatter, the lengthening of pauses, both had progressed by tiny increments over the years. It was not just that the group's mean age had progressed and that familiarity had lessened what they had left to say to one another. New faces had joined the ranks while some of the older ones had faded away. And yet the silence had crept along on its inexorable course.
The process was less evident in the non-restricted bars. The presence of women seemed to lift the mood and add a certain buoyancy to a room. The men wore different faces then, responding to the opposite sex, playing the game of being men, of being secure and confident, of having everything under control.
But when men got together in places where women could not go, places like the White Hart, they left the masks at home. There was little sense in trying to fool each other. And so a pall would seep through the air, intangible at first, but palpable by evening's end. Not gloom. No, certainly not gloom. These were not bad times. One could hardly call them good t
imes, but they certainly weren't bad.
It was the future that was wrong. Tomorrow was no longer something to be approached with the idea of meeting it head on, of conquering it, making the most of it, using it to add to one's life. Tomorrow had become a struggle to hold one's own, or if that were not possible, to give up as little as possible as grudgingly as possible with as tough a fight as possible.
All men have dreams; there are first-order dreams, second-order dreams, and so on. For the men at the bar of the White Hart, the dreams were dying. Not with howls of pain in the night, but by slow alterations in aspiration, by a gradual lowering of sights. First-order dreams had been completely discarded, second-order dreams were on the way… maybe a few in the third-order could be preserved, at least for a little while.
There was the unvoiced conviction that a huge piece of machinery feeding on hope and will and self-determination, ceaselessly grinding them into useless power, had been levered into motion and that no one knew how to turn it off. And if they were quiet they could, on occasion, actually hear the gears turning.
LaNague took a booth in a far corner of the room and sat alone, waiting. He had been a regular at the bar for a brief period five years ago, spending most of his time listening. All the intelligence gathered by the investigators Tolive had sent to Throne over the years could not equal the insight into the local social system, its mood, its politics, gathered in one night spent leaning against the bar with these men. Some of the regulars with long tenures gave him a searching look tonight, sensing something familiar about him, and sensing too that he wanted to be alone.
If LaNague had judged the man correctly – and he hoped he had – Den Broohnin would walk through the front door momentarily. He would have to be handled carefully. Reason would be useless. Fear was the key: Just the right amount would bring him into line; too much and he would either run or attack like a cornered animal. A dangerous man, an explosive man, his cooperation was imperative if the plan was to maintain its schedule. But could his berserker tendencies be controlled? LaNague didn't know for sure, and that bothered him.
He reviewed what he knew about Broohnin. A native of Nolevatol's great farm lands, he had grown up with little education, spending most of his daylight hours trying to pull a crop from the alien soil of his family's farm. Friction between the boy and his father began and grew and culminated in young Den Broohnin fleeing the family farm – but only after beating his father senseless. He somehow made it to Throne where years on the streets of Primus toughened and seasoned him in the ways of city life.
Somewhere along the line he had come to the conclusion that the Imperium must fall and that he was the one to bring it down – by any means. For Broohnin the murder of the reigning Metep seemed the most direct way to accomplish this. That course of action had to be stopped, for it threatened to ruin all of LaNague's plans.
When Broohnin entered, the already low level of chatter at the bar lowered further as it does when any outsider ventures near an insular group such as this. He knew his uneasiness showed. His lips were tight behind his beard as his eyes scanned the room. He spotted a blond stranger waving from the corner. Conversation gradually returned to its previous level.
With every muscle in his body tense and ready to spring at the first sign of danger, Broohnin stalked warily to the booth and slid in opposite LaNague.
He was now truly seeing the stranger for the first time. He had spoken to a shadowy wraith last night; the figure before him now was flesh and blood… and not exactly an imposing figure. A thin, angular face with an aquiline nose dividing two green eyes, intense, unwavering, all framed with unruly almost kinky, blond hair. Long neck, long limbs, long tapered fingers, almost delicate. Alarmingly thin now without the bulk of last night's cloak, and dressed only in a one-piece shirtsuit and a vest, all dark green.
“Where are your friends?” Broohnin asked as his eyes roamed the room.
“Outside.” The stranger, who already held a dark ale, signaled the barman, who brought the tray he had been holding aside. He placed before Broohnin a small glass of colorless, potent liquor made from hybrid Throne corn with a water chaser beside it.
Broohnin ran the back of his hand across his mouth in an attempt to conceal his shock: this was what he drank, just the way he drank it. Any hope he had held of dealing with this man on an equal footing had been crushed beyond repair by that one little maneuver. He was completely outclassed and he knew it.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“I certainly hope so. I want you to be in such complete and total awe of my organization and my approach to a… change… that you'll drop your own plans and join me.”
