THESE TRUTHS

In a world history that seems a record of slaughter, oppression and starvation, the early Greek and Roman Republics, The Magna Carta, Common law, Parliaments, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, are social inventions that somehow have held small islands of freedom and happiness above the blood and mud of dictatorships and kings. As inventions, they should be spread to other worlds, and species, for several generations before we venture to give them the doubtful benefits of increased weapons technology.

We hold these truths to be inarguable, that all Englishmen are born with equal rights. Among our rights are life, property and the security of our homes," wrote the tall young man. Thinking hard, he bore down on the feather pen. One prong broke at the tip and it dripped a blot on the paper, covering English.

He took out a small knife and sharpened the goose quill to a new point, rereading what he had written. "—inarguable?" Most of his friends could argue anything or everything. "Rights?" a good word, but he used that same word twice, almost in the same sentence. He crossed off the first "rights" and was left with "that all men are born with equal—" Equal what? Equal punishment under the law. The law should not respect titles or moderate the punishment to the rich. Men understood what injustices they meant when they growled about equality. Mention common law?

He tore the top off the sheet of paper and started again. "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent and from the equal creation they derive—" He went back and crossed off Undeniable. They would deny anything. Indesputable? They would despute anything.

He crossed it off and wrote above the line, remembering the great words of Locke: "We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are founded among men, drawing their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government shall become destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."

Benjamin Franklin looked over his shoulder. "Pursuit of Happiness? Locke puts it as 'The rights to life, liberty and property.' The pursuit of Happiness doesn't seem as substantial as property."

"What if I forbade you to pursue happiness?" Jefferson asked patiently. "What possession or property would you part with more reluctantly that the pursuit of happiness?"

"A good point, Thomas," Franklin conceded, smiling. He read back. "Created equal? Not clear, Thomas. You're at least a head taller than I."

"Go away," Thomas Jefferson growled, bearing down with his feather pen until the quill tip threatened to break again.

"The code of honor and the prejudice of armed aristocrats are survival devices. It will be the same on any planet where armed males govern a conquered and disarmed nation. How can a strategist get them to put aside honor and accept equality?"

Klee, H.S. Handbook of Democratic Revolutions

The millenium after the Magna Carta was not celebrated with fireworks.

The planet was smaller and more stony than Earth, but had a moderate season from pole to pole, with sparse meadow and thick forest, rather chilly in summers and mild in winters.

Stone castles every ten or twenty miles gave the observers some warning of what to expect. They hovered their spaceships and let down one messenger. Then the Dit ships went elsewhere in that solar system to claim and terraform four uninhabitable planets. Their messenger was left to fend for himself with only strategy and skill.

All the beings in the throne room were lions. They stood on hind legs and wore fine velvet clothes and swords, but the wide round eyes, the flat nose with a black patch over it, the short upper lip and bristled mustache did not need the thick upper arms and wide pawlike padded hands to proclaim the race and species, Cat. They chatted with each other in low tones as a petition was read loudly to the king.

Their tails and ears twitched nervously as the reading of the petition was interrupted by a scream and roar from the cellar.

Pacing on the dais, the king was a massive figure with shoulders half as wide as his height. His long hair was a wavy yellow mane, his eyes were amber yellow and he was dressed in red velvet, pinched in at the waist to prove he had not yet grown soft in the belly.

Waiting for the reading, he stopped pacing and roared across the courtroom at a guard.

"Tell that torturer that we don't question prisoners on days when the king is giving hearings." The guard ran.

The king gestured irritably with a big pawlike hand, "Go on with the petition, I'm listening."

Bristling, the group of petitioners stood the length of the courtroom away from the king, their hands resting on their swords. The oldest among them raised the petition again and resumed reading. The crowd in the courtroom resumed discreet chatting and gaming with a box game of small balls and wooden squares, purring to their silky furred, gorgeously clothed ladies. In spite of the milling crowd a wide open lane was left between the petitioners and the king, through which the black maned petitioner shouted his message.

He finished and waited. The lane remained open. The crowd quieted.

