A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows df-7 Read online

  “This round formed the basis of a civilization centered on the islands around the Sea of Achan. The natives built towns, which they left every fall and reentered every spring. Here they carried on sedentary occupations, stoneworking, ceramics, carpentry, a limited amount of agriculture. The real foundation of their economy was, however, herding and hunting. Except for necessary spurts of activity, in their homelands they were an easygoing folk, indolent, artistic, ceremonious, matrilineal—since paternity was never certain—and loosely organized into what they called the Great Flock of Lannach.

  “But elsewhere a different practice developed. Dwelling on large oceangoing rafts, fishers and seaweed harvesters, the Fleet of Drak’ho ceased migrating. Oars, sails, nets, windlasses, construction and maintenance work kept the body constantly exercised; year-round sexuality, season-free reproduction, was a direct consequence. Patriarchal monogamy ensued. The distances traveled annually were much less than for the Flock, and home was always nearby. It was possible to accumulate heavy paraphernalia, stores, machines, books. While civilization thus became more wealthy and complex than anywhere ashore, the old democratic organization gave way to authoritarian aristocracy.

  “Histories roughly parallel to these have taken place elsewhere on the globe. But Lannach and Drak’ho remain the most advanced, populous, materially well-off representatives of these two strongly contrasted life-orderings. When they first made contact, they regarded each other with mutual horror. A measure of tolerance and cooperation evolved, encouraged by offplanet traders who naturally preferred peaceful conditions. Yet rivalry persisted, sporadically flaring into war, and of late has gained new dimensions.

  “At the heart of the dilemma is this: that Lannachska culture cannot assimilate high-energy technology, in any important measure, and survive.

  “The Drak’ho people have their difficulties, but no impossible choices. Few of them today are sailors. However, fixed abodes ashore are not altogether different from houses on rafts aforetime. Regular hours of work are a tradition, labor is still considered honorable, mechanical skills and a generally technophilic attitude are in the social atmosphere which members inhale from birth. Though machinery has lifted off most Drak’hoans the toil that once gave them a humanlike libido, they maintain it by systematic exercise (or, in increasingly many cases, by drugs), since the nuclear family continues to be the building block of their civilization.

  “As producers, merchants, engineers, industrialists, even occasional spacefarers, they flourish, and are on the whole well content.

  “But the cosmos of Lannach is crumbling. Either the Great Flock must remain primitive, poor, powerless, prey to storm and famine, pirates and pestilence, or it must modernize—with all that that implies, including earning the cost of the capital goods required. How shall a folk do this who spend half their lives migrating, mating, or living off nature’s summertime bounty? Yet not only is their whole polity founded upon that immemorial cycle. Religion, morality, tradition, identity itself are. Imagine a group of humans, long resident in an unchanged part of Terra, devout churchgoers, for whom the price of progress was that they destroy every relic of the past, embrace atheism, and become homosexuals who reproduce by ectogenesis. For many if not all Lannachska, the situation is nearly that extreme.

  “In endless variations around the planet, the same dream is being played. But precisely because the Great Flock has changed more than other nations of its kind, it feels the hurt most keenly, is most divided against itself and embittered vat the outside universe.

  “No wonder if revolutionary solutions are sought. Economic, social, spiritual secession, a return to the ways of the ancestors; shouts of protest against ‘discrimination,’ demands for ‘justice,’ help, subsidy, special consideration of every kind; political secession, no more taxes to the planetary peace authority or the Imperium; seizure of power over the whole sphere, establishment of a sovereign autarky—these are among the less unreasonable ideas afloat.

  “There is also Alatanism. The Ythrians, not terribly far away as interstellar distances go, have wings. They should sympathize with their fellow flyers on Diomedes more than any biped ever can. They have their Domain, free alike of Empire and Roidhunate, equally foreign to both. Might it not, are its duty and destiny not to welcome Diomedes in?

