The Game Of Empire Read online

  Ronan swallowed hard. "Say on."

  "Those officers who know what actually happened are bewildered. Several are embittered. It is like the impression here that Daedalus was left neglected to face danger alone; but this impression has more reason behind it. Sir, the Merseian fleet was led with unprecedented stupidity. Its advance squadrons flew straight into the trap that Admiral Magnusson had set at Black Hole 1571—although the hazard should have been plain to any commander who knew aught of astrophysics or naval history. Then, instead of reforming to mount a rescue operation, Cyntath Merwyn split his main strength north and south, creating two pincers which Terra's rear echelons broke one by one. It should never have happened."

  "Aren't you glad it did?" Ronan asked dryly. "I daresay harsh things have been done to high-ranking people, back in the Roidhunate. It doesn't publicize its failures."

  "Sir, this was a failure too grotesque. An experienced, senior officer admitted as much to me. His rage came nigh to making him vomit." Targovi paused. "And yet, captain, and yet … our fleet could have pursued the advantage gained further than it did. It could have inflicted far worse damage. Instead, it was content to let the bulk of the enemy armada retreat."

  Ronan flushed. "Who are you to talk strategy? What do you know that Admiral Magnusson did not? Has it occurred to you that his first duty was not to risk our forces, but to save them?"

  "Captain, I simply suggest—"

  "You have said quite enough," Ronan bit off. "Do you care to submit a detailed report? No, don't answer that. It would be worthless. Or worse than worthless, in the present explosive situation." His image stiffened. "Agent Targovi, you will drop this line of inquiry. That is an order. Return to Imhotep. Do not, repeat not attempt any additional amateurish investigation of matters which do not concern you. If we should have an assignment for you later, you will be informed."

  The Tigery was quiet for a space.

  "May I ask why the captain is displeased?" he ventured.

  "No. Official secrets."

  "Aye, sir. If I have transgressed, I am … sorry."

  Ronan relented a trifle. "I'll accept that you didn't know any better."

  "Very good, sir. But—Well, about my Moonjumper, sir. Of course, everybody thinks I bought her, and my piloting instruction, out of my gains from storming a pirate stronghold on Imhotep. I can return now, with half my cargo unsold, claiming a family crisis. But would it not arouse wonder, should I fail to come back soon to Daedalus?"

  "Are you that well known?" The man considered. "As you will. You do have a living to make." Part-time clandestines received a pittance for their efforts, though retirement benefits, when they could plausibly claim to be living off their savings, were fairly good. "But watch your actions. If you step over the bounds, you're dead."

  "Understood, sir. Aught else? No, sir? Out." Targovi switched off.

  By himself, he sank into thought. Rather, he went racing away on a dozen different trails of thought, the hunter's thrill along his nerves. Certain suspicions were strengthening.

  He needed help, and was unsure where to seek it. Well, since he must go home anyway, he could begin there. If he probed deeper, he might die. Quite possibly. But if not—if he did a deed that they would notice on Terra itself—

  Chapter 3

  At the Olga's Landing spaceport, he took his van from the hold of his ship. It was equally plebeian in appearance, a long and lumpy metal box, scratched and dented, meant for hauling stuff, with a control cab and a couple of passenger benches forward. Retractable wheels and pontoons seemed to be as much in case the gravs failed as for surface use.

  Unlike the ship, the van had more capabilities than it showed. When Naval Intelligence had recruited and sketchily trained young Targovi, it provided him such equipment as he might conceivably need sometime. That was not usual for an agent whose anticipated job was simply to keep alert and report anything dubious he noticed in the course of his ordinary rounds. However, Targovi was a son of Dragoika, and she was chief among the Sisterhood that led the Tigeries of the Toborkozan region. Moreover, she was an old friend of Dominic Flandry. Though he had not visited the Patrician System for a decade and a half, he and she still exchanged occasional communications; and he had risen to Fleet Admiral, and gained the ear of the Emperor.

  One gave little extras to the restless son of Dragoika.

