The Game of Empire df-9

by Poul Anderson

  “But you can’t see, you’re constitutionally unable to see or even imagine, that a real and lasting peace is possible between us and them.”

  Flandry shook his head. “It isn’t, unless and until the civilization that dominates them goes under or changes its character completely. The Roidhun could make a personal appearance singing ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and I’d still want us to keep our warheads armed. You haven’t had the chance to study them, interact with them, get to know them from the inside out, that I’ve had.”

  Magnusson lifted a fist. “I’ve fought them—done them in, as you so elegantly put it, by the tens of thousands to your measly dozen or two—since I enlisted in the Marines thirty years ago. And you have the gall to say I don’t know them.”

  “That’s different, Sir Olaf,” Flandry replied placatingly, “You’ve met them as brave enemies, or as fellow officers, colleagues, when truces were being negotiated and in the intervals of so-called peace that followed. It’s like being a player on one of two meteor ball teams. I am acquainted with the owners of the clubs.”

  “I don’t deny hostility and aggressiveness on their part. Who does? I do say it’s not been unprovoked—from the time of first contact, centuries ago, when the Terran rescue mission upset their whole order of things and found ways to get rich off their tragedy—and I do say they have their share of good will and common sense, also in high office—which are utterly lacking in today’s Terran Imperium. It won’t be quick or easy, no. But the two powers can hammer out an accommodation, a peace—an alliance, later on, for going out together through the galaxy.”

  Flandry patted a hand over the beginnings of a yawn. “Excuse me. I’ve been many hours awake now, and I must confess to having heard that speech before. We play the recordings you send our way, you know.”

  Magnusson smiled grimly. “Sorry. I did get carried away, but that’s because of the supreme importance of this.” He squared his blocky shoulders. “Don’t think I’m naive. I do know Merseia from the inside. I’ve been there.”

  Flandry lounged back. “As a youngster? The data we have on you suggested you might have paid a couple of visits in the past.”

  Magnusson nodded. “Nothing treasonable about that. No conflicts were going on at the time. My birthworld, Kraken, has always traded freely, beyond the Terran sphere as well as within it.”

  “Yes, your people are an independent lot, aren’t they? Do go on, please. This is precisely the sort of personal insight I’ve been trying for.”

  Magnusson went expressionless. “My father was a space captain who often took cargoes to and from the Roidhunate, sometimes to Merseia itself. That was before the Starkad incident caused relations to deteriorate entirely. Even afterward, he made a few trips, and took me along on a couple of them. I was in my early teens then—impressionable, you’re thinking, and you’re right, but I was also open to everything observation might show me. I got chummy with several young Merseians. No, this didn’t convince me they’re a race of angels. I enlisted, didn’t I? And you know I did my duty. But when that duty involved getting together with Merseians in person, my senses and mind stayed open.”

  “It seems a pretty fragile foundation for a consequential political judgment.”

  “I studied too, investigated, collected opinions, thought and thought about everything.”

  “The Roidhunate is as complex as the Empire, as full of contradictions and paradoxes, if not more so,” Flandry said in a level tone. “The Merseians aren’t the sole species in it, and members of some others have been influential from time to time.”

  “True. Same as with us. What of it?”

  “Why, we know still less about their xenos than we do about our own. That’s caused us rude surprises in the past. For example, my long-time antagonist Aycharaych. I got the impression you also encountered him.”

  Magnusson shook his head. “No. Never.”

  “Really? You seem to recognize the name.”

  “Oh, yes, rumors get around. I’d be interested to hear whatever you can tell.”

  Flandry bit his lip. “The subject’s painful to me.” He dropped his cigarette down an ash-taker and straightened in his chair. “Sir Olaf, this has been a fascinating conversation and I thank you for it, but I am genuinely tired. Could I bid you goodnight? We can take matters up again at your convenience.”

  “A moment. Stay,” Magnusson reflected. Decision came. He touched the call unit on his belt. A door slid aside and four marines trod through. They were Irumclagians, tall, slim, hard-skinned, their insectlike faces impassive. “You are under arrest,” Magnusson said crisply.