Ceremonially the king sat down on his throne, picked up an ancient and rusty battle ax, held it slanting across his chest, and bellowed across the distance. "I say No."

The nobles paused in their gaming. The petitioners stood bristling with their hands on their swords for a moment and then the oldest advanced down the aisle toward the king, his sword suddenly bare and glittering. His younger relatives followed. They were all slender with dark manes, obviously a family and obviously determined to kill their ruler. The king's palace guards turned their backs, and stood motionless.

The king advanced to the edge of the dais and leaned on his heavy ancient ax, his lips curled in a sneer.

Sitting on the back edge of the dais the human observer from the Dit fleet looked at the oncoming swords and stirred uneasily. He whispered a rapid description of the situation, knowing that his earbutton transceiver was sending it to a relay satellite to be recorded in case he did not return.

The chatting crowd did not seem to notice the threat to the king! Then, throughout the apparently playful crowd in the courtroom there was a rustling rearrangement of position, and the aisle to the king closed and was filled with lion men, resting their hands on their swords, still talking of other things to each other but facing outward toward the advancing hand of petitioners.

The king bellowed over the heads of his defenders. "You agree then?"

The leader of the black-maned band glared around with a snarl. "I agree." He sheathed his sword and all the younger ones of his band followed his action. He turned and stalked out, his tail twitching, and his band followed, their hands still resting angrily on the hilts of their swords.

The youngest and last of them turned back at the entrance and shouted, "Instead of growing white, you all grow yellow with age, like peasants." Then he ran.

The human observer, sitting wrapped in his dark cloak, noticed that the nobles of the throne room had yellow manes like the king, but they looked dark at the roots. Their manes were dyed or bleached to match the king's long yellow mane. He understood the insult.

The king turned and leaned the rusty ax back in its place against the throne. He glanced at the human observer sitting wrapped in his cloak on the edge of the platform, and asked quietly. "When do you start giving me orders?"

In the human Messenger's earphones his girlfriend on the spaceship cheered. "Hurray!! Tell the bastard to stop torturing prisoners. Tell him from now on it's human rights or else!" Dason, hearing her, smiled, she was a terraforming biologist and had the patience to set up evolutionary patterns that would ripen in a thousand years, but she had not patience in social engineering; it was not her science.

She did not understand that warriors of a warrior culture take no threats. From within the hood of his cloak he told the king, "I am only here to observe. I admire your technique in reaching agreements."

The king sat down on his throne. "Mostly luck. If I could not give my nobles a bit of meat for themselves in every decision they would not defend me. Someday they will face my way when the petitioner charges and charge with him. Then my good fellow, I must decide that I did not mean what they thought they heard me say, and explain quickly. But I will probably fight and die instead. I am very stubborn. My father died defending a foolish decision."

He looked over to the human in the dark cloak. "We have both been too polite. When do you start giving me my orders?"

The human rose, a tall dark figure shapeless in his cloak. "I don't give orders, only advice."

The king stared from round yellow eyes, and grinned, showing sharp fangs. "Advice like my advice to the Clan Rudont just now. Come now, dear fellow. I know you wish to preserve my vanity, but since the moment your fleet hovered over my palace and you came down out of it without even condescending to wear weapons, I have been conquered. I know that." He held his relaxed pose on the throne, broad fingers and round eyes for a moment stared too intently.

Without looking away he made a gesture across the crowded throne room with a big padded hand. "Everyone here knows I am conquered. News has spread from the fiefs of my nobles. Even peasants know it throughout the entire kingdom. They know you are here to give me orders from your king. Why not come out of that mysterious dark cape?"

The Messenger stepped before the throne and ceremoniously, with a wide swing of his arm, stripped off his dark cape and flung it on the floor. He had spent several weeks observing the customs and actions of the natives. He had painted a dark patch over his nose, and lined the trace of a cleft lip, but he could not add a tail.

Some conversation in the court stopped with a hiss. Others turned to see what had caused the silence and let out a slower and harsher hiss of surprise as they saw the shape which had been hidden by the cloak.

With all eyes on him, the Messenger knelt before the throne and offered the king his sword, holding the blade and offering the handle.

