Young Flandry Read online

  "But why?"

  Abrams shrugged. "Mutual interest in preventing accidents. Cultivation of friendship between peoples and individual beings. I think that's what the catchword is back home."

  Runei scowled. "Quite impossible. I advise you not to make any such proposal on the record."

  "Nu? Wouldn't look so good if you turn us down?"

  "Tension would only be increased. Must I repeat my government's position to you? The oceans of Starkad belong to the seafolk. They evolved there, it is their environment, it is not essential to the landfolk. Nevertheless the landfolk have consistently encroached. Their fisheries, their seabeast hunts, their weed harvests, their drag nets, everything disturbs an ecology vital to the other race. I will not speak of those they have killed, the underwater cities they have bombed with stones, the bays and straits they have barred. I will say that when Merseia offered her good offices to negotiate a modus vivendi, no land culture showed the slightest interest. My task is to help the seafolk resist aggression until the various landfolk societies agree to establish a just and stable peace."

  "Come off that parrot act," Abrams snorted. "You haven't got the beak for it. Why are you really here?"

  "I have told you—"

  "No. Think. You've got your orders and you obey 'em like a good little soldier. But don't you sometimes wonder what the profit is for Merseia? I sure do. What the black and red deuce is your government's reason? It's not as if Saxo sun had a decent strategic location. Here we are, spang in the middle of a hundred light-year strip of no man's land between our realms. Hardly been explored; hell, I'll bet half the stars around us aren't so much as noted in a catalogue. The nearest civilization is Betelgeuse, and the Betelgeuseans are neutrals who wish emerods on both our houses. You're too old to believe in elves, gnomes, little men, or the disinterested altruism of great empires. So why?"

  "I may not question the decisions of the Roidhum and his Grand Council. Still less may you." Runei's stiffness dissolved in a grin. "If Starkad is so useless, why are you here?"

  "Lot of people back home wonder about that too," Abrams admitted. "Policy says we contain you wherever we can. Sitting on this planet, you would have a base fifty light-years closer to our borders, for whatever that's worth." He paused. "Could give you a bit more influence over Betelgeuse."

  "Let us hope your envoy manages to settle the dispute," Runei said, relaxing. "I do not precisely enjoy myself on this hellball either."

  "What envoy?"

  "You have not heard? Our latest courier informed us that a . . . khraich . . . yes, a Lord Hauksberg is hitherbound."

  "I know." Abrams winced. "Another big red wheel to roll around the base."

  "But he is to proceed to Merseia. The Grand Council has agreed to receive him."

  "Huh?" Abrams shook his head. "Damn, I wish our mails were as good as yours . . . . Well. How about this downed flitter? Why won't you help us look for the pieces?"

  "In essence, informally," Runei said, "because we hold it had no right, as a foreign naval vessel, to fly over the waters. Any consequences must be on the pilot's own head."

  Ho-ho! Abrams tautened. That was something new. Implied, of course, by the Merseian position; but this was the first time he had heard the claim in plain language. So could the greenskins be preparing a major push? Very possible, especially if Terra had offered to negotiate. Military operations exert pressure at bargaining tables, too.

  Runei sat like a crocodile, smiling the least amount. Had he guessed what was in Abrams' mind? Maybe not. In spite of what the brotherhood-of-beings sentimentalists kept bleating, Merseians did not really think in human style. Abrams made an elaborate stretch and yawn. "'Bout time I knocked off," he said. "Nice talking to you, old bastard." He did not entirely lie. Runei was a pretty decent carnivore. Abrams would have loved to hear him reminisce about the planets where he had ranged.

  "Your move," the Merseian reminded him.

  "Why . . . yes. Clean forgot. Knight to king's bishop four."

  Runei got out his own board and shifted the piece. He sat quiet a while, studying. "Curious," he murmured.

  "It'll get curiouser. Call me back when you're ready." Abrams switched off.

  His cigar was dead again. He dropped the stub down the disposal, lit a fresh one, and rose. Weariness dragged at him. Gravity on Starkad wasn't high enough that man needed drugs or a counterfield. But one point three gees meant twenty-five extra kilos loaded on middle-aged bones . . . . No, he was thinking in standard terms. Dayan pulled ten per cent harder than Terra . . . . Dayan, dear gaunt hills and wind-scoured plains, homes nestled in warm orange sunlight, low trees and salt marshes and the pride of a people who had bent desolation to their needs . . . . Where had young Flandry been from, and what memories did he carry to darkness?

