Rise of the Terran Empire Page 7

  "Eat, drink, smoke," the host urged, waving at a well-stocked portable bar, trays of intricate canapés, boxes of cigars and cigarettes. He himself held a churchwarden pipe which had seen years of service and grown fouler for each day of them. "I wanted we should talk here, not on a circuit with seals, so we could relax, act honest, not have to resent what anybody maybe says."

  Story nodded and took Scotch whisky in the civilized manner, neat with a water chaser. Van Rijn refilled a tumbler of Genever gin, adding a dash of what he called angst en onrust bitters. They settled down in loungers. Lennart sat upright on a sofa opposite, accepting nothing.

  "Well," she said. "What do you have in mind?"

  "We should see if we can compromise, or if not that, map out our areas of disagreement. Right?" Story supplied.

  "Also horse-trade information," van Rijn said.

  "That can be a mighty valuable commodity, especially when it's in short supply," Story observed.

  "I hope you realize neither of us can make promises, Freeman van Rijn." Lennart clipped off each word. "We are simply executives of our corporations." She herself was a vice president of Global Cybernetics. "And in fact, neither the Home Companies nor the Seven form a monolith. They are only tied together by certain business agreements."

  The recital of what a schoolboy should know did not insult van Rijn. "Plus interlocking directorates," he added blandly, taking up a tiny sandwich of smoked eel upon cold scrambled egg. "Besides, each of you got more voice in things than you let on, ja, you can bellow like wounded blast furnaces any time you want. And those business agreements, what they mean is the Seven is one cartel and the Home Companies another, and got plenty of political flunkies in high places."

  "Not us in the Commonwealth," Story said. "That's become your plutocracy, Freelady Lennart, not ours."

  Her thin cheeks flushed. "You can say that truly of your poor little puppet states on their poor little planets," she retorted. "As for the Commonwealth, we've now had fifty years of progressive reforms to strengthen democracy."

  "By damn," van Rijn muttered, "maybe you really believe that."

  "I hope we aren't here to rehearse stale partisan politics," Story said.

  "Me too," van Rijn answered. "That is what it will amount to, what the Council will do if we leave it to itself. Members will take their positions and then not be able to get off because they have spread so much manure around. They will quarrel till plaster falls from the sky. And nothing else will happen . . . unless a few leaders agree to let it happen. That is what I want us to wowpow about."

  "The issues are simple," Lennart declared. She repeated what she had said more than once at the conference table. "Mirkheim is too valuable, too strategic a resource, to be allowed to fall into the claws of beings that have demonstrated their hostility. I include certain human beings. The Commonwealth has a just title to sovereignty over it, inasmuch as the original discoverers represented no government whereas the Rigassi expedition was composed of our citizens. The Commonwealth likewise has a duty to mankind, to civilization itself, to safeguard that planet. The Home Companies support this. It's a patriotic obligation, and I am frankly surprised that persons of your education don't recognize it."

  "My education was in the school of hard knockers," van Rijn replied. "Yours too, I suspect, Freeman Story, ha? You and me should understand each other."

  "I understand why you change the subject," Lennart flung forth. "A discussion of morals would embarrass you."

  "Well, speaking of morals, and immorals too," van Rijn said, "what about those original discoverers of Mirkheim, ha? What rights you think they have?"

  "That can be decided in the courts, after Mirkheim is secured."

  "Ja, ja, in courts whose judges you buy and sell like shares of stock. I hear a background noise already, you whetting your lawyers. That was why the Supermetals Company worked in secret."

  Story raised his brows. "Do you expect us to believe, Freeman, that you aided and abetted them for a decade out of an abstract sense of justice?"

  "What makes you suppose I was in any plot, a plain old peddler of belly comfort like me?"

  "It's not been made public, but Rigassi learned from the workers at Mirkheim that a member of the Polesotechnic League had been helping in their cover-up, ever since he tracked the planet down. They didn't say who he was; they were simply, rather pathetically, trying to seem stronger than they are—"

  Lennart drew a sharp breath. "How do you know that?" she exclaimed.

  Story grinned. He was not about to reveal whatever espionage system his bloc maintained. He continued addressing van Rijn: "In retrospect, the man has to have been you. And a gorgeous job you did. Especially those hints you let drop, those clues you let be found, indicating an entire civilization more advanced than ours was producing the supermetals. Expeditions going solemnly out in search . . . Surely the most magnificent hoax in history." After a moment: "Do you mind telling us why you did it?"

  "Well, you would call me a liar if I said I thought it was the right thing, and could be I would myself." Van Rijn swallowed a confection of Limburger cheese and onion on pumpernickel, tamped his pipe with a horny forefinger, and drank smoke. "I admit, partly I got talked into it by somebody I care about," he went on, between blowing rings. "And partly, for independents like me, is best if supermetals be on a free market. I don't want either of your cartels having the power that a Mirkheim monopoly in your hands would give. The original outfit, it is more reasonable."

