Rise of the Terran Empire Page 21

  Strang frowned. "You must, madam. For the sake of your people. Riots, which could lead to actual attempts at overthrow . . . the military would have no choice but to open fire." He paused. "If you do not issue the order, I will. That would seriously undermine your authority."

  What authority?

  Nevertheless, this polite, grisly game we play, you and I, is all that postpones—what?

  "A massacre would lose you much of your support," she warned.

  His mouth tightened beneath the neat mustache. "Your use of an emotional word like that shows that an incident might necessitate extreme measures on the part of my office, madam."

  "Oh, I'll cancel the festivities. Belike nobody would be in a mood for them anyway."

  "Thank you, madam. Ah . . . you will consult with me on the wording, won't you?"

  "Yes. Good day, Commissioner."

  "Good day, Your Grace."

  Alone, Sandra rose and sought an open window. She had not turned on fluoros, and the storm made her conference chamber gloomy, a cave wherein only a few visions stood out, shimmer of a polished wood panel, dulled colors of a picture, curve of the Diomedean battle-ax. Freshness blew in, though, loud and raw. Rain struck the garden like spears and hid sight of the world beyond its wall. Lightning flared, making every bare twig on the shrubs leap forth under a sheet-metal sky; thunder rolled across unending reaches while murk returned.

  She would not ride forth today. She had been doing that every morning, taking her best-beloved horse over Pilgrim Hill to Riverway, along the Palomino to Silver Street, thence to Olympic Avenue and back, a distance of several kilometers—always alone—to let the people see her, for whatever comfort that might give on either side. Folk often bowed deeply or kissed their hands to her. But too few would be out in this weather to make the gesture worth the effort.

  I want to, however, I am parched with wanting. Though not through Starfall. West instead, on Canyon Road into the countryside, at a gallop straight against wind and rain, gallop and gallop without stop, hoofs smashing skulls of Strang and his men, then beyond them into the hills, the mountains, the deserts, a leap off the horizon and out among the stars.

  A buzzer sounded. She untied her fists, strode to the intercom, and pressed accept. "Yes?"

  "Madame," said the voice of her entrykeeper, "Martin Schuster is waiting to see you."

  "What?" She came back to herself. "Oh. Yes. Send him in."

  Whoever he is. I know only that Athena Falkayn sent me a message asking me to receive him in private, which is why I happened to be here when Strang—her gullet clenched—called.

  The door opened for him and closed again. He was like her in being tall, blond, and middle-aged. When she looked more closely into the lean countenance, she choked down a cry of startlement and stood rigid.

  He bowed. "Good greeting, Your Grace. Thank you for receiving me." He kept a touch of Hermetian accent if not of phrasing, for, as she knew, throughout the years he had not been long at a time on Earth, nor on any other world where Anglic was spoken. "What I have to say is confidential."

  "Right." Her heart fluttered. "This room is spyproofed." As he hesitated: "Since the occupation, I've assigned guards and technicians to full-time duty, making sure it stays secure."

  "Fine." Their gazes locked. "I think you know me."

  "David Falkayn?"

  "Yes."

  "Why have you come back?"

  "To help however I can. I was hoping you, madam, could give me a few ideas about that."

  Sandra's gesture was jagged. "Welcome. Sit. Care you for refreshment, a smoke, aught I can offer?"

  "Not now, thank you." Falkayn remained standing till she had taken her seat. She fumbled forth a cigar from a humidor beside her chair, bit the end off, and started it going.

  "Tell me your story," she said.

  "Eric reached Sol unharmed," he began, and continued. She seldom interrupted his succinct narrative with questions.

  When he was through, she shook her head and sighed. "I admire your courage and resource, Captain Falkayn, and maybe you can be of help. That's dreadfully far from certain, though. At best, between us we can fight a delaying action, buying temporary concessions from Strang with our cooperation in laying the foundations for his eventual dictatorship. Naught can really save Hermes but the defeat of Babur."

  "Which will take years if it's possible at all, and lives and treasure and social disruption beyond reckoning," he said. "The Commonwealth is confused, dismayed, and lacks will. The League is paralyzed by its own feuds. I think after a while the Commonwealth will fight all-out, largely because the Home Companies want that. They see Mirkheim as their entry into space on a scale that'll make them competitive with the Seven. But they can't conjure up a determined populace and a powerful navy overnight. Meanwhile Babur will—who can tell what? Yes, madam, I doubt we on Hermes can count on rescue from abroad."

  "What would you advocate, then?" She drew savagely on her cigar. The smoke bit her tongue.

  "Political maneuvers, as you've been carrying out and I may be able to join you in. Simultaneously, covert organization of armed resistance, to operate out of our enormous hinterlands. We just might make the cost of supporting Strang more than it's worth to Babur, which has little to gain here."

  "Whatever the real reason was for Babur overrunning us, won't that continue to obtain?" she argued against all her dearest wishes. "And never underestimate Strang. He's surely foreseen that we may try what you suggest, and taken steps. In his evil way—not that he sees himself as evil—he's a genius."

