Rise of the Terran Empire Read online

  Rise of the Terran Empire

  by

  Poul Anderson

  Table of Contents

  RISE OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE

  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.

  "Introduction" copyright © 2009 by Hank Davis.

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

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3275-3

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First Baen printing, June 2009

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Anderson, Poul, 1926-2001.

  Rise of the Terran Empire / by Poul Anderson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3275-3 (trade pbk.)

  1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 3. Interplanetary voyages--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.N378R57 2009

  813'.54--dc22

  2009011712

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgements

  Mirkheim, copyright © 1977 by Poul Anderson; Berkley Putnam, 1977.

  Introduction to "Wingless," first published in The Earth Book of Stormgate, Berkley Putnam 1978; copyright © 1978 by Poul Anderson.

  "Wingless" © as "Wingless on Avalon," Children of Infinity, Roger Elwood, ed., Franklin Watts, 1973; copyright © 1973 by Franklin Watts, Inc.

  Introduction and Afterword to "Rescue on Avalon," first published in The Earth Book of Stormgate, Berkley Putnam 1978; copyright © 1978 by Poul Anderson.

  "Rescue on Avalon," copyright © 1973 by the Boy Scouts of America, Boy's Life, July, 1973.

  "The Star Plunderer" (including the Introduction), copyright © 1952 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.; Planet Stories, September, 1952.

  Introduction to "Sargasso of Lost Starships" copyright © 2009 by Hank Davis.

  "Sargasso of Lost Starships," copyright © 1951 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.: Planet Stories, January 1952.

  The People of the Wind, copyright © 1973 by Poul Anderson; Signet, 1973.

  BAEN BOOKS

  BY

  POUL ANDERSON

  The Van Rijn Method

  David Falkayn: Star Trader

  Rise of the Terran Empire

  Young Flandry (forthcoming)

  To Outlive Eternity and Other Stories

  Time Patrol

  Hokas! Pokas! (with Gordon R. Dickson)

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

  DESCENT INTO EMPIRE

  The third volume of the Technic Civilization saga is centered around a major faultline in the series' future history; "interesting times," as the famous Chinese curse phrases it. There is darkness, disaster, and tragedy. But there are also men and women fighting the darkness, enduring through tragedy, striving to bring light back to the human worlds.

  The series was written by Poul Anderson, after all . . .

  The Commonwealth was no utopia, but it had a measure of political freedom. The Polesotechnic League was no confederation of saints, but its members (for their own benefit, of course) were a counterforce to the power of the Confederation, insuring economic freedom.

  It couldn't last, of course. Sooner or later, the center cannot hold. The traders might have acted against their "colleagues" who were engaging in outright piracy and pillage—but they didn't, and doomed the Polesotechnic League. Nor did they act against those who sold starships and high-tech weapons to barbarian planets, thereby dooming the Confederation.

  That's the big picture. On a smaller scale, Mirkheim, the novel that leads off this volume, is a last hurrah for Nicholas Van Rijn, David Falkayn, Adzel, and Chee Lan. The old order is crumbling. As one of the Baburites says to David Falkayn during a tense situation, "You do not speak for the entire League. It no longer has a single voice."

  Yet Van Rijn and his trader team persevere. Quoth Adzel, "Oh, I regret nothing . . . Let us savor this final adventure of ours for what it is." They'll tell sad stories of the deaths of kings some other time, after the hurly-burley's done.

  Still, even though one danger is averted, the triumph is bittersweet, as the four go their separate ways, with Van Rijn musing (in his characteristic fractured Anglish), "I suppose will still be held solemn councils of the League for another century, till some Napoleon type without no sense of humor comes along and ends the farce."

  As it happened, the Napoleon type was named Manuel, and he built an empire that would protect beleaguered Terra—Earth—from those extraterrestrial barbarians with starships and high-tech weapons. Empires can accomplish great things . . . and they can also commit even more terrible atrocities, sometimes at the same time. For its own protection, if not for less compelling reasons, the rising Terran Empire began annexing formerly independent star systems, whether they wanted to join the club or not.

  And in the end, the Terran Empire contains the seeds of its own doom, a doom darker and more disastrous than was that of the smaller Commonwealth which it replaced. Its fall will be followed by the Long Night, which may engulf that sector of the Galaxy for thousands of years.

  Yet there are those who fight to delay that inevitable fall, and make plans to shorten the Long Night's duration. Chief among them is Dominic Flandry, one of science fiction's most popular and beloved figures. He'll step onstage in the next volume, if the unfailingly patient reader will forgive my getting ahead of the story.

  Once again, a word about the introductions to the stories. Poul Anderson did not, to my knowledge, do introductions to the two novels, but did introductions (and an afterword) to the two short stories set on Avalon when they appeared in The Earth Book of Stormgate. They were written as if by the Ythrian, Hloch of the Stormgate Choth. (For other details, see my introduction to The Van Rijn Method, the first volume in the Technic Civilization series.)

  As for the two novelettes, "The Star Plunderer" had an introduction by Anderson on its first appearance in print, in Planet Stories. And in the case of "The Sargasso of Lost Starships," also from that grand old Planet pulp and here appearing in book form for the first time, all the blame for that story's introduction is mine.

  "Sargasso" is pure-quill pulp writing, both in the style and in the plot, which is much unlike anything else in the Technic Civilization saga. I thought of doing an introduction exploring that aspect, and yielded to the temptation. (That was nowhere as strong a temptation as Valduma was for Donovan, but I'm obviously a lesser man than him.) I hope that Poul Anderson would not too severely disapprove of what I've done. And you don't have to read it.

  Finally, as with The Van Rijn Method, once again the e-book version of Rise of the Terran Empire has a bonus: another essay by Sandra Miesel, authority extraordinaire on the works of Poul Anderson. It will illuminate the intricacies of the novel The People of the Wind (contained herein) far more than I could ever do.

  —Hank Davis, 2009

  MIRKHEIM

  Prologue

  Y minus 500,000.

  Once there had been a great proud star, bright as a hundred Sols. Through four hundred million years its blue-white fire burned steadily, defiance of the darkness around and challenge to those other suns whose distant brilliances crowded the sky. Orbiting it afar was a companion worthy of its majesty, a planet whose mass equal
ed fifteen hundred Earths, redly aglow with the heat of its own contraction. There may have been lesser worlds and moons as well; we cannot now say. We simply know that the giant stars rarely have attendants, so this one was due to a curious ordainment of God, or destiny, or chance.

  The giants die young, as arrogantly as they have lived. A day came when the hydrogen fuel at the core was exhausted. Instead of swelling and reddening as a lesser sun would do in its old age, this fell in upon itself. Energies beyond imagination broke free; atoms crashed together to fuse in strange new elements; the star exploded. For a short while, in its fury, it shone well-nigh as radiant as its entire galaxy.

  No ordinary world could have endured the storm of incandescence which then swept outward. Something the size of Earth must have perished entirely, the very iron of its core made vapor. Even the huge companion lost most of its mass, hydrogen and helium bursting forth into endlessness. But this drank so much energy that the metallic heart of the globe was only turned molten. Across it seethed the matter cast out by the star in its death struggle.

  More of that matter escaped into space. For tens of millennia the wrecks of sun and planet whirled in the middle of a nebula which, seen from afar, glowed like faerie lacework. But it dissipated and lost itself across light-years; darkness moved inward. The remnant of the planet congealed, barely aglimmer where its alloys cast back the gleam from distant constellations.

  For half a million years, these ruins drifted alone through the deep.

  Y minus 28.

  The world men call Babur will never be a home to them. Leaving his spaceship, Benoni Strang grew violently aware of weight. Upon his bones lay half again the drag of the Hermes which had bred him or the Earth which had bred his race. Flesh strained against the burden of itself. The armor that kept him alive became a stone on either shoulder, either foot.

  Nevertheless, though he could have activated his impeller and flitted from the airlock, he chose to stride along the gangway to the ground, like an arriving king.

  At first he could barely see that beings awaited him. The sun Mogul was high in a murky purple heaven where red clouds roiled, and its radiance was more fierce than that of Maia or Sol; but it was tiny at its distance. Hoar soil gave back some light, as did an ice cliff a kilometer away and the liquid ammonia cataract toppling over its sheerness. Yet his vision did not reach to the horizon. He thought a grove of low trees with long black fronds stood at the edge of sight on his left, and that he could make out the glistening city he knew was to his right. However, this was as unsure as the greeting he would get. And every shape he discerned was so alien that when he glanced elsewhere he could not remember it. Here he must learn all over again how to use his eyes.

  A hydrogen-helium atmosphere turned shrill the boom of the falls, the thump of boots on gangway and afterward their scrunch across sod. By contrast, his breath within the helmet, the slugging of blood in his ears, came to him like bass drumbeats. Sweat dampened his skin and reeked in his nostrils. He hardly noticed. He was too exultant at having arrived.

  The blur before him gained form with each step he took, until it was a cluster of a dozen creatures. One of them moved to meet him. He cleared his throat and said awkwardly, through a speaker: "I am Benoni Strang. You wanted me to join you."

