The purity plot, p.3
The Purity Plot, page 3
None of the Glasseye rebels were at all prepared for this creature out of legend descending upon their camp. Not a one of them had ever seen a live roc before, and even those who had seen pictures did not have the presence of mind to connect the abstract concept with this thing they now faced. All they knew was that some monster, bigger than any animal had a right to be, was attacking their camp from out of the nighttime sky. They were not cowards; they would have faced an army of imperial troops without flinching. But this was the stuff of which nightmares are made. Giving no thought at all to their weapons, they began running at top speed away from the roc, as it settled gently in the center of the clearing.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Luise and her party sped outside, carrying the unconscious Lord Hok with them. Luise waved up at Jeanne, who sat astride the roc's short, stubby neck, then helped strap their charge into the makeshift sling that had been rigged to carry him out of here. The roc was very nervous, first at having so many people screaming and running all around it and then having the d'Alembert party figdeting with the strange device around its neck.
Jeanne was projecting soothing emotions and talking to the roc in gentle tones, but keeping the large creature under control required her fullest concentration. At last, when Lord Hok was safely strapped into his carrying harness, Luise gave the animal trainer the "all smooth" signal, and Jeanne commanded her mount into the air once more. The roc barely had room to spread its wings fully in the small clearing, but a couple of mighty flaps brought it quickly above treetop level, after which it had much more freedom of motion.
The d'Alembert party remaining on the ground, strong though they were, were bowled over by the winds left by the roc's takeoff. They waited until the gusts had subsided, then scrambled to their feet and raced for cover back into the headquarters building. Their primary mission had now been accomplished, but the entire battle was far from over.
The incident with the roc, from its first appearance until it disappeared once more into the sky, had taken less than three minutes. Some of the cooler heads among the rebel gang were beginning to realize that something more than just the appearance of a monster might be involved in the events of this evening. Half a dozen of them stopped their outward flight, drew their blasters and fired upward at the retreating form of the roc, but the mammoth creature was far beyond the range of their puny hand-held weapons. The terrorist leaders began rallying their frightened troops, and, within another minute and a half, were able to lead their forces back into the clearing in search of any enemies.
Luise and her party watched tensely from the headquarters building as the rebels made their cautious approach. The d'Alemberts had come into the camp without any powered weapons so they could get past the security detectors, but they had blasters now, taken from the bodies of the rebels they'd killed earlier. Luise had the team hold their fire as long as possible while the enemy slowly advanced. She knew there would be doubt in the opponents' minds about a great number of things, and letting them advance in silence into the darkness would only increase their fears. She was not worried about defending her position; the terrorists had designed their headquarters building to withstand enemy assaults, and Luise's people were all crack shots. They should have no trouble fighting off an attack, if it came to that. But reinforcements were on the way.
With Lord Hok now safely in their hands, there was no need for delicacy, and Duke Etienne relished the opportunity to flex his metaphorical muscles. The instant the roc had touched down at home base, the circus's manager gave the order to begin Phase III, the full-scale assault. Armored trucks filled with d'Alembert fighters surged ahead through the jungle, heedless of any alarms they might be setting off in the process. Anyone who got in their way was mowed down mercilessly-as the terrorists had been doing for some time to innocent civilians on Glasseye.
As alarms began sounding throughout the camp, the reentering rebels stopped and turned back toward the entrance, prepared to face this new, unexpected enemy. Luise waited until the first of the trucks made its appearance, then ordered her own group to commence firing from inside the headquarters building. Caught in an unexpected crossfire, the rebel troops never had a chance. Energy beams began sizzling the night air, and within thirty seconds the terrorist forces were decimated. The few survivors of that fiery debacle broke from the ranks and fled for cover into the dense jungle. Special details were assigned the job of tracking them down.
So successful was the mission that, in the end, out of a total of one hundred and three rebels known to be staying at the camp, only six were left unaccounted for-and those were of no significance at all.
Chapter 3
The Imperial Council
The Imperial Council was perhaps the most anachronistic element of the entire governmental structure, a throwback to the times before the rigid class system had settled into the minds of people throughout the galaxy. Unlike the Chamber of Thirty-Six, where the grand dukes met to consider matters placed within their jurisdiction by the Emperor, or the College of Dukes where the rulers of individual planets met to discuss policies, the Imperial Council's constituency was neither fixed nor composed exclusively of nobility. The Emperor appointed its members from among the most eminent people of his time, regardless of rank; even commoners had served in it with distinction, up to and including the exalted post of prime councilor. Depending on the ruler, the Imperial Council could be composed entirely of sycophants, cronies, mistresses and charlatans; but a wise and able emperor used his prerogative to appoint people of intelligence and diverse opinions, so that he might better understand all sides of an issue before deciding. The Emperor's word was law, but that did not stop him from listening to advice.
Under Stanley Ten, the Imperial Council had always been a center for lively debate, even on unimportant issues. Today, the issue before it was the spread of terrorism throughout the Empire, and emotions ran strong. As the Head of SOTE, Zander von Wilmenhorst was automatically a member of the Council, and the report he made was mixed. He told the Council of the Service's success on Glasseye, and the news was accepted gratefully by all; but his prognosis for the future set off a bitter fight between the Council's two major factions.
