Dictator Yar Jupi's palace was part of the Temple of Eternity, in which worship had ceased after the Faetians forgot their religion. Now the Dread Wall separated the temple from the monastery buildings that had been converted for the Dictator's use. The soaring spire of black stone resembled a torpedo with a disintegration warhead. The ancient architects never suspected that they were anticipating the outlines of a future weapon. Even less could they have imagined that, in the event of a disintegration war, the cellars under the Temple of Eternity would house the Central Control Panel of Defence Automatons. The machines could unleash a death-dealing swarm of disintegration torpedoes against Danjab.
A session of Peaceful Space was now being held over these fearsome machines in the former shrine of the temple with its black columns soaring up into the sky. Its chairman was Um Sat of Danjab, who had in his time discovered the disintegration of matter (By the disintegration of matter, the Faetians meant the nuclear reactions of fissionand synthesis, as a result of which, as is known, a deficiency of mass is observed; that is, matter diminishes; it disintegrates, releasing an enormous amount of energy) and had made a terrible mistake by publishing his discovery on both continents simultaneously. The great roundhead, as he was called, and the planet's first authority on matter, had decided that he was as great an authority on life. Believing that the simultaneous appearance of a superpowerful weapon on both continents would create a "balance of fear", he hoped that war would become impossible. However, the tension of the relations between the continents was growing. Urn Sat had only hit on one of the causes: overpopulation and hostility because of the lack of room. But the hostility over profits was far more dangerous. Overpopulation was aggravating all aspects of the struggle even further. The proprietors on both continents, while suppressing dissatisfaction of the toilers by force, were also threatening one another with force across the ocean. It seemed to them that they could, at the expense of their competitors, not only boost profits, but could pacify the malcontents in their own country with a small handout.
The horrified Um Sat was beginning to realize the inevitability of a disintegration war and he considered himself responsible for it. That is why he was now trying to find a solution for everything in the exploration of new space continents, dreaming about the partial resettlement of Faetians on them and about universal reconciliation.
Heavy responsibility, disillusion, care and fatigue had left their mark on the old Faetian's face. His high forehead under the dense shock of hair was furrowed by deep lines. The big, sad eyes were full of kindly wisdom and understanding. But with it all went a weak chin covered by a greying beard.
In spite of the Sat's tragic mistake, he was still respected for his tremendous achievements in science and for his unquestionable integrity of purpose. Consequently, the sages of learning from both continents met him in the hall with the greatest respect.
But at that moment, within only a hundred paces of the Temple of Eternity, behind the wall of the Lair, there was another world-famous Faetian whom no one respected but all feared.
Yar Jupi became Dictator during the black days when the Power of Justice was suppressed.
Before his daughter was born, he was merely an inconspicuous tradesman who did business with the roundheads. To please his clients, he took Mother Lua into service for Mada, who had lost her mother. The nurse replaced the child's real mother at the memorable time when the fury of the oppressed burst into the open. The uprising shook Powermania, depriving the proprietors of power and possessions.
Lying low in their burning hatred, they refused to reconcile themselves to defeat. They had the brutal experience of struggle amongst themselves. They had always fought to the death with the toilers and with one another. However, they were now ready to forget their own quarrels.
There were proprietors on both sides of the ocean. But since the discovery and settlement of the new continent of Danjab, the Faetians had lived there without the ancient prejudices; there wasn't even any favourable soil on which they could flourish. The result was that, under the new circumstances, both roundheads and longheads began enjoying equal rights and opportunities to make others work for them. Be that as it may, it led to the rapid growth of, if not a culture, at least a technology. The products of the Gutturals, as its inhabitants began to style themselves, invariably proved better and cheaper than those of Powermania's barbarians. And the proprietors of Danjab inundated the old continent with their products. In Powermania, crude and primitive means of manufacture still prevailed. The proprietors of that continent found themselves under threat of ruin. No matter how much they oppressed their toilers, the profits were slipping out of their hands. They came to seethe with hatred for everything from Danjab. Only a defeat in the struggle with the Justice Movement temporarily relegated a reckoning with the overseas proprietors to the background.
