A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows df-7 Read online

  {The office was cramped, its air stale. The commander of Intelligence said, “Nothing slow and easy for you, Vymezal. Treason’s too urgent a matter; and traitors deserve no careful handling.”

  “I am not—”

  “We’ll soon find out. Take her away, O’Brien. I want her prepared for hypnoprobing.”}

  {Downward whirl through shrieks, thunders, flashes, pain and pain, down toward emptiness, but oh, she cannot reach blessed cool nothing; eternity has her.

  The Golden Face, the cinnabar eyes, an indigo plume above, a voice of mercy: “Rest, Kossara. Sleep. Forget.” No more.}

  {She was still dazed, numb, when the drumhead court-martial condemned her to life enslavement.}

  Flandry considered the papers in his hands. Her few dry words appeared to have turned him as impersonal, for he said in the same tone, expressionless, “Thank you. Not much left in your mind, is there? No explanation of your hatred for the Empire.”

  “What do you mean?” exploded from her. “After what I told!”

  “Please,” he said. “You’re a bright, educated, reasonably objective person. Taking your memories as correct—which they may not be; you could be recalling pieces of delirium—you should be able to entertain the possibility that you and your friends had the bad luck to meet fools and brutes such as infest every outfit. You should consider using established procedures to have them identified, traced, penalized. Unless, of course, you’re so set in your attitude that this business seems typical, mere confirmation of what you already knew.”

  He glanced up. “Have you been told exactly what’s in this report on you? The Intelligence report, that is.”

  “No,” she got forth.

  “I didn’t expect you would. It’s secret. Let me give you a summary.” His vision skimmed the sheets he flipped through as he recited:

  “Overtly, you and your attendant Trohdwyr arrived at Thursday Landing for a duly approved xenological research project on behalf of your, um, Shkola, among the Diomedeans of the Sea of Achan area. The declared motivation was that Dennitzans have lately opened trade with a comparable species near home, and want an idea of what to expect from continued impact of high-technology civilization on them. Quite normal. The Imperial resident provided you the customary assistance. He and his household depose that you were a charming guest who gave them no hint of bad intentions. However, you were soon off for the field. They never saw you again.

  “Meanwhile, Naval Intelligence was busy throughout that part of space. There was reason to suspect some kind of hostile operation, taking advantage of widespread disorganization caused by the war and not yet amended. Diomedes was certainly a trouble spot, secessionism steadily gaining strength in a principal society of the planet. Those revolutionaries seemed to hope for Ythrian support.

  “But other, more reliable sources indicated Ythri had nothing to do with this. Then who were the humans known, from loyal native witnesses, to be active on Diomedes? If not Avalonians, working for the Domain they live in, who?

  “With the help of informers, Intelligence agents tracked down a group of these subversives to a mountain hideout. Seeing what they took for a Merseian, they leaped to conclusions … not unjustified, it turned out. The gang resisted arrest and, except for you, perished in the fire fight. Blasters in an enclosed space like a cave—the marines were wearing combat armor and your companions were not. The fact that the suspects fought, under those circumstances, seems to prove they were as fanatical as your psychograph says you are.

  “Hypnoprobed, you revealed you were the deputy of your uncle the Gospodar, come to check on the progress. His idea was that Dennitzans posing as Avalonians could incite an uprising on Diomedes. This by itself would draw Imperial attention there. The apparent likelihood of Ythri being behind it would decoy considerable of our armed strength, too. Then at the right moment—you quoted your uncle simply as speaking of a ‘lever’ to use on the Imperium, for getting concessions. But you spilled your belief—and you ought to know—that, if events broke favorably, he’d seize the chance to rebel. Depending on circumstances, he’d either try for the throne, or carry out the same plan as the late Duke Alfred was nursing along, to rip a sizable region loose from the Empire and place it under Merseian protection.

  “Which, of course”—Flandry lifted his gaze again—“would give the Roidhunate a bridgehead right in that frontier. Do you wonder that the treatment you got was rough?”

  Kossara sprang from her chair. “How crazy do you think we are?” she yelled.

