David Drake & S M Stirling - The Chosen

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CHARTER ONC

Visager

K2I AJ=. (After the Fall)

3OS YJO. (Year of the Oath)

Commodore Maurice Fair lifted the uniform cap from his head and wiped at the sweat on his forehead

with a handkerchief. He was standing on the liner docks on the north shore of Oathtaking's superb

C-shaped harbor. Behind him were the broad quiet streets of Old Town, running out from Monument

Square behind his back. There the bronze figures of the Founders stood, raised weapons in their

hands—the cutlasses and flintlocks common three centuries ago. The Empire-Alliance war had ended

an overwhehning Imperial victory. The first thing the Alliance refugees had done was swear a

solemn oath of vengeance against those who'd broken their ambitions and slaughtered everyone of

their fellows who hadn't fled the mainland.

After three years in the Land of die Chosen as a naval attach^, Farr was certain of two things:

their descendants still meant it, and they'd extended the future field of attack from the Empire

to everyone else on the planet Visager. Perhaps to the entire universe.

West and south around the bay ran the modern city of Oathtaking, built of black basalt and gray

tufa from the quarries nearby. Rail sidings, shipyards, steel mills, factories, warehouses, the

endless tenement blocks that housed the Protggg laborers. A cluster of huge buildings marked the

commercial center; six and even eight

2 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

stories tafl, their girder frames sheathed in granite carved in the severe columnar style of

Chosen architecture. A pall of coal smoke lay over most of the town below the leafy suburbs on the

hill slopes, giving the hot tropical air a sulfurous taste. A racket of shod hooves sounded on

stone-block pavement, die squeal of iron on iron and a hiss of steam, the hoot of factory sirens.

Ships thronged die docks and harbor, everything from old-fashioned windjammers in with cargoes of

grain from the Empire to modern steel-hulled steamers of Land or Republic build.

Out in die middle of the harbor a circle of islands finked by causeways marked the site of an

ancient caldera and the modem navy basin. Near it moved the low hulk-log gray shape of a

battlewagon, spewing black smoke from its stacks. His mind categorized it automatically:

Ezerherzoe Grufan, name-ship of her class, launched last year. Twelve thousand tons displacement,

four 250-mm rifles in twin turrets fore and aft, eight 175mm in four twin-tube wing turrets, eight

155mm in barbette mounts on either side, 200mm main belt, face-hardened alloy steel Four-stacker

with triple expansion engines, eighteen thousand horsepower, eighteen knots.

Tile biggest, baddest thing on the water, or at least it would be until the Republic launched its

first of the Ifemocmt-class in eighteen months.

Fair shook his head. Enough. You're going home. He raised his eyes.

Snow-capped volcanoes ringed the port city of Oathtak-ing on three sides. They reared into the ha^

tropical air like perfect cones, their bases overlapping in a tangle of valleys and folds coated

with rain forest like dark-green velvet. Below the forest were terraced fields; Fair remembered

riding among them. Dusty gravel-surfaced lanes between rows of eucalyptus and flamboyants. A

little cooler than down here on the docks; a little less humid. Certainly better smelling than the

oily waters of die harbor. Pretty, in a way, the glossy green of the coffee

THE CHOSEN 3

bushes and the orange orchards. He'd gone up there a couple of times, invited up to the manors of

family estates by Chosen navy types eager to get to know the Republic's naval attache1. Not bad

oscos, some of diem; good sailors, terrible spies, and given to asking questions that revealed

much more than they intended.

Also, tiiat meant he got a travel pass for die Oaditak-ing District. There were some spots where a

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good pair of binoculars could get you a glimpse at die base if you were quick and discreet.

Nothing earthshaking, just what was in port and what was in drydock and what was building on the

slipways. Confirming what Intelligence got out of its contacts among die Protege" workers in die

shipyard. That was how you built up a picture of capabilities, bit by bit. He'd been here diree

years now, he'd done a pretty good job—gotten die specs on die steam-turbine experiments—and it

was time to go home.

For more reasons than one. He dropped his eyes to die man and woman talking not far away.

What did I ever see in him? Sally Hosten thought.

Her husband—soon to be ex-husband—stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. Karl Hosten

was a tall man even for one of die Chosen, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, as trim at durty-

five as he had been twelve years ago when they married. His face was square and so deeply tanned

diat die turquoise-blue eyes glowed like jewels by contrast; his cropped hair was white-blond. He

wore undress uniform: gray shorts and short-sleeved tunic and gunbelt.

"This parting is not of my will," he said in crisp Chosen-accented Landisch.

