A Circus of Hells Read online

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  Bribed to explore a supposedly barren moon, Lt. Flandry finds it swarming with a hideous race of killers, controlled by a deranged computer brain!

  A Circus of Hells by Poul Anderson

  Chapter I

  The story is of a lost treasure guarded by curious monsters, and of captivity in a wilderness, and of a chase through reefs and shoals that could wreck a ship. There is a beautiful girl in it, a magician, a spy or two, and the rivalry of empires. So of course—Flandry was later tempted to say—it begins with a coincidence.

  However, the likelihood that he would meet Tachwyr the Dark was not fantastically low. They were in the same profession, which had them moving through a number of the same places; and they also shared the adventurousness of youth. To be sure, once imperialism is practiced on an interstellar scale, navies grow in size until the odds are huge against any given pair of their members happening on each other. Nevertheless, many such encounters were taking place, as was inevitable on one of the rare occasions when a Merseian warship visited a Terran planet. A life which included no improbable events would be the real statistical impossibility.

  The planet was Irumclaw, some 200 light-years from Sol in that march of the human realm which faced Betelgeuse. Lieutenant (j.g.) Dominic Flandry had been posted there not long before, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth until he learned that even so dismal a clod had its compensations. The Merseian vessel was the cruiser Brythioch, on a swing through the buffer region of unclaimed, mostly unknown suns between the spaces ruled in the names of Emperor and Roidhun. Neither government would have allowed any craft belonging to its rival, capable of spouting nuclear fire, any appreciable distance into its territory. But border authorities could, at discretion, accept a “goodwill visit.” It broke the monotony and gave a slight hope of observing the kind of trivia which, fitted together, now and then revealed a fact the opposition would have preferred to keep secret.

  In this case Merseia profited, at least initially.

  Official hospitality was exchanged. Besides protocol, the humans were motivated, whether they knew it or not, to enjoy the delicate frisson that came from holding converse with those who—beneath every diplomatic phrase—were the enemy. Flandry did know it; he had seen more of life than the average twenty-one-year-old. He was sure the liberty parties down in Old Town were being offered quite a few drinks, and other amenities in certain cases.

  Well, why not? They had been long in the deeps between the stars. If they were straight back from here, they must travel a good 140 light-years—about ten standard days at top hyperspeed, but still an abyss whose immensity and strangeness wore down the hardiest spirit—before they could raise the outermost of the worlds they called their own. They needed a few hours of small-scale living, be their hosts never so hostile.

  Which we aren’t anyway, Flandry thought. We should be, but we aren’t, most of us. He grinned. Including me. Though he would have liked to join the fun; he couldn’t. The junior officers of Irumclaw Base must hold the customary reception for their opposite numbers from the ship. (Their seniors gave another in a separate building. The Merseians, variously bemused or amused by the rigid Terran concept of rank, conformed. They set more store by ceremony and tradition, even that of aliens, than latter-day humans did.) While some of the visitors spoke Anglic, it turned out that Flandry was the only man on this planet who knew Eriau. The mess hall had no connection to the linguistic computer and there was no time to jury-rig one. His translations would be needed more than his physical presence.

  Not that the latter was any disgrace, he reflected rather smugly. He was tall and lithe and wore his dress uniform with panache and had become a favorite among the girls downhill. Despite this, he remained well liked by the younger men, if not always by his superiors.

  He entered at the appointed evening hour. Under Commander Abdullah’s fishy eye, he saluted the Emperor’s portrait not with his usual vague wave but with a snap that well-nigh dislocated his shoulder. And a heel click to boot, he reminded himself. Several persons being in line ahead of him, he had a minute for taking stock. Its tables removed except for one bearing refreshments—and its chairs, in deference to the guests—the room stretched dreary. Pictures of former personnel, trophies and citations for former accomplishments, seemed to make its walls just the more depressing. An animation showed a park on Terra, trees nodding, in the background the skyward leap of a rich family’s residential tower and airborne vehicles glittering like diamond dust; but it reminded him too well of how far he was from those dear comforts. He preferred the darkness in the real window. It was open and a breeze gusted through, warm, laden with unearthly odors.

