Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Page 13

  "Fact three. Meanwhile assorted immigrants were tricklin' in, lookin' for refuge or new start or whatever. They were ethnically different. Haughty nords used their labor but made no effort to integrate them. Piecewise, they found niches for themselves, and so drifted away from dominant civilization. Hence tinerans, Riverfolk, Orcans, Highlanders, et cetera. I suspect they're more influential, sociologically, than city dwellers or rural gentry care to believe."

  Jowett halted and poured himself a cup of the tea which Desai had ordered brought in. He looked as if he would have preferred whiskey.

  "Your account does interest me, as making clear how an intelligent Aenean analyzes the history of his world," Desai said. "But what has it to do with my immediate problem?"

  "A number of things, Commissioner, if I'm not mistaken," Jowett answered. "To begin, it emphasizes how essentially cut off persons like me are from . . . well, if not mainstream, then several mainstreams of this planet's life.

  "Oh, yes, we have our representatives in tricameral legislature. But we—I mean our new, Imperium-oriented class of businessmen and their employees—we're minor part of Townfolk. Rest belong to age-old guilds and similar corporate bodies, which most times feel closer to Landfolk and University than to us. Subcultures might perhaps ally with us, but aren't represented; property qualification for franchise, you know. And . . . prior to this occupation, Firstman of Ilion was, automatically, Speaker of all three Houses. In effect, global President. His second was, and is, Chancellor of University, his third elected by Townfolk delegates. Since you have—wisely, I think—not dissolved Parliament, merely declared yourself supreme authority—this same configuration works on.

  "I? I'm nothin' but delegate from Townfolk, from one single faction among them at that. I am not privy to councils of Frederiksens and their friends."

  "Just the same, you can inform me, correct me where I'm wrong," Desai insisted. "Now let me recite the obvious for a while. My impressions may turn out to be false.

  "The Firstman of Ilion is primus inter pares because Ilion is the most important region and Hesperia its richest area. True?"

  "Originally," Jowett said. "Production and population have shifted. However, Aeneans are traditionalists."

  "What horrible bad luck in the inheritance of that title—for everybody," Desai said. And, seated alone, he remembered his thoughts.

  Hugh McCormac was a career Navy officer, who had risen to Fleet Admiral when his elder brother died childless in an accident and thus made him Firstman. That wouldn't have mattered, except for His Majesty (one dare not speculate why, aloud) appointing that creature Snelund the Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis; and Snelund's excesses finally striking McCormac so hard that he raised a rebel banner and planet after planet hailed him Emperor.

  Well, Snelund is dead, McCormac is fled, and we are trying to reclaim the ruin they left. But the seeds they sowed still sprout strange growths.

  McCormac's wife was (is?) the sister of Edward Frederiksen, who for lack of closer kin has thereby succeeded to the Firstmanship of Ilion. Edward himself is a mild, professorial type. I could bless his presence—except for the damned traditions. His own wife is a cousin of McCormac. (Curse the way those high families intermarry! It may make for better stock, a thousand years hence; but what about us who must cope meanwhile?) The Frederiksens themselves are old-established University leaders. Why, the single human settlement on Dido is named after their main ancestor.

  Everybody on this resentful globe discounts Edward Frederiksen: but not what he symbolizes. Soon everybody will know what Ivar Frederiksen has done.

  Potentially, he is their exiled prince, their liberator, their Anointed. Siva, have mercy.

  "As I understand it," the image of Jowett said, "the boy raised gang of hotheads without his parents' knowledge. He's only eleven and a half, after all—uh, that's twenty years Terran, right? Their idea was to take to wilderness and be guerrillas until . . . what? Terra gave up? Ythri intervened, and took Aeneas under its wing like Avalon? It strikes me as pathetically romantic."

  "Sometimes romantics do overcome realists," Desai said. "The consequences are always disastrous."

  "Well, in this case, attempt failed. His associates who got caught identified their leader under hypnoprobe. Don't bother denyin'; of course your interrogators used hypnoprobes. Ivar's disappeared, but shouldn't be impossible to track down. What do you need my advice about?"