When Yar Jupi proclaimed his Doctrine of Hatred, he had only heard about the Council of Blood, not suspecting who the members might be. Once, when summoned to a secret meeting of the council in a cellar, he was shaken to recognize, under the cowls of those present, two important workshop proprietors and one big land proprietor.
"Our choice has fallen on you, Yar Jupi," declared the land proprietor. "Your Doctrine of Hatred could unite, for nothing unites better than common hatred. With its help, the Movement of Blood should suppress the Movement of Justice. But do not forget that purity of blood," he added significantly, "though regarded as the supreme ideal, is still only a weapon for suppressing the power of the riff-raff."
"The Movement of Blood will justify its name," affirmed Yar Jupi, who already considered himself as one of its leaders.
The proprietors exchanged glances.
"We shall deal with the roundheads both here and overseas," said the future Dictator with inspiration.
"You traded with the roundheads, your wife nursed their children," began a workshop proprietor insinuatingly, and he threw back his cowl. "That is advantageous to us, because, however loudly you may shout about hatred, the overseas proprietors can still trust you most of all for having been able to get on with the roundheads. You will go overseas and convince them that what has happened here will happen to them too. Let them help us to deal with the power of the 'seekers after justice', having thereby preserved their own possessions. Let them send good weapons to the contingents of your cutthroats. You will know how to use it. Both now ... and later. You understand?" And the workshop proprietor pulled the hood with its eyeslits down over his face.
Yar Jupi understood everything perfectly. Shrewd and cunning, he made his Doctrine of Hatred the main weapon against the Power of Justice. He even did not hesitate to publicise his maniacal plan for the seizure of the whole planet by the longfaces. The overseas proprietors turned a blind eye to this. It was most important of all for them to help the leader to deal with the hated power of the toilers, and if he also spouted empty phrases about conquests, then let him amuse himself, but he would at least be doing his job.
The ex-tradesman not only fooled the overseas proprietors, he surrounded himself with bands of cutthroats lusting for booty. He distracted the unstable elements from the defence of their own interests by encouraging them to persecute the roundheads. In a word, he did everything that was required.
The Power of Justice was smashed. Its leaders from among the toilers and also many roundfaced Faetians were exterminated. The continent swam in blood. Yar Jupi was carried to the top on a crest of bloody foam.
The Council of Blood made the subtle and obliging shopkeeper Dictator of Power-mania, counting on his subservience. No one, apart from him, knew who was a member of the Council of Blood and whose interests it defended.
After dealing with the toilers' revolt, the new Dictator proclaimed all roundheads (mostly toilers) to be inferior citizens. In the name of struggle with overpopulation on the planet, he forbade them to have children. Newborn infants and their parents were threatened with the death penalty. But the roundheads had to labour twice as hard as the rest. The use of overseas products was declared incompatible with the principles of blood. The proprietors of Powermania sighed with relief: their profits were safe.
The overseas proprietors came to their senses too late. Yar Jupi not only deprived them of profits on the old continent, but threatened them with a war of disintegration, of total annihilation. They had no option but to prepare for such a war in defence, above all, of their own power and profits.
The military leaders of both sides, fearing a disintegration war, intended to deliver the strike first. To ensure that it would also be the last, they demanded the build-up of disintegration weapons. The proprietors of both continents, equally demented and camouflaging their intentions behind phrases about a love of peace, compelled their workshops to produce even more frenziedly.
The naive hopes of Um Sat, the great Elder of learning, for a peaceful "balance of fear" came down with a crash and he now began voicing a demand for the total elimination of all reserves of disintegration weapons and a ban on their use. Many sober minds supported him.
In the tense pre-war atmosphere, Yar Jupi found himself hearing more and more often the name of Um Sat, who had discovered the secret of the disintegration of matter and was now appealing to the conscience of the Faetians so that it could be "covered up again".
The Dictator received reports of dangerous conversations: "If the roundheads could give the planet a Faetian like Um Sat, then how can they be declared inferior? Why do the roundheads have to work twice as hard as others, but throughout the life of one generation they must yield their place on Faena to the longfaces?"
