"No staying power," Raj amplified. "They can get into wars, and if you push them to the wall they can mobilize like hell, but when it's less vital than that, they don't like paying the butcher's bill or die money either. They'll get into wars occasionally, and piss away men and equipment and then decide it's no fun and go home." correct, santander will exercise a general hegemony, increasingly cultural and economic rather than military, this will inaugurate a period of intense competition within a framework of minimal government, such episodes are unstable but tend to rapid technological innovation.

"The Republic will go into space because it gives you as much glory as war and it's less frustrating," Raj explained. observe:

A cylinder taller than a building lifted into the air in a blue-white discharge. The next view was strange: a white-streaked blue disk floating in utter blackness, ringed by unwinking stars. It wasn't until John saw the outline of a continent that he realized he was seeing Visa-ger from space.

From space! he thought. A construct of girders floated across the vision. Men in spacesuits flitted around it and incomprehensible machines with arms like crabs. a tanaki displacement net, Center said in this scenario, visager would enter die second federation without prior political unification, an unusual development.

The visions ceased, leaving only a mirrored wall at the end of a strange study.

Raj handed him a glass and sat in the chair facing him. John took a cautious sip of the sweet wine.

"Lad, you can leave here with no memories of what you've seen and heard," he said calmly- "Or you can leave here as Center's agent-as I was Center's agent-to he" get this planet out of the dead-end it's trapped in ani set its people free." 18 S.M. Stirling 6 David Drake "I'll do it," John blurted, then flushed again.

The words seemed to have come directly from his mouth without passing through his brain.