The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

IV

The low gravity of Luna Base was better than the endless nightmare of the flight up. Mark had been trapped in a narrow compartment with berths so close together that the sagging bunk above his pressed against him at high acceleration. The ship had stunk with the putrid smell of vomit and stale wine.

Now he stood under the glaring lights in a bare concrete room. The concrete was the gray-green color of moon rock. They hadn’t been given an outside view, and except for the low gravity he might have been in a basement on Earth. There were a thousand others standing with him under the glaring bright fluorescent lights. Most of them had the dull look of terror. A few glared defiantly, but they kept their opinions to themselves.

Gray-coveralled trustees with bell-mouthed sonic stunners patrolled the room. It wouldn’t have been worthwhile trying to take one of the weapons from the trustees, though; at each entrance was a knot of CoDominium Marines in blue and scarlet. The Marines leaned idly on weapons which were not harmless at all.

“Segregate us,” Mark’s companion said. “Divide and rule.”

Mark nodded. Bill Halpern was the only person Mark knew. Halpern had been the technocrat spokesman in the meeting on the campus.

“Divide and rule,” Halpern said again. It was true enough. The prisoners had been sorted by sex, race and language, so that everyone around Mark was white male and either North American or from some other English-speaking place. “What the hell are we waiting for?” Halpern wondered. There was no possible answer, and they stood for what seemed like hours.

Then the door opened and a small group came in. Three CoDominium Navy petty officers, and a midshipman. The middie was no more than seventeen, younger than Mark. He used a bullhorn to speak to the assembled group. “Volunteers for the Navy?”

There were several shouts, and some of the prisoners stepped forward.

“Traitors,” Halpern said.

Mark nodded agreement. Although he meant it in a different way from Halpern, Mark’s father had always said the same thing. “Traitors!” he’d thundered. “Dupes of the goddamn Soviets. One of these days that Navy will take over this country and hand us to the Kremlin.”

Mark’s teachers at school had different ideas. The Navy wasn’t needed at all. Nor was the CD. Men no longer made war, at least not on Earth. Colony squabbles were of no interest to the people on Earth anyway. Military services, they’d told him, were a wasteful joke.

His new friends at college said the purpose of the CoDominium was to keep the United States and the Soviet Union rich while suppressing everyone else. Then they’d begun using the CD fleet and Marines to shore up their domestic governments. The whole CD was no more than a part of the machinery of oppression.

And yet—on tri-v the CD Navy was glamorous. It fought pirates (only Mark knew there were no real space pirates) and restored order in the colonies (only his college friends told him that wasn’t restoring order, it was oppression of free people). The spacers wore uniforms and explored new planets.

The CD midshipman walked along the line of prisoners. Two older petty officers followed. They walked proudly—contemptuously, even. They saw the prisoners as another race, not as fellow humans at all.

A convict not far from Mark stepped out of line. “Mister Blaine,” the man said. “Please, sir.”

The midshipman stopped. “Yes?”

“Don’t you know me, Mister Blaine? Able Spacer Johnson, sir. In Mister Leary’s division in Magog.”

The middie nodded with all the gravity of a seventeen-year-old who has important duties and knows it. “I recall you, Johnson.”

“Let me back in, sir. Six years I served, never up for defaulters.”

The midshipman fingered his clipboard console. “Drunk and disorderly, assault on a taxpayer, armed robbery. Mandatory transportation. I shouldn’t wonder that you prefer the Navy, Johnson.”

“Not like that at all, sir. I shouldn’t ever have took my musterin’-out pay. Shouldn’t have left the Fleet, sir. Couldn’t find my place with civilians, sir. God knows I drank too much, but I was never drunk on duty, sir, you look up my records—”

“Kiss the middie’s bum, you whining asshole,” Halpern said.

One of the petty officers glanced up. “Silence in the ranks.” He put his hand on his nightstick and glared at Halpern.

The midshipman thought for a moment. “All right, Johnson. You’ll come in as ordinary. Have to work for the stripe.”

