Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Read online

  "Firstlin' Ivar! Where you been? What's gone on? Your mother's gnawed fear for you this whole past five-day."

  The heir to the house lurched by him. Beyond the gateway, the courtyard was crisscrossed with moon-shadows from towers, battlements, main keep, and lesser buildings. A hound, of the lean heavy-jawed Hesperian breed, was the only other life in sight. Its claws clicked on flagstones, unnaturally loud.

  Astaff pushed a button to close the door. For a time he squinted until he said slowly, "Better give me that rifle, Firstlin'. I know places where Terrans won't poke."

  "Me too," sighed from Ivar.

  "Didn't do you a lot o' good, stashed away till you were ready for—whatever you've done—hey?" Astaff held out his hand.

  "Trouble I'm in, it makes no difference if they catch me with this." Ivar took hold of the firearm. "Except I'd make them pay for me."

  Something kindled in the old man. He, like his fathers before him, had served the Firstmen of Ilion for a lifetime. Nevertheless, or else for that same reason, pain was in his tone. "Why'd you not ask me for help?"

  "You'd have talked me out of it," Ivar said. "You'd have been right," he added.

  "What did you try?"

  "Ambushin' local patrol. To start stockpilin' weapons. I don't know how many of us escaped. Probably most didn't."

  Astaff regarded him.

  Ivar Frederiksen was tall, 185 centimeters, slender save for wide shoulders and the Aenean depth of chest. Exhaustion weighted down his normal agility and hoarsened the tenor voice. Snub-nosed, square-jawed, freckled, his face looked still younger than it was; no noticeable beard had grown during the past hours. His hair, cut short at nape and ears in the nord manner, was yellow, seldom free of a cowlick or a stray lock across the forehead. Beneath dark brows, his eyes were large and green. Under his jacket he wore the high-collared shirt, pouched belt, heavy-bladed sheath knife, thick trousers tucked into half-boots, of ordinary outdoor dress. There was, in truth, little to mark him off from any other upper-class lad of his planet.

  That little was enough.

  "What caveheads you were," the sergeant said at last.

  A twitch of anger: "We should sit clay-soft for Terrans to mold, fire, and use however they see fit?"

  "Well," Astaff replied, "I would've planned my strike better, and drilled longer beforetime."

  He took Ivar by the elbow. "You're spent like a cartridge," he said. "Go to my quarters. You remember where I bunk, no? Thank Lord, my wife's off visitin' our daughter's family. Grab shower, food, sleep. I've sentry-go till oh-five-hundred. Can't call substitute without drawin' questions; but nobody'll snuff at you."

  Ivar blinked. "What do you mean? My own rooms—"

  "Yah!" Astaff snorted. "Go on. Rouse your mother, your kid sister. Get 'em involved. Sure. They'll be interrogated, you know, soon's Impies've found you were in that broil. They'll be narco-quizzed, or even 'probed, if any reason develops to think they got clue to your whereabouts. That what you want? Okay. Go bid 'em fond farewell."

  Ivar took a backward step, lifted his hands in appeal. "No. I, I, I never thought—"

  "Right."

  "Of course I'll—What do you have in mind?" Ivar asked humbly.

  "Get you off before Impies arrive. Good thing your dad's been whole while in Nova Roma; clear-cut innocent, and got influence to protect family if Terrans find no sign you were ever here after fight. Hey? You'll leave soon. Wear servant's livery I'll filch for you, snoutmask like you're sneezewort allergic, weapon under cloak. Walk like you got hurry-up errand. This is big household; nobody ought to notice you especially. I'll've found some yeoman who'll take you in, Sam Hedin, Frank Vance, whoever, loyal and livin' offside. You go there."

  "And then?"

  Astaff shrugged. "Who knows? When zoosny's died down, I'll slip your folks word you're alive and loose. Maybe later your dad can wangle pardon for you. But if Terrans catch you while their dead are fresh—son, they'll make example. I know Empire. Traveled through it more than once with Admiral McCormac." As he spoke the name, he saluted. The average Imperial agent who saw would have arrested him on the spot.