  “The fact that few Ythrian leaders have even heard of Diomedes, and none show the least interest in crusading, is ignored. Mystiques seldom respond to facts. They are instruments which can be played on … ”

  Twice had the sun come from the mountains and returned behind them.

  “Goodbye, then,” Kossara said.

  Flandry could find no better words than “Goodbye. Good luck,” hoarse out of the grip upon his gullet.

  She regarded him for a moment, in the entryroom where they stood. “I do believe you mean that,” she whispered.

  Abruptly she kissed him, a brief brush of lips which exploded in his heart. She drew back before he could respond. During another instant she poised, upon her face a look of bewilderment at her own action.

  Turning, she twisted the handle on the inner airlock valve. He took a following step. “No,” she said. “You can’t live out there, remember?” Her body prepared before she left Dennitza, she closed the portal on him. He stopped where he was. Pumps chugged until gauges told him the chamber beyond was now full of Diomedean air.

  The outer valve opened. He bent over a viewscreen. Kossara’s tiny image stepped forth onto the mountainside. A car awaited her. She bounded into it and shut its door. A minute later, it rose.

  Flandry sought the control cabin, where were the terminals of his most powerful and sensitive devices. The car had vanished above clouds. “Pip-ho, Chives,” he said tonelessly. A hatch swung wide. His Number Two atmospheric vehicle glided from the hold. It looked little different from the first, its engine, weapons, and special equipment being concealed in the teardrop fuselage. It disappeared more slowly, for the Shalmuan pilot wanted to stay unseen by the woman whom he stalked. But at last Flandry sat alone.

  She promised she’d help me. What an inexperienced liar she is.

  He felt no surprise when, after a few minutes, Chives’ voice jumped at him: “Sir! She is descending … She has landed in the forest beside a river. I am observing through a haze by means of an infrared ’scope. Do you wish a relay?”

  “Not from that,” Flandry said. Too small, too blurry. “From her bracelet.”

  A screen blossomed in leaves and hasty brown water. Her right hand entered. Off the left, which he could not see, she plucked the ring, which he glimpsed before she tossed it into the stream.

  “She is running for cover beneath the trees, sir,” Chives reported.

  Of course, replied the emptiness in Flandry. She thinks that, via the ring, I’ve seen what she’s just done, in the teeth of every pledge she gave me. She thinks that now, if she moves fast, she can vanish into the woods—make her own way afoot, find her people and not betray them, or else die striving.

  Whereas in fact the ring was only intended to lull any fears of surveillance she might have after getting rid of it—only a circlet on her bridal finger—and Chives has a radio resonator along to activate her bracelet—the slave bracelet I told her would be blind and deaf outside of Terra.

  “I do not recommend that I remain airborne, sir,” Chives said. “Allow me to suggest that, as soon as the young lady has passed beyond observing me, I land likewise and follow her on the ground. I will leave a low-powered beacon to mark this site. You can flit here by grav-belt and retrieve the vehicles, sir. Permit me to remind you to wear proper protection against the unsalubrious ambience.”

  “Same to you, old egg, and put knobs on yours.” Flandry’s utterance shifted from dull to hard. “I’ll repeat your orders. Trail her, and call in to the recorder cum relay ’caster I’ll leave here, in whatever way and at whatever times seem discreet. But ‘discretion’ is your key word. If she appears to be in danger, getting her out of it—whether by brin
ging me in to help or by taking action yourself—that gets absolute priority. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Did the high, not quite human accent bear a hint of shared pain? “Despite regrettable tactical necessities, Donna Vymezal must never be considered a mere counter in a game.” That’s for personnel and planets, the anonymous billions—and, savingly, for you and me, eh, Chives? “Will you proceed to the Technic settlement when your preparations are complete?”

  “Yes,” Flandry said. “Soon. I may as well.”

