A Prison Unsought (68 page)

She spoke the one sentence she had planned: “Has Your
Highness any idea what we might expect?”

It was a very oblique approach to the delicate question of
what he thought might be his father’s choice: death for the Rifters and
Eusabian’s heir as well as for himself and his advisers, or life, and if so, to
what end?

The Aerenarch leaned forward. “If they can stay alive
without cost of innocent lives, they will. Suicide might be a quicker death,
but not more honorable when they are needed back among us.”

“You do not think he might balance
their lives against that of Eusabian’s heir, then, Your Highness?”

Brandon’s smile turned sardonic, briefly recalling Semion to
mind. “Do you mean, is Anaris to be counted so little a threat? To that I can’t
return a simple answer, except that to underestimate him would be a mistake.
But you have to realize . . .” He hesitated, then said, “To my
father, Anaris is not just an enemy.”

Ng waited, hoping her puzzled expression would prompt him to
explain.

For a time it seemed that no explanation would be
forthcoming, for the Aerenarch rose and walked the length of the room, his
coffee cup forgotten in his fingers. He gazed beyond the holographic depiction
of the movements of Eusabian’s fleet, then said over his shoulder, “I don’t
know if I can make it any clearer, because I don’t entirely understand it
myself.”

“Anything that affords us insight
can only aid our planning, Your Highness.” She uttered the platitude in her
most encouraging voice.

And won a brief grin in response. He said, “My own
experience of Anaris was limited to hunt and run: he spent his time trying to
bully me into submission. Once or twice he threatened to kill Galen and me. So
we retaliated by making him a butt. This went on for, oh, three years or so,
and there came a time when . . .”

The Aerenarch glanced up at the holo, his gaze abstracted,
the resemblance to Semion very strong.

Anger
, Ng thought.
Semion was angry all the time. I’m seeing
old anger in Aerenarch-Brandon
.

He said, “Forgive me, but the, er, timeliness of the memory
has its ironies. There came an incident in which Anaris’s attempted goal, shall
we say, came very close to success. So they moved Galen and me to Charvann,
ostensibly so Galen could attend the university.”

Ng did not know what surprised her more: that the Panarch
would permit it go on so long, or that his son would be the one removed, and
the hostage the one to stay in the place of the son.
The thinking behind it is quintessential Douloi,
she realized.
The first, a matter of training, and the
second, of honor.

“. . . and
when I returned from the academy, I saw my father seldom. Anaris saw more of
him than I did. But that was not by preference. I had an interview with my
father one day. It was after one of Anaris’s visits to his private study.
Something had happened. I don’t know what; by then we were moving in separate
spheres. But my father said that seeing me was a pleasure, and Anaris a duty.
And while he could deny himself pleasures, he must never shirk duty.”

I was right,
thought
Ng. Out loud, she said, “So the Panarch did his best to subvert the Dol’jharian
hostage, then?”

Brandon shook his
head, his gaze still distant. “No. Eusabian would have had him gutted as soon
as he stepped off the transfer ship if he’d suspected that. Always, always they
were enemies, but in opening up our history and thought to Anaris, I think he
hoped that—despite the exposure of our weakness, which could be used against
us—Anaris would take with him memory of our strengths.” His smile hardened.
“Semion was violently opposed. He maintained up until the very end that
Dol’jhar was planning a war, and we must be ready. Everything he did was aimed
at making the Panarchy ready. We would have become a military meritocracy,
drawing on the best minds in the Tetrad Centrum, if he’d succeeded. And
whatever you think of Semion’s goals, or methods, it turns out he was right in
his prediction.”

I hadn’t realized how
intertwined with their lives the Eusabian heir was.
Ng shivered with a frisson
of presentiment, and wondered exactly what had happened during that incident
when Anaris had ‘nearly succeeded’ in his attack on Brandon. “Was he the only
heir?”

Brandon grinned, dropped into his chair, and swallowed off
his coffee. “No, Eusabian had three sons and two daughters. Anaris was the
youngest.” He set his cup down with a musical ring. “Is this beginning to sound
familiar? They are all dead.”