"No, it's mine," Sally agreed, in English.

She'd spoken Landisch for a long time, her voice had been a little rusty when she went to die

Santander embassy to see about getting her Republican citizenship back. She'd met Maurice mere.

And she didn't intend to speak Karl's language again, if she could help it.

4 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

"Will you not reconsider?" he said.

Twelve years together had made it easy for her to read the emotions behind a Chosen mask-face. The

sorrow she sensed put a bubble of anger at the back of her mouth, hard and bitter.

"Will you give John back his children?" she said.

A brief glance aside showed that her son John wasn't nearby anymore. Where . . . twenty feet or

so, bending over a cargo net with another boy of about the same twelve years. Jeffrey Fair,

Maurice's son.

Karl Hosten stiffened and ran a hand over his stubbled scalp. "The law is the law; genetic defects

must be—"

"A clubfoOt is not a genetic defect!" Sally said with quiet deadliness. "It's a result of carriage

during pregnanc/*—a spear of guilt stabbed her—"which can be, was, corrected surgically. And you

didn't even tell me you were having him sterilized in the delivery room. I didn't find out until

he was eleven years old!"

"Would you have been happier if you knew? Would he?"

"How happy would he be when he found out he couldn't be Chosen?"

Karl swallowed and looked very slightly away. He is my son too, he didn't say. Aloud: "There are

many fine careers open to Probationers-Emeritus. Johan is an intelligent boy. The University—"

"As a Washout" Sally said, using the cruel slang term for those jvho failed the exacting Trial of

Life at eighteen after being born to or selected for the training system. It was far better than

Prote'ge' status, anything was, but in die Land of the Chosen . . .

"We've had this conversation too many times," she said.

Karl sighed. "Correct. Let us get this over with."

She looked around. "John!"

John Hosten felt prickly, as if his own skin were too tij^ht and belonged to somebody else.

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Everyone had been

THE CHOSEN 5

too quiet in the steamcar, after they picked him up at the school. He'd already said good-bye to

his friends— he didn't have many—and packed. Vulf, his dog, was already on board the ship.

/ don't ttxtnt to listen to them fight, he thought, and began drifting away from his mother and

father.

That put him near another boy about his own age. Johns eyes slid back to him, curiosity driving

his misery away a little. The stranger was skinny and tall, red-haired and freckled. His hair was

oddly cut, short at the sides and floppy on top, combed—a foreigner's style, different from both

the Chosen crop and the bowl-cut of a Proti. He wore a thin fabric pullover printed in bizarre

colorful patterns, baggy shorts, laced shoes with rubber soles, and a ridiculous looking billed

cap.

"Hi," he said, holding out a hand. Then: "Ah, guddag."

"I speak English," John said, shaking with the brief hard clamp of tne Land. English and Imperial

were compulsory subjects at school, and he'd practiced with his mother.

The other boy flexed his fingers. "Better'n I speak Landisch," he said, grinning. "I'm Jeffrey

Fair. Tliat's my dad over there."

He nodded towards a tall slender man in a white uniform who was standing a careful twenty meters

from the Hosten party. John recognized the uniform from familiarization lectures and slides:

Republic of Santan-der Navy, officer's lightweight summer garrison version. It must be Captain

Farr, the officer Mom had been seeing at the consulate about the citizenship stuff.

7 wish stie'd tell me the truth. I'm not a little kid or an idiot, he thought. That wasn't the

only reason she was talking to Maurice Farr so much. "John Hosten, Probationer-hereditary," he

replied aloud.

A Probationer-hereditary was born to the Chosen and automatically entitled to the training and the

Test of Life; only a few children of Protege's were adopted into the course. Then he flushed. He

wasn't going to be a

S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

Probationer long, and he could never have passed the Test, not the genetic portions. Not with his

foot. He couldn't be anything but a Washout, second-class citizen.

"You don't have to worry about all that crap any more," Jeffrey said cheerfully, jerking a thumb

over his shoulder at the liner Pride of Bosson. "We're all going back to civilization."

The Bag that fluttered from her signal mast had a blue triangle in the left field with fifteen

white stars, and two broad stripes of red and white to the right. The Republic of Santander's

banner.

John opened his mouth in automatic reflex to defend die Land, then closed it again. He was going

to Santan-der himself. To live.

"Y#, we're going," he said. They both looked over towards their parents. "Your mother?"

"She died when I was a baby," Jeffrey said.

