Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Read online

  "Agreed. I simply want to hear your side of the story." Ridenour offered a cigar. "Your species likes tobacco, does it not?"

  "I thank." A seven-fingered hand took the gift with ill-concealed eagerness. "But you know why we fight. This is our home."

  "Um-m-m . . . Freehold was man-occupied before your race began space flight."

  "True. Yet Arulian bones have strengthened this soil for more than two centuries. By longstanding agreement, the Arulians who lived and died here did so under the Law of the Sacred Horde. For what can your law mean to us, Terran—your law of property to us who do things mutually with our pheromonesharers; your law of marriage to us who have three sexes and a breeding cycle; your law of Imperial fealty to us who find truth's wellspring in Eternal Aruli? We might have compromised, after Freehold was incorporated into your domain. Indeed, we made every reasonable attempt to do so. But repeated and flagrant violation of our rights must in the end provoke secessive action."

  Ridenour started his pipe. "Well, now, suppose you look at the matter as I do," he suggested. "Freehold is an old human colony, although it lies far from Terra. It was founded before the Empire and stayed sovereign after the Empire began. There was just no special reason why we should acquire it, take on responsibility for it, while the people remained friendly. But needing trade and not getting many human visitors, they looked elsewhere. The Merseians had lately brought modern technology to Aruli. Arulian mercantile associations were busy in this region. They had the reputation of being industrious and reliable, and they could use Freehold's produce. It was natural that trade should begin; it followed that numerous Arulians should come here to live; and, as you say, it was quite proper to grant them extraterritoriality.

  "But." He wagged his pipestem. "Relationships between the Terran and Merseian Empires grew more and more strained. Armed conflict became frequent in the marches. Freehold felt threatened. By now the planet had—if not a booming industry—at least enough to make it a military asset. A tempting target for anyone. Sovereign independence looked pretty lonely, not to say fictitious. So the Nine Cities applied for membership in the Empire and were accepted—as much to forestall Merseia as for any other reason. Of course the Arulian minority objected. But they were a small minority. And in any case, as you said, compromise should have been possible. Terra respects the rights of client species. We must; they are too many for suppression. In fact, no few nonhumans have Terran citizenship."

  "Nevertheless," the prisoner said, "you violated what we hold hallowed."

  "Let me finish," Ridenour said. "Your mother world Aruli, its sphere of influence, everything there has lately become a Merseian puppet. No, wait, I know you'll deny that indignantly; but think. Consider your race's recent history. Ask yourself what pronouncements have been made by the current Bearers of the Horns—as regards Merseia versus Terra—and remember that they succeeded by revolutionary overthrow of the legitimate heirs. Never mind what abuses they claim to be correcting; only recall that they are Merseian-sponsored revolutionaries.

  "Reflect how your people here, on this planet, have always considered themselves Arulians rather than Freeholders. Reflect how they have, in fact, as tensions increased, supported the interests of Aruli rather than Terra. Maybe this would not have occurred, had the humans here treated you more fairly in the past. But we were confronted with your present hostility. What would you expect us to do—what would you do in our place—but decree some security regulations? Which is the prerogative of His Majesty's government, you know. The original treaty granting them extraterritoriality was signed by the Nine Cities, not by the Terran Empire.

  "So you revolted, you resident aliens. And we discovered to our dismay that the rebellion was well prepared. Multiple tons of war supplies, multiple thousands of troops, had been smuggled beforehand into wilderness areas . . . from Aruli!"

  "That is not true," the prisoner said. "Of course our mother world favors our righteous cause, but—"

  "But we have census figures, remember. The registered Arulian-descended Freeholders do not add up to anything like the total in your 'Sacred Horde.' You yourself, my friend, whose ancestors supposedly lived here for generations, cannot speak the language! Oh, I understand Aruli's desire to avoid an open clash with Terra, and Terra's willingness to indulge this desire. But let us not waste our personal time with transparent hypocrisies, you and I."

  The prisoner refused response.

