Now, more than ever, he could feel that his innocence had been stripped away. He’d just killed three men, and though they were highwaymen and would have used their testimony to nail him to the inverted cross, still they had not held any weapons, and because of their ignorance, they had been powerless against him.
Gallen rushed up the hillside, under the shelter of an old apple grove. There he fell to his knees and began praying sincerely for the first time in years, begging God for forgiveness.
And as he prayed with his eyes closed, the amplified words hissing from his microphone, he suddenly saw a weak light before him. He opened his eyes. A pale-blue glowing figure stood before him, leaning against the tree. A wight.
Two weeks ago, the sight would have frozen his heart. But now he knew that it was only a creature formed from luminescent nanotech devices, like the glowing mask he wore from Fale. Yet this creature had the thoughts and memories of a long-dead human inhabiting it. It was a heavyset man with lamb chop sideburns.
“I don’t know who you are,” the wight said, in a deep voice, “but this is an interdicted planet. By charter, you cannot be carrying the kinds of weapons you have on you.”
“Then why don’t you take them from me?” Gallen said. He didn’t need a sword. His mantle whispered that it could incapacitate the creature with a burst of radio waves at any time.
“Och, there’s not much that I can do against the likes of you,” the wight answered. “But I can raise the hue and cry against you. I’ll call you a demon. At my word, every townsman in a thousand miles would come marching to war against you. Sooner or later, we’d get you.”
“You would let that many people die-just to rid this world of one man?” Gallen whispered.
The wight didn’t answer. “We’ve chosen how we will live here on Tihrglas.”
“Eighteen thousand years ago you chose how you will live. But you’re dead, and this isn’t your world anymore,” Gallen said.
“It is filled with our children. If they wish to change the planetary charter, they may do so.”
“Yet you don’t even let them know that there are worlds beyond this. How can they choose?”
The wight sat down a few feet from Gallen, folded his hands into a steeple and stared at them thoughtfully. “You know of the worlds beyond this, of the wars and horrors found in the universe. Of what value is such knowledge? Our people lead simple lives, free of care. It is a commodity that cannot be purchased.”
Things had changed much in the past eighteen thousand years. New sub-races of humanity had been engineered. The Tharrin had been created and given leadership of most planets, ending the petty conflicts and wars that the galaxy had endured under the corporate governors so long before. Gallen did not know much about how the galaxy had been run millennia ago, and he wondered how much the wights understood about how it functioned now.
“I fear,” Gallen said, “that much has changed in eighteen thousand years. When you built this world, if I remember my history right, corporate wars raged between planets, but mankind has come far toward making peace with itself.”
The wight smiled wryly. “From your words, I guess that mankind has not managed to bring about perfect peace?”
“As long as men are free to do evil, and have the power to do so, there will be evil,” Gallen answered. “But the evils of today are perpetrated on a smaller scale than in the past.”
“In other words, you’ve cut the balls off the bigger predators. You’ve taken away their power.”
Gallen considered a moment. He’d seen how heavily modified the Tharrin were, and in a sense they were no longer even human. Yes, mankind had stripped their leaders of the capacity to do evil. “We’ve modified mankind to some extent. Most people do not have the same level of desire to do evil that your people had in your time.”
“Aye, we knew it would be done. It was such a seductive solution to the problem, that we knew others would not resist the temptation. You can place evil men in jail, or you can make the flesh a prison in itself where evil cannot enter. There’s not much difference. But you’re still restricting people’s freedom.”
So you created bars of ignorance, Gallen thought, and imprisoned them anyway. “The point is,” Gallen said, “that the universe is not so dangerous now as it was in your day. Perhaps it is time for your children to join it.”
“Mark my words-” the wight said, suddenly angry, “if our feral children go into the universe, in two generations they’ll pose such a threat that none of your peaceful planets would want them!”
Gallen studied the wight, and realized that he had a point. Gallen had just seen the face of evil on his own world, and if highwaymen like the Flahertys were given power, they would take their criminal ways out into the larger galaxy. He envisioned pirating fleets and judges who had been purchased.
In the greater universe, others had chosen to reengineer their children, rid them of the desire to dominate and oppress others. On some worlds, he knew, huge police forces had been created to handle the problem. No matter how you looked at it, bars had been created, and Gallen’s ancestors had chosen to control their children by giving them an inheritance of ignorance. Perhaps they had been right to retreat from the future.
Yet Gallen and Maggie had both seen the larger universe, and they had grown from it. Gallen had come home only to find that there was nothing left for him here. He had few friends. And something inside him had changed. He’d outgrown this place, and he felt free to leave now.
He thought of the Tharrin woman, Ceravanne, whom Everynne had shown him on Tremonthin, and he was suddenly eager to be off.
Gallen sighed, looked at the wight. He was an older man who had graying hairs among his sideburns, someone who looked as if the heavy burdens of life had bent him low. “If the only other worlds out there were inhabited only by humans,” Gallen said, “then perhaps I would be content to admit that this world should stay as it is. But there is a race of beings called the dronon, and they will come here. Perhaps, someday, they will come to war against this world. If they do, your people will need to grow up, or they will be destroyed.”
The wight gave Gallen a calculating look. “We saw one of your dronon not two weeks ago, and wondered how it came to be. I’ll take this bit of news to Conclave. Perhaps we must reconsider how this world is run.” He stood up.
“And I,” Gallen said, rising, “will leave this world with all possible haste, without alerting anyone else here of the universe beyond.”
“Not just like that,” the wight said, shaking his head. “I’ll not let you go at your own pace. We’ll escort you, if you please. Just tell us where your ship is.”
Suddenly, there was an uproar in town. Gallen looked back down over the small seaport. Hundreds of glowing wights were striding through the edge of town, past the fires and tent cities. The townsfolk were terrified. The wights only came to town if a priest tied someone to a tree for breaking the laws found in the Tome. And a person taken for such an offense never returned.
“My mother lives down there,” Gallen sighed, realizing that the wight must have had a built-in transmitter. It must have called its companions. “I’ll go down to say good-bye.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” the wight said with just a hint of force. “You can’t stop me,” Gallen replied. “You wear the mantle of a Lord Protector,” the wight said. “If you would protect those people below, then you will leave now. It is against the law to wear such mantles on this world. You know that. And things have already gotten out of hand-what with off-worlders coming through the gates. But things aren’t too bad. For now, we will clean up the evidence of off-world intruders, and in a generation these shenanigans will all be forgotten, the stuff of legend. But if you go back to town and pollute those folks down there with more knowledge, we will be forced to eradicate them.”