  On a sudden impulse Abrams put down his cigar, bent his head, and inwardly recited the Kaddish.

  Get to bed, old man. Maybe you've stumbled on a clue, maybe not, but it'll keep. Go to your rest.

  He put on cap and cloak, thrust the cigar back between his jaws, and walked out.

  Cold smote him. A breeze blew thinly under strange constellations and auroral glimmer. The nearer moon, Egrima, was up, almost full, twice the apparent size of Luna seen from Terra. It flooded distant snowpeaks with icy bluish light. Buruz was a Luna-sized crescent barely above the rooftops.

  Walls bulked black on either side of the unpaved street, which scrunched with frost as his boots struck. Here and there glowed a lighted window, but they and the scattered lamps did little to relieve the murk. On his left, unrestful radiance from smelters picked out the two spaceships now in port, steel cenotaphs rearing athwart the Milky Way. Thence, too, came the clangor of night-shift work. The field was being enlarged, new sheds and barracks were going up, for Terra's commitment was growing. On his right the sky was tinted by feverish glowsigns, and he caught snatches of drumbeat, trumpets, perhaps laughter. Madame Cepheid had patriotically dispatched a shipful of girls and croupiers to Starkad. And why not? They were so young and lonely, those boys.

  Maria, I miss you.

  Abrams was almost at his quarters when he remembered he hadn't stashed the papers on his desk. He stopped dead. Great Emperor's elegant epiglottis! He was indeed due for an overhaul.

  Briefly he was tempted to say, "Urinate on regulations." The office was built of ferroconcrete, with an armorplate door and an automatic recognition lock. But no. Lieutenant Novak might report for duty before his chief, may his pink cheeks fry in hell. Wouldn't do to set a bad security example. Not that espionage was any problem here, but what a man didn't see, he couldn't tell if the Merseians caught and hypnoprobed him.

  Abrams wheeled and strode back, trailing bad words. At the end, he slammed to a halt. His cigar hit the deck and he ground down a heel on it.

  The door was properly closed, the windows dark. But he could see footprints in the churned, not yet congealed mud before the entrance, and they weren't his own.

  And no alarm had gone off. Somebody was inside with a truckload of roboticist's gear.

  Abrams' blaster snaked into his hand. Call the guard on his wristcom? No, whoever could burgle his office could surely detect a transmission and was surely prepared for escape before help could arrive. By suicide if nothing else.

  Abrams adjusted his gun to needle beam. Given luck, he might disable rather than kill. Unless he bought it first. The heart slugged in his breast. Night closed thickly inward.

  He catfooted to the door and touched the lock switch. Metal burned his fingers with chill. Identified, he swung the door open and leaned around the edge.

  Light trickled over his shoulder and through the windows. A thing whirled from his safe. His eyes were adapted and he made out some details. It must have looked like any workman in radiation armor as it passed through the base. But now one arm had sprouted tools; and the helmet was thrown back to reveal a face with electronic eyes, set in a head of alloy.

  A Merseian face.

  Blue
lightning spat from the tool-hand. Abrams had yanked himself back. The energy bolt sparked and sizzled on the door. He spun his own blaster to medium beam, not stopping to give himself reasons, and snapped a shot.

  The other weapon went dead, ruined. The armored shape used its normal hand to snatch for a gun taken forth in advance and laid on top of the safe. Abrams charged through the doorway while he reset for needle fire. So intense a ray, at such close range, slashed legs across. In a rattle and clash, the intruder fell.

  Abrams activated his transmitter. "Guard! Intelligence office—on the double!"

  His blaster threatened while he waved the lights to go on. The being stirred. No blood flowed from those limb stumps; powerpacks, piezoelectric cascades, room-temperature superconductors lay revealed. Abrams realized what he had caught, and whistled. Less than half a Merseian: no tail, no breast or lower body, not much natural skull, one arm and the fragment of another. The rest was machinery. It was the best prosthetic job he'd ever heard of.

  Not that he knew of many. Only among races which didn't know how to make tissues regenerate, or which didn't have that kind of tissues. Surely the Merseians—But what a lovely all-purpose plug-in they had here!

