Sagittarius Whorl Read online

Enormous quantities of Macrodur computers were sold to the Haluk. The manufacturers of ticklesuits and Japanese kimonos also did a roaring business.

  Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, a political upheaval was in full swing.

  Many Conservative Delegates were recalled and Reversionist candidates elected to take their places. Geraldo Gonzalez matured into a statesman of major stature. Together with Efrem Sontag, he sponsored Assembly bills that eventually eliminated the longstanding domination of CHW politics by the Hundred Concerns.

  Pocket Delegates disappeared into oblivion. Syndics found other jobs. Corporation finks were immediately purged from the Secretariat for Xenoaffairs, the Interstellar Commerce Secretariat, and Zone Patrol. Over the next decade, legislation was enacted that reformed many areas of the human governmental structure.

  The Conlegius statutes, which had given Concerns far-ranging independent police powers, were abolished. At the suggestion of Delegate Sontag, Karl Nazarian was appointed to a new CCID task force overseeing Concern security reorganization.

  The Commonwealth Correction System was also revamped, eliminating the penalty of disenfranchisement except for capital crimes. Throwaways were invited to reapply for citizenship and carefully screened. The scandal-ridden Coventry penitentiaries were closed down.

  Corporate ownership of the stars would persist for a long time, as the Assembly slowly whittled away at the entrenched hegemony of Big Business and enacted new tax measures to finance the reforms. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was a galactic democracy.

  Nonstargoing Insap races were granted just wages and given educational options. They did not become corporate stakeholders and share in the profits of their exploited

  worlds. Their consciousness raised, some of the natives became predictably restless. But the majority didn't give a damn, so long as the human invaders brought in plenty of trade goods.

  Beer was an especially big hit among carbon-based life-forms.

  After the brief Haluk War, I spent time in dystasis and emerged with my previous body, buffed up a little here and there. Joanna was present for my rollout, and so were Simon—healthy as a horse—and Eve and Beth and even Cousin Zed. Karl Nazarian and his Over-the-Hill Gang were on hand, along with Mimo and my old comrades Ivor Jenkins and Ildiko Szabo.

  Daniel Frost pleaded a previous engagement with his psychotherapist. He now lived quietly with his wife in a secure house in the Ontario Cottage Country and steadfastly denied that he had done anything wrong.

  Fulfilling my promise to Simon, I now serve as a part-time Rampart executive. Most of my work is tedious troubleshooting. I have moments when I sincerely wish I were a beach bum again.

  I did manage to implement Reversionist principles on many of the planets in the Perseus Spur, but the ex-Galapharma worlds in the Orion Arm fought my radical notions tooth and nail. Their reform may have to wait until the Commonwealth Assembly does the job for me.

  I myself have no desire to seek public office, although I still give generous donations to the Reversionists. A political cowboy is a sorry thing.

  One of the charitable foundations that I manage is dedicated to alleviating the lot of the denizens of the Dark Path. Sadly, numbers of them want nothing more than to continue on exactly as before; the trogs are always with us. A sizable majority have been assisted by my foundation to make new lives under one sun or another.

  Mama Fanchon Labrecque became head of the Visiting Practitioner Service of Kedge-Lockaby's new Katje Vander-post Memorial Hospital.

  Mohammed al-Wazan is in medical school and hopes someday to join Mama. The sadistic executive creep who used him as a boy-toy was mysteriously shanghaied and is now a permanent maroony, in charge of toilet-cubicle maintenance in the asteroid Phlegethon.

  Santa Claus still lives beneath Toronto. If there is profound symbolism there, I haven't been able to figure it out.

  The rest of the Grange Place Tribe have returned to their families and are doing as well as can be expected.

  Professor Joanna DeVet teaches political science at Commonwealth University for three terms each year. Her book was a popular smash and provoked unseemly jealousy among certain of her academic colleagues, even though she donated the proceeds to charity.

  We were remarried a week after I emerged from the tank. We have a house in the Kawartha Lakes region and an apartment in Rampart Tower. Neither one has domestic robots.

  We vacation at the Sky Ranch and on Kedge-Lockaby. She loves my yellow submarine. I love the way she sits a horse.

  Joanna is still trying to understand me, and claims that the natural history of the wolverine offers significant insights into my character. I call that piffle.

  She has also tells me that she sometimes misses Helly the Haluk.

  I don't.

  The End