Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Read online

  "But," Ridenour stammered. "But. How?"

  "As mayor, I knew that such devices were included in the last consignment of defensive materials that the Navy sent to Domkirk. I knew that one was carried on every military aircraft of ours. And several military aircraft were among those stolen last night. I watched my chance, I made myself ridiculous, and—" Uriason threw out his chest, thereby also throwing out his belly—"at the appropriate moment, I palmed this one from beneath the noses of the wrecking crew."

  Ridenour wet his lips. They felt sandpapery. "I could've guessed that much," he got out. "But me—I—how—"

  "It would not be in character for me to accompany the savages into their wilderness," Uriason said.

  "They would be entirely too suspicious. Can I, can Freehold, can His Majesty and the entire human species rely upon you, sir?"

  The man was short and fat. His words rose like hot-air balloons. Nevertheless, had he dared under possible observation, Ridenour would have bowed most deeply. As matters were, the Terran could just say, "Yes, Citizen Mayor, I'll try to do my best."

  These were the stages of their journey:

  Karlsarm walked beside Ridenour, amicably answering questions. But wariness crouched behind. He wasn't altogether convinced that this man's reasons for coming along were purely scientific and diplomatic. At least, he'd better not be, yet. Sometimes he thought that humans from the inner Empire were harder to fathom than most nonhumans. Being of the same species, talking much the same language, they ought to react in the same ways as your own people. And they didn't. The very facial expressions, a frown, a smile, were subtly foreign.

  Ridenour, for immediate example, was courteous, helpful, even genial: but entirely on the surface. He showed nothing of his real self. No doubt he loved his family and was loyal to his Emperor and enjoyed his work and was interested in many other aspects of reality. He spoke of such things. But the emotion didn't come through. He made no effort to share his feelings, rather he kept them to himself with an ease too great to be conscious.

  Karlsarm had encountered the type before, offplanet. He speculated that reserve was more than an aristocrat's idea of good manners; it was a defense. Jammed together with billions of others, wired from before birth into a network of communication, coordination, impersonal omnipotent social machinery, the human being could only protect his individuality by making his inner self a fortress. Here, in the outback of Freehold, you had room; neither people nor organizations pressed close upon you; if anything, you grew eager for intimacy. Karlsarm felt sorry for Terrans. But that did not help him understand or trust them.

  "You surprise me pleasantly," he remarked. "I didn't expect you'd keep up with us the way you do."

  "Well, I try to stay in condition," Ridenour said. "And remember, I'm used to somewhat higher gravity. But to be honest, I expected a far more difficult trip—narrow muddy trails and the like. You have a road here."

  "Hm, I don't think a lot of it. We do better elsewhere. But then, this is a distant marchland for us."

  Both men glanced around. The path crossed a high hillside, smoothly graded and switchbacked, surface planted in a mossy growth so tough and dense that no weeds could force themselves in. (It was a specially bred variety which, among other traits, required traces of manganese salt. Maintenance gangs supplied this from time to time, and thus automatically kept the moss within proper bounds.) The path was narrow, overarched by forest, a sun-speckled cool corridor where birds whistled and a nearby cataract rang. Because of its twistings, few other people were visible, though the party totalled hundreds.

  Most of them were on different courses anyhow. Karlsarm had explained that the Free People laid out as many small, interconnected, more or less parallel ways as the traffic in a given area demanded, rather than a single broad highroad. It was easier to do, less damaging to ecology and scenery, more flexible to changing situations. Also, it was generally undetectable from above. He had not seen fit to mention the other mutant plant types, sown throughout this country, whose exudates masked those of human metabolism and thereby protected his men from airborne chemical sniffers.

  "I've heard you use beasts of burden in a limited fashion," Ridenour said.

  "Yes, horses and stathas have been naturalized here," Karlsarm said. "And actually, in our central regions, we keep many. City folk see just a few, because we don't often bring them to our thinly populated borderlands. No reason for it. You can go about as fast on foot, when you aren't overloaded with gear. But at home you'll see animals, wagons—boats and rafts, for that matter—in respectable totals."

