What looked like flying boxes darted out over the crowd. Streaks of fire lanced out from one, trailing smoke toward the man giving the speech. The timber framework of the dais exploded into a ball of orange flame, and more fire-lances slashed down into the crowd. Suddenly the supernal lights went out, and the buildings were dark except for the light of fires, light enough to see the thousands trampled to death as the crowd fled. .

— and the viewpoint was in a room. The walls were lined with technology, flat screens and readouts such as you might see on any altar in the Civil Government, but functioning, incomprehensible pictures and columns of figures, the whole giving off a subliminal hum of life. Two men floated in the center of the room as if it were underwater; they were dressed in tight blue overalls, the uniform of Holy Federation as preserved in the ancient Canonical Handbook. The younger man was speaking, an urgent whisper. The language was Old Namerique, a tongue that survived only in fragments and in the debased form the western barbarians used, but somehow Raj understood it:

'Admiral Kenner, we've got to cut off the rot in that sector. We must, sir. One quick raid, we drop off a Bethe missile on delay, and take out the Tanaki Net. It's like cauterizing a wound, sir.'

The older man nodded, his face stony. 'Make it so, Commodore,' he said, jackknifing to grab a handhold and touch a screen. 'I've keyed the release codes in to your access.'

'Thank you very much, sir,' the younger man said. The Admiral had just enough time to look around and meet the knife. .

— and Raj was watching East Residence from far above; not the city of his own day, but the ancient town with its broad grassy avenues and dreamlike towers. Then light sparked at its center, sun-bright, and spheres of cloud rippled out across the cityscape in its wake. A cloud rose towering, mushroom-shaped. .

— and he was in the streets of East Residence, seeing familiar buildings but turned tumbled and weed- grown. Men in the uniform of his own service fought a desultory street-battle, seeming more intent on plundering the few remaining shops and homes. Two tumbled in combat below his motionless eye-point, faces distorted as they struggled hand-to-hand with rifles braced against each other. Then one twisted aside and smashed the butt across the other's face, reversing and driving the long bayonet through his belly. He did not bother to withdraw it before he went through the victim's pockets, ignoring the twitchings and feeble pawings of the dying man. .

— and the Governor's Palace was a grassy mound grown with oaks; Raj recognized it only because of the shape of the harbor below, a long oval running east-west. You could still see the pattern of the streets through the forest, and here and there a snag of walls, or the humped shapes of the defensive earthworks. The sound of children running and playing echoed through the open parkland. In the foreground two men crouched by a fire; one was skillfully chipping a spearhead from a piece of glass, with the wooden shaft and a bundle of sinew for binding lying near. The other was butchering a carcass for roasting, working with slivers of glass and a stone hammer for breaking the bones. Both men were naked save for hide loincloths and shaggy as bears; it was a moment before Raj realized the body they were butchering was also human. .

* * *

Raj shuddered; visions of things that had been, that were, that still might be. 'That's what men come to without the Spirit,' he said.

Thom blinked at him. 'Well, that's one way of putting it,' he agreed.

Raj nodded, swallowing and looking away. 'Yeah. I, ah, well, I asked Center if I could see you, because we're-the Expeditionary Force is leaving for the Southern Territories. The Governor-Barholm; his uncle Vernier died and Barholm's in the Chair-is set on retaking them. I'm certainly going with the army. . and I'll probably be commanding it.'

It was Thom's turn to be shocked. 'Congratulations. . but isn't that a bit of a jump for a Captain, even if he is one of the new Governor's Guards?'

Raj smiled, rueful and bitter. 'Things have sort of changed, Thom,' he said.

He saw his friend stiffen and a faint almost-glimmer slide across his eyes. Raj Whitehall needed no vision from Center to see what Thom Poplanich was being shown. Raj's memory provided that, and his dreams more often than he liked.

