Bradley,Marion Zimmer - Traitor's Sun

TRAITOR'S

SUN

A Novel of Darkover

MARION ZIMMER

BRADLEY

Herm Aldaran snapped awake, his heart pounding and sweat streaming down his

chest. He gasped for air and struggled to push aside the bedclothes, his head throbbing.

He sat there, blinking in the faint light that came from the common room of the small

apartment, and swallowed hard. His dry mouth tasted like iron filings and his feet felt

alien and disconnected from his body. Though his nightrobe was almost drenched around

his broad chest, part of the sleeve was still dry enough to use to wipe the moisture off his

face. As Herm stood up, the room spun, and he nearly sat down again.

At last his body stopped shaking, and his heart slowed to a more normal rhythm. He

glanced at Katherine, his wife of more than a decade, still undisturbed by his movements.

In the dim light Herm could see her dark hair spread across the pillow, and the sweep of

her brow below it, the curve of her mouth beneath the strong nose. Not for the first time

he wondered why such a beautiful woman had consented to marry a plain fellow like

himself. It was a puzzle, but he knew it was not because he was wealthy—he was not—or

had the ambiguous honor of being the Senator from Cottman IV, as the Terran Federation

designated Darkover, the world of his birth. He gazed at her, letting his mind wander a

bit, and felt himself settle into relative calm.

Herm realized he would not be able to go back to sleep anytime soon, so he rose and

left the bedroom as quietly as possible, careful not to rouse Katherine. He peeped around

the thin partition that separated their sleeping quarters from those of their two children

and found them undisturbed. Then he padded across the dingy tiles in the small food

preparation station and opened the cool cabinet. The carafe of juice was cold in his

fingers, and he had a desire to drink right out of the lip of it. Until he held it, he had not

realized he was still trembling slightly. He forced himself to find a glass, and poured

some of the yellow liquid into it. Then he gulped down half the glass, letting the tart

flavor of the juice wash away the nasty taste on his tongue. The cold liquid hit his belly

like a blow, and for a moment he felt as if he had swallowed acid. Then the dreadful

sensation vanished, although his stomach continued to protest for several seconds. He

knew it was only an illusion, but he had the feeling that he could sense the sugar in the

juice entering his bloodstream. His breathing deepened, and he shivered all over, chilled

where he had been burning only a few moments earlier.

Herm sank down onto one of the stools that stood beside the long counter which

served as the eating area, put the glass down before he dropped it, and forced himself to

empty his mind. A sense of utter wrongness played along his nerves, fretting like the

discordant notes of some classic industrial symphony. That style of music had enjoyed a

resurgence during his first years in the Chamber of Deputies of the Federation legislature,

and he had been dragged to a few concerts. It had stuck in his mind, much to his disgust,

for it was not music as he had thought of it, but more like noise, and rather unpleasant

noise at that. He hated it, as he hated the stool, the smallness of the room in which he sat,

and the cramped quarters assigned him as Darkover's Federation Senator.

When Lew Alton had still been Senator, he had had somewhat larger quarters, and a

home on Thetis as well. But those days were gone now, and few if any members of the

legislature had off-world places unless they were inherited ones. The Office of Finance

had imposed strict travel limitations a few years earlier, which restricted the movements

of the members. They could go to their home worlds for elections every five Terran

years, but Herm never had returned to Darkover. He had not been elected, but instead had

been appointed by Regis Hastur, a man he had never actually met, twenty-three years

before. He had worked for eight years in the Chamber of Deputies, and when Lew Alton

had vacated the Senate seat, he had taken his place.

Policy changes imposed by the Office of Finance, and numerous other dictates over

the years, had ultimately left the legislature prisoner to the whims of Premier Sandra

Nagy and her Expansionist cronies. Despite its name, the Expansionists were an austere

bunch of autocrats, and each year had seen more and more restrictions imposed on

everyone except the most favored members of the Party. As he had told his wife once, on

a rare occasion when he was moderately certain there were no listening devices nearby,

"The Expansionists say there are limited resources in the Federation—and all of them are

the rightful property of the Expansionists!" She had not even laughed.

