A few days later, I left North America Center, and in spite of the
ominous need to hurry, my eastward journey was a ramble. The anarchs
would be sure to check my movements as far back as they could, and my
story had better ring true. For the present, I must _be_ my role, a
vagabond.
The city was soon behind me. It was far from other settlement--it is
good policy to keep the Centers rather isolated, and we could always
contact our garrisons in native towns quickly enough. Before long I was
alone in the mountains.
I liked that part of the trip. The Rockies are huge and serene, a fresh
cold wind blows from their peaks and roars in the pines, brawling
rivers foam through their dales and canyons--it is a big landscape,
clean and strong and lonely. It speaks with silence.
I hitched a ride for some hundreds of miles with one of the great
truck-trains that dominate the western highways. The driver was
Earthling, and though he complained much about the Valgolian tyranny he
looked well-fed, healthy, secure. I thought of the wars which had been
laying the planet waste, the social ruin and economic collapse which
the Empire had mended, and wondered if Terra would ever be fit to rule
itself.
I came out of the enormous mountainlands into the sage plains of
Nevada. For a few days I worked at a native ranch, listening to the
talk and keeping my mouth shut. Yes, there was discontent!
"Their taxes are killing me," said the owner. "What the hell incentive
do I have to produce if they take it away from me?" I nodded, but
thought: _Your kind was paying more taxes in the old days, and had
less to show for it. Here you get your money back in public works and
universal security. No one on Earth is cold or hungry. Can you only
produce for your own private gain, Earthling?_
"The labor draft got my kid the other day," said the foreman. "He'll
spend two good years of his life working for them, and prob'ly come
back hopheaded about the good o' the Empire."
_There was a time_, I thought, _when millions of Earthlings clamored
for work, or spent years fighting their wars, gave their youth to a
god of battle who only clamored for more blood. And how can we have a
stable society without educating its members to respect it?_
"I _want_ another kid," said the female cook. "Two ain't really enough.
They're good boys, but I want a girl too. Only the Eridanian law says
if I go over my quota, if I have one more, they'll sterilize me! And
they'd do it, the meddling devils."
_A billion Earthlings are all the Solar System can hold under decent
standards of living without exhausting what natural resources their own
culture left us_, I thought. _We aren't ready to permit emigration; our
own people must come first. But these beings can live well here. Only
now that we've eliminated famine, plague, and war, they'd breed beyond
reason, breed till all the old evils came back to throttle them, if we
didn't have strict population control._
* * * * *
"Yeah," said her husband bitterly. "They never even let my cousin have
kids. Sterilized him damn near right after he was born."
_Then he's a moron, or carries hemophilia, or has some other hereditary
taint_, I thought. _Can't they see we're doing it for their own good?
It costs us fantastically in money and trouble, but the goal is a level
of health and sanity such as this race never in its history dreamed
possible._
"They're stranglin' faith," muttered someone else.
_Anyone in the Empire may worship as he chooses, but should permission
be granted to preach demonstrable falsehoods, archaic superstitions, or
antisocial nonsense? The old "free" Earth was not noted for liberalism._
"We want to be free."
_Free? Free for what? To loose the thousand Earthly races and creeds
and nationalisms on each other--and on the Galaxy--to wallow in
barbarism and slaughter and misery as before we came? To let our
works and culture be thrown in the dust, the labor of a century be
demolished, not because it is good or bad but simply because it is
Valgolian? Epsilon Eridanian!_
"We'll be free. Not too long to wait, either--"
_That's up to nobody else but you!_
I couldn't get much specific information, but then I hadn't expected
to. I collected my pay and drifted on eastward, talking to people of
all classes--farmers, mechanics, shopowners, tramps, and such data as I
gathered tallied with those of Intelligence.
About twenty-five per cent of the population, in North America at
least--it was higher in the Orient and Africa--was satisfied with the
Imperium, felt they were better off than they would have been in the
old days. "The Eridanians are pretty decent, on the whole. Some of 'em
come in here and act nice and human as you please."
Some fifty per cent was vaguely dissatisfied, wanted "freedom" without
troubling to define the term, didn't like the taxes or the labor draft
or the enforced disarmament or the legal and social superiority of
Valgolians or some such thing, had perhaps suffered in the reconquest.
But this group constituted no real threat. It would tend to be passive
whatever happened. Its greatest contribution would be sporadic rioting.
The remaining twenty-five per cent was bitter, waiting its chance,
muttering of a day of revenge--and some portion of this segment was
spreading propaganda, secretly manufacturing and distributing weapons,
engaging in clandestine military drill, and maintaining contact with
the shadowy Legion of Freedom.
Childish, melodramatic name! But it had been well chosen to appeal to a
certain type of mind. The real, organized core of the anarch movement
was highly efficient. In those months I spent wandering and waiting,
its activities mounted almost daily.