"Fate's hand, but you are skinny and ugly," said the king in low tones. "Do you know what you are doing?"

The Messenger mumbled. "I'm offering fealty and swearing loyalty to you, because I like you. Your people should not think you are conquered. Take the damned sword."

The king stood and with a kingly gesture took the sword by the hilt. "Rise, friend," the king bellowed. The Messenger rose and the king gave him back his sword.

All nobles in the court roared three times while the king embraced the Messenger with his big furry arms. The court roared again and all embraced all. The servants were sent out for wine.

Alcohol is remarkably similar on all planets where the plants produce carbohydrates from sunlight. It was a case of parallel mechanical design. Light fuels burn faster in the body. Dason got drunk on local booze, and enjoyed a party with the lions. He was a master of hand combat, but found the games of the lions somewhat rough, for they outweighed him in what seemed to be solid muscle, even the ladies. During the party he observed the ways of the servants and observed something that made him thoughtful the next day.

The king joined him outside. "Hung over?"

"No, just watching the peasants." There were husky peasants reaping grain on the hillsides above the castle. They were wide shouldered and thick armed, with short irregular manes the color of the king's long mane. Their shoulders were bare and a line of fur showed down the length of the bare backs. They swung the long bladed scythes in short impatient strokes, and women followed them, gathering and bundling the cut grain in rolls of brown cloth.

What are you thinking, Messenger?" asked the king, accepting a steaming cup of some wake up gruel from a servant, looking upward at the fields.

Dason wondered how much to tell him. He was a Messenger of the Sacred Words, and would not delay, but nobles of castled and fortified feudalisms always believed fiercely in inherited superiority and inherited privilege. A noble would die fighting to defend his family's right to command all "inferiors." A king would feel horror and disgust on hearing the words liberty ...equality. Nevertheless there could be a way. He tested the response.

"In my country, all the peasants have a voice in any decision that applies to them." Dason watched the king's expression. He saw controlled disgust.

The king made a humorous face. "Should I arm them all and try to fit them into the throne room? My nobles would kill a peasant they found armed."

"We arm them all, and teach them to read, and then write out the decisions, a paper to each man. Each man marks yes or no and the papers are counted." To a feudal noble this would sound like consulting the horses, or arming his enemies to attack him.

The king growled low in his throat and changed it to a cough. He bristled. "I prefer the advice of honorable nobles such as yourself, men from families of honor and power, men with titles and wisdom." He looked sidelong at Dason, hearing his silence as anger and coughed again. "I do not want to offend a man's religion. Does your king rule many lands?"

"My religion rules many worlds," Dason said, "But we will not force you. I am your friend. I never give commands to my friends." He stopped talking, because in the situation everything he said sounded like a veiled threat. This man or lion could not be pushed. He smiled and changed the subject. "Nice weather this morning."

Butsey, his girlfriend on the spaceship must have been listening on the spaceship monitor again. She said in his earphones, "Bah! I thought you were going to read him the rules that time. When are you going to get the prisoners out of his cellar? When they're dead?"

"Don't push!" he muttered back to the listener on the spaceship.

The king waved the servant further away and stepped closer. "Friend Dason, there is something I've been wanting to ask you. Do you mind?"

He shrugged, "Ask."

The king looked up and down the patio for listeners then stood close and lowered his voice. "How did you lose your tail? Was it a battle?"

Dason had learned to understand prestige, no lowborn explanation would make him acceptable as the king's friend. Yet he would have to imply a lack of fighting experience. He selected his lie for maximum honor and glory.

"Initiation ceremony," he explained secretively. "We trade it for wisdom. Can't be allowed into the inner secrets of the Messengers if you have a tail. We must show no pain."

The king shuddered. "We don't have a society like that." He looked respectfully at his friend, the messenger from space. "But I must admit you know many strange secrets, Dason my friend. Perhaps as a friend you will someday tell me a very few secrets, such as how to build a flying warship."

"Are you willing to pay the price?" asked Dason, hiding a smile.

The king clutched his tail. "That's not what I meant. I hope the swordsman did not shave too close, my good friend. You are well?"