“Yes, sir, sure thing, sir.” Johnson strode toward the area reserved for recruits. His manner changed with each step he took. He began in a cringing walk, but by the time he reached the end of the room, he had straightened and walked tall.

The midshipman went down the line. Twenty men volunteered, but he took only three.

An hour later a CoDominium Marine sergeant came looking for men. “No rebels and no degenerates!” he said. He took six young men sentenced for street rioting, arson, mayhem, resisting arrest, assault on police and numerous other crimes.

“Street gang,” Halpern said. “Perfect for Marines.”

Eventually they were herded back into a detention pen and left to themselves. “You really hate the CD, don’t you?” Mark asked his companion.

“I hate what they do.”

Mark nodded, but Halpern only sneered. “You don’t know anything at all,” Halpern said. “Oppression? Shooting rioters? Sure that’s part of what the CD does, but it’s not the worst part. Symptom, not cause. The case is their goddamn so-called intelligence service. Suppression of scientific research. Censorship of technical journals. They’ve even stopped the pretense of basic research. When was the last time a licensed physicist had a decent idea?”

Mark shrugged. He knew nothing about physics.

Halpern grinned. There was no warmth in the expression. His voice had a bitter edge. “Keeping the peace, they say. Only discourage new weapons, new military technology. Bullshit, they’ve stopped everything for fear somebody somewhere will come up with—”

“Shut the fuck up.” The man was big, hairy like a bear, with a big paunch jutting out over the belt of his coveralls. “If I hear that goddamn whining once more, I’ll stomp your goddamn head in.”

“Hey, easy,” Halpern said. “We’re all in this together. We have to join against the class enemy—” The big man’s hand swung up without warning. He hit Halpern on the mouth. Halpern staggered and fell. His head struck the concrete floor. “Told you to shut up.” He turned to Mark. “You got anything to say?”

Mark was terrified. I ought to do something, he thought. Say something. Anything. He tried to speak, but no words came out.

The big man grinned at him, then deliberately kicked Halpern in the ribs. “Didn’t think so. Hey, you’re not bad-lookin’, kid. Six months we’ll be on that goddamn ship, with no women. Want to be my bunkmate? I’ll take good care of you. See nobody hurts you. You’ll like that.”

“Leave the kid alone.” Mark couldn’t see who spoke. “I said let go of him.”

“Who says so?” The hairy man shoved Mark against the wall and turned to the newcomer.

“I do.” The newcomer didn’t look like much, Mark thought. At least forty, and slim. Not thin though, Mark realized. The man stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coveralls. “Let him be, Karper.”

Karper grinned and charged at the newcomer. As he rushed forward, his opponent pivoted and sent a kick to Karper’s head. As Karper reeled back, two more kicks slammed his head against the wall. Then the newcomer moved forward and deliberately kneed Karper in the kidney. The big man went down and rolled beside Halpern.

“Come on, kid, it stinks over here.” He grinned at Mark.

“But my buddy—”

“Forget him.” The man pointed. Five trustees were coming into the pen. They lifted Halpern and Karper and carried them away. One of the trustees winked as they went past Mark and the other man. “See? Maybe you’ll see your friend again, maybe not. They don’t like troublemakers.”

“Bill’s not a troublemaker! That other man started it! It’s not fair!”

“Kid, you better forget that word ‘fair.’ It could cause you no end of problems. Got any smokes?” He accepted Mark’s cigarette with a glance at the label. “Thanks. Name?”

“Mark Fuller.”

“Dugan. Call me Biff.”

“Thanks, Biff. I guess I needed some help.”

“That you did. Hell, it was fun. Karper was gettin’ on my nerves, anyway. How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty.” And what does he want? Lord God, is he looking for a bunkmate, too?

“You don’t look twenty. Taxpayer, aren’t you?”

“Yes—how did you know?”

“It shows. What’s a taxpayer’s kid doing here?”

Mark told him. “It wasn’t fair,” he finished.

“There’s that word again. You were in college, eh? Can you read?”

“Well, sure, everyone can read.”

Dugan laughed. “I can’t. Not very well. And I bet you’re the only one in this pen who ever read a whole book. Where’d you learn?”