Young Flandry Read online

  Young Flandry

  Table of Contents

  ENTER A HERO, SOMEWHAT FLAWED

  by Hank Davis

  ENSIGN FLANDRY

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  A CIRCUS OF HELLS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  THE REBEL WORLDS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION

  YOUNG FLANDRY

  Poul Anderson

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed

  in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  "Enter A Hero, Somewhat Flawed" copyright © 2009 by Hank Davis.

  "A Chronology of Technic Civilization" by Sandra Miesel copyright © 2008 by Sandra Miesel.

  Acknowledgements

  Ensign Flandry copyright © 1966 by Poul Anderson

  A Circus of Hells copyright © 1970 by Poul Anderson

  The Rebel Worlds copyright © 1969 by Poul Anderson

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3327-9

  Cover art by David Seeley

  First Baen printing, January 2010

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Anderson, Poul, 1926-2001.

  Young Flandry / by Poul Anderson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3327-9 (trade pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS3551.N378Y68 2010

  813'.54—dc22

  2009039503

  Printed in the United States of America

  Baen Books by Poul Anderson

  The Technic Civilization Saga

  The Van Rijn Method

  David Falkayn: Star Trader

  Rise of the Terran Empire

  Young Flandry

  Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (forthcoming)

  To Outlive Eternity and Other Stories

  Time Patrol

  Hokas! Pokas! (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Enter a Hero, Somewhat Flawed

  I'll start with a quote whose authorship is unknown but not unsuspected . . .

  Introducing . . . Dominic Flandry. Before he's through he'll have saved worlds and become the confidante of emperors. But for now he's seventeen years old, as fresh and brash a sprig of the nobility as you would care to know. The only thing as damp as the place behind his ears is the ink on his brand-new commission.

  Though through this and his succeeding adventures he will struggle gloriously and win (usually) mighty victories, Dominic Flandry is essentially a tragic figure: a man who knows too much, who knows that battle, scheme and even betray as he will, in the end it will mean nothing. For with the relentlessness of physical law the Long Night approaches. The Terran Empire is dying . . .

  I didn't see how I could top that, so I hijacked it (but please to call it research!). I can't prove it, but I think I know who wrote that anonymous text from the back cover of the Ace edition of the novel Ensign Flandry (included in these pages). The paperback was published while Jim Baen was in charge at that venerable sf publisher . . . and Jim usually did his own cover copy at three different publishers, including the one he founded . . . and to me, it reads like Jim's work. And it captures Dominic Flandry in two well-honed paragraphs.

  I'll be using somewhat more paragraphs, and less effectively. But if you're now all revved up to read Ensign Flandry, and maybe the other two novels as well without further ado, go right ahead. I'll be here when you get back.

  I will dispute one item in the quote. Flandry arguably isn't "a sprig of the nobility." True, his father was a minor nobleman, but Flandry was his illegitimate offspring, born of an affair with an opera singer. His mother's profession makes it seem odd that Flandry repeatedly mentions he has no interest in music, even if at one point in the following pages he is whistling an unnamed waltz tune while piloting a ship in a scene that might be Poul Anderson's sly nod at 2001: A Space Odyssey. But I digress . . .

  Dominic Flandry—Captain Dominic Flandry—made his first appearances in 1951 in two pulp magazines, Planet Stories and Future. The pulps soon died, alas, but Flandry was just getting started. In the following years, Poul Anderson chronicled his further adventures, by which time Flandry had been knighted (Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, if you please), until by 1966 some back history was in order. The three novels in this set visit Flandry at the beginning of his illustrious career.

  He's already obviously charming and attractive to the opposite sex, judging from their reactions. (Later, he'll pay for a biosculpt, then wonder if he's made his face too handsome.) And he's making an impression on his superiors. As one of them tells him in The Rebel Worlds, "You'll either be killed, young man, or you'll do something that will force us to step on you, or you'll go far indeed."

  That's after the same superior officer refers obliquely to some of Flandry's misadventures, and says, "Don't worry . . . yet. Competent men are so heartbreakingly scarce these days, not to mention brilliant ones, that the Service keeps a blind eye handy for a broad range of escapades." That's Flandry: he's a hero, but a somewhat tarnished one; he's a rascal, but not a villain; and he's a gloomy philosopher, well aware that he's been born in the twilight of the declining Terran Empire.

  As he puts it:

  . . . the night is coming—the Long Night, when the empire goes under and the howling peoples camp in its ruins . . . . Our ancestors explored further than we in these years remember. When hell cut loose and their civilization seemed about to fly into pieces, they patched it together with the Empire. And they made the Empire function. But we . . . we've lost the will. We've had it too easy for too long. And so the Merseians on our Betelgeusean flank, the wild races everywhere else, press inward . . . why do I bother? . . . I could be more comfortable doing almost anything else.

