Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire by Jerry Pournelle

provincial human backwater, weak and struggling for any step of progress."
    Stattor leaned forward on his desk. He was smiling. The desk creaked under his weight. "You no longer have to suffer, Usko. I've set up a physical rehabilitation program for you, and when you've recovered, you'll be given living quarters on the world of your choosing, transportation privileges wherever you want to go, and an allotment of 500,000 credits a year."
    She stared at him, and it seemed that for a full half minute she did not register what he had said.
    "How much did they pay you on Perda?" he asked. She swallowed heavily, her chin dipping as she did so. "They put 200 a year into an account for each of us."
    "And how much have you earned so far?"
    She shook her head helplessly. "I can't figure like that anymore."
    "You may not know," Stattor said, "there's a severance tax of 28 percent. A prisoner who completes his sentence is required to pay for the food he has eaten." He smiled. "The severance tax was my idea."
    "If it hadn't been necessary for our cause, you wouldn't have done it."
    Stattor shook his head. This was the Usko Imani of his memories. When he had doubts, he had only to speak to her; her vision was intensely single-minded, sincere, and idealistic. She was unique. In part, that was why he had sent her to Perda.
    "Would you like a drink?" Stattor asked suddenly.
    "I haven't had a drink in—"
    He pressed the call button and said to Zallon, "Bring Ms. Imani a gin and lemon." Stattor turned back to Usko and said, "That was your favorite drink. I remember. Perhaps you'll still have a taste for it." He leaned back in his chair. "No one was ever more dedicated to our cause than you. I admired you. I envied you for that. I remember a justice named Kudensa, a skinny, reactionary low-grade. . . . Do you remember him?"
    She shook her head.
    "You volunteered to bed him, to get information, although we all knew what he would put you through."
    Still, she was shaking her head.
    "I remember it took eight weeks for you to recover."
    She looked blank. "Did I get the information?"
    Stattor nodded. "You did." He thought he saw her face start to relax.
    Zallon entered with a tray, from which he took the cloudy yellow drink and placed it in Usko's hands with a linen napkin. Without a sound, the aide left the office.
    "It was very loyal of you to do that." Stattor said.
    "I don't remember it. It couldn't have hurt me badly. The good of humankind is important. I've served that."
    "You're the only person who could say that that I would believe. That's why I put you in prison."
    She had her drink halfway to her lips—her gnarled hands stopped there.
    "Because of your idealism," Stattor explained. "That's why you spent twenty years in prison."
    "I don't understand."
    Stattor shrugged and sipped his drink. "Let's talk about the old days for a minute. Do you remember the Setback? When we lost nearly all of our secret council?"
    Her face went suddenly grim. "I remember. On Perda, every year, we have half a day off to remember and study the works of those we lost. And to read the story of Kenda Dean, the informer."
    "You knew Kenda well, didn't you?"
    "I never suspected he could do such a thing—or that the government had been paying him the whole time. I accept it now, but I never understood it."
    "You never understood it because he didn't do it. I did it. I informed."
    She looked at him as though he were still speaking. Then, suddenly, she laughed, and he remembered how, long ago, she had laughed. He remembered her lips as she had come up from the lakeside. He remembered her hands and he remembered the morning they had awakened in each other's arms.
    "It's true," he said. "I informed on them all."
    "You didn't. You couldn't have."
    "The government police had been paying me for almost a year prior to that. I used the police to eliminate opposition to my chairmanship of the movement."
    "You couldn't—"
    "I did it for myself. I have always done