  Ivar swallowed and stammered, "I . . . I can't thank—"

  "You're next Firstman of Ilion," the sergeant snapped. "Maybe last hope we got, this side of Elders returnin'. Now, before somebody comes, haul your butt out of here—and don't forget the rest of you!"

  3

  Chunderban Desai's previous assignment had been to the delegation which negotiated an end of the Jihannath crisis. That wasn't the change of pace in his career which it seemed. His Majesty's administrators must forever be dickering, compromising, feeling their way, balancing conflicts of individuals, organizations, societies, races, sentient species. The need for skill—quickly to grasp facts, comprehend a situation, brazen out a bluff when in spite of everything the unknown erupted into one's calculations—was greatest at the intermediate level of bureaucracy which he had reached. A resident might deal with a single culture, and have no more to do than keep an eye on affairs. A sector governor oversaw such vastness that to him it became a set of abstractions. But the various ranks of commissioner were expected to handle personally large and difficult territories.

  Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia. Thus he was a natural choice for the special diplomatic team. In his quiet style, he backstopped the head of it, Lord Advisor Chardon, so well that afterward he received a raise in grade, and was appointed High Commissioner of the Virgilian System, at the opposite end of the Empire.

  But this was due to an equally natural association of ideas. The mutiny in Sector Alpha Crucis had been possible because most of the Navy was tied up around Jihannath, where full-scale war looked far too likely. After Terra nevertheless, brilliantly, put the rebels down, Merseia announced that its wish all along had been to avoid a major clash and it was prepared to bargain.

  When presently the Policy Board looked about for able people to reconstruct Sector Alpha Crucis, Lord Chardon recommended Desai with an enthusiasm that got him put in charge of Virgil, whose human-colonized planet Aeneas had been the spearhead of the revolt.

  Perhaps that was why Desai often harked back to the Merseians, however remote from him they seemed these days.

  In a rare moment of idleness, while he waited in his Nova Roma office for the next visitor, he remembered his final conversation with Uldwyr.

  They had played corresponding roles on behalf of their respective sovereigns, and in a wry way had become friends. When the protocol had, at weary last, been drawn, the two of them supplemented the dull official celebration with a dinner of their own.

  Desai recalled their private room in a restaurant. The wall animations were poor; but a place which catered to a variety of sophonts couldn't be expected to understand everybody's art, and the meal was an inspired combination of human and Merseian dishes.

  "Have a refill," Uldwyr invited, and raised a crock of his people's pungent ale.

  "No, thank you," Desai said. "I prefer tea. That dessert filled me to the scuppers."

  "The what?—Never mind, I seize the idea, if not the idiom." Though each was fluent in the other's principal language, and their vocal organs were not very different, it was easiest for Desai to speak Anglic and Uldwyr Eriau. "You've tucked in plenty of food, for certain."

  "My particular vice, I fear," Desai smiled. "Besides, more alcohol would muddle me. I haven't your mass to assimilate it."

  "What matter if you get drunk? I plan to. Our job is done." And then Uldwyr added: "For now."

  Shocked, Desai stared across the table.

  Uldwyr gave him back a quizzical glance. The Merseian's face was almost human, if one overlooked thick bones and countless details of the flesh. But his finely scaled green skin had no hair whatsoever, he lacked earflaps, a low serration ran from the top of his skull, down his back to the end of the crocodilian tail which counterbalanced his big, forward-lean
ing body. Arms and hands were, again, nearly manlike; legs and clawed splay feet could have belonged to a biped dinosaur. He wore black, silver-trimmed military tunic and trousers, colorful emblems of rank and of the Vach Hallen into which he was born. A blaster hung on his hip.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  "Oh . . . nothing." In Desai's mind went: He didn't mean it hostilely—hostilely to me as a person—his remark. He, his whole civilization, minces words less small than we do. Struggle against Terra is just a fact. The Roidhunate will compromise disputes when expediency dictates, but never the principle that eventually the Empire must be destroyed. Because we—old, sated, desirous only of maintaining a peace which lets us pursue our pleasures—we stand in the way of their ambitions for the Race. Lest the balance of power be upset, we block them, we thwart them, wherever we can; and they seek to undermine us, grind us down, wear us out. But this is nothing personal. I am Uldwyr's honorable enemy, therefore his friend. By giving him opposition, I give meaning to his life.