Dason laughed, divining the king's worried meaning. "They left me my other parts. I am still male. But let us not talk of secrets."

From the interior and depth of the castle there was a startling interruption, a shriek of pain that ululated down to a bellow of rage, and staccato roar that sounded like curses.

The king glanced uneasily toward the open palace door. "Let's take a walk away from the noise, and talk of the ways of your kings. I want to understand what they desire from me."

He strode toward the castle wall and the open postern gate with a long stride, almost a lope, and outside turned from the road and bounded down a steep hill, passing surly blond peasants cutting the deep grass with long scythes. Behind him a squad of five guards detached from the gate and followed to see that their king was not attacked. Dason, following, turned down his earphones, cutting off Butsey's plea to "kill the bastards and rescue that prisoner."

The king paused, looking up at the stonework of the castle leaning out from the hill above, pausing to let the human catch up. "I keep the grass cut short to prevent attackers who would creep up on the castle," said the king. He was panting.

"Good strategy," said Dason, seeing a compliment was expected. A closer look at the two peasants he had passed had verified they both looked remarkably like the king and enough alike to be brothers.

The king straddled, one leg bent on the upslope, one leg stiff on the down slope, kingly in his healthy good humor. "Why? Why do you people give away your power to your peasants? I give my peasants no power. My fathers conquered their fathers." Laughing he swung his arms. "I am enjoying the spoils. If they want to be rulers let them go find a country and conquer it, like my ancestors did."

The adviser grinned, envying his arrogance and turned up his earphones in time to hear his girlfriend, probably working in her laboratory at the spaceship, mutter, "Male chauvinist pig!" in admiring tones.

A peasant girl passed, hobbling under a great load of hay bundled in a blanket. Her face did not show.

The king's eyes followed her. He licked his lips and smiled "Husky lass. She walks with a fine swing. I can have all of that I want."

He turned abruptly and followed the girl, striding uphill.

The human messenger followed and said, "Consider heredity .... Your father liked women?" He turned off his earphones, hoping Butsey was not going to listen in on the strategy he was going to use.

The king laughed. "He was an elk in an apple orchard, trying to put his teeth marks on every pretty apple. Until he married my mother the Queen." He caught up with the girl, grabbed her arm, carefully lifted the load of hay from her head, and nuzzled along the sides of her round neck and pink innocent face.

"How many children do you think your father got upon peasant girls while he was yet a young prince?" The messenger asked. He picked up the bundle of hay and followed as the king pulled the girl toward the hay drying rick.

The king laughed. "That cannot be counted. One or two a day, maybe more when the weather is fine. I only know from my experience, not his."

He unbuckled his sword belt. "Here, hold my sword. You will stand guard outside for me, my friend. It would be a pity if the country suddenly lost a king because some father came upon us too suddenly, and did not recognize his anointed ruler."

Dason put down the hay and accepted the sword. "Sir, if your father was busy in these same fields in his time, what are the chances that her father is your half brother?"

The king planted a kiss on the girl's neck and pulled her inside the shade of the hutlike drying racks. "I can see you are working up some complicated way to spoil my fun. Don't tell me about it until afterward." He pulled the laughing girl down under the cool racks of drying grass into the green darkness. The Messenger politely walked a few yards away and scanned the hillside for outraged father or brothers.

One of the thick armed workers scything the hillside below laid aside his long-bladed scythe and started up the hill toward him. An older one intercepted him with a grip on the arm.

Soon there was a fight going, with the two snarling contestants trading loud, open-handed slaps. There was no blood where each blow landed, for they kept their claws held back and sheathed within their strong fingers. One, knocked off balance by a blow, rolled backward and downhill thirty feet, then snarling, returned to the attack.

The king's guard of five soldiers stood watching from the road. They cheered and laughed, urged the fight on, chose sides and bet.

Back in the hay rick behind him the Messenger heard male laughter and female giggling and a high pitched yelp, followed by more giggling and the sound of friendly talk. The king rejoined him, adjusting rumpled clothing.

