Poul Anderson - No Truce with Kings

A pitchfork thrust for the colonel’s belly. He managed to grab it with his left hand, divert the tines, and chop at the hand on the shaft. A scythe gashed his right side. He saw blood but wasn’t aware of pain. A flesh wound, no more. He swept his saber back and forth. The forefront retreated from its whistling menace. But God, my knees are made of rubber. I can’t hold out another five minutes .

A bugle sounded. There was a spatter of gunfire. The mob on the staircase congealed. Someone screamed.

Boots banged across the ground floor. A voice rasped: “Hold everything, there! Drop those weapons and come on. First man tries anything gets shot.”

Mackenzie leaned on his saber and fought for air. He hardly heard the Espers melt away.

When he felt a little better, he went to one of the small windows and looked out. Horsemen were in the plaza. Not yet to sight, but nearing, he heard infantry.

Speyer arrived, followed by a sergeant of engineers and several privates. The major hurried to Mackenzie. “You sir? You’ve been hurt!”

“A scratch,” Mackenzie said. He was getting back his strength, though no sense of victory accompanied it, only the knowledge of aloneness. The injury began to sting. “Not worth a fuss, look.”

“Yes, I suppose you’ll live. Okay, men, get that door open.”

The engineers took forth their tools and assailed the lock with a vigor that must spring half from fear. “How’d you guys show up so soon?” Mackenzie asked.

“I thought there’d be trouble,” Speyer said, “so when heard shots I jumped through the window and ran around to my horse. That was just before those clodhoppers attacked you; I saw them gathering as I rode out. Our cavalry got in almost at once, of course, and the dogfaces weren’t far behind.”

“Any resistance?”

“No, not after we fired a few rounds in the air.” Speyer glanced outside. “We’re in full possession now.”

Mackenzie regarded the door. “Well,” he said, “I feel better about our having pulled guns on them in the office. Looks like their adepts really depend on plain old weapons, huh? And Esper communities aren’t supposed to have arms. Their charters say so ... That was a damn good guess yours, Phil. How’d you do it?”

“I sort of wondered why the chief had to send a runner to fetch guys that claim to be telepaths. There we go!”

The lock jingled apart. The sergeant opened the door, Mackenzie and Speyer went into the great room under the dome.

They walked around for a long time, wordless, among shapes of metal and less identifiable substances. Nothing was familiar. Mackenzie paused at last before a helix projected from a transparent cube. Formless darkness swirled within the box, sparked as if with tiny stars.

“I figured maybe the Espers had found a cache of old-stuff, from just before the Hellbombs,” he said in a muffled voice. “Ultra-secret weapons that never got a chance to be used. But this doesn’t look like it. Think so?”

“No,” Speyer said. “It doesn’t look to me as if these were made by human beings at all.”

“But do you not understand? They occupied a settlement. That proves to the world that Espers are not invulnerable. And to complete the catastrophe, they seized its arsenal.”

“Have no fears about that. No untrained person can activate those instruments. The circuits are locked except in the presence of certain encephalic rhythms which result from conditioning. That same conditioning makes it impossible for the so-called adepts to reveal any of their knowledge to the uninitiated, no matter what may be done to them.”

“Yes, I know that much. But it is not what I had in mind. What frightens me is that the revelation will spread. Everyone will know that the Esper adepts do not plumb unknown depths of the psyche after all, but merely have access to an advanced physical science. Not only will this lift rebel spirits, but worse, it will cause many, perhaps most of the Order’s members to break away in disillusionment.”

“Not at once. News travels slowly under present conditions. Mwyr, you underestimate the ability of the human mind to ignore data which conflict with cherished beliefs.”

“But—”

“Well, let us assume the worst. Let us suppose that faith is lost and the Order disintegrates. That will be a setback to the plan, but not a fatal one. Psionics are merely one bit of folklore we found potent enough to serve as the motivator of a new orientation toward life. There are Others, for example the widespread belief in magic among the less educated classes. We can begin action on a different basis, if we must. The exact, form of the creed is not important. It is only scaffolding for the belief structure: a communal, anti-materialistic social group, to which more more people will turn for sheer lack of anything else, as the coming empire breaks up. In the end, the new culture can and will discard whatever superstitions gave it the initial impetus.”

“A hundred-year setback, at least.”

“True. It would be much more difficult to introduce a radical alien element now, when the autochthonous has developed strong institutions of its own, than it was in the past. I merely wish to reassure you that it is not impossible. I do not actually propose to let matters go that far. The Espers can be salvaged.”

“How?”

“We must intervene directly.”

“Has that been computed as being unavoidable?”

“Yes. The matrix yields an unambiguous answer. I do not like it any better than you. But direct action occurs oftener than we tell neophytes in the schools. The most direct procedure would of course be to establish such hard conditions in a society that its evolution along desired lines becomes automatic. Furthermore, that would let us close our minds to the distressing fact of our own blood guilt. Unfortanately, the Great Science does not extend down to the details of day-to-day practicality.”

“In the present instance, we shall help to smash the reactionaries. The government will then proceed so harshly against its conquered opponents that many of those who accept the story about what wast found at St. Helena will not live to spread the tale. The rest ... well, they will be discredited by their own defeat. Admittedly, the story will linger for lifetimes, whispered here and there. But what of that? Those who believe in the Way will, as a rulee, simply be strengthened in their faith, by the very process of denying such ugly rumors. As more and, persons, common citizens as well as Espers, reject materialism, the legend will seem more and more fantastic. It will seem obvious that certain ancients invented the tale to account for a fact that they in their ignorance were to unable to comprehend.”

“I see ... ”

“You are not happy here, are you, Mwyr?”

“I cannot quite say. Everything is so distorted.”

“Be glad you were not sent to one of the really alien planets.”

“I might almost prefer that. There would be a hostile environment to think about. One could forget how far is to home.”

“Three years’ travel.”

“You say that so glibly. As if three shipboard years were not equal to fifty in cosmic time. As if we could expect a relief vessel daily, not once in a century. And as if the region that our ships have explored amounts one chip out of this one galaxy!”

“That region will grow until someday it engulfs galaxy.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I know. Why do you think I chose to become a psychodynamician? Why am I here, learning to meddle with the destiny of a world where I do not belong? ‘To create the union of sentient beings, each member species a step toward life’s mastery of the universe.’ Brave slogan! But in practice, it seems, only a chosen races are to be allowed the freedom of that universe.”