  “I beg your pardon?” Flandry scarcely stirred, and his words came very soft. “This is a parley under truce.”

  “It was supposed to be,” Magnusson said. “You’ve violated the terms by attempting espionage. I’m afraid you and your party must be interned.”

  “Would you care to explain?”

  Magnusson snapped an order to the nonhumans. It was clear that they knew only the rudiments of Anglic. Three took positions beside and behind Flandry’s chair. The fourth stayed at the door, blaster unholstered.

  Magnusson rose to stand above the prisoner, legs widespread, fists on hips. He glowered downward. Wrath roughened his voice: “You know full well. I was more than half expecting it, but let you go ahead in hopes you’d prove to be honest. You didn’t.

  “For your information, I learned three days ago that the Terran spies specially sent to Merseia were detected and captured. I suspect they went at your instigation, but never mind; you certainly know what they were up to. The leading questions you fed me were part and parcel of the same operation. No wonder you came yourself. Nobody else would’ve had your devil’s skill. If I hadn’t been warned, I’d never have known—till the spies and you had returned home and compared notes. As it is, I now have one more proof that the God looks after His warriors.”

  Flandry met the fire-blue stare coolly and asked, “Won’t our captivity be a giveaway?”

  “No, I think not,” Magnusson said, calming. “Nobody will expect those agents of yours to report back soon. Besides, the Merseians will start slipping the Terrans disinformation that seems to come from them. You can imagine the details better than I can. As for your mini-diplomatic corps here, won’t the Imperium be happy when it does not return at once? When, instead, courier torps bring word that things look surprisingly hopeful?”

  “The Navy isn’t going to sit idle because of that,” Flandry cautioned.

  “Of course not. Preparations for the next phase of the war will go on. All my side has done is stop an attempt by your side that could have been disastrous if it had succeeded. Yes, I’m sure there are people back there whom you’ve confided your suspicions to; but what value have they without proof? After fighting recommences in earnest, who’ll pay them any further attention?”

  Magnusson sighed. “In a way, I’m sorry, Flandry,” he said. “You’re a genius, in your perverse fashion. This failure is no fault of yours. What a man you would have been in the right cause! I bear you no ill will and have no wish to mistreat you. But I dare not let you continue. You and your entourage will get comfortable quarters. When the throne is mine, I will … decide whether it may eventually be safe to release you.”

  He gave orders. Unresisting, Flandry rose to be led away. “My compliments, Sir Olaf,” he murmured. “You are cleverer than I realized. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Sir Dominic,” replied the other.

  Chapter 19

  The climax was violent.

  It began with delusive smoothness. “How I shall regret leaving this place,” Axor mused at supper. “Though I will always thank God for the privilege of having encountered wonder here.”

  Targovi pricked up his ears. “Leaving?”

  “Well, we cannot expect our hosts to maintain us forever—especially me, bearing in mind what my food must cost them. Working together with the lady Isis Zachary and her colleagues at the Apollonium in these
past days, I have learned things of supreme value, and perhaps contributed some humble moiety in return, but now we seem to have exhausted our respective funds of information and the conclusions which discussion has led us to draw therefrom.”

  “Apollonium?” Targovi’s question was absent-minded, practically a reflex. His thoughts were racing away.

  Axor waved a tree-trunk arm around the room where he sprawled and the Tigery sat at table. He was really indicating the nighted campus beyond the hospice walls. “This center of learning, research, philosophy, arts. They do not call it a university because it has no teaching function. Being what they are, Zacharians require no schools except input to their homes, no teachers except their parents or, when they are mature, knowledgeable persons whom they can call when explanation is necessary.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. You’ve finished, you say?”

