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  Kas shrugged. “I do not have the fire power here on Hrrrm to enforce that which I wish to happen. If I did, I would. Very well. We will do as you wish.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The square through which they walked back had no ground transportation, but numerous pedestrians gawked at them from a distance.

  “Who are all these people?” Mike asked.

  “Hangers on to the rich and famous,” Kas said.

  “Why do they stare so?” Mike asked.

  “Their minds reach out to yours,” Kenton said. “They find a wall of rejection to their probes instead of greetings. They reach out to Joe, and they find he has no implants. He is a pariah in our society. He is outcast and will be shunned by everyone he meets. Whatever life you have, if you have a life, Joe is already outside the pale.”

  Mike asked, “What happens if they find out you were trying to help us escape?”

  “I am ready for all contingencies. Each of us in that chamber has all kinds of power. No one in this Senate ever gets investigated. There are no special prosecutors. There are no investigative commissions. These are the rich. These are the elite. We are allowed to do that which will make us richer. If we want to put up a business that would ruin the eco-system of a whole planet, why we can. That’s our freedom.”

  “And the freedom of all the people on the planet?” Mike asked.

  “They’re free to leave or stay.”

  “But you’ve given them two choices they don’t want to make. Whoever decides which choices you have, has the power. If you’re the one who decides which choices you have, then others have fewer choices. Don’t you have any limits on your power?”

  “No.”

  “Hell of a way to run a star system,” Mike said.

  “Our spread and success is because of the structure you choose to doubt. You may doubt, but we have all this.”

  “But you don’t have me,” Mike said.

  Kas nodded and smiled.

  Back in the chamber, their entrance created only a small stir. Kas left them to return to his seat. The yellow-robed person nearest to Mulk was speaking. “What is happening here is not fair to the Earthling. How was he to know? There is no possibility of Earth being part of our system. They are a third of the way on the other side of the galaxy.”

  Joe whispered. “The speaker is Ove. He’s the greatest living artist. He sculpts underground caverns.”

  “How does anyone take them home?” Mike asked.

  “If you’re rich I suppose anything’s possible. Mostly he makes them and people come visit although I believe he has created numerous decorated caverns on private estates.”

  “And people pay for this?” Mike asked.

  “Obviously if he’s in this assembly, somebody must pay him a very great deal.”

  Mike only saw a few yellow robed people in the whole room. Perhaps being a starving artist was a universal concept.

  Ove said, “Why was there such expense paid to retrieve this person who had no desire to return to our part of the galaxy? I have seen no evidence that the former police procurer, Joe, nor the Earthling he consorted with, had any plans for an invasion.”

  Bits of laughter rippled through the room.

  “They had one ship with no means to build more, or were they going to get on their bicycles and peddle their way across the galaxy?”

  More laughter.

  “Have we no barriers to possible invasion, or have we been lied to by the security services about the level of protection we have?”

  Bex said, “You know very well that those who wish to subvert the established order that we have created would have no compunction about helping Vov come back. There are spies and secrets and subversion.”

  “But I have seen no evidence of such a conspiracy,” Ove said. “And Vov is dead.”

  “Do you need to see an army marching into this chamber before you will admit there is danger?” Bex asked.

  “I hear constant rumors. I see no facts. Was Vov helped to escape? If so, by whom?” He pointed at Bex. “I see the head of security here. He gives no answers to these questions.”

  “We’re still investigating.”

  “If after all this time you have found nothing, maybe there is nothing to be found.”

  “It’s there all right.”

  Ove said, “It is good to be assured that something exists. I would like to see proof that something exists.”

  “We’ll get you your proof,” Bex said.

  “Sometime before the next invasion, I hope,” Ove said. “And what of the issue of beams of pure zukoh? No one has talked about their existence, and that this Earthling defeated them. Pure zukoh was supposed to be a theoretical weapon.” Ove pointed toward where Mike sat. “And this creature defeated it. What secrets are the military keeping from us?”

  Bex said, “We’re keeping you safe.”

  “Which, once again, and as has always been the case, does not answer my question.”

  They glared at each other in silence. Finally, Ove resumed, “I return to my earlier point. This is ultimately unfair.”

  Cark rose. “The Earthling did not know the laws and customs here, but Joe did. Did the Earthling ask no questions?”

  Ove responded to her. “Which questions was he supposed to ask? The people of this place called Earth are not even aware of our existence. Ignorance of the law this profound is an excuse. The suggestion from your faction, Cark, that we execute them both is ludicrous. It is never going to happen. Why did you even try a vote?”

