“When the old Earth government financed the Great Propogation—hundreds and hundreds of years ago—the seedships were sent out to dozens of stars that were thought to possibly have Earth-like planets orbiting them. On the worlds that were found appropriate, the priests aboard the ships cloned an initial population from their genetic banks, and started setting up societies like that on Earth. Except for one seedship—the one that found its way here, to this world. The Academy—it was powerful even back then, almost a government to itself—had the priests of that seedship programmed differently. They came to this world and set things up the way they are now—low technology, semi-feudal government, every little region divided from the others by distance and language.
“Why? For research—or that’s what they still call it. Oh, what a bleeding farce it’s become. Or maybe it was that way all along. Maybe the Academy’s always been as futile as it is powerful. This whole world’s a laboratory for them to play with. They dress up their undergraduates like the archetypal image of angels that are found in everyone’s subconscious, so they can scare whatever answers they want out of the people they keep so ignorant. And for what? Scholasticism is all that it is. People on Earth thousands of years ago would argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Now the Academy exists in order to see how much useless data can be crammed into their memory banks by angels. It makes me sick to think of them peering and snooping at their fellow human beings like they were lab animals, and storing their pointless little findings in the computers at their headquarters. The filth, the degrading of the studied and the studiers.”
He paused for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was lower. “There it is—centuries of secret history, stripped to the bones. The ugliest part.” He fell silent, his former amused attitude replaced with a look of grim contemplation.
After a few seconds, Daenek spoke. “But why did they try to kill us?”
Lessup gazed at the wall and then back at Daenek. “You’re a threat to them,” he said simply. “They’ve guessed that you’re going to try to find out what happened to the last thane, your father. That worries them.”
“Because they’re responsible for his death and overthrow—that’s the reason, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Lessup met his level gaze. “The Academy engineered the coup, and set up the Regent in his place. The thane was such an important component in the social structure that they couldn’t get rid of him through any less drastic means.”
“But why did they do it?” Daenek’s voice had grown hard.
“That’s what I don’t know. There are some things the Academy hierarchy keeps secret from the rest, and that’s one of them. But it’s easy to guess that your father must have been planning something that worried them.”
Daenek walked to the boarded-up window. The slits between the boards let the sun hit his still masked face like bars. The answers he wanted seemed agonizingly close but instead of them he had found the world he thought he knew dissolving with Lessup’s recitation. He turned away from the window. “So they sent a bunch of you out to get us—what happened? Why did you mess them up?”
Another shrug of the bony shoulders. “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was already a little drunk when they gave up the assignment, and I’d been brooding for a long time. I was never really cut out to be a member of the Academy anyway. Signed up just to get off my own home world.”
Rennie got to her feet and walked over to where Daenek was standing. She pulled him a little farther away from Lessup and whispered, “Hey, how much of this guy’s story do you believe?”
“I don’t know,” replied Daenek. “Maybe none, maybe all of it. But I think I know how he can help us find out something more for sure.” He crossed the room and stood above Lessup.
“The Academy headquarters is pretty close by, isn’t it? It would have to be, for a bunch of assassins to show up in the flesh.”
Lessup nodded. “The headquarters are in a big underground complex on the far side of the city.”
“And the computer data banks are there, too?” asked Daenek.
The former sociologist nodded.
“How much do you know about operating them?”
“Enough, I guess.” Lessup grinned, seemingly in anticipation of Daenek’s idea.
“Hey,” said Rennie. “How about letting me in on what you’re thinking?”
“Just this,” said Daenek. “If everything’s been crammed into those data banks, then all you’d have to do is look hard enough to find what you want.”
Chapter XVII
“I still think this is a dumb idea,” said Rennie. She shone her flashlight at the circular metal plate set into the ground. “I mean, what’s the point of taking a chance on getting caught down there? This isn’t going to lead us to any money.”
Daenek ignored her, turning to Lessup on his other side. “You sure they shut down for the night?” They had waited until night to make the attempt at the best time.
“Sure,” said Lessup. “Everybody’s got to sleep some time. We won’t run into anybody down there.”
“They won’t be waiting for you to come back?”
Lessup shook his head. “This is an old ventilation shaft that I discovered during my off-hours. I used to slip out at night, change into some clothes I had stashed, and go wandering around. The main entrance is automatically guarded, of course, but nobody knows about this.”
Daenek and then Rennie followed him out of the buildings’ shadows and over to the meter-wide plate. “See?” said Lessup.
“The bolts have all rusted and snapped. They’re just hanging there.” He bent down and slid the plate to one side, exposing the dark mouth of the shaft below it. “I’ll go first. The sides are corrugated, enough to give you a fingerhold, and its only a couple of meters until the shaft hits one of the corridors.”
They watched him lower himself into the shaft and disappear from view. “This still seems stupid to me,” whispered Rennie disgustedly. “I mean, what’s the point?”
“Go on,” said Daenek. “I’ll follow you down.”
Still muttering, she descended into the shaft. When her head was no longer visible, Daenek lowered himself, gripping the ridges on either side with the tips of his fingers. The air in the shaft was still and musty.
A small square of light appeared to one side below him, revealing the bottom of the shaft. He dropped the last short distance, knelt down and scrambled through the opening. Lessup and Rennie were on the other side, in a corridor dimly lit by overhead panels.
Lessup pushed a louvered grill back into place over the opening into the short. He grinned at Daenek. “I should’ve been a burglar,” he said. “I really get a charge out of sneaking around when everybody’s asleep. It puts you one up on ’em. Come on.”
The corridor crossed a wider hallway down which Lessup led them. Daenek was aware of their cautious footsteps sounding against the antiseptic blue-white walls. The doors were all unmarked but Lessup finally stopped before one, pushed it carefully open a few inches and looked inside. “All clear,” he said after a moment. He winked and opened it all the way.
When they were inside the room, he pulled the door shut after them. “This is the main data access terminal,” he said, gesturing.
There were a dozen seats molded of the same material as the walls and set into the floor facing tilted control panels. Above each panel was a blunt-cornered rectangle of dull-grey glass.
Lessup slid into one of the chairs and pressed one of the buttons before him. A faint electronic hum, and the screen in front of him pulsed with blue light. Daenek and Rennie stood behind him, silently watching.