“I don't see that I have much choice.”
“You can go back to Nolevatol.”
“That's hardly a choice. Neither is dealing with your Flinter friends.” He lifted his glass. “To a new order, or whatever you have in mind.”
The stranger hoisted his ale mug by the handle, but did not drink. He waited instead until Broohnin had swallowed his sip of liquor, then made his own toast.
“To no order.”
“I'll drink to that,” Broohnin said, and took another burning pull from his glass while the other quaffed half a mugful. That particular toast appealed to him. Perhaps this wouldn't turn out too badly after all.
“LaNague is the name,” the stranger said. “Peter LaNague.” He brought out a small cube and laid it on the table. “The Flinters gave me this. It creates a spheroid shell that distorts all sound waves passing through its perimeter. Radius of about a meter. It's quite unlikely that anyone here would be much interested in our conversation, but we'll be discussing some sensitive matters, and with all the assassination attempts lately” – a pause here, a disapproving twist of the thin lips – “I don't want some overzealous citizen accusing us of sedition.”
He pressed the top of the cube and suddenly the chatter from the bar was muted and garbled. Not a single word was intelligible.
“Very handy,” Broohnin said with an appreciative nod. He could think of dozens of uses immediately.
“Yes, well, the Flinter society is obsessed with the preservation of personal privacy. Nothing really new technologically. Only the pocket size is innovative. Now…”
“When does the Imperium fall?” Broohnin's interjected question was half facetious, half deadly earnest. He had to know.
LaNague answered with a straight face. “Not for years.”
“Too long! My men won't wait!”
“They had better wait.” The words hung in the air like a beckoning noose. Broohnin said nothing and kept his eyes on his glass as he swirled the colorless fluid within. The moment passed and LaNague spoke again.
“Most of your men are Throners, I believe.”
“All but myself and one other.”
“A very important part of my plan will require a group such as yours. It will help if they're natives. Will they co-operate?”
“Of course… especially if they have no other choice.”
LaNague's head moved in a single, quick, emphatic shake. “I'm not looking for that kind of co-operation. I called you here because you seem to be an intelligent man and because we are both committed to bringing the Out-world Imperium to an end. You've developed an underground of sorts – an infrastructure of dedicated people and I don't think they should be denied the chance to play a part. But you and they must play according to my plan. I want to enlist your aid. The plan requires informed, enthusiastic participation. If that is beyond you and your cohorts, then you'll not participate at all.”
Something was wrong here. Broohnin sensed it. Too much was being withheld. Something did not ring true, but he could not say where. And there was an air of – was it urgency? – about the slight man across the table from him. Under different circumstances he would have played coy and probed until he had learned exactly what was going on. But this fellow had Flinters at his beck and call. Broohnin wanted no part of any games with them.
“And just what is this plan of yours? What brings a Tolivian to Throne as a revolutionary?”
LaNague smiled. “I'm glad to see I didn't underestimate your quickness. The accent gave me away, I suppose?”
“That, and the Flinters. But answer the question.”
“I'm afraid you're not in a position of confidence at this point. Be secure in the knowledge that the stage is being set to bring down the Imperium with a resounding crash – but without slaughter.”
“Then you're a dreamer and a fool! You can't smash the Imperium without taking Metep and the Council of Five out of the picture. And the only way those fecaliths will be moved is to burn a few holes in their brain pans. Then see how fast things fall apart! Anything else is wasted time! Wasted effort! Futility!”
As he spoke, Broohnin's face had become contorted with rage, saliva collecting at the corners of his mouth and threatening to fly in all directions. His voice rose progressively in volume and by the end of his brief outburst he was shouting and pounding on the table. He caught himself with an effort, suddenly glad LaNague had brought the damper box along.
The Tolivian shook his head with deliberate slowness. “That will accomplish nothing but a changing of the guard. Nothing will be substantially different, just as nothing is substantially different now from the pre-Imperium days when Earth controlled the out-worlds.”
“You forget the people!” Broohnin said, knowing he sounded as if he were invoking an ancient god. “They know that everything's gone wrong. The Imperium's only two centuries old and already you can smell the rot! The people will rise up in the confusion following Metep's death and–”
“The people will do nothing! The Imperium has effectively insulated itself against a popular revolution on Throne – and only on Throne would a revolution be of any real significance. Insurgency on other worlds amounts to a mere inconvenience. They're light years away and no threat to the seat of power.”
“There's no such thing as a revolution-proof government.”