  Targovi took off in a soft whirr. The mountains reared grandly around. Most were white-capped; glaciers shimmered blue-green under the shrunken sun. Pioneers had melted the snow off Mt. Horn and emplaced thermonuclear fires underground to keep rock and air liveably warm. Now the ice bulls and the frost-loving plants they had grazed were gone. Woods fringed the city. Agriculture occupied lower reaches, as far down as sea level. But humans dared not breathe there, unless through a reduction helmet. At those pressures, the gases their lungs required became poisons.

  It was otherwise for Targovi. After he had left the range behind and was humming east above its foothills, he pulled his oxygill out of its tiny sockets. Already it had been forcing him to inhale shallowly. He stowed it in its case with care, although the fabric was hard to damage, and proceeded to a wholly comfortable altitude. That was no lengthy descent, as steep as the density gradient is under Imhotepan gravity.

  The continent rolled away beneath him, a single forest, infinite shadings of green and gold, silvered with rivers and lakes, mysterious as the Land of Trees Beyond where some aged people believed the spirits of the dead went. Overhead, the sky was deeply blue, fleeced with clouds, the great half-disc of the moon Zoser ghostly above the sea that presently hove in sight. A splendid world, he thought. Not Starkad, nothing could be, but why mourn for that which was forever lost? His generation had come to life here, not there. As yet they were few, often baffled or slain by a nature alien to them; but in time they would win to understanding, thence to mastery, and their descendants would dwell throughout the planet.

  It was not sufficient for Targovi. He located the Crystal River and followed its course till it emptied into Dawnside Bay. There, where a harbor could lie sheltered from tidal turbulence, the Kursovikians had built their new town. Other societies had settled elsewhere, seeking to carry on their particular ways, but the Kursoviki folk were largely seafarers.

  They were also those who had always been in closest contact with the Terrans, whose mission headquarters stood on a ridge to the west. Low and softly tinted, the building looked subordinate to the gray stone mass on a hilltop that was the Castle of the Sisterhood. Targovi knew how much of an illusion that was.

  Nonetheless, Toborkozan had struck roots and grown; it could survive without further help if need be. Houses—timber, often bearing carven totems on the roofs—were spread widely along cobbled streets. The waterships in port were nearly all wooden too, archaic windjammers because those had been what the wrights knew how to make; but most had gotten auxiliary engines, and some were hovercraft of fairly modern design. A ferrocrete field on the northern headland offered landing to aircars, as well as the gliders and propeller-driven wingboats which various Tigeries had constructed for themselves.

  Targovi, privileged, set his vehicle down in the courtyard of the Castle and got out. Guards raised traditional halberds in salute. They carried firearms as well, for emigration had not extinguished every feud or kept fresh ones from arising, not to mention lawlessness, and it was better to watch over your own, yourself, than depend on the Terrans. Targovi learned that his mother was in her apartment and hastened thither.

  Dragoika lived high in the Gaarnokh Tower. Gaarnokhs had not been among the species which could be introduced on Imhotep, but memory lingered of their horned mightiness. She was standing in a room floored with slate and walled with granite. Tapestries gentled it a trifle. Books and a single seashell goblet were from Starkad. The rest—bronze candelabrum, things of silver and glass, massive table, couches whose lines resembled a ship's—were crafted here. Carrying capacity between suns had been so limited; much worse decisio
ns had had to be made than to abandon the works of an entire history. She was looking out an open ogive window, into the salt breeze and onward to surf on the reefs beyond the bay.

  "Greeting, mother and chieftain," said Targovi.

  Dragoika turned, purred, and came to take his hands in hers. Though the female mane that rippled down her back was grizzled, she moved lithely. The sumptuous female curves had become lean, but her breasts jutted proud. True, they weren't ornamental adipose tissue like human dugs, they were organs muscular and vascular, from which her infants had sucked not milk but blood. Targovi had seen Terran speculations that the need to maintain a high blood supply made her sex the more vigorous one, and that this accounted for its dominance in most Tigery cultures. His doubts about that did not in any important way diminish his respect for her.

  "Welcome home, youngest son," she said. "How fared you?"

  "Into a wind that stank of evil," he replied. "How fare the folk?"