Yar Jupi sensed a threat in these "brazen" questions!
Fearing another Uprising of Justice, the Dictator lost his peace of mind. He fell prey to persecution mania. He no longer left the Lair, where he led an ostentatiously ascetic life. He was equally mistrustful of the roundheads and the longfaces, and even of the proprietors of the Council of Blood, whom he served and to whom he could become useless.
To appease the people, who were boiling with rage, he stepped up his preparations for a disintegration war, promising that the ban on roundheads having children would be lifted after the successful end of the war and the resettlement of the victors on the overseas continent.
Alongside this, he muffled the discontent of the toilers with adventurist plans for the transfer of the roundheads to the planet Mar, where they would be free of all prohibitions (as if it was simply a matter of resettlement!).
He therefore encouraged the conquest of space and promoted the creation of Space Station Deimo near Mar. The Culturals already had a base there named Phobo. Yar Jupi even agreed to declare Outer Space "peaceful", since the interests of the proprietors clashed mainly on Faena.
However, the great learned Elder Um Sat, who had solved the mysteries of matter, could not fathom the depths of unscrupulous politics. For him, the "problem of overpopulating the planet" really blotted out everything else, although, in fact, it merely aggravated the burdens of the toilers and their struggle with the proprietors, not to mention the hostility of the proprietors amongst themselves. Evidently, in order to be a true Elder, it was still inadequate to be learned in one specific branch of knowledge.
No one had expected to see the cautious and calculating Yar Jupi at a session of Peaceful Space. He was too afraid of assassination. Obviously, it was not for nothing that Yar Jupi had chosen a place for the session near the Lair. The Temple of Eternity communicated with the former monastery by an underground passage.
During the session, Yar Jupi suddenly appeared out of the wall with two impressive robot bodyguards.
He was a tall, well-built Faetian with a long, clean-shaven face, a small dark beard, a hooked nose, a narrow, harsh mouth and suspicious, restless eyes that looked out from under the zigzags of irregular eyebrows. His egg-shaped skull, clean shaven on purpose, was considered to be of impeccable form among the Superiors. There was something bird-like and predatory in the expression on his face.
Yar Jupi addressed those present with a pompous speech in which he spoke about the innate striving of the Superiors for peace and about his agreement with the project for resettling Faetians on other planets to avoid war on Faena.
He had brought as a gift to Peaceful Space an interplanetary ship. Quest, ready for immediate lift-off together with an experienced astronaut commander; he offered Um Sat the opportunity to lead the expedition to Terr.
Then he announced the Council of Blood's decision to consider Um Sat an "honorary longface" with rights of the Superior amongst the Superiors. The basis for this was research by the "historians" of Blood, who had established that the name Sat in honour of the planet, marked with a noble ring, was only given to the purest longfaces.
Um Sat was flabbergasted. The expedition to Terr was a reality. On Danjab they had merely been arguing over how much to allocate for an interplanetary ship for Terr, whereas he could now lead such an expedition. But ... that falsification by the "historians"! The Dictator had not disdained to use it so as to take Um Sat from the roundheads. The learned Elder's first impulse was to turn down the Dictator's gifts; anyone else in his place would have acted likewise, but he refrained. After all, he stood for reconciliation, for the settlement of Faetians in space. How could he say no to the Faetians and refuse to survey the planet Terr, which could become their new home? Had he the right to display personal or racial vanity to the detriment of all Faetian society? Would it not be more reasonable to demonstrate the feasibility of space resettlement and divert the interest of the workshop proprietors to building spaceships instead of manufacturing torpedoes for a disintegration war?
In his answering speech, Um Sat controlled himself and expressed his gratitude to Yar Jupi both for the interplanetary ship being handed over to Peaceful Space and for the high rank bestowed on him, Um Sat. He promised to think about the possibility of personally taking part in the expedition.
He despised himself, but considered that he was making a great sacrifice.
The Dictator grinned and vanished through the gap in the wall with his robot bodyguards. Overseas technology never failed.