There was a crash behind them. The boys turned, both relieved at the distraction. One of the steam

cranes on the Bosson's deck had slipped a gear while unloading a final cargo net on the dock. The

Protege" foreman of the docker gang went white under his tan—he'd be held responsible—and turned

to yell insults and complaints up at the liner's deck, shaking his fist. Then he turned and

whipped his lead-weighted truncheon across the side of one docker's head. There was a sound like a

melon dropping on pavement; the dockers face seemed to distort like a rubber mask. He fell to the

cracked uneven pavement with a limp finality, as if someone had cut all his tendons.

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"Shit," Jeffrey whispered.

The foreman made an angry gesture with his baton, and two of the dockers took their injured fellow

by the arms and dragged him off towards a warehouse. His head was rolled back, eyes disappeared in

the whites, bubbles of blood whistling out of his nose. The foreman turned back to the ship and

called up to the seamen on the railing, calling for an officer. They looked back

THE CHOSEN 7

at him for a moment, then one silently turned away and walked towards the nearest hatch . . .

slowly.

The gang instantly squatted on their heels when the foreman's attention went elsewhere. A few lit

up stubs of cigarette; John could smell the musky scent of hemp mingled with the tobacco. A few

smirked at the foreman's back, but most were expressionless in a different way from Chosen, their

faces blank and doughy under sweat and stubble. They were wearing cotton overalls with broad

arrows on them, labor-camp inmates' clothing.

"Hey, that crate's busted," Jeffrey said.

John looked. One wood-and-iron box about three meters on a side had sprung along its top. The

stencils on the side read Museum of History and Nature/ Copernik. He felt a stir of curiosity.

Copernik was capital of the Land, and die Museum was more than a storehouse; it was the primary

research center of die most advanced nation on Visager. He'd had daydreams of working there

himself, of finally figuring out some of the mysterious artifacts of the Ancestors, the star-

spanning colonizers from Earth. The Federation had fallen over a thousand years ago—it was 1221

A.F. right now—and nobody could understand the enigmatic constructs of ceramic and unknown metals.

Not even now, despite the way technology had been advancing in the past hundred years. They were

as incomprehensible as a steam engine or a dirigible would be to one of the arctic savages.

"What's inside?" he said eagerly.

"C'mon, let's take a look."

The laborers ignored them; John was in a Probationer's school uniform, and Jeffrey was an obvious

foreigner— an upper-class boy could go where he pleased, and the Fourth Bureau would be lethally

interested if they heard of Prot6g6s talking to an auzlander. Even in the camps, there was always

someplace worse. The foreman was still trading cusswords with the liner's petty officer.

John grabbed at the heavy Abaca hemp of the net and climbed; it was easy, compared to the obstacle

courses

S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

at school. Jeffrey followed in an awkward scramble, all elbows and knees.

"It's just a rock," he said in disappointment, peering through the sprung panels.

"No, it's a meteorite," John said.

The lumpy rock was about a meter across, suspended in an elastic cradle in the center of the

crate. It hadn't taken any damage when the net dropped—unlike a keg of brandy, which they could

smell leaking—but then, from die slagged and pitted appearance, it had survived an incandescent

journey through the atmosphere. John was surprised that it was being sent to the museum;

meteorites were common. You saw dozens in the sky, any night. There must be something unusual

about this one, maybe its chemical composition. He reached through and touched it.

"Sort of cold," he said. Not quite icy, but not natural, either. "Feel it."

Jeffrey stretched a long thin arm through the crack. "Yeah, like—"

The universe vanished.

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Sally looked over her shoulder. Where was John? Then she saw him, scrambling over the cargo net

with another boy. With Maurices son. She opened her mouth to call them back, then closed it. It's

important that they get along. Maurice hadn't made a formal proposal yet, but . . . She turned

back.

Karl had his witnesses to either side: his legal children, Heinrich and Gerta, adopted in the

fashion of the Chosen. Heinrich was the son of a friend who'd died in an expedition to the Far

West Islands; they were dangerous, and the seas between, with their abundant and vicious native

life, even more so. The other had been born to Protege" laborers on the Hosten estates and

christened Gitana. Karl had sponsored her; she was a bright active youngster and her parents were

John's nurse and attendant valet/bodyguard, respectively.

THE CHOSEN

9

Maria and Angelo stood at a respectful distance; their daughter ignored them. Ex-daughter; no

Chosen were as strict as those Chosen from Prote'ge' ranks. She was Gerta Hosten now, not Gitana

Pesalozi,

A Chosen attorney exchanged papers with the plump little Santander consul, then turned to Sarah.

"Sarah Hosten, ne'e Kingman, do you hereby irrevocably renounce connubial ties with Karl Hosten,

Chosen of the Land?"

