Flandry heard Bronson make a strangled noise and Aline draw a gasp. If that player got back into the game, at this precarious stage of things—Silence thickened while the newcomers went up the aisle to pay their respects.
Not thought, but instinct and impulse surged through Flandry. He sprang down off the stage. The court sword hissed from the sheath at his hip. "Stop those two!" he roared. "They would murder the Sartaz!"
Aycharaych's eyes widened. He opened his mouth to denounce what he saw in the Terran's mind—and sprang back in bare time to avoid a thrust at his body.
His own rapier whipped into his hand. In a whirr of steel, the spies met.
Korvash had drawn blade in sheer reflex. "Strike him down before he kills!" Aline cried. Guards swarmed forward.
The ambassador dropped his weapon. "This is ridiculous—" he began. A stun pistol chopped off his words. He collapsed and lay in a heap.
"That was perhaps unnecessary," the Sartaz said shrewdly. "Remove him to medical attention . . . with due care."
Flandry and Aycharaych moved across his view, viciously busy. "Get them separated!" the officer of the guards called.
"No," the Sartaz countermanded. "Let them have it out."
Aline clenched her hands together. Bronson stood appalled. Slowly, at the royal signal, the troopers resumed formation.
Flandry had thought himself a champion fencer, but Aycharaych was his match. Though the Chereionite was hampered by gravity, no human could equal his speed and precision. The blade he wielded whistled in and out and around, feinted, thrust, parried, flicked blood from his opponent's arm and shoulder; and always he smiled.
His telepathy did him little good. Fencing is a matter of reflexes more than of conscious thought. Perhaps it gave him an extra edge, compensating for the handicap of weight.
The Totentanz went on. Flandry began to score in his turn. Red drops flowed down the golden visage. I am going to wear you out, Aycharaych, the man thought. You'll tire before I do. He retreated, and his enemy had no choice but to follow in hopes of a fatal opening.
Almost, he got one. Flandry's guard went awry, Aycharaych lunged, his point reached the Terran's upper arm. But then a karate kick knocked the sword spinning from his grasp, and steel was at his throat.
"Do not kill!" the Sartaz exclaimed. "We'll hear all of you out. Guards, disarm them."
"Dominic, Dominic," Aline crooned, between tears and laughter; yet she held her place on stage.
"Your Majesty," Flandry panted, "please, I beg you for your own sake, let me keep this prisoner till we've finished what we started. Time's ghastly short, and if he gets a chance, he'll spin matters out till too late. You'll soon understand."
His mind projected: Aycharaych, if you part your lips, so help me, I'll run you through and worry about the consequences to me afterward.
The Chereionite made the faintest of shrugs. Was there irony in it? He must have anticipated the ruler's decision:
"Very well. That would be . . . fitting."
Flandry poised more at ease. What he had said was probably not altogether a lie. No doubt the Merseians had returned with the idea of shortly springing their own surprise; they had learned—quite likely from Aycharaych, who'd tapped the mind of some aide or whoever—that Bronson and Aline were back too, realized that a Terran scheme must also be afoot, and decided it was best to act immediately, no matter how much they must improvise; meanwhile, a warning must be on its way to their troops—
"You'd better take over the demonstration," he called to Aline and Bronson. He dared not to let his attention wander for an instant from the one he confronted. At the edge of vision, he saw the general give the woman a bewildered look, and stand back as she trod forward.
"Your Majesty and nobles," she began, and self-possession welled back up within her, "we pray pardon for the haste and disorderliness of this proceeding, but feel sure you will soon realize that that was forced on us. Full explanation will be forthcoming from the Terran Imperium in due course, though you will surely also realize that it will take time to collect all the facts.
"Basically, our mission discovered that Merseia has decided to cease negotiating for an alliance which may never be granted. Instead, the Merseian plan is to compel it by arms. A small force, aided by traitors in your own ranks, has occupied the Gunazar Valley in the Borthudian range and is, at this very moment, preparing a bridgehead for invasion. With Alfzar under its weapons, the whole planetary system must yield—"
She let the uproar subside before she resumed coolly: "It was not feasible for us to pass this information on at once as we should and as we wished, for several reasons. First, it came piecemeal. Second, though it was gathered by agents we trusted, we had no documentation that would convince you. Third, Merseian agents were everywhere, and we even had reason to believe one of them could read your minds. If they had known their plot was being revealed, they—and the Merseian strength out in space—might well have chosen to act precipitately. As representatives of Terra, we did not feel we had a right to hazard exposing the Betelgeusean worlds to a major conflict.
"