  He waited for an answer, but Cark sat back down in stony silence.

  “I hear no answer and bow to the impossibility of responding with logic and sense to what I asked, because there is no logic and sense to it.”

  Goaded, Cark rose. “Belief is not absurd.”

  “Sure it is,” Ove said.

  An esoteric debate on the nature of spirituality and the philosophical structure of belief ensued. The outcome seemed to be that those in the auditorium who chose to believe intended to do so, and those who didn’t, intended not to do so. It took over two hours for that to be decided. Mike was bored to tears.

  After that debate ended, the gentleman in black, third from Mulk, rose to speak. “I have heard the previous two hours of debate in other venues at even greater length more times than I care to admit. I am staggered that the debate still goes on. I am staggered that anyone thinks the rest of us want to hear it.” He raised his hand palm outward as Cark rose to interrupt. “I will not answer questions or debate the issue. If those who choose to believe wish to debate it, they will have to find someone stupid enough who wishes to debate it with them.”

  “Who is this guy?” Mike whispered.

  Kenton said, “Def, the leader of the Sky Pirates.”

  “He can call them stupid?” Mike asked.

  “He can call them anything he wishes. They have called him much worse. He has called them much worse. Egos get bruised here, no doubt. Consequences happen. Def knows they have no power within his system. They can do nothing to him there. They can’t touch him here. Between here and there is another matter.”

  Def said, “I wish to return to the point of our meeting, what to do with them. I suggest exile. I suggest a prison planet for all of them.”

  “All of whom?” Mike whispered to Kenton.

  Kenton tapped on the screen attached to his chair. The device automatically recorded everything that was said. After several minutes, he looked up. “They are referring to those who engage in sexual behavior with their own gender.”

  “They lock us up?”

  “On the tangerine worlds they do. They have exile colonies that are rumored to be death traps.”

  “They could talk us to death here,” Mike said, “and there would be no need for exile.”

  Joe said, “The other factions do as they wish, but the law applies to the entire governmental unit. It just isn’t enforced as much in some places.”

  “If you can read minds,
how could they not lock up every gay person?” Mike asked.

  “We do not have sexual police,” Kenton said. “The areas of the brain dealing with any kind of sexual activity, thought, word, or deed are inviolate.”

  Mike scoffed, “You’ve got mind control, and you’re not going to touch that? I thought I was the naïve one on this planet being from Earth and all. I can’t believe they’d let that alone.”

  Joe said, “Obviously they want some control if they are going to try to exile all of us.”

  Mike said, “I bet you could get one hell of a pogrom going if you set up an implant to read sexual desire.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Kenton said. “An individual’s privacy is paramount here. The government is based on that. It’s in the first words of our founding documents.”

  Joe said, “Hush, I want to listen.”

  Def continued, “Exile is the solution that meets the most criteria of our laws and customs. Our problem here is that several different laws and customs are involved. We cannot just say to the Earthling, ‘Lack of knowledge of the law is no excuse.’ That’s absurd. As to the knowledge the Earthling has, now that we know it exists, isn’t every one of us in our home system, desperately trying to replicate it? It must be doable. How long are we going to need what this Earthling knows? Probably not long. Vov may have been unique, but his knowledge wasn’t. The data must exist and/or his work must be replicable. It is for the rest of us to find it, and we will. I know I have hired scientists and put them to work day and night. I suspect all of you have. How long it will take, I don’t know. Whoever finds it, and I suspect there will be more than one of us, will make lots of money. That’s what we’re supposed to be about here, making money and making it easy for free market capitalism to reign. I believe the Earthling is less of a threat than we have been led to believe. We may be threats to each other, but he is not the problem. It is ourselves, our desires, and our allegiances that cause our problems.”

  Mike interjected, “As Pogo said in the old comic strip, We have met the enemy and he is us.”

  Kenton shushed him.

  Def was continuing. “What solution to all that does the Earthling offer? Another weapon? We have lots of weapons. We have powerful protection forces. He cannot undo the fabric of society. He may change who is the richest, but there will still be the richest. Vov may have wanted to conquer all. He may have wanted to give his allies the ability to become rich or to attempt to destroy us all. A series of interstellar wars seems insane, but Vov was a lunatic. The Earthling doesn’t seem to me to be crazy.”

  “We are to base our security plans on your analysis of an alien’s psyche?” Bex asked.

  “In exile, he would be neutralized completely. His psychological state would mean nothing.”

  Cark said, “We would certainly consider exile, depending on the conditions.”