  Ridenour sighed. "Your sacrifices, what victories you have had, everything you have done is for nothing," he went on. "Suppose you did succeed. Suppose you actually did win your 'independent world in pheromone association with the Holy Ancestral Soil'—do you really think your species would benefit? No, no. The result would mean nothing more than a new weapon for Merseia to use against Terra . . . a rather cheaply acquired one." His smile was weary. "We're familiar with the process, we humans. We've employed it against each other often enough in our past."

  "As you like," the Arulian said. By instinct he was less combative as an individual than a human is, though possibly more so in a collectivity. "Your opinions make scant difference. The great objective will be achieved before long."

  Ridenour regarded him with pity. "Have your superiors really kept on telling you that?"

  "Surely. What else?"

  "Don't you understand the situation? The Empire is putting less effort into the campaign than it might, true. This is a distant frontier, however critical. Two hundred light-years make a long way from Terra. But our lack of energy doesn't matter in the long run, except to poor tormented Freehold.

  "Because this system has in fact been taken by us. You aren't getting any more supplies from outside. You can't. Small fast courier boats might hope to run our blockade, I suppose, if they aren't too many and accept a high percentage of loss. But nothing except a full-sized task force would break it. Aruli cannot help you further. She hasn't that kind of fleet. Merseia isn't going to. The game isn't worth the candle to her. You are cut off. We'll grind you away to nothing if we must; but we hope you'll see reason, give up and depart.

  "Think. You call it yaro fever, do you not—that disease which afflicts your species but not ours—for which the antibiotic must be grown on Aruli itself where the soil bacteria are right? We capture more and more of you who suffer from yaro. When did you last see a fresh lot of antibiotic?"

  The prisoner screamed. He cast his cigar at Ridenour's feet, sprang from his chair and ran to the office door. "Take me back to the stockade!" he wept.

  Ridenour's mouth twisted. Oh, well, he thought, I didn't really hope to learn anything new from any of those pathetic devils.

  Besides, the savages are what I'm supposed to investigate. Though I've speculated if perhaps, in the two centuries they lived here, the Arulians had some influence on the outback people. Everybody knows they traded with them to some extent. Did ideas pass, as well as goods?

  For certainly the savages have become troublesome.

  The next day Ridenour was lucky and got a direct lead. The mayor of Domkirk arrived in Nordyke on official business. And word was that the Domkirk militia had taken prisoners after beating off a raid from the wilderness dwellers. Ridenour waited two days before he got to see the mayor; but that was about par for the course in a project like this, and he found things to do meanwhile.

  Rikard Uriason proved to be a short, elegantly clad, fussy man. He was obviously self-conscious about coming from the smallest recognized community on the planet. He mentioned a visit he had once made to Terra and the fact that his daughter was studying on Ansa, twice in the first ten minutes after Ridenour entered his hotel room. He kept trying to talk the Emperor's Anglic and slipping back into Freeholder dialect. He fussed about, falling between the stools of being a gracious host and a man of the universe. Withal, he was competent and well informed where his own job was concerned.

  "Yes, sir, we of Domkirk live closer to the outback than anyone else. For various reasons," he said, after they were finally seated wit
h drinks in their hands. A window stood open to the breeze off Catwick—always slightly alien-scented, a hint of the smell that wet iron has on Terra—and the noise of streets and freight-belts, and the view of waters glittering out to the dunes of Longenhook. "Our municipality does not yet have the manpower to keep a radius of more than about two hundred kilometers under cultivation. Remember, Terran crops are fragile on this planet. We can mutate and breed selectively as much as we like. The native life forms will nonetheless remain hardier, eh? And, while robotic machines do most of the physical work, the requirement for supervision, decision-making human personnel is inevitably greater than on a more predictable world. This limits our range. Then too, we are on a coastal plateau. Onyx Heights falls steeply to the ocean, westward to the Windhoek, into marsh—unreclaimable—by us at our present stage of development, at any rate."

  Good Lord, Ridenour thought, I have found a man who can out-lecture me. Aloud: "Are those tidelands inhabited by savages, then?"

