reason he found himself remembering the tale of a great empire which had existed on Terra just before the age of space travel, a nation that covered most of what had been called Asia and Europe. For half a century it had devoted itself to preparations for a war that never came, and finally it had collapsed into bits and pieces, bankrupted by its own fear. Perhaps the Expansionist movement would run the same course. This thought gave him cold comfort while he waited.
At last the terminal blinked into life. He scrolled the most recent newsfeeds, scanning the words rapidly, looking for any clues that might tell him how much time he had. He ignored reports of food shortages, yet another water riot in the Indonesian islands, the arrival of the Governor of Tau Ceti III for a state visit, and several other items. Ah, here it was, a terse tidbit buried at the end of the most recent feed. The Premier had announced a major speech before the combined houses three days hence. So, that was how much time he had to get as far away as he could. Not much, but enough. It felt right, down in his bones, just as Lew had said it would. And clever as he was, he had always kept a means of escape open.
For an instant all he could think of was that he was, at last, going to go back to Darkover—immediately. A wave of relief made him grin at the flashing screen. But, in all likelihood, he was not coming back, and that presented a fresh set of problems. He must take Kate and the children with him. That was simple enough, except that she would have questions about why they were abandoning their home. And he could hardly tell her the truth, for that would alert the monitors in the walls.
Hernes sighed. Life as a bachelor had been much simpler, but less satisfactory. Kate was an intelligent woman; she would just have to trust him because she would know he was thinking of their best interests. He spent a futile moment worrying over uprooting the children, and then forced it out of his mind. They were young and adaptable, and it was more important to keep them from harm than to worry about anything else. Later, out of reach of constant surveillance, he would explain things. It was not something he looked forward to. She would tear a strip off his hide for not finding some way of telling her earlier and it was probably less than he deserved.
With a grunt, he keyed a program into the comlink, one that had been placed there years before. A message popped up on the screen, with all the correct codes, telling him to return to Darkover immediately. He suppressed a grin, knowing it for a clever fraud, and hoping that the information ferrets had never discovered its existence. It certainly looked official, and if no one examined it too closely, it should allow him to remove himself and his family from danger.
Herm looked at it, tried to appear startled, scratching his head fretfully and muttered. Then, with a pleasure he had difficulty concealing, he keyed in another program. There was a further delay, and sweat puddled under his arms and ran down his sides. Then, almost magicially, he found an open passage across Federation space booked on the first departing ship, in perfect order. It allowed him to use his privileged position to usurp the first available cabin, in the first class section of a Big Ship.
He derived a grim pleasure from using his trapdoor. These days, with the Expansionist restrictions, it sometimes took months to book passage, unless one had friends in the right places. But as a Senator he could still pull rank, even though he knew it meant that he would almost certainly disrupt some complete stranger’s travel plans. He calmed his conscience by remembering it would likely discomfort some Expansionist party loyalist, since these were the people permitted travel for the most part.
The link scrolled and made a faint and not unpleasant humming noise as it worked. After several minutes a display came up, a routing with a transfer to Vainwal.