The news as Bors got it from the men of Deccan was remarkable for two
reasons: that so much of it was true, and that all of it was glamorized
and romanticized and garbled. It was astonishing to find any relation at
all between such fabulously romantic tales and the facts, because there
was no way for news to travel between solar systems except on ships, and
no ships had carried stories like these!
Here on Deccan, the shining-eyed young men _knew_ that Bors had landed
on Tralee and on Garen. They _knew_ that there was a fleet in being
which had fought and annihilated a Mekinese task-force many times its
size.
To the Captain, their knowledge was undiluted catastrophe!
They admired Bors because they believed he commanded that fleet, which
he now had in hiding while he flashed splendidly about the subjugated
worlds, performing prodigious feats of valor and destruction, half
pirate and half hero. The story had it that he'd been driven from his
native Tralee by the invaders, and that now he fought Mekin in
magnificent knight-errantry, and that it was _he_ who'd set alight the
flame of rebellion on so many worlds.
Bors listened, and was numbed. He heard references to the fight off
Meriden, and the temporary escape of one of his enemies, and that he'd
pursued it to the solar system of Mekin itself and there destroyed it
while Mekin watched, helpless to interfere.
The distortion of facts was astounding. But the mere existence of facts
at this distance was impossible! Then Bors found himself thinking that
these tales sounded like fantasies or daydreams, and he went white. He
knew what had happened.
Just before he'd left the fleet, he'd talked to a fat woman and a
scowling man who, together, made up the Talents, Incorporated brand new
Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious Rumors, so that rumors
of a high degree of detail got started, nobody knew how. If such rumors
spread, and everybody heard them, nobody would doubt them. It was
appallingly probable that the fighting on Cassis and Avino and Deccan
had no greater justification in reason than that an enormously fat woman
romantically pictured such things as resulting from the derring-do of
one Captain Bors, of whom she thought sentimentally and glamorously and
without much discrimination.
But she'd daydreamed about the fleet, too! And that it had destroyed a
Mekinese squadron many times its size....
He heard the leader of the young men from Deccan speaking humorously.
"Your revolt, sir," he told Bors, "is spreading everywhere! On Cela,
sir, there are great space-ship yards, where they build craft for the
Mekinese navy. Not long ago they finished one and it went out to space
for a trial run. It didn't come back. Sabotage. Everybody knew it. The
Mekinese raged. A little while later they finished another ship. But the
Mekinese were smart! They sent it off for its trial run with only Celans
on board. If there were sabotage this time, it wouldn't be Mekinese who
died in space! But that ship didn't come back either! It touched down
here, sir, three weeks ago, and we supplied it with food and missiles
and some of us joined it. It went off to try to find you."
"I'd better--go after it," said Bors, dry-throated. "It could blunder
into trouble. At best--"
The youthful leader of Deccan's revolt grinned widely.
"It's got plenty of missiles," he told Bors. "It can take care of
itself! And it has plenty of food. We even gave them target-balloons to
practice launching missiles on. We've been storing up missiles to lay an
ambush for a Mekinese squadron if one comes by. A lot of us joined the
ship, though."
"In any case," said Bors, with the feel of ashes in his throat, "I'll
track it down so it can join the fleet."
He could not bring himself to tell these confident and admiring young
men that there was no hope and never had been; that the tales of his
achievements were only partly true and that they had popped into
people's minds because a very fat woman far away indulged in daydreams
and fantasies.
They wouldn't have understood. If they had, they wouldn't have believed.
He found that he savagely resisted the conviction himself. But there was
no other way for such garbled tales with such a substratum of fact to be
spread among the stars. And whoever spread them knew of events up to the
last news sent back by Bors, but nothing after that. Undoubtedly,
Talents, Incorporated's Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious
Rumors had been at work on Mekin, but the damage done elsewhere was a
thousand times greater than any benefit done there.
It was too late to repair the damage, here or anywhere else. This planet
and all the rest were too far committed to rebellion ever to be forgiven
by Mekin. Mekin would take revenge. It was not pleasant to think about.
So the _Horus_ departed, and traveled in high-speed overdrive for
ship-days seemingly without end, toward Glamis. It knew nothing that
happened outside its own cocoon of overdrive field. It knew nothing of
any of the thousands of myriads of stars, whose planetary systems
offered unlimited room for humanity to live in freedom and without fear.
During the journey Bors only endured being alive. All this disaster was
ultimately his fault. The fleet's survival was due to his work with
Talents, Incorporated. The raids of a single ship--which now would have
such disastrous results--were the fruits of his suggestion, the
consequence of his actions.