The three-room apartment was a better domicile than most ordinary Terrans

possessed, but Herm had grown up in Aldaran Castle, with stone walls around him, and

great, roaring hearths sending out gusts of scent-laden sooty, heated air. An odd thing to

miss, after more than two decades. But the scentless, stifling atmosphere of the

apartment, which was warm all the year round because of the central controls of the

building, still made him feel like a trapped animal. There were eight billion people on the

planet, and more every year. He had a great longing for space, for stretches of conifers

and the smell of mountain balsam, for the cry of the Hellers' hawks, their russet plumage

bright against a sky illuminated by a ruddy sun.

It was not simply a nostalgia for unsullied expanses of gleaming snow that stirred

him. Even after two decades, he remained uncomfortable with his situation—felt alien.

Herm had never felt entirely clean after using a sonic shower, although it removed all the

dead skin and oil from his body. Water, like everything else, was rationed and taxed, and

he had a deep longing for a great wallow in a tub of steaming water, scented with oil of

lavender. A thick towel of Dry Town cotton to dry with, and a robe of felted wool over

his body completed the pleasant fantasy. No clammy synthetic on his skin . . .

It made his heart ache to think of those things, and he wondered at himself. He had

spent almost half his life off Darkover, and felt he should have accustomed himself to it

by now. But if anything, his homesickness grew worse and worse. For a moment he

remembered his younger self, a yokel by Federation standards, arriving to represent his

world in the lower chamber. He had been awed by the huge buildings, the hives and

skyscrapers, the presence of technologies unimaginable on his far-distant world. Despite

having grown up with various Terrans who were welcomed at Aldaran Castle, and having

a mother who claimed Terra as the planet of her birth, he had quickly realized he was

incredibly ignorant. He did not remember much about his mother, for she had died when

he was three. And certainly nothing he remembered her saying prepared him for the

reality he experienced during his first year in the Chamber of Deputies. She had granted

him a strange, unDarkovan name which he understood now was ancient and unusual even

by Terran standards, a predisposition toward baldness, and beyond that only distant

fragmented memories. Dom Damon Aldaran's wives, all three of them, had perished—his

father had been tragically unlucky.

It had been fortunate that Lew was there to help him through those first few years. He

had learned how to use the technology, how to access newsfeeds on a computer and

communicate with people almost instantly. More importantly, Lew Alton had set him to

studying the literature and philosophy of a hundred planets, and the complex history of

the Federation itself. At first he had been unsure of the purpose of these efforts, and had

only read the texts in order to please the older man. But slowly he had come to

understand how uneducated he was for the task he had been chosen to perform. With

great difficulty he had started to understand the thinking of the Federation, how it was

founded on ancient ideas that had never taken root on Darkover—some of them very

good ideas.

But now he knew that these ideals were being abandoned, and that the Federation was

moving into an area of military dominance and oppression. It had happened before, in the

history of humans, but he wished it was not occurring during his own lifetime. And it was

not something he could discuss openly, as had been possible when he first came from

Darkover. Like every other person on the planet, he was subject to constant observation.

And there was nothing he could do about it, since disabling the spy eyes that watched and

listened was a serious offense. He wondered what the average person thought about it or

if they thought at all. Likely they did not, hypnotized as they were with mediafeeds and

vidrams.

But Herm knew that the situation was bad and getting worse all the time. Trillions of

credits were disbursed every year to create new technologies. At the same time, very little

was spent on the day-to-day existence of ordinary people, whose lives became ever more

difficult. He had tried to understand this phenomenon, but it still made no sense to him,

and, like most of his fellow legislators, he was virtually powerless to change it.

He was being morbid. It must just be the strain of recent days. Regis Hastur had never

filled his original place in the Chamber of Deputies after Herm had vacated it, and he had

not encountered another native of his planet in sixteen years. This rarely weighed on him,

but he was so tired now that it seemed a heavy burden.

Of late, sleep had become a rare commodity, as the meetings, both public and private,

in the two chambers of the Federation legislature had gone far into what passed for night

in this dreadful place. Any of Zandru's frozen hells seemed preferable at that moment.

The Senate, his labor of almost sixteen years now, was a hornet's nest stirred with an

Expansionist stick, and the Chamber of Deputies was little better. But he had dealt with

political crises before without waking up in the middle of the night with his heart trying

to hammer its way through his chest.