  The Merseians were a more welcome sight, if only as proof that a universe did exist beyond Irumclaw. Forty of them stood in a row, enduring repeated introductions with the stoicism appropriate to a warrior race.

  They resembled especially large men…somewhat. A number of their faces might have been called good-looking in a craggy fashion; their hands each had four fingers and a thumb; the proportions and articulations of most body parts were fairly anthropoid. But the posture was forward-leaning, balanced by a heavy tail. The feet, revealed by sandals, were splayed, webbed, and clawed. The skin was hairless and looked faintly scaled; depending on sub-species, its color ranged from the pale green which was commonest through golden brown to ebony. The head had two convoluted bony orifices where man’s has external ears. A ridge of serrations ran from its top, down the spine to the end of the tail.

  Most of this anatomy was concealed by their uniforms: baggy tunic, snug breeches, black with silver trim and insignia. The latter showed family connections and status as well as rank and service. The Merseians had politely disarmed themselves, in that none carried a pistol at his wide belt; the Terrans, in turn, had refrained from asking them to remove their great knuckleduster-handled war knives.

  It wasn’t the differences between them and men that caused trouble, Flandry knew. It was the similarities—in planets of origin and thus in planets desired; in the energy of warm-blooded animals, the instincts of ancestors who hunted, the legacies of pride and war—

  “Afal Ymen, may I present Lieutenant Flandry,” Abdullah intoned. The young man bowed to the huge form, whose owner corresponded approximately to a commander, and received a nod of the ridged and shining pate. He proceeded, exchanging names and bows with every subordinate Merseian and wondering, as they doubtless did too, when the farce would end and the drinking begin.

  “Lieutenant Flandry.”

  “Mei Tachwyr.”

  They stopped, and stared, and both mouths fell open.

  Flandry recovered first, perhaps because he became aware that he was holding up the parade. “Uh, this is a, uh, pleasant surprise,” he stammered in Anglic. More of his wits returned. He made a formal Eriau salutation: “Greeting and good fortune to you, Tachwyr of the Vach Rueth.”

  “And…may you be in health and strength, Dominic Flandry…of Terra,” the Merseian replied.

  For another moment their eyes clashed, black against gray, before the man continued down the line.

  After a while he got over his astonishment. Albeit unexpected, the happenstance that he and Tachwyr had met again did not look especially important. Nonetheless, he went robotlike through the motions of sociability and of being an interpreter. His gaze and mind kept straying toward his former acquaintance. And Tachwyr himself was too young to mask entirely the fact that he was as anxious to get together with Flandry.

  Their chance came in a couple of hours, when they managed to dodge out of their respective groups and seek the refreshment table. Flandry gestured. “May I pour for you?” he asked. “I fear that except
for the telloch, we’ve run out of things native to your planet.”

  “I regret to say you have been had,” Tachwyr answered. “It is a dreadful brand. But I like your—what is it called?—skoksh?”

  “That makes two of us.” Flandry filled glasses for them. He had already had several whiskies and would have preferred this one over ice. However, he wasn’t about to look sissified in front of a Merseian.

  “Ah…cheers,” Tachwyr said, lifting his tumbler. His throat and palate gave the Anglic word an accent for which there were no Anglic words.

  Flandry could form Merseian speech better if not perfectly. “Tor ychwei.” With both hands he extended his glass so that the other might take the first sip.

  Tachwyr followed it with half of his own in a single gulp. “Arrach!” Relaxed a little, he cocked his head and smiled; but under the shelf of brow ridge, his glance held very steady on the human. “Well,” he said, “what brings you here?”

  “I was assigned. For a Terran year, worse luck. And you?”

  “The same, to my present ship. I see you are now in the Intelligence Corps.”

  “Like yourself.”