"Brush me off behind like a good fellow. I'm green with grass." The king patted and beat at the front of his clothes, sending leaves and stalks and green seeds of grass down to the ground in a cloud. The Messenger patted and brushed at his back and the fine red velvet slowly recovered its normal brightness.

The girl peeked out of the rick at them, very pink in the cheeks, buttoning her tight shirt over her breasts with confused fingers, pushing buttons into the wrong holes.

The king said, "Would you like a turn at her, my good fellow? I'm sure she would oblige if her king asked her." He accepted his sword.

"No, thank you," said the Messenger, smiling. "I would not want to interrupt the possibility of a miracle. If she had a child by you, she might give birth to your father."

The king finished tightening his sword belt, then he loosened his sword in its sheath and straddled his legs wide in a fighting stance, and stared at the human with a level and hostile stare. "I find your joke obscene and in bad taste," he said frostily.

Dason cocked his head sideways in a relaxed and disarming lack of aggression. "You did ask me for some secrets, sir. This secret is closely guarded by all students of blood lines, for it is a very dangerous truth. Let me tell you another secret that may taste better. Imagine two young peasants from different family meeting boy to girl. They each think their peasant fathers are their true fathers. But though they have different mothers, you fathered them both. They follow your temperament and take a roll in the next hay rick. The girl can, then in the normal lapse of time, give birth to yourself or your very twin. When half brothers and half sisters cross blood lines their male children throw back to the father and are either his brothers or his very self born again."

The king thoughtfully chewed his knuckles. "Yes, one of the breeders of riding elks once tried to explain the very same thing to me. Cross a champion elk with his own daughter, or his son with his daughter and the champion appears again and again among the offspring. Does that mean that there are many more of me?" He felt his features with his hand.

The messenger did not laugh. "How old were you when you first matured and felt an interest in females?"

"Eleven. I was a little slow," the king said apologetically.

"Let's say as a low estimate you fathered ten bastards, that year," said the messenger, building his point. "Eleven years later, growing up, they met each other, found much in common, the boys like the girls. In a year more the second crop of your own blood line is being born, without your help. Of those five children, one or two will be you again, two or three will be girls, and one or two will be very close brothers, perhaps resembling your father or grandfather in a way. They were born when you were twenty three years old. These peasant couples will have had more children since, each new one coming with a one in four odds of being you. And they were only the second echo of your eleventh year! You have been busy among the girls every year since! How many years since you were twenty-two?"

They were climbing a hill that overlooked the castle. It was clearcut also, and they passed between two more husky blond men swinging long-bladed scythes, and heard something like a growl that changed abruptly to a covering cough. They did not look back.

For a long thoughtful time the king did not answer, just climbed rapidly toward the stand of trees at the crest of the hill. "That was over twenty years ago," he said finally. "I gather what you mean is that the grandchildren of my eleven year old escapades out of my virginity are now twenty years old, and several of them are my twin, and there are many more of me, but younger. Do they know that they are me?"

"No. They don't have your memories, only your personality," the Messenger said, panting with the climb. "They enjoy what you enjoy, grow angry at whatever angers you, and of course, look like you."

At the top of the hill they came to the first giant tree. From its lowest branch dangled a hanged man. The Messenger stopped and looked at the sturdy blond corpse.

"Note the resemblance. What was his crime?"

The king looked upward at the heavily muscled young man with the reddish blond hair that matched his, shade for shade. The king was deeply upset. He stared hard, his own hair standing up and out at the sides, bristling as if confronted by danger.

"His crime was unimportant. One of my nobles mentioned it to me. I think he growled when given a command by one of his betters."

"Indeed," said the human sarcastically. "Who are his betters, that he should take insults and commands from them? These nobles who visit your court during the decision and petition days? They are no kin of yours, right?"

"It was a Protkim who accused him. Their family has been friends and guards of my family for a long time." The king looked away from the corpse, sweat standing out on his forehead. "Is there a way to find out if that is me?"

"Yes," said the human, "but only with a living man. It is too late."

The king asked plaintively. "If he is me, where has his soul gone?"

"Perhaps to hell, for daring to insult a Protkim," said the human cultural engineer, knowing the effect of his words. "He must take their orders and insults. He is any man's servant."

