Aline joined him and took his arm. "Are you letting a single failure discourage you?" she asked with careful good cheer. "Dominic Flandry, the single-handed conqueror of Scothania, brought down by that overgrown buzzard?"
"I just can't understand what happened, how he knew," the man mumbled. "The greenest cub in the Corps shouldn't have gotten caught as I was. How many of our best people has he accounted for? I'm convinced it was he who made McMurtrie disappear, three years back. Who else? Is our turn coming?"
"Oh, now!" She tried to laugh. "You know the devil himself is no better than the organization he belongs to, and Merseian Intelligence isn't that good. Were you drinking sorgan when you first heard about Aycharaych?"
"Drinking what?" he asked.
"Ah, I can tell you something you don't know," she said, still valiantly smiling. "Not that it's especially important. I simply happened to pick it up as a bit of gossip from one of our Alfzarian opposite numbers. It's a drug produced on a planet of this system—Cingetor? Yes. For Alfzarians it's medicinal, but in humans it has the odd property of depressing certain brain centers. The victim loses all critical sense. He believes, without question, anything you tell him."
"Hm." Flandry stroked his mustache. "Could be useful in our line of work."
"Not very. There are better ways of interrogating a prisoner, or for that matter producing a fanatic. The drug has an antidote which also confers permanent immunity. The Sartaz has forbidden its sale to his subjects who're of our species, but mainly just because it could help certain types of criminals."
"I should think our Corps would like to keep a little of it stashed away anyhow, against contingencies. And, m-m, to be sure, certain gentlemen would find it an aid to seduction."
"What are you thinking of?" she teased.
"Nothing. I don't need it," he answered smugly.
The diversion had somewhat brightened his mood. "Let me put some painkiller on this bump and escort you back to the party," he suggested. "I'll fend off the amorous drunks."
"But it's so beautiful here—" she sighed. "Ah, well, if you really want to go."
The Betelgeusean System is an appropriate setting for mysteries. It has no theoretical business possessing half a dozen planets, out of forty-seven, with life upon them. After all, being considerably more massive than Sol, it was only on the main sequence for a short time, as astronomical time goes. Now it is dying, a red giant that has consumed its innermost attendants. True, the total radiation is great enough that the zone where water can be liquid includes the orbits of those six worlds. However, this condition will not prevail sufficiently long for biologies to develop, let alone intelligences.
Yet when the first Terrestrial explorers arrived, they found flourishing ecologies and a civilization whose spacecraft plied from edge to edge of the system. The Betelgeuseans had only dim traditions about ancestors who fled some catastrophe elsewhere—in slower-than-light ships, no doubt—and seeded the barrenness they found with life that transformed it. (Properly gene-engineered microorganisms could generate an oxynitrogen atmosphere in mere decades of exponential multiplication; meanwhile automated operations could produce soil in chosen areas; eventually full-sized plants and animals could be grown from cells and released; after that, life would spread of itself, being a geological force of great potency.) Perhaps the effort exhausted the pioneers, or perhaps the resource base was insufficient to maintain a high technology in that early phase. Whatever the cause, reliable records on the Betelgeusean worlds only go back for some thousands of years.
Their sun will not keep those worlds warm very much longer, and its dying gasps may well make them uninhabitable even before they start to freeze—but the span available is measured in geological rather than historical terms. It is ample for an orderly move to new homes, now that the Betelgeuseans have learned such tricks as travel at hyperdrive pseudovelocities. Meanwhile they are in no hurry about it, for they command abundant resources, with all that that implies in the way of power.
In Flandry's day, their political position was also one he often wished his own people could occupy. They had not attempted to establish an empire on the scale of Terra or Merseia, but were content to maintain hegemony over such few neighbor stars as were needed for the protection of their home. Generations of wily Sartazes had found it profitable to play potential enemies off against each other; and the great states had, in turn, found it expedient to maintain Betelgeuse as a buffer vis-a-vis their rivals and the peripheral barbarians.