  "Well enough … thus far. But you are back sooner than is wont. It would not be for aye, this time?"

  "It would not. It cannot. I tell you, death was in the wind I snuffed upon Daedalus. I must return."

  Her tendrils drooped. "Ever will you go forth—someday, if you live, beyond any ken of mine. Overbold are you, my son."

  "No more than you, mother, when you skippered a ship on the Zletovar Sea and the vaz-Siravo rose beweaponed from beneath."

  "But you are male." Dragoika sighed. "The Terran example? Are you driven to do everything a female can do, as I've heard their females were once driven to match the males? I hoped for grandchildren from you."

  "Why, you shall have them. Just find me a wife who's content if I'm often away."

  "Or always away, like him who begot your friend Diana?" Dragoika's mood lightened. She did send a parting shot: "Long will it be ere many vaz-Toborko besides yourself are found on Daedalus, let alone worlds among the stars. How like you your celibacy?"

  "Not much. It measures my feelings for you, mother, that I came here before seeking the waterfront minxes. However, if this is the price to pay—There is naught a fellow can get so far behind on, nor so quickly catch up on."

  She whistled in merriment. "Well, then, scapegrace, come have a smoke and we'll talk." She surveyed him closely. "It was not filial piety brought you first to me. You've somewhat to ask."

  "I do that," he admitted. Excitement pulsed within him. Dragoika got word from around this globe. If anyone could aid him onward, it was she.

  The wind blew slow but powerful. It filled the upper square sails, lower fore-and-aft canvas, and jibs that drove Firefish southeast. Seas rushed, boomed, flung bitter spindrift off their crests; they shimmered green on their backs, dark purple in their troughs. Following the wake soared a flock of flying snakes.

  Abruptly the lookout shouted. Sailors swarmed to the rail or into the rigging to see. Captain Latazhanda stayed more calm. She had received word on the ship's radio, and given directions.

  The van lumbered down, extended pontoons, sought to lay alongside. Though Targovi maneuvered cautiously, he nearly suffered a capsizing. Waves under this gravity moved with real speed and force. His second pass succeeded. Leaning out an opened door, he made fast a towline tossed him and let his vehicle drop aft. He flew across on a gravity impeller.

  Besides the crew, their passengers were on deck to meet him. He thrust aside awe at his first in-the-flesh sight of a Wodenite, and turned toward Diana Crowfeather. She sprang over the planks and into his arms.

  "Targovi, you rascal, how wonderful!" she warbled. "What're you doin' here?" Anxiety smote. She stepped back, her hands still on his shoulders, and stared at him through the vitryl that snugged around her head. Aside from it and its pump, she was briefly clad. No matter the broad orbit, Imhotep's atmosphere has a greenhouse effect felt even at sea. "Is somethin' wrong?"

  "Yea and nay," Targovi replied in his language, which she understood and the Wodenite presumably did not. "I would fain speak with you alone, little friend." He purred. "Fear not. I, the trader, have in mind to give you, in swap for this adventure of yours, a bigger and wilder one."

  "Oh, but I've promised Axor—"

  "He will be included. I count on you to persuade him. But let me be about my devoirs."

  Saluting Latazhanda, he explained that he carried an urgent message. She and her crew were a rough lot, but had the manners not to inquire what it was. "I daresay you know whither we're bound," she remarked. "The Starboard and Larboard Islands, where this mad pair want to look at what may be ruins left by fay-folk of old." She rumbled a chuckle. "They're paying aplenty for the charter."

  "Need is that I must take them from you. But I'll make your loss good, my lady. A fourth of the fare." Targovi winced as he spoke. The price would come out of his purse, and it was uncertain whether the Corps would ever honor that expense account.

  "A fourth!" yowled Latazhanda. "Are you madder than they? I declined a lucrative cargo to make this trip. Three-fourths at least."

  "Ah, but so enticing a puss as you cannot fail to attract the offers of ardent agents." Much consignment, brokerage, and other shore-side business was in male hands. "How I envy them. Your charms cause me to reward you with a third of the passage money you're forgoing."