  Tachwyr the Dark—his skin was a slightly deeper green than is usual around the Wilwidh Ocean—could not altogether suppress a scowl. “I started in that branch,” he said. “You were a flyer when you came to Merseia.” He paused. “Were you not?”

  “Oh, yes,” Flandry said. “I transferred later.”

  “At Commander Abrams’ instigation?”

  Flandry nodded. “Mostly. He’s a captain now, by the way.”

  “So I have heard. We…take an interest in him.”

  After the Starkad affair, Flandry thought, you would. Between us, Max Abrams and I wrecked a scheme concocted by none less than Brechdan Ironrede, Protector of the Roidhun’s Grand Council.

  How much do you know about that, Tachwyr? You were only put to showing me around and trying to pump me, when Abrams and I were on your world as part of the Hauksberg mission. And the truth about Starkad was never made public; no one concerned could afford to let it come out.

  You do remember us, though, Tachwyr. If nothing else, you must have gathered that we were instrumental in causing Merseia quite a bit of trouble. It bothers you to have found me here.

  Better get off the subject. “You remain through tomorrow? I admit Irumclaw has less to offer than Merseia, but I’d like to return part of the courtesy you gave me.”

  Again Tachwyr was slow to speak. “Thank you, negative. I have already arranged to tour the area with shipmates.” The Eriau phrasing implied a commitment which no honorable male would break.

  Flandry reflected that a male would not ordinarily bind himself so strongly to something so minor.

  What the devil? the human thought. Maybe they aim to sample our well-known Terran decadence and he doesn’t want me to realize their well-known Merseian virtue can slack off that much. “Stay in a party,” he warned. “Some of those bars are almost as dangerous as the stuff they serve.”

  Tachwyr uttered the throaty laugh of his species, settled down on the tripod of feet and tail, and started yarning. Flandry matched him. They enjoyed themselves until the man was called away to interpret a tedious conversation between two engineer officers.

  Chapter II

  Such was the prologue. He had practically forgotten it when the adventure began. That was on a certain night about eight months later.

  Soon after the red-orange sun had set, he left the naval compound and walked downhill. No one paid him any heed. A former commandant had tried to discourage his young men from seeking the occasionally lethal corruptions of Old Town. He had declared a large part of it off limits. Meeting considerable of the expense out of his own pocket, he had started an on-base recreation center which was to include facilities for sports, arts, and crafts as well as honest gambling and medically certified girls! But the bosses below knew how to use money and influence. The commandant was transferred to a still more bleak and insignificant outpost. His successor dismantled what had been built, informed the men jovially that what they did off duty was their business, and was said to be drawing a nice extra income.

  Flandry sauntered in elegance. The comet gleaming on either shoulder was so new that you might have looked for diffidence from him. But his bonnet was tilted more rakishly on his seal-brown hair than a strict interpretation of rules would have allowed; his frame was draped in a fantastic glittergold version of dress tunic and snowy trousers tucked into handmade beefleather half-boots; the cloak that fluttered behind him glowed with phosphorescent patterns through the chill dusk; and while he strolled, he sang a folk ballad concerning the improbable adventures of a Highland tinker.

  It made a good cover for the fact that he was not out for pleasure.

  Beyond the compound walls, the homes of the wealthy loomed amidst grandly downsweeping private parks. In a way, Flandry thought, they epitomized man’s trajectory. Once the settlement had been sufficiently large and prosperous, and sufficiently within the Imperial sphere, to attract not only merchants but aristocrats. Old Town had bustled with culture as well as commerce—provincial, no doubt, this far from Terra; nevertheless, live and genuine, worthy of the respectful emulation of the autochthons.

  Tonight Irumclaw lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire. What mansions were not standing hollow had become the property of oafs, and showed it. (The oafs were not to be scoffed at. Several of them directed large organizations devoted to preying on the spacemen who visited and the Navy men who guarded what transshipment facilities remained in use.) Outside the treaty port boundaries, barbarism rolled forward as the natives abandoned civilization with a perhaps justifiable contempt.