That stability was ending, though, as tension ratcheted upward between Terra and Merseia. Squarely between the two domains, its navy commanding the most direct route and in a position to strike at the heart of either, Betelgeuse would be an invaluable ally. If Merseia could get that help, it might well be the last preparation considered necessary for all-out war. If Terra could get it, Merseia would suddenly have to make concessions.
Emissaries swarmed to the red sun, together with spies, genteel blackmailers, purveyors of large bribes, and other such agents, whom their governments promptly disowned whenever they got caught. Official negotiations had reached the point where—Flandry claimed—clandestine activities were a major industry on the capital planet Alfzar. He and Aline had lately been dispatched to join in, he chosen primarily for his experience with nonhumans, she for her talents with her own species. Quite a few members of it had been settled here for generations, as citizens, and some of those held key positions. And then came Aycharaych.
For the most distinguished of his foreign guests, the Sartaz gave a hunting party. That monarch evidently enjoyed watching mortal enemies forced to exchange courtesies. Doubtless this occasion did please most of the Merseians; hunting was their favorite sport. The Terrans were less happy, but could scarcely refuse.
Flandry was especially disgruntled. Though he kept in physical trim as a matter of necessity, his own favorite play was conducted in a horizontal position. Worse, he had too much else to do.
The best-laid plans of him and his colleagues were going disastrously agley. Whether Imperial, Betelgeusean, or more exotic, agent after Terran agent had come to grief. Their undertakings failed due to watchfulness, their covers were blown, their own offices were ransacked and the data banks made to yield secrets, they themselves were apt to suffer arrest, or disappearance, or unexplained demise. None among them had found the source of betrayal. Flandry's guess was generally discounted. No single being could be as effective as he thought Aycharaych must be. It just wasn't possible that the opposition could have known about so many projects, caches, contacts, hiding places—or for that matter, Flandry thought, that his rival was never vulnerable to any of his assassination schemes—yet, damnation, it was happening.
And now a bloody hunt!
Alfzar rotates at almost the same rate as Terra. This meant that Flandry's servant roused him at an unsanctified hour. He had no absolute prejudice against sunrise; in fact, it was quite a pretty end to an evening. To get up then was a perversion of God's gifts. Dawn here was an alien thing, too. Mist tinged blood-red drifted in dankness through the open windows of his bedroom. It smelled like wet iron. Someone was blowing a horn somewhere, doubtless with intentions of spreading cheer; but to him, local music sounded like a cat in a washing machine. Engines growled. He closed his palms around the warmth of a coffee cup and shivered.
But somebody has to prop up civilization, at least through my own lifetime, he told himself. Consider the alternative.
Breakfast made the universe slightly more tolerable. He dressed with some pleasure, too, in skintight green iridon, golden-hued cloak with cowl and goggles, mirrorlike boots. At his waist he secured a needle gun and the slender sword which Alfzarian custom required be worn in the royal presence. The long walk downstairs and out to a palace gate, the longer walk thence to the marshalling field, brought him fully alive.
A picturesque medley of beings moved about the area, talking, gesturing, making ready. The Sartaz himself was on hand—also quite humanoid t
o see, short, stocky, hairless, blue-skinned, his eyes huge and yellow in the round, blunt-faced head. He was more plainly clad than the nobles, guards, and attendants of his race who surrounded him. The Terrans were more or less in a cluster of their own, a great deal less animated than the Betelgeuseans; several seemed downright miserable. The Merseians likewise kept somewhat aloof; they had reason to feel happy, but haughtiness prevented them from showing it in more than body language.
Flandry gave and received formal greetings all around. Terra and Merseia were at peace, were they not?—however many beings died and cities burned on the marches. He kept his gray gaze sleepy, but it missed little.
Not that there was anything new to see. The average Merseian exceeded him in height, standing a bulky two meters in spite of the forward-leaning posture. Also hairless, their skins were pale green and faintly scaly in appearance, though the massive countenances approximated the human except for an absence of ear-flaps. A low serration ran from the brow, down the spine, to the end of the long and heavy tail. Form-fitting black garb, trimmed in silver, covered most of the body.
