CHAPTER SIX
Awakening after being hit with a sonic stunner was always accompanied by a splitting headache.
Rogers thought he could remember feeling that headache several times while struggling back into consciousness, before sinking into oblivion once again. It made sense: the effect of a stunner normally didn’t last more than twenty minutes or so, and he must have been shot repeatedly to keep him under.
Now, however, the headache didn’t go away. He slowly opened his eyes and felt around him, to find that he was lying on a narrow cot in a small, windowless, featureless chamber with two doors, one of which was partially open to reveal elementary sanitary facilities. The lighting was dim, which was probably just as well, given the way even it caused his pain to spike. He blinked several times, and discovered by experiment that he wasn’t secured in any way. Ordering himself not to waste mental effort on useless self-reproach, he sat up and carefully swung his legs over the edge of the cot. He reached into a pocket, confirming his assumption that his signaling unit was gone. So—equally as a matter of course—was his communicator. (Whoever had taken it undoubtedly knew he also had an implant communicator in his skull, but they would know that the thing was too short-ranged to be of any use from wherever he now was.) But then he felt in another pocket, and his fingers closed around a perfectly normal-seeming superconductor-loop energy cell such as people routinely carried to provide power for various devices. It was such a standard, harmless piece of personal equipment—everybody had one, all the time—that it had never occurred to his captors to take it from him.
He didn’t permit himself to smile, for he had already spotted the video pickup just under the ceiling in a corner of the room.
He gave the pickup an insouciant I’m-awake-now wave.
Presently the door—it was an old-fashioned one—swung open. Two figures entered. One, unsurprisingly, was Grey Goldson. The other was a man of about her age, armed with a stunner. He was holding it at his side rather than aiming it, but Rogers instantly rejected the thought of trying anything, for the man seemed keyed to a high pitch of coiled-spring alertness that somehow went with his general appearance. Medium-tall and rangy, he had a lean, almost bony face topped with thick, curly black hair. He was clean-shaven, but his dark-complexioned face had what looked to be a permanent shadow, and his brows were black. Against that background, his eyes were almost startling in their vivid blueness.
“How are you feeling?” asked Grey.
“You mean aside from a miserable headache?” Rogers sighed. “Still, I suppose I should be thankful that you used a non-lethal weapon.”
“Of course. We’re not murderers.”
“‘We’ meaning, I presume, the Sons of Arnold?”
Her startlement lasted less than a second. “Yes. I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve deduced that.”
“But your superiors in NAISA haven’t,” Rogers stated rather than asked. “Must be a bit stressful, leading a double life.”
“Sometimes. But it’s useful to us to have a member well established in the Agency.”
“I can just imagine. But isn’t this little escapade going to strip away your cover?”
“It wasn’t supposed to. The idea was that we’d both be taken in the ambush and then separated. After which I’d ‘escape’ and report that I’d been unable to get you out with me.”
“But now that the ambushers are in custody at the Residency, won’t they reveal you under interrogation?”
“Credit us with a little intelligence. As I told you before, our organization is highly compartmentalized. Those three men know nothing of me. All they knew was that they were going to grab a NAISA agent who was accompanying you.”
“I see. But it didn’t work out, did it? You and I were last seen, by Imperial security men, free as birds after the ambush was foiled. And now I’ve vanished. Isn’t your role going to be somewhat awkward to explain?”
The man accompanying Grey spoke up for the first time. “We’ll think of something.” Without actually aiming the stunner, he brought it up into a readier position. “Maybe a second ambush between the first one and your hotel, after your ‘guardian angel’ was gone. Then we’ll be able to revert to the original plan.”
Rogers turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “I believe you have me at a disadvantage—in more ways than one.”
“This,” said Grey, “is Ethan Stark. One of our leaders.” She slipped a hand into his free one and leaned against his side.
“Delighted,” said Rogers drily. “But to return to the subject: Even if you do come up with some explanation—although this second-ambush story is stretching credulity awfully far—the fact remains that I now know about you. So…what’s to be done with me?”
There was an awkward silence. Grey finally broke it.
“I told you that we’re not murderers—”
“Merely kidnappers.”