  "The wisdom of chasing him in the first place," Desai said wearily.

  "Oh. Positive. You dare not let him run loose. I do know him slightly. He has chance of becomin' kind of prophet, to people who're waitin' for exactly that."

  "My impression too. But how should we go after him? How make the arrest? What kind of trial and penalty? How publicized? We can't create a martyr. Neither can we let a rebel, responsible for the deaths and injuries of Imperial personnel—and Aeneans, remember, Aeneans—we can't let him go scot-free. I don't know what to do," Desai nearly groaned. "Help me, Jowett. You don't want your planet ripped apart, do you?"

  —He snapped off the playback. He had gotten nothing from it. Nor would he from the rest, which consisted of what-ifs and maybes. The only absolute was that Ivar Frederiksen must be hunted down fast.

  Should I refer the problem of what to do after we catch him to Llynathawr, or directly to Terra? I have the right.

  The legal right. No more. What do they know there?

  Night had fallen. The room was altogether black, save for its glowboards and a shifty patch of moonlight which hurried Creusa cast through the still-active transparency. Desai got up, felt his way there, looked outward.

  Beneath stars, moons, Milky Way, three sister planets, Nova Roma had gone elven. The houses were radiance and shadow, the streets dappled darkness, the river and canals mercury. Afar in the desert, a dust storm went like a ghost. Wind keened; Desai, in his warmed cubicle, shivered to think how its chill must cut.

  His vision sought the brilliances overhead. Too many suns, too many.

  He'd be sending a report Home by the next courier boat. (Home! He had visited Terra just once. When he stole a few hours from work to walk among relics, they proved curiously disappointing. Multisense tapes didn't include crowded airbuses, arrogant guides, tourist shops, or aching feet.) Such vessels traveled at close to the top hyperspeed: a pair of weeks between here and Sol. (But that was 200 light-years, a radius which swept over four million suns.) He could include a request for policy guidelines.

  But half a month could stretch out, when he faced possible turmoil or, worse, terrorism. And then his petition must be processed, discussed, annotated, supplemented, passed from committee to committee, referred through layers of executive officialdom for decision; and the return message would take its own days to arrive, and probably need to be disputed on many points when it did—No, those occasional directives from Llynathawr were bad enough.

  He, Chunderban Desai, stood alone to act.

  Of course, he was required to report everything significant: which certainly included the Frederiksen affair. If nothing else, Terra was the data bank, as complete as flesh and atomistics could achieve.

  In which case . . . why not insert a query about that Aycharaych?

  Well, why?

  I don't know, I don't know. He seems thoroughly legitimate; and he borrowed my Tagore. . . . No, I will ask for a complete information scan at Terra. Though I'll have to invent a plausible reason for it, when Muratori's approved his proposal. We bureaucrats aren't supposed to have hunches. Especially not when, in fact, I like Aycharaych as much as any nonhuman I've ever met. Far more than many of my fellow men.

  Dangerously more?

  4

  The Hedin Freehold lay well east of Windhome, though close enough to the edge of Ilion that westerlies brought moisture off the canals, marshes, and salt lakes of the Antonine Seabed—actual rain two or three times a year. While not passing through the property, the Wildfoss helped maintain a water table that supplied a few wells. Thus
the family carried on agriculture, besides ranching a larger area.

  Generation by generation, their staff had become more like kinfolk than hirelings: kinfolk who looked to them for leadership but spoke their own minds and often saw a child married to a son or daughter of the house. In short, they stood in a relationship to their employers quite similar to that in which the Hedins, and other Hesperian yeomen, stood to Windhome.

  The steading was considerable. A dozen cottages flanked the manse. Behind, barns, sheds, and workshops surrounded three sides of a paved courtyard. Except for size, at first glance the buildings seemed much alike, whitewashed rammed earth, their blockiness softened by erosion. Then one looked closer at the stone or glass mosaics which decorated them. Trees made a windbreak about the settlement: native delphi and rahab, Terran oak and acacia, Llynathawrian rasmin, Ythrian hammerbranch. Flowerbeds held only exotic species, painstakingly cultivated, eked out with rocks and gravel. True blossoms had never evolved on Aeneas, though a few kinds of leaf or stalk had bright hues.

