Free Purple and Black by K.J. Parker Page B

with a view to taking it over.
    What the hell do you want to do that for, Gorgias? Well, he said, I've had a lot of time to think, and I've come to the conclusion that it's got to go. What's got to go, Gorgias? The empire, you idiot. It's all got to go. Pull it all down and start over.
    Don't talk stupid, I said, that's Nico you're talking about. I know, he said, and then he grinned—you know how he grins when he's really upset about something. If it'd been anybody else, he said, I'd probably be able to let it go, I'd just give up on everything and go somewhere, get a job, die. But Nico's betrayed us. He's gone back on everything we agreed.
    What are you talking about, I said. He scowled at me, like I was stupid. Everything, Phormio, he said. Everything we talked about, everything we decided on, everything we agreed, back in Anassus, when we were still thinking straight. And then he pointed to his coat and told me to look in the pocket, and there was the book.
    You remember the book, Nico. It's in your handwriting; proceedings of the board of inquiry into the condition of the world. He made me give it to him, and then he leafed through and found the place. Then he made me read it out loud.
    You remember the bit, Nico? It goes—

    Proposed by Nicephorus Tzimisces; that all power (political, military, economic) is an abomination; that Mankind is addicted to servitude through long use, but is capable of surviving without it; indeed, can only survive if the addiction is broken; that all and any means are justified in the struggle against power. Further proposed by Nicephorus; that in the unlikely event that he should succeed to the Imperial throne, he would immediately dissolve the Empire and give power back to the Senate, subject to an overriding agenda to disband the standing army, grant self-determination to the provinces, break up the major trading corporations and put in place all measures necessary and expedient to reduce power and government to the absolute minimum necessary, until such time as Humanity is ready to do without it altogether. Put to the vote and passed unanimously.

    Come off it, Gorgias, I said, we were just kids.
    He looked at me. You don't mean that, he said. And I thought about it, and he was right. Then he took the book back, and found another bit. Remember this?

    Proposed by Phormio; Man is born free. As soon as he is born, he is subjected to authority; that of his parents, his educators, the government. Each submission to authority diminishes him, so that as the body grows, the soul withers. He learns away his freedom, his divine essence, until the day comes when, fully educated in the skills of the slave, he denies all his potential, forswears everything he might have done or been. Proposed, therefore, that the members of this board of enquiry shall make a solemn undertaking to remember this moment, when they could still see clearly, and to acknowledge that on this day, at this moment, the seventeenth hour of the sixteenth day after the Calends of Triptolemon in the fifth year of the Emperor Actis IV Tzimisces, being one thousand, two hundred and fifteen years from the foundation of the city of Vesa, they agreed and declared that the following precepts were unalterably and unequivocally true; that power is the greatest evil; that evil must be resisted; that compromise is betrayal; that the fight must never end. Put to the vote and passed unanimously.

    I looked at him. I did say that, didn't I?
    He nodded. And Nico wrote it down in the book, he said. Look, there it is, in his truly terrible handwriting.
    I shook my head. Fine, I said, you look at it. That's kids talking, Gorgias. Notice the unique blend of cockiness, pomposity and ignorance that identifies the voice of youth. So when I was nineteen, I wanted to abolish the Empire. Big deal. When I was eleven I really wanted to be a cavalry captain. I made a promise to myself that that's what I'd be. But I grew up, I said to him, and I'm not bound