“I see,” she said.

And my life is tied up with these people as well. . . .
Memory wrenched at her, fending off the attack of Eusabian’s flagship, the Blood
of Dol, at Acheront while the lances boarded it: the flight of the Panarch’s enemy
just before the ship blew up. The inevitability of a confrontation between the
two heirs seemed a certainty. It had to happen, it would happen, and—though she
dreaded the prospect—she knew she had to be there.

The latest changes downloaded from the hyperwave rippled
through the strategic display, and Anaris sat back, drumming his fingers on the
console. They had woefully underestimated the cunning of their enemy. Of this
the evidence was clear, in slashing lines of red and green and the fuzzy blue
of relativistic indeterminacy. Despite their handicap, the Panarchists were
slowly chivvying his father’s forces into a revealing redeployment that pointed
straight at the Suneater.

The only questions now were: how long would it take the enemy,
despite their slower communications, to see the success of their strategy, and
how long then to find the Suneater?

At least it is in one
of the worst parts of the Rift
, he thought.
Their search will be slow.

He tapped rapidly at
the keys, composing a query to his sources in Juvaszt’s chain of command, then
stopped and wiped the message header. He grimaced.

These conversations with Gelasaar are eroding my sense of
propriety.
Of course he could not communicate with the Fist of Dol’jhar, now
approaching the Suneater. His first message must be the ritual notification of
the completion of his father’s paliach.

Anaris shrugged and completed the query, then keyed it to
his secretary. Morrighon would handle it.
Observing
the letter if not the spirit.
Then he laughed.
A very Panarchist approach.

He glanced at the chrono. Gelasaar would be arriving
momentarily. His mind ranged swiftly over all he had learned in their
conversations, focused by the Panarch’s strangely intense request, at their
last meeting, that he study the Unalterables. He toyed with his dirazh’u, the
silken cord mirroring the complexity of his thoughts.

The annunciator chimed.

“Enter,” Anaris said. As the door
to his quarters hissed open he stood up and tapped the gravitors to standard
gee, and then hesitated. This would be their last meeting alone. On a whim, he
left the strategic display of the Thousand Suns running. Then, feeling the gaze
of Gelasaar hai-Arkad on his back, he turned around.

That strange intensity had not lapsed—if anything, he sensed
it stronger than before. The second was the Panarch’s age. The thought startled
Anaris. This was the first time he had consciously noted Gelasaar’s age. Why?

He let nothing of this show as he motioned the Panarch to a
chair, then stepped aside as, instead, Gelasaar walked toward the console. They
studied the display in silence for a time, standing side by side.

“You see that communications and
control are not, after all, always sufficient,” the Panarch said finally.

“That is merely a lack of strategic
judgment and insufficient understanding of a new weapon,” said Anaris.

“Perhaps,” the Panarch replied,
turning away and seating himself in his usual place. “Have you reflected on the
Unalterables, as I requested?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Something about Gelasaar’s demeanor mildly unsettled Anaris.
He sensed currents here he could not understand.

“The first thing I discovered is
that there are two kinds of Unalterables: the prohibitions and the
prescriptions. The former have held up better than the latter.”

“Why do you think that is?”

This was almost an interrogation. Anaris hesitated, then
decided that he would find out why sooner if he went along with it.
“A dance has no contrary.
As you
suggested,” he said, “it has to do with the second Polarity: ‘Seek not control,
nor multiply laws; the cracks in the system are blessings, not flaws.’” He
stopped.

Gelasaar waited patiently.

“At least some of the Unalterables
seem to express this Polarity perfectly. For instance, the right of sophonts to
untraceable monetary exchanges, which mitigates against attempts to control
economic relationships.”

“Very good,” said the Panarch, his
voice neutral.

A reflex of pleasure triggered annoyance.
I am not under judgment here.
“But the
purpose of the prescriptions is not as clear,” Anaris said.

Gelasaar nodded. “They are the same.” He spread his hands on
his knees. “Consider the oneills, fixed by an Unalterable at a maximum
population of fifty thousand. That is a fundamental determinant of the
structure of civilization in the Thousand Suns and a powerful limitation on the
power of government.”

