Seeklight

The sociologist nodded and finished buttoning up the shirt Daenek had given him. His thin wrists stuck a little ways beyond the cuffs as he extended his hand to Daenek. “My name’s Lessup,” he said. “I already know both of yours.”

“Great,” muttered Rennie. She stood up and walked in front of him. “How’d you find out?”

He shrugged. “Somebody in the Academy must have recognized him in spite of the disguise.” He pointed his thumb at Daenek.

“Academy?” said Daenek. “What’s this Academy?”

“Us. You know, the sociologists. Though I guess I’m not one of ’em anymore.”

“How come they tried to kill us?”

The ex-sociologist rubbed his chin doubtfully. “Well, I’m not really sure. I mean, I’ve got some ideas, but I don’t know. You see?”

Daenek stared at him, trying to detect lying or evasion in the way he spoke. “Just what do you know?”

“More than you.”

His face settling in a grim expression, Daenek nodded and folded his arms across his chest. “Good,” he said. “I’ve come a long way to find out some things. So I want to hear everything you know about what’s going on here. No matter how long it takes.” Lessup shrugged. “It’s not that there’s a lot that you don’t know. I mean, the secret, the big secret that’s been kept from you and everybody else on this world—it’s basically simple. Yet not so simple. I don’t think I’m making myself very clear about this.”

“Take your time,” said Daenek. “I’ve learned to be patient.”

“Actually, I’m kind of hungry—”

“No. We’ll talk first, and then we’ll see about eating.”

“All right, then. But it’s not just a matter of the way things are now, you know.”

“I figured it had something to do with my father’s death.”

“Further back than that.” Lessup shook his head. “To explain, you have to go into ancient history. All the way back to the seedships—”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” said Ren-nie. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, visibly restless.

“Just hang on a moment.” Lessup looked annoyed at the interruption.

“Go on,” said Daenek.

“All right,” said Lessup. He was silent for a few seconds, then took a deep breath and spoke again. “The Academy owns this world. Or as good as owns it. Always has. In a sense, it was created just for the Academy.

“When the old Earth government financed the Great Propogation—hundreds and hundreds of years ago—the seedships were sent out to dozens of stars that were thought to possibly have Earth-like planets orbiting them. On the worlds that were found appropriate, the priests aboard the ships cloned an initial population from their genetic banks, and started setting up societies like that on Earth. Except for one seedship—the one that found its way here, to this world. The Academy—it was powerful even back then, almost a government to itself—had the priests of that seedship programmed differently. They came to this world and set things up the way they are now—low technology, semi-feudal government, every little region divided from the others by distance and language.

“Why? For research—or that’s what they still call it. Oh, what a bleeding farce it’s become. Or maybe it was that way all along.

Maybe the Academy’s always been as futile as it is powerful. This whole world’s a laboratory for them to play with. They dress up their undergraduates like the archetypal image of angels that are found in everyone’s subconscious, so they can scare whatever answers they want out of the people they keep so ignorant. And for what? Scholasticism is all that it is. People on Earth thousands of years ago would argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Now the Academy exists in order to see how much useless data can be crammed into their memory banks by angels. It makes me sick to think of them peering and snooping at their fellow human beings like they were lab animals, and storing their pointless little findings in the computers at their headquarters. The filth, the degrading of the studied and the studiers.”

He paused for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was lower. “There it is—centuries of secret history, stripped to the bones. The ugliest part.” He fell silent, his former amused attitude replaced with a look of grim contemplation.

After a few seconds, Daenek spoke. “But why did they try to kill us?”

Lessup gazed at the wall and then back at Daenek. “You’re a threat to them,” he said simply. “They’ve guessed that you’re going to try to find out what happened to the last thane, your father. That worries them.”

“Because they’re responsible for his death and overthrow—that’s the reason, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Lessup met his level gaze. “The Academy engineered the coup, and set up the Regent in his place. The thane was such an important component in the social structure that they couldn’t get rid of him through any less drastic means.”

“But why did they do it?” Daenek’s voice had grown hard.