  “We’re bound for Diomedes to find out,” he said.

  “Why not straight to Dennitza like an honest man?”

  “Others will, never fear. Detective work on an entire nation, or just on its leaders, takes personnel and patience. A singleton like me does best vis-a-vis a small operation, as I suppose the one on Diomedes necessarily is.”

  Flandry’s eyes narrowed. “If you want your liberty back, my dear, rather than being resold when I decide you’re not worth your keep, you will cooperate,” he said. “Think of it not as betraying your folk, but as helping save them from disastrously wrong-headed adventurers.

  “We have a libraryful of material on Diomedes aboard. Study it. Ponder it. Something may jog your memory; a lot that you’ve forgotten is probably not irretrievably lost. Or you should be able to make deductions—you’re a smart girl—deductions about likely rendezvous points remaining, where we can snare more agents. Or, better yet, I’d guess: Diomedeans involved in the movement, never identified by our people, they should recognize you, if you show yourself in the proper ways. They should make contact and—do you see?”

  “Yes!” she screamed. “And I won’t!”

  She fled.

  The man sat quiet for a while before he said to the empty air, “Very well, if you wish, Chives will bring you your meals in your cabin.”

  VI

  As Flandry conned the Hooligan, Diomedes grew huge in the screens before him. Too heavily clouded for oceans and continents to show as anything but blurs, the dayside glowed amber-orange, with tinges of rose and violet, under the light of a dull sun. The nighted part gave pale whiteness back to moons and stars, reflections off ice and snow. When Kossara last came here, equinox was not long past; now absolute winter lay upon fully half the planet.

  Flandry’s attention was concentrated on piloting. Ordinarily he would have left that to the automatics, or to Chives if no ground-control facilities existed. But this time he must use both skill and the secret data he had commandeered back on Terra, to elude the Imperial space sentries.

  Most were small detector-computer units in orbit, such as supervised traffic around any world of the Empire which got any appreciable amount of it, guarding against smugglers, hostiles, recklessness, or equipment failures. Flandry had long since rigged his speedster to evade them without much effort, given foreknowledge of their paths. But surely the unrest on Diomedes, the suspicion of outside interference, had caused spacecraft to be added. Sneaking past these required an artist. He enjoyed it.

  Just the same, somewhere at the back of awareness, memory rehearsed what he had learned about his goal. Pictures and passages of text flickered by:

  “Among the bodies which men have named Diomedes—among all the planets we know—in many respects, this one is unique.

  “Though not unusually old, the system is metal-poor. To explain that, Montoya suggested chemical fractionation of the original cloud of dust and gas by the electromagnetic action of a passing neutron star … As a result, while Diomedes has a mass of 4.75 Terra, the low net density gives it a surface gravity of only 1.10 standard. However, so large an object was bound to generate an extensive atmosphere. Between gravitational potential resulting from a diameter twice Terran, and low temperature and irradiation resulting from the G8 sun, much gas was retained. Life has modified it. Today mean sea-level pressure is 6.2 bars; the partial pressures of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide are about the same as on Terra, the rest of the air consisti
ng chiefly of neon …

  “Through some cosmic accident, the spin axis of Diomedes, like that of Uranus in the Solar System, lies nearly in the orbital plane. The arctic and antarctic circles thus almost coincide with the equator. In the course of a year 11 percent longer than Terra’s, practically the whole of each hemisphere will be sunless for a period ranging from weeks to months. Chill even in summer, land and sea become so frigid in winter that all but highly specialized life-forms must either hibernate or migrate …

  “Progressive autochthonous cultures had brought Stone Age technology, the sole kind possible for them, to an astonishing sophistication. Once contacted by humans, they were eager to trade, originally for metals, subsequently for means to build modern industries of their own. Diomedes offers numerous organic substances, valuable for a variety of purposes, cheaper to buy from natives than to synthesize …

  “The biochemistry producing these compounds is only terrestroid in the most general sense. It consists of proteins in water solution, carbohydrates, lipids, etc. But few are nourishing to humans and many are toxic. They permeate the environment. A man cannot survive a drink of water or repeated breaths of air, unless he has received thorough immunization beforehand. (Of course, that includes adaptation to the neon, which otherwise at this concentration would have ill effects too.) Short-term visitors prefer to rely on their basic antiallergen, helmets, protective clothing, and packaged rations.

