Matt steps back and stares at Volkov's back. His hand clenches around the nastiest of the knives in his jacket pocket. For a moment he savors the image of taking it out, opening it, and slamming its half-serrated blade between Volkov's shoulders.

  Instead he just says, "You stupid, stupid Stalinist son of a bitch."

  Volkov looks back at him, with the grin of a rider on a roller coaster.

  "You're too kind," he says.

  Salasso, Gail, Avakian, and Stone stand around the radio, thumbing the dial and listening to a bumpy succession of fragments of disturbing news. Gail is monotonously saying, "Shit shit shit shit . . . "

  Volkov has given Endecott a hand up. The radical stumbles on board, clutching a briefcase and a bullhorn, a radio slung on a strap around his neck bouncing on his chest. He straightens and glances about. He takes in the control deck in about a second, nods an "Oh, hi!" of recognition to Gail, smiles at the others, and finally fixes on Matt.

  "You're the other cosmonaut?"

  "Yup," says Matt. If he doesn't know Avakian, that's none of Matt's business.

  Endecott shakes his hand. "Good, good," he says. His quick glance takes in Volkov. "Any arms on board?"

  "Maybe a couple of pistols," says Matt.

  "Are any of you good shots?"

  Volkov gives a downturned smile. "Me, him, and Gail."

  "Okay," says Endecott. He darts to the exit hatch, leans out, and starts shouting, and within half a minute has passed back four rifles and, with more difficulty, an ammunition box. Then he turns to Salasso and looks at him with his first hint of not knowing quite what to say next.

  "My name is Salasso," says the saur, "and you want me to take this ship somewhere else."

  "Yes," says Endecott, with relief. His shoulders sag briefly, then he pulls himself straight. "There are a lot of other places where you could help, but I have to tell you: The Traders' House is under attack."

  "Go there," says Volkov. He grabs Endecott's shoulder. "Do you have to come?"

  Endecott dithers for a fraction of a second. "Yes," he says. "You might need me to negotiate."

  By this time it's pretty much moot. Salasso is already taking the ship up. The hatch is still open, but the field keeps the slipstream at arm's length. Gail has about a minute to familiarize Matt and Volkov in the workings of the rifle, which she calls the Chapman. Matt imagines leaning out of the hatch and firing it, reloading after every five rounds. Along with the hope that their opposition is easily terrified, he has a thought.

  "Will this thing punch through the field?"

  Salasso's concentration on the fiddly, crude controls doesn't waver.

  "Yes," he says, "but the velocity of the projectile will be reduced."

  The ship halts again. The view in front is tilted upward. They're a couple of hundred meters up and about the same distance out to sea from the Traders' House. Its roof has three huge holes in it and the walls are pockmarked. Men in ones and twos are skirmishing through the garden. A few bodies sprawl on the ground.

  Gail gets on one knee behind the exit hatch and pokes her rifle out, waves behind her back at Salasso.

  "Take us around," she says.

  For a petrifying few seconds the contradiction between the wildly moving view and the rock-steady one-gravity local field makes Matt almost sick. The bangs of the rifle are shocking. Gail rolls aside and sits and reloads; Matt takes his cue and takes her place as Salasso brings the ship around for another low pass. Matt sees a flashing blur of wrecked greenery, scurrying dark figures, a wall. As the ship soars and then swings around again, Matt is shouldered roughly aside by Volkov. He crawls sideways, rolls to a seated position, and notices that the rifle is hot and its magazine is empty and he can't hear a thing. Gail mouths words at him around a fixed grin as she finishes reloading just before Endecott takes the firing position.

  Next time around, Matt is back on the door and Salasso brings the ship to another intuitively impossible halt. A few meters away Matt sees a man with his arms above his head and a rifle at his feet. Other men are running past, fleeing. Matt takes aim at one, fires. He falls, thrashing and screaming. The others stop; some throw themselves on the ground, then join the others in standing with their hands up. Matt vaults out, Endecott just behind him, and covers that scattered half dozen defeated men. It's over.