  It generally bustled here, overseers, housekeepers, smiths, masons, mechanics, hands come in from fields or range, children, dogs, horses, stathas, hawks, farm machinery, ground and air vehicles, talk, shouting, laughter, anger, tears, song, a clatter of feet and a whiff of beasts or smoke. Ivar ached to join in. His wait in the storeloft became an entombment.

  Through a crack in the shutters he could look down at the daytime surging. His first night coincided with a birthday party for the oldest tenant. Not only the main house was full of glow, but floodlights illuminated the yard for the leaping, stamping dances of Ilion, to music whooped forth by a sonor, while flagons went from mouth to mouth. The next night had been moonlight and a pair of young sweethearts. Ivar did not watch them after he realized what they were; he had been taught to consider privacy among the rights no decent person would violate. Instead, he threshed about in his sleeping bag, desert-thirsty with memories of Tatiana Thane and—still more, he discovered in shame—certain others.

  On the third night, as erstwhile, he roused to the cautious unlocking of the door. Sam Hedin brought him his food and water when nobody else was awake. He sat up. A pad protected him from the floor, but as his torso emerged from the sack, chill smote through his garments. He hardly noticed. The body of an Aenean perforce learned how to make efficient use of the shivering reflex. The dark oppressed him, however, and the smell of dust.

  A flashbeam picked forth glimpses of seldom-used gear, boxes and loaded shelves. "Hs-s-s," went a whisper. "Get ready to travel. Fast."

  "What?"

  "Fast, I said. I'll explain when we're a-road."

  Ivar scrambled to his feet, out of his nightsuit and into the clothes he wore when he arrived. The latter were begrimed and blood-spotted, but the parched air had sucked away stinks as it did for the slop jar. The other garment he tucked into a bedroll he slung on his back, together with his rifle. Hedin gave him a packet of sandwiches to stuff in his pouchbelt, a filled canteen to hang opposite his knife—well insulated against freezing—and guidance downstairs.

  Though the man's manner was grim, eagerness leaped in Ivar. Regardless of the cause, his imprisonment was at an end.

  Outside lay windless quiet, so deep that it was as if he could hear the planet creak from the cold. Both moons were up to whiten stone and sand, make treetops into glaciers above caverns, strike sparkles from rime. Larger but remoter Lavinia, rising over eastern hills, showed about half her ever-familiar face. Creusa, hurtling toward her, seemed bigger because of being near the full, and glittered as her spin threw light off crystal jaggedness. The Milky Way was a frozen cascade from horizon to horizon. Of fellow planets, Anchises remained aloft, lambent yellow. Among the uncountable stars, Alpha and Beta Crucis burned bright enough to join the moons in casting shadows.

  A pair of stathas stood tethered, long necks and snouted heads silhouetted athwart the house. We must have some ways to go, Ivar thought, sacrificin' horse-speed in pinch for endurance over long dry stretch. But then why not car? He mounted. Despite the frigidity, he caught a scent of his beast, not unlike new-mown hay, before he adjusted hood and nightmask.

  Sam Hedin led him onto the inland road, shortly afterward to a dirt track which angled off southerly through broken ground where starkwood bush and sword trava grew sparse. Dust puffed from the plop-plop of triple pads. Six legs gave a lulling rhythm. Before long the steading was lost to sight, the men rode by themselves under heaven. Afar, a catavale yowled.

  Ivar cleared his throat. "Ah-um! Where're we bound, Yeoman Hedin?"

  Vapor smoked from breath slot. "Best hidin' place for you I could think of quick, Firstlin'. Maybe none too good."

  Fear jabbed. "What's happened?"

