Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 (2 page)

 
          
"Methorian ship descending towards gas giant, sir."

 
          
Archier
accepted an imaging fix. He saw the alien vessel, a great bulky pod caught
within a baroque-looking cradle, and watched as it slipped into the swirling
clouds of the huge planet.

 
          
"I'm
hazy on recognition, Arctus. What is it?"

 
          
"It's
a Methorian cargo carrier," Arctus informed him.

 
          
"Oh,"
Archier murmured, incurious as to whether the alien settlement was merely an
outpost or even a fully developed planetary society. As with several other
alien interstellar empires, the Methorian
empire
interpenetrated the human one but had practically no contact with it. Given the
scale of interstellar distances, and the variety of worlds, there- could be
little concept of exclusive territory as between oxygen-breathing humans,
hydrogen-breathing methanogens, salines, high-temperature acidophiles, and so
forth, all inhabiting types of planet of no value to the others.

 
          
So
the Methorian presence in a system from which the Empire was, for the time
being, forced to retreat, signified nothing. The gas giant flipped from the
screen, and at the same time from Archier's notice. In its place he saw the
local star field, almost a cluster in its own right, lighting up lacy gas
trails to one side of it.

 
          
Are we to give this up?
he
thought.
No.'
It's
ours. It must remain ours.
The Empire claimed each
one of these stars as its own property. That aliens might hold a similar view
was of no consequence, any more than the owner of a stretch of forest would
bother himself with the territorial struggles of the animals living in it. Vast
dramas might be unfolding in any of these alien empires, without human society
being in the least aware of it.

 
          
There
was a flurry on the screen as the metric fields generated by the feetol drives
of a hundred and forty ships intermeshed to form a single field enclosing the
fleet like a bubble. By then they were already travelling faster than light;
now their velocity increased a hundredfold.

 
          
Ten-Fleet
was
en route
to Escoria Sector.

 
          
Evening,
fleet time, and Admiral Archier left his quarters to go strolling through his
flagship
ICS Standard Bearer.
ICS
prefixed the names of all Star Force vessels. It stood for
Imperial Council Ship,
the Imperial Council having replaced the
Imperial Directorate—a cybernetic decision-making system—nearly a century ago.
The short-lived Directorate, a product of the Anti-archist Revolution, had in
its turn replaced the Imperial Civil Service, which had been commanded by
an
hereditary line of genetically optimised Emperor
Protectors.

 
          
Though
Archier would readily admit that the overthrow of the principle of personal
overlordship was praiseworthy on ideological grounds, its practical results had
been far from beneficial. The Directorate had so completely failed to handle
the affairs of the Empire that an official doctrine of machine unsentience had
ensued. Ironically, that doctrine was now crippling the Empire's industrial
capacity because of the disaffection of the robot workforce. The collective
leadership of the Council was doing its best to arrest the Empire's
progressive decay and disintegration, but it too was failing. Archier, in
common with many officers under his command, privately believed—though it was
politically unwise to say so too openly—that the disinheriting of the Protector
had been a tragic mistake.

 
          
Haunting
music, exotic scents, drifted through the salons and dance halls of the
flagship, which like all major war vessels of Imperial Star Force was one huge
pleasure ship. It could hardly have been otherwise; the vessel had been built
in the Imperial yards and its crew all belonged to that part of the Empire's
starclouded heartland known as Galactic Diadem. To such people, sybaritic
luxury was as natural and necessary as the air they breathed.

 
          
The
talented artists and scientists collected as taxes by
Ten-
Fleet—it
had become its chief function—were often open-mouthed with astonishment when
brought aboard. Archier had heard them apply the word "decadent" more
than once. For his part, the outlying worlds from which the taxes were levied
seemed rude and barbarous. He viewed their unreliability with disdain, all the
more so because their contribution was so vital if the Empire was to survive.

 
          
"Good
evening, Admiral."

 
          
"Good
evening, Madam." Archier's response was cordial to the handsome matron who
lounged against the frame of an arcaded entrance. Beyond it, in a kind of
gymnasium, a group of ten-year-old girls in leotards were learning a dance
routine. They were nymphs—junior members of Priapus' People, one of Diadem's
finest dance and sex troupes, for which training began at the age of eight.
Already these girls would be experts in a variety of erotic arts, coached in
the giving of sexual pleasure.

 
          
An
entertainment by their more mature colleagues was scheduled for later. Barely
glancing at the lissom, lunging bodies, Archier walked on, to enter the main
salon. There, airy melodies blared softly over a hum of conversation. He tried
to forget his anxieties, to let himself relax.

 
          
A
satin-sheathed young figure turned as he passed.

 
          
"Dance
with me.
Admiral."

 
          
The
face that smiled wistfully at him was senile, artificially aged to that of a
ninety-year-old's, though the girl was in fact about twenty. Her cheeks and
jowls were wrinkled and sagging, caked with cosmetic, her green eyes spiteful
and rheumy. The combination of an ancient face "and a young body was to be
seen throughout the salon; it was the current fashion in feminine beauty, a
concept that changed rapidly in all sophisticated societies. It said much for
the strength of social conditioning that the sight of the sexually trained girl
children had aroused Archier hardly at all, but when the withered, decayed
cheek of his dance partner was placed against his, a thrill went right through
him.

