Arkezhan gained nerve. “Now that they are heartened, my folk will not tolerate what they realize is my humiliation,” he said. “And they will absolutely exact justice for my death. They have the same historical examples to cite that you do, and more clearly applicable. Yield, and perhaps I can negotiate safe conduct for you out of this trap you have closed on yourselves.”
Mikel sighed. “That is impossible for us. Have you enough rudimentary sense of honor to understand? We will fight, and no one shall take any of us alive.” He slid his killer pistol from the sheath. A harsh glee leaped. “Least of all you.”
”No,” proclaimed a new voice.
7
It came not from any throat or any instrument. Maybe the walls of the house reverberated with it, soft though it was. The men outside must have heard it too, for they stopped in their tracks.
The voice was a deep contralto, calm and implacable. “Desist.” Abruptly, heatlessly, every weapon within a kilometer slumped into uselessness.
Down on the grass, men stood as if frozen, or sank to their knees. Three screamed and bolted back into the garden. The cars aloft stopped and hovered. Up in the Winter Room, Arkezhan sagged down again. Mikel’s followers stared at their emptied hands or wildly around at the ice.
”You were about to go beyond a brawl or even a murder,” said the voice. “You would have broken the Peace of the Covenant.”
It was the Worldguide that spoke, Mikel knew. Amidst tumult, a tiny part of him wondered how much of its attention the central intelligence of the Solar System was giving to this occasion and this moment.
”Did you think your actions went unobserved?”
The machines, robots, planetary maintenance, the whole incomprehensibly vast meshwork of communications, computations, and information, Mikel realized. Yes, and satellites, and invisibly small flying sensors, everything in the service of humankind and of life everywhere, therefore its deeds and decisions unquestioningly- gladly-accepted by nearly every person alive.
”Your own laws, usages, and consciences preserved it thus far in l his nation. Your own ceremonies, rituals, vyings for status, and pleasures took up your energies.”
What else was left for us? cried the unborn rebel.
”But now that very tradition has led you to reignite the old violence. Unchecked, it would burn more fiercely from generation to generation, resentment, blind hate, feud, war, with unrest in many other societies. It must end at once.”
The voice mildened the barest bit. “Take comfort. Yours is not the first country where the threat has arisen, nor will it likely be the last, for long times to come. Always the flame has been quietly clamped. So it shall be here.
”The raiders shall go freely home. There shall be no penalty upon them, overt or covert, and their people may feel themselves vindicated if they so desire; but neither shall there be penalty for anyone else, or revenge-ever, in the lifetimes of you and your descendants.
”Go in peace. Abide in peace.”
No words about enforcement were necessary.
The voice fell silent. Slowly, men looked into one another’s eyes.
In a rush of horror, which was followed by relief and a kind of resignation, Mikel thought: Now we know our future.