Um Sat announced an intermission in the work of the Peaceful Space session. He needed to pull himself together and justify himself to himself. Of course, he was still the same roundhead-true, inwardly confused, devastated and now the owner of rights he did not need at all.
But these rights proved particularly necessary to his former pupil and favourite, Ave Mar.
Dobr Mar, Ave's father, the Ruler of Danjab, felt ill at ease in the round office with the vaulted ceiling. He was the nine-hundred-and-sixty-second ruler who had moved in there.
An angular chin and a bony jaw on the intelligent face spoke of will and energy; the fine mouth, turned down at the corners, testified to worry; the bags under the eyes and the balding head with its remnants of greying hair, to a hard life. He had been given the name Dobr (Kind) for his coming-of-age. Until then he had borne his father's name. Terrible Mar, with the addition The Second Junior. The Ruler was thinking of his son on the barbarians' continent, where an explosion could occur at any time...
In spite of himself, there arose in his mind's eye, in all its details, that accursed day half a cycle ago, when he had decided on an act for which he could now find neither justification nor forgiveness.
The robot secretary reported that Kutsi Merc was in the waiting-room. Since the time when Dobr Mar's predecessor had been shot in that very office by his own secretary, the Grand Circle had decreed that only robot secretaries should work in the Ruler's Palace. And now the "intelligent box" had shown Kutsi Merc on the screen. While waiting to be received, Kutsi had not noticed that he was being watched, but he was naturally alert. A typical roundhead, he had a face like the disc of Lua, Faena's eternal satellite. His narrow eyes were looking sideways at the door.
Relations were complex between Dobr Mar and Kutsi Merc. Only Kutsi knew how the Ruler had come to power. Dobr Mar had formerly been a "friend of the Ruler", and by law had to occupy the "first chair" in the event of his death.
No one abused the "mentally unstable" assassin more than Dobr Mar. He swore to pursue the same foreign policy as the late Ruler: the eternal hostility with Powermania was to be tempered and everything possible should be done to reconcile the planet's two continents and deliver the Faetians from the horrors of war.
Not long before the assassination of Dobr Mar's predecessor, Kutsi Merc had handed him the terrible conditions on which he could become Ruler: he must be the first to start a disintegration war.
Once he had taken his predecessor's place, Dobr Mar was in no hurry to pursue the lunatic policy of the "mortally unstable" who demanded that the war be won with disintegration weapons.
Dobr Mar ruled Danjab, finding work and living accommodation for the ominously growing population. He tried to reduce the tension in relations between the continents, put through a law making old goods subject to destruction so that new ones would be acquired and managed things so that Yar Jupi, satisfied by the cut in the import of overseas goods, was even forced to agree to joint actions in space.
Dobr Mar had guessed why Kutsi Merc had come and what he was going to say. After all, the Ruler had not yet met the "special conditions". And on the eve of the elections, Dobr Mar was afraid of possible denunciations. What if he struck the first blow?
When he went into the office, Kutsi Merc halted. Squat, but well-built and broad-shouldered, almost without a neck, he looked like a wrestler before a match.
The match took place. Dobr Mar went trustingly towards him.
"The councillors of the Grand Circle are troubled by the information obtained by Kutsi Merc to the effect that the barbarians have mastered and even improved on the automatic machines they originally obtained from us, so that they have become dangerous."
"The Ruler is right. The automatic machines are dangerous. I have a reliable agent in the Lair."
"What guarantee is there that the automatic machines won't function by accident?"
"They're almost the same on Danjab."
"That's not enough! The barbarians must not be allowed to keep them. Such is the decision of the Grand Circle."
"I bow before the will of the first proprietors. But the barbarian automatic machines are under the Lair. Even a snake couldn't get through there."
"A snake couldn't, but Kutsi Merc could. Besides, he has a reliable agent there."
Kutsi Merc understood everything. Dobr Mar needed to show the proprietors that he was carrying out their conditions, and at the same time he could get rid of Kutsi Merc by sending him on an impossible assignment.
After his inevitable failure, Kutsi Merc could no longer prevent Dobr Mar from being re-elected.
Not a line moved on Kutsi Merc's face.
