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end-- the audience believed that it was real. Beautiful. Of course, everybody and his duck is breaking choracter now, but it doesn't work anymore. Everyone knows it's just another device. But the first time, with you and Ham--" and Triuff made an expansive gesture "--it was magnificent."
Arran led the way down the corridor. "Well, I'm glad it worked. But I'm still looking forward to a chance to rake Ham over the coals for it."
"Oh, Arran, I'm sorry," Triuff said.
Arran stopped and faced her manager. "For what?"
Triuff actually looked sad. "Arran, it's Hamilton. Not even a week after you went under-- it was the saddest thing. Everybody talked about it for days."
"What? Did something happen to him?"
"He hung himself. Turned off the lights in his flat so none of the watchers could see him, and hung himself from a light fixture with a bathrobe tie. He died right away, no chance to revive him. It was terrible."
Arran was surprised to find a lump in her throat. A real one. "Ham's dead," she said softly. She remembered all the scenes they had played together, and a real fondness for him came over her. I'm not even acting, she realized. I truly cared for the man. Sweet, wonderful Ham.
"Does anyone know why he did it?" Arran asked.
Triuff shook her head. "No one has the slightest idea. And the thing I just can't believe-- there it was, a scene they've never had before in a loop, a real suicide. And he didn't even record it!"
BURNING
With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
--Judges 15:16
There were exactly twenty ships, and they were exactly alike-vast cylinders, kilometers long and kilometers wide, with slender needles sticking out of one end. The huge cylinders were propulsion; the entire payload was in the needle. It was ridiculously uneconomical; energy costs were phenomenal; the ship's pilots spent most of their lives asleep, allowed by the drug somec to dreamlessly pass the thrice-lightspeed journeys between stars because otherwise they would grow old and die somewhere around the first tenth of the average trip. But the ships took them between the stars, and so they went.
From the outside, of course, all starships looked the same-- there had been no improvement on the fundamental design in centuries. But these ships were different.
First Exchange
From: Starfleet SWIP-e33
To: System-- Harper. Authority: Planets Harper, Harper Moon, Stoddard
Request permission to take on supplies. Captain, Homer Worthing.
From: System-- Harper. Authority: Planets Harper, Harper Moon, Stoddard
Permission denied. How the hell stupid do you think we are? Governor, Dallan Pock.
* * *
"The bastards," said Captain Worthing.
"Agreed," spattered back the radio. With typical precision the twenty ships of the fleet had already gone into orbit around the three planets of the Harper system.
"Looks like radio has finally caught up with us."
"Or one of Mother's little messenger ships."
"If it's here, I don't see it, and you don't hide a starship."
"Maybe it went away again. We have burned several dozen of Mother's best ships. Can we turn this off?"
"Sure," Worthing said, and the radio fell silent. Instead, Worthing leaned back on his chair and began the other kind of contact with all nineteen of the ship's captains in his fleet.
We're in a precarious position, they told him.
Agreed, he answered.
We're nearly out of supplies. We've been playing this game for two hundred years. These ships were meant to put into port.
Then we must certainly get our supplies here, Worthing replied.
They're resisting. That must mean they're expecting an imperial fleet soon.
This much is obvious.
Well, then, Captain Worthing, what the bloody hell are we going to do?
We, my dear friends, are going to scare their little heads off.
And if they don't scare?
Then we're in trouble, yes?
* * *
Second Exchange
From: SWIP-e33
To: Our unwise planetside friends
We are a fully equipped fleet. We do not ask, we demand supplies within 24 hours, with unencumbered right to land, or we will be forced to use our armaments against you. There isn't a weapon you have that can harm us. We can defeat any imperial fleet, in case you're expecting rescue. You know who we are. You know what we can do. Our patience is not infinite.
From: Authority
To: The rebels
We don't want any trouble. We know that you can't land anything if we don't want it to land, and we know you don't have any armaments that work against planets. It's a stalemate. So why don't you just go away?
* * *
"They aren't going," said the colonel to Governor