  Latazhanda gave him a long look. "I've heard of you, the chapman who goes beyond the sky. If you've time to take hospitality, your stories should be worth my accepting a mere two-thirds."

  They haggled amicably and flirtatiously until they reached an agreement which included his spending the night in her cabin. She enjoyed variety, and he did not mind that part of the bargain at all.

  What with additional introductions, and leisured preliminaries of acquaintanceship with F. X. Axor, the hour was near sunset when Targovi and Diana could be by themselves. That was in the crow's nest on the mainmast. He balanced against the surging and swaying as easily as any of his race, and it delighted her so much that she took a while to calm down and pay heed.

  Wind swirled in shrouds, bore iodine odors. The ship creaked and whooshed. A low sun threw a bridge over the waters. Forsaking this quest for another would not be quite easy.

  "My mother Dragoika told me about you and your comrade, of course," Targovi began. "You had called on her and she helped you arrange this transportation. My thanks to the gods, for you two must be their very sending."

  "What do you want of us?" she asked.

  "How would you like to go to Daedalus and roam about?"

  "Oh, marvelous! I've only seen Aurea and its neighborhood—" Diana checked herself. "But I did promise Axor I'd be his guide, interpreter, assistant."

  "Axor will come along. In fact, that is the whole idea."

  "But don't you understand? He isn't travelin' for pleasure, nor for science, really. To him, this is a … a pilgrimage. We can't go 'til he's looked over the stones on those islands."

  "They've lasted thousands of years—millions, if he is right. They can wait a bit longer. Tell him, what's true, this is a chance he had better seize. Soon none but Navy ships may be going between Patrician planets."

  "What? Why?"

  "And Javak the Fireplayer alone knows when the spacelanes will be open again. If Axor must be stranded, better on Daedalus than Imhotep. That air helmet of his seems to pain him."

  "Yes, I think it does, though he never complains. It had to be made special for him. He's comfortable in Olga's Landin'."

  "But what would there be for him to do? Whereas Daedalus may well be the world that has what he's seeking. Likelier, I should think. Have any such things ever been found on globes the size of Imhotep? Chances are, he's wasting his efforts. You, small person, are not, because you are having a glorious time simply traveling. However, you can have the same on Daedalus, and more. No need for a helmet. Plenty of handsome young men."

  Diana sniffed and tossed her head as much as she could under these conditions. "I can take care of myself, thank you. Do you know of anything yonder that might be Foredweller remai
ns?"

  "In my traffickings I have seen curious sights, and heard tell of others. Once we're there, I will ask more widely and more closely, until I have a goal or three for you."

  She gave him a hard stare. "Why do you want this?"

  "Well, as a trader who smells trouble uptime, I need better information—"

  She laughed. "Let's not play pretty games. Nobody can overhear us. You're no more a simple packman than I am. I've known for years. What you really are, it wouldn't've been polite to ask … 'til now."

  He joined an acrid mirth to hers. "Hai, little friend of the universe, you are your father's daughter! … I suspected that you suspected. Certain remarks you made, looks you pierced me with, already ere your limbs lengthened—not what a child shows the son of her mother's associate when he's come back from an adventure and put her on his lap to tell her about it … Aye, trusting you to keep silence, I admit to turning an honest credit now and then by keeping my senses open on behalf of your father's corps. Is that terrible?"

  "Contrariwise," she replied enthusiastically. "The Navy staked you, didn't it? I never really believed what you said about the pirates."

  "Well," he growled, miffed, "we can talk further another time. What matters this evening is that devils are loose. They know me too well on Daedalus. But who would be wary of an innocent old priest and his young girl companion, wandering about on a purely religious expedition?"

  Diana tensed. "What'd we really be doin'?"

  "Essentially, distracting attention from me. I have business I want to pursue, best not discussed here. You two will be conspicuous without posing a threat to anybody."

  She scowled. "I can't just use him."

  "You'll not." Targovi spread his hands. "Who dares say there are no Ancient relics along the Highroad River and—on islands beyond? Already millions of years ago, that must have been a good place to settle. I'll help you gather information about it."