 
          
He
considered asking her to his table, even though he knew the current fad in her
age group was to refuse all sexual liaisons. She had been made pure virgin, her
hymen surgically restored, all memory of past sexual encounters expunged from
her mind. However, when the tune ended and they ceased to dance a wheezing
voice accosted him from behind.

 
          
"Ah,
there you are, Admiral!"

 
          
A
pig
whom
he recognised as Acting Fire Command Officer
of Fleet Weapons Division had come bustling into the salon. A trifle wearily,
he acknowledged the creature. By the regulations officers of command rank were
supposed to be human, but human personnel were so scarce it had become the
practice to give animals acting rank instead. Pigs appeared particularly suited
to this role, and indeed eager for it.

 
          
Archier's
Fire Command Officer seemed exasperated. He grunted, raising a bristled snout.
"Not a very successful day, Admiral!"

 
          
Murmuring
a polite goodbye to the old-faced young woman, Archier sauntered with the animal
towards the buffet. "The times we live in cause much confusion," he
admitted ambiguously.

 
          
"Confusion?
I suffer from no confusion!" The pig
thrust his snout in a trough to root for tidbits, while Archier surveyed the
delicacies laid out on the buffet tables. He picked up a tiny flask and sipped
a cool, creamy, thick purple fluid from it through a straw. The cannabis-based
drink made him feel better almost immediately.

 
          
The
pig, on the other hand, seemed only to grow more agitated. He took his head out
of the trough as though unable to contain himself any longer. "Admiral, I
waited and waited for you to order a strike. And what happened? We simply left
and did nothing!"

 
          
"We
were ordered away," Archier said amiably. "There was no time to
complete collection."

 
          
"Even
so, we should have left them something to remember us by!" spluttered the
pig. "Vapourise a city or two. Beam a disintegration trail across the main
continent. These worlds need to be shown
who's
master!"

 
          
Thoughtfully
Archier sucked up the rest of the purple drink. "It wouldn't really have
been fair. They hadn't actually refused payment yet. It wasn't their fault we
had to leave."

 
          
"It
was
their fault we were there at all!
By the Simplex, Admiral, what's going to happen to the Empire if all we're
going to be is
fair?
Firmness is
what's needed!" The pig shook his head and let out a long, troubled
snuffling sound. "Sometimes I despair of you humans!"

 
          
He
waddled away. A voice spoke near Archier. "I wonder if the appointment was
wise in that pig's case. I've noticed he gets upset when he doesn't get a
chance to play with the fleet's firepower."

 
          
With
a shrug Archier acknowledged a young man in the sheened dress uniform of the
Drop Commando. "People naturally like to do their job—animals more so than
humans, if you ask me. Anyway, a post like that calls for keenness. It needs a
pig, or feline."

 
          
The
commando nodded. "My cheetahs and dogs strain at the leash every time we
invest a planet. It's difficult explaining why we can't go, sometimes."

 
          
"What
we really need are more humans."

 
          
"Don't
we all know
that!
" The commando laughed and helped
himself to a leaf-dish of crunchy diced vegetables. "At least, in the
Force we do. But try telling civilians."

 
          
Tossing
the empty flask into a waste slot, Archier turned away. In his mind he saw
Galactic Diadem, laid out like a map. Imperial worlds trailed out of the
glowing starbank like ragged tentacles from some monster octopus, merging and
dissipating into the fringe worlds—planets where Imperial control had become
weak of late.

 
          
In
theory the Empire claimed sovereignty over the whole galaxy, anticipating a
time when mankind would be present throughout the galactic disk. In fact, if
the galaxy were viewed from afar the extent of Imperial power would be seen as
a fairly small though visible blotch, and whether that blotch would now be
further extended was becoming, to many minds, problematical.

 
          
One,
and perhaps the chief difficulty, was the drastically declining birth rate of
Diadem and its close environs. The human population of Diadem, which could be
thought of as ruling mankind much as one imperial country would once have ruled
other countries (though it was never admitted that any such thing as political
division existed) was about one million. To that could be added a few tens of
millions of animals with artificial intelligence who assisted in the
administration of the Empire, and of course some hundreds of millions of robots
who were vital economically but were denied citizenship.

 
          
But
neither animals nor robots were artistically or scientifically creative, and
one million people, spread over such a vast region, offered too small a
reservoir of creative talent to encourage confidence in the future. What was
more, the situation was getting worse. The next generation would see an Empire
manned by only seven hundred thousand. Eventually the population might
stabilise, but Diadem would lose the mental strength necessary for its self-appointed
destiny.

 
          
The
remedy was typical of the Empire's methods: a levy of artists, scientists and
philosophers drawn from the fringe and vassal worlds which mainly had their own
governments and whose total population could be measured in the hundreds of
millions. Whether the personnel tax was succeeding in its aims was debatable.
Some of the dragooned artists and scientists certainly found their carefree
lives in Diadem to their liking and stayed—particularly those from social
regimes which, while more vigorous, were also more restrictive. But the total liberty
inalienable to full Imperial citizens in Diadem—and that included anyone with
90 percent or more human genes— virtually made it impossible to prevent anyone
from clandestinely leaving, should they be so inclined. Not even the threat to
punish the home worlds of defectors had always proved effective.