  Falkayn stared past her, out the rainful window. "You must know him better than anybody else on this planet," he said.

  "That's not well. He's as dedicated as a machine, and no easier to get near. I wonder if he ever sleeps. Why, shortly before you came in, he called me personally about banning public events on Elvander's Birthday. He could have told an aide to make the arrangements, but no, he had to see to it himself."

  Falkayn smiled a little. "I must study him, try to get a notion of his style. I'm told he makes no speeches, and hardly ever delivers a statement in his own name."

  "True. He's no egotist, I must admit. Or . . . rather . . . he's interested in the substance of power, not the show."

  "I don't even know what he looks like."

  "Well, I can play back our conversation." Sandra was vaguely relieved to rise, walk across to her phone, and punch the button. She wasn't sure how to respond to this man, home-born but far-faring, famous but a stranger, who had come to her out of the storm.

  The screen lit, the familiar, well-hated features appeared, Strang said, "Good morning, Your Grace—"

  "Yaaah!"

  The yell ripped at her eardrums. She whirled and saw Falkayn on his feet, crouched crook-fingered. "Can't be!" he roared. And then, a whisper: "Is."

  "I am calling you about Elvander's Birthday, madam," said the recording.

  "Turn it off," Falkayn asked hoarsely. "Judas priest." He looked around him, as if seeking among the shadows. "What else can I say? Judas priest."

  It was as if a tendril of the lightning ran up Sandra's spine, but cold, cold. She went stiff-legged back to him. "Tell me, David."

  "This—" He shook himself violently. "Does Strang have a twin brother, a double, anything of the kind?"

  "No." She halted. "No, I'm certain not."

  He began to pace, hands wrestling behind his back. "A piece of the puzzle, a keystone, an answer?" he mumbled. "Be quiet. Let me think." Neither of them noticed his breach of manners.

  She waited in a chill draught from the window while he prowled the room, his lips shaping unvoiced words or now and then a nonhuman oath. When at last he stopped and regarded her, it was strangely right that he stood beneath the ax.

  "This is information that has got to get to Earth," he thrust forth. "To van Rijn. Immediately. And secretly. How can you smuggle a message out?"

  She shook her head. "There's no way."

  "There must be." />
  "None. Think you I have not wanted it, have not sat with my officers trying to imagine how we might do it? This planet is meshed in radar sweeps, detectors, and ships. Your friends could never have gotten off it alive. You reached atmosphere by masking yourself as a meteoroid, yes. But you know what happened after that. And . . . meteoroids don't rise."

  Falkayn's fist smote the wall. "Listen. What I've learned could determine the whole course of the war. If we get it to van Rijn in time. That's worth virtually any sacrifice we can make."

  She took hold of his arm. "Why?"

  He told her.

  She stood long silent. "You see I don't have a complete solution to the riddle," he added. "I'll leave that for Old Nick to work out. He's good at such things. I could even be wrong, in which case our effort will have gone for zero. But you see why we must make the effort. Don't you?"

  "Yes." She nodded blindly. "A wild gamble, though. If aught goes awry, we've lost more than our lives."

  "Of course. Nevertheless," he hammered, "we must try. No matter how fantastic our scheme, it's better than nothing.

  "Surely communication goes back and forth between Strang and the Baburite high command. If we could hijack one of those boats—"

  "Impossible." Sandra walked from him, back to the window. Wind whooped, rain rushed, thunder went like enormous wheels. Winter was on its way to Starfall.

  He came up behind her. "You know something," he accused.

  "Yes," she answered beneath the noise, not turning her head. "I do. But oh, God, my people—and yours, your mother, brother, sister, spaceship comrades, everybody left behind—"

  It was his turn to fall mute, and afterward to force: "Go on."

  "I still have the ducal space-yacht," she told him, drop by drop. "Strang has more than once suggested I might like to take a cruise to relax. I've ever answered no. His meaning is obvious. I can flee to Sol. He'll not oppose that."

  "No, he wouldn't," Falkayn agreed low. "It'd give him the perfect excuse to seize total control, with the support of the extremist Hermetian Liberation Fronters. 'The Grand Duchess, like her son before her, has defected to the enemy, intending to lead back a foreign force that will crush our glorious revolution.'"

  "There'd be no leadership for Kindred, Followers, and loyal Travers. They'd feel I'd betrayed them . . . and erelong they could become the subjects of a reign of terror."

  "I see you've read your history, Lady Sandra."

  Once more they stood dumb.

  "I'd still be here," he said at last. "I'd proclaim myself and do whatever I was able."

  She swung about. "Oh, no," she denied. "Oh, no, David. I'd take my entire immediate family, including Eric's fiancée, because this would make it doubly plausible to Strang that I intended to run. But you . . . you'd come along under your false name, substituted for one of my regular crew. I can't leave you."

  "Why not?"

  "You could stay incognito, useless, when we've need of your talents in space. Or you could invoke your prestige, try to fill my role . . . and provoke the terror for certain. Strang would know we'd conspired. He'd feel he must strike fast and hard. Whereas if you're not on hand, if the aristocrats in fact are leaderless and dismayed, he may think it politic to spare them the worst."