  "No, sir, I do not believe so. Certainly not in any significant degree. The raiders who plague our borders appear to be centered in the Windhoek Range and the Upwoods beyond. That was where the recent trouble occurred, on that particular margin. We have been fortunate in that the war's desolation has passed us by. But we feel, on this very account, our patriotic duty is all the more pressing, to make up the agricultural losses caused elsewhere. Some expansion is possible, now that refugees augment our numbers. We set about clearing land in the foothills. A valley, actually, potentially fertile once the weeds and other native pests have been eradicated. Which, with modern methods, takes only about one year. A Freehold year, I mean, circa about twenty-five per cent longer than a Terran year. Ah . . . where was I? . . . yes. A band of savages attacked our pioneers. They might have succeeded. They did succeed in the past, on certain occasions, as you may know, sir. By surprise, and numbers, and proximity—for their weapons are crude. Necessarily so, iron and similar metals being scarce. But they did manage, for instance, several years ago, to frustrate an attempt on settling on Moon Garnet Lake, in spite of the attempt being supplied by air and backed by militia with reasonably modern small arms. Ahem! This time we were forewarned. We had our guards disguised as workers, their weapons concealed. Not with any idea of entrapment. Please understand that, sir. Our wish is not to lure any heathen to their deaths, only to avoid conflict. But neither had we any wish for them to spy out our capabilities. Accordingly, when a gang attacked, our militiamen did themselves proud, I may say. They inflicted casualties and drove the bulk of the raiders back into the forest. A full twenty-seven prisoners were flitted to detention in our city jail. I expect the savages will think twice before they endeavor to halt progress again."

  Even Uriason must stop for breath sometime. Ridenour took the opportunity to ask: "What do you plan to do with your prisoners?"

  The mayor looked a little embarrassed. "That is a delicate question, sir. Technically they are criminals—one might say traitors, when Freehold is at war. However, one is almost obliged morally, is one not, to regard them as hostiles protected by the Covenant? They do by now, unfortunately, belong to a foreign culture; and they do not acknowledge our planetary government. Ah . . . in the past, rehabilitation was attempted. But it was rarely successful, short of outright brainscrub, which is not popular on Freehold. The problem is much discussed. Suggestions from Imperial experts will be welcomed, once the war is over and we can devote attention to sociodynamic matters,"

  "But isn't this a rather longstanding problem?" Ridenour said.

  "Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it is true that for several centuries people have been leaving the cities for the outback. Their reasons varied. Some persons were mere failures; remember, the original colonists held an ideal of individualism and made scant provision for anyone who could not, ah, cut the mustard. Some were fugitive criminals. Some were disgruntled romantics, no doubt. But the process was quite gradual. Most of those who departed did not vanish overnight. They remained in periodic contact. They traded things like gems, furs, or their own itinerant labor for manufactured articles. But their sons and grandsons tended, more and more, to adopt a purely uncivilized way of life, one which denied any need for what the cities offered."

  "Adaptation," Ridenour nodded. "It's happened on other planets. On olden Terra, even—like the American frontier." Seeing that Uriason had never heard of the American frontier, he went on a bit sorrowfully: "Not a good process, is it? The characteristic human way is to adapt the environment to oneself, not oneself to the environment."

  "I quite agree, sir. But originally, no one was much concerned in the Nine Cities. They had enough else to think about. And, indeed, emigration to the wilderness was a safety valve. Thus, when the anti-Christian upheavals occurred three hundred years ago, many Christians departed. Hence the Mechanists came to power with relatively little bloodshed—including the blood of Hedonists, who also disappeared rather than suffer persecution. Afterward, when the Third Constitution decreed tolerance, the savages were included by implication. If they wished to skulk about in the woods, why not? I suppose we, our immediate ancestors, should have made ethnological studies on them. A thread of contact did exist, a few trading posts and the like. But . . . well, sir, our orientation on Freehold is pragmatic rather than academic. We are a busy folk."

  "Especially nowadays," Ridenour observed.