  Not quite. With a vast rush of air the ship lifts and skims out to sea at about ten meters altitude, straight for a low, armed craft a way offshore. Matt watches in fascinated horror as the ship stops directly above it. With preternatural clarity he can see a long gun barrel moving above the deck.

  Then the Bright Star descends implacably on the craft, pushing it down into the water. When the starship lifts again there's nothing below it but a roiling froth of bubbles and a few small, bobbing objects. It stays above them. Matt has a busy few minutes rounding up men and weapons while Endecott runs through impromptu interrogations, and then the ship's shadow falls over them again. It descends onto the remains of the house's back garden, and a handful of soaked militiamen drop from its side and join the other prisoners.

  Meanwhile a lot of to-and-fro yelling has been going on, and men from the de Tenebre clan have started popping out of the shrubbery. One or two of them are checking the casualties, distinguishing the dead from the wounded and giving the latter what help they can. The smell of blood and shit mingles horribly with the garden's scents. Matt is in no compassionate or regretful mood. His blood is still up; he feels nothing but outrage that the house has been attacked and anxiety for those inside it.

  Volkov jumps down from the ship and sprints to Endecott. Matt, seeing that the prisoners are now adequately guarded and in any case have the fight knocked out of them, steps over to the two men, who're already exchanging information and speaking rapid-fire into radios. He waits for the first slight pause, then grabs both of them.

  "What the fuck is going on?"

  "A good chunk of the PA didn't stay bought," says Endecott. "Their attempted coup has been met by an uprising of the people. Barricades are up all over town."

  "Who's supporting this coup?"

  Endecott waves a hand. "Oh, some of the magnates and compradores. And their hangers-on. Usual riffraff, some of the Back-o'-the-Docks elements--"

  Volkov holds up a hand. "Face it," he says, "the city's pretty much split on this, yes?"

  "You could say that," Endecott acknowledges, "but the core industrial workers are out on strike--"

  "And how many are out for the 'People's Republic'?"

  Endecott shrugs. "To be honest, that's a slogan that has been raised spontaneously by the loyal sections of the militia. We've picked it up and we're running with it, but--"

  "Excellent!" says Volkov. "However, right now the key issue is to isolate and defeat the conspirators, so I strongly suggest you ask your comrades to stop defacing the flags, and so on, and get the maximum unity possible among the forces opposed to the coup. You know all this, Endecott. Don't get carried away."

  He turns to Matt. "Can we ask Salasso to take Endecott back to the harbor and possibly do a little more intimidation along the way?"

  "You can ask," says Matt. "It's up to him. See if the others want to get off first."

  "Go to it," Volkov tells Endecott. He claps the radical's shoulder. "Don't worry, man, you're doing a good job."

  Endecott runs to the ship. A moment later, Stone, Gail, and Avakian scramble out. The ship lifts again, climbs, and heads for Rawliston.

  "If this is a good job," says Matt, "I'd hate to see a bad one."

  Volkov gives a wry grin. "It's their revolution," he says "and their people. Now let's go and see to our own."

  Lydia climbed up one of the exit shafts and stood on damp grass and looked around. This shaft emerged at the front of the house, on the side where the road passed it. A white vehicle with a red Maltese cross painted on the side was parked in the driveway, and the Hospitallers were stretchering people out or dragging long heavy sacks. All of the deaths and serious casualties were among the attackers, but now the relief of that thought was clouded with a kind of nausea and guilt. Not that it had been wrong to defend themselves, but that she had, without much knowledge or care, contributed her might to bringing these things to pass. Whatever it costs I will pay, she had thought. But it was not she who was paying.

  Warned off from entering the house, where masonry still unpredictably crashed every minute or so, she wandered around to the back and found most of the clan there, milling about, half dressed or naked or in nightwear, all of the adults carrying some weapon or other, like armed sleepwalkers. The family's own cuts and bruises and broken bones were being dealt with by the medically trained among the cousins, by Avakian, and by the saurs. Esias was in a huddle with the people who had come off the Bright Star, interrupting his conversation now and then to speak to relatives or speak on his radio. Lydia pushed her way through.