  "Your population must be larger than is guessed, then."

  "I don't know what the current guess is in the Cities. And we don't bother with, uh, a census. But I'd estimate twenty million of us on this continent, and about the same for the others. Been stable for a long time. That's the proper human density. We don't crowd each other or press hard on natural resources. And so we've got abundant free food and stuff. No special effort involved in satisfying the basic needs. At the same time, there are enough of us for specialization, diversity, large-scale projects like road building. And, I might add, gifted people. You know, only about ten per cent of mankind are born to be leaders or creators in any degree. We'd stagnate if we were too few, same as we'd grow cramped and over-regulated if we became too many."

  "How do you maintain a level population? You don't appear to have any strong compulsion mechanism."

  "No, we haven't. Tradition, public opinion, the need to help your neighbor so he'll help you, the fact that out-and-out bastards get into quarrels and eventually get killed—such factors will do, when you have elbow room. The population-control device is simple. It wasn't planned, it evolved, but it works. Territory."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "A man claims a certain territory for his own, to support him and his family and retainers. He passes it on to one son. How he chooses the heir is his business. Anybody who kills the owner, or drives him off, takes over that parcel of land."

  Ridenour actually registered a little shock, though he managed a smile. "Your society is less idyllic than some young City people told me," he said.

  Karlsarm laughed. "We do all right—most of us. Can any civilization claim more? The landless don't starve, remember. They're taken on as servants, assistants, guards and the like. Or they become itinerant laborers, or entrepreneurs, or something. Let me remind you, we don't practice marriage. Nobody needs to go celibate. It's only that few women care to have children by a landless man." He paused. "Territorial battles aren't common any more, either. The landholders have learned how to organize defenses. Besides, a decent man can count on help from his neighbors. So not many vagabonds try to reave an estate. Those that do, and succeed—well, haven't they proven they're especially fit to become fathers?"

  The paths ranged above timberline. The land became boulder-strewn, chill and stark. Ridenour exclaimed, "But this road's been blasted from the cliff side!"

  "Why, of course," said Rowlan. "You didn't think we'd chip it out by hand, did you?"

  "But what do you use for such jobs?"

  "Organics. Like nitroglycerine. We compound that—doesn't take much apparatus, you know—and make dynamite from it. Some other explosives, and most fuels, we get from vegetables we've bred." Rowlan tugged his gray beard and regarded the Terran. "If you want to make a side trip," he offered, "I'll show you a hydroelectric plant. You'll call it ridiculously small, but it beams power to several mills and an instrument factory. We are not ignorant, John Ridenour. We adopt from your civilization what we can use. It simply doesn't happen to be a particularly large amount."

  Even in this comparatively infertile country, food was plentiful. There were no more fruits for the plucking, but roots and berries were almost as easily gotten in the low brush, and animals—albeit of different species from the lowlands—continued to arrive near camp for slaughter. Ridenour asked scholarly little Noach how that was done, he being a beast operator himself. "Are t
hey domesticated and conditioned?"

  "No, I wouldn't call them that, exactly," Noach replied. "Not like horses or dogs. We use the proper stimuli on them. Those vary, depending on what you're after and where you are. For instance, in Brenning Dales you can unstopper a bottle of sex attractant, and every gruntleboar within ten kilometers rushes straight toward your bow. Around the Mare we've bred instincts into certain species to come when a sequence of notes is played on a trumpet. If nothing else, you can always stalk for yourself, any place. Hunting isn't difficult when critters are abundant. We don't want to take the time on this journey, though, so Mistress Jenith has been driving those cragbuck with her fire bees." He shrugged. "There are plenty of other ways. What you don't seem to realize, as yet, is that we're descended from people who applied scientific method to the problem of living in a wilderness."

  For once, the night was clear above Foulweather Pass. Snow glistened on surrounding peaks, under Selene, until darkness lay drenched with an unreal brilliance. Not many stars shone through. But Karlsarm scowled at one, which was new and moved visibly, widdershins over his head.