Talents, Incorporated was involved, to be sure, but only because he'd
allowed it to be. He should have realized that Madame Porvis would work
havoc if her talent was as described. No mere romantic daydreamer would
fashion fantasies with military secrecy in mind and security as a
principle. Everything was betrayed. Everything was ruined. And if he,
Bors, had only been properly skeptical, the fleet would have been
destroyed and Kandar now occupied by the Mekinese--doomed to servitude
but not necessarily to annihilation--and other worlds would also be
safely servile. They'd still be resentful and they'd bitterly hate
Mekin, but they would not have before them the monstrous vengeance now
in store.
Bors, in fact, felt guilty because he was still alive.
There was only one small thing he could still try to set aright. He
could insist that Morgan take Gwenlyn far away from the dangerous
possibility that Mekin might somehow find her. He _had_ to make Morgan
see the need for it. If necessary, he would convince King Humphrey that
a royal order must be issued to send the _Sylva_ light-centuries away,
before the Mekinese empire began to restore itself to devastated
calm--if that process hadn't already begun.
Mekin had its grand fleet assembled and ready. If convincing and,
unfortunately, truthful rumors ran about Mekin, as elsewhere, concerning
the fleet and Bors's attempts to hide it, then their dictator need only
give a single order and the grand fleet would lift off. When it found
Kandar unoccupied it would leave Kandar dead. Then it would seek out the
fleet, and destroy it, and then it would move from one to another of
its rebellious tributaries and take revenge upon them....
And Bors could only hope to salvage the life of one girl from the
wreckage of everything that human beings prefer to believe in. He could
only hope to send Gwenlyn away--if he was not already too late.
The _Horus_ broke out into normal space twelve days after leaving
Deccan. The untrustworthy sun of Glamis still shone brightly. The inner
planet revolved about it with one side glowing low red heat and the
other side piled high with frozen atmosphere. The useless outer planet
remained a lush green, save for its seas. And the fleet still circled it
from pole to pole.
Bors had himself ferried to the flagship by space-boat, because what he
had to report was too disheartening to be spoken where all the fleet
might hear. Gwenlyn met him at the flagship's airlock. She looked very
glad, as if she'd been uneasy about him.
"Call for a boat," Bors commanded her curtly, "to take you to the
_Sylva_. Go on board with anybody else who belongs on it, your father,
anybody. I'm going to ask the king to insist that the _Sylva_ get away
from here--fast! Before the Mekinese turn up."
Gwenlyn shook her head, her eyes searching his face.
"The _Sylva's_ not here. It's gone to Kandar as a sort of
dispatch-boat."
Bors groaned.
"Then I'll try to get another ship assigned to take you away," he said
formidably. "Maybe one of the captured cargo-ships I sent back."
"No," said Gwenlyn. "They're going to be released. They'll go to Mekin,
and we _couldn't_ go there!"
Bors groaned again. Then he said savagely, "Wait here for me. I'll
arrange something as soon as I've seen the king."
He strode down the corridor to King Humphrey's cabin. A sentry came to
attention. Bors passed through a door. The king and half a dozen of the
top-ranking officers of the fleet were listening apathetically to
Morgan, at once vexed and positive and uncertain.
"But you can't ignore it!" protested Morgan. "I don't understand it
either, but you'll agree that since my precognizer said no ship but
Bors's is coming here--and he precognized every one of the prizes before
they arrived--you'll concede that the Mekinese aren't coming here. So
you're going out to meet them."
He saw Bors, and breathed an audible sigh of relief.
"Bors!" he said in a changed tone. "I'm glad you're back!"
Bors said grimly, "Majesty, I've very bad news."
King Humphrey shrugged. He spoke in a listless voice.
"I doubt it differs from ours. You captured a passenger-liner off Mekin,
you will remember. You sent it here. When it arrived we found that all
its passengers knew that Kandar was not occupied and that the fleet sent
to capture it had not reported back."
"My news is worse," said Bors. "The continued existence of our fleet,
and the fact that it defeated a Mekinese force, is common knowledge on
at least five planets--all of them now in revolt against Mekin."
The king's expression had reached the limit of reaction to disaster. It
did not change. He looked almost apathetic.
"Mekin," he said dully, "sent a second squadron to Kandar to investigate
the rumors of defeat. We have a very tiny force there--three ships. Of
course our ships won't attack the Mekinese, but they might as well.
Knowing that we destroyed their first fleet and that we still live,
Mekin will assuredly retaliate."
"And not only on Kandar," said Bors. "On Tralee and Garen and Cassis and
Meriden--"
Morgan interrupted.
"Majesty! All this is more reason to listen to me! I've been telling you
that all my Talents agree--"
King Humphrey interrupted tonelessly, "We've made our final
arrangements, Bors. We are going to release the cargo-ships and the
passenger-ship you sent us. We will use them as messengers. We are
going to send a message of surrender, to Mekin."
Bors swallowed. His most dismal forebodings had produced nothing more
hopeless than this moment.