“How?”

“First, fifty thousand is the
largest polity that can be governed democratically, as are the Highdwellings
under their temenarchs. Second, in so small a polity, in any sort of liberal
culture, democracy is almost inevitable; the ease of personal associations
guarantees it. And that democratic structure forcibly resists any attempts of
my government to micromanage human affairs.”

“But planets are far larger,”
Anaris countered.

“Which is why the Covenant of
Anarchy makes the distinction it does.” The Panarch’s gaze shifted to a
distance far beyond the walls of the cabin. “And even so, the Covenant was
showing signs of strain. Highdwellers and Downsiders growing apart, the loss of
planets to Quarantine, political questions arising from . . .”
The Panarch blinked. “Do you see it, Anaris?”

His eyes were shadowed with an unfathomable concern; once
again Anaris sensed judgment suspended.

It should have made him angry, but curiously enough his
overriding emotion was conflict—dichotomy. His Dol’jharian heritage rejected
fiercely what the Panarch was saying—
subjects
obey or die
, it insisted. But the part of him created in his youth on
Arthelion was able to comprehend the, ah, call it the elegance of the action
that is no action, the careful layering of responsibility and anarchy that was
Panarchic governance.

He nodded slowly. “Loopholes. Always leave loopholes. If you
arrange them carefully, the flow of government will proceed as planned,
unresisted by those who choose escape rather than acquiescence. This leaves you
free to constructively apply the power you have, rather than fighting those who
would oppose that power.”

Gelasaar’s smile lit
like sunrise. “You have transcended your heritage, Anaris achreash’Arkad.”

Of the spirit of
Arkad.
The shock was almost overwhelming; the more so for its truth, and he
almost missed what the Panarch said next.

“And so I give you your life.”

“What?”

Instead of answering him, Gelasaar asked: “How far to
Gehenna?”

Anaris stared. “About thirty hours.”

The Panarch let out his breath and spread his hands on his
knees. “Good. You were astonished, you said, at how little there was in the
Palace computers about Gehenna. That is because the key to the Gehenna system
has never been committed to the DataNet—it exists only in hard copy and the
memories of a very few of us.” He motioned to the dirazh’u lying limply in
Anaris’s hands. “It is ironic, the Dol’jharian belief in a destiny determined
by knots, for it is the Knot that guards Gehenna.”

Anaris heard the capitalization of the noun.

“A fracture in fivespace, some
thirty light-minutes in extent, left over from the first few seconds of
Creation and somehow anchored by Gehenna’s sun. I do not understand the physics
of it. I only know the Gehenna system must be approached along the plane of the
ecliptic, and even then, it is extremely dangerous to use the fiveskip. Ships
attempting any other approach are never seen again.”

The Panarch smiled, and Anaris knew he’d let his
astonishment show.

“There are no guard ships, no
weapons—the orbital monitor is unarmed. The guardian of Gehenna is Totality
itself.”

Instinctively Anaris
turned back to the strategic display, still running the projection of ship
movements throughout the Thousand Suns. Three thoughts rang like tocsins in his
mind.

I was under judgment,
and
Once again, we underestimated
the Panarchists.
It could be a trick, but he knew it wasn’t. Morrighon had told
him how frantically, and futilely, Fasthand had been seeking data on Gehenna. It
all fit together. How dangerously simple, to preserve a secret merely by
leaving it on paper!

And the third
 . . .
He turned back to Gelasaar. “You knew all along that Brandon was going to run.”

“I had my hopes,” Gelasaar said
tranquilly. “That Brandon, denied a place in the system from within, might find
a way to preserve it from without, after I was gone. I saw to it that he had
the means to learn if he so willed. And an avenue of escape. He used both.”

Anaris swiped the console dark with a strike of his hand,
then faced the older man. And even though he knew the answer, he asked the
question, anyway: “Why are you telling me this?” He tabbed the console to
summon Morrighon; he would have to notify Fasthand immediately.