The Chosen

dropped into a pool, its huge bronze propellers still whirling as it took the final plunge. Through the smoke came a line of battlewagons, with the black-and-gold banner of the Chosen at their masts. Their main batteries were scorched and blistered with heavy firing, but silent; their secondary guns and quick-firers stabbed out into the waters.

destruction of santander.

Even without Centers information, he recognized the next scene. It was Republic Hall in Santander City. The great red-granite dome was shattered; a man in the black frock coat and tall hat of Republican formality stood before a Chosen general and handed over the Constitution of the Republic in its glass-cased box. The general threw it down and ground the heel of his boot into it while the troops behind him cheered.

consequences.

A shabby tenement street in a Chosen city. Figures clustered about the steps, talking, falling silent as a strange-looking steamcar bristling with weapons hummed by.

'But those are Chosen,' John exclaimed.

Raj spoke: 'What do carnivores do when they've finished off the game?'

metaphorical but correct, Center's passionless non-voice said. once consolidation is complete, the chosen lines would fall out with each other. the planet cannot support so large a ruling class in conditions of intense competition, not indefinitely; and the social system resulting from conquest and slavery cannot be rationally adjusted to maximize productivity. internal reorganization would lead to the creation of a noble caste and the exclusion of most chosen lines.

Armies clashed, armed with strange, powerful weapons. Machines swarmed through the air, ran in sleek low-slung deadliness over the earth. Men died, Protege soldiers, civilians.

the new nobility would fight among themselves, first with protege armies. rivalry would build.

A long sleek shape dropped on a pillar of white fire into a desert landscape. Landing legs extended, and a hatchway opened.

technological progress would continue to an interplanetary-transport level, then fossilize. none of the contending factions on visager could afford to divert sufficient resources to reestablish stardrive.

A huge city, buildings reaching for the sun. It took a moment for John to recognize it as Oathtaking, and then only by the shape of the circular harbor and the volcanoes that ringed it. Suddenly one of the giant towers vanished in an eye-searing flash.

one party among the nobility attempts to use the fallen chosen lines against the other. instead they rise against the nobility planet-wide, attempting to restore the old system. the proteges revolt. maximum entropy results.

Rings of violet fire expanded over the sites of cities, rising until the fireballs spread out against the top of the atmosphere.

probability 87 %, ±6 %, Center added.

John sat, shaken. I'm just a kid, he thought. Not even good enough to make the Test of Life, a gimp. What'm I supposed to do about all this?

'Why can't you do something?' he asked. 'You came from the stars, you've got another Federation-land a starship and tell people what to do!'

'We can't,' Raj said. 'First, we don't have the resources. There are only four worlds in the Federation, so far. There are thousands needing attention. And even if we could, that would just set us up for another cycle of empire, decline and war like the First Federation. The new worlds have to climb out on their own with minimal interference, and do so in the right way.'

correct, Center said. a true federation may achieve stability in an dynamic and mobile sense. a hegemony imposed from without could not.

'You want me to. . somehow to stop the Chosen from taking things over,' John said.

He felt a flush of excitement. It was a little like what he'd felt last week, when the housemaid looked back over her shoulder at him as she plumped the pillows and smiled, and he knew he could right there and then if he wanted to. But it was stronger, deeper. He could affect the destiny of a whole planet. Save the whole world. He, John Hosten with a pimple on his nose and a foot that still ached when he used it too hard, despite all the surgeons could do.

specifically, you will act to strengthen the republic of santander, Center said. with my advice and that of raj Whitehall, you will rise quickly and be in a position to influence policy. such intervention will drastically increase the probability of the republic emerging as the dominant factor in the cycle of wars which will begin in the next two decades.

'The Republic will conquer. . unite the world?'

no. that probability is less than 12 %, ±3. observe:

Troops in the brown uniforms and round hats of the Republic marched out of a city: Arena, in the Sierra. Crowds lined the streets, hooting and whistling. Sometimes they threw things.

santander lacks the organizational infrastructure to forcefully integrate foreign territories.

'No staying power,' Raj amplified. 'They can get into wars, and if you push them to the wall they can mobilize like hell, but when it's less vital than that, they don't like paying the butcher's bill or the money either. They'll get into wars occasionally, and piss away men and equipment and then decide it's no fun and go home.'

correct. santander will exercise a general hegemony, increasingly cultural and economic rather than military. this will inaugurate a period of intense competition within a framework of minimal government. such episodes are unstable but tend to rapid technological innovation.

'The Republic will go into space because it gives you as much glory as war and it's less frustrating,' Raj explained.

observe:

A cylinder taller than a building lifted into the air in a blue-white discharge. The next view was strange: a white-streaked blue disk floating in utter blackness, ringed by unwinking stars. It wasn't until John saw the outline of a continent that he realized he was seeing Visager from space.

From space! he thought. A construct of girders floated across the vision. Men in spacesuits flitted around it and incomprehensible machines with arms like crabs.

a tanaki displacement net, Center said. in this scenario, visager would enter the second federation without prior political unification. an unusual development.

The visions ceased, leaving only a mirrored wall at the end of a strange study.

Raj handed him a glass and sat in the chair facing him. John took a cautious sip of the sweet wine.

'Lad, you can leave here with no memories of what you've seen and heard,' he said calmly. 'Or you can leave here as Center's agent-as I was Center's agent-to help get this planet out of the dead-end it's trapped in and set its people free.'

'I'll do it,' John blurted, then flushed again.

The words seemed to have come directly from his mouth without passing through his brain.

Raj shook his head. 'This isn't a game, John. You could die. You quite probably will die.'

The mirrored wall dissolved into its impossibly real pictures. This time they were much more personal. John- an older John-lay beside a hedgerow. His face was slack, eyes unblinking in the thin gray mist of rain. One hand lay on his stomach, a blue bulge of intestine showing around the fingers.

John sat stripped to the waist in a metal chair, waist and limbs and neck held by padded clamps; another device of levers and screws held his mouth open. A single bulb shone down from the ceiling. A Fourth Bureau specialist dressed in a shiny bib apron stepped up to him with a curved tool in his hands.

'Shame, Hosten, shame,' he said. 'You have neglected your teeth. Still, I think this nerve is still sensitive.'

The curved shape of stainless steel probed and then thrust. The body in the chair convulsed and screamed a fine mist of blood into the cellar's dark air.

Another John stood in the dock of a courtroom. The Republic's flag stood on the wall behind the panel of judges. They whispered together, and then one of them raised his head: