For Love and Glory Read online

  BY POUL ANDERSON

  FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

  Alight in the Void

  All One Universe

  The Armies of Elfland

  The Boat of a Million Years

  Conan the Rebel

  The Dancer from Atlantis

  The Day of Their Return

  Explorations

  The Fleet of Stars

  For Love and Glory

  Genesis

  Going for Infinity

  Harvest of Fire

  Harvest the Stars

  Hoka! (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Kinship with the Stars

  A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

  The Long Night

  The Longest Voyage

  Maurai and Kith

  A Midsummer Tempest

  Mother of Kings

  No Truce with Kings

  Operation Chaos

  Operation Luna

  Past Times

  The Saturn Game

  The Shield of Time

  Starfarers

  The Stars Are Also Fire

  Tales of the Flying Mountains

  There Will Be Time

  The Time Patrol

  War of the Gods

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction.

  All the characters and events portrayed in this novel

  are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  FOR LOVE AND GLORY

  Copyright © 2003 by the Trigonier Trust

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

  or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Book design by Jane Adele Regina

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Anderson, Poul, 1926-2001.

  For love and glory / Poul Anderson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.” ISBN: 0-312-87449-9

  1. Antiquities—Collection and preservation—Fiction. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction.

  3. Women archaeologists—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.N378F62003 813’.54—dc21

  2002040942

  First Edition: March 2003

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  TO GEOFF KIDD

  for help above and beyond

  the call of friendship

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII

  XLVIII

  IL

  L

  LI

  LII

  LIII

  LIV

  About the e-Book

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A dozen years ago, the late Isaac Asimov created a science fictional cosmos to serve as a narrative background for other writers. It was interesting to see how differently they handled it while trying to stay consistent with the premises. I contributed to two of the ISAAC’S UNIVERSE volumes, The Diplomacy Guild (1990) and Phases in Chaos (1991). Now Janet Asimov and editor Martin Greenberg have graciously given me leave to incorporate these stories in an independent novel.

  It has turned out independent indeed. The concept of several intelligent spacefaring species, who come upon relics of unknown predecessors, is still there, but that is scarcely unique in our literature. Otherwise little remains except that pair of episodes, much altered. To avoid conflict with anything in the original series or constraining any future volumes, the history, the races involved, the individual characters, most place names, and the general course of events have all been changed. This tale stands entirely on its own.

  Still, I wish to acknowledge my debt to Isaac, Janet, and Marty.

  —POUL ANDERSON

  I

  AT first sight Lissa thought it was an island—a strange one, yes, but this whole world was strange to her. Then as she and Karl came out of the woodland and went on toward the river, she knew it could not be. It lay in midstream, dully iridescent, about twenty meters long, perhaps a fourth as wide, curving up to a gently rounded top one meter or so above the water. Someone or something had made it.

  But there were no native sophonts anywhere around this star. Scant though exploration had been in the seven Terran years since the system was first visited, that much was certain.

  So who, and when, and why?

  She halted. “What the chaos? Have you any idea what that might be?”

  Karl stopped too. “None,” he said. “I do not recall any such artifact from my experience or other sources of information. A slight resemblance to some dwellings of the Orcelin civilization.” The tip of his tail gestured at the camp near the shore. “Obviously it is not the work of yonder persons. I presume they are studying it. They may have learned something.”

  The translator clinging to Lissa’s backpack rendered his answer into flat-voiced Anglay. He could follow her words readily enough. If he had tried to utter them the result would have been grotesque. For her part, she could not hear most of his language, let alone pronounce those trills, whistles, and supersonic melodies. Once it had struck her funny that such a huge creature should have so thin a voice. But that was in her silly girlhood. She had since met beings much more paradoxical and less comprehensible, and learned that to them humans were likewise.

  [12] She did still sometimes wonder whether Karl—her name for him, honoring a friend at home—really spoke as academically as the device rendered it. He was a scientist, but also a top-class waymate. Yet she would never understand the nuances of his personality, nor he hers. They could never be more than comrades.

  “Let’s have a better look.” She unsheathed her optic, raised it to her eyes, and activated it. His keener vision had already made out what she now did. The surface was not actually smooth, it was subtly, bewilderingly complex. Increasing the magnification gave small help. Noontide shadows were too short to bring out enough relief.

  The idea struck her like a fist. Her hands dropped. “Forerunner work?” she cried.

  Amidst the tumult in her head she felt that the translator’s level tone was, for once, conveying an emotion. Calm. “I immediately suspected so.” Somebody with Karl’s size and strength might not be very excitable. Interested, yes; delighted, maybe; but free of the chills that ran up her spine, out to the ends of her fingers.

  Steadiness returned. She lifted the optic again.

  Two beings poised on the thing, with a variety of instruments set forth. One
was a male human, the other an anthropard from Rikha or a Rikhan colony. She watched them come to full alertness, peer her way, and hasten down the whaleback curve. Their boat lay alongside, tethered by a geckofoot grapnel. They got in, cast off, and motored toward the land.

  Lissa swung her gaze about and found their camp, which from here was half screened by brush. She put her optic back.

  “Do you recognize either of them?” asked Karl.

  “No,” she said, “nor why they haven’t been in touch.” She scowled as she started off again. “We’ll find out. We’d better.”

  The camp amounted to three dome shelters. But the vehicle standing by was no ordinary flyer adapted for this planet. Twice the size, it was clearly capable not simply of flitting through atmosphere, hovering, vertical landings and takeoffs, but of making [13] orbit. Indeed, when last she and Karl heard from headquarters, personnel had detected a small spaceship circling farther out than theirs in a sharply canted plane. Apparently those who had been aboard would rather not be noticed.

  Otherwise the landscape lay primeval, hills rolling low in the east and on either side of the valley, thickly wooded. The vegetation was unlike any she knew of anywhere else, curiously shaped boles and boughs, foliage in shades of dark yellow and brown, eerie blossoms—another world, after all. Animal life was as alien and as abundant; the sky was full of wings and clamor. The fundamental biochemistry resembled hers in a number of ways, and the basis of life itself was microbial here too. But that was due to the working of the same natural laws on more or less Earthlike planets. How many centuries until the biology of even this single continent would be even sketchily charted?

  Depends partly on how much of an effort scientifically oriented sophonts feel is worth making, passed banally through her mind. The galaxy’s so huge, so various, and always so mysterious.

  Odd, how high and steep the riverbanks were. In fact, it flowed at the bottom of a rocky canyon. Farther inland, its sides were low, begrown to the very edge of the water. Only as she neared did she see that here the stream had broadened to almost a kilometer.

  She reviewed the local geography as scanned by a satellite. Flowing westward, the river became wider still. Fifty kilometers hence its estuary was salt marshland. There it emptied into a channel that in turn led to an ocean.

  Evidently local topography had made it cut this gorge. Hadn’t that taken time on a geological scale? But the rock wasn’t wind-sculpted, merely littered with boulders where ledges and cracks offered resting places.

  Nor was the ground above richly forested, like upstream. A strip of thin, poor, rocky soil reached back some fifty meters from either verge. Tough-looking, deep-rooted little bushes stood sparsely, interspersed with lesser plants that she guessed were [14] evanescent opportunists. She saw just a few tiny animals scuttering between, though winged creatures continued plentiful. The camp was at the edge of the semi-desert, half surrounded by fairly large shrubs, trees behind it.

  One of countless puzzles. ... At the moment, she had too much else to think about. Surely in due course somebody would reason this out.

  She eased her pace. In spite of a noticeably denser atmosphere and higher partial pressure of oxygen, in spite of her being in athletic condition and having trained beforehand, a surface gravity fifteen percent above Earth normal added nine kilos to her weight.

  Karl slowed to match her. By his standards, he was taking baby steps. Carrying nearly all their field equipment on his back, as well as his own mass, he seemed to move effortlessly.

  With him at her side she’d scarcely need the pistol at her hip. Not that she supposed the pair ahead of her had violent intentions. Still, however mild-mannered, Karl was bound to be a trifle overawing. Looming a meter above her, he was not wholly unlike a, well, a tyrannosaur. Longer arms, yes, and four-fingered hands; short muzzle, big green eyes, tall ears, gray skin; the taloned feet bare rather than booted. His many-pocketed coverall resembled hers, though open in back for a formidable tail.

  The air had cooled, while keeping a medley of odors, sweet, pungent, acid, sulfury. Wind boomed from the west, where clouds lifted massive. Their hollows were dark blue, their heights amber, against a sky almost purple. The sun brooded overhead, two and a fourth times the size of Sol seen from Earth. To the human eye, an M0 dwarf is pale yellow, and you can look straight at it for a moment without being blinded. To Lissa, the summer light recalled autumn at home.

  And the noontide would last and last. This planet orbited close in, with a two-thirds rotational lock. A hundred and twenty-three of Earth’s days would pass before noon came back.

  [15] She thrust her stray thoughts aside. The man and his partner had reached a wooden dock that a robot—they must have one or two along—had doubtless constructed, and were debarking. In a few minutes she’d meet them.

  II

  THE spot was about halfway between. All four halted. For an instant only the wind spoke.

  After an appraising look, the man apparently decided that Anglay was their likeliest common language. “Greeting, my lady, sir.” She didn’t recognize his accent. The voice was resonant, though she guessed from it that he couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles. “Welcome. Maybe.” He added the last word with a grin. She suspected it was not entirely in jest.

