“As I understand it,” the image of Jowett said, “the hoy raised gang of hotheads without his parents’ knowledge. He’s only eleven and a half, after all—uh, that’s twenty years Terran, right? Their idea was to take to wilderness and be guerrillas until … what? Terra gave up? Ythri intervened, and took Aeneas under its wing like Avalon? It strikes me as pathetically romantic.”
“Sometimes romantics do overcome realists,” Desai said. “The consequences are always disastrous.”
“Well, in this case, attempt failed. His associates who got caught identified their leader under hypnoprobe. Don’t bother denyin’; of course your interrogators used hypnoprobes. Ivar’s disappeared, but shouldn’t be impossible to track down. What do you need my advice about?”
“The wisdom of chasing him in the first place,” Desai said wearily.
“Oh. Positive. You dare not let him run loose. I do know him slightly. He has chance of becomin’ kind of prophet, to people who’re waitin’ for exactly that.”
“My impression too. But how should we go after him? How make the arrest? What kind of trial and penalty? How publicize? We can’t create a martyr. Neither can we let a rebel, responsible for the deaths and injuries of Imperial personnel—and Aeneans, remember, Aeneans— we can’t let him go scot-free. I don’t know what to do,” Desai nearly groaned. “Help me, Jowett. You don’t want your planet ripped apart, do you?”
—He snapped off the playback. He had gotten nothing from it. Nor would he from the rest, which consisted of what-ifs and maybes. The only absolute was that Ivar Frederiksen must be hunted down fast.
Should I refer the problem of what to do after we catch him to Llynathawr, or directly to Terra? I have the right.
The legal right. No more. What do they know there? Night had fallen. The room was altogether black, save for its glowboards and a shifty patch of moonlight which hurried Creusa cast through the still-active transparency. Desai got up, felt his way there, looked outward.
Beneath stars, moons, Milky Way, three sister planets, Nova Roma had gone elven. The houses were radiance and shadow, the streets dappled darkness, the river and canals mercury. Afar in the desert, a dust storm went like a ghost. Wind keened; Desai, in his warmed cubicle, shivered to think how its chill must cut.
His vision sought the brilliances overhead. Too many suns, too many.
He’d be sending a report Home by the next courier boat. (Home! He had visited Terra just once. When he stole a few hours from work to walk among relics, they proved curiously disappointing. Multisense tapes didn’t include crowded airbuses, arrogant guides, tourist shops, or aching feet.) Such vessels traveled at close to the top hyperspeed: a pair of weeks between here and Sol. (But that was 200 light-years, a radius which swept over four million suns.) He could include a request for policy guidelines.
But half a month could stretch out, when he faced possible turmoil or, worse, terrorism. And then his petition must be processed, discussed, annotated, supplemented, passed from committee to committee, referred through layers of executive officialdom for decision; and the return message would take its own days to arrive, and probably need to be disputed on many points when it did— No, those occasional directives from Llynathawr were bad enough.
He, Chunderban Desai, stood alone to act.
Of course, he was required to report everything significant: which certainly included the Frederiksen affair. If nothing else, Terra was the data bank, as complete as flesh and atomistics could achieve.
In which case … why not insert a query about that Aycharaych?
Well, why?
I don’t know, I don’t know. He seems thoroughly legitimate; and he borrowed my Tagore … No, I will ask for a complete information scan at Terra. Though I’ll have to invent a plausible reason for it, when Muratori’s approved his proposal. We bureaucrats aren’t supposed to have hunches. Especially not when, in fact, I like Aycharaych as much as any nonhuman I’ve ever met. Far more than many of my fellow men.
Dangerously more?
IV
The Hedin freehold lay well east of Windhome, though close enough to the edge of Ilion that westerlies brought moisture off the canals, marshes, and salt lakes of the Antonine Seabed—actual rain two or three times a year. While not passing through the property, the Wildfoss helped maintain a water table that supplied a few wells. Thus the family carried on agriculture, besides ranching a larger area.