  “The Diomedean must be similarly careful about materials from offplanet. In particular, most metals are poisonous to him. That he can use copper and iron anyway, as safely as we use beryllium or plutonium, is a tribute to his intelligence. But the precautions by themselves have inevitably joined those factors which force radical change upon ancient customs. Some cultures have adjusted without extreme stress. Others continue to suffer upheaval. Injustice and alienation bring dissension and violence … ”

  Although, Flandry thought, if we Imperials packed up our toys and went home, everybody here would soon be a great deal worse off. There’ve been too many irreversible changes. You can’t even sit still in this universe and not make waves.

  The sun was never down in summer; but Diomedes’ 12.5-hour rotation spun it through a circle. At the point in space and time where Hooligan landed, sharply rising mountains to the south concealed the disc.

  The saloon was warm and scented. Nevertheless, what he saw in the screen made Flandry grimace and give an exaggerated shiver. “Brrr! No wonder climes like this foster Spartan virtues. The inhabitants have to be in training before they can emigrate and dispossess whoever lives on desirable real estate.”

  “You can’t appreciate, can you, here is home for the Lannachska that they only want to keep unruined,” Kossara said.

  Couldn’t she recognize a joke? Maybe not. She’d held aloof since he interviewed her, studying as he urged but saying nothing about what meaning she drew from it.

  What a waste, Flandry sighed. We could have had a gorgeous voyage, you and 1.

  His gaze lingered on her. A coverall did not hide the fullness of a tall and supple body. Blue-green eyes, mahogany locks, strongly sculptured countenance had begun to haunt his reveries, and in the last few nightwatches his dreams. Did she really speak in the exact husky contralto of Kathryn McCormac? …

  She sensed his regard, flushed, and attacked: “We are on Lannach, are we not? I think I recall several of these peaks.”

  Flandry nodded and gave his attention back to the view. “Yes. Not far south of Sagna Bay.” He hoped she’d admire how easily he’d found a particular site on the big island, nothing except maps and navigation to guide him down through the stormy atmosphere. But she registered unmixed anger. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t object to that, seeing how carefully I fueled it.

  Concealed by an overhanging cliff, the ship stood halfway up a mountain, with an overlook down rugged kilometers to a horizon-gleam which betokened sea. Clouds towered in amethyst heaven, washed by faint pink where lightning did not flicker in blue-black caverns. Crags, boulders, waterfalls reared above talus slopes and murky scraps. Thin grasslike growth, gray thornbushes, twisted low trees grew about; they became more abundant as sight descended toward misty valleys, until at last they made forest. Wings cruised on high, maybe upbearing brains that thought, maybe simple beasts of prey. Faint through the hull sounded a yowl of wind.

  “Very well,” Kossara said grimly. “I’ll ask the question you want me to ask. Why are we here? Aren’t you supposed to report in at Thursday Landing?”

  “I exercised a special dispensation I have,” Flandry said. “The Residency doesn’t yet know we’ve come. In fact, unless my right hand has lost its cunning, nobody does.”

  At least I get a human startlement out of her. He liked seeing expressions cross her face, like clouds and sunbeams on a gusty spring day. “You see,” he explained, “if subversive activities are going on, there’s bound to be a spy or two around Imperial headquarters. News of your return would be just about impossible to suppress. And since you’re in the custody of a Naval officer, it’d alarm the outfit we’re after.

  “Whereas, if you suddenly reappear by yourself, right in this hotspot, you’ll surprise them. They won’t have time to get suspicious, I trust. They’ll make you welcome—”

  “Why should they?” Kossara interrupted. “They’ll wonder how I got back.”

  “Ah, no. Because they won’t know you were ever gone.”

