“Safety—huh?” Ivar stared from him to Tatiana.
She closed fingers on the tadmouse’s back, as if in search of solace. “Yes,” she said, barely audibly.
“Terrorists of the self-styled freedom movement,” Desai stated, his voice crisper than he felt. “They had already assassinated a number of Aeneans who supported the government. Your turning to us, your disclosure of a plot which might indeed have pried this sector loose from the Empire—you, the embodiment of their visions—could have brought them to murder again.”
Ivar sat mute for a time. The bells died away. He didn’t break the clasp he shared with Tatiana, but his part lost strength. At last he asked her, “What did you do?”
She gripped him harder. “I persuaded them. I never gave names … Commissioner Desai and his officers never asked me for any … but I talked to leaders, I was go-between, and— There’ll be general amnesty.”
“For past acts,” the Imperial reminded. “We cannot allow more like them. I am hoping for help in their prevention.” He paused. “If Aeneas is to know law again, tranquillity, restoration of what has been lost, you, Firstling, must take the lead.”
“Because of what I am, or was?” Ivar said harshly.
Desai nodded. “More people will heed you, speaking of reconciliation, than anyone else. Especially after your story has been made public, or as much of it as is wise.”
“Why not all?”
“Naval Intelligence will probably want to keep various details secret, if only to keep our opponents uncertain of what we do and do not know. And, m-m-m, several high-ranking officials would not appreciate the news getting loose, of how they were infiltrated, fooled, and led by the nose to an appalling brink.”
“You, for instance?”
Desai smiled. “Between us, I have persons like Sector Governor Muratori in mind. I am scarcely important enough to become a sensation. Now they are not ungrateful in Llynathawr. I can expect quite a free hand in the Virgilian System henceforward. One policy I mean to implement is close consultation with representatives of every Aenean society, and the gradual phasing over of government to them.”
“Hm. Includin’ Orcans?”
“Yes. Commander Yakow was nearly shattered to learn the truth; and he is tough, and had no deep emotional commitment to the false creed—simply to the welfare of his people. He agrees the Imperium can best help them through their coming agony.”
Ivar fell quiet anew. Tatiana regarded him. Tears glimmered on her lashes. She must well know that same kind of pain. Finally he asked, “Jaan?”
“The prophet himself?” Desai responded. “He knows no more than that for some reason you fled—defected, he no doubt thinks—and afterward an Imperial force came for another search of Mount Cronos, deeper-going than before, and the chiefs of the Companions have not opposed this. Perhaps you can advise me how to tell him the truth, before the general announcement is made.”
Bleakness: “What about Aycharaych?”
“He has vanished, and his mind-engine. We’re hunting for him, of course.” Desai grimaced. “I’m afraid we will fail. One way or another, that wily scoundrel will get off the planet and home. But at least he did not destroy us here.”
Ivar let go of his girl, as if for this tune not she nor anything else could warm him. Beneath a tumbled lock of yellow hair, his gaze lay winter-blue. “Do you actually believe he could have?”
“The millennialism he was engineering, yes, it might have, I think,” Desai answered, equally low. “We can’t be certain. Very likely Aycharaych knows us better than we can know ourselves. But … it has happened, over and over, through man’s troubled existence: the Holy War, which cannot be stopped and which carries away kingdoms and empires, though the first soldiers of it be few and poor.
“Their numbers grow, you see. Entire populations join them. Man has never really wanted a comfortable God, a reasonable or kindly one; he has wanted a faith, a cause, which promises everything but mainly which requires everything.
“Like moths to the candle flame—
“More and more in my stewardship of Aeneas, I have come to see that here is a world of many different peoples, but all of them believers, all strong and able, all sharing some tradition about mighty forerunners and all unready to admit that those forerunners may have been as tragically limited, ultimately as doomed, as we.