The Game Of Empire Read online

  "Wait, wait." Diana frowned into the shadows. "My education's been catch-as-catch-can, you realize, but—M-m, yes. Remnant walls and such. Rumors that the Chereionites built them once, whoever the Chereionites are or were. But I thought—um, um—yes, a spaceman from Aeneas told me about a lot of such sites on his planet. Except Aeneas is small, dry, thin-aired. He figured the Old Shen—that was his name for them—they must have originated on a planet of that type, and favored the same kind for colonization."

  "Not necessarily. I venture to think that that is simply the kind where remnants are best preserved. The materials were as durable as the structures seem to have been beautiful. But everything in our cosmos is mortal. On airless globes, micrometeoroids would have worn them down. On planets with thick atmospheres, weather would do the same, while geological process wrought their own destructions. However, sometimes ruins have endured on terrestroid worlds, fossilized, so to speak. For example, a volcanic ashfall or a mudslide which later petrified has covered them. Something like this happened in the territory now covered by the Ascetic Hills of Woden. Since, the blanketing soil and rock have been gnawed away by the elements, revealing these wonders."

  Axor sagged out of his excitement. "But you know of nothing anywhere in the Patrician System?" he finished dully.

  Diana thought fast. "I didn't say that. Look, Imhotep is a superterrestrial planet, more than a third again the surface area of Daedalus—or Terra—not much less than that next to Woden, I'll bet. And even after centuries, it's not well mapped or anything. This was just a lonely scientific outpost till the Starkadian resettlement. Tigeries, explorin' their new lands—yes, they tell stories about things they've seen and can't account for—But I'd have to go and ask for details, and then we'd prob'ly have to engage a watership to ferry us, if some yarn sounded promisin'."

  Axor had recovered his spirits. "Moreover, this system contains other planets, plus their larger moons," he said. "I came here first merely because Imhotep was the destination of the tramp freighter on which I could get passage. The colonized planet sunward, Daedalus?"

  "Maybe. I haven't been on Daedalus since my mother died, when I was a sprat." Diana considered. Resolve thrilled along her nerves. She would not knowingly lead this sweet old seeker on a squiggle chase, but neither would she willingly let go of him—while hope remained that his search could carry her to the stars.

  "As long as you are on Imhotep," she said, "that's the place to start, and I do know my way around Imhotep as well as anybody. Now for openers, can you explain what you're after and why you think you might find a clue here?"

  She drained her stein and signalled for more, Hassan brought a bucket to recharge Axor's mug as well. Meanwhile the Wodenite, serene again, was telling her:

  "As for the Foredwellers, their traces are more than an archaeological puzzle. Incredibly ancient as they are, those artifacts may give us knowledge of the Incarnation.

  "For see you, young person, some three thousand standard years have passed since Our Lord Jesus Christ walked upon Terra and brought the offer of salvation to fallen man. Subsequently, upstart humankind has gone forth into the light-years; and with Technic civilization has traveled faith, to race after race after race.

  "About such independently spacefaring beings as the Ymirites, one dares say nothing. They are too alien. It may be that they are not fallen and thus have no need of the Word. But painfully plain it is that every oxygen-breathing species ever encountered is in no state of grace, but prone to sin, error, and death.

  "Now our Lord was born once upon Terra, and charged those who came after with carrying the gospel over the planet. But what of other planets? Were they to wait for human missionaries? Or have some of them, at least, been granted the glory of their own Incarnations? It is not a matter on which most churches have ventured to dogmatize. Not only are the lives, the souls, so different from world to world, but here and there one nevertheless does find religions which look strangely familiar. Coincidence? Parallel development? Or a deeper mystery?"

  He paused. Diana frowned, trying to understand. Questions like this were not the sort she was wont to ask. "Does it matter? I mean, can't you be as good a person regardless?"

  "Knowledge of God always matters," said Axor gravely. "This is not necessary to individual salvation, no. But think what a difference in the teaching of the Word it would make, to know the truth—whatever the truth may be. If science can show that the gospel account of Christ is not myth but biography; and if it then finds that his ministry was, in empirical fact, universal—would not you, for example, my dear, would not you decide it was only reasonable to accept him as your Saviour?"