  Volkov smiled and took her hand, very formally and properly. "It's good to see you," he said.

  "Likewise," she said, equally formally. "Thank you for--"

  At that moment Matt's lady friend, Daphne, hurtled out of the crowd and threw herself on Matt, almost knocking him over, wrapping her arms around him and twining one leg behind his knees. Lydia smiled to herself. That was what she wanted to do with Volkov, but not in public. Not in front of her father. At that moment Faustina arrived and gave Volkov a barely decent embrace. Esias and Lydia noticed each other pretending not to notice and almost laughed.

  "It's Endecott you have to thank," said Volkov, when Faustina had stepped back. "He made stopping this raid a priority. Maybe he had some political reason for doing that, or knew he would have me to reckon with if he hadn't, but I'm still grateful."

  "I'm just glad you're back." She looked around. "All of you," she added. "Did you do what--you set out to do?"

  "Yes," Volkov said. Gail nodded. Matt's face, and Stone's, took on a strange, withdrawn expression for a moment. Then Stone looked down, and Matt turned back to Daphne's hair. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as Volkov had done in Lydia's hair just before he'd left.

  "Talk about all that later," he mumbled. Then he stretched and looked around over the crowd.

  "Are Elizabeth and Gregor here?"

  Lydia shook her head.

  "They're holed up at the university," Esias said.

  "There's some fighting, not very serious--different gangs of students laying into each other with fists. The main fight seems to be over the university radio station, which has fallen into the hands of some of the extreme democrats." He smiles. "It's under seige by the less extreme ones."

  "This is all so chaotic," Lydia said.

  "It isn't," Matt said, with a glare at Volkov. "It's all bloody predictable. You got most of the personnel of the Port Authority to change sides, all right, but those who benefitted from its previous policy have struck back with those who didn't. And that's roused the workers and the city poor, or at least sections of them, and I bet they aren't going to settle for a few trade policy changes that won't show any benefit to them for decades. Especially after you've been cynically stirring them up."

  Volkov returned him a thin-lipped smile.

  "It's not my responsibility that a long-overdue reform is being brutally opposed." He shrugged. "And if some on the people's side are in the grip of illusions, at least it inspires them to fight, in a way they might not for the small improvements that are all that is possible at the moment."

  Esias, to Lydia's surprise, agreed.

  "We can make a difference here," he said. "Judging by the attack on us, and from what my contacts have been saying on the radio, we have a certain symbolic importance for both sides. So does the Bright Star, and so does Grigory Volkov. We have to get him into the town, into the thick of it, and onto the airwaves."

  Lydia had a moment of inspiration.

  "The university," she said. "It's in a commanding position, and the radio station--"

  Esias looked around and beckoned urgently to one of the saurs. "Let's get that skiff upright and check that it can fly. We don't have time to wait for the rest to arrive."

  He organized Volkov and the saur pilot and a few extra hands, and they hurried away.

  "I'm going too," Lydia said.

  "No, you are not," said Esias.

  He looked into the hot rage of her eyes for a second, then covered his retreat by adding, "Not like that. There are clothes down in the shelter."

  She surprised him with a hug, and ran.

  "Don't you want to go too?"

  Matt, sitting on rubble and gratefully sipping coffee, looks up at Stone and Gail.

  "No," he says. He motions them to sit down.

  "Why not?" Gail asks.

  "Look," says Matt, "I'm not a very political animal, and all the political instincts I do have would only make things worse. I would be inclined to urge people to, you know, take their affairs into their own hands, not to trust anybody in authority. Which would be fine if I was going to stick around for the consequences, but I'm not. And I'm a stranger here, so why should anyone listen to me?"

  "Volkov is a stranger," says Stone, "but people listen to him. And he is going away, too, but he is not afraid to urge people to do things now."

  "Yeah, well, there is that," says Matt. "Volkov's a political animal, all right. And he expects to be living with the consequences."

  "Ninety-odd light-years away?" Gail scoffs. "Sounds like he'll be well out it."