  The green face writhed. Wrath and anguish spewed from the lips. The hand fumbled at the chest. To turn off the heart? Abrams kicked that wrist aside and planted a foot on it. "Easy, friend," he said.

  Chapter Three

  Morning on Merseia—

  Brechdan Ironrede, the Hand of the Vach Ynvory, walked forth on a terrace of Castle Dhangodhan. A sentry slapped boots with tail and laid blaster to breastplate. A gardener, pruning the dwarfed koir trees planted among the flagstones, folded his arms and bent in his brown smock. To both, Brechdan touched his forehead. For they were not slaves; their families had been clients of the Ynvorys from ages before the nations merged into one; how could they take pride in it if the clan chief did not accord them their own dignity?

  He walked unspeaking, though, between the rows of yellow blooms, until he reached the parapet. There he stopped and looked across his homeland.

  Behind him, the castle lifted gray stone turrets. Banners snapped in a cool wind, against an infinitely blue sky. Before him, the walls tumbled down toward gardens, and beyond them the forested slopes of Bedh-Ivrich went on down, and down, and down, to be lost in mists and shadows which still cloaked the valley. Thus he could not see the farms and villages which Dhangodhan dominated: nothing but the peaks on the other side. Those climbed until their green flanks gave way to crags and cliffs of granite, to snowfields and the far blink of glaciers. The sun Korych had now cleared the eastern heights and cast dazzling spears over the world. Brechdan saluted it, as was his hereditary right. High overhead wheeled a fangryf, hunting, and the light burned gold off its feathers.

  There was a buzz in the air as the castle stirred to wakefulness, a clatter, a bugle call, a hail and a bit of song. The wind smelled of woodsmoke. From this terrace the River Oiss was not visible, but its cataracts rang loud. Hard to imagine how, a bare two hundred kilometers west, that stream began to flow through lands which had become one huge city, from foothills to the Wilwidh Ocean. Or, for that matter, hard to picture those towns, mines, factories, ranches which covered the plains east of the Hun range.

  Yet they were his too—no, not his; the Vach Ynvory's, himself no more than the Hand for a few decades before he gave back this flesh to the soil and this mind to the God. Dhangodhan they had preserved little changed, because here was the country from which they sprang, long ago. But their real work today was in Ardaig and Tridaig, the capitals, where Brechdan presided over the Grand Council. And beyond this planet, beyond Korych itself, out to the stars.

  Brechdan drew a deep breath. The sense of power coursed in his veins. But that was a familiar wine; today he awaited a joy more gentle.

  It did not show upon him. He was too long schooled in chieftainship. Big, austere in a black robe, brow seamed with an old battle scar which he disdained to have biosculped away, he turned to the world only the face of Brechdan Ironrede, who stood second to none but the Roidhun.

  A footfall sounded. Brechdan turned. Chwioch, his bailiff, approached, in red tunic and green trousers and modishly high-collared cape. He wasn't called "the Dandy" for nothing. But he was loyal and able and an Ynvory born. Brechdan exchanged kin-salutes, right hand to left shoulder.

  "Word from Shwylt Shipsbane, Protector," Chwioch reported. "His business in the Gwelloch will not detain him after all and he will come here this afternoon as you desired."

  "Good." Brechdan was, in fact, elated. Shwylt's counsel would be most helpful, balancing Lifrith's impatience and Priadwyr's over-reliance on computer technology. Though they were fine males, each in his own way, those three Hands of their respective Vachs. Brechdan depended on them for ideas as much as for the support they gave to help him control the Council. He would need them more and more in the next few years, as events on Starkad were maneuvered toward their climax.

  A thunderclap cut the sky. Looking up, Brechdan saw a flitter descend with reckless haste. Scalloped fins identified it as Ynvory common-property. "Your son, Protector!" Chwioch cried with jubilation.

  "No doubt." Brechdan must not unbend, not even when Elwych returned after three years.

  "Ah . . . shall I cancel your morning audience, Protector?"

  "Certainly not," Brechdan said. "Our client folk have their right to be heard. I am too much absent from them."

  But we can have an hour for our own.

  "I shall meet Heir Elwych and tell him where you are, Protector." Chwioch hurried off.

