“When first the Confederacy system was imposed, they set then: assassins to execute those few who would not or could not adapt. That was centuries ago, and many millions of lives ago, and yet the unadapted are still here—and they are still out there killing. You know something, Lacoch? No matter how many they kill, no matter how many they reprogram, no matter what means they develop to control mind and body—we will still exist. Those who would shape history never learn from it, and yet if they did they would see in people like us the greatness of man, why he’s out here among the stars instead of blown away by his own hand back on some dirty fly-speck of a home world. No matter how many enemies tyranny would kill, there is always somebody else. Always.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call the Confederacy a tyranny. Not when compared to the old ways.”
“Well, perhaps not, but there, new ways mask the old. A society that mandates absolutely the way people must think, eat, drink, whom to love—and whether to love—is a tyranny, even if cloaked in gold and tasting of honey.”
“But if the people are happy—”
“The people of the greatest tyrannies are usually happy—or, at least, not unhappy. No tyrant in human history ever governed without the tacit support of the masses, no matter what those masses might say if the tyrant was ever overthrown. Revolutions are made by the few, the elect, those with the imagination and the intellect to penetrate the tyranny and see how things could and should be better. It is a lesson the Confederacy understands full well—that’s why people like Koril and myself are here. And, no matter to what lengths they go, the Confederacy will eventually follow all other human empires and fall, either from external factors or from sheer dry rot. They are staving off the fall, but fall they will, eventually. Some of us would prefer they fall sooner than later.”
“You sound like an embittered philosopher,” I commented.
He shrugged. “Actually, I was a historian. Not one of those official types teaching you all the doctored-up versions of the past you were supposed to learn, but one of the real ones with access to all the facts, doing analyses for the Confederacy. History is a science, you know—although they don’t really let you know that either. The techs are scared to death of it and put it in the same category as literature, as always. That’s why hard science people are the most ignorant of it and so easily led. But, I digress from my point.”
“I find this all fascinating,” I told him truthfully-knowing my enemy was vital—“but you were speaking for some reason of Koril.”
He nodded. “Koril is one of the old school intellectuals. He knows that the Confederacy will fall one day of its own weight and he is content to allow natural forces to do just that, even if it might be centuries in the future. There is another school, though, that believes that a quick and, if need be, violent push to oblivion will, overall, save lives and produce positive results for more people. A man can die in agonizing slowness or nearly instantly—which is more merciful to him? You see the difference in positions?”
I nodded. “Evolution or revolution—an old story. I gather this is behind Koril no longer being Lord?”
“It is. He was an evolution man in power at the wrong time.”
I was becoming more and more interested. “The wrong time? That implies that such a revolution on such a scale is suddenly possible, something I find very hard to believe.”
“About five years ago,” Korman told me, “Marek Kreegan, Lord of Lilith, called a special conference of the Four Lords of the Diamond. We had been contacted, it seems, by an external force that wanted our aid in overthrowing the Confederacy.”
“External force?” I could hardly believe it. A week on Charon and already I was finding out a lot of details I thought I would have to dig out with a sword.
“An alien force. Big. Powerful. Not really more advanced than the Confederacy but unhampered by their ideological restraints, which means they have a lot of stuff we don’t. They are also—by design, we think—far fewer in number than humankind. They have a long history of getting along with other kinds of life forms, but their analysis of the culture and values of the Confederacy said that together we would just out-and-out crush them. They feel they must destroy the Confederacy, but they have no wish to destroy humankind as well.”
“Do you think they could? You just said how small they were compared to us.”
He shook his head sadly from side to side, more in wonder than in reaction to my question. “You see? You make an easy mistake. It’s not numbers that are important. The Confederacy itself could destroy a planet with ten billion on it with one simple device, and do it with perhaps only one man and two robots. Three against ten billion—and who would win?”
“But they’d have to get to all those planets first,” I pointed out.
“Any race smart enough to meet and attempt an alliance with the Four Lords—and pull it off under the noses of the picket ships and the other devices our prison system contains to keep us isolated—and who even so remains virtually unknown to the Confederacy would have few problems doing so.”
I had to admit he had a point there, but I let it pass for the moment. “And the Four Lords went along with the deal?”
He nodded. “Three of them did. Kreegan came up with the master plan; the aliens will provide the technology and access; and the other worlds contribute their power, wealth, and expertise.”
“I assume the one who didn’t was Koril.”
Again he nodded. “That’s the story. He was just flat-out against the plan. He feared the aliens were only using us for a painless conquest which once undertaken, would enable them to enslave or wipe out mankind. In this he was pretty well alone. Of course, emotionally, to be a party to the overthrow of the Confederacy within your lifetime is almost irresistible, but there is an overriding practical reason as well. The Warden worlds that help will share in the rewards, even the spoils. There is very good reason to believe that these aliens are capable of curing, or at least stabilizing, the Warden organism. You understand what that means.”
I nodded. “Escape.”
“More than escape! It means we, personally, will be there to pick up the pieces. Quite an incentive! But, as I said, there is overriding practicality here. Charon is probably the least necessary of all the Warden worlds. Mostly political criminals, wrong thinkers, that type are sent here, and the plot, quite frankly, could proceed without us. Could—and would. We would be isolated, cut off as things proceeded without us. But if anything went wrong, we would be blamed along with the others, even though we took no part. That might result in the Confederacy literally destroying the Warden Diamond. But, if things succeeded, the other three would be on the winning side, with all those IOUs and means of escape, and we would be stuck here, consigned to eternal oblivion. Therefore, since we were not important to the plot, we either joined it and gained or we didn’t and lost whatever the outcome. That was what caused the unprecedented removal of a Lord of the Diamond.”
“This Koril—I gather he didn’t take this lying down?”
“Hardly! It took the entire Synod’s combined power to oust him, and even then he was horrible in his power. He fled, finally, to Gamush, the equatorial continent, where he had already prepared a retreat and headquarters so well hidden none have been able to find it. Consider—a lowly apt in the magical arts could kill you with a glance. One of the village sores could level a castle and transform all the people into trees if he or she felt like it. The combined Synod could make a continent vanish and rearrange the oceans of the world. But that same combined Synod could only oust, not kill, Koril—and cannot locate him now. Does that give you an appreciation of the old man’s power?”