  "What happens here in the next few months or years," says Matt, "will start feeding through to Nova Babylonia in the next few months or years of our friend's life. And of our other friends' lives, the de Tenebres', come to that." He laughs. "You know, when I met him here after we arrived, he said he was arranging forward shipping of devices and techniques new to Nova Babylonia, to give himself something to trade on if the research into his longevity didn't pan out."

  "What's so funny about that?" asks Gail.

  "That's exactly what he's doing now, with all his political tinkering."

  Gail snorts. "He wants Croatan to export revolution to Nova Babylonia? That'll take some doing!"

  "Yeah," says Matt. "It will, and he's just the man to do it. The mighty and ancient republic has some creaking timbers of its own, and he knows just where to apply the levers."

  "Nah," says Gail. "Nova Babylonia is rich. Nova Terra's like a huge park. Life is easy for everybody. Not like here."

  "Hmm," says Matt. "Yet it had a civil war, maybe worse than any you've had here, just a few centuries ago. And unless they've made some huge jump in their machinery and technology since the de Tenebres left, and had a social revolution into the bargain--all of which I wouldn't rule out but I wouldn't bet on--they still have many people working for a few. And that's all it takes."

  "You are more of a revolutionary than Volkov is," says Stone. "He has said nothing like this."

  Matt grins, drains his coffee, and stands up. "See what I mean?" he says. "Anything I can say here would only make things worse."

  "I don't see why," says Gail.

  "People can be free and equal only when they're all rich, or all poor. Anything in between, they can't. And Rawliston's in between and will be for a long time to come. The Great Vale, though--"

  "We are not all poor!" says Stone.

  "No," says Matt. "You're all rich."

  And what's going to happen here will make you all poor.

  He gazes down at Stone, transfixed by the guilt of this thought. The development triggered by the Bright Star's arrival, and that of its almost inevitable successors, will be enough to destroy Stone's society in decades. The likely outcome of the revolution here will only speed that up. An expanding, industrializing capitalist society with a state that will, for the first time, be well adapted to that kind of society--the outcome that Volkov undoubtedly wants--will absorb the Great Vale into its hinterland. Matt can see it all now; the trinkets turned out for money in airless workshops, the young people drifting to the city factories, the drunks and drug addicts, the deserted villages become bijou holiday homes, the servants and gardeners and prostitutes. He can see it now because he's seen it all before.

  And the devil of it is, he can see how Volkov can think it's all justified, in the light not only of his own ideology but also in the light of what they've learned from the gods about what is really going on in the universe.

  Well, it may be inevitable, but he's damned if he's going to justify it to himself. He's damned if he's just going to let it happen. And damned, he realizes, is exactly what he will be, his whole life might as well not have been lived, if he doesn't do something about it.

  Now.

  Gail and Stone are watching his silent seconds of troubled thought with puzzled concern. He forces a reassuring smile.

  "You know," he says, "I've thought of a way I can get involved here, a way that won't make things worse."

  Gail gives him an encouraging grin. "Better than doing nothing," she says.

  "Stone," says Matt, "what exactly was Volkov saying to you, in the ship?"

  "He was talking about how more trade will come here, with the new ships," says Stone. "And he said that the Port Authority will still tax it, but that the new ships can land anywhere, not just on the sea. So perhaps, he said, a place like the Great Vale could become a port, too, one that did not tax the trade, and could compete with Rawliston. It could declare itself a free port. I said I would raise the matter with the elders."

  Matt blinks. Gods above, the man's clever.

  "Stone," he says earnestly, "I entirely agree with that. You should raise the matter with the elders and tell them that this is one thing they absolutely must not do."

  "Why not?"

  "How long do you think Rawliston would let you take trade away from them?"

  "How could they stop us? The treaty forbids them to interfere with us."

  "I'm just guessing here," says Matt, "but I think you'll find that the treaty forbids your two societies, Christians and heathens, from interfering with each other--and it wouldn't take much to convince people that stealing trade, as they'd call it, was interfering, and anything Rawliston did to stop it was self-defense."

 

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