The king let out a sudden roar of rage. He whipped out his sword, spun and sunk it into a tree trunk behind.

He let go of the handle and watched the sword quiver and hum, stuck deep into the side of the tree. "I am no man's property."

"If you were young and trained to be a peasant, and keep your eyes down in the presence of a noble, how would it feel to watch a king who looked no better than you walk by wearing the crown and sword?"

"I'd grab the crown and put it on my head. I'd buckle on the sword and kill anyone who tried to take the crown from me," the king said cheerfully, and grinned and took the sword from the tree trunk without yanking by bunching his hands on the hilt and walking a circle around the tree.

"If you tried it you would die," said the Messenger. "Tell me who it is that you have groaning and cursing in your cellar?"

"Some traitor who was leading a rebellion against me. He is scheduled to be pulled apart for the entertainment of the gentry as a start for this afternoon's tourney. Do you mean that is me, also?" The king turned back down the hill suddenly and bounded down the steeper slope toward the other side of the castle.

"Possible," panted the Messenger catching up by dangerous leaps. "Has anyone ever said to you that you looked like a peasant?"

"Yes, I killed him," shouted the king, plugging downhill. "My mother says I look like my grandfather the conqueror."

"The peasants look like your grandfather," shouted Dason slowing and falling behind.

The king stopped so suddenly he ran into him. "Wait," he turned and held the human's arm. Below them the slope steepened to the back of the castle almost directly below. "Are there so many of us? Give me a number."

"I could draw you a diagram of blood lines. Your grandfather was like yourself roaming the fields instead of the bedrooms of the court?"

The king nodded, "He would never betray the nobles and his brothers in arms by casting glances at their wives. My father felt the same way. Besides, long walks alone are better for the blood. I've walked the entire kingdom, inspected fortifications, looked at the landing beaches, and thought of tactics to repel invasion, as did my father and my grandfather."

"And inspected the inside of hay ricks with peasant girls all over the kingdom?" asked Dason and whistled. "That ups the numbers."

He suddenly remembered Butsey. She would be over her anger at the taking of the peasant girl. He turned on his earphones again.

She sounded interested. "Population statistics, that's my field. You might be conning him with the truth brother Dase. Often aristrocrat women do not breed enough to keep the line healthy. The peasant women may be multiplying the line of the conqueror. Three generations could breed to ninety per cent. Autocline, the strong below, the weak above. It will turn over in revolution without any help from you, Dase."

Dason choked and covered his half laugh half surprise.

"I hesitate to ask this, my friend, but what did the natives look like when your grandfather conquered this country?"

The king stared, then he coughed a short laugh. "I don't know. I never thought to ask." The pupils of his eyes widened in thought.

Dason asked, "What would you be doing if you were an army of peasants?"

"Practicing rebellion," the king said proudly. "Practicing with weapons, conspiring with the castle servants, learning the ways in and out of the castle. Preparing an uprising." He looked back to the distant, strong, yellow-maned men swinging their long scythe blades. "I am surprised they let me pass. I am not going back that way and give them another chance to change kings."

The king started down the steeper slope toward the castle wall, slipping and sliding and grabbing at weeds to slow his slide.

"You must tell me how to get out of this mess, my friend, I do not want to kill an army of myself, and of my grandfather. It would be impious and something like incest, or suicide. Whether I killed them or they killed me, the whole family would be damned for shedding the blood of our family."

Sliding in a tumble of soft dirt and uprooted weeds the king came to the back kitchen gate of the castle wall and strode in through a squawk and scatter of kitchen birds and grunting, garbage-eating animals, and into the castle, stamping mud from his boots.

He waited for his human adviser to catch up, apparently thinking of another question.

Before the messenger could reach him there was a deep scream from the cellar. The king let out an almost identical yell of rage. Cursing, he ran for the stairs. "Stop, you vultures!" he bellowed, half way down. "Let that man alone."

