Galactic Empires by Gardner Dozois Read Free Book Online Page B

I’d appreciate a summary.”
    “That kind of thing never gets put in a file, as you well know. What are you looking for? We got Fiech, for God’s sake. Two and a half millennia in oblivion! It doesn’t get better than that.”
    “Why did he do it?”
    “What?”
    “I don’t understand his motivation.”
    “To liberate Merioneth from Dynasty oppression,” Christabel recited viciously. “And the bastards won!”
    “Yes, they did, but Fiech didn’t. He was utterly committed to his cause, so much so that he perpetrates one of the worst atrocities in modern history. One that almost killed his precious movement stone dead. People were repelled by what he did. Even his old colleagues realized that was too much, which is why they quickly got professional. That’s how they won. Continuing to wipe out the Dynasty kids and keep bystander bodyloss to an absolute minimum was smart. It bought pressure to bear exactly where it was needed. Yet Fiech will never see the end result, he’ll never live on his free, liberated Merioneth. Motivated people simply don’t commit suicide, which is effectively what he’s done. By the time he comes out of suspension, the Commonwealth won’t be recognizable, even if it still exists. Damnit, we’ll probably all be post-physical by then. He’s sacrificed himself for something he’ll never know. That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Fanatics never make any real sense to anyone except themselves. Don’t look for logic here, you’ll only be disappointed.”
    “There was logic behind this. I just don’t understand it yet. And that bothers me. It means we’ve overlooked something. Whoever set this up expended a huge amount of effort. The Directorate ran checks on every planetary medical database in the Commonwealth. Nobody has any record of the doppelganger’s DNA, which is extremely unusual for this day and age. The nearest we can do is identify family traits; he has ancestry within a mix of Celtic, Northern Spanish, and Saudi ethnicities. We found what we believe is a possible cousin on Piura; it was certainly the closest genetic match. But the poor girl didn’t recognize Dimitros. I ran her family tree as best I could, but if he’s on it, I couldn’t tell. We just don’t know who he is. If we can’t find out, then he’s either the most important man in the Merioneth independence movement, or an absolute nobody. I don’t believe either.”
    “Maybe you’re right with the first one, and his pals in the Free Merioneth Forces are planning on springing him out of suspension just before CST shuts the wormhole.”
    “Not going to happen. Nothing and nobody can break into the Justice Directorate suspension facility.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    Paula saw a nervous-looking Aidan appear at the top of the Main. She smiled. “What I always do; keep the file open, solve the case properly.”
    Christabel followed her gaze. “Of course, you always get your man.”
    “Yes. Always.”
----
    WHAT PAULA FOUND OUT
    Nelson Sheldon was right about the timing. Twenty-one months after Fiech’s court case, and three weeks after a planetary referendum officially denounced as a shambolic farce by Intersolar observers, the senator from Merioneth stood up in the Commonwealth Senate to declare that her planet was regretfully withdrawing from the Intersolar Commonwealth to “pursue our future independently.” The Speaker wished her well, and there was a chilly silence as the Merioneth delegation dramatically walked out of the full chamber. CST immediately announced that the wormhole link to Merioneth would be withdrawn in three months, leaving enough time for anyone on the planet who didn’t wish to be Isolated to return to the Commonwealth.
    Out of a population of seventeen million, the number wanting to remain part of the Commonwealth was just over nine million. It took an awful lot of trains running round the clock to bring them out. Which made travel to Merioneth extremely easy,