Free Vestiges of Time by Richard C. Meredith

many illusions down here. We know we’re under sentences of immediate execution on the spot, or prolonged torture in some of the lords’ dungeons, if we’re ever caught. We just hope we can put off being caught for a few more months.”
    There was a coldness in her eyes and in her words that showed me a new side of EnDera and maybe a new side of this whole underground setup.
    “That’s one of the reasons we were in such a rush to get your cooperation,” she went on, her fingers unconsciously touching the looped cross of life she wore. “Don’t flatter yourself by thinking you’re the only man in the world we could use. There are lots of others. We even have some people in our organization now who could serve in your place in a pinch. But you’re the most available of the best suited, if you follow me.” “And this business this morning when I asked you what they would do if I refused?”
    “I know. I guess I was playing with you. But I didn’t want you to agree unless you wanted to cooperate. I didn’t want to scare you into it. But . . . but you’re right. If you hadn’t agreed this morning, you would probably be dead by now. I’m glad you agreed.”
    “I am too.”
    A long, quiet pause followed while I framed questions in my mind, working out a means of getting from her the kinds of answers I wanted.
    “This place must have cost a fortune to build, several fortunes. Who’s paying for it?”
    “A lot of people, an awful lot of people, Harkos. The lord DessaTyso and his family, for example. They’ve come close to destituting themselves to aid us. He’s the most wealthy of us, of course, but a lot of
    other people in the higher castes—people as fed up with things as we are—have helped us, have given us every bit of aid they could.
    “And it’s not just rich people, either. Poor- and middle-caste people all over the nation have chipped in what they could to help us—and in a lot of cases, maybe in most of them, they didn’t even know what they were giving their money to, but they were told that they were working for the good of all the people. And that was the truth.”
    She wasn’t as fanatic as AkweNema, maybe, but there was a dedication in her that burned like a bright fire.
    “We have other friends too.”
    My heart skipped a beat. Other friends?
    “People and organizations outside NakrehVatee,” she said, answering my unvoiced question. “Other governments. Private organizations. Wealthy individuals. A lot of people think the world would be better off if there were a different kind of government here in VarKhohs.
    “And maybe some of them aren’t so friendly. Maybe they’d like nothing better than to see internal turmoil paralyze NakrehVatee so they could go about their business without the interference of our government. Okay, we’ll take their money and their aid. But we’re not committing ourselves to anything or anyone outside the BrathelLanza.” Where had I heard similar sentiments expressed before? “We’re not going to stage our revolution so that some other nation can jump into an international power vacuum and start dominating the small nations in our sphere of influence. That’s one thing we’re not going to do. We’ll keep up our nation’s strength against foreign powers.”
    I wasn’t certain that I followed her line of reasoning, but that’s not what was coming to concern me right at that moment. “Other friends,” she had said, and those two words led me to think about the world
    in which I had found myself, how I had come there, why I had come there; to think of the Kriths and the Tromas who directed them and what they had said that had led me to the world of the BrathelLanza and NakrehVatee. “Other friends” seemed to abound.
    Aud I was remembering some words spoken to me some months before by a gross and alien female Krith. The words came clearly into my mind as if I were listening to a recording of that conversation:
    “There is another falsehood,”