  “Thank you,” she replied. Her glance searched him. He stood tall in his rough garb, thick-shouldered, slender-hipped. The head was round, the face blunt, blue-eyed, weatherbeaten; a stubble of beard showed he hadn’t bothered lately with depilatory. The light-brown hair grew a bit thin on top but peeked abundantly from under collar and sleeves. By no means unattractive, she thought. “I’m Lissa Davysdaughter Windholm of Asborg—Sunniva III. My companion’s name for human purposes is Karl.”

  “What language does he prefer? I know a few.”

  “His own. The dominant one on Gargantua,” as humans called the mother planet of that race, a back formation from their name for the race itself. “He understands us quite well.”

  “We’d like to understand him, though, wouldn’t we?”

  “Shouldn’t my translator be set for that?”

  He laughed. “A touch, my lady! Well, I’m Torben Hebo. My partner is Dzesi, from her native world.”

  The other made a gesture involving her knife. “S-s-su alach.” She switched to Anglay. Her species could render human sounds fairly well, with hissing overtones and an underlying growl. “Peace [17] between us, Lissa Windholm and Karl Gargantuan.”

  “Peace in truth, Dzesi,” Karl answered through the device. “I request knowledge of your origins, that we may address you in seemly wise.”

  Lissa realized, startled, that he had some familiarity with Rikhans—must have had dealings, probably scientific. Fortunate! Her acquaintance was minimal, almost entirely from what she had learned in school and from occasional anecdotes. They were said to be innately proud and touchy.

  The anthropard’s eerily humanlike mouth made a smile, baring pointed reddish teeth. Otherwise the visage, with its slit-pupilled amber eyes, flat single-nostrilled nose, upstanding tufted ears, and long cilia, suggested a cat more than anything else. The body, nude except for orange-hued, black-spotted fur and a belt holding two pouches and the knife, was also not unlike Lissa’s, in a huge-chested, breastless, wasp-waisted fashion. The long legs brought the height to about the same as the man’s.

  “Yes-s,” she said. “I am of the Ulas Trek in Ghazu.”

  “In honor,” Karl responded.

  “Accepted and offered.”

  Lissa turned to Hebo. “But where are you from, sir, and what’s your allegiance?”

  He shrugged. “Everywhere, and to my friends.” With another laugh: “Hey, this is an unexpected pleasure. Welcome for sure, Lissa—and, uh, Karl, of course. Come on, we’re being rotten hosts, let’s get you settled down and have a drink for openers.”

  He was scanning her with imperfectly concealed lust. That was natural under the circumstances, even a compliment if he kept it under contro
l. She was not tall but full-bodied, supple, tawny of skin and high of cheekbones, short-nosed, heavy-lipped, stubborn-chinned, mahogany hair banged and bobbed. Her last rejuvenation having been eighteen years ago, time had thus far only laid a few laughter lines at the hazel eyes. And she always carried her biological age well, whatever it was at any given time.

  [18] “We thank you, but we must take your hospitality provisionally,” Karl said toward Dzesi.

  “Your warning satisfies,” the Rikhan told him.

  “For now, anyway,” said Hebo. Quickly: “We’ve got a lot to talk about. Plus that drink.”

  He led the way. Dzesi came well behind.

  Karl signed to Lissa that she should lower the volume of the translator before he explained: “Her ancestors seldom went about without a rearguard. To provide one was an amicable act. The feuds are now ended—or sublimated—but traditions endure. And, I believe, instincts. Ghazu is largely steppe. Its inhabitants are the only known beings who, nomadic, independently developed high technology.”

  Lissa nodded. What a diverse and wonderful universe she lived in!

  The habitation dome was clean, and neat where neatness counted. Hebo’s things showed a certain bachelor disarray. Dzesi’s things were few. The humans sat on folding chairs, the Rikhan on her haunches, the Gargantuan balanced on his tail. Hebo broke out a bottle of excellent whiskey for Lissa and himself, not diluting it much. Dzesi poured water from a gilt bottle into a decorated drinking horn and sipped ceremoniously, almost religiously. Karl had tea from his own canteen. Everybody knew how poisonous alcohol was to his kind.

  Hebo lifted his tumbler. “Here’s to friendship.”

  “Indeed.” No matter how much she enjoyed the dram she took, Lissa tautened. “I must say, though, you haven’t seemed eager for it.”

  “Business is business,” Hebo replied, unabashed. “Now that you’ve found us, let’s make the best of it.”

  “What’s your business, then, if you please?”

  “I might ask why you care. A whole planet should be plenty big enough for all, no?”