The Merseians said nothing overtly rude, but neither did they hide their contempt. I can understand that, Flandry thought, as he often compulsively did. Their civilization is young and strong, its energies turned outward, while ours is old, sated, decadent. All we want to do is maintain the status quo, because we're comfortable in it. Hence we're in the way of their dream of galactic overlordship. We are the first ones they have to smash.
Or so they believe. And so we believe. Never mind what the unascertainable objective truth of the matter may be. Belief is what brings on the killing.
Shadowy through streaming red mist, a figure approached. In unreasonable shock, Flandry recognized Aycharaych, also garbed for the chase. The Chereionite halted before him, smiled amicably, and said, "Good morning, Captain."
"Oh . . . yes," the man got out. "Same to you, I suppose."
But wait, I'm losing my manners, my suavity, I'm letting him rattle me, and that in itself is a petty defeat. Better I give him my petty defiance.
"I'm a bit surprised," he added. "Wouldn't have thought you cared for hunting."
"Why, are we not both hunters by trade?" Aycharaych replied. "True, as a rule I find sophonts to be much the most interesting quarry. However, what I have heard of the game we seek today has made it seem sufficiently challenging. One wonders whether the ancestral pioneers here developed them specifically for sport."
"And then designed the rest of the local ecology to accommodate them?" Flandry laughed. "Well, projects have taken weirder courses than that."
The conversation became animated, ranging over the peculiarities and mysteries of many intelligent races. When the final horn blew its summons, Terran and Chereionite exchanged a wryly regretful glance. Too bad. We were enjoying this. Too bad also that we're on opposite sides . . . isn't it?
Hunters swung themselves into tiny one-person airjet craft and secured the harness. Each flyer had a needle-beam energy projector in the nose. That was minimal armament against a Borthudian dragon. Flandry reflected that the Sartaz wouldn't mind if an indignant beast did away with a guest or three.
The squadron lifted in a chorus of banshee wails and streaked northward for the mountains. Breaking through the mist, pilots saw Betelgeuse as an enormous, vaguely bounded disc in a purplish sky. Presently its warmth drank up the vapors below, and landscape lay revealed in all its unearthliness. The range appeared ahead, gaunt peaks, violet-shadowed canyons, snowfields tinged bloody by the sunlight. Despite himself, Flandry thrilled.
Voices came over the radio, in the court language and occasionally, courteously, in accented Anglic or Eriau. Scouts had spotted dragons here and there. Jet after jet peeled away from the squadron to go in pursuit. Before long, Flandry found his craft alone with one other.
Then two forms rose from the ground and started winging off. His pulse accelerated, his belly muscles tightened, he brought his flyer downward in a steep dive.
Like most predators, the dragons weren't looking for trouble. Annoyed by the racket overhead, they had set off in search of peace and quiet. However, they had never had reason to acquire an instinct of fear, either. Ten scaly meters of jaws, neck, body, and tail snaked through heaven, beneath enormous leathery wings. The beasts were less heavy than they appeared, and glided more than they actually flew. Just the same, a high-energy metabolism kept such a mass aloft. Yonder teeth could rend steel.
Flandry took aim. The creature he had chosen grew monstrously in his sights. A sunbeam made an eye glare scarlet as the dragon banked to face him in battle.
He squeezed his trigger. A thin blade of lightning smote forth, to burn through scales and the vital organs beneath. Yet the monster held to its collision course. Flandry rolled out of the way. Wings buffeted air, meters from him.
He had not allowed for the tail. A sudden impact shivered his teeth together. The jet reeled and went into a spin. The dragon followed.
Flandry fought his controls and tore the craft around, upward. He barrel-rolled and confronted open jaws. His beam seared in between the fangs. The dragon stumbled in midflight. Flandry pulled away and fired into a wing, ripping it.
Another blow shuddered through him. He twisted his head about in time to see the fuselage bitten open. The second beast had come to the aid of its crippled mate.