  “There will be no colonies of death,” Def said. “We will not be a party to the behaviors you follow on your worlds. We don’t want them dead. We want them out of the way. We would set up all the usual safeguards and any others anyone wanted to ensure that the members of the colony, especially the Earthling, are not tampered with. Are there not prison planet safeguards that are known to keep out rescue missions of any kind?”

  “Yes,” Bex said, “but this might be whole governments, invasion fleets.”

  Def said, “It would be a balance of terror. No one wants anyone else to get the Earthling’s knowledge. Everyone has a stake in him not being taken. Therefore, it would be in everyone’s interest to protect him.”

  Bex asked, “How is he to be kept safely in exile? All of us will be trying to kidnap him.”

  Def said, “As head of security, you’re saying there are limits on your power and ability? I find that hard to believe.” He ignored Bex’s shouts of inarticulate rage. “A commission of the most powerful will organize a guard around the planet chosen as their prison.”

  Kenton explained. “Def is actually being very smart. The religionists are not his natural allies. They can’t win on executing you both. They know that. It is highly improbable that you will be executed, especially after they lost that first vote, but exile, that could work. He makes cause with the second most likely thing they would want to happen to you.”

  “Why does he want exile?” Mike asked.

  “Got to be some monetary advantage in it for him.”

  Mike asked, “Why would the religionists go along with it?”

  “Because,” Kenton said, “exile is most often tantamount to murder, even when it isn’t on one of their prison planets, which are death traps, and they want the sexually different in all our known worlds executed. This is a way to begin getting you all into one place. Def waited to make his suggestions until he sensed a lot of them were fed up and just wanted to be done with this.”

  Joe confirmed, “The planets or moons people are exiled to are the least hospitable. These are poor planets or moons that no one else wants. Numerous well financed and well planned colony-making expeditions to them have probably failed. They don’t care if prisoners die. They haven’t officially killed you, but they might as well have. People can’t be rescued from outside the prison because the probes set about it are geared to wipe out everyone on the surface of the planet should unauthorized persons attempt an entrance.”

  Kenton added, “There’s no escape from exile planets. There’s no way someone could get in to spirit you away.”

  “There’s always a way,” Mike said.

  Joe said, “Exile planets are very secure. I’ve never heard of an escape or someone being rescued from one. I’ve just heard that people die.”

  “Why didn’t they exile Vov?” Mike asked.

  “There’s a difference between exile and a regular prison, and no, I don’t know why Vov was put where he was put.”

  As Def finished speaking, Cark rose, “And what about their violation of our sexual customs? On our exile planets that prohibition is strictly enforced. Are they to be allowed to exist on some planet in wild abandon, practicing their cult-like behavior? I object very strongly to that notion.”

  Def responded. “You may be able to interfere in such a way in your home system, but the customs and rules of exile in the general government do not permit such interference.”

  Cark said, “Is the Senator suggesting that centuries of custom, that our founding principles, can be violated with impunity? This is a society built on what is rational. Is he saying that irrationality is going to rule?”

  Def said, “The longer we listen to you, the longer the irrational will triumph. I do not choose to honor those concepts which do not make me money. We are all free to ignore those that we wish to. If your grand tradition served all of us, they would all be dead in less than a year on such a planet. Our exile planets are not the death traps that yours are.”

  “Close enough,” Joe whispered.

  Def said, “Furthermore, I am not interested in their sexual behavior in the least. I don’t think any of us should be.”

  Shouts of “no,” “order,” “hypocrite,” “heathen,” “radical,” “treason,” and “blasphemy” filled the air, mostly from the tangerine faction.

  Def simply remained standing, gazing out over the crowd. When order was restored and silence obtained, Def said, “You may shout as much as you wish. You will find that my solution is the only one that will satisfy some of what all of us want. In this debate, no side is going to get all of what they want. No one has the votes for that.”

  Pandemonium broke out again.

  Mike said, “You’d think this was some third-world, tin-pot attempt at democracy or the United States House of Representatives when the Republicans are in charge.”

  “It isn’t democracy, not really,” Kenton said.

  Again waiting for the crowd to calm down, Def began again, “We can waste our time fighting about what we want to get or spend our time coming up with a solution. I realize there are many delegates here who be
lieve that if they could make just one more argument or give one more reason that the rest of us would be won over by the brilliance of their logic.” He gave a short harsh laugh. “We all knew our positions before we even got here. I’ve never had so many hyper-space communications in my life than I did in the week before this debate. We waste our time in frivolous ways.”

  “How dare you call this frivolous?” Bex said.

  “Wasn’t hard,” Def said. “Want me to do it again?”

  This set off another round of shouts and catcalls.