The line breaking at El Djem as the fugitives took them in the back. Suzette wild-eyed, shouting They're dead, they're all dead to his question. The milling bulk of red-robed Colonists around the final laager, his own voice shouting Fall back one step and volley! over and over again, raw and hoarse, the choking cloud of powder smoke as the cannon cut loose, and the nightmare retreat through the desert. Governor Vernier dying, and Barholm and Lady Anne Clerett at the foot of the bed amid the ministers and priests and doctors; Anne's face, like something perched in a tree watching a sick sheep. Sandoral, and the Colonist battalions marching over the ridge in perfect order under their green banners, down into the gunsmoke where two hundred cannon dueled. The heaps of dead before his trenches, and that last moment when he knew they weren't going to break and then they did-wondering where the Colonist ruler, the Settler, had escaped to, until the Skinner mercenary brought him Jamal's head grinning at some private joke of death.

'So there are advantages to being a hostage, you see,' Raj said with envious sadness.

thom poplanich is not a hostage, Center corrected, with the passionless pedantry that was its most frequent tone, to release him now would threaten the plan to reunite Bellevue, to rebuild the Tanaki Spatial Displacement System, and if necessary to rebuild the Federation from here.

Thom smiled, looking up slightly; when he spoke, Raj recognized the tone of a long-standing argument.

'That'll take generations; centuries, even. Provided that it doesn't fail, which you admit is more probable than not.'

the shortest journey ends at one false step, Center replied.

Thom laughed, cutting off the chuckle at his friend's bewilderment. 'There used to be a saying that the longest journey-oh, never mind, it doesn't translate well into Sponglish anyway.' He shrugged, the expressive 'unavoidable-circumstance' resignation of an East Residence dweller. 'Since Center has elected you its instrument in the crusade, what do you think of the idea, Raj?' he asked.

Raj ran his hand through the short black curls that covered his head.

'I don't know, Thom, I honestly don't. I'm a soldier, not a priest; it's what I was born for.'

For five hundred years the Whitehalls had fought the Civil Government's wars, dying in them often enough, and leaving only an urn of ashes or a sword to be brought home to their ancestral lands in Descott County.

'But you know me, too old-fashioned and country-bred to have an original thought. I serve the Spirit of Man of the Stars and the Holy Federation; and since I'm a soldier, I serve them as a soldier must, in the field and under arms. I. . I don't think I deserve an angel for a counselor, not really. If that's what Center is.' It was certainly a computer, and such had been the immaterial servants of Holy Federation, right enough. 'I just know I have to do my best.

'I used to think that war was glory. Now. . the only thing to say for it is that it shows you what men are. I've made some good friends over the past year, damn good. And I think I've got some aptitude for this shit; what that says about me, I don't know. But I have to try.'

Thom held out his hand; Raj squeezed it in his. 'I know you always will do your best,' Thom said. 'Spirit, how I envied you that single-mindedness.' He laughed shortly. 'Starless Dark, this isn't so bad; I was a scholar by temperament anyway; just my bad luck I was the old Governor's nephew. You might say we both had the misfortune to get what we asked for.'

Raj made himself meet his friend's eyes. 'Thom, there's one last thing. About-'

'Des, yes. Center told me.' Thom met the gaze. 'He was my brother; he was also an idiot. Letting himself be sucked into that scheme to overthrow Barholm was suicide, Raj. He ran onto your sword.'

Actually I burned him alive, Raj thought, swallowing and remembering the sound and the smell from the room below. Him and about a hundred others. Most of them had deserved it, although not the hapless troopers who'd gotten caught up in the coup attempt. Des Poplanich had been no more guilty, so naive he didn't even know he was a puppet. And Spirit knew Barholm had done enough to deserve enemies. .

'That'll leave Ehwardo as the head of the family-since I'm effectively dead down here,' Thom went on; that was his first cousin, and the only adult male Poplanich left. 'Raj. . look out for him if you can?'

'I'll try. He's never shown any interest in politics, or anything but commanding the House battalion, anyway. I've got some capital with the Chair. . I will try.' He drew himself up and saluted, fist to brow. 'Goodbye, Thom. I'll be back, if I can.'

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