“—and I meant it, damn it!” She drew a breath. “I know we’ve taken a chance by…bringing you here. But we had to do it. Ethan opened my eyes to the reason why. He persuaded me, and together we persuaded the council.”
“And as to this ‘reason’?”
Stark took a step closer to Rogers, eyes blazing blue fire. “You may as well drop the pretense, Commander Rogers. The real reason you were sent here was to investigate—and destroy—our organization!”
“What?” Rogers took a deep breath and made himself speak reasonably. “Look, Agent Goldson knows, even if you don’t, that I’m here to follow up leads indicating a possible New American connection with Caliphate activities.”
“That’s just an excuse! You want to tie the Sons of Arnold to some imaginary Caliphate plot, thus discrediting us and giving the Empire an excuse to take action against us—maybe even with the cooperation of the deluded New American government.” Stark’s glare intensified, if possible. “Guilt by association—a classic tool of governmental repression!”
“And your fixation on the Sons made it obvious what your real target was,” Grey added. “It removed all doubt from my mind that Ethan was right.” She gripped Stark’s hand more tightly.
Rogers looked from one of them to another and saw that they were beyond the reach of argumentation. “All right,” he said calmly. “Assuming your twisted version of reality is correct, we still come back to the original problem. Here I am, I know Grey’s secret…and, as you’ve repeatedly assured me, you’re not murderers.” No harm in reminding them of that last part, he told himself.
“As I told you, we’re taking a chance,” said Grey. “What we hope to do is—”
Stark’s communicator beeped for attention. He listened for a moment, then turned to Grey. “He’s here.”
Grey went to the door and departed while Stark kept Rogers covered with his stunner. Almost immediately, she returned with an elderly and slightly overweight but healthy-looking gentleman in somewhat old-fashioned clothes. His gray hair had almost completely receded—usually regarded as a sign of lack of vanity, in this age when male-pattern baldness could be corrected by gene therapy—and he had mild brown eyes in a ruddy face. His expression was benign.
Grey spoke. “Allow me to present Dr. Elihu Bricknell, distinguished professor of history at New Philadelphia University…and, less publicly, chairman of our organization’s governing council.”
“I’m honored,” said Rogers, keeping his voice free of irony. Somebody else’s secret I’m not supposed to know, said an unwelcome voice at the back of his mind.
“The honor is mine, Commander Rogers,” said Dr. Bricknell with a gentle smile.
“But to what do I owe the honor?”
Dr. Bricknell turned to Grey. “You haven’t told him, Grey?”
“I was just about to, sir.” She turned to Rogers. “Commander—”
“Call me Robert. Or even Bob.”
“Very well, Robert. We’ve made you our…involuntary guest because we want you to hear our side. We hope to persuade you of the justice of our cause.”
Rogers stared at her. “You expect to turn me?”
Bricknell spoke eagerly. “We only ask that you listen to us with an open mind. Surely that’s not too much to ask. After all, you’re North American yourself. And your very name reflects a great deal of history.”
“Not a history of which I imagine you approve.”
The historian smiled. “That was all a long time ago, Commander—I mean, Robert. But Grey tells me you know something of that history. So you surely know what led the Americans of 1776 into rebellion.”
“I also know that the majority of them—including most of the rebellion’s initial leaders—were reconciled in the end.”
“But not altogether. As you know, the Second American Rebellion broke out only a little over seven decades later.”
“And you know that most Americans were never really all that wholehearted about it, outside of the Dominion of New England. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was that it had Robert E. Lee to lead its forces against dotards like Raglan and clowns like Cardigan. And even he agreed—with visible relief, we’re told—to call it off when further Imperial reforms were offered. Those reforms finalized the Grand Council’s evolution into a super-legislature for the Empire, in which the dominions were directly represented, with the Viceroyalty still existing within the Imperial structure to deal with specific interdominion matters. In fact he later led the reconquest of the Commonwealth of New England, when it decided it couldn’t let well enough.”
“Yes,” said Stark with a scowl. “He was a traitor—a second Washington.”
