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Page 95 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html to whom the emissaries of Duke Joris had looked for their strongest support, went over. "You people want us to abandon a planet we've built up from nothing, and all the time and money we've invested in it, to go back to Gram and pull your chestnuts out of the fire? Gehenna with you! We're staying here and defending our own planet. If you're smart, you'll stay here with us." The Bigglersport delegation was still on Tanith, trying to recruit mercenaries from the King of Tradetown and dickering with a Gilgamesher to transport them to Gram, when the big lie turned into something like the truth. The observation post on the Moon of Tanith picked up an emergence at twenty light-minutes due north of the planet. Half an hour later, there was another one at five lightminutes; a very small one, and then a third at two lightseconds, and this was detectable by radar and microray as a ship's pinnace. He wondered if something had happened on Amaterasu or Beowulf; somebody like Gratham or the Everrards might have decided to take advantage of file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20Space%20Viking.txt (108 of 130) [2/4/03 10:07:04 PM] file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20Space%20Viking.txt the defensive mobilization on Tanith. Then they switched the call from the pinnace over to his screen, and Prince Simon Bentrik was looking out of it. "I'm glad to see you! Your wife and son are here, worried about you, but safe and well." He turned to shout to some 165 body to find young Count Steven of Ravary and tell him to tell his mother. "How are you?" "I had a broken leg when I left Moonbase, but that's mended on the way," Bentrik said. "I have little Princess Myrna aboard with me. For all I know, she's Queen of Marduk, now." He gulped slightly. "Prince Trask, we've come as beggars. We're begging help for our planet." "You've come as honored guests, and you'll get all the help we can give you." He blessed the Xochitl invasion scare, and the big lie which was rapidly ceasing to be a lie; Tanith had the ships and men and the will to act. "What happened? Makann deposed the King and took over?" It came to that, Bentrik told him. It had started even before the election. The People's Watchmen had possessed weapons that had been made openly and legally on Marduk for trade to the Neobarbarian planets and then clandestinely diverted to secret People's Welfare arsenals. Some of the police had gone over to Makann; the rest had been terrorized into inaction. There had been riots fomented in working-class districts of all the cities as pretexts for further terrorization. The election had been a farce of bribery and intimidation. Even so, Makann's party had failed of a complete majority in the Chamber of Representatives, and had been compelled to patch up a shaky coalition in order to elect a favorable Chamber of Delegates. "And, of course, they elected Makann Chancellor; that did it," Bentrik said. "All the opposition leaders in the Chamber of Representatives have been arrested, on all kinds of ridiculous charges-sex-crimes, receiving bribes, being in the pay of foreign powers, nothing too absurd. Then they rammed through a law empowering the Chancellor to fill vacancies in the Chamber of Representatives by appointment." "Why did the Crown Prince lend himself to a thing like that?" "He hoped that he could exercise some control. The Royal Family is an almost holy symbol to the people. Even Makann was forced to pretend loyalty to the King and the Crown Prince . . "It didn't work; he played right into Makann's hands. What happened?" 166 The Crown Prince had been assassinated. The assassin, an unknown man believed to be a Gilgamesher, had been shot to death by People's Watchmen guarding Prince Edvard at once. Immediately Makann had seized the Royal Palace to Page 96 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html protect the King, and immediately there had been massacres by People's Watchmen everywhere. The Mardukan Planetary Army had ceased to exist; Makann's story was that there had been a military plot against the King and the government. Scattered over the planet in small garrisons, the army had been wiped out. in two nights and a day. Now Makann was recruiting it up again, exclusively from the People's Welfare Party. "You weren't just sitting on your hands, were you?" "Oh, no," Bentrik replied. "I was doing something I wouldn't have thought myself capable of, a few years ago. Organizing a mutineering conspiracy in the file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20Space%20Viking.txt (109 of 130) [2/4/03 10:07:04 PM] file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20Space%20Viking.txt Royal Mardukan Navy. After Admiral Shefter was forcibly retired and shut up in an insane asylum, I disappeared and turned into a civilian contragravity lifter operator at the Malverton Navy Yard. Finally, when I was suspected, one of the officers, he was arrested and tortured to death later-managed to smuggle me onto a lighter for the Moonbase. I was an orderly in the hospital there. The day the Crown Prince was murdered, we had a mutiny of our own. We killed everybody we even suspected of being a Makannist. The Moonbase has been under attack from the planet ever since." There was a stir behind him; turning, he saw Princess Bentrik and the boy enter the room. He rose. "We'll talk about this later. There are some people here . . ." He motioned them forward and turned away, shoo-ing everybody else out of the room. The news was all over Rivington, and then all over Tanith, while the pinnace was still coming down. There was a crowd at the spaceport, staring as the little craft, with its blazon of the crowned and planet-throned dragon, settled onto its landing legs, and reporters of the Tanith News Service with their screen pickups. He met Prince Bentrik, a little in advance of the others and managed to whisper to him hastily: "While you're talking to anybody here, always remember 167 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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