  "Vid word went around this day, garth to garth," Hedin said. He was a stout man in his later middle years. "Impies out everywhere in Hesperia, ransackin' after you. Reward offered; and anybody who looks as if he or she might know somethin' gets quick narcoquiz. At rate they're workin', they'll reach my place before noon." He paused. "That's why I kept you tucked away, so nobody except me would know you were there. But not much use against biodetectors. I invented business which'll keep me from home several days, rode off with remount—plausible, considerin' power shortage—and slipped back after dark to fetch you." Another pause. "They have aircars aprowl, too. Motor vehicle could easily get spotted and overtaken. That's reason why we use stathas, and no heatin' units for our clothes."

  Ivar glanced aloft, as if to see a metal teardrop pounce. An ula flapped by. Pride struggled with panic: "They want me mighty badly, huh?"

  "Well, you're Firstlin' of Ilion."

  Honesty awoke. Ivar bit his lip. "I . . . I'm no serious menace. I bungled my leadership. No doubt I was idiot to try."

  "I don't know enough to gauge," Hedin replied judiciously. "Just that Feo Astaff asked if I could coalsack you from Terrans, because you and friends had had fight with marines. Since, you and I've gotten no proper chance to talk. I could just sneak you your rations at night, not dare linger. Nor have newscasts said more than there was unsuccessful assault on patrol. Never mentioned your name, though I suppose after this search they'll have to."

  The mask muffled his features, but not the eyes he turned to his companion. "Want to tell me now?" he asked.

  "W-well, I—"

  "No secrets, mind. I'm pretty sure I've covered our spoor and won't be suspected, interrogated. Still, what can we rely on altogether?"

  Ivar slumped. "I've nothin' important to hide, except foolishness. Yes, I'd like to tell you, Yeoman."

  The story stumbled forth, for Hedin to join to what he already knew about his companion.

  Edward Frederiksen had long been engaged in zoological research on Dido when he married Lisbet Borglund. She was of old University stock like him; they met when he came back to deliver a series of lectures. She followed him to the neighbor world. But even in Port Frederiksen, the heat and wetness of the thick air were too much for her.

  She recovered when they returned to Aeneas, and bore her husband Ivar and Gerda. They lived in a modest home outside Nova Roma; both taught, and he found adequate if unspectacular subjects for original study. His son often came along on field trips. The boy's ambitions presently focused on planetology. Belike the austere comeliness of desert, steppe, hills, and dry ocean floors brought that about—besides the hope of exploring among those stars which glittered through their nights.

  Hugh McCormac being their uncle by his second marriage, the children spent frequent vacations at Windhome. When the Fleet Admiral was on hand, it became like visiting a hero of the early days, an affable one, say Brian McCormac who cast out the nonhuman invaders and whose statue stood ever afterward on a high pillar near the main campus of the University.

  Aeneas had circled Virgil eight times since Ivar's birth, when Aaron Snelund became Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis. It circled twice more—three and a half Terran years—before the eruption. At first the developed worlds felt nothi
ng worse than heightened taxes, for which they got semi-plausible explanations. (Given the size of the Empire, its ministers must necessarily have broad powers.) Then they got the venal appointees. Then they began to hear what had been going on among societies less able to resist and complain. Then they realized that their own petitions were being shunted aside. Then the arrests and confiscations for "treason" started. Then the secret police were everywhere, while mercenaries and officials freely committed outrages upon individuals. Then it became plain that Snelund was not an ordinary corrupt administrator, skimming off some cream for himself, but a favorite of the Emperor, laying grandiose political foundations.

  All this came piecemeal, and folk were slow to believe. For most of them, life proceeded about as usual. If times were a bit hard, well, they would outlast it, and meanwhile they had work to do, households and communities to maintain, interests to pursue, pleasures to seek, love to make, errands to run, friends to invite, unfriends to snub, plans to consider, details, details, details like sand in an hourglass. Ivar did not enroll at the University, since it educated its hereditary members from infancy, but he began to specialize in his studies and to have off-planet classmates. Intellectual excitement outshouted indignation.

  Then Kathryn McCormac, his father's sister, was taken away to Snelund's palace; and her husband was arrested, was rescued, and led the mutiny.

  Ivar caught fire, like most Aenean youth. His military training, hitherto incidental, became nearly the whole. But he never got off the planet, and his drills ended when Imperial warcraft hove into the skies.