“But can you really blame him? By the turn of the twentieth century, North America became the Empire’s economic and population center of gravity, and the term ‘Imperial Federation’ was already being used for the Empire’s guiding philosophy, which was to eliminate the whole dichotomy between metropolis and colonies. A century after that, when dominion status was extended to England, Scotland and Ireland on exactly the same basis as the overseas dominions, it merely legalized a long-accomplished fact.”
“All that is at least arguably true, even though it puts the best possible face on things,” Bricknell acknowledged. “But have you considered what was lost—the future that might have been if the American rebels had won their independence? Have you read their Declaration of Independence?”
“Yes, in school. As I recall, it consisted mainly of a list of highly debatable grievances.”
“Ah, but the rest of it—especially its sublime preamble!” Bricknell’s eyes glowed with visionary fervor. “It expressed the highest ideals which the human mind had yet conceived. It held out the possibility of an entirely fresh start for the human race, purified of all the ancient accretions which the Empire and its associated monarchies have perpetuated.”
“But, Doctor, have you considered what would have been lost? The Empire expanded its power base by transcending the nation-state much as Rome once transcended the city-state. It thus achieved a predominant position that the British Isles alone could never have sustained this long. And it has been a stabilizing force in the world.”
“Oh, I don’t claim the Empire is altogether evil. But it has held the world back from the utopia which might have been. The Americans, freed from the last rusty chains of European monarchism, would have created a new kind of community, free of corruption, greed and violence. Human nature itself would have been transformed!”
“Uh…are you quite sure? I seem to recall some things—such as slavery.”
“Slavery lasted until the 1830s in the Empire, but the Americans would have abolished it as soon as they attained independence. They would have had to! After all, the Declaration stated quite explicitly that ‘all men are created equal.’ Perfect equality and brotherhood would have prevailed. And perhaps it still can!”
Idealists! sighed Rogers inwardly. “Doctor, I can’t pretend to your academic credentials in history, so I won’t dispute any of that. But surely you realize that after the Second Rebellion there were only a few diehards left—your own ancestors. And in the hundred and sixty years since they left Earth, American separatism has entirely died out. From your perspective out here, perhaps you haven’t kept abreast of the current climate of opinion on Earth. But the Queen herself is at least a quarter North American—at least the last time anyone figured out the royal family’s ancestry. Today, nobody cares anymore. Take my word for it: Today’s North Americans don’t want to be ‘liberated’ from an Empire which they, with the help of the Indians, largely run.”
Stark spoke darkly, in the tone of a man coining a phrase. “They need to have their consciousness raised.”
God, thought Rogers, how did he come up with an expression that stupid and meaningless? Do these people think they’re striking a blow for something or other by degrading the English language?
“We don’t expect you to instantly throw off all your conditioning, Robert,” said Bricknell soothingly, shushing Stark. “But we hope to at least persuade you that our methods are nonviolent, and that even if—which I do not personally believe—there are people on New America who are involved in machinations by the Caliphate, they are not to be found in the Sons of Arnold. And ultimately, we cherish a hope that you will come to see our viewpoint and become a seed of ideas which may germinate among your fellow North Americans.”
Looking at Stark’s scowl, Rogers somehow suspected that germination of ideas wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. He inconspicuously brushed a hand against the pocket that held his innocent energy cell. No. Stark was altogether too damned alert with his stunner. And even if he succeeded in escaping from this place, he had no idea of where it was, or how to find his way back to the Residency or his hotel, especially given that this was one of New America’s all-dark “days.”
And besides, he thought, from every standpoint, maybe my best move just now is to play along—but without overplaying it.
And, he realized, I don’t really want to hurt these people. Not Grey, anyway.
He forced a conflicted expression on his features. “Dr. Bricknell, I’ve never had this expressed to me in these terms before. It’s all new to me. Perhaps you have a point. I need to consider these matters—maybe reevaluate my received ideas. And besides…I’m still a little fatigued after my recovery from the stunner.”
Stark was a study in skepticism, but Bricknell didn’t notice him. “That’s wonderful, Robert,” he beamed. “And I’m really sorry we had to do that. We’ll just leave you alone to think things over for a while.”
And so they left it. But the door to his room was still locked.