  "Yes. Very true. I presume you do not speak only of the war. Before it started, we had large plans in train. Our incorporation into His Majesty's domains augured well for the furtherance of civilization on Freehold. We hope that, when the war is over, those plans may be realized. But admittedly the savages are a growing obstacle."

  "I understand they sent embassies telling this and that city not to enlarge its operations further."

  "Yes. Our spokesman pointed out to them that the Third Constitution gave each city the right to exploit its own hinterland as its citizens desired—a right which our Imperial charter has not abrogated. We also pointed out that they, the savages, were fellow citizens by virtue of residence. They need only adopt the customs and habits of civilization—and we stood ready to lend them educational, financial, even psychotherapeutic assistance toward this end. They need only meet the simple, essential requirements for the franchise, and they too could vote on how to best develop the land. Uniformly they refused. They denied the authority of the mayors and laid claim to all unimproved territory."

  Ridenour smiled, but with little mirth. "Cultures, like individuals, die hard," he said.

  "True," Uriason nodded. "We civilized people are not unsympathetic. But after all! The outbacker population, their number, is unknown to us. However, it must be on the same order of magnitude as the cities', if not less. Whereas the potential population of a Freehold properly developed is—well, I leave that to your imagination, sir. Ten billion? Twenty? And not any huddled masses, either. Comfortable, well fed, productive, happy human beings. May a few million ignorant woodsrunners deny that many souls the right to be born?"

  "None of my business," Ridenour said. "My contract just tells me to investigate."

  "I might add," Uriason said, "that Terra's rivalry with Merseia bids fair to go on for long generations. A well populated highly industrialized large planet here on the Betelgeusean frontier would be of distinct value to the Empire. To the entire human species, I believe. Do you not agree?"

  "Yes, of course," Ridenour said.

  He readily got permission to return with Uriason and study the savage prisoners in depth. The mayor's car flitted back to Domkirk two days later—two of Freehold's twenty-one hour days. And thus it happened that John Ridenour was on hand when the city was destroyed.

  Karlsarm loped well in among the buildings, with his staff and guards, before combat broke loose. He heard yells, crack of blasters, hiss of slugthrowers, snap of bowstrings, sharp bark of explosives, and grinned. For they came from the right direction, as did the sudden fire-flicker above the roofs. The airport was first stru
ck. Could it be seized in time, no dragons would fly.

  Selene light had drenched and drowned pavement luminosity. Now windows were springing to life throughout the town. Karlsarm's group broke into a run. The on-duty militiamen, barracked at the airport, were few.

  Wolf's detachment should be able to handle them in the course of grabbing vehicles and that missile emplacement which Terran engineers had lately installed. But Domkirk was filled with other men, and some of them kept arms at home. Let them boil out and get organized, and the result would be slaughterous. But they couldn't organize without communications, and the electronic center of the municipality was in the new skyscraper.

  A door opened, in the flat front of an apartment house. A citizen stood outlined against the lobby behind, pajama-clad, querulous at being roused. "What the hell d'you think—"

  Light spilled across Karlsarm. The Domkirker saw: a man in bast and leather, crossbow in hands, crossbelts sagging with edged weapons; a big muscular body, weatherbeaten countenance, an emblem of authority which was not a decent insigne but the skull and skin of a catavray crowning that wild head. "Savages!" the Domkirker shrieked. His voice went eunuch high with panic.

  Before he had finished the word, the score of invaders were gone from his sight. More and more keening lifted, under a gathering battle racket. It suited Karlsarm. Terrified folk were no danger to him.

  When he emerged in the cathedral square, he found that not every mind in town had stampeded.

  The church loomed opposite, overtopping the shops which otherwise ringed the plaza. For they were darkened and were, in any event, things that might have been seen anywhere in the Empire. But the bishop's seat was raised two centuries ago, in a style already ancient. It was all colored vitryl, panes that formed one enormous many-faceted jewel, so that by day the interior was nothing except radiances—and even by moonlight, the outside flashed and dim spectra played. Karlsarm had small chance to admire. Flames stabbed and bullets sang. He led a retreat back around the corner of another building.