  The other divined his thoughts and uttered the harsh Merseian chuckle. "If you want to pretend tonight that matters have been settled for aye, do. I'd really rather we both got drunk and traded war songs."

  "I am not a man of war," Desai said.

  Beneath a shelf of brow ridge, Uldwyr's eyelids expressed skepticism while his mouth grinned. "You mean you don't like physical violence. It was quite an effective war you waged at the conference table."

  He swigged from his tankard. Desai saw that he was already a little tipsy. "I imagine the next phase will also be quiet," he went on. "Ungloved force hasn't worked too well lately. Starkad, Jihannath—no, I'd look for us to try something more crafty and long-range. Which ought to suit your Empire, khraich? You've made a good thing for your Naval Intelligence out of the joint commission on Talwin." Desai, who knew that, kept silence. "Maybe our turn is coming."

  Hating his duty, Desai asked in his most casual voice, "Where?"

  "Who knows?" Uldwyr gestured the equivalent of a shrug. "I have no doubt, and neither do you, we've a swarm of agents in Sector Alpha Crucis, for instance. Besides the recent insurrection, it's close to the Domain of Ythri, which has enjoyed better relations with us than with you—" His hand chopped the air. "No, I'm distressing you, am I not? And with what can only be guesswork. Apologies. See here, if you don't care for more ale, why not arthberry brandy? I guarantee a first-class drunk and—You may suppose you're a peaceful fellow, Chunderban, but I know an atom or two about your people, your specific people, I mean. What's that old, old book I've heard you mention and quote from? Rixway?"

  "Rig-Veda," Desai told him.

  "You said it includes war chants. Do you know any well enough to put into Anglic? There's a computer terminal." He pointed to a corner. "You can patch right into our main translator, now that official business is over. I'd like to hear a bit of your special tradition, Chunderban. So many traditions, works, mysteries—so tiny a lifespan to taste them—"

  It became a memorable evening.

  Restless, Desai stirred in his chair.

  He was a short man with a dark-brown moon face and a paunch. At fifty-five standard years of age, his hair remained black but had receded from the top of his head. The full lips were usually curved slightly upward, which joined the liquid eyes to give him a wistful look. As was his custom, today he wore plain, loosely fitted white shirt and trousers, on his feet slippers a size large for comfort.

  Save for the communication and data-retrieval consoles that occupied one wall, his office was similarly unpretentious. It did have a spectacular holograph, a view of Mount Gandhi on his home planet, Ramanujan. But otherwise the pictures were of his wife, their seven children, the families of those four who were grown and settled on as many different globes. A bookshelf held codices as well as reels; some were much-used reference works, the rest for refreshment, poetry, history, essays, most of their authors centuries dust. His desk was less neat than his person.

  I shouldn't go taking vacations in the past, he thought. God knows the present needs more of me than I have to give.

  Or does it? Spare me the ultimate madness of ever considering myself indispensable.

  Well, but somebody must man this post. He happens to be me.

  Must somebody? How much really occurs because of me, how much in spite of or regardless of? How much, and what, should occur? God! I dared accept the job of ruling, remaking an entire world—when I knew nothing more about it than its name, and that simply because it was the planet of Hugh McCormac, the man who would be Emperor. After two years, what else have I learned?

  Ordinarily he could sit quiet, but the Hesperian episode had been too shocking, less in itself than in its implications. Whatever they were. How could he plan against the effect on these people, once the news got out, when he, the foreigner, had no intuition of what that effect might be?

  He put a cigarette into a long, elaborately carved holder of land-whale ivory. (He thought it was in atrocious taste, but it had been given him for a birthday present by a ten-year-old daughter who died soon afterward.) The tobacco was an expensive self-indulgence, grown on Esperance, the closest thing to Terran he could obtain hereabouts while shipping remained sparse.