  VII

  Where the equator crossed the eastern shoreline of a continent men called Centralia, Thursday Landing was founded. Though fertile by Diomedean standards, the country had few permanent residents. Rather, migration brought tides of travelers, northward and southward alternately, to their ancestral breeding grounds. At first, once the sharpest edge was off their sexual appetites, they had been glad to hunt and harvest those things the newcomers wanted from the wilderness, in exchange for portable trade goods. Later this business grew more systematized and extensive, especially after a large contingent of Drak’ho moved to these parts. Descending, Flandry saw a fair-sized town.

  Most was man-built, blocky interconnected ferrocrete structures to preserve a human-suitable environment from monstrous rains and slow but ponderous winds. He glimpsed a park, vivid green beneath a vitryl dome, brightened by lamps that imitated Sol. Farther out, widely spaced in cultivated fields, stood native houses: tall and narrow, multiply balconied, graceful of line and hue, meant less to resist weather then to accept it, yielding enough to remain whole. Watercraft, ranging from boats to floating communities, crowded the harbor as wings did the sky.

  Yet Flandry felt bleakness, as if the cold outside had reached in to enfold him. Beyond the fluorescents, half the world he saw was land, hills, meadows, dwarfish woods, dim in purple and black twilight, and half was bloodily glimmering ocean. For the sun stood barely above the northern horizon, amidst sulfur-colored clouds. At this place and season there was never true day or honest night.

  Are you getting terracentric in your dotage? he gibed at himself. Here’s a perfectly amiable place for beings who belong in it.

  His mood would not go away. Nevertheless it does feel unreal somehow, a scene from a bad dream. The whole mission has been like that. Everything shadowy, tangled, unstable, nothing what it seems to be … nor anybody who doesn’t carry secrets within secrets …

  Myself included. He straightened in the pilot chair. Well, that’s what I’m paid for. I suppose these blue devils of mine come mainly from guilt about Kossara, fear of what may happen to her. O God Who is also unreal, a mask we put on emptiness, be gentle to her. She has been hurt so much.

  Ground Control addressed him, in Anglic though not from a human mouth. He responded, and set Hooligan down on the spacefield as directed. The prospect of action heartened him. Since I can’t trust the Almighty not to soldier on the job, let me start my share now.

  He had slipped back into space from Lannach, then returned openly. The sentinel robots detected him, and an officer in a warship demanded identification before granting clearance, at a distance from the planet which showed a thoroughness seldom encountered around fifth-rate outpost worlds. No doubt alarm about prospective rebellion and infiltration had caused security to be tightened. Without the orbital information he possessed, not even a vessel as begimmicked as his could have neared Diomedes unbeknownst.

  The image of the portmaster appeared in a comscreen. “Welcome, sir,” he said. “Am I correct that you are alone? The Imperial resident has been notified of your coming and invites you to be his house guest during your stay. If you will tell me where your accommodation lock is—frankly, I have never seen a model quite like yours—a car will be there for you in a few minutes.”

  He was an autochthon, a handsome creature by any standards. The size of a short man, he stood on backward-bending, talon-footed legs. Brown-furred, the slim body ran out in a broad tail which ended in a fleshy rudder; at its middle, arms and hands were curiously anthropoid; above a massive chest, a long neck bore a round head—high, ridged brow, golden eyes with nictitating membranes, blunt-nosed black-muzzled face with fangs and whiskers suggestive of a cat, no external ears but a crest of muscle on top of the skull. From his upper shoulders grew the bat wings, their six-meter span now folded. He wore a belt to support a pouch, a brassard of authority, and, yes, a crucifix.

  I’d better stay in character from the beginning. “Many thanks, my dear chap,” Flandry replied in his most affected manner. “I say, could you tell the chauffeur to come aboard and fetch my bags? Deuced lot of duffel on these extended trips, don’t y’ know.” He saw the crest rise and a ripple pass along the fur, perhaps from irritation at his rudeness in not asking the portmaster’s name.

  The driver obeyed, though. He was a husky young civilian who bowed at sight of Flandry’s gaudy version of dress uniform. “Captain Ahab Whaling?”

