He sat down in the whispering silvery pseudograss, put face on knees and tail across neck. His fingers plucked at the dirt. "After that," he said, "we went slaving."
Flandry stood silent for a space. He had been furious at the carnage being inflicted by the more advanced Shalmuans on the weaker ones. Swooping down on a caravan of chained prisoners, he had arrested its leader and demanded an explanation. Ch'kessa had suggested they flit to his homeland.
"Where are your villagers?" Flandry asked at length, for the houses stood empty, smokeless, silent.
"They cannot live here with those dead," Ch'kessa replied. "They camp out, coming back only to maintain. And doubtless they fled when they saw your boat, my lord, not knowing what you would do." He looked up. "You have seen. Are we deeply to blame? Will you return me to my gang? A sum is promised each of us for each slave we bring in. It is helpful in meeting the tax. I will not get mine if I am absent when the caravan reaches the airfield."
"Yes." Flandry turned. His cloak swirled behind him. "Let's go."
Another low voice at his back: "I never swallowed any brotherhood-of-beings crap, you know that, Sam'l, but when our own xenos are scared by a vessel of ours—!"
"Silence," Flandry ordered.
The gig lifted with a yell and trailed a thunderbolt across half a continent and an ocean. Nobody spoke. When she tilted her nose toward jungle, Ch'kessa ventured to say, "Perhaps you will intercede for us, my lord."
"I'll do my best," Flandry said.
"When the Emperor hears, let him not be angry with us of the Clan Towns. We went unwillingly. We sicken with fevers and die from the poisoned arrows of the Yanduvar folk."
And wreck what was a rather promising culture, Flandry thought.
"If punishment must be for what we have done, let it fall on me alone," Ch'kessa begged. "That does not matter greatly after I watched my little one die."
"Be patient," Flandry said. "The Emperor has many peoples who need his attention. Your turn will come."
Inertial navigation had pinpointed the caravan, and a mere couple of hours had passed since. Flandry's pilot soon found it, trudging down a swale where ambush was less likely than among trees. He landed the gig a kilometer off and opened the airlock.
"Farewell, my lord." The Shalmuan knelt, coiled his tail around Flandry's ankles, crawled out and was gone. His slim green form bounded toward his kin.
"Return to the ship," Flandry instructed.
"Doesn't the captain wish to pay a courtesy call on the resident?" asked the pilot sarcastically. He was not long out of the Academy. His hue remained sick.
"Get aloft, Citizen Willig," Flandry said. "You know we're on an information-gathering mission and in a hurry. We didn't notify anyone except Navy that we'd been on Starport or New Indra, did we?"
The ensign sent hands dancing across the board. The gig stood on its tail with a violence that would have thrown everybody into the stern were it not for acceleration compensators. "Excuse me, sir," he said between his teeth. "A question, if the captain pleases. Haven't we witnessed outright illegality? I mean, those other two planets were having a bad time, but nothing like this. Because the Shalmuans have no way to get a complaint off their world, I suppose. Isn't our duty, sir, to report what we've seen?"
Sweat glistened on his forehead and stained his tunic beneath the arms. Flandry caught an acrid whiff of it. Glancing about, he saw the other four men leaning close, straining to hear through the throb of power and whistle of cloven atmosphere. Should I answer? he asked himself, a touch frantically. And if so, what can I tell him that won't be bad for discipline? How should I know? I'm too young to be the Old Man!
He gained time with a cigarette. Stars trod forth in viewscreens as the gig entered space. Willig exchanged a signal with the ship, set the controls for homing on her, and swiveled around to join in staring at his captain.
Flandry sucked in smoke, trickled it out, and said cautiously: "You have been told often enough, we are first on a fact-finding mission, second at the disposal of Alpha Crucis Command if we can help without prejudice to the primary assignment. Whatever we learn will be duly reported. If any man wishes to file additional material or comment, that's his privilege. However, you should be warned that it isn't likely to go far. And this is not because inconvenient facts will be swept under the carpet," though I daresay that does happen on occasion. "It's due to the overwhelming volume of data."