  These glum musings are interrupted by a woman who asks him for directions, then makes it obvious that she's interested in more than directions, put
ting him in a better mood and musing that another job might prove boring. That's Flandry, too: aware that civilization is shot through with irreparable cracks, but enjoying its pleasures while he can.

  Mention is made of the Polesotechnic League, long gone, and Flandry "wistfully" thinks that he was born out of his proper time. "He would much rather have lived in the high and spacious days of the trader princes, when no distance and no deed looked too vast for man, than in this twilight of empire." Your humble scribe did wonder at that point how Flandry and Van Rijn would have gotten along—sparks would fly, I'd wager!

  Born in the wrong century or not, he'll still charm the ladies, enjoy the expensive creature comforts, and fiercely oppose all enemies of the Empire, foreign and domestic. He has no illusions about the flaws and limitations of the Empire, but knows that it's far better than anything that might take its place.

  Poul Anderson originally conceived Flandry as a science fictional counterpart of Leslie Charteris' celebrated Simon Templar, better known as the Saint, but his hero soon began to look more like a science fictional counterpart of another iconic hero with an English accent, James Bond, though the resemblance is almost certainly a case of parallel evolution, since Flandry's early adventures appeared prior to the publication of Casino Royale (1953), with 007's debut. Both Bond and Flandry have flamboyant adventures, have excellent taste in clothes, food and drink, and encounter far more than their share of, ah, friendly females (in Flandry's case, not always human). But Flandry's adventures have the additional dimension of taking place before that looming twilight of the gods backdrop. Bond is making the world safe for western civilization. Flandry is trying to keep civilization from collapsing in his lifetime, hoping that some pieces will survive the inevitable shattering of the Terran Empire.

  In the first of these three novels, you'll meet Flandry, of course (or renew your acquaintance), but you'll also meet Max Abrams of the Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, Flandry's mentor (who does his own musing on the coming Long Night, showing that it isn't Flandry's private hobgoblin). And you'll meet a character who often appears in Poul Anderson's stories in various guises: the intelligent, well-meaning, and well-connected individual who thinks that surely, we can all just get along if we sit down and discuss this like the sane beings that we are—and whose idealistic naiveté is a blueprint for disaster. Since there has never been a shortage of people like that, both in and out of government, in our "real" world, who think that we can reason with those who want to destroy us, this aspect of Ensign Flandry makes the 1966 novel very much up-to-date.

  Another sort of villain, not admirable at all, appears in The Rebel Worlds. Bordering on the psychotic—on second thought, make that clear over the border—and this one also makes the story downright contemporary, when one considers the mindset of those aforementioned enemies who want to destroy us.

  A villain whom you will not meet in this book is the alien Aycharaych, Flandry's most persistent nemesis, his Moriarty. But have patience, he'll have a whole novel to himself in the next volume in this series. (Flandry will not be onstage in that novel, but never fear, there'll be plenty of Flandry—Captain Flandry by then—in the rest of the next book.)

  I've found that most people visualize Dominic Flandry as Errol Flynn. I've always opted for a young David Niven, probably because I first encountered Flandry in "A Handful of Stars" (later retitled "We Claim These Stars," and still later, "Hunters of the Sky Cave") in the June 1959 Amazing Stories shortly after seeing several vintage David Niven movies on TV (and I was startled a few years later when Algis Budrys wrote in a book review that Flandry could have only be born of a union between David Niven and Diana the Huntress). You can visualize him as you wish (but if you see him as Brad Pitt, I don't want to hear about it), but that's really peripheral to the fast-moving and thoughtful adventures in which you're about to join him. Bon voyage—and fasten your seat belts.

  —Hank Davis, 2009

  ENSIGN FLANDRY

  To Frank and Beverly Herbert

  Excerpts (with some expansion of symbols) from Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris, Cis-Betelgeusean Orionis Sector, 53rd ed., Reel III, frame 28:

  IGC S-52,727,061. Saxo. F5, mass 1.75 Sol, luminosity 5.4 Sol, photosphere diameter 1.2 Sol . . . . Estimated remaining time on main sequence, 0.9 begayear . . . .

  Planetary system: Eleven major bodies . . . . V, Starkad. Mean orbital radius, 3.28 a.u., period 4.48 years . . . . Mass, 1.81 Terra. Equatorial diameter, 15,077 km. Mean surface gravity, 1.30 g. Rotation period, 16h 31m 2.75s. Axial inclination, 25° 50' 4.9" . . . . Surface atmospheric pressure, ca. 7000 mm. Percentage composition, N2 77.92, O2 21.01, A 0.87, CO2 0.03 . . . .