As much as Herm hated living in the Federation, he actually enjoyed the constant

turmoil of political life. Or he had until a few months before, when the Expansionist party

had finally achieved a slim majority in both houses, and begun to implement policies he

opposed. New taxes had been passed for all member planets of the Federation, to build a

fleet of dreadnaughts, great fighting ships, when there was no foe to defend against.

Some worlds had protested, and even tried to rebel, and combat troops had been sent in to

"keep order." It had gone from being a game at which he excelled, with his natural talent

for verbal interplay, and the cunning which had always been his mainstay, to a daily

nightmare from which he feared he would never awaken.

Recently the flow of events had disturbed a few of the more moderate Senators in the

Expansionist Party itself. With what Herm regarded as enormous courage, these men and

women had voted against their own majority on a critical defense bill, effectively

destroying it, and bringing both the Senate and the Chamber to an impasse. Pressure had

been brought, persuasion had been used, but to no avail. Except for endless conferences,

meetings, and some lengthy speeches on the floor, no actual business had been conducted

for nearly six weeks now, and it did not appear that any would be in the near future. The

leaders of the Expansionists were becoming more and more desperate, and the only good

that had come out of the mess was that no more new taxes had been passed in the interim.

But no benefit could ultimately come from a paralyzed parliament. A government unable

to act could inadvertently do more harm than good.

Herm tried to shake away the dour mood that enveloped his mind, and found himself

remembering one of the last conversations he had had with Lew Alton, just before Lew

had resigned his office and returned to Darkover. Lucky man. He wasn't balancing his

bottom on a stingy stool, trying to make sense out of a hysteria that had grown and grown

over the past decade. What had he said? Ah, yes. "There may come a time when the

Federation loses its collective mind, Hermes, and when that happens, if it does, I cannot

really advise you what to do. But when that day arrives, you will know it in your bones.

And then you must decide whether to stay and fight, or run from the fracas. Believe me, it

will be evident to your intelligence. Trust your instincts then, young man."

Good advice, and still sound. But things were different now than when Lew had still

been Darkover's Senator. Then Herm had not been married—what a singularly foolish

thing to have done, to wed a widow from Renney with a small son, Amaury. But he had

been hopelessly in love! Now they had their own child, his daughter Terese, a delightful

girl of nearly ten. They were the light of his life, and he knew that without the anchor of

Kate and the children he would have been even more miserable than he was. He realized

he had not thought the matter through thoroughly when he met her, fell totally in love,

and married her a month afterward. Certainly he had not considered the problems of a

half-Darkovan child reaching an age where threshold sickness and the onset of laran

were real concerns. And he had never told Katherine about the peculiar inbred

paranormal talents of his people, although he had always intended to . . . someday. The

moment just had never seemed right. And what, after all, would he say? "Oh, by the way,

Kate, I've been meaning to tell you that I can read the minds of other people."

Herm shuddered at the imagined scene that would certainly follow. No, he had not

told her the truth, not clever Herm. He had just gone on, wheeling and dealing, keeping

Darkover safe from Federation predators, and put the matter off until another day. A

wave of regret and guilt swept through him, and his stomach felt full of angry insects.

After his mother's death, he had became a private child and had grown into a

secretive adult, a habit which had stood him in good stead during his years in the

Federation. The very walls had ears and eyes, even those in this miserable excuse for a

kitchen—the so called FP Station. Well, two counters, a tiny sink, a cool box and heating

compartment were nothing like a vast stone chamber with a beehive-shaped oven in one

corner, one or two large fireplaces, and a long table where the servants could sit and eat

and gossip. The old cook at Aldaran Castle—she was probably dead now—had had a

way of fixing water fowl with vegetables that was wonderful, and his mouth watered at

the thought of it. He had not tasted fresh meat since he and Katherine had gone to Renney

nine years before. Vat-grown protein had no flavor, even if it did nourish his body.

