Triple Detent by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction
Publisher: DAW Books
Published: 1974-09-22T17:11:42+00:00

"Anyone have the answer to that?" Smith asked, looking about.

Henrys raised his hand. "Conqueror, the system itself takes care of the trust. It is like dividing cake fairly

—"

"You're Henrys, aren't you?"

Surprised, Henrys nodded.

"I was a crewman aboard your father's ship, fifteen years ago. Admiral Henrys is the present chief Conqueror of Kazo. His accession was extremely popular among the natives. I thought I recognized the family resemblance. And the thinking."

The others turned toward Henrys, impressed. But he plowed ahead with his answer. "It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid," he said, quoting from The Revolutionist's Handbook. Then he elaborated on his own. "But when the system takes insincere, selfish individual motivations into account, trust becomes implicit. If we govern Uke, and Uke governs Kazo, and Kazo governs Earth—"

Smith interrupted him again. "I have not told you that, recruit."

Still Henrys would not be moved. "Obviously you are being transferred from Kazo to Uke, Conqueror.

But you are still delivering Kazo recruits to Earth. So it has to be planet Kazo that is changing governments."

The captain addressed the others. "You can see why this man's father rose to the top job. And it's no nepotism; the Kazos selected this recruit. Anyone else care to finish the reasoning?"

Several others were ready now. The captain called on one.

"If Uke governs Kazo, and Kazo governs Uke," the recruit said carefully, "then it would be self-defeating for Uke to introduce inferior representatives into the system. Bad government on Kazo would lead to bad government on Earth, and come full-circle back to Uke. So their initial complement, consisting of their entire spacefleet, will be exceedingly careful. After that, we'll be doing the selection on Uke, so we know the choices will be good. It's foolproof!"

Well enough stated, Dick thought. But hearing his theses from another mouth, not as the rantings of a rebel but as establishment doctrine, made him feel abruptly uncertain. Foolproof? Nothing was foolproof! His whole life had been fraught with accident and error, from a mother who had married against her mother's preference, and a father who stayed too much in space, to an alien conquest of Earth that wasn't really a conquest, the death of his father that was instead a promotion to Conqueror status, and revolution that wasn't... and now his assignment to planet Kazo—that turned out to be duty on planet Uke, that he had never heard of before this hour. What certainties remained for him—except further un certainties? Only a fool would think of the future as foolproof.

But another question jolted him out of it. "Why are there no women?" a recruit asked.

Smith frowned. "It is the start of occupation—just as it was fifteen years ago on Earth and Kazo. There will be special dangers. We can't risk..."

Nonsense, Henrys thought. The medieval ages were long gone; women were no longer to be considered weak creatures to be protected. The real meaning was that men could not afford to be distracted by romantic dalliances when a world was in the throes of pacification.

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