  "If he doesn't—"

  "I said it before, David. Everybody at Hornbeck must remain, save you."

  His gaze yielded to hers. After he had long been hypnotized by the floor, she barely heard him: "If we do help short-circuit a total war, we'll save lives in the hundreds of millions. But they'll be lives that we never knew."

  He lifted his head. "So be it. Are you game, Sandra?"

  An early snow decked the land when the yacht Castle Catherine lifted from Williams Field. Beyond ferrocrete, cradles, buildings, and machines, the country lay blue-shadowed white, altogether hushed, rolling away westward to the panther forms of the Arcadian Hills. Above, heaven was unutterably blue. Breath smoked from nostrils, footfalls rang loud.

  High Commissioner Benoni Strang had provided Her Grace with an honor guard of his soldiers. They presented arms while she and her crew passed by them. She touched her brow in return salute. All proceedings were correct.

  Likewise was the paperwork which had led to this day. Her Grace had expressed a desire to visit the outer planet Chronos, enjoy the beauty of its rings, mountaineer and vac-ski on its moon Ida. Clearance was naturally granted.

  She, her children, Lorna Stanton, and her men boarded. Nobody paid the men any special heed, though it was alive on their faces that they knew where they were really going. The gangway retracted behind them, the airlock shut. Soon engines hummed, negagravity took hold, the hull rose like a snowflake borne on a breeze, until it was so high that it gleamed like a star and then blinked out.

  Past the guardian vessels Castle Catherine accelerated, outward and outward in the ecliptic plane. The sun dwindled, the Milky Way beckoned. At a sufficient distance, she sprang over into hyperdrive and overtook the light that fled from Maia.

  There was no pursuit.

  When it was clear that she would go free, Sandra sought Falkayn in private, laid her head on his breast, and wept.

  XVIII

  Hanny Lennart appeared uncomfortable. Eric suspected that that was less because of having to rebuke him than because of the surroundings where she must do so. Leading the navy of a world which the Commonwealth still recognized as sovereign, he could not well be given a formal reprimand. She had asked him to join her at lunch and he had promptly chosen the Tjina House, off a list that van Rijn had supplied earlier.

  The last of twenty-one boys set down his dish of condiment, bowed above hands laid together, and withdrew from the private room. The diners would ring for further service when they desired. It was a lovely day along the Sunda Strait, and a wall had been retracted to let sea-cooled tropical air flow in. Gardens fell in thousand-hued terraces toward the water, palms rustled, bamboo swayed. Out on cobalt blue glided the stately torpedo shape of a cargo carrier and the winging sails of sportcraft. Unseen, a musician drew softness from a wooden flute.

  Eric took a long swallow of beer and began slathering his curry. Lennart gave him a disapproving look across the table. "This much luxury feels indecent in wartime," she said.

  "What wartime?" he retorted. "If we were bestirring ourselves, I might agree."

  "Patience, please, Admiral Tamarin-Asmundsen. But I'm afraid that's a quality you lack. It's what I want to speak to you about."

  "Carry on, Freelady." Thought of Lorna, his mother, his planet made the food suddenly ashen. "I'd like to have the Solar strategy explained to me, if any. I don't have to sit here stuffing my gut. Rather would I be out raiding."

  "This government cannot condone your acting independently."

  "Then let it integrate us with its forces and give us work to do!"

  Lennart puckered her lips. "Quite frankly, Admiral, you are responsible for the delay in that. After your connivance at David Falkayn's escape—"

  "What escape? I'm tired of repeating that he and his fellows went as commissioned Hermetian officers, on orders from me, to gather intelligence . . . because the Commonwealth has persistently neglected that elementary operation."

  Lennart gave way a little. "Let's not quarrel." She constructed a smile of sorts. "I argued on your behalf, argued that you could not really be blamed for wanting news about your home, nor for your now obvious liaison with your father. Yes, I wanted you to become part of a unified command as soon as possible."

  To become subordinate, you mean, subject to court martial if I misbehave again, Eric knew.

  "Well, Admiral," Lennart proceeded, "what I wish to discuss today is the additional difficulties you have since created for me, for all your friends. Your appearances before civic groups, your speech on the issues show—they have alienated high officials. They give the impression of a chronic troublemaker, if you will excuse the language."

  "Why, yes, Freelady, I am a troublemaker, or hope to be,"
he said. "For the Baburites, that is. I've urged that we move. If we're not ready for another pitched battle, we can still make life fairly miserable for the enemy. We can harass his commerce, we can dump megatons on his bases, till he sees 'twill pay him to disgorge Hermes and negotiate an agreement about Mirkheim."

  Lennart's expression bleakened. "There can be no compromise. Otherwise Babur has gained by its aggression. It must be made to yield on every point—especially on Mirkheim, which precipitated the whole war. For that purpose, we need to build more strength than we have at present. This cannot be done overnight. Meanwhile we have to keep our forces guarding the Commonwealth against the kind of tactics you describe."