  Brechdan waited. The sun began to warm him through his robe. He wished Elwych's mother were still alive. The wives remaining to him were good females, of course, thrifty, trustworthy, cultivated, as females should be. But Nodhia had been—well, yes, he might as well use a Terran concept—she had been fun. Elwych was Brechdan's dearest child, not because he was the oldest now when two others lay dead on remote planets, but because he was Nodhia's. May the earth lie light upon her.

  The gardener's shears clattered to the flagstones. "Heir! Welcome home!" It was not ceremonial for the old fellow to kneel and embrace the newcomer's tail, but Brechdan didn't feel that any reproof was called for.

  Elwych the Swift strode toward his father in the black and silver of the Navy. A captain's dragon was sewn to his sleeve, the banners of Dhangodhan flamed over his head. He stopped four paces off and gave a service salute. "Greeting, Protector."

  "Greeting, swordarm." Brechdan wanted to hug that body to him. Their eyes met. The youngster winked and grinned. And that was nigh as good.

  "Are the kindred well?" Elwych asked superfluously, as he had called from the inner moon the moment his ship arrived for furlough.

  "Indeed," Brechdan said.

  They might then have gone to the gynaeceum for family reunion. But the guard watched. Hand and Heir could set him an example by talking first of things which concerned the race. They need not be too solemn, however.

  "Had you a good trip home?" Brechdan inquired.

  "Not exactly," Elwych replied. "Our main fire-control computer developed some kind of bellyache. I thought best we put in at Vorida for repairs. The interimperial situation, you know; it just might have exploded, and then a Terran unit just might have chanced near us."

  "Vorida? I don't recall—"

  "No reason why you should. Too hooting many planets in the universe. A rogue in the Betelgeuse sector. We keep a base—What's wrong?"

  Elwych alone noticed the signs of his father being taken aback. "Nothing," Brechdan said. "I assume the Terrans don't know about this orb."

  Elwych laughed. "How could they?"

  How, in truth? There are so many rogues, they are so little and dark, space is so vast.

  Consider: To an approximation, the size of bodies which condensed out of the primordial gas is inversely proportional to the frequency of their occurrence. At one end of the scale, hydrogen atoms fill th
e galaxy, about one per cubic centimeter. At the other end, you can count the monstrous O-type suns by yourself. (You may extend the scale in both directions, from quanta to quasars; but no matter.) There are about ten times as many M-type red dwarfs as there are G-type stars like Korych or Sol. Your spaceship is a thousand times more likely to be struck by a one-gram pebble than by a one-kilogram rock. And so, sunless planets are more common than suns. They usually travel in clusters; nevertheless they are for most practical purposes unobservable before you are nearly on top of them. They pose no special hazard—whatever their number, the odds against one of them passing through any particular point in space are literally astronomical—and those whose paths are known can make useful harbors.

  Brechdan felt he must correct an incomplete answer. "The instantaneous vibrations of a ship under hyperdrive are detectable within a light-year," he said. "A Terran or Betelgeusean could happen that close to your Vorida."

  Elwych flushed. "And supposing one of our ships happened to be in the vicinity, what would detection prove except that there was another ship?"

  He had been given the wristslap of being told what any cub knew; he had responded with the slap of telling what any cub should be able to reason out for himself. Brechdan could not but smile. Elwych responded. A blow can also be an act of love.

  "I capitulate," Brechdan said. "Tell me somewhat of your tour of duty. We got far too few letters, especially in the last months,"

  "Where I was then, writing was a little difficult," Elwych said. "I can tell you now, though. Saxo V."

  "Starkad?" Brechdan exclaimed. "You, a line officer?"

  "Was this way. My ship was making a courtesy call on the Betelgeuseans—or showing them the flag, whichever way they chose to take it—when a courier from Fodaich Runei arrived. Somehow the Terrans had learned about a submarine base he was having built off an archipelago. The whole thing was simple, primitive, so the seafolk could operate the units themselves, but it would have served to wreck landfolk commerce in that area. Nobody knows how the Terrans got the information, but Runei says they have a fiendishly good Intelligence chief. At any rate, they gave some landfolk chemical depth bombs and told them where to sail and drop them. And by evil luck, the explosions killed several key technicians of ours who were supervising construction. Which threw everything into chaos. Our mission there is scandalously short-handed. Runei sent to Betelgeuse as well as Merseia, in the hope of finding someone like us who could substitute until proper replacements arrived. So I put my engineers in a civilian boat. And since that immobilized our ship as a fighting unit, I must go too."