The Court of a Thousand Suns (Sten #3). Allan Cole

palace grounds, and wander the streets. Fowler, and the other cities on Prime World, were high-rise/low-rise/open kaleidoscopes.

      To illustrate: A building lot, listed in the Prime World plat book as NHEB0FA13FFC2, a half kilometer square, had originally been leased to the luxury-loving ruler of the Sandia system, who built a combination of palace and embassy. But when he was turned out of office by a more Spartan regime, Sandia sublet the ground to an interstellar trading conglomerate which tore down the palace and replaced it with a high-rise headquarters building. But Transcom picked the wrong areas and products, so the building was gradually sub sublet to such “small” enterprises as mere planetary governments or system-wide corporations. And as the leases were sublet to smaller entities, the rent went up. Annual rental on a moderate-size one-room office could take a province’s entire annual product.

      The Transcom building turned into an office slum until all the subleases were bought up by the Sultana of Hafiz, who, more than anything, wanted a palace she could use on her frequent and prolonged trips to Prime World. The high-rise was demolished and another palace built in its place.

      All that in eighty-one years. Yet the Imperial records still registered the President of Sandia, who by then had spent forty-seven years forcibly ensconced in a monastery, as the lease-holder.

      Given the subleasing system, even rent control did not work. “Single” apartments sometimes looked more like troopship barracks because of the number of people required to meet the monthly rent.

      The Emperor had tried to help, since he was quite damned aware that even in an age of computers and bots, a certain number of functionaries were needed. But even Imperial housing projects quickly changed hands and became examples of free enterprise gone berserk.

      After nearly 800 years of fighting the sublet blight, in a final effort to control the pressure that drove such destructive practices, a limitation was placed on immigration to Prime World. Prospective emigrants were required to show proof of employment, proof that a new job had been created for them, or proof of vast wealth. The regulations were strictly enforced.

      That made every Prime World resident rich. Not rich on Prime World, but potentially rich. Anyone, from an authorized diplomat to the lowest street vendor, could sell his residence permit for a world’s ransom.

      Prime Worlders being Prime Worlders, they did not. Most preferred to sit in their poverty (although poverty was relative, given guaranteed income, rations, recreation, and housing) than to migrate to be rich. Prime World was the Center, the Court of a Thousand Suns, and who would ever choose to move away from that if he, she, or it had any choice?

      Sometimes the Emperor, when he was drunk, dejected, and angry, felt the answer was to nationalize all the buildings and draft everyone on the world. But he knew that his free-lance capitalists would figure a way around that one, too.

      So it was easier to let things happen as they did, and live with minor annoyances such as population density or city maps that were outdated within thirty days of issue.

      In addition to the cities and the parks, Prime World was full of estates. Most of the leased estates were situated as close to the Imperial ring as possible. The proximity of one’s living grounds to the palace was another measure of social stature.

      There was one final building located on the grounds of the Emperor’s main palace. It was about ten kilometers away from Arundel, and housed the Imperial Parliament. It had been necessary to build some kind of court, after all. After the Eternal Emperor authorized its structure, he’d immediately had a kilometer-high landscaped mountain built between his castle and the parliament building. He may have had to deal with politicians, but he didn’t have to look at them when he was on his own time . . .

      Prime World was, therefore, a somewhat odd place. The best and the worst that could be said is that it worked — sort of.

      The pneumosubways linked the cities, and gravsleds provided intrasystem shipping. Out-system cargoes arriving in Prime System were off-loaded to one of the planet’s satellites or the artificial ports that Imperial expansion had made necessary. From there, they would either be transferred to an outbound freighter or, if intended for Prime World itself, lightered down to the planet’s surface.

      Five shipping ports sat on Prime World. And like all ports throughout history, they were grimy and violent.

      The biggest port, Soward, was the closest to Fowler. One kilometer from Soward’s main field was the Covenanter.

      Like the rest of Prime World, Soward had troubles with expansion. But warehousing and shipping had to be located as close to ground level as possible.

      Ancillary buildings, such as rec halls, offices, bars, and so forth, were built over the kilometer-square warehouses. Ramps — some powered, some not — swept up from the ground level to the spider-web steel frameworks that held the secondary buildings.

      The Covenanter sat three levels above the ground. To reach the bar required traveling one cargo ramp, one escalator, and then climbing up oil-slick stairs. Despite that, the Covenanter was usually crowded.

      But not in the night.

      Not in the rain.

      * * * *

      Godfrey Alain moved into the shadows at the top of the escalator and waited to see if he was being tailed.

      Minutes passed, and he heard nothing but the waterfall sound of the rain rushing down the ramps to the ground far below. He pulled his raincloak tighter around him, still waiting.

      Alain had left his hotel room in Fowler. Four other rented “safe” rooms had given him momentary safety, a chance to see if he was followed, and a change of clothes. He appeared to be clean.

      A more experienced operative might have suggested to Alain that he should have tried less expensive costuming; his final garb and his final position, a warehouse district, made him a potential target for muggers.

      But Godfrey Alain was not a spy; the skills of espionage were secondary to him. To most of the Empire, he was a terrorist. To himself, his fellow revolutionaries, and the Tahn worlds, Alain was a freedom fighter.

      What Alain was, oddly enough, was less a factor of politics than population movement. The Tahn worlds having originally been settled by low-tech refugees guaranteed that the Empire left them alone. The Tahn worlds being what they were — a multisystem sprawl of cluster worlds — guaranteed no Imperial interference. But the Tahn’s lebensraum expansion also was a guarantee that sooner or later the Empire and the Tahn would intersect, as had happened some generations before when Tahn settlers moved from their own systems to frontier worlds already occupied by small numbers of Imperial pioneers.

      The two very different cultures were soon in conflict, and both sides screamed for help. The Tahn homeworlds could not provide direct armed support, nor were they willing to risk a direct confrontation with the Empire.

      The Empire, on the other hand, could afford no more than token garrison forces of second- and third-class units to “protect” the Imperial settlers from Tahn colonials.

      The Caltor system Alain was born into was on one of those in conflict. Since the Tahn settlers ghettoed together socially and economically, they were guaranteed an advantage against the less united Imperial inhabitants. But the Imperial pioneers had Caltor’s garrison troopies to fall back on and they felt that Imperial presence lent them some authority.

      Such a situation breeds pogroms. And in one such pogrom Alain’s parents were slaughtered.

      The boy Alain saw the bodies of his parents, saw the local Imperial troops shrug off the “incident,” and went to school. School was learning how to turn a gravsled into a kamikaze or a time bomb; how to convert a mining lighter into a transsystem spaceship; how to build a projectile weapon from pipes; and, most important, how to turn a mob into a tightly organized cellular resistance movement.

      The resistance spread, from pioneer planet to pioneer planet, always disavowed by the distant Tahn worlds yet always backed with “clean” weaponry and moral support; always fought by the Imperial settlers and their