"I must go. I must. I-"
Raj turned back, and Thom recoiled a half step. The other man's teeth were showing, and a muscle twitched on one cheek. "I. . there's been so much dying. . I can't. . so many dead, so many, how can I save myself?"
"They were enemies," Thom said softly.
"No! Not them. My own men! I used men like bullets! There aren't one in three of the 5th Descott Guards remaining, of the ones who rode out with me against the Colony five years ago. Poplanich's Own-raised from your family estates, Thom-had a hundred and fifty casualties in one battle, and I was leading them."
Thom opened his mouth, then closed it again. Center cut in on them, an iron impatience in its non-voice:
leading is the operative word, raj whitehall. you were leading them. observe:
* * *
"Back one step and volley!" Raj shouted, hoarse with smoke and dust.
Around him the shattered ranks firmed. Colonial dragoons in crimson djellabas rode forward, reins in their teeth as they worked the levers of their repeating carbines. The muzzles of their dogs snaked forward, then recoiled from the line of bayonets.
BAM. Ragged, but the men were firing in unison.
"Back one step and volley!" Raj shouted again.
He fired his revolver between two of the troopers, into the face of a Colonial officer who yipped and waved his yataghan behind the line of dragoons. The carbines snapped, and the man beside Raj stumbled back, moaning and pawing at the shattered jaw that dangled on his breast.
"Hold hard, 5th Descott! Back one step and volley."
* * *
Raj blinked back to an awareness of the polished sphere that was Center's physical being. That had been too vivid: not just the holographic image that the ancient computer projected on his retina; he could still smell the gunpowder and blood.
if you had not struck swiftly and hard, the wars would have dragged on for years. deaths would have been a whole order of magnitude greater, among soldiers of both sides and among the civilians. as well, entire provinces would be so devastated as to be unable to sustain civilized life.
Images flitted through their minds: bones resting in a ditch, hair still fluttering from the skulls of a mother and child; skeletal corpses slithering over each other as men threw them on a plague-cart and dragged it away down the empty streets of a besieged city; a room of hollow-eyed soldiers resting on straw pallets slimed with the liquid feces of cholera.
"That's true enough for a computer," Raj said.
Even then, Thom noted the irony. He was East Residence born, a city patrician, and back when they both believed computer meant angel he'd doubted their very existence. That had shocked Raj's pious country-squire soul; Raj never doubted the Personal Computer that watched over every faithful soul, and the great Mainframes that sat in glory around the Spirit of Man of the Stars. Now they were both agents of such a being.
Raj's voice grew loud for a moment. "That's true enough for the Spirit of Man of the Stars made manifest, true enough for God. I'm not God, I'm just a man-and I've done the Spirit's work without flinching. But I'd be less than a man if I didn't think I deserve death for it." Silence fell.
"They ought to hate me," he whispered, his eyes still seeing visions without need of Center's holographs. "I've left the bones of my men all the way from the Drangosh to Carson Barracks, across half a world. . they ought to hate my guts."
they do not, Center said. instead-
* * *
A group of men swaggered into an East Residence bar, down the stairs from the street and under the iron brackets of the lights, into air thick with tobacco and sweat and the fumes of cheap wine and tekkila. Like most of those inside, they wore cavalry-trooper uniforms-it was not a dive where a civilian would have had a long life expectancy-but most of theirs carried the shoulder-flashes of the 5th Descott Guards, and they wore the red-and-white checked neckerchiefs that were an unofficial blazon in that unit. They were dark close-coupled stocky-muscular men, like most Descotters; with them were troopers from half a dozen other units, some of them blond giants with long hair knotted on the sides of their heads.
There was a general slither of chairs on floors as the newcomers took over the best seats. One Life Guard trooper who was slow about vacating his chair was dumped unceremoniously on the sanded floor; half a dozen sets of eyes tracked him like gun turrets turning as he came up cursing and reaching for the knife in his boot. The Life Guardsman looked over his shoulder, calculated odds, and pushed out of the room. The hard-eyed girl who'd been with him hung over the shoulder of the chair's new occupant. The men hung their sword belts on the backs of their chairs and called for service.
"T'Messer Raj," one said, raising a glass. "While 'e's been a-leadin' us, nivver a one's been shot runnin' away!"
* * *
– they do not hate you. they fear you, for they know you will expend them without hesitation if necessary. but they know raj whitehall will lead from the front, and that with him they have conquered the world.
"Then they're fools," Raj said flatly.
"They're men," Thom said. "All men die, whether they go for soldiers or not. But maybe you've given them something that makes the life worth it, just as you have Center's Plan to rebuild civilization throughout the universe."
They exchanged the embrahzo again. Thom stepped back and froze, his body once again in Center's timeless stasis.
Raj turned and took a deep breath. "Can't die deader than dead," he murmured to himself.
CHAPTER TWO
The great corridor outside the Audience Hall shone with the delicate colored marble and semiprecious stone that made up the intaglio work of the floor. The walls were arched windows on the outer side, and religious murals on the inner-icons of the Saints, lives of the martyrs, stars, starships, Computers calling forth Order from Primeval Chaos. Though the day was overcast, hidden gaslights threw a bright radiance through mirrors.
Soldiers in the black uniforms and black breastplates of the Life Guards stood along the walls every few paces, rifles at port; officers had their swords drawn and the points resting at their boots. The uniforms were Capital-crisp, but the faces under the plumed helmets were closed and watchful-square beak-nosed faces, dark and hard, on men slightly bowlegged from riding as soon as they could walk. The Life Guards were recruited from the Barholm family estates back in Descott county, from vakaros and yeoman-tenant rancheros. When Descotters ate a man's salt they took the responsibilities seriously, in the main.
Suzette adjusted Raj's cravat, beneath the high wing collar of the dress-uniform jacket. There was a fixed, intent look on her face. Raj recognized it; it was the look you got when the overall situation was completely out of control, so you focused on the immediate skill you could master. Suzette had been brought up in East Residence, and her family had been patrician for fourteen generations. Court etiquette-and the intricate currents of court intrigue-were as much her heritage as the saddle of a war-dog or the hilt of a saber were to him.
He'd seen the same look on a Brigade trooper's face, adjusting the grip on his sword and the angle of the blade-as he rode into the muzzle of a cannon loaded with grapeshot.
Three of his Companions were standing around, with similar expressions. They were looking at the Life Guards, and figuring the odds on a firefight if an order came through to arrest Raj on the spot. Not good, he thought.