"I do."

"Karl Hosten, do you acknowledge this renunciation?"

"I do."

"Do you also acknowledge Sarah Hosten as bearing full parental rights to John Hosten, issue of

this union?"

"Excepting that John Hosten may continue to claim my name if he wishes, I do." Karl swallowed, but

his face might have been carved from the basalt of the volcanoes.

"Heinrich Hosten, Gerta Hosten, Probationers-adoptee of the line of Hosten, do you witness?"

"We do."

"All parties will now sign, fingerprint and list their geburtsnumero on this document."

Sally complied, although unlike anyone born in the Land of the Chosen she didn't have a birth-

number tattooed on her right shoulderblade and memorized like her name. The ink from the

fingerprinting stained her handkerchief as she wiped her hands.

The consul stepped forward. "Sarah Jennings Kingman, as representative of the Republic of

Santander, I hereby officially certify that your lapsed citizenship in the Republic is fully

restored with all rights and duties appertaining thereunto; and that your son John Hosten as issue

of your body is accordingly entitled to Santander citizenship also. . . . Where is the boy?"

The universe vanished. John found himself in a ... place. It seemed to be the inside of a

perfectly reflective

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S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

sphere, like being inside a bubble made of mirror glass. He tried to scream.

Nothing happened. That was when he realized that he had no throat, and no mouth. No body.

No body no body nobodynobody—

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The hysteria damped down suddenly, as if he'd been slipped a tranquilizer. Then he became

conscious of weight, breath, himself. For a moment he wanted to weep with relief.

"Excuse me," a voice said behind him.

He turned, and the mirrored sphere had vanished. Instead he saw a room. The furnishings were

familiar, and wrong. A fireplace, rugs, deep armchairs, books, table, decanters, but none of them

quite as he remembered. A man was standing by a table, in uniform, but none he knew: baggy maroon

pants, a blue swallowtail jacket, a belt with a saber; a pistol was thrown on the table beside the

glasses. He was dark, darker than a tan could be, with short very black hair and gray eyes. A tall

man, standing like a soldier.

"Where . . . what. . ." John began.

"Attention!" die man said.

"Sir!" John barked, bracing. Six years of Probationer schooling had made that a reflex.

"At ease, son," the dark man said, and smiled. "Just helping you get a grip on yourself. First,

don't worry. This is real"—he gestured around at the room—"but it isn't physical. You're still

touching the meteorite in the crate. Virtually no time is passing in die . . . the outside world.

When we've finished talking, you'll be back on the dock and none the worse for wear."

"Am I crazy?" John blurted.

"No. You've just had something very strange happen." The smile grew wry. "Pretty much the same

thing happened to me, lad. A long time ago, when I wasn't all that much older than you are now.

Sit."

John sank gingerly into one of the chairs. It was comfortable, old leather that sighed under his

weight. He

THE CHOSEN

11

sat with his feet on the floor and his hands on the arms of the chair.

"My names Raj Whitehall, by the way. And this"— he waved a hand at the room—"is Center. A

computer."

Despite the terror that boiled somewhere at the back of his mind, John shaped a silent whistle. "A

computer? Like the Ancestors had, the Federation? I've read a lot about them, sir."

Raj Whitehall chuckled. "Well, that's a good start. My people thought they were angels. Yes,

Center's a holdover from the First Federation. Military computer, Command and Control type. Don't

ask me any of the details. Where I was brought up, experts understood steam engines, a little.

Look there."

John turned his head to look at the mirrored surface. Instead, he was staring out into a

landscape. It wasn't a picture; there was depth and texture to it. Subtly different from anything

he'd ever seen, the moons in the faded blue sky were the wrong size and number, the sunlight was a

different shade. It cast black shadows across eroded gullies in cream-white silt. Out of the

badlands came a column of men in uniforms like Raj's. They were riding, but not on horses. On

dogs, giant dogs five feet high at the shoulder. They looked a lot like Vulf, except their legs

were thicker in proportion, John whistled again, this time aloud.

The column of men went by, and a clumsy-looking field gun pulled by six more of the giant dogs.

Then Raj Whitehall pulled up his ... well, his giant hound. A woman rode beside him, not in

uniform. Her face was dusty and streaked with sweat, and beautiful. Slanted green eyes glowed out

of it.

The vision faded, back to the absolutely perfect mirror. John looked back to Raj. "Where was

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that?" he said. Then, slowly: "When was that?"