  That was what he had argued for at the Council: that the Polesotechnic League exert the might it had when it was united, in an effort to have Mirkheim declared a stateless planet under the protection of the League, which Supermetals would join. He knew perfectly well that there was no chance of the resolution being adopted unless a lot of hard minds got changed. The Home Companies insisted that they would support the Commonwealth's cause; the Seven were for the entire League holding clear of any struggle, strictly neutral and prepared to negotiate with whatever party won.

  He now pursued the matter. "Story, it does not make sense we should sit by and piddle on our thumbs. Freelady Lennart has right as far as she goes: if Babur takes Mirkheim, is the worst outcome for all of us. And Babur is perhaply better armed than the Commonwealth. It for sure has shorter lines of communication."

  "Who brought affairs to this pass?" Lennart's tone grew shrill. "Who first began trading with the Baburites, sold them the technology that got them into space, for a filthy profit? The Seven!"

  "We had dealings, yes," Story said mildly. "At the time, that kind of transaction was standard practice, you recall. Nobody objected. Subsequently—well, I admit our companies let trade fall to almost nothing because it was no longer paying very well, not because we foresaw Babur's arming. We didn't. Nobody did. Who would have? Just the research and development necessary—incredible they could do it in so few years.

  "But." He made a lecturer's gesture. "But from our earlier experience, we know we can do business with the Baburites. The possibility that we'll have to buy our supermetals from them is no more frightening than the possibility we'll have to buy them from the Home Companies, which is what a Commonwealth takeover would amount to. We'll still have things to exchange that Babur needs."

  "Would you not prefer buying at a cheaper price from the present owners, and from other companies that will also work Mirkheim and sell on the open market?" van Rijn asked.

  "They won't necessarily be cheaper," Story said. "Oxygen breathers are too apt to be in direct competition with us." He bridged his fingers and looked across them first at Lennart, then at van Rijn. "To be blunt, I think most of the fear of Babur is nothing but a child's fear of the unfamiliar. You never took the trouble to learn about it, when it seemed to be only one more obscure planet off in the fringes of known space. But I happen to be a former xenologist, who specialized in subjovians. I've studied all records the Seven have of their dealings with it. I've been there myself in the past and talked with its l
eaders. So I tell you—and I'm here to tell the entire Council—Babur's no den of ogres. It's the home of a species as reasonable by their lights as we are by ours."

  "Exactly," van Rijn growled. "God help reason, if we and they is the best it can do. But I had a little brush-up with the Baburites myself once. I also have lately been scanning what data on them can be got here in the Solar System. Their lights is very flickery."

  "Their claim to Mirkheim is ridiculous," Lennart put in. "Nothing but a slogan for territorial aggression."

  "Not in terms of their own dominant culture," Story said.

  "Then it isn't a culture we can afford to let become strong. It makes no bones about intending to establish an empire. If that meant only Babur-type worlds, perhaps we could live with it. But as I read their statements and actions to date, they plan to seize hegemony over that entire volume of space. That cannot be tolerated."

  "How will you stop it?"

  "For a start, by taking appropriate action at Mirkheim. Quickly, decisively. Our intelligence indicates Babur will back down from a fait accompli."

  "'Our' intelligence?" Story murmured. "How good are your connections to the Ministry of Defense?"

  Van Rijn jetted thick blue clouds. "I think you just answered something I wasn't so sure about, Lennart," he said.

  She stared. Apprehension crossed her features. "I didn't—I am only advocating, personally, you realize—"

  "I got connections of my own. Not to nothing secret, like you seem to. But so simple a datum as clearances of civilian craft for deep space—suddenly for a while a lot of them got to wait—that kind of thing—ja, drop by drop by drop of fact I collect, till I got a full jigsaw puddle. Your way of talking, after these many years I have known you, Lennart, that says much too."

  Van Rijn stood up, lightly in the low weight, like a rising moon which eclipsed the radiance of Earth. "Story," he said, "it will not be announced right away, but I bet you rubies to rhubarb the Commonwealth government has already dispatched a task force to Mirkheim. And I am not the least bit sure Babur will take that meekly-weakly." He turned to a little Martian sandroot statuette of St. Dismas that stood on the bar, his traveling companion of a lifetime. "Better get busy and pray for us," he told it.

  IV

  Under full hyperdrive, spaceship Muddlin' Through fared from the Solar System toward the sun that men had named Mogul. Pulsed Schrödinger waves drove her at a pseudovelocity equivalent to thousands of times the true speed of radiation; and in galactic terms those stars were near neighbors. Yet her clocks would have registered two and a half weeks when she reached her destination. So big is the universe. Sentient beings speak lightly of crossing light-years because they cannot comprehend what they are doing.

  David Falkayn, Chee Lan, Adzel, and Muddlehead were in the saloon playing poker. Rather, the first three were. The computer was represented by an audiovisual sensor and a pair of metal arms. It was an advanced model, functioning at consciousness level, very little of its capability needed en route to maintain the systems of the ship. The live travelers had even less to do.

  "I'll bet a credit," said Chee. A blue chip clattered to the middle of the table.

  "Dear me." Adzel laid down his hand. "Can I fetch more refreshment for anyone?"

  "Thanks." Falkayn held out an empty beer mug. "I'll raise." He doubled the bet. After half a minute during which the faint purr of engines and ventilators came through silence: "Hey, Muddlehead, what's keeping you?"