Prime councilor at the moment was Duke Mosi Burr'uk of Katswabia, a small black man in his late fifties with a smooth-shaven skull and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked weak, but appearances were most deceptive; he possessed one of the shrewdest minds in the Empire, and made all his presentations with the force of his dynamic personality. Unfortunately, he and von Wilmenhorst were frequently on opposite sides of any issue.
The P.C. was now holding forth on the subject of the terrorists. "We cannot continue to let these acts of aggression against the rightful government go unpunished. To do so is to abrogate all our responsibility, to encourage anarchy and to abet rebellion. I applaud the action of SOTE in this particular instance; it proves what I've been saying all along, that fast and uncompromising actions are needed if we're to stop this nonsense. These terrorists smell weakness like a pack of wolves; the only thing they respect is armed force. We have the power at our disposal to obliterate these scum from the face of the galaxy; I do wish we would choose to exercise it and flex our muscles a little more often."
Duke Mosi was far from the end of his planned tirade, but his pause for breath and for dramatic effect gave the Head an opportunity to interject some remarks of his own.
"Having the power, my dear Mosi, implies the responsibility to use it wisely. In some cases, the more power you have, the less ability you have to act. The Emperor's power is absolute, so he must show more restraint than is ordinarily expected. He has the power, for instance, to condemn children to death merely for stealing a piece of candy from a store. But doing so would represent foolhardiness in the extreme."
"We're not talking about pieces of candy. These are terrorists who kill people and blow up buildings. Surely you'll concede the moral difference."
The Head nodded. "Yes, of course. But I feel we should leave their capture and punishment-at least on an overt level-to the local authorities, the same as we do for ordinary murderers and arsonists. To give them special treatment would be to offer them the recognition they want; by seeming to ignore them, we - are thwarting the achievement of their goals."
"There is a fundamental difference between terrorists and ordinary criminals," Duke Mosi insisted. "These people have stated their aim is to overthrow the Empire. Your Service is supposed to prevent that."
"And that is exactly what we're working to do. Not by running after them on a case-by-case basis every time they blow up a building. That's what the local police are for. But by investigating the root cause of the phenomenon and destroying that. Kill the roots of a plant and the visible part soon withers and dies. That's a job the local police can't handle, because the unseen part of this unrest spans interstellar distances-but it's the kind of work SOTE does best.
"The Service is convinced that there is a single conspiratorial group behind most or all of these terrorist organizations. That's where we're concentrating our efforts, and that's where I think we stand the best chance of success."
The debate raged for more than an hour, with both points of view being rigorously defended and attacked.
William Stanley, supreme ruler of the Empire of Earth, sat quietly in his seat, as was his wont, and absorbed all that was being said, speaking only when it was necessary to calm down the more excited of the various speakers, or to puncture some pretentious metaphors. His eyes and ears missed nothing that happened within the room, and finally, when it was obvious to everyone that the argument was circling around without any further points to be made, he brought the discussion to a close with observations of his own.
"It seems to me," he said, "that cracking down harder on the rebels might be a mistake at this point. At the moment, from all I've been able to determine, these terrorists are a decided minority within the Empireless than a hundredth of a percentage point of the total population, if SOTE's figures are to be believed. The terrorists have little popular support. The overwhelming majority of the populace sees them merely as thugs and troublemakers. That's how I want to keep it.
"If I move in with force against these packs of human kulvaks, I automatically vindicate their existence. I provide them with the imperial oppression' they've been decrying so loudly. I give them the opportunity to shout, 'if we're not right, why is he sending his goon squads against us?' It will make martyrs, and people will start wondering whether I really am oppressive. I would only be handing the opposition more new converts.
"I agree with Duke Mosi that action must be taken against these gangs; it must be strong and it must be, soon. But I think I prefer Grand Duke Zander's plan of action. We work secretly to undermine the conspiracy. Let them have their little fireworks displays; as long as they don't get out of hand, we can afford it."
He slanted a stern look toward the Head. "And it's SOTE's job, of course, to make sure they don't get out of hand, isn't it?"
"Quite so, Your Majesty," Zander von Wilmenhorst replied.
The Emperor stood up, and all the councilors quickly rose to attention. "Then, gentlemen and ladies, I think this meeting has served its purpose. Thank you all for your ideas and advice. Until next time..." He gave them leave to depart with a sweep of his hand, then reconsidered a bit. "Zander, if I could speak with you privately?"
"Of course, Your Majesty."
The Head followed his ruler into the Emperor's private chambers, where pretenses were dropped and they were just two old friends, Zan and Bill, respectively.
Those generalized terms you were using are all very well for a council meeting," the Emperor said, "but tell me, what in hell are you really up to these days?"