  The Baburite carried a vocalizer, which changed hums and mumbles into Anglic words. "We required that for your sake as well as ours. If you are to maintain close relationships and do research on us, as we on you, then you must often come to the surface and interact directly with us. This visit will test your ability."

  It had already been tested in the environmental chambers of the school that had trained him. Strang didn't say so. That might somehow give offense. Despite two decades of contact, trade which had culminated in exchanging spacecraft technology for heavy metals and a few other goods, humans knew little about Baburites. We're absolutely ignorant of how much they know about us, he recalled.

  "I thank you," he said. "You'll have to be patient with me, I'm afraid, but eventually I should be in a position to reward your efforts."

  "How?"

  "Why, by finding new areas where we can do business to our mutual benefit." Strang did not admit his superiors had scant expectation of that. He had barely gotten this assignment, mainly to give him a few years' practical experience, he a young xenologist whose education had concentrated on subjovian planets.

  He had uttered no hint of the ambition he nourished. The hour to do so would be when he had proof the scheme was possible—if it ever would be.

  "After our experience on Suleiman," the native said, "we question what we may gain from the Polesotechnic League."

  The flat artificial voice could convey none of the resentment. And did such an emotion lie behind it? Who could read the heart of a Baburite? It did not even have anything like a heart.

  "The Solar Spice & Liquors Company is not the whole League," Strang answered. "Mine is entirely different from it. They've nothing in common but membership, and membership means less than it used to."

  "This we will study," the being told him. "That is why we will cooperate with your scientific team. We mean to get as well as give knowledge, information we need before our civilization can claim a place by yours."

  The dream in Strang flared upward.

  Y minus 24.

  Both moons of Hermes were aloft, Caduceus rising small but nearly full, the broad sickle of Sandalion sinking westward. High in the dusk, a pair of wings caught light from the newly set sun and shone gold. A tilirra sang amidst the foliage of a millionleaf, which rustled to a low breeze. At the bottom of the canyon it had cut for itself, the Palomino River rang with its haste; but that sound reached the heights as a murmur.

  Sandra Tamarin and Peter Asmundsen came out of the mansion onto a terrace. Halting at the parapet, they looked down to where water gleamed through shadow, then around them to the forest which enclosed Windy Rim, and across to violet silhouettes of the Arcadian Hills. Their hands joined.

  She said at last, "I wish you had not to go."

  "Me too," he replied. "'Tis been a wonderful visit."

  "Are you positive you can't handle the matter from here? We have complete equipment, communication, computation, data retrieval, everything."

  "Ordinarily that would be fine. But in this case—well, my Traver employees do have legitimate grievances. In their place, belike I'd threaten a strike myself. If I can't avoid giving preferential promotions to Followers, at least I can try to hammer out a set of compensations for Travers, as might be extra vacations. Their leaders will be in more of a mood to compromise if I've taken the trouble to come meet them in person."

  "I suppose you're right. You have a sense for such things." She sighed. "I wish I did."

  He regarded her a while, and she him, before he said, "You do. More than you realize." Smiling: "You'd better—our probable next Grand Duchess."

  "Do you believe so in truth?" On the instant, the question they had been thrusting aside throughout this holiday was with them. "I did once, oh, yes. Now I'm not sure. That's why I've, well, retreated here to my parents' home. Too many people made plain what they think of me after seeing the consequence of my own damn foolishness."

  "Brake that nonsense," he said, perhaps more roughly than intended. "If your father had not those business interests that disqualify him, there'd be no doubt of his election. You're his daughter, the best possibility we own—equal to him, maybe better—and for precisely that reason, you're intelligent enough to know it. Are you telling me you've let a few prudes and snobs hurt you? Why, you should be bragging about Eric. Eventually your youngling will be the best Grand Duke Hermes ever had."

  Her eyes went from his toward the darkling wilderness. He could barely hear her: "If he can curb the devil that's in him from his father."

  Straightening, she met his gaze again and said aloud, "Oh, I've stopped being angry at Nick van Rijn. He was more honest with me, really, than I was with him or myself. And how could I re
gret having Eric? But of late—Pete, I'll admit to you, I wish Eric were legitimate. That his father were a man who could bide with us."

  "Something of the kind might be arranged," he blurted. And then his tongue locked, and they stood long mute, two big blond humans who searched each other's faces through a twilight that half blinded them. The breeze lulled, the tilirra chanted, the river laughed on its way to the sea.

  Y minus 18.

  A ship hunted through space until she found the extinct supernova. Captain David Falkayn beheld the circling planetary core and saw that it was good. But its aspect was so forbidding that he christened it Mirkheim.

  Soon afterward, he guided other ships there, with beings aboard who meant to wrest hope out of desolation. They knew the time granted them would be slight, so while they could they must labor hard and dare much.