  Uncomfortable, Diana tried to shift the subject. "So you think you may get a hint from the Foredweller works?"

  "I cherish hopes, as did those scholars who conceived the thought before me. Consider the immense timeline, millions of years. Consider that the Builders must have been too widespread and numerous, too learned and powerful—yes, too wise, after their long, long history—to be destroyed by anything material. No, surely they abandoned their achievements, as we, growing up, put away childish things, and went on to a higher plane of existence. Yet surely, too, they nourished a benign desire to ease the path for those who carne after. They would leave inscriptions, messages—time-blurred now, nearly gone; but perhaps the writers did not foresee how many ages would pass before travel began again between the stars. Still, what better could they bequeath us than their heritage of Ultimate Meaning?"

  Diana had her large doubts. Likewise, obviously, did others, or Axor wouldn't have had to bum his unpaid way across the Empire. She didn't have the heart to say that. "What have you actually found?" she asked.

  "Not I alone, by no means I alone. For the most part, I have merely studied archaeological reports, and gone to see for myself. In a few instances, however—" The Wodenite drew breath. "I must not boast. What I deal with are the enigmatic remains of occasional records. Diagrams etched into a wall or a slab, worn away until virtually blank. Codings imprinted in molecules and crystals, evocable electronically but equally blurred and broken. Some, nobody can comprehend at all. Some do seem to be astronomical symbols—such as signs for pulsars, with signs for hydrogen atoms and for numbers to give periods and spatial relationships. One can estimate how those pulsars have slowed down and moved elsewhere, and thus try to identify them, and thence the sun toward which a record conceivably points …

  "On a barren globe five parsecs from here, amidst the tailings of a former mining operation, I found clues of this kind. They appeared to me to whisper of the sun Patricius."

  Axor broke off, crossed himself, stared into remoteness.

  After a while Diana made bold to speak again. "Well, your … your reverence, you needn't despair yet. What say we establish ourselves in town for a few days? You can rest up while I arrange conferences and transportation and so forth. You see, nothin' has turned up in the mountains; but Tigeries do tell about islands with what may be natural formations but might also be ruined walls, except that Imhotep never had any native sophonts. If that doesn't work out, I can inquire among spacefolk, get us passage offplanet, whatever you want. And it shouldn't cost you very heavily."

  Axor smiled. The crocodilian expanse of his mouth drew a shriek from a joygirl. "A godsend indeed!" he roared.

  "Oh, I'm no saint," Diana answered. He couldn't be so naive as to suppose she had immediately fallen in love with his cause—though it looked like being fun. "Why do I offer to do this? It's among the ways I scratch out my livin'. We got to agree on my daily wage; and I'll be collectin' my cumshaws on the side, that you don't have to know about. Mainly, I expect to enjoy myself." To mention her further dreams would be premature.

  Axor put spectacles on nose to regard her the better. "You are a remarkable young being, donna Crowfeather," he said, a surprisingly courtly turn of phrase. "If I may ask, how does it happen you are this familiar with the planet?"

  "I grew up here." Impulsively, perha
ps because she was excited or perhaps because the beer had started to buzz faintly in her head, she added: "And my father was responsible for most of what you'll see."

  "Really? I would be delighted to hear."

  It was generally easy to confide in a chance-met xeno, as it was not with a fellow human. Furthermore, Axor's manner was reassuring; and no secrets were involved. The whole quarter knew her story, as did Tigeries across reaches of several thousand kilometers.

  "Oh, my father's Dominic Flandry. You may have heard of him. He's become an Admiral of the Fleet, but forty-odd years ago he was a fresh-caught ensign assigned to the planet Starkad, in this same sector. Trouble with the Merseians was pilin' up and—Anyway, he discovered the planet was doomed. There were two sophont races on it, the land-dwellin' Tigeries and the underwater Seafolk; and there were five years to evacuate as many as possible before the sun went crazy. This was the only known planet that was enough like Starkad. It helped that Imhotep already had a scientific base and a few support industries, and that Daedalus was colonized and becomin' an important Naval outpost. Just the same, the resettlement's always been a wild scramble, always underfunded and undermanned, touch and go."

