The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

There are no sororities and fraternities, although the Candidate Sections of the Phraetries (q.v.) fulfill many of the same functions.

Current enrollment (2090): students, 8,000; post-graduate students and teaching assistants, 2,000; faculty, 998.

* * *

“God Almighty, that’s gruddy,” one of the students said. “Overload gruddy.”

Ursula Gordon nodded as she relaxed back into the wicker chair in the student commons. The ‘caster himself was obviously shaken as he showed the bodies being recovered from the burnt-out wreckage of the Armstrongs’s van.

“I don’t know what the planet’s coming to,” one of the observers said disgustedly, taking another pull at his beer.

Observe, Ursula told herself. That’s what you’re here for. That and the classes, and hers were over for the morning. They had been interesting . . . odd mixture of people, too. Mostly young, but with a solid sprinkling of older types; evidently the University ran extension-courses all over the settled portions of the planet, not difficult with satellite communications. No problems about enrolling, either; if you paid your way, you could sign up for any course that had room for you, although the fees were quite high.

There were plenty of scholarship students as well, often from poorer Citizen or even transportee families. They did have to pass entrance exams, stiff ones, but their tuition was free and they got first crack at the service-staff jobs that would let you live with modest comfort while you studied. It was a tempting arrangement: leave the Legion, go to the University and eventually become a citizen of Sparta. But there’s a job to be done first.

The viewer switched to underwater shots of divers pulling bodies from the wreck of the Alicia, with voice-over commentary on the long slash that peeled open her hull for half its length. Ursula looked aside, out the arched windows. You could tell what the priorities of the Spartan Founders had been; the University had been started almost as soon as the prefab shelters went up. It occupied an inordinate stretch of high-value land, too, down on the southwestern shoreline of the city. Georgian-brick dormitories and white neoclassical lecture halls, flagstoned paths and gardens that were quietly spectacular; without the harsh flamboyance she had been accustomed to on Tanith. From here you could see students strolling along the pathways, sitting on stone benches under trees, eating or flirting, people-watching themselves or indulging in the perennial undergraduate arguments about the Nature of Things.

A sailboat was skipped across Sparta Sound, its sails gaily blue and yellow against the forest green of the offshore islands. The air of the winter afternoon was chilly enough to make the walking-out khakis and wooly-pully sweater comfortable; shirtsleeve weather to the others on the verandah.

“Yeah, it’s tragic, but . . .” someone was saying. He had a button on his tunic, black with a crimson rim and a red = sign. Then his voice went higher: “Hey, Senator Croser’s on!”

The lean Eurasian face filled the screen; that was set into the wall to imitate a crystal display unit, but it was actually a locally made cathode ray set-up with no Tri-V capacity at all.

“Quiet everybody! Listen!” That from Mary Williams, an intense girl who’d taken little part in the earlier discussions.

” . . . NCLF and I, personally, denounce this abhorrent crime, and demand that the Royal administration bring the perpetrators to justice,” he was saying.

Sincere looking, Ursula thought judiciously. Being interviewed in his study, from the bookcases and shabby-elegant furniture. Looking very professorial in a dark-blue tunic with leather elbow-patches, knee-breeches, and matching sash. No. A little too hard-faced, she decided. An outdoorsman’s look, body fit even by Spartan standards; and yes, that was a snow-leopard head on the wall behind him. Beaky Anglo face with slightly tilted blue eyes, gray-streaked black hair.

“At the same time, and without condoning such atrocities or the sick minds that conceive them, this senseless violence is exactly what the Non-Citizens’ Liberation Front is doing its best to stop—and which the so-called Pragmatists are fanning. Extremism breeds extremism. A new deal for our oppressed classes is the only way to restore true peace and social harmony to Sparta.”

“Are you saying that Senator Armstrong provoked this attack?” the interviewer asked sharply.

Croser shook his head. “Please, I insist that you not read words into my mouth.” He leaned forward, making a clean, spare gesture with one hand; his voice was deep and sincere, the eyes level and intense.

