Into the Sea of Stars (21 page)

Ian nodded.

"Good then." Smith pushed off and floated toward the door. At his approach it slid
open,
a sudden roar engulfed
them, as if a storm-tossed sea was breaking outside the
golden room.

Smith grabbed hold of a circular railing of gold, stop
ping his forward momentum. He stood there surrounded
by thunder.

Ian cautiously slipped up to the doorway and peaked
out. "My God, it's full of people," he whispered.

He was looking out into a vast cylinder-shaped audi
ence chamber: a kilometer or more in diameter, its length
ten kilometers back up into the vessel. The entire popu
lation of the one habitat—millions of them—had gathered
in this one place.

"O my children," Smith shouted, and his amplified
voice rose above the thunderous roar.

"For you are the Father of us all!" ten millions answered in return.

"Our promise shall be fulfilled, our glory magnified a
thousandfold
. Our revenge shall be just."

"For so you have promised!"

"Our Hegira shall come to an end in the gardens of
Paradise!"

Smith reached to his belt and with a dramatic flourish drew a sword that glinted in the harsh blue sunlight pour
ing in through the windows that surrounded the docking
port like a beaded halo.

Ian gasped with amazement as, like a field of steely wheat, a wavering shimmer of metal rippled up over the
multitude.
Until all human forms were blotted out beneath
ten million upraised swords.

"Father, Father, Father..."

Smith pushed off from the golden ring and reentered the golden room.

"That is power, Ian
Lacklin
," he said with a cold glim
mer of menace. "Think of that power when, in vengeance
for what we suffered, I unleash it across the world that
so cruelly drove us out into the night."

Ian was silent as together they
reboarded
the shuttle.

Not a word was said between the two as the same
performance was repeated at half a dozen other colonies.

Ian knew he had been invited to the ritual display to
be impressed.
But for what purpose?
Part of it, he guessed,
was to judge his reaction. But by the informal way that
he was treated, Ian suspected that Smith was looking for a contact that was not filled with ritual,
nor
blood kin, for that matter.

Finally a question almost anthropological in nature
broke the silence.

"Why the swords?
I mean, I've been observing your technological level and it's simply astounding. Why this
anachronism? Now, don't take offense, but in my eyes
swords are rather ridiculous in a technological level anywhere beyond the Napoleonic. It's even stranger when I
can't trace any useful cultural lineage out of it. I mean, swords were never used in space in your time, at least, not in anything above a poorly written video thriller."

"But there is a cultural lineage," Smith replied. "There's
a direct historical linkage that centers our society
around
the sword and the mystique of the warrior. One more stop, Ian
Lacklin
, and then I shall explain."

The adulation seemed to have put Franklin Smith in a jovial mood, and he laughed as he entered through the
airlock into yet another golden room. Ian sat in the shuttle
and waited as the waves of noise washed the interior. For
several minutes he looked across the star-studded night,
the familiar formations now changed, with some brighter,
and others dimmed, or lost altogether. Finally he found
the one he was looking for, almost lost in the harsh glare of Delta.

The chanting would soon be heard there, as well, Ian realized, and he, more than anyone else alive, would be
the one responsible for the devastation to come. He, a
historian, a studier of others, a bookworm lost in fantasies
of the heroic past would be the cause. Ian suddenly realized that in this movement he might very well be the
prime ingredient in the fate of an entire world.

As his eyes scanned the shuttle, Ian recognized the
superior technology. Hell, they had a thousand-year head
start, a thousand years without the long night, the plagues,
the
convulsive wars that followed. Only in the last two hundred years had Earth reemerged into the enlighten
ment. For all practical purposes the only technological
advantage his people had was the
translight
capability. In all others, they were sadly lacking. So now, thanks to his
damnable curiosity, Earth's one small advantage would
allow Smith to cross space in a matter of months—bring
ing with him the fire and sword of vengeance.

The chants were still thundering as Smith slipped into the seat next to him, closed the airlocks, and broke free
and away.