Raj nodded, leaning his hips back against the table and crossing his arms. "That was Bellevue, the

planet where I was born. About a hundred and fifty years ago."

12

S.M. Stirling if David Drake

"You're ... a ghost?"

"A ghost in a machine. A recording that thinks it's a man. It's a convincing illusion, even to

me."

John sat silently for what felt like a minute. "Why are you talking to me?"

"Good lad," Raj said. John felt an obscure jolt of pride at the praise. Raj went on. "Now, listen

carefully. You know how the Federation collapsed?"

John nodded. Visager had preserved the records; he'd seen them in school. Expansion from Earth,

then rivalries and civil war. Civil war that continued until the Tanaki Nets were destroyed and

interstellar travel cut off, and then on Visager itself until civilization was thoroughly

sjnashed. After that a long process of rebirth, slow and painful.

"That happened all over the human-settled galaxy. On Bellevue, the collapse was even worse than

here. Center was left in the rubble underneath the planetary governor's mansion. Center waited a

long, long time for die time to be right. More than a thousand years; then it found me. Bellevue's

problem was internal division. We were set to slag ourselves down again, this time right back to

stone hatchets, all the more surely because we were doing it with rifles and not nukes. I was a

soldier, an officer. With Center's help—and some very brave men—I reunited the planet. Bellevue's

the capital of the Second Federation, now."

"You want me to unite Visager?" John felt his mouth drop open. "Me?" His voice broke

embarrassingly, the way it had taken to doing lately, and he flushed.

Raj shook his head. "Not exactly. More to prevent it being unified, at least by the wrong people."

He leaned forward slightly. "Tell me honestly, John. What do you think of the Chosen?"

John opened his mouth, then closed it. Memories flickered through his mind; ending with the blank,

caved-in faces of the dockers as the unconscious man was carried away.

THE CHOSEN

13

"Honestly, sir—not much. Mom doesn't, either. I tried talking to Dad about it once, but..." He

shrugged and looked away.

Raj nodded. "Center can foresee things. Not the future always, but what will probably happen, and

how probable it is. Don't ask me to explain it—I've had three lifetimes, and I still can't

understand it. But I know it works."

maintenance of your personality matrix is incompatible with the modifications necessary to

comprehend stochastic analysis.

John started and put his hands to his ears. The voice had come from everywhere and nowhere. It

felt heavy, somehow, as if the words held a greater freight of meaning than any he'd ever heard.

The sound of them in his head had been entirely flat and even, but there were undertones that

resonated like a guitar's strings after the player's fingers left them. The voice felt . . . sad.

"Center means that if I was changed that much, I wouldn't be me," Raj said.

John hosten, the ancient, impersonal voice said, in the absence of exterior intervention, there is

a 51% probability ±6%, that the chosen wifl establish complete dominance of visager within 34

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years. observe.

John looked toward the mirrored wall.

An endless line of men in tattered green uniforms marched past a machine-gun nest manned by Land

troops, Prote'ge' infantry, and a Chosen officer. Two plain-clothes police agents stood by, in

long leather coats and wide-brimmed hats, heavy pistols in their hands. Every now and then they

would flick their hands, and the soldiers would drag a man out of the line of prisoners, force him

down to his knees. The Fourth Bureau men would step up and put the muzzles of their guns to the

back of the kneeling man s head . . .

conquest of the empire, Center said, observe:

A montage followed: cities burning, with their names

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S.M. Stirling b David Drake

and locations somehow in his mind. Ships crowded with slave laborers arriving in Oathtaking and

Pillars and Dorst A group of Chosen engineers talking over papers and plans, while a line of

laborers that stretched beyond sight worked on a railway embankment.

consolidation, further expansion.

A burning warship sank, in an ocean littered with oily guttering flames, wreckage, bodies, and men

who still tried to move. Hundreds of them were sucked backwards and down as the ship upended and

sank like a lead pencil 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-eold 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 ^reat 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, die

chosen lines would fall out with each other, the planet cannot support so large a lading class In

THE CHOSEN

15

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, Prote'ge' soldiers, civilians.

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

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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

stardr-ive.

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 gant towers vanished in an eye-searing flash.

one party among the nobility attempts to use the fallen chosen lines against die 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 aU, this?

"Why can't you do something?" he asked. "You came

16

S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

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.

THE CHOSEN

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17

"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 die 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 Visa-ger 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 die 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 he" get this planet out of the dead-

end it's trapped in ani set its people free."

18 S.M. Stirling 6 David Drake

"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 wiU 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:

"John Hosten, this court finds you guilty as charged of treason and espionage. You will be taken

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