The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Can it.” The meeting chairman banged his fist on the desk. “We’ve got work to do. This is no time for ideology.”

“Without the proper revolutionary theory, nothing can be accomplished.” This came from a bearded man in a leather jacket. He looked first at the chairman, then at the dozen others in the classroom. “First there must be a proper understanding of the problem. Then we can act!”

The chairman banged his fist again, but someone else spoke. “Deeds, not words. We came here to plan some action. What the hell’s all the talking about? You goddamned theorists give me a pain in the ass! What we need is action. The Underground’s done more for the Movement than you’ll ever—”

“Balls.” The man in the leather jacket snorted contempt. Then he stood. His voice projected well. “You act, all right. You shut down the L.A. transport system for three days. Real clever. And what did it accomplish? Made the taxpayers scared enough to fork over pay raises to the cops. You ended the goddamn pig strike, that’s what you did!”

There was a general babble, and the Underground spokesman tried to answer, but the leather-jacketed man continued. “You started food riots in the Citizen areas. Big deal. It’s results that count, and your result was the CoDominium Marines! You brought in the Marines, that’s what you did!”

“Damned right! We exposed this regime for what it really is! The Revolution can’t come until the people understand—”

“Revolution, my ass. Get it through your heads, technology’s the only thing that’s going to save us. Turn technology loose, free the scientists, and we’ll be—”

He was shouted down by the others. There was more babble.

Mark Fuller sat at the student desk and drank it all in. The wild music outside. Talk of revolution. Plans for action, for making something happen, for making the Establishment notice them; it was all new, and he was here in this room, where the real power of the university lay. God, how I love it! he thought. I’ve never had any kind of power before. Not even over my own life. And now we can show them all!

He felt more alive than he ever had in all his twenty years. He looked at the girl next to him and smiled. She grinned and patted his thigh. Tension rose in his loins until it was almost unbearable. He remembered their yesterdays and imagined their tomorrows. The quiet world of taxpayer country where he had grown up seemed very far away.

The others continued their argument. Mark listened, but his thoughts kept straying to Shirley; to the warmth of her hand on his thigh, to the places where her sweater was stretched out of shape, to the remembered feel of her heels against his back and her cries of passion. He knew he ought to listen more carefully to the discussion. He didn’t really belong in this room at all. If Shirley hadn’t brought him, he’d never have known the meeting was happening.

But I’ll earn a place here, he thought. In my own right. Power. That’s what they have, and I’ll learn how to be a part of it.

The jacketed technocracy man was speaking again. “You see too many devils,” he said. “Get the CoDominium Intelligence people off the scientists’ backs and it won’t be twenty years before all of the earth’s a paradise. All of it, not just taxpayer country.”

“A polluted paradise! What do you want, to go back to the smog? Oil slicks, dead fish, animals exterminated, that’s what—”

“Bullshit. Technology can get us out of—”

“That’s what caused the problems in the first place!”

“Because we didn’t get far enough! There hasn’t been a new scientific idea since the goddamn space drive! You’re so damned proud because there’s no pollution. None here, anyway. But it’s not because of conservation, It’s because they ship people out to hellholes like Tanith, because of triage, because—”

“He’s right, people starve while we—”

“Damn right! Free thoughts, freedom to think, to plan, to do research, to publish without censorship, that’s what will liberate the world.”

The arguments went on until the chairman tired of them. He banged his fist again. “We are here to do something,” he said. “Not to settle the world’s problems this afternoon. That was agreed.”

The babble finally died away and the chairman spoke meaningfully. “This is our chance. A peaceful demonstration of power. Show what we think of their goddamn rules and their status cards. But we’ve got to be careful. It mustn’t get out of hand.”

* * *

Mark sprawled on the grass a dozen meters from the platform. He stretched luxuriantly in the California sun while Shirley stroked his back. Excitement poured in through all his senses. College had been like this in imagination. The boys at the expensive private schools where his father had sent him used to whisper about festivals, demonstrations, and confrontations, but it hadn’t been real. Now it was. He’d hardly ever mingled with Citizens before, and now they were all around him. They wore Welfare-issue clothing and talked in strange dialects that Mark only half understood. Everyone, Citizens and students, writhed to the music that washed across them.

Mark’s father had wanted to send him to a college in taxpayer country, but there hadn’t been enough money. He might have won a scholarship, but he hadn’t. Mark told himself it was deliberate. Competition was no way to live. His two best friends in high school had refused to compete in the rat race. Neither ended here, though; they’d had the money to get to Princeton and Yale.

More Citizens poured in. The festival was supposed to be open only to those with tickets, and Citizens weren’t supposed to come onto the campus in the first place, but the student group had opened the gates and cut the fences. It had all been planned in the meeting. Now the gate-control shack was on fire, and everyone who lived nearby could get in.

Shirley was ecstatic. “Look at them!” she shouted. “This is the way it used to be! Citizens should be able to go wherever they want to. Equality forever!”

Mark smiled. It was all new to him. He hadn’t thought much about the division between Citizen and taxpayer, and had accepted his privileges without noticing them. He had learned a lot from Shirley and his new friends, but there was so much more that he didn’t know. I’ll find out, though, he thought. We know what we’re doing. We can make the world so much better—we can do anything! Time for the stupid old bastards to move over and let some fresh ideas in.

Shirley passed him a pipe of borloi. That was another new thing for him; it was a Citizen habit, something Mark’s father despised. Mark couldn’t understand why. He inhaled deeply and relished the wave of contentment it brought. Then he reached for Shirley and held her in his warm bath of concern and love, knowing she was as happy as he was.

She smiled gently at him, her hand resting on his thigh, and they writhed to the music, the beat thundering through them, faces glowing with anticipation of what would come, of what they would accomplish this day. The pipe came around again and Mark seized it eagerly.

* * *

“Pigs! The pigs are coming!” The cry went up from the fringes of the crowd.

Shirley turned to her followers. “Just stay here. Don’t provoke the bastards. Make sure you don’t do anything but sit tight.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Mark felt excitement flash through him. This was it. And he was right there in front with the leaders; even if all his status did come from being Shirley’s current boyfriend, he was one of the leaders, one of the people who made things happen. . . .

The police were trying to get through the crowd so they could stop the festival. The university president was with them, and he was shouting something Mark couldn’t understand. Over at the edge of the common green there was a lot of smoke. Was a building on fire? That didn’t make sense. There weren’t supposed to be any fires, nothing was to be harmed; just ignore the cops and the university people, show how Citizens and students could mingle in peace; show how stupid the damned rules were, and how needless—

There was a fire. Maybe more than one. Police and firemen tried to get through the crowd. Someone kicked a cop and the bluecoat went down. A dozen of his buddies waded into the group. Their sticks rose and fell.

The peaceful dream vanished. Mark stared in confusion. There was a man screaming somewhere, where was he? In the burning building? A group began chanting: “Equality now! Equality now!”

Another group was building a barricade across the green.

“They aren’t supposed to do that!” Mark shouted. Shirley grinned at him. Her eyes shone with excitement. More police came, then more and a group headed toward Mark. They raised aluminum shields as rocks flew across the green. The police came closer. One of the cops raised his club.