* * * * *
The illegal radio carried unending programs, propaganda, fabricated
stories of Valgolian brutality. I knew from personal experience that
some were false, and I knew the whole Imperial system well enough to
spot most of the rest at least partly invented. I realized we couldn't
trace such a well-organized setup of mobile and coordinated units, and
jamming would have been poor tactics, but even so--
_The day is coming.... Earthmen, free men, be ready to throw off your
shackles.... Stand by for freedom!_
I stuck to my role. When autumn came, I drifted into one of the native
cities, New Chicago, a warren of buildings near the remains of the old
settlement, the same gigantic slum that its predecessor had been. I got
a room in a cheap hotel and a job in a steel mill.
I was Conrad Haugen, Norwegian-American, assigned to a spaceship by the
labor draft and liking it well enough to re-enlist when my term was
up. I had wandered through much of the Empire and had had a great deal
of contact with Eridanians, but was most emphatically not a Terrie. In
fact, I thought it would be well if the redskin yoke could be thrown
off, both because of liberty and the good pickings to be had in the
Galaxy if the Empire should collapse. I had risen to second mate on an
interstellar tramp, but could get no further because of the law that
the two highest officers must be Valgolian. That had embittered me and
I returned to Earth, foot-loose and looking for trouble.
* * * * *
I found it. With officer's training and the strength due to a home
planet with a gravity half again that of Earth, I had no difficulty at
all becoming a foreman. There was a big fellow named Mike Riley who
thought he was entitled to the job. We settled it behind a shed, with
the workmen looking on, and I beat him unconscious as fast as possible.
The raw, sweating savagery of it made me feel ill inside. _They'd let_
this _loose among the stars_!
After that I was one of the boys and Riley was my best friend. We went
out together, wenching and drinking, raising hell in the cold dirty
canyons of steel and stone which the natives called streets. _Valgolia,
Valgolia, the clean bare windswept heights of your mountains, soughing
trees and thunderous waters and Maara waiting for me to come home!_
Riley often proposed that we find an Eridanian and beat him to death,
and I would agree, hiccupping, because I knew they didn't go alone
into native quarters any more. I sat in the smoky reek of the bars,
half deafened by the clatter and raucousness called music, trying not
to think of a certain low-ceilinged, quiet tavern amid the gardens of
Kalariho, and sobbed the bitterness of Conrad Haugen into my beer.
"Dirty redskins," I muttered. "Dirty, stinking, bald-headed, sons of
bitches. Them and their god-damn Empire. Why, y'know, if 't hadn' been
f' their laws I'd be skipper o' my own ship now. I knew more'n that
slob o' a captain. But he was born Eridanian--God, to get my hands on
his throat!"
Riley nodded. Through the haze of smoke I saw that his eyes were
narrowed. He wasn't drunk when he didn't want to be, and at times like
this he was suddenly as sober as I was, and that in spite of not having
a Valgolian liver.
I bided my time, not too obviously anxious to contact the Legion. I
just thought they were swell fellows, the only brave men left in the
rotten, stinking Empire; I'd sure be on their side when the day came. I
worked in the mill, and when out with the boys lamented the fact that
we were really producing for the damned Eridanians, we couldn't even
keep the products of our own sweat. I wasn't obtrusive about it, of
course. Most of the time we were just boozing. But when the talk came
to the Empire, I made it clear just where I stood.
* * * * *
The winter went. I continued the dreary round of days, wondering how
long it would take, wondering how much time was left. If the Legion
was at all interested, they would be checking my background right now.
Let them. There wouldn't be much to check, but what there was had been
carefully manufactured by the experts of the Intelligence Service.
Riley came into my room one evening. His face was tight, and he plunged
to business. "Con, do you really mean all you've said about the Empire?"
"Why, of course. I--" I glanced out the window, as if expecting to
see a spy. If there were any, I knew he would be native. The Empire
just doesn't have enough men for a secret police, even if we wanted to
indulge in that sort of historically ineffective control.
"You'd like to fight them? Like really to help the Legion of Freedom
when they strike?"
"You bet your obscenity life!" I snarled. "When they land on Earth,
I'll get a gun somewhere and be right there in the middle of the battle
with them!"
"Yeah." Riley puffed a cigaret for a while. Then he said, "Look, I
can't tell you much. I'm taking a chance just telling you this. It
could mean my life if you passed it on to the Eridanians."
"I won't."
His eyes were bleak. "You damn well better not. If you're caught at
that--"
He drew a finger sharply across his throat.
"Quit talking like a B-class stereo," I bristled. "If you've got
something to tell me, let's have it. Otherwise get out."
"Yeah, sure. We checked up on you, Con, and we think you're as good a
prospect as we ever came across. If you want to fight the Eridanians
now--_join the Legion_ now--here's your chance."
"My God, you know I do! But who--"
"I can't tell you a thing. But if you really want to join, memorize
this." Riley gave me a small card on which was written a name and
address. "Destroy it, thoroughly. Then quit at the mill and drift to
this other place, as if you'd gotten tired of your work and wanted to
hit the road again. Take your time, don't make a beeline for it. When
you do arrive, they'll take care of you."