Charon (15 page)

 
"A little more than five years ago the Lord of Charon was Tulio Koril. He was a wily old rogue, and tremendously powerful. He had little stomach for the routine affairs of state—when one can be a god, how much more do bureaucracy, paperwork, and routine decisions weigh on him?"

 
"Why did he keep at it, then?"

 
"A sense of duty, of obligation, mostly. He derived no joy from it, but he saw the potential for terrible abuse in the position and felt that any of his logical successors would be a disaster—his opinion, of course, which has to be balanced against the egomania necessary to get to be Lord in the first place."

 
"A
Warden
man with a sense of duty and obligation?"

 
"There are many. I fancy myself one, in fact. You are as much an outcast as any of us, yet far more than we, you are the product of the society that cast you out. It is a society that aims overall for the common good, but to achieve that aim it requires all its citizens to take a certain viewpoint that is not necessarily the only one. Many of us are criminals by any lights, of course, but many more are criminal only because we dared take or develop a different viewpoint than the one the Confederacy favors. Throughout man's dirty history 'different' was always equated with evil, when 'different' is—well, simply 'different.' If
their
system is perfect, why do they employ detectives, assassins, and, for that matter, how the hell can they produce
us!"

 
It was not a question easily answered, nor profitably responded to at this time. I said nothing.

 
"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 bis 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 Kree-gan, 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 escapel
It
means we, personally, will be there to pick up the pieces.
Quite an incentivel 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
bis
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 outst, not kill, Koril—and cannot locate him now. Does that give you an appreciation of the old man's power?"

 
I had seen little but parlor tricks on this world so far, but I could accept his examples at least as comparative allegory. "And he's still working against you."

 
"He is. Not effectively of late, but he is more than dangerous. He retained good friends in high places, and some of his agents even managed to penetrate meetings of the Four Lords themselves. At one point, they got past tight security of kinds you can not imagine to witness a meeting with our alien allies themselves. The spies slipped up before they could do any harm and were all eventually tracked down and killed, but it was a
very
close call. Koril came within a hair's breath of killing all Four Lords and two of the aliens as well—and he wasn't even there! He was still safe down in Gamush."

 
It was my turn to push now. "All this is well and good— but, tell me, why are you telling me all this? I would assume it's far from common knowledge."

 
"You're right. Koril's fall was pictured publically as a move to save Charon from, evil ambition. We created, in the minds of the people, a portrait of him as a devil, a demon, a creature of pure powerful evil. It has been quite
effective,
and even useful—a force of opposition based on fear and power. It keeps the masses in line, and he can be blamed for just about anything that goes wrong."

 
"A bogeyman."
So much for tolerating other points of view, I thought to myself.

 
"Yes, exactly.
But a real one who remains a real threat. We would much prefer to have him be merely a myth. He's used our own propaganda against us too, to attract those unhappy with us in any way, employing the trappings of devil worship and the rest, creating an effective cult of opposition, in both senses of the word 'cult.' We can not be truly safe and secure until Koril is destroyed."

 
"But I thought you said you had tried that and failed."

 
"Well, not exactly. There was no concerted effort to destroy him when he wasn't already forewarned and forearmed. After all, we didn't hate him or covet his job—we merely wanted him out because we could not change his mind. Had we foreseen what sort of enemy he would make—but that's hindsight. We
can
kill him—if we face him down. But to do that we have to know where he is, where that redoubt is."

 
I knew all this was leading somewhere, but it wasn't clear why I was the one being led there. "What's all this
have
to do with me?"

 
"I'm coming to that. First of all, he has a large minority following in-his demon cult, but they are mostly useless except as information gatherers because they really believe that guff. In the aftermath of his botched assault we pretty well wiped out his effective force. He needs new people—level-headed, unclouded with superstition, and yet with some residual ties to the old values of the Confederacy. People who would be useful commanders of his demonic troops, bring fresh ideas and approaches to him, and take his side against the aliens even if they had no particular love for the Confederacy."

 
I began to see. "In other words, newly arrived inmates like me."

 
"You're the most logical. We get few newcomers these days—none of the Wardens get many, and we get the fewest of all. The nature of our atmosphere prevents most clandestine communications, and even blocks basic surveillance of us on the ground by remotes. The Confederacy has agents of one sort or another all over the Warden Diamond, but they are of almost no use here since messages are nearly impossible to get in or out except by spacecraft, which are rigidly monitored. You're the first small group we've gotten since long before Koril was deposed, so you're an absolute natural for him to approach. And of course there is a different reason as well—the real reason why we got
any
prisoners this drop. You see, due to the inevitable slip-up, the Confederacy is finally wise to the fact that we and our alien allies are plotting against it. That's
all
it knows though, and it's too little to act upon—and, I think, too late. Still, they are not stupid. They have already sent at least one top assassin to the Warden Diamond—we know that."