He gestured. "A hundred thousand planets, gentlemen, more or less," he said. "Each with its millions or billions of inhabitants, its complexities and mysteries, its geographies and civilizations, their pasts and presents and conflicting aims for the future, therefore each with its own complicated, ever-changing, unique set of relationships to the Imperium. We can't control that, can we? We can't even hope to comprehend it. At most, we can try to maintain the Pax. At most, gentlemen.
"What's right in one place may be wrong in another. One species may be combative and anarchic by nature, another peaceful and antlike, a third peaceful and anarchic, a fourth a bunch of aggressive totalitarian hives. I know a planet where murder and cannibalism are necessary to race survival: high radiation background, you see, making for high mutation rate coupled with chronic food shortage. The unfit must be eaten. I know of intelligent hermaphrodites, and sophonts with more than two sexes, and a few that regularly change sex. They all tend to look on our reproductive pattern as obscene. I could go on for hours. Not to mention the variations imposed by culture. Just think about Terran history.
"And then the sheer number of individuals and interests; the sheer distance; the time needed to get a message across our territory—No, we can't direct everything. We haven't the manpower. And if we did, it'd remain physically impossible to coordinate that many data.
"We've got to give our proconsuls wide discretion. We've got to let them recruit auxiliaries, and hope those auxiliaries will know the local scene better than Imperial regulars. Above all, gentlemen, for survival if nothing else, we've got to preserve solidarity."
He waved a hand at the forward viewscreen. Alpha Crucis blazed lurid among the constellations; but beyond it—"If we don't stick together, we Terrans and our nonhuman allies," he said, "I assure you, either the Merseians or the wild races will be delighted to stick us separately."
He got no reply: not that he expected one. Was that a sufficiently stuffy speech? he wondered.
And was it sufficiently truthful?
I don't know about that last. Nor do I know if I have any right to inquire.
His ship swam into sight. The tiny spindle, well-nigh lost beside the vast glowing bulk of the planet she circled, grew to a steel barracuda, guns rakish across the star clouds. She was no more than an escort destroyer, she had speed but was lightly armed, her crew numbered a bare fifty. Nevertheless, she was Flandry's first official command and his blood ran a little faster each time he saw her—even now, even now.
The gig made a ragged approach. Willig probably didn't feel well yet. Flandry refrained from commenting. The last part of the curve, under computer choreography, was better. When the boat housing had closed and repressurized, he dismissed his guards and went alone to the bridge.
Halls, companionways, and shafts were narrow. They were painted gray and white. With the interior grav generators set for full Terran weight, thin deckplates resounded under boots, thin bulkheads cast the noise back and forth, voices rung, machinery droned and thumped. The air that gusted from ventilator grilles came fresh out of the renewers, but somehow it collected a faint smell of oil on the way. The officers' cabins were cubbyholes, the forecastle could be packed tighter only if the Pauli exclusion principle were repealed, the recreation facilities were valuable chiefly as a subject for jokes, and the less said about the galley the wiser. But she was Flandry's first command.
He had spent many hours en route reading her official history and playing back tapes of former logbooks. She was a few years older than him. Her name derived from a land mass on Ardèche, which
was apparently a human-settled planet though not one he had ever chanced upon mention of. (He knew the designation Asieneuve in different versions on at least four worlds; and he speculated on how many other Continent-class vessels bore it. A name was a mere flourish when computers must deal with millions of craft by their numbers.) She had gone on occasional troopship convoy when trouble broke loose on a surface somewhere. Once she had been engaged in a border incident; her captain claimed a probable hit but lacked adequate proof. Otherwise her existence had been routine patrols . . . which were essential, were they not?
You didn't salute under these conditions. Men squeezed themselves aside to make way for Flandry. He entered the bridge. His executive officer had it.