  Past the residential section, workshops and warehouses hulked black in the night, and Flandry moved alert with a hand near the needle gun under his tunic. Robberies and murders had happened here. Lacking the police to clean out this area, assuming he wanted to, the commandant had settled for advising men on liberty not to go through alone.

  Flandry had been shocked to learn that when he first arrived. “We could do it ourselves—establish regular patrols—if he’d order it. Doesn’t he care? What kind of chief is he?”

  His protest had been delivered in private to another scout, Lieutenant Commander Eisenschmitt. The latter, having been around for a while, shrugged. “The kind that any place like this gets,” he answered. “We don’t rate attention at GHQ, so naturally we’re sent the hacks, boobs, and petty crooks. Good senior officers are too badly needed elsewhere. When Irumclaw does get one it’s an accident, and he doesn’t stay long.”

  “Damn it, man, we’re on the border!” Flandry pointed out the window of the room where they sat. It had been dark then, too. Betelgeuse glowed bloody-brilliant among the hosts of stars where no writ ran. “Beyond there—Merseia!”

  “Yeh. And the gatortails expanding in all directions except when we bar the way. I know. But this is the far edge of nowhere…in the eyes of an Imperial government that can’t see past its perfume-sniffing nose. You’re fresh from Terra, Dom. You ought to understand better than me. I expect we’ll pull out of Irumclaw entirely inside another generation.”

  “No! Can’t be! Why, that’d leave this whole flank exposed for six parsecs inward. We’d have no way of protecting its commerce…of, of staying around in any force—”

  “Uh-huh.” Eisenschmitt nodded. “On the other hand, the local commerce isn’t too profitable any more, less each year. And think of the saving to the Imperial treasury if we end operations. The Emperor should be able to build a dozen new palaces complete with harems.”

  Flandry had not been able to agree at the time. He was too lately out of a fighting unit and a subsequent school where competence was demanded. Over the months, though, he saw things for himself and drew his own sad conclusions.

  There were times when he would have welcomed a set-to with a ba
ndit. But it had not befallen, nor did it on this errand into Old Town.

  The district grew around him, crumbling buildings left over from pioneer days, many of them simply the original beehive-shaped adobes of the natives slightly remodeled for other life forms. Streets and alleys twisted about under shimmering glowsigns. Traffic was mainly pedestrian, but noise beat on the eardrums, clatter, shuffle, clop, clangor, raucous attempts at music, a hundred different languages, once in a while a muffled scream or a bellow of rage. The smells were equally strong, body odors, garbage, smoke, incense, dope. Humans predominated, but many autochthons were present and space travelers of numerous different breeds circulated among them.

  Outside a particular joyhouse, otherwise undistinguished from the rest, an Irumclavian used a vocalizer to chant in Anglic: “Come one, come all, come in, no cover, no minimum. Every type of amusement, pleasure, and thrill. No game too exotic, no stakes too high or low. Continuous sophisticated entertainment. Delicious food and drink, stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers, to your order, to your taste, to your purse. Every sex and every technique of seventeen, yes, seventeen intelligent species ready to serve your desires, and this does not count racial, mutational, and biosculp variations. Come one, come all—” Flandry went in. He chanced to brush against two or three of the creature’s arms. The blue integument felt cold in the winter air.

  The entrance hall was hot and stuffy. An outsize human in a gaudy uniform said, “Welcome, sir. What is your wish?” while keeping eyes upon him that were like chips of obsidian.

  “Are you Lem?” Flandry responded.

  “Uh, yeh. and you—?”

  “I am expected.”

  “Urh. Take the gravshaft to the top, that’s the sixth floor, go left down the hall to a door numbered 666, stand in front of the scan and wait. When it opens, go up the stairs.”

  “Six-six-six?” murmured Flandry, who had read more than was common in his service. “Is Citizen Ammon a humorist, do you think?”