“Aeneas was in the forefront of struggle for a political end. When defeat came, that turned the dwellers and their energies back toward transcendental things. And then Aycharaych invented for them a transcendence which the most devout religionist and the most hardened scientist could alike accept.
“I do not think the tide of Holy War could have been stopped this side of Regulus. The end of it would have been humanity and humanity’s friends ripped into two realms. No, more than two, for there are contradictions in the faith, which I think must have been deliberately put there. For instance, is God the Creator or the Created? —Yes, heresies, persecutions, rebellions . . . states lamed, chaotic, hating each other worse than any outsider—”
Desai drew breath before finishing: “—such as Merseia. Which would be precisely what Merseia needs, first to play us off against ourselves, afterward to overrun and subject us.”
Ivar clenched fists on knees. “Truly?” he demanded.
“Truly,” Desai said. “Oh, I know how useful the Merseian threat has often been to politicians, industrialists, military lords, and bureaucrats of the Empire. That does not mean the threat isn’t real. I know how propaganda has smeared the Merseians, when they are in fact, according to their own lights and many of ours, a fairly decent folk. That does not mean their leaders won’t risk the Long Night to grasp after supremacy.
“Firstling, if you want to be worthy of leading your own world, you must begin by dismissing the pleasant illusions. Don’t take my word, either. Study. Inquire. Go see for yourself. Do your personal thinking. But always follow the truth, wherever it goes.”
“Like that Ythrian?” Tatiana murmured.
“No, the entire Domain of Ythri,” Desai told her. “Erannath was my agent, right. But he was also theirs. They sent him by prearrangement: because in bis very foreignness, his conspicuousness and seeming detachment, he could learn what Terrans might not.
“Why should Ythri do this?” he challenged. “Had we not fought a war with them, and robbed them of some of their territory?
“But that’s far in the past, you see. The territory is long ago assimilated to us. Irredentism is idiocy. And Terra did not try to take over Ythri itself, or most of its colonies, in the peace settlement. Whatever the Empire’s faults, and they are many, it recognizes certain limits to what it may wisely do.
“Merseia does not.
“Naturally, Erannath knew nothing about Aycharaych when he arrived here. But he did know Aeneas is a key planet in this sector, and expected Merseia to be at work somewhere underground. Because Terra and Ythri have an overwhelming common interest—peace, stability, containment of the insatiable aggressor—and because the environment of your world suited him well, he came to give whatever help he could.”
Desai cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t intend that long a speech. It surprised me too. I’m not an orator, just a glorified bureaucrat. But here’s a matter on which billions of lives depend.”
“Did you find his body?” Ivar asked without tone.
“Yes,” Desai said. “His role is another thing we cannot make public: too revealing, too provocative. In fact, we shall have to play down Merseia’s own part, for fear of shaking the uneasy peace.
“However, Erannath went home on an Imperial cruiser; and aboard was an honor guard.”
“That’s good,” Ivar said after a while.
“Have you any plans for poor Jaan?” Tatiana asked.
“We will offer him psychiatric treatment, to rid him of the pseudo-personality,” Desai promised. “I am told that’s possible.”
“Suppose he refuses.”
“Then, troublesome though he may prove—because his movement won’t die out quickly unless he himself denounces it—we will leave him alone. You may disbelieve this, but I don’t approve of using people.”
Desai’s look returned to Ivar. “Likewise you, Firstling,” he said. “You won’t be coerced. Nobody will pressure you. Rather, I warn you that working with my administration, for the restoration of Aeneas within the Empire, will be hard and thankless. It will cost you friends, and years of your life that you might well spend more enjoyably, and pain when you must make the difficult decision or the inglorious compromise. I can only hope you will join us.”