He forced the delightful vision of a plump fowl running with fat and pinkish juices

out of his mind and tried to focus on his abrupt arousal. What had brought him out of his

desperately needed rest? He had no sense of a dream, so it must have been something

else. Herm shivered all over, in spite of the warmth of the room, and watched the flesh

crinkle along his forearms. He had not been dreaming at all. No, it was almost certainly

an occurrence of the Aldaran Gift, a foresight he would probably wish to avoid, once he

remembered what it was. His laran was decent, good enough to catch the occasional

thoughts of the men and women he dealt with every day, an advantage he was careful not

to display or abuse. He relied much more on his native cunning than on his telepathy—it

was a more dependable talent, and less ethically dubious.

Besides, he was a diplomat, not a spy, and just because the Federation kept a watchful

eye and ear on his every movement did not seem sufficient reason to imitate them. But he

did wonder what the unseen auditors made of his love trysts with Kate. Nothing, most

likely, since they must record millions of such incidents every night. Still, the lack of real

privacy rankled, the more so because he was sure he was being observed even now. The

things that human beings would do in the name of order never failed to astound him.

Now, all he had to do was remember what had awakened him, and get back to sleep.

Something was most assuredly up, but it had felt that way for weeks. He had caught the

occasional thoughts in the minds of his fellow legislators, and they were deeply

perturbed. This was not limited to the opposition either, for he had noticed more than a

few Expansionist Senators mentally squirming, their thoughts giving lie to the words

issuing from their mouths. Lacking the Alton Gift of forced rapport, which had given his

predecessor such an advantage, Herm made do with scraps of unguarded thought, and

what he mostly heard was more banal or self-serving than useful.

The halls and conference rooms of the Senate Building were permeated with fear

these days, and Herm had observed long-time allies eyeing one another suspiciously.

There was good reason to be afraid. Opposition to Expansionist strategies was dangerous,

and more than a few Senators had had unexplained accidents or sudden illnesses in the

last few years. Trust and the capacity for reasonable compromise, the foundation stones

of representative government, had vanished almost completely, replaced by a wariness

and paranoia that was chilling to glimpse in the unguarded minds of his fellows. It made

the actions of people like Senator Ilmurit appear impossibly brave. She had crossed the

aisle with seven other moderates and unwound the tenuously held majority the

Expansionists had achieved with such enormous effort, and not a little treachery as well.

His eyes itched furiously, and his muscles twitched. It was infuriating, too, for he

knew that he would not have had a vision for any trivial matter. He did not have the

Aldaran Gift very strongly, but when it manifested itself, it was always important. Twice

in the years he had served as Darkover's Senator it had helped him avoid political traps

and betrayals.

He closed his eyes, feeling the tug of exhaustion, and tried to recall the warning that

had awakened him. It was muddled, a collection of voices, shouts of distress and words

he could barely make out. It took him several minutes of intense concentration to realize

that it was not one thing, but two separate events, shuffled together so it was difficult to

distinguish between them.

Two women? Yes, that was right. Who? Neither was his Kate, nor the voices of any

of the female Senators or Deputies he knew. Then he recognized one, the very familiar

voice of Sandra Nagy, the current Premier of the Federation. He had not known it at first

because he was accustomed to her usually pleasant alto, the one in which she gave

addresses which were broadcast throughout the reaches of the Terran Federation,

explaining why taxes would be raised again, or why combat troops had been used against

civilian populations.

Herm suddenly realized that he had had no vision, and no dream either, but instead

the experience of clairaudience, which was the rarest manifestation of the Aldaran Gift.

He had heard the future—if only he could remember the bedamned words! He tensed,

knitting his brow fiercely, willing his mind to cough up some clarity and sense.

Concentrate on Nagy, he told himself, and ignore the other sounds.

"I cannot permit the functioning of the Federation government to remain at a halt any

longer," Herm heard at last. "Since it is clear that the opposition is determined to hold the

legislature hostage to their own inexplicable and selfish goals, I have no choice but to

dissolve both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies until such time as new elections

can be held and order restored."

Herm sat stunned for a moment. When was this going to occur? The Aldaran

foresight was never exact, and it rarely offered such useful things as dates or times. He

did not doubt the forehearing, however, but could only try to think what it would mean

for Darkover.