  "They've put up another satellite." The words puffed ghost white from his lips; sound was quickly lost, as if it froze and tinkled down onto the hoarfrosted road. "Or moved a big spaceship into near orbit without camouflage. Why?"

  "The war?" Evagail shivered beside him and wrapped her fur cloak tighter about her. (It was not her property. Warm outfits were kept for travelers in a shed at the foot of the pass, to be returned on the other side, with a small rental paid to the servant of the landholder.) "What's been happening?"

  "The news is obscure, what I get of it on that miniradio we took along," Karlsarm said. "A major fight's developing near Sluicegate. Nuclear weapons, the whole filthy works. By Oneness, if this goes on much longer we won't be left with a planet worth inhabiting!"

  "Now don't exaggerate." She touched his hand. "I grant you, territory that's fought on, or suffers fallout, is laid waste. But not forever; and it isn't any big percentage of the total."

  "You wouldn't say that if you were the owner. And what about the ecological consequences? The genetic? Let's not get overconfident about these plant and animal species we've modified to serve our needs while growing wild. They're still new and unstable. A spreading mutation could wipe them out. Or we might have to turn farmers to save them!"

  "I know. I know. I do want you to see matters in perspective. But agreed, the sooner the war ends, the better." Evagail turned her gaze from that sinister, crawling spark in the sky. She looked down the slope on which they stood, to the camp. Oilwood fires were strewn along the way, each economically serving a few people. They twinkled like red and orange constellations. A burst of laughter, a drift of song came distantly to her ears.

  Karlsarm could practically read her thought. "Very well, what about Ridenour?" he challenged.

  "I can't say. I talk with him, but he's so locked into himself, I get no hint of what his real purpose may be. I could almost wish my Skill were of the love kind."

  "Why yours?" Karlsarm demanded. "Why don't you simply wish, like me, that we had such a Mistress with us?"

  Evagail paused before she chuckled. "Shall I admit the truth? He attracts me. He's thoroughly a man, in his quiet way; and he's exotic and mysterious to boot. Must you really sic an aphrodite onto him when we reach Moon Garnet?"

  "I'll decide that at the time. Meanwhile, you can help me decide and maybe catch forewarning of any plot against us. He can't hide that he's drawn to you. Use the fact."

  "I don't like to. Men and women—of course, I mean women who don't have that special Skill—they should give to each other, not take. I don't even know if I could deceive him."

  "You can try. If he realizes and gets angry, what of it?" Beneath the shadowing carnivore headpiece, Karlsarm's features turned glacier stern. "You have your duty."

  "Well . . ." Briefly, her voice was forlorn. "I suppose." Then the wide smooth shoulders straightened. Moonfrost sparkled on a mane lifted high. "It could be fun, too, couldn't it?" She turned and walked from him.

  Ridenour sat at one campfire, watching a dance. The steps were as intricate as the music that an improvised orchestra made. He seemed not only glad but relieved when Evagail seated herself beside him.

  "Hullo," she greeted. "Are you enjoying the spectacle?"

  "Yes," he said, "but largely in my professional capacity. I'm sure it's high art, but the conventions are too alien for me."

  "Isn't your business to unravel alien symbolisms?"

  "In part. Trouble is, what you have here is not merely different from anything I've ever seen before. It's extraordinarily subtle—obviously the product of a long and rigorous tradition. I've discovered, for instance, that your musical scale employs smaller intervals than any other human music I know of. Thus you make and use and appreciate distinctions and combinations that I'm not trained to hear."

  "I think you'll find that's typical," Evagail said. "We aren't innocent children of nature, we Free People. I suspect we elaborate our lives more, we're fonder of complication, ingenuity, ceremoniousness, than Terra herself."

  "Yes, I've talked to would-be runaways from the Cities."

  She laughed. "Well, the custom is that we give recruits a tough apprenticeship. If they can't get through that, we don't want them. Probably they wouldn't survive long. Not that life's harder among us than in the Cities. In fact, we have more leisure. But life is altogether different here."