  "The Terran Empire has many demands on its resources, starting with defense," said Axor.

  "Although one must deplore violence, I cannot but admire the gallantry with which Admiral Magnusson cast back the Merseian attack last year."

  "The Imperial court and bureaucracy are pretty expensive too, I hear," Diana snapped. "Well, never mind. I don't pay taxes."

  "I have, yes, I have encountered tales of Admiral Flandry's exploits," said Axor in haste. "But he cannot have spent much time on Imhotep, surely."

  "Oh, no. He looked in once in a while, when he happened to be in the region. A natural curiosity. My mother and he—Well, I keep tellin' myself I shouldn't blame him. She never did."

  Once Maria Crowfeather had admitted to her daughter that she got Dominic Flandry's child in hopes that that would lead to something permanent. It had not. After he found out on his next visit, he bade a charming, rueful goodbye. Maria got on with her own life.

  "Your mother worked in the resettlement project?" Axor inquired tactfully.

  Diana nodded. "A xenologist. She died in an accident, a sudden tidal bore on a strange coast, three standard years ago."

  Maria Crowfeather had been born on the planet Atheia, in the autonomous community Dakotia. It had been among the many founded during the Breakup, when group after ethnic group left a Commonwealth that they felt was drowning them in sameness. The Dakota people had already been trying to revive a sense of identity in North America. Diana, though, kept only bits of memory, fugitive and wistful, about ancestral traditions. She had passed her life among Tigeries and Seafolk.

  "Leaving you essentially orphaned," said Axor. "Why did nobody take care of you?"

  "I ran away," Diana replied.

  The man who had been living with Maria at the time of her death did not afterward reveal himself to be a bad sort. He turned out to be officious, which was worse. He had wanted to marry the girl's mother legally, and now he wanted to put the girl in the Navy brat school ' on Daedalus, and eventually see to it that she wed some nice officer. Meanwhile Tigeries were hunting through hills where wind soughed in waves across forests, and surf burst under three moons upon virgin islands.

  "Did not the authorities object?" Axor wondered.

  "They couldn't find me at first. Later they forgot."

  Axor uttered a splintering noise that might f be his equivalent of a laugh. "Very well, little sprite of all the world, let us see how you guide a poor bumbler. Make the arrangements, and leave me to my data and breviary until we are ready for departure. But can you give me an idea of what to expect?"

  "I'll try, but I don't make any promises," Diana said. "Especially these days. You didn't arrive at the best time, sir."

  Scales stirred above the brow ridges. "What do you mean, pray?"

  Grimness laid grip on her. She had ignored the news as much as possible. What could she do about it? Well, she had mentally listed various refuges, according to where she would be when the trouble exploded, if it was going to. But here she was committing herself to an expedition which could take her anyplace, and—"That ruckus with the Merseians last year was just a thing off in space," she said. "Since, I've kept hearin' rumors—ask your God to make them only rumors, will you?—Sir, we may be on the edge of a real war."

  Chapter 2

  On Daedalus, the world without a horizon, a Tigery was still an uncommon sight, apt to draw everybody's attention. Targovi had made an exception of himself. The capital Aurea, its hinterland, communities the length of the Highroad River as far as the Phosphoric Ocean, no few of the settlements scattered elsewhere, had grown used to him. He would put his battered Moonjumper down at the spaceport, exchange japes with guards and officials, try to sell them something, then load his wares into an equally disreputable-looking van and be off. His stock in trade was Imhotepan, a jackdaw museum of the infinite diversity that is every planet's. Artifacts of his people he had, cutlery, tapestries, perfumes; things strange and delicate, made underwater by the Seafolk; exotic products of nature, skins, mineral gems, land pearls, flavorful wild foods—for the irony was that huge Imhotep had begotten life which Terrans, like Starkadians, could safely take nourishment from, whereas Terra-sized Daedalus had not.