"The day we left Earth orbit," Smith suddenly stated, picking up on a question that Ian had already half for
gotten, "we numbered just over one hundred thousand.
The bastards who started the wars knew that we were
trapped—we who were on that colony. Even if we made
the engines, produced the sails, or deployed our ion packs,
we were still trapped."

"Why?"

"Because the
Earthside
government forced one hundred
thousand people aboard a colony designed for twenty-five thousand. It was such a crude analogy. Earth with
her twelve billion had exceeded her carrying capacity, and
those of us who protested and tried to alter that equation without resorting to war were forced onto a colony that
had far exceeded its closed eco-capacity, as well. They
knew we could only stay alive through massive trans
shipments from Earth. Those bastards reasoned that if
they were defeated, they could still destroy us outright
or leave us in space to linger a slow death until we finally
destroyed ourselves.

"I remember one of their leaders laughing at me when we had just reached solar system escape velocity. He said
he would enjoy contemplating the ways that we would
use to kill each other."

Smith stopped for a moment and looked straight in the
direction of Sol and the Earth that he had escaped.

"I outlived you, you bastards!" Smith screamed. "You
laughed at me and I beat you all. And I'll be back with
billions to seek revenge."

"The sword," Ian asked, trying to divert Smith away
from what appeared to be a potentially violent tirade.

"Yes, the sword, your question about the sword," Smith
replied absently.

He looked off into space, as if searching for some distant, painful memory. "Consider this problem, Ian
Lacklin
. You are acknowledged as the great leader of a group. Be it through cunning, political stealth, charismatic awe,
or, in the very rare case, through actual ability to rule.
You have a closed system, there are one hundred thou
sand people and you know that only twenty-five thousand
will live. And you, Ian
Lacklin
, you alone can choose. What now would you do?"

Ian recoiled at the thought of the few possibilities. The
harming of an insect was to him a moral question, and
often he would catch a fly only to release it outside rather than kill it. True, he had played absurd "survival in the shelter" games while in graduate school, but this was
different. The man before him was real and had faced that
actual question—and had apparently solved it.

"I think I would have resigned or killed myself."

"Bullshit!" Smith thundered his response with such
rage that Ian pulled back from him. "You sit here in your complacency and talk philosophical bullshit. First you absolve yourself of the problem, thereby attempting to make yourself morally superior. I hold such people in
contempt. Complete contempt!"

"I'm not trying to show myself superior to you," Ian shouted back. "It's just that my mind rebels at finding a way to kill seventy-five thousand people."

Smith looked at Ian for a moment then smiled a sad, almost whimsical smile. "If any of my people had ever dared to speak to me like that, my followers would tear
him apart. You know, I miss this. I truly miss this." He sighed and looked off into space for a moment. "Too bad
it will have to end sometime.

"I still hold the moral whiners in contempt," Smith
said, drawing the conversation back to its original path,
"for they present an argument, such as nonviolence or
disarmament and peace, while living in the safety of their
sheltered lives. Let them truly be placed on the line, let
them see their children starving in the name of peace, let them see their families bombed and raped—then see how
their moral arguments stand.

"I think, Ian
Lacklin
, my pudgy, bespectacled, bookish
professor, I think that if you were suddenly in the same
situation as I..." His voice trailed away for a moment,
as if the images he was arguing over were wavering before him like phantoms. "I think,
Ian, that
you, too, would
finally learn to decide the fate of tens of thousands. Learn,
at last, just how easy it really is. But back to the answer
of your question, my friend."

He spoke a couple of quick commands into the
nav
system and the shuttle rolled into a different trajectory,
aiming itself toward a close sweep of the small planet that
was the source of Franklin Smith's strength. Then he turned back to their conversation.

"In short, Ian
Lacklin
, I had to devise a way to kill
seventy-five thousand of my own people, otherwise all of
us would die. Our council thought of raiding another col
ony, but we had yet to build the necessary weapons, and
anyhow, the colonies were already destroyed in the open
ing stages of the war or far ahead of us on their trajec
tories.