It was not a complete surprise, for it had always been a possibility, under the

constitution of the Federation. No Premier had disbanded the government in more than a

century, since before the Terrans had come to Darkover, but he had read the history of

such events. What he knew did not reassure him. As often as not, it was a first move to

tyranny, oppression, and suffering. And the Federation had already gone a good way in

that direction, with their spy eyes in even the meanest domicile, all in the name of

security. There was an ever present fear of rebellion which had grown over the past

decade until it colored everything. Even those Senators who were reasonable men and

women seemed to have caught the contagion. As for the Expansionist members, they

drank in their imagined responses to such revolts like fine wine, getting tipsy on vintage

visions of retaliation. Sometimes he almost thought they enjoyed their fever dreams of a

galaxy-wide apocalypse.

Lew Alton had been right all those years before—the Federation was going to hell in

a handcart. The miracle was that it had taken this long. But what should he do now? And

what of the other voice, the less distinct one, the unknown woman who had cried in his

mind?

Run!

The single word in his mind rang like a great bell, blotting out all other considerations

for a moment. Hermes-Gabriel Aldaran was afraid, and he felt no shame in confessing it

to himself. He half rose off the uncomfortable stool, then sank back again. There were

eyes watching him, and while it might be days or even weeks before any human eyes

studied the record of this particular moment, he must be careful not to behave in a

manner that would draw attention to his actions. He had Kate and the children to think of.

He went over the remembered words again, feeling more and more frustrated. When

was she going to make this devastating announcement? What good did it do him to have

foreknowledge if he lacked any clue as to whether the foreseen events would occur

tomorrow or next week! Herm made himself consider the immediate situation as calmly

and objectively as he was able. A handful of worlds were simmering on the edge of

rebellion, and when the Premier disbanded the legislature, at least one of them would use

it as an excuse to try to break with the Federation. He understood that, but he could not be

sure that Nagy did. Her advisory council was made up almost entirely of the more

extreme voices in the Party, those who sincerely believed that they knew better how to

run the lives of everyone on Federation planets than their native peoples did themselves.

And what would the dissolution of the legislature mean for the governors, kings, and

other ruling bodies of the member planets? Without representation, they would lose their

voices completely. Would she suspend the Federation Constitution and institute martial

law? Herm rubbed the short beard around his mouth reflectively. No, she would not go

that far—at least not immediately. Instead, she and her cronies would wait for some

planet to rebel, and use that as an excuse to declare a state of emergency. This was the

logical course.

Had troops already been deployed to those planets regarded as either dangerous or

potentially disloyal? Herm did not know, and there was no way he could gain access to

the files where such information might exist without arousing immediate suspicion. He

had better assume that portions of the Fleet were in place or on their way, just to be safe.

Hadn't there been something about some war games in the Castor sector? He scratched

his head and flogged his weary brain to remember. Yes, it was Castor. There were two

worlds there which he would focus on, if he were some Expansionist strategist looking

for trouble.

Satisfied for the instant that he had theorized as well as he could without any real

information, Herm tried to analyze his own situation. Where did he stand? He was the

unaligned Senator of a Protected Planet, and not an overt threat to anyone. He had been

careful to cultivate an unthreatening personality, and this had served him well enough

during his years. But Herm knew the tenor of the Expansionist mind well enough to

realize that if you were not their ally, you were regarded as an enemy. He had seen some

of his friends in the Senate destroyed by scandals that he knew were trumped up, and he

did not want to wait around to find out if he would become the latest victim. That was

unlikely, because Darkover was not an important world. But he had Kate and the children

to consider, not just his own Aldaran hide. And once the Senate was disbanded, he would

no longer have the immunity of his office to protect him and his family. He could be

arrested then, or worse. If only he were not so weary and was able to think with a clear

head. Instead, he was just plain scared, and was attempting to resist the impulse to flee.

Herm decided that he had to try to discover when Sandra Nagy was actually going to

drop her political bomb, before he did anything more. He rose from the stool and padded

across to the household terminal, knowing that at least this action would not arouse much

attention from the spy eyes in the walls. He was in the habit of accessing the newsfeeds

several times a day, and even at night if he couldn't sleep, as he was now. Indeed, it was

such a typical thing that it might allay suspicion rather than otherwise.