That evening, instead of the entertainment of a man being pulled apart, the nobles ready for the tourney were grouped to listen to a speech from the king. He paused an odd, long pause and cleared his throat nervously. "All men are brothers," he said loudly, and paused, his ears turning pink. The assembled nobles in armor gazed, waiting and puzzled. The king imagined the laughter of Dason. (Almost all men! Don't claim too much success. Some may be cousins!)

Defiantly the king cleared his throat and roared louder. "No born man can be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him or send upon him any force, except by the group agreement of his equals, or to press laws of the land. To no one will we sell justice, to no one will we refuse or delay right and justice. Justice is above all kings forever!" The nobles growled and muttered, beginning to understand a threat.

Behind a screen of drapes sat a bandaged and splinted blond lion with a distinct resemblance to the king. "What does Sir Big Mouth mean?" he growled in an undertone.

Dason grinned, "He has decided you are all his brothers. It means, after you're back in shape, the king will let you take a swing at him."

The bandaged lion sat up straighter. "That is justice. If this is true, the king is a man worth following. I'll break his arm."

The king entered through the curtains, and on the other side they heard the clashing of armor as the tourney contestants mounted their elks for the battles and contests.

"They received it in silence, as I expected," said the king.

"Because I limited only my power they did nothing. But when do I tell these nobles and rulers of all the parts of my realm that all peasants are equal and will vote? And that they cannot slay their peasants?"

"When you are ready with an army at your back to defend you from them," the engineer said.

The king roared a short laugh, "I know that. I just wanted to be sure you know that. I take no advice from fools." He turned to the splinted and bandaged twin self in the chair. "Wilk, how soon can your man organize all the peasants to rise and take the castles? If I issued proclamations of equality in the fall, after the harvest, the nobles would bring armies against me, and leave their castles undefended. Just as they charge my castle, I want them to hear that they have lost their own castles, and turn back."

The big yellow-maned man in the chair laughed, showing sharp teeth. "We were already organized to rise at the first civil war. I can persuade the committee to time it your way, and keep you as part king. But—"

In his big thick fingered hand he held a rolled up manuscript on white leather. The Messenger recognized the sacred words.

A scribe had labored all night to copy it. The big revolutionary smiled a satisfied cat smile and handed the Constitution to the king.

The ambassador from the Federate Fleet walked in a nervous crouch, ducking his head to clear the rough edges of a corridor that had been widened to let him pass. Before him marched his guard of bees, shouldering aside the workers who still tore at the wax of the passageway. An outraged high buzzing rose as the stranger passed, for he was not a bee, he was too tall, too upright, too dark, and gave a strange smell that aroused their urge to kill invaders of their home.

Tzee Tzat wrapped his bat wings tightly around himself like a black cloak and pulled his head down, nervously rehearsing what his speech would be in the buzzing language of the bees. The group emerged into the high wide throne room of the Queen. She lay on a high dais, a large platform to carry her great bulk, surrounded by ministers and messengers, feeders bringing food, and groomers stroking and cleaning her sides, while in the distance nurse bees hurried in line to receive eggs and take them away to the hatcheries. She rested her intelligent head on slender folded arms and looked down from the edge of the platform, long feathery antennae turned inquiringly toward him. Nervously Tzee Tzat stopped and bowed. It was the wrong gesture. A clamor of angry buzzes broke out around the throne room and his guard unsheathed their stings and circled him, closing in with deadly aim.

Terrified the ambassador straightened, realizing that bowing had elevated his wingtips behind him like a sting, a gesture of threat. He buzzed and gestured. "I greet the ruler of the bees and submit to her law. I bring a message."

The queen waved a slender arm and the guard retreated grumbling. "Speak your message," she commanded.

Tzee Tzat stiffened with his wings wrapped tightly around him, looking like a head projecting from a closed black unbrella. His large owlish eyes were frightened but alert.

"I bring a threat and a command from our high council to your ruler. And I bring myself to help, with new knowledge."

"You bring a threat?" buzzed the Queen. Again she waved a slim arm and the guards unsheathed their stings and closed in, circling.

The large owlish eyes grew more frightened. "I am a messenger, not a fighter. I have no sting and no weapons. I can hurt no one."

