“I am Terran Space Admiral Acton Gilliyar.”
He paused for a moment before he went on, his mellow eloquence echoing off the long stone wall. He came in peace, to bring President Cleon Stawhawke’s most cordial greetings and a heartfelt welcome into the Republic. I hardly heard the booming words. I was watching Laurel.
Her face white and stiff at first, she flushed pink. Her small fists clenched. Glaring at me with a look that changed from shock to scornful contempt, she spat on the ground.
“The President regrets your long neglect,” his polished voice rolled on. “I understand that you are trying to survive here in a stare of lawless anarchy. I have come to bring you the law and order of Terran civilization. President Starhawke has appointed me the first governor of the planet Lucifer.”
Muttering, people stared at one another and back at him.
“ Sir!” Laurel’s voice rang loud, heated perhaps by her anger at me. “We want none of your Republic.”
She looked around at those beside her, saw them nodding with agreement. “We need none of you!”
“Madam.” He raised his voice, his tone grown harder. “With all due respect, I must inform you that your planet has belonged to the Terran Republic since the discoverers landed here and raised our flag.”
“Non—nonsense, sir!” She caught her breath and lifted her quivering voice. “You threw us out of your wicked empire, and left us here to die. We’ve earned our freedom and we’ll die to keep it.”
“You may die. You’ll never keep it.”
“We’ll never give it up.”
“I must warn you, madam, that your words are a reckless incitement to treason.” His voice slow and grimly solemn, he looked around at the little crowd and fixed his eyes on her. “If you want to die, the choice is yours. In modern times, suspected traitors are no longer merely exiled. The penalty now is death.”
I heard a stifled outcry from her mother, a furious oath from her father. Friends gathered around them in a muttering group. The admiral turned to lift his hand at nose of the lander. The martial music rose again. He ordered his rifle squad back to the ramp. Laurel darted past them to the flag, pulled the staff out of the ground, and hurled it against the side of the lander. She stood staring at him and then at me, breathing hard.
“We witnessed that outrageous act of open treason!” he shouted at her. “What is your name?”
“Laurel Greenlaw.” She tossed her head. “What is yours?”
“Acton Gilliyar.” He grinned at her bleakly. “We’ll be meeting again.”
He beckoned to me. I followed him and the riflemen aboard. A warning siren screeched. Looking down from the control turret, I saw people scattering. Laurel stood closer, shaking here fist, dwindling to a defiant doll as we lifted.
The admiral landed us at half a dozen towns up and down the Avalon, at the ski lodge below the volcano, the oasis down on the desert, at a lumber camp on the headwaters of the Styx. At each stop he went off with his rifle squad to read his proclamations. A few people hooted. Nobody cheered.
We climbed back to the geosynchronous point. He broadcast an ultimatum demanding unconditional submission. The colonists must accept the rule of the democratic Terran Republic, swear allegiance to President Cleon III, welcome Terran landing forces, pay Terran taxes, obey orders from him as their newly appointed governor. Unless he received a signal of surrender within three days, he would be forced, however unwillingly, to take whatever measures the situation might require.
“There will be no signal,” I warned him. “There is no government, nobody with authority to surrender.”
“I expected opposition from the like of that Greenlaw woman.” He shook his head, his jaw set hard. “These people were condemned and sent here as outlaw enemies of the state. They are enemies and outlaws still. If they want a lesson in Terran power, I’ll give them a lesson.”
Waiting three days in orbit, he received no signal of surrender. His lesson was a volley of guided missiles.
“I’m remaining on the flagship,” he told me. “It will be my official residence. Captain Crendock is going down as my executive secretary with orders to secure the planet and establish administrative control.”
He was startled when I wanted to go back to Benspost.
“Why?” He gave me a hard look. “You won’t find friends there.”
Uncomfortably, I tried to explain my own torn feelings.
“I’m still loyal,” I told him, “bound by my duty to the Republic. But I did make friends there. People were generous to me. I was fascinated with their history. I want to write it for the whole Republic.”
“Forget your pet traitors,” he advised me. “That Greenlaw woman is no friend now.”
“Yet she is making history. History worth recording.”
“Better get back to Terra while you can.” He gave me a stiff half-smile. “You were warned to expect no public recognition, but we will surely find something for you.”
He called me a fool when I shook my head.
I had to go back to find Laurel, to try to explain what I had done, to beg her to understand. I didn’t tell him that, but in the end, he replaced my lost radio and holo camera and let me go back down to Benspost with Crendock. A missile had struck there, and little remained of old Ben Greenlaw’s trading post.
Yet life went on. I saw camels loaded with lumber and tile to repair shattered buildings. Bart was back again from some Terran planet with another illicit cargo. We found his skipcraft undamaged, standing on the pad near the ashes and fallen walls.
“Leave him alone,” Gilliyar had ordered. “I hope to legalize the trade and impose excise taxes.
Camels were tethered around his ship, the drivers loading them with goods he had brought. His crew was loading it again with exports: nuts and dried fruit from the desert lowlands, rare hardwoods and balls of raw rubber from the rain forest.
His parents had set up a new barter center in a tent on a vacant lot. His mother burst into tears when she saw me, and ran back into the tent. His father sat in his wheelchair behind a rough table, surrounded with whatever his clerks had been able to salvage. I thought he seemed sick, the splotches of his old jungle fever infection livid and swollen.
He looked up at me with an enigmatic expression.
“Well, sir?” He shook his head. “I never expected to see you again.”
“I’m a historian,” I said. “I came back to write the history of the colony. And I want to see your daughter.”
“You’ve turned our history to tragedy.” He spoke with a harsh finality. “You’ll never see Laurel.”
He turned to deal with a farmer who had come with a basket of eggs to trade. I saw Bart himself, stooping in the ashes of the store, filling a bag with scraps of fused and blackened metal. He met me with a quizzical grin and handed me what was left of my gun, the magazine shattered when the ammunition exploded.
“I think this was yours.”
I asked about Laurel.
“Gone.” The grin vanished. “I don’t know where.” His gaze grew sharper. “If your Terran friends are looking for her…”
He shrugged and stooped again into the ashes.
A few days later he came up to me while I was out with the camera to shoot a group of workers with spades and wheelbarrows, refilling a crater that one of Gilliyar’s missiles had left in the road.
“Let’s talk.” He offered his hand. “I’ve heard about your history. I want our Terran friends to know our story. Will you let me take you back to tell it?”
I thanked him.
“But the history isn’t finished. And I want to stay till I can see your sister.”
His face grew bleak. “You’ll be here forever.”
Before he took off, I gave him a draft of my unfinished narrative, copies of my holos of the ruins, and a shot of Crendock strutting off a lander to repeat Gilliyar’s ultimatum. I kept digging into the records I could find, asking people for their recollections, shooting the damage from the bombardment and the efforts at reconstruction.
And longing all the time for a glimpse of Laurel.
Crendock set up his headquarters on a hilltop above the ruins. His landers were busy for a time, bringing
