"A hundred and fifty years."
"That old?" The old man sighed. "History has been crowded since. Do you know any of it?"
Mallow shook his bead slowly.
Barr said, "You're fortunate. It has been an evil time for the provinces, but for the reign of Stannell VI, and he died fifty years ago. Since that time, rebellion and ruin, ruin and rebellion." Barr wondered if he were growing garrulous. It was a lonely life out here, and he had so little chance to talk to men.
Mallow said with sudden sharpness, "Ruin, eh? You sound as if the province were impoverished."
"Perhaps not on an absolute scale. The physical resources of twenty-five first-rank planets take a long time to use up. Compared to the wealth of the last century, though, we have gone a long way downhill and there is no sign of turning, not yet. Why are you so interested in all this, young man? You are all alive and your eyes shine!"
The trader came near enough to blushing, as the faded eyes seemed to look too deep into his and smile at what they saw.
He said, "Now look here. I'm a trader out there out toward the rim of the Galaxy. I've located some old maps, and I'm out to open new markets. Naturally, talk of impoverished provinces disturbs me. You can't get money out of a world unless money's there to be got. Now how's Siwenna, for instance?"
The old man leaned forward, "I cannot say. It will do even yet, perhaps. But you a trader? You look more like a fighting man. You hold your hand near your gun and there is a scar on your jawbone."
Mallow jerked his head, "There isn't much law out there where I come from. Fighting and scars are part of a trader's overhead. But fighting is only useful when there's money at the end, and if I can get it without, so much the sweeter. Now will I find enough money here to make it worth the fighting? I take it I can find the fighting easily enough."
"Easily enough," agreed Barr. "You could join Wiscard's remnants in the Red Stars. I don't know, though, if you'd call that fighting or piracy. Or you could join our present gracious viceroy gracious by right of murder, pillage, rapine, and the word of a boy Emperor, since rightfully assassinated." The patrician's thin cheeks reddened. His eyes closed and then opened, bird-bright.
"You don't sound very friendly to the viceroy, Patrician Barr," said Mallow. "What if I'm one of his spies?"
"What if you are?" said Barr, bitterly. "What can you take?" He gestured a withered arm at the bare interior of the decaying mansion.
"Your life."
"It would leave me easily enough. It has been with me five years too long. But you are not one of the viceroy's men. If you were, perhaps even now instinctive self-preservation would keep my mouth closed."
"How do you know?"
The old man laughed, "You seem suspicious Come, I'll wager you think I'm trying to trap you into denouncing the government. No, no. I am past politics."
"Past politics? Is a man ever past that? The words you used to describe the viceroy what were they? Murder, pillage, all that. You didn't sound objective. Not exactly. Not as if you were past politics."
The old man shrugged, "Memories sting when they come suddenly. Listen! Judge for yourself! When Siwenna was the provincial capital, I was a patrician and a member of the provincial senate. My family was an old and honored one. One of my great-grandfathers had been No, never mind that. Past glories are poor feeding."
"I take it," said Mallow, "there was a civil war, or a revolution."
Barr's face darkened. "Civil wars are chronic in these degenerate days, but Siwenna had kept apart. Under Stannell VI, it had almost achieved its ancient prosperity. But weak emperors followed, and weak emperors mean strong viceroys, and our last viceroy the same Wiscard, whose remnants still prey on the commerce among the Red Stars aimed at the Imperial Purple. He wasn't the first to aim. And if he had succeeded, he wouldn't have been the first to succeed.
"But he failed. For when the Emperor's Admiral approached the province at the head of a fleet, Siwenna itself rebelled against its rebel viceroy." He stopped, sadly.
Mallow found himself tense on the edge of his seat, and relaxed slowly, "Please continue, sir."
"Thank you," said Barr, wearily. "It's kind of you to humor an old man. They rebelled; or I should say, we rebelled, for I was one of the minor leaders. Wiscard left Siwenna, barely ahead of us, and the planet, and with it the province, were thrown open to the admiral with every gesture of loyalty to the Emperor. Why we did this, 朓'm not sure. Maybe we felt loyal to the symbol, if not the person, of the Emperor, 朼 cruel and vicious child. Maybe we feared the horrors of a siege."
"Well?" urged Mallow, gently.
"Well, came the grim retort, "that didn't suit the admiral. He wanted the glory of conquering a rebellious province and his men wanted the loot such conquest would involve. So while the people were still gathered in every large city, cheering the Emperor and his admiral, he occupied all armed centers, and then ordered the population put to the nuclear blast."
"On what pretext?"
"On the pretext that they had rebelled against their viceroy, the Emperor's anointed. And the admiral became the new viceroy, by virtue of one month of massacre, pillage and complete horror. I had six sons. Five died variously. I had a daughter. I hope she died, eventually. I escaped because I was old. I came here, too old to cause even our viceroy worry." He bent his gray head, "They left me nothing, because I had helped drive out a rebellious governor and deprived an admiral of his glory."