  “Virtually. Dear friend,” Axor trumpeted, “I cannot express my gratitude for your part in bringing me to this haven. While they have never undertaken serious investigation of the Foredwellers, the Zacharians are insatiably curious about the entire cosmos. Their database contains every item ever reported or collected by such of their people as have gone to space. I retrieved scores of descriptions, pictures, studies of sites unknown to me. Comparison with the facts I already possessed began to open portals. Isis, Vishnu, and Kwan Yin were those who especially took fire and produced brilliant ideas. I would not venture to claim that we are on the way to deciphering the symbols, but we have identified regularities, recurrences, that look highly significant. Who knows where that may lead future scholarship? To the very revelation of Christ’s universality, that will in time bring all sentient beings into his church?” The crocodilian head lifted. “I should not lament my departure,” the Wodenite finished. “Ahead of me, while this mortal frame lasts, lie pilgrimages to those planets about which I have learned, to the greater glory of God.”

  “Well, good,” mumbled Targovi. “Know you when we must leave?”

  “No, not yet. I daresay they will tell me at the next session. You might be thinking where we should ask them to deposit us on the mainland. They have promised to take us anyplace we like.”

  “Diana will be sad, I suppose. She’s had a fine time. Where is she this eventide?”

  Though Axor’s visage was not particularly mobile, somehow trouble seemed to dim his brown eyes, and assuredly it registered in his basso profundo: “I cannot say. I have seldom seen her throughout our stay. She goes about in company with that man—what is his name?”

  “Kukulkan, if she hasn’t swapped escorts.”

  “Ah.” Fingers that could have snapped steel bars twiddled with the spectacles hanging from the armored neck. “Targovi, I—this is most embarrassing, but I must speak—Well, I am not human, nor versed in human ways, but lately I … I have begun to fear for that maiden’s virtue.”

  The Tigery choked back a yowl of laughter.

  “You know her well,” Axor continued. “Do you think, before it is too late—I pray it be not too late—you could advise her, as an, an elder brother?”

  Opportunity! Targovi pounced. “I can try,” he said. “Truth to tell, I too have fretted about her. I know humans well enough to understand what Kukulkan’s intentions are. If we are bound away soon—what one Zacharian knows, they all seem to know—he’ll press his suit.”

  “Oh, dear. And she so young, innocent, helpless.” Axor crossed himself.

  “I’ll see if I can find them,” Targovi proposed. “She may not thank me tonight, but afterward—” Despite an urgency which had become desperate, he must still hold down his merriment. Oh, aye, wouldn’t Diana Crowfeather be overjoyed at having her business minded for her? His tail dithered. “Wish me luck.”

  Axor bowed his head and silently invoked a saint or two. Targovi shoved the rest of his meal aside and left.

  The whole farce might have been unnecessary. He didn’t know whether the hospice was bugged; lacking equipment hidden aboard Moonjumper, he had no way of finding out. Therefore he assumed it was, and furthermore that there was a stakeout—not a flesh-and-blood watcher, nothing that crude, but sensors in strategic locations. His going forth should, now, arouse no more misdoubts than his feckless wanderings about in the area appeared to have done.

  At most, whoever sat monitoring might flash Kukulkan word that Targovi meant to deboost any seduction, and Kukulkan might thus do best to take the girl for a romantic ride over the mountains … if he had not already done so … The Zacharians did indeed stick together. No, more than that. They were almost a communal organism, like those Terran insectoids they had introduced to the island ecology—ants—though ants with individual intelligence far too high for Targovi’s liking upon this night.

  He went out the door. A breeze lulled cool, smelling of leaves and sea, ruffling his fur; he wore nothing but his breechcloth, belt, and knife. Lawns dreamed empty beneath a sky where clouds drifted, tinged argent by Icarus and bronze by the sun-ring. That band was blocked off in the south by the peaks, in places elsewhere by distant weather, but it and the moon gave ample light for humans to see by. He had been waiting for fog or rain to lend comparative darkness in which his vision would have the advantage.

  Well, he could wait no longer.