  The smoke-bite didn't soothe him. He jumped up and prowled. He hadn't yet adapted so fully to the low gravity of Aeneas, 63 percent standard, that he didn't consciously enjoy movement. The drawback was the dismal exercises he must go through each morning, if he didn't want to turn completely into lard. Unfair, that the Aeneans tended to be such excellent physical specimens without effort. No, not really unfair. On this niggard sphere, few could afford a large panoply of machines; even today, more travel was on foot or animal back than in vehicles, more work done by hand than by automatons or cybernets. Also, in earlier periods—the initial colonization, the Troubles, the slow climb back from chaos—death had winnowed the unfit out of their bloodlines.

  Desai halted at the north wall, activated its transparency, and gazed forth across Nova Roma.

  Though itself two hundred Terran years old, Imperial House jutted awkwardly from the middle of a city founded seven centuries ago. Most buildings in this district were at least half that age, and architecture had varied little through time. In a climate where it seldom rained and never snowed; where the enemies were drought, cold, hurricane winds, drifting dust, scouring sand; where water for bricks and concrete, forests for timber, organics for synthesis were rare and precious, one quarried the stone which Aeneas did have in abundance, and used its colors and textures.

  The typical structure was a block, two or three stories tall, topped by a flat deck which was half garden—the view from above made a charming motley—and half solar-energy collector. Narrow windows carried shutters ornamented with brass or iron arabesques; the heavy doors were of similar appearance. In most cases, the gray ashlars bore a veneer of carefully chosen and integrated slabs, marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite, materials more exotic than that; and often there were carvings besides, friezes, armorial bearings, grotesques; and erosion had mellowed it all, to make the old part of town one subtle harmony. The wealthier homes, shops, and offices surrounded cloister courts, vitryl-roofed to conserve heat and water, where statues and plants stood among fishponds and fountains.

  The streets were cramped and twisted, riddled with alleys, continually opening on small irrational plazas. Traffic was thin, mainly pedestrian, otherwise groundcars, trucks, and countryfolk on soft-gaited Aenean horses or six-legged green stathas (likewise foreign, though Desai couldn't offhand remember where they had originated). A capital city—population here a third of a million, much the largest—would inevitably hurt more and recover slower from a war than its hinterland.

  He lifted his eyes to look onward. Being to south, the University wasn't visible through this wall. What he saw was the broad bright sweep of the River Flone, and ancient high-arched bridges across it; beyond, the Julian Canal, its tributaries, verdant parks along them, barges and plea
sure boats upon their surfaces; farther still, the intricacy of many lesser but newer canals, the upthrust of modern buildings in garish colors, a tinge of industrial haze—the Web.

  However petty by Terran standards, he thought, that youngest section was the seedbed of his hopes: in the manufacturing, mercantile, and managerial classes which had arisen during the past few generations, whose interests lay less with the scholars and squirearchs than with the Imperium and its Pax.

  Or can I call on them? he wondered. I've been doing it; but how reliable are they?

  A single planet is too big for single me to understand.

  Right and left he spied the edge of wilderness. Life lay emerald on either side of the Flone, where it ran majestically down from the north polar cap. He could see hamlets, manors, water traffic; he knew that the banks were croplands and pasture. But the belt was only a few kilometers wide.

  Elsewhere reared worn yellow cliffs, black basalt ridges, ocherous dunes, on and on beneath a sky almost purple. Shadows were sharper-edged than on Terra or Ramanujan, for the sun was half again as far away, its disc shrunken. He knew that now, in summer at a middle latitude, the air was chill; he observed on the tossing tendrils of a rahab tree in a roof garden how strongly the wind blew. Come sunset, temperatures would plunge below freezing. And yet Virgil was brighter than Sol, an F7; one could not look near it without heavy eye protection, and Desai marveled that light-skinned humans had ever settled in lands this cruelly irradiated.

  Well, planets where unarmored men could live at all were none too common; and there had been the lure of Dido. In the beginning, this was a scientific base, nothing else. No, the second beginning, ages after the unknown builders of what stood in unknowable ruins. . . .

  A world, a history like that; and I am supposed to tame them?