Wind poured in, searingly cold. The dragon struck again, and this time clung. Unmanageable, the aircraft plunged groundward. Mountains reeled across Flandry's vision. What an ending! passed through him. Brought down and maybe eaten by my own quarry—
He was free. The other jet had arrived, firing with surgical precision. All gods bless that pilot, whoever he is! Cleanly slain, the great creature toppled Lucifer-like. Its killer whipped around to dispose of the one Flandry had wounded.
The Terran got his vehicle on an even keel. He'd better inspect the damage, though, and give his nerves a chance to untwist, before proceeding back. The dragon that nearly got him had crashed on a slope beneath a ledge big enough for a vertical landing. As he approached, he raised a hand in salute. There lay another brave animal, done in as an act of politics. He grounded and sat for a minute quietly shuddering.
A whistle shrilled him back to alertness. The second aircraft was on its way down, presumably for the pilot to see how he fared; his radio was hors de combat. He opened the cockpit and climbed out to stand on harsh yellow turf, in a gelid breeze, that he might give proper thanks.
The vehicle set down. Its engine whined into silence, its canopy drew back, its rider got out.
Aycharaych.
Flandry's reaction was well-nigh instantaneous. Here he stood, unrecognizable as an individual at the distance between, in cloak and hood and goggles. Yonder was his enemy, unsuspecting, and there were no witnesses and any agonies of conscience could be postponed till a convenient time—
His hand was on the butt of his needle gun when he saw that Aycharaych's weapon was already drawn and aimed at him. He froze. The Chereionite approached him at an easy, steady pace, until he could hear the quiet word: "No."
He kept both his hands well away from his person. "Do you mean to do the honors yourself, then?" he asked.
"Not at all, unless you absolutely force me," Aycharaych said. "I do wish you to take out your gun, drop it, and step a few meters aside. Thereafter you are free to determine if your vehicle is airworthy. If not, I will be glad to summon assistance for you."
"You . . . are very . . . kind, sir."
"You are very useful, Captain. I perceive that you now understand why."
Aycharaych smoothly declined to discuss the matter further.
Afternoon light streamed through a window of Aline's room, the most private place she and Flandry could find in the palace. Its ruddiness somehow seemed only to bring out the pallor on her face. "Can't be," she whispered through lips drawn tight.
"Is," Flandry replied grimly. "The only possible answer. How he knows everything
about us, everything we try and plan and—think. He can read our minds."
"But telepathy—you know its limitations—"
Flandry nodded. "Low rate of data conveyance at those frequencies, as well as high noise levels and rapid degradation of the signal. Not to speak of the coding problem. Different races have such different brain-activity patterns that a telepath has to learn a whole new 'language' for each. In fact, he has to do it for every single member of a basically non-telepathic species like ours; we don't grow up in a shared communication mode, the way we do with our mother tongues."
He began to pace, back and forth across the enclosing chamber. "But Chereion's a very old planet," he said. "Its people have the reputation among the more superstitious Merseians of being sorcerers. Somehow, they must be able to detect and interpret something mental that intelligent beings have in common universally, or almost universally. I've been wondering about—oh, a fantastic inborn ability to acquire information, store it, chase it up and down every branch of a logic tree till the meaning emerges—in hours, minutes, seconds?"
He beat fist against palm. "I am reasonably sure he can only read surface thoughts, those in the immediate awareness. Otherwise he'd have found out so much about us that the Merseians would be swaggering around on Terra by now. However, what he can do is bad enough!"
"No wonder he spared your life," Aline said drearily. "You've become the most valuable man on his side."
"And not a thing I can do about it," Flandry sighed. "I'm so helpless—we all are—that he doesn't care that we learn about him. Rather, he's no doubt made our knowledge a factor in his plans—our loss of morale at the news, for instance—
"I don't know what the range of his mind reading is. Probably just several meters: on the basis of what we know about the physical nature of the carrier waves for telepathy. But he sees me every day; and every time, he skims whatever I'm thinking of." The man's laugh jarred forth. "How do I go about not thinking of my work? By chanting mantras every waking moment? Better I should return home. Better we all should, perhaps, and give up on Betelgeuse."
Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Page 35