"Majesty--"
"We have to sacrifice," said the king in a leaden voice, "not only our
lives but our self-respect, to try to gain something less than the total
annihilation of Kandar. We shall tell the Mekinese that we will return
to Kandar and form up in space. If they send a small force to accept our
surrender, they shall have it. If they prefer to destroy us, they can do
that also. But we submit ourselves to punishment for having resisted the
original fleet. We admit our guilt. And we beg Mekin not to avenge that
resistance upon our people, who are not guilty."
Bors tried to speak, and could not. There was a sodden, utterly
unresilient stillness in the room, as if all the high officers of the
fleet were corpses and the king himself, though he spoke, was not less
dead.
Then Morgan moved decisively. He moved away from the spot where he had
been engaged in impassioned argument. He took Bors by the arm, and
hustled him through the door.
"Come along!" he said urgently. "Something's got to be done! You have
the knack of thinking of things to do! The king's intentions--"
The door closed behind him and he broke off. He wiped sweat from his
forehead with one hand while he thrust Bors on with the other. They came
to a cabin evidently assigned to him. Gwenlyn waited there.
"Craziness!" said Morgan bitterly. "Craziness! I get the finest group of
Talents that ever existed! I teach them to think! I instruct them! And
they can't think of what is going to happen. And everything depends on
it! Everything!"
"When will the _Sylva_ be back?" demanded Bors.
Morgan automatically looked at his watch. Gwenlyn opened her mouth to
speak. Morgan shook his head impatiently. Gwenlyn was silent.
"My ship-arrival Talent's with the _Sylva_," said Morgan harassedly. "We
sent him to Kandar to find out if the Mekinese fleet's coming there, and
when. It isn't coming here. He said so."
"It'll go to Kandar," said Bors bitterly, "to destroy it. I imagine
we'll go there too, to be destroyed."
"But it's insane!" protested Morgan. "Look! You captured a
passenger-ship off Mekin. Right?"
"Yes."
"You sent it here with all its passengers. Right?"
"Yes."
"One of the passengers said he was a clairvoyant. Hah!" Morgan expressed
the ultimate of disgust. "He was a fortune-teller! He didn't know there
was anything better than that! A fortune-teller! But he's a Talent! He's
a born charlatan, but he's an authentic Talent, and he doesn't know what
that is! He thinks predictions as Madame Porvis thinks scandals! And
they're just as crazy! But he _is_ a Talent and they have to be right!"
Bors said, "You're going to take Gwenlyn away from here,--and fast!"
Morgan paid no attention. He was embittered, and agitated, and in
particular, he was frustrated.
"It's all madness!" he protested almost hysterically. "Here we've got a
firm precognition that King Humphrey's going to open parliament on
Kandar next year, and there's another one--"
Gwenlyn said quickly, "Which you won't tell!"
"Which I won't tell. But something's got to happen! Something's got to
be done! And this crazy Talent gives me a crazy precognition and looks
proud because I can't make sense of it! What the hell can you make out
of a precognition that Mekin will be defeated when an enemy fleet
submits to destruction, lying still in space? There's no sense to it!
_My_ Talents wouldn't think of anything idiotic like that! They've got
better sense! But when this lunatic said it, they could precognize it
too! It's so! They couldn't think of it themselves, but when this
Mekinese Talent does, they know it's true. But it can't be!"
Bors said coldly, "The fleet's going to be destroyed, certainly. If that
will defeat Mekin. But Gwenlyn is not to stay aboard to be destroyed
with it! How are you going to get her away?"
"The king's waiting for the _Sylva_ to come back," Morgan said
indignantly, "so he'll know--my ship-arrival Talent went to find out--if
the Mekin fleet's going to Kandar, and when. He insists that if they
know the fleet exists, they know where it is and will come here looking
for it. But Madame Porvis couldn't have told that in her daydreaming.
She didn't _know_ what planet we're circling! She couldn't have spread
that fact by contagion!"
"She spread plenty more!" said Bors. "Her daydreams were too damned
true!"
Gwenlyn said, "It's a contradiction in terms for a fleet to win a battle
by letting itself be destroyed. Perhaps the Captain--"
"It's also a contradiction in terms," said Bors bitterly, "for all our
troubles to come because we won a victory. Now we regret that we weren't
all killed. But it's madness for the king to propose to get us all
slaughtered in hope of rousing the Mekinese better nature!"
"Maybe you can resolve it, Captain," said Gwenlyn thoughtfully. "Could
it be that it isn't a contradiction but only a paradox?"
Bors spread his hands helplessly. Of all times and circumstances, this
particular moment and situation seemed the least occasion for quibbling
over words.
Then he said, "Yes.... It could be a paradox. If this prediction by that
wild Talent is true, there is a way it could win a fight. I don't
believe it, but I'm going to put something in motion. Nothing can make
matters worse!"
He turned and strode back to the council room where King Humphrey and
the high commanders of his fleet sat like dead men, waiting for the
moment to be killed, to no purpose.