  "The probabilities for and against me are calculable as being exactly balanced," said the flat artificial voice. Electronic brooding continued for a few seconds. "Very well," it decided, and matched Falkayn.

  "Ki-yao?" wondered Chee. Her whiskers dithered, her tail switched the stool on which she sat. "Well, if you insist." She raised back.

  Inwardly, the human jubilated. He had a full house. Outwardly, he pretended to ponder before he raised again. Muddlehead saw him. "Are you sure you don't need some readjustment somewhere?" Falkayn asked it.

  "Whom the gods would destroy," said Chee smugly. Again she raised back. Meanwhile Adzel, his hoofs thudding on the carpet, returned with Falkayn's beer. The Wodenite himself refrained from drinking it on a voyage—no ship could have carried enough—and instead sipped a martini in a one-liter chillglass.

  Falkayn raised another credit. Muddlehead saw. Chee and Falkayn peered its way, as if they could read an expression in the vitryl lens. Slowly, Chee added two chips to the pot. Falkayn suppressed a grin and raised once more. Muddlehead raised back. Chee's fur stood on end. "Damn your mendacious transistors to hell!" she screamed, and threw down her hand.

  Falkayn hesitated. Muddlehead had implied its cards were mediocre, but—He called. His opponent revealed four queens.

  "What the jumping blue blazes?" Falkayn half rose. "You said the probabilities—"

  "I referred to the odds in favor of suckering you," explained Muddlehead, and raked in the pot.

  "It appears that after our long hiatus, we will have to learn each other's styles of play ab initio," Adzel remarked.

  "Well, listen." Chee shuffled the deck. "I'm growing tired of nothing but straight poker. Dealer's choice, right? I say seven card stud, low hole wild."

  Falkayn grimaced. "That's a nasty thing to say."

  "The odds in wild card games are precisely as determinable as those in the standard versions," declared Muddlehead.

  "Yes, but you're a computer," Falkayn grumbled.

  "You want to cut?" Chee asked Adzel.

  "What?" The dragon blinked. "Oh—oh, my apologies. I was taking the opportunity to meditate." With astonishing delicacy, an enormous hand split the pack.

  The beating he took in that round did not seem to disturb his feelings. But when the deal came to him, he announced placidly, "This will be baseball."

  "Oh, no!" Falkayn groaned. "What's happened to you two in the past three years?" He soon folded and sat grimly drinking and thinking.

  His turn arrived. "I'll show you bastards," he said. "This will be Number One. You know it? Seven card stud, high-low, kings and tens wild for low, sevens and deuces wild for high."

  "Om mani padme hum," whispered Adzel shakenly.

  Chee arched her back and spat. Settling down again on her cushion, she protested, "Muddlehead could blow a fuse."

  "The problem is less complex than computing an entry orbit," the ship reassured her, "though rather more ridiculous."

  The game went on, in a weird fashion. Falkayn took the whole pot, largely by default. "I hope we've all learned our lesson," he said. "Your deal, Muddlehead."

  "I believe I am also permitted to call an unorthodox game," replied the machine.

  Falkayn winced, Chee Lan bottled her tail, but Adzel proposed, "Fair is fair. However, let us thereafter confine ourselves to straight draw and stud."

  "My assessment is that this one will confirm you in that desire," Muddlehead told them, shuffling. "It is played like draw except that there is no point in drawing. Players pick up their cards with the backs toward them, so that each can see the hand of everybody but himself."

  After a shocked silence, Chee demanded: "What kind of perverts were they that gave you your last overhaul?"

  "I am self-programming within the limits of the types of task for which I am built," the computer reminded her. "Thus whenever I am activated but idle, I endeavor to make that idleness creative."

  "I think the Manichaean heresy just scored a point," said Adzel. Van Rijn would have understood the reference, but it went by Falkayn, though he was reasonably well-read.

  At least play was mercifully short. At its end, the man rose. "Deal me out," he said. "I want to check on dinner." Gourmet cooking was among the hobbies with which he passed the time on voyages, as painting and sculpture were for Chee, music and the study of Terrestrial history for Adzel.

  Having basted the roast, he did not immediately return to the saloon but lit his pipe and sought the bridge. His footfalls sounded loud. This was during the
period of several hours per twenty-four when the ship's gravity generator was set at fifty-five percent above Earth's pull, to accustom the crew to what they would undergo on Babur if they landed there. An added forty-five kilos of weight did not unduly tire him. It was uniformly distributed over a body in good condition. What he and his mates had to adapt was chiefly their cardiovascular systems. Nonetheless he felt the heaviness in his bones.

  On the bridge, optical compensators projected an exact simulacrum of whichever half of the sky they were set to show. Falkayn stopped at the control board. Beyond the glowing instruments, darkness roofed him in, housing a wilderness of stars. They gleamed at him from every side, sword-sharp swarms, the Milky Way an argent cataract, the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy made small and strange by distances he would never see overleaped. As if he felt the elemental cold between them, he cradled the bowl of his pipe in one fist, his campfire symbol. Beneath the susurrus of the ship lay an infinite stillness.