Rovian of Ferra was slightly more than human size. His fur was velvet at midnight. His ponderous tail, the claws on his feet and fingers, the saber teeth in his jaws, could deal murderous blows; he was also an expert marksman. The lower pair of his four arms could assist his legs at need. Then his silent undulant gait turned into lightning. He habitually went nude except for guns and insignia. His nature and nurture were such that he would never become a captain and did not want to be. But he was capable and well liked, and Terran citizenship had been conferred on him.
"S-s-so?" he greeted. His fangs handicapped him a little in speaking Anglic.
Alone, he and Flandry didn't bother to be formal. Mankind's rituals amused him. "Bad," the master said, and explained.
"Why bad?" Rovian asked. "Unless it provokes revolt."
"Never mind the morals of it. You wouldn't understand. Consider the implications, however."
Flandry inhaled a cigarette to lighting. His gaze sought Shalmu's disc, where it floated unutterably peaceful in its day and night. "Why should Snelund do this?" he said. "It's considerable trouble, and not without hazard. Ordinary corruption would earn him more than he could live to spend on himself. He must have a larger purpose, one that requires moonsful of money. What is it?"
Rovian erected the chemosensor antennae that flanked the bony ridge on his skull. His muzzle twitched, his eyes glowed yellow. "To finance an insurrection? He may hope to become an independent overlord."
"M-m-m . . . no . . . doesn't make sense, and I gather he's not stupid. The Empire can't conceivably tolerate breakaways. He'd have to be crushed. If necessary, Josip would be deposed to clear the track for that operation. No, something else—" Flandry brought his attention back. "Get patrol clearance for us to go in half an hour. Next rendezvous, Llynathawr."
Hyperdrive vibrations are instantaneous, though the philosophers of science have never agreed on the meaning of that adjective. Unfortunately, they damp out fast. No matter how powerful, a signal cannot be received beyond a distance of about one light-year. Thus spaceships traveling at quasivelocity are not detectable by their "wakes" at any farther remove than that. Neither are the modulations that carry messages quicker than light; and the uncertainty principle makes it impossible to relay them with any hope that they will not soon degenerate into gibberish.
Accordingly, Asieneuve was within two hours of her goal before she got the news. Fleet Admiral Hugh McCormac had escaped to the Virgilian System. There he had raised the standard of rebellion and proclaimed himself Emperor. An unspecified number of planets had declared for him. So had an unspecified proportion of the ships and men he formerly commanded. Armed clashes had taken place and full civil war looked inevitable.
Chapter Four
When the Empire purchased Llynathawr from its Cynthian discoverers, the aim had been to strengthen this frontier by attracting settlers. Most of the world was delightful in climate and scenery, rich in natural resources, wide in unclaimed lands. Navy sector headquarters were close enough, on Ifri, and housed enough power to give ample protection. Not all the barbarians were hostile; there existed excellent possibilities of trade with a number of races—especially those that had not acquired spacecraft—as well as with Imperial planets.
Thus far the theory. Three or four generations showed that practice was something else again. The human species appeared to have lost its outward urge. Few individuals would leave a familiar, not too uncomfortable environment to start over in a place remote from government-guaranteed security and up-to-date entertainment. Those who did usually preferred city to rural life. Nor did many arrive from the older colonies nearby, like Aeneas. Such people had struck their own roots.
Catawrayannis did become a substantial town: two million, if you counted in the floating population. It became the seat of the civil authority. It became a brisk mart, though much of the enterprise was carried on by nonhumans, and a pleasure resort, and a regional listening post. But that was the end of the process. The hinterland, latifundia, mines, factories, soon gave way to forests, mountains, trafficless oceans, empty plains, a wilderness where lights gleamed rare and lonely after dark.
Of course, this has the advantage of not turning the planet as a whole into still another cesspool, Flandry thought. After reporting, he had donned mufti and spent a few days incognito. Besides sounding out various bourgeoisie and servants, he had passed through a particularly ripe Lowtown.