  Remarks: Though 254 light-years from Sol, the system was discovered early, in the course of the first Grand Survey. Thus the contemporary practice of bestowing literary-mythological names on humanly interesting objects was followed. Only marginally manhabitable, Starkad attracted a few xenological expeditions by its unusual autochthons . . . . These studies were not followed up, since funds went to still more rewarding projects and, later, the Polesotechnic League saw no profit potential. After the Time of Troubles, it lay outside the Imperial sphere and remained virtually unvisited until now, when a mission has been sent for political reasons.

  The 54th edition had quite a different entry.

  Chapter One

  Evening on Terra—

  His Imperial Majesty, High Emperor Georgios Manuel Krishna Murasaki, of the Wang dynasty the fourth, Supreme Guardian of the Pax, Grand Director of the Stellar Council, Commander-in-chief, Final Arbiter, acknowledged supreme on more worlds and honorary head of more organizations than any one man could remember, had a birthday. On planets so remote that the unaided eye could not see their suns among those twinkling to life above Oceania, men turned dark and leathery, or thick and weary, by strange weathers lifted glasses in salute. The light waves carrying their pledge would lap on his tomb.

  Terra herself was less solemn. Except for the court, which still felt bound to follow daylight around the globe for one exhausting ceremony after another, Birthday had become simply an occasion to hold carnival. As his aircar hummed over great dusking waters, Lord Markus Hauksberg saw the east blaze with sky luminosity, multi-colored moving curtains where fireworks exploded meteoric. Tonight, while the planet turned, its dark side was so radiant as to drown the very metro-centers seen from Luna. Had he tuned his vid to almost any station, he could have watched crowds filling pleasure houses and coming near riot among festively decorated towers.

  His lady broke the silence between them with a murmur that made him start. "I wish it were a hundred years ago."

  "Eh?" Sometimes she could still astonish him.

  "Birthday meant something then."

  "Well . . . yes. S'pose so." Hauksberg cast his mind back over history. She was right. Fathers had taken their sons outdoors when twilight ended parades and feasts; they had pointed to the early stars and said,—Look yonder. Those are ours. We believe that as many as four million lie within the Imperial domain. Certainly a hundred thousand know us daily, obey us, pay tribute to us, and get peace and the wealth of peace in return. Our ancestors did that. Keep the faith.

  Hauksberg shrugged. You can't prevent later generations from outgrowing naïveté. In time they must realize, bone deep, that this one dustmote of a galaxy holds more than a hundred billion suns; that we have not even explored the whole of our one spiral arm, and it does not appear we ever will; that you need no telescope to see giants like Betelgeuse and Polaris which do not belong to us. From there, one proceeded easily to: Everybody knows the Empire was won and is maintained by naked power, the central government is corrupt and the frontier is brutal and the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism. So get yours, have fun, ease your conscience with a bit of discreet scoffing, and never, never make a fool of yourself by taking the Empire seriously.

  Could be I'll change that, Hauksberg thought.
>
  Alicia interrupted him. "We might at least have gone to a decent party! But no, you have to drag us to the Crown Prince's. Are you hoping he'll share one of his pretty-boys?"

  Hauksberg tried to ease matters with a grin. "Come, come, m'love, you do me an injustice. You know I still hunt women. Preferably beautiful women, such as you."

  "Or Persis d'Io." She sagged back. "Never mind," she said tiredly. "I just don't like orgies. Especially vulgar ones."

  "Nor I, much." He patted her hand. "But you'll manage. Among the many things I admire about you is your ability to carry off any situation with aplomb."

  True enough, he thought. For a moment, regarding those perfect features under the diademed hair, he felt regret. So his marriage had been political; why couldn't they nonetheless have worked out a comradeship? Even love—No, he was confusing his love for ancient literature with flesh-and-blood reality. He was not Pelléas nor she Mélisande. She was clever, gracious, and reasonably honest with him; she had given him an heir; more had never been implied in the contract. For his part, he had given her position and nearly unlimited money. As for more of his time . . . how could he? Somebody had to be the repairman, when the universe was falling to pieces. Most women understood.

  To entropy with it. Alicia's looks came from an expensive biosculp job. He had seen too many slight variations on that fashionable face.

  "I've explained to you often enough," he said. "Lot rather've gone to Mboto's or Bhatnagar's myself. But my ship leaves in three days. Last chance to conduct a bit of absolutely essential business."

  "So you say."

  He reached a decision. Tonight had not seemed to him to represent any large sacrifice on her part. During the months of his absence, she'd find ample consolation with her lovers. (How else can a high-born lady who has no special talents pass her time on Terra?) But if she did grow embittered she could destroy him. It is vital to keep closed that faceplate which is pretense. Never mind what lies behind. But in front of the faceplate waits open ridicule, as dangerous to a man in power as emptiness and radiation to a spacefarer.