  “Right.” Flandry often ransacked ancient books. He had documentation aboard for several different aliases. Why risk alerting someone? The more everybody underestimated him, the better. Since he wanted to pump his fellow, he added, “Ah, you are—”

  “Diego Rostovsky, sir, handyman to Distinguished Citizen Lagard. You mentioned baggage? … Jumping comets, that much? … Well, they’ll have room at the Residency.”

  “Nobody else staying there, what?”

  “Not at the moment. We had a bunch for some while, till about a month ago. But I daresay you know that already, seeing as how you’re Intelligence yourself.” Rostovsky’s glance at the eye insigne on Flandry’s breast indicated doubt about the metaphorical truth of it.

  However, curiosity kept him friendly. When airlocks had decoupled and the groundcar was moving along the road to town, he explained: “We don’t fly unnecessarily. This atmosphere plays too many tricks … Uh, they’ll be glad to meet you at the Residency. Those officers I mentioned were too busy to be very good company, except for—” He broke off. “Um. And, since they left, the isolation and tension … My master and his staff have plenty to keep them occupied, but Donna Lagard always sees the same people, servants, guards, commercial personnel and their families. She’s Terran-reared. She’ll be happy for news and gossip.”

  And you judge me the type to furnish them, Flandry knew. Excellent. His gaze drifted through the canopy, out over somber fields and tenebrous heaven. But who was that exception whom you are obviously under orders not to mention?

  “Yes, I imagine things are a bit strained,” he said. “Though really, you need have no personal fears, need you? I mean, after all, if some of the tribes revolted, an infernal nuisance, ’speci’lly for trade, but surely Thursday Landing can hold out against primitives.”

  “They aren’t exactly that,” was the answer. “They have industrial capabilities, and they do business directly with societies still further developed. We’ve good reason to believe a great many weapons are stashed around, tactical nukes among them. Oh, doubtless we could fend off an attack and stand siege. The garrison and defenses have been augmented. But trade would go completely to pieces—it wouldn’t take many rebels to interdict traffic—which’d hurt the economy of more planets than Diomedes … And then, if outsiders really have been the, uh, the—”

  “Agents provocateurs,” Flandry supplied. “Or instigators, if y’ prefer. Either way; I don’t mind.”

  Rostovsky scowled. “Well, what might their bosses do?”

  Martin Lagard was a small prim man in a large prim office. When he spoke, in Anglic still tinged by his Atheian childhood, both his goatee and the tip of his nose waggled. His tunic was of rich material but unfashionable cut, and he had done nothing about partial baldness.

  Blinking across his desk at Flandry, who lounged behind a cigarette, the Imperial resident said in a scratchy voice, “Well, Fm pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Whaling, but frankly puzzled as to what may be the nature of your assignment. No courier brought me any advance word.” He so
unded hurt.

  I’d better soothe him. Flandry had met his kind by the scores, career administrators, conscientious but rule-bound and inclined to self-importance. Innovators, or philosophers like Chunderban Desai, were rare in that service, distrusted by their fellows, destined either for greatness or for ruin. Lagard had advanced methodically, by the book, toward an eventual pension.

  He was uncreative but not stupid, a vital cog of empire. How could a planetful of diverse nonhumans be closely governed by Terra, and why should it be? Lagard was here to assist Imperials in their businesses and their problems; to oversee continuous collection of information about this world and put it in proper form to feed the insatiable data banks at Home; to collect from the natives a modest tribute which paid for their share of the Pax; to give their leaders advice as occasion warranted, and not use his marines to see that they followed it unless he absolutely must; to speak on their behalf to those officials of the Crown with whom he dealt; to cope.

  He had not done badly. It was not his fault that demons haunted the planet which were beyond his capability of exorcising, and might yet take possession of it.

  “No, sir, they wouldn’t give notice. Seldom do. Abominably poor manners, but that’s policy for you, what?” Flandry nodded at his credentials, where they lay on the desk. “ ’Fraid I can’t be too explicit either. Let’s say I’m on a special tour of inspection.”