"It is clear," he said respectfully. "Penetrate into the Lair and destroy it and its automatic machines by using a disintegration charge." He thought for a moment and added almost casually, "A reliable cover will be needed."
"Fine," agreed the Ruler, walking round the horse-shoe table and settling himself in the comfortable armchair. Many of his predecessors had used that chair and he intended to keep his place in it for a long time to come.
"The cover would be Ave Mar."
"Ave Mar? My son?" Dobr Mar rose abruptly to his feet.
He turned away to hide his wrath. This experienced spy was playing an unworthy game with him, hoping that the father would not risk his son's life.
Before Dobr Mar had thrice put up his candidature for Ruler and had been defeated for refusing to become the "Ruler's friend", he had been the owner of vast fertile fields. His son Ave had been born in those fields, close to nature. He had been given his name Ave (Welcome) when he reached maturity. As a little boy, he had run around with half-naked children of roundheads working in his father's fields.
He had not only gone fishing with them to help them fill their bellies at least once in a while, he had climbed trees for the nutrient buds, but, like all generations of children, he had played at war.
Dobr Mar was proud of his son, although the boy had inherited his curly hair from his roundhead grandmother and his girlish curved eyelashes and his clear gaze from his mother. The father didn't particularly like his son looking at the world too ecstatically, naively believing in justice and the ancient laws of honour. Life had punished him many times for this old-fashionedness. But the father was flattered that his son worshipped him for his efficiency and love of peace. However, the son sometimes behaved rashly. On leaving his teacher Um Sat, "not wishing to serve the science of death", he openly spoke up against the fact that the decisive role on both continents was being played by the proprietors of the fields and big workshops who had profited from the over-populated lands and the labour of those working for the proprietors. Fortunately for him, as his father knew from the secret reports, he never managed to attach himself to the "current under the ice" of young people threatening to break through even here, on Danjab, in a new Uprising of Justice. Ave himself often heard seditious remarks by disciples of the Doctrine of Justice, but he didn't consider it necessary to report them to his father. Ave knew about the secret meetings, the participants in which as in token of greeting used to touch their right eyebrow with their left hand.
But he was not admitted to these assemblies. The toilers apparently did not trust him because he was the Ruler's son. It never entered his father's head that Ave Mar's friends could safeguard him as a capable scientist. After leaving Um Sat, Ave devoted himself to the problem of a possible life for the Faetians on other planets. Dobr Mar knew but did not really understand his arguments that the authorities on astronomy were wrong in affirming that life was impossible anywhere except on Faena, since the other planets were either too far away from their star or, like Merc, Ven and Terr, had been incinerated by its rays. The Faetians had nowhere to go if they fled from their own planet, if you discounted the grim planet Mar, which was hardly capable of supporting life and had been earmarked by the Dictator of the barbarians' continent as a place of exile for roundheads. It turned out that the only means of purging the planet for future generations might be war and war alone. Ave, however, affirmed that the temperatures there were not as high as might be expected from its proximity to Sol, its star. What was decisive was the carbon dioxide content, which created the greenhouse effect, preventing the excess heat radiation into space. This effect made it possible for life to develop on Faena. On its horizon, the star rose solely as the brightest star, whereas on Terr it must have been a blinding disc to look at. Ave held that if there was less carbon dioxide than on Faena, there would be no greenhouse effect, the superfluous heat could be dissipated and any life forms could develop on its surface.
Ave's views were rejected by the experts as absurd. He became disillusioned in the Elders of learning, in the teachings and in himself, lost heart and began to pine away.
His father merely shrugged his shoulders. He would have preferred a son more adapted to life, although he loved and pitied him.
And now Kutsi Merc was demanding a sacrifice... To carry out the task, Dobr Mar must risk his son's life.
Kutsi Merc was certainly calculating that the Ruler would back down, but he was mistaken. The Ruler, too, was cornered.
...As he remembered all this, Dobr Mar, "defender of the right and culture", did not know what to do. He did not know how the operation on Powermania was going to turn out. Would the crazy mission succeed? Would the dangerous Kutsi Merc be eliminated, and would Ave survive?