  "I've scarcely begun to grasp how different," Ridenour said. "The questions are so many, I don't know where to start." A dancer leaped, his feather bonnet streaming in Selene light, flame light, and shadow. A flute twittered, a drum thuttered, a harp trilled, a bell rang, chords intertwining like ripple patterns on water. "What arts do you have besides . . . this?"

  "Not architecture, or monumental sculpture, or murals, or multi-sense taping." Evagail smiled. "Nothing that requires awkward masses. But we do have schools of—oh, scrimshaw, jewelry, weaving, painting and carvings, that sort of thing—and they are genuine, serious arts. Then drama, literature, cuisine . . . and things you don't have—to call them contemplation, conversation, integration—but those are poor words."

  "What I can't understand is how you can manage without those awkward masses," Ridenour said. "For example, everyone seems to be literate. But what's the use? What is there to read?"

  "Why, we probably have more books and periodicals than you do. No electronics competing with them. One of the first things our ancestors did, when they started colonizing the outback in earnest, was develop plants with leaves that dry into paper and juice that makes ink. Many landholders keep a little printing press in the same shed as their other heavy equipment. It doesn't need much metal, and wind or water can power it. Don't forget, each area maintains schools. The demand for reading matter is a source of income—yes, we use iron and copper slugs for currency—and the transporters carry mail as well as goods."

  "How about records, though? Libraries? Computers? Information exchange?"

  "I've never met anybody who collects books, the way some do in the Cities. If you want to look at a piece again, copies are cheap." (Ridenour thought that this ruled out something he had always considered essential to a cultivated man—the ability to browse, to re-read on impulse, to be serendipitous among the shelves. However, no doubt these outbackers thought he was uncouth because he didn't know how to dance or to arrange a meteor-watching festival.) "Messages go speedily enough for our purposes. We don't keep records like you. Our mode of life doesn't require it. Likewise, we have quite a live technology, still developing. Yes, and a pure science. But they concentrate on areas of work that need no elaborate apparatus: the study of animals, for instance, and ways to control them."

  Evagail leaned closer to Ridenour. No one else paid attention; they were watching the performance. "But do me a favor tonight, will you?" she asked.

  "What? Why, certainly." His gaze drifted across the ruddy lights in her h
air, the shadows under her cloak, and hastily away. "If I can."

  "It's easy." She laid a hand over his. "Just for tonight, stop being a research machine. Make small talk. Tell me a joke or two. Sing me a Terran song, when they finish here. Or walk with me to look at the moon. Be human, John Ridenour . . . only a man . . . this little while."

  West of the pass, the land became a rolling plateau. Again it was forested, but less thickly and with other trees than in the warm eastern valleys. The travelers met folk more often, as population grew denser; and these were apt to be mounted. Karlsarm didn't bother with animals. A human in good condition can log fifty kilometers a day across favorable terrain, without difficulty. Ridenour remarked, highly centralized empires were held together on ancient Terra with communication no faster than this.

  Besides, the outbackers possessed them: not merely an occasional aircar for emergency use, but a functioning web. He broke into uncontrollable laughter when Evagail first explained the system to him.

  "What's so funny?" She cocked her head. Though they were much together, to the exclusion of others, they still lacked mutual predictability. He might now be wearing outbacker garb and be darkened by Freehold's harsh sunlight and have let his beard grow because he found a diamond-edge razor too much trouble. But he remained a stranger.

  "I'm sorry. Old saying." He looked around the glen where they stood. Trees were stately above blossom-starred grasses; leaves murmured in a cool breeze and smelled like spice. He touched a green tendril that curled over one trunk and looped to the next. "Grapevine telegraph!"

  "But . . . well, I don't recognize your phrase, John, but that kind of plant does carry signals. Our ancestors went to a vast amount of work to create the type and sow and train it, over the entire mid-continent. I confess the signals don't go at light speed, only neural speed; and the channel isn't awfully broad—but it suffices for us."