  For a number of years he had thus ranged, dickering, swapping, amusing himself and most whom he encountered, a generally amiable being whom—certain individuals discovered too late—it was exceedingly dangerous to affront. Even when tensions between Merseia and Terra snapped asunder, sporadic combats erupted throughout the marches, and at last Sector Admiral Magnusson took his forces to meet an oncoming armada of the Riodhunate, even then had Targovi plied his trade unhindered.

  Thus he registered shock when he landed in routine fashion a twelvemonth later, and the junior port officer who gave him his admission certificate warned: "You had better stay in touch with us. Interplanetary traffic may be suddenly curtailed. You could find yourself unable to get off Daedalus for an. indefinite time."

  "Eyada shkor!" ripped from Targovi. His tendrils grew stiff. A hand dropped to the knife at his side. "What is this?"

  "Possible emergency," said the human. "Understand, I am trying to be friendly. There ought to be a short grace period. If you then return here immediately, I can probably get you clearance to go home. Otherwise you could be stranded and unable to earn your keep, once your goods were sold and the proceeds spent."

  "I … think … I would survive," Targovi murmured.

  The officer peered across his desk. "You may be right," he said. "But we may not like the ways you would find. I would be sorry to see you jailed, or gunned down."

  The Tigery looked predatory enough to arouse qualms. His resemblance to a man was merely in the roughest outlines. He stood as tall as an average one, but on disproportionately long and powerful legs whose feet were broad and clawed. Behind, a stubby tail twitched. The torso was thick, the arms and their four-fingered hands cabled with muscle. The round head bore a countenance flat and narrow-chinned, a single breathing slit in the nose, carnivore teeth agleam in the wide mouth. Beneath the fronded chemosensor tendrils, eyes were slanted and scarlet-hued. The large, movable ears were scalloped around the edges as if to suggest bat wings. Fur clothed him in silkiness that had now begun to bristle, black-striped orange except for a white triangle at the throat. His voice purred, hissed, sometimes growled or screeched, making its fluent Anglic an outlandish dialect.

  He wore nothing at present but a breech-clout, pocketed belt, knife, and amulet hung from his neck—these, and an oxygill. Its pleated pearly ruff lifted from his shoulders at the back of the head, framing the latter. Strange it might seem, to observe such a molecularly-convoluted intricacy upon such a creature, and to recollect what chemical subtleties went on within, oxygen captured and led into the bloodstream through capillary-fine tubes su
rgically installed. Yet it gave him the freedom to be barbaric, where he would else have been encumbered with a helmet and pump, or have perished. His kind had evolved under an air pressure more than nine times the Terran.

  "I think your efforts might fail," he said low. Easing: "However, surely naught untoward will happen. You are kind to advise me, Dosabhai Patel. You wife may find some pleasant trinket in her mail. But what is this extremity you await?"

  "I did not say we are bound to have one," replied the officer quickly.

  "What could it be, does it come on us?"

  "Too many wild rumors are flying about. Both naval and civil personnel are under orders not to add to them."

  Targovi's chair had been designed for a human, but he was sufficiently supple to flow down into it. His eyelids drooped; he bridged his fingertips. "Ah, good friend, you realize I am bound to hear those rumors. Were it not best to arm me with truths whereby I may slay them? I am, of course, a simple, wandering trader, who knows no secrets. Yet I should have had some inkling if, say, a new Merseian attack seemed likely."

  "Not that! Admiral Magnusson gave them a lesson they will remember for a while." Patel cleared his throat. "Understand, what happened was not a war."

  Targovi did not overtly resent the patronizing lecture that followed, meant for a half-civilized xeno: "Bloody incidents are all too common. It is inevitable, when two great powers, bitter rivals, share an ill-defined and thinly peopled buffer zone which is, actually, an arena for them. This latest set of clashes began when negotiations over certain spheres of influence broke down and commanders in various locations grew, ah, trigger-happy. True, the Roidhunate did dispatch a task force to 'restore order.' Had it succeeded, the Merseians would undoubtedly have occupied the Patrician System, thereby making this entire sector almost indefensible and having a salient deep into the Empire. We would have had to settle with them on highly disadvantageous terms. As you know, Admiral Magnusson beat them back, and diplomats on both sides are trying to mend things … No, we are in no immediate danger from outside."