He pressed his hand against the glassy surface of the comlink and waited. For several

seconds nothing happened and his heart began to beat a bit faster, fearing that he was too

late, and that events had rushed beyond his control, that he would be denied access and a

goon squad of Expansionist bully boys would come knocking at the door. Then he

scolded himself silently. The system had been sluggish for weeks now, due to power

blackouts that occasionally blinded half a continent for hours at a time.

Everything on the planet—from voting to food ordering—was dependent on these

electronic links. But the shortsightedness of the Expansionists had blocked the funds for

improvements, and now the system was beginning to fall apart. It was, Herm knew,

symptomatic of all that was wrong in the Federation. Infrastructures were decaying, and

no one was able to get a bill through the legislature to do anything about it. The

population kept increasing, but the services that supported the people were deteriorating,

because the funds needed were being spent on armaments, on the construction of military

ships and the training of troops. It was folly, and he knew that he was not the only one

who was aware of it. Unfortunately, no one wanted to hear his voice, or those of others

who suggested that spending on defense over basic needs was unsupportable.

He thought about his studies of history. However reluctantly they had begun, they

were now almost an obsession. His love of history was one of the few pleasures outside

his family that he had, an escape from the dreadful present he was living through. For

some reason he found himself remembering the tale of a great empire which had existed

on Terra just before the age of space travel, a nation that covered most of what had been

called Asia and Europe. For half a century it had devoted itself to preparations for a war

that never came, and finally it had collapsed into bits and pieces, bankrupted by its own

fear. Perhaps the Expansionist movement would run the same course. This thought gave

him cold comfort while he waited.

At last the terminal blinked into life. He scrolled the most recent newsfeeds, scanning

the words rapidly, looking for any clues that might tell him how much time he had. He

ignored reports of food shortages, yet another water riot in the Indonesian islands, the

arrival of the Governor of Tau Ceti III for a state visit, and several other items. Ah, here it

was, a terse tidbit buried at the end of the most recent feed. The Premier had announced a

major speech before the combined houses three days hence. So, that was how much time

he had to get as far away as he could. Not much, but enough. It felt right, down in his

bones, just as Lew had said it would. And clever as he was, he had always kept a means

of escape open.

For an instant all he could think of was that he was, at last, going to go back to

Darkover—immediately. A wave of relief made him grin at the flashing screen. But, in

all likelihood, he was not coming back, and that presented a fresh set of problems. He

must take Kate and the children with him. That was simple enough, except that she would

have questions about why they were abandoning their home. And he could hardly tell her

the truth, for that would alert the monitors in the walls.

Hermes sighed. Life as a bachelor had been much simpler, but less satisfactory. Kate

was an intelligent woman; she would just have to trust him because she would know he

was thinking of their best interests. He spent a futile moment worrying over uprooting the

children, and then forced it out of his mind. They were young and adaptable, and it was

more important to keep them from harm than to worry about anything else. Later, out of

reach of constant surveillance, he would explain things. It was not something he looked

forward to. She would tear a strip off his hide for not finding some way of telling her

earlier and it was probably less than he deserved.

With a grunt, he keyed a program into the comlink, one that had been placed there

years before. A message popped up on the screen, with all the correct codes, telling him

to return to Darkover immediately. He suppressed a grin, knowing it for a clever fraud,

and hoping that the information ferrets had never discovered its existence. It certainly

looked official, and if no one examined it too closely, it should allow him to remove

himself and his family from danger.

Herm looked at it, tried to appear startled, scratching his head fretfully and muttered.

Then, with a pleasure he had difficulty concealing, he keyed in another program. There

was a further delay, and sweat puddled under his arms and ran down his sides. Then,

almost magicially, he found an open passage across Federation space booked on the first

departing ship, in perfect order. It allowed him to use his privileged position to usurp the

first available cabin, in the first class section of a Big Ship.

He derived a grim pleasure from using his trapdoor. These days, with the

Expansionist restrictions, it sometimes took months to book passage, unless one had

friends in the right places. But as a Senator he could still pull rank, even though he knew

it meant that he would almost certainly disrupt some complete stranger's travel plans. He

calmed his conscience by remembering it would likely discomfort some Expansionist

party loyalist, since these were the people permitted travel for the most part.

The link scrolled and made a faint and not unpleasant humming noise as it worked.

After several minutes a display came up, a routing with a transfer to Vainwal. The system

Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Traitor's Sun

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