And now I feel so respectable I creak, his mind went on. Contrast? No, not when I'm about to meet Aaron Snelund. His pulse quickened. He must make an effort to keep his face and bearing expressionless. That skill he owed less to official training than to hundreds of poker games.
As a ramp lifted him toward an impressive portico, he glanced back. The gubernatorial palace crowned a high hill. It was a big pastel-tinted structure in the dome-and-colonnade style of the last century. Beneath its gardens, utilitarian office buildings for civil servants made terraces to the flatland. Homes of the wealthy ringed the hill. Beyond these, more modest residences blended gradually into cropground on the west side, city on the east. Commercial towers, none very tall, clustered near the Luana River, past which lay the slums. A haze blurred vision today and the breeze blew cool, tasting of spring. Vehicles moved insectlike through streets and sky. Their sound came as a whisper, almost hidden in the sough of trees. It was hard to grasp that Catawrayannis brawled with preparation for war, shrilled with hysteria, tensed with fear—
—until a slow thundering went from horizon to horizon, and a spatial warcraft crossed heaven on an unknown errand.
Two marines flanked the main entrance. "Please state your name and business, sir," one demanded. He didn't aim his slug-thrower, but his knuckles stood white on butt and barrel.
"Commander Dominic Flandry, captain, HMS Asieneuve, here for an appointment with His Excellency."
"A moment, please." The other marine checked. He didn't merely call the secretarial office, he turned a scanner on the newcomer. "All right."
"If you'll leave your sidearm with me, sir," the first man said. "And, uh, submit to a brief search."
"Hey?" Flandry blinked.
"Governor's orders, sir. Nobody who doesn't have a special pass with full physical ID goes through armed or unchecked." The marine, who was pathetically young, wet his lips. "You understand, sir. When Navy units commit treason, we . . . who dare we trust?"
Flandry looked into the demoralized countenance, surrendered his blaster, and allowed hands to feel across his whites.
A servant appeared, bowed, and escorted him down a corridor and up a gravshaft. The decor was luxurious, its bad taste more a question of subtly too much opulence than of garish colors or ugly proportions. The same applied to the chamber where Flandry was admitted. A live-fur carpet reached gold and black underfoot; iridescences swept over the walls; dynasculps moved in every corner; incense and low music tinged the air; instead of an exterior view, an animation of an Imperial court masquerade occupied one entire side; behind the governor's chair of state hung a thrice life-size, thrice flattering portrait of Emperor Josip, fulsomely inscribed.
Four mercenaries were on guard, not human but giant shaggy Gorzunians. They stirred scarcely more than their helmets, breastplates, or weapons.
Flandry salute
d and stood at attention.
Snelund did not look diabolical. He had bought himself an almost girlish beauty: flame-red wavy hair, creamy skin, slightly slanted violet eyes, retroussé nose, bee-stung lips. Though not tall, and now growing paunchy, he retained some of his dancer's gracefulness. His richly patterned tunic, flare-cut trousers, petal-shaped shoes, and gold necklace made Flandry envious.
Rings sparkled as he turned a knob on a memoscreen built into the chair arm. "Ah, yes. Good day, Commander." His voice was pleasant. "I can give you fifteen minutes." He smiled. "My apologies for such curtness, and for your having to wait this long to see me. You can guess how hectic things are. If Admiral Pickens had not informed me you came directly from Intelligence HQ, I'm afraid you'd never have gotten past my office staff." He chuckled. "Sometimes I think they're overzealous about protecting me. One does appreciate their fending off as many bores and triviators as possible—though you'd be surprised, Commander, how many I cannot escape seeing—but occasionally, no doubt, undue delay is caused a person with a valid problem."
"Yes, Your Excellency. Not to waste your time—"
"Do sit down. It's good to meet someone straight from the Mother of us all. We don't even get frequent mail out here, you know. How fares old Terra?"
Young Flandry Page 43