  She stared. Flandry explained: “Your companions died. If rebel observers learned that you lived, they learned nothing else. No matter how idiotically my colleagues behaved toward you, I’m sure they followed doctrine and let out no further information. You vanished into their building, and that was that. You were brought from there to the spaceship in a sealed vehicle, weren’t you? … Yes, I knew it … The Corpsmen had no reason to announce you’d been condemned and deported, therefore they did not.

  “Accordingly, the rest of the gang—human if any are left on Diomedes, and most certainly a lot of natives—have no reason to suppose you haven’t just been held incommunicado. In fact, that would be a much more logical thing to do than shipping you off to Terra for purchase by any blabbermouth.”

  She frowned, less in dislike of him than from being caught up, willy-nilly, by the intellectual problem which his planned deception presented. “But wasn’t it a special team that caught and, and processed me? They may well have left the planet by now.”

  “If so, you can say they gave you in charge of the Intelligence agents stationed here semi-permanently. In fact, that’s the safest thing for you to maintain in any event, and quite plausible. We’ll work out a detailed story for you. I have an outline already, subject to your criticism. You wheedled a measure of freedom for yourself. That’s plausible too, if you don’t mind pretending you became the mistress of a bored, lonely commander. At last you managed to steal an aircar. I can supply that; we have two in the hold, one a standard civilian convertible we can set for Diomedean conditions. You fled back here, having enough memories left to know this is where your chances are best of being found by your organization.”

  She tensed again, and stretched the words out: “What will you do meanwhile?”

  Flandry shrugged. “Not having had your preventive-medical treatment, I’m limited in my scope. Let’s consult. Tentatively, I’ve considered making an appearance in a persona I’ve used before, a harmlessly mad Cosmenosist missionary prospecting for customers on yet another globe. However, I may do best to stay put aboard ship, following your adventures till the time looks ripe for whatever sort of action seems indicated.”

  Her starkness deepened. “How will you keep track of me?”

  From his pocket Flandry took a ring. On its gold band sparkled what resembled a sapphire. “Wear this. If anybody asks, say you got it from your jailer-lover. It’s actually a portable transmitter, same as your bracelet was on Terra but with its own power source.”

  “That little bit of a thing?” She sounded incredulous.
“Needing no electronic network around? Reaching beyond line-of-sight? And not detectable by those I spy on?”

  Flandry nodded. “It has all those admirable qualities.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “I’m not at liberty to describe the principle. Anyway, nobody ever told me. I’ve indulged in idle speculations about modulated neutrino emission, but they’re doubtless wildly wrong. What I do know is that the thing works.” Flandry paused. “Kossara, I’m sorry, but under any circumstances … before I can release you, before I can even land you again on a prime world like Terra, you’ll have to have wiped from your memory the fact that such gadgets exist. The job will be painless and very carefully done.”

  He held out the ring. She half reached for it, withdrew her hand, flickered her glance about till it came to rest on his, and asked most softly: “Why do you think I’ll help you?”

  “To earn your liberty,” he answered. Each sentence wrenched at him. “Defect, and you’re outlaw. What chance would you have of getting home? The orbital watch, the surface hunt would be doubled. If you weren’t caught, you’d starve to death after you used up your human-type food.

  “And consider Dennitza. Your kin, your friends, small children in the millions, the past and present and future of your whole world. Should they be set at stake, in an era of planet-smasher weapons, for a political point at best, the vainglory of a few aristocrats at worst? You know better, Kossara.”

  She stood still for a long while before she took the ring from him and put it on her bridal finger.

  “Given the support of a dense atmosphere,” said a text, “the evolution of large flying organisms was profuse. At last a particular species became fully intelligent.

  “Typical of higher animals on Diomedes, it was migratory. Homeothermic, bisexual, viviparous, it originally followed the same reproductive pattern as its less developed cousins, and in most cultures still does. In fall a flock moves to the tropics, where it spends the winter. The exertion during so long a flight causes hormonal changes which stimulate the gonads. Upon arrival, there is an orgy of mating. In spring the flock returns home. Females give birth shortly before the next migration, and infants are carried by their parents. Mothers lactate like Terran mammals, and while they do, will not get pregnant. In their second year the young can fly independently, they have been weaned, their mothers are again ready to breed.