The Queen buzzed a lower note and the guards circled away and lined up against the wall staring in hostile alertness.

The Queen asked. "Why does your hive threaten against my hives?"

"You promised to allow other flying species to exist on your planets and on the planets you conquer. You have broken your treaty. You have killed many birds and bats and other flying intelligent citizens on three planets." Tzee Tzat's voice broke on a high batlike squeak and he stopped and shivered, remembering, seeing his flying friends suddenly enshrouded in a ball of stinging bees, then released, falling limp. Days of walking with his wings wrapped around him tightly to avoid looking like a flying creature, painful climbs up slippery walls to the doors of houses, with bees buzzing near, waiting to see wings. Days of terror until the Federate Fleet arrived to rescue his planet.

He made an effort and adjusted his variable bat screech back to the steady smooth hum of the bees. "The Federate Council threatens your hives and cities with extermination. But I have been sent to change your map of right directions, to save you. Why were the flying people attacked?"

The Queen signalled to her counselors. They clustered around her, touching and signaling and buzzing, and then she turned back to the messenger. "Those alien fliers were slain because they flew too high above the bees, like predators who would eat bees, and they did not give proper signals of peace. Also they cropped from the same meadows as working bees and did not give proper dance signals of sharing food. We have not broken our word, we have obeyed our treaty. We no longer kill everything which flies, we let them live, therefore you must let us live."

She pushed herself on her front arms, trembling, barely able to pry up the weight of her great, pregnant lower body, and looked down at him with her large shining eyes. "We only kill whatever breaks the law."

Tzee Tzat tried to stand taller. "You must not judge and kill birds by the laws of bees. Birds have their own laws."

"We obey the hive laws. There is no other way to be right. All other ways are wrong," replied the Queen. But she trembled and her antenna waved in irregular, hesitant motion as though combing the air for scents of the strange realities. She folded her arms and lay on the dais, staring.

"There are other ways and other laws, equally right," Tzee Tzat said.

She was astonished. She stiffened her front legs again as if hearing something different, and raised herself in excitement and agitation.

"Right is right, and only the law is right. There can be only one true flight line to home. All different ways are wrong. The bee who returns to the hive finds it only in one place."

Tzee Tzat was a translator of great skill. He recognized that she had recited a traditional saying and he imagined himself as an old wise bee, a philosopher of bees. He invented a new saying.

He buzzed and waved with both hands and swayed and turned in bee signals of direction and distance. "If the bee starts from the west meadow, the hive is to the east. If the bee starts from the east meadow, the hive is to the west. There are many true and right ways to the home of truth, to the hive of the Creator and Multiplier of all life."

The counselor bees had listened closely, now they moved, buzzed, waved and danced a repeat song of what he had said, memorizing the new saying. The Queen held very still. With her antennae pointing straight at him, she waited, quivering.

Tzee Tzat judged his moment accurately. He removed the revolutionary manifesto from within his cloak of wings and held it up to read. As he read the ancient and sacred words he translated to bee ideas.

"These are the sacred directions. You know this territory. You have flown above it. If you look in all the directions of life you will find that the Central Creator and Multiplier of all life wishes

diversity, to fill the hive of all life. All living things begin with equal right to life, difference and choice of flight course." He stopped and watched the Queen.

"The Creator must love differences. She laid eggs of enough different species, and hived enough different unsuitable planets," said the Queen. "But it is our duty to treat differences from rightness as mistakes."

He signaled with emphasis. "The Creator makes no mistakes, all living things begin with equal right to life, difference and choice of place. Diversity is storage bees and nursery bees, diversity is bees unlike flowers, diversity is flowers unlike each other, different for each field and hill, for each change of season and temperature. Diversity is growth and strength. When young we must seek our own direction, group with others who found the same way, make the rules for our own hive and hatch the egg for our own ruler."

Tzee Tzat's bat eyes widened with enthusiasm, his bat wings half unfurled like flags as he read the great words.

He signaled and turned, bowed and made short runs, mapping the way to truth in their minds like mapping the way to great fields of honey, giving them a ritual they would pass on to new young hatchlings forever; a new song for bees to buzz.