"So we had to take in the following considerations
before cutting back on our population. Our ecosystem
was susceptible to sabotage; a small group of malcontents
could seize a key point—the reactor, the central control system, or one of a hundred other points—and thereby
blackmail the rest. Therefore I was forced to move swiftly
and to create a state of tight control. It had to be harsh,
ruthless, and unswerving in loyalty; and most important,
instantaneous to command without thought of personal
self.

"I realized, Ian, that a system employing Bushido was
the key."

"Bushido?"

"An ancient" word.
Japanese, meaning a code of war
riors' honor.
It suited my needs perfectly. A system of
feudal overlords with retainers who valued honor more
than life; service to their clan's lord became the definition
of their life. In short, Ian, it became the only way. I needed
to instill discipline and an acceptance of death to serve
the greater whole—a society where death was accept
able."

He fell silent for a moment and looked away. And Ian
noticed a tremor in his jaw, as if he was fighting for con
trol.

"I had to kill seventy-five thousand so twenty-five thousand could live," he whispered. "And there was no
escaping that trauma. No escape for Dr. Franklin Smith,
professor of philosophy from Berkeley.

"Our governmental system had been democratic, but
the ruling body of our unit came to me, knowing what
had to be done. They knew a democratic system would
deadlock over the question of who would die. They feared
some of the malcontents' taking over, and knowing that
I was the pacifist and philosopher, they felt comfortable with my becoming the Angel of Death. Oh, they could
wash their hands of it then—the stigma would be carried
by Smith. Let Smith kill them; afterward we'll deal with
him. I begged them at first not to nominate me, but in the
end I took the position."

"What did you do then?" Ian asked, realizing why it
was that Smith had spared him. Ian was the cathartic, the
only one in Smith's universe that he could unburden to.
He had for the moment become, like of old, the confessor
to a Pope, the confessor to a god.

"I was married, you know," Smith replied, his voice
barely a whisper. "Janet... Janet. I told her why and she
understood. Then I killed her."

He looked away again and started to sob. The planet
was rolling by beneath them, the shuttlecraft skimming a
thousand meters above the surface. Pits the size of cities
dotted the landscape, and from them
rose
streams of pay-loads propelled upward by the mass-drivers. As they ap
proached the equatorial band, it seemed as if the planet
were rimmed with the spokes of a wheel soaring upward
to the
geosync
points, where processing plants manufactured the needs of a billion people. Ian didn't say a word
as the quiet sobs filled the shuttle. Suddenly Smith stiff
ened and with a forceful effort turned and looked back at
Ian.

"With that one death I gained the understanding and,
thereby, the control over the others; they listened to one
who had made the penultimate sacrifice. First, I ordered
that the best and the brightest would be saved. Those
with the superior intellect and the superior genetic ca
pabilities would live to breed a superior race. They were
isolated in a secure portion of the colony. The single door
way into that section became known as the Portal of Life,
for only those chosen could go through it.

"Next I selected those with unique skills and knowl
edge who had not earlier been selected. I now had half
the people that I could save."

"What did the council say to this plan?"

Smith's expression hardened. "They said nothing. After
I killed Janet, my first order had been to kill every member of the council. They gave me the power—I
used it. I killed them, for they all deserved to die. They would have used me in the end as their scapegoat, their
Judas, and turned against me.
For I realized that only by yielding to the decisions of a wise clan lord could
we survive, and I would become that lord.
I had already
selected my bodyguards, those who would be my first
generation of priests, though I knew that my cult would
have to be developed gradually.

"I then created the Order of the Sword, and the system
to exercise it. Hardly anyone had experience with sword
work. It was fair, and simple. Our stores of steel were
adequate and we manufactured those first weapons easily
enough. Crude, they were, but sufficient. And thus for
six months, day by day, the fighting of pairs became the
path out. And with it, the forcing of obedience to my will,
since those who were the best, those who could take the discipline, gradually became my closest guards and car
riers of my will."