The Head explained his intuitive feelings that Lady A and her organization were behind these activities. "As you pointed out, they have so little popular support that they couldn't keep going unless they had some secret sponsor supplying them with money and people. We have some strong leads from the raid on Glasseye. I think we've enough justification now to put the d'Alembert-Bavol teams onto it. If they can't crack the problem, no one can."
"I hate the thought of cutting short their honeymoons," the Emperor said, "but I agree it's necessary. As pompous a windbag as he is, I think Mosi is right. This is a problem that threatens the stability -of the Empire, and, if your hunch is correct, I want it taken care of before Edna ascends the throne. God knows, the poor girl will have enough problems to face without having to worry about insurrections, too."
The Head nodded. After a few more minutes of innocuous chatter, the two men parted and Zander von Wilmenhorst flew back to his headquarters in Miami.
Returning to his spacious office, he punched the intercom for his daughter, who was also his chief assistant. "Helena, put through a scramble call to DesPlaines. We've got some assignments to parcel out."
Chapter 4
Honeymoon on DesPlaines
DesPlaines: An inhospitable lump of rock circling a Yellow star at a respectable distance. A critic once defined it as "the slag heap of the universe." It was a world of sharp, jagged mountain ranges, of small but restless oceans, of turbulent storms that would spring from nowhere and cause their havoc, only to disappear once more as mysteriously as they came. It was a compact world with few earthquakes; all of its material had settled into the densest configuration long ago.
Above all, it was a world where things moved quickly. Because of its superdense composition, the gravitational acceleration of objects falling at its surface was three times as fast as that on Earth. Objects weighed three times their terrestrial value, and fell with speeds that astonished the uninitiated. It was not a planet for weaklings or slowpokes.
There was native life on the planet when the first human settlers came, life that had adapted to these hardy conditions. There were grasses and cereals so tough that no terrestrial could chew them; trees so hard that the sharpest Earthly axes failed to make a dent; animals that moved like invisible streaks, with two or more hearts apiece just to keep their "blood" circulating through their bodies.
Human settlers arrived at DesPlaines in 2018, two years after the tyrannical communist take-over of Earth. They were primarily of French and North American descent, looking for freedom and a better life. Had they known the hell that awaited them on the planet's surface they might well have kept searching. But their ship was having difficulties and they were tired. They decided to take their chances here, so they landed and began their colonization.
More than half of them died within the first three months. The largest single cause of death was stumbling; when objects fell at three times their accustomed rate, there could be no such thing as a minor accident. Heart failure was a close second as a major killer; the human heart had just not been intended to pump blood for long periods of time against such incredible resistance. As if those two reasons were not enough, there were plenty of other factors acting to reduce the population: bone disorders, women dying in childbirth, exotic diseases, and native animal attacks. The local predators saw these slow-moving creatures as an ideal food source, and made vast inroads into the colony's population.
Those who did survive, though, were tough. They were the strongest, fastest, and healthiest of the original settlers. They knew they were stranded here for the rest of their lives (taking off from a three-gee world in a disabled ship was no easy task). Infant mortality in those first few generations was so high that they were forced into extreme prolificacy to keep their numbers up.
The second generation was better able to cope with the conditions on DesPlaines than was the first. They combined whatever genes had made their parents' bones and hearts slightly stronger than those of the people who had perished. They had never known any weaker gravitational pull so, while moving at the necessary speeds put a great tax on their systems, things did not seem too fast for them.
With each succeeding generation, the survivors were slightly tougher, slightly faster, slightly stronger. Sixty-two years after the initial settlement, exploratory ships under the Koslov Dynasty from the once-again capitalistic Earth rediscovered DesPlaines. It was known, by now, that there were enough terrestrial style planets to go around, and that no one need live under such harsh conditions. The government of Earth offered to help move the DesPlainians to a more hospitable world, but, surprisingly, the DesPlainians refused. Their parents and grandparents had died to build this home for them, and they took a stubborn pride in it. "DesPlainians," they boasted, "can live where no one else would dare." And so they remained on a planet that was officially listed in the Empire's planetary classifications as "hostile."
After a while, they even began to thrive there. DesPlaines was a planet rich in heavy metals and precious stones, which the rest of humanity always needed, and DesPlaines' export trade was soon booming. The people were an asset, too. DesPlainians were in constant demand throughout the rest of space as soldiers, fighters, explorers and bodyguards because of their extraordinary reflexes and superior strength.
Of such stock was the d'Alembert family bred, and in particular, Yvette d'Alembert Bavol. Although she was short, standing 163 centimeters, and at 70 kilos mass was more heavyset than the terrestrial ideal, there was not a gram of flab to be found anywhere on her body. Being a native of a high-grav world had given her the physique, and being a member of the unique d'Alembert clan had put in an extra conditioning that few people in the galaxy could match. She and her brother Jules had been the circus's star aerialists before leaving the show two years ago to become SOTE's prime team of agents.
Her thoughts at the moment, though, were far from any conspiracies threatening the Empire. She was sitting on a blanket on the ground, looking across at her husband of less than a month, Pias Bavol. Like herself, Pias was a native of a high-grav world-