“I am simply saying that the Pragmatist proposals—to forcibly indenture convicts for the length of the sentence the CoDominium imposes, or involuntary transportees who don’t immediately become ‘self-sufficient’—this is not only wrong, stupid, a step on the road to slavery—it’s a source of the very violence the Pragmatists complain of.” His voice grew passionate for a moment: “Our parents and grandparents didn’t come here to live in an armed camp, or for cheap labor, they came for freedom. We didn’t come to be the CoDominium’s partners in oppression. We’ve lost sight of that, and we’re paying the price.”

“By ‘we,’ do you mean the Pragmatists, or the Citizen body as a whole?” the interviewer continued.

“Pragmatists and Foundation Loyalists both; the ugly and benign faces of repression. Oh, I grant the good intentions of the most of the Loyalist leadership, even of some Pragmatists, poor Senator Armstrong among them. But look how the Crown and its Senate and Council hangers-on is reacting to the current crisis! Hiring off-planet paid killers and raising armies, when the same funds devoted to the welfare of the less fortunate would buy us real peace.”

He smiled sadly. “There’s a very old joke from Earth. A Minister of State goes to his king and says: ‘Sire, in your new budget I notice you spend billions for weapons and not one penny for the poor.’ The king replies: ‘Yes, when the revolution comes, I’ll be ready.’ ”

There was a chuckle through the common room; even the interviewer’s voice seemed more friendly when he continued:

“You don’t advocate revolution, then, Senator Croser? Some of your followers seem more radical.”

Croser chuckled. “There go my people; I must hurry to get ahead of them, for I am their leader,” he quoted. “Mahatma Gandhi. The moderate leadership of the NCLF—of which I am only one—are Sparta’s best guarantee against revolution. It’s the Citizens who obstinately cling to outworn aristocratic privilege, who prate about self-serving and exploded slogans such as the separation of state and economy, who are risking everything. The true radicals look on the NCLF as the greatest obstacle to a bloody revolution, and driving the NCLF underground would be the best gift the Crown could give to the real rebels—to the extent that there are any.”

“You don’t agree there’s a real security threat?”

“Yes! Of course there’s a threat: and it is the inequitable distribution of power and wealth on Sparta, not a few extremists in the hills, or the type of fanatic who perpetrated this action today. We won’t discuss the ludicrous tales of massive conspiracies the Government is putting about to justify its preparations for war on the people.”

“Senator, some have pointed out that you, yourself are a wealthy man with extensive landholdings and mineral interests. . . .”

Croser nodded and began loading a pipe. “Quite true. And if I gave it all away, the process of economic concentration would continue; we’re breeding an oligarchy here, based on nothing better than the luck of being born into an old-settler family. If you look at the record, you’ll find almost all my income goes into the NCLF, free of charge. And”—he waggled the pipestem admonishingly—”the NCLF stands four-square for private property; we just want more people to have the privilege! John Stuart Mill himself said that excessive concentration of wealth is a provocation to leveling legislation.”

“Thank you, Senator. This is Jerric van Damm of the Spartan Herald Service, interviewing Senator Dion Croser, legate of the Dockworkers’ Union on today’s terrorist attack which resulted in the death of Mrs. Alicia Armstrong and her three children, and the severe injury of her husband, Senator Steven Armstrong. Senator Croser, any closing remarks?”

“Thank you, Citizen van Damm. Just this.” The camera panned in, until the blue eyes filled the screen. “I appeal to you, my fellow citizens of Sparta, to wake up and realize injustice can never rest secure. In your hands lies the power to avert tragedy—and the price is reform. Act now!”

“Now, there’s someone who knows what’s going on!” one of the students said, pushing his glasses back with his thumb.

“Horseshit,” another said. She was sitting with a young man, and they were both in the gray sweatsuit outfits of Brotherhood militia training. “You boil that little speech down, and what it amounts to is that somehow we’re all guilty because a bunch of scum-suckers burned a pregnant woman and three children to death; not to mention the sailors on that boat. C’mon, Ahmed, we’ll be late for drill.”