  Leaving the campus behind, he followed a street at a trot which should look reasonable under the circumstances, until it passed by a park. There he cut across. Trees roofed grass. He vanished into the gloom. At its farther edge he went on his belly and became a ripple of motion that could easily have been a trick of wind-blown cloud shadows.

  From there on he was a Tigery hunter a-stalk, using every scrap of cover and every trick in the open, senses tuned to each least flicker, shuffling, whiff, quivering, clues and hints for which human languages lacked words. Often he froze for minutes while a man or a woman walked by, sometimes close enough to touch. Had dogs been about, he would perforce have left a number of the abominable creatures dead, but fortunately the Zacharians had better taste than to keep any. As was, he took more than an hour to approach his goal.

  It stood high in the hills, on the fringe of settlement. A five-meter wall, thirty meters on a side, surrounded an area forbidden to visitors. When Heimdal was showing him about, Targovi had inquired what was within. “Defense,” his guide answered. “You may not know it, but under the treaty we take responsibility for the defense of this island—not out into space, of course; that’s the job of the Navy; but against whatever hostile force might break through or might come over the surface. We maintain our own installations. This one guards Janua.”

  Guards, aye. Flattened on the ground, Targovi felt a faint shudder. Something had passed beneath. Well, he had already eye-gauged that the spaceport—from which outsiders were also banned—lay just opposite, on the far side of the range. A connecting tunnel was logical.

  His glance roved. Above the stony bulk of the wall, the Mencius ridge made a grayness beyond which glimmered the Hellene peaks. Sculptured slopes fell downward, multiply shadowed, frostily highlighted. The Averroes River was brokenly visible, agleam. It plunged into the sheening of the bay. Phosphorescence traced runes over the ocean. Beneath him were soil, pebbles, prickly weeds, dew.

  Attention went back to the fortress. No, he realized, it wasn’t any such thing as St. Barbara’s had been part of. It must be a command post for missiles, energy projectors, aircraft, and whatever else laired in the vicinity. He doubted there was much. Daedalus had long been under Imperial protection. Now it was under Magnusson’s, but that should make no immediate difference. Likewise, Targovi conjectured, security was lax. The Zacharians would have had no cause to be strict, not for centuries, and if requirements had changed overnight, organization and training could hardly have done the same.

  Still, all it took was a single alarm, or afterward a single bullet or ray or flying torpedo …

  Hence he never considered the gate from which a road wound off. Instead, he slithered to a point well away, where he could stand i
n shadow and examine the wall. It sloped upward, as was desirable for solidity. The material was unfinished stone, perhaps originally to keep anyone from climbing on vacsoles—or was that notion too ridiculous? Erosion had blurred the roughness of the blocks but also pitted the mortar. A human could never have gone up, but a Tigery might, given strength and claws and eyesight adaptable to dim light. He found no indications of built-in warning systems. Why should they exist? Who, or what, would be so crazy as to attempt entry?

  Being of the species he was, Targovi did not stop to wonder about his saneness. He had little more to go on than a hunter’s hunch. What lay behind the wall, he could barely guess. What he could do after he found it was unknowable beforehand. He sorely missed the weapons and gear stowed in his ship. Yet he did not consider himself reckless. He went ahead with that which he had decided to do.

  After long and close study, he had a way picked out. He crawled backward until he judged the distance sufficient for a running start. Lifting eyes, ears, and tendrils above the shrubs, he searched for possible watchers. None showed. Then better be quick, before any did! He sprang to his feet and charged.

  Well-conditioned Tigeries under a single standard gravity can reach a sprint speed which outdoes their Terran namesake. Sheer momentum carried Targovi far up the barrier. Fingers and claws did the rest; he needed only an instant’s purchase to thrust himself onward, too fast to lose his grip and fall. Over the top he went, fell, landed on pads that absorbed much of the shock, took the rest in rubbery muscles, and promptly dived for cover. That was behind a hedge. It would do him scant good if someone had noticed. After a minute, having heard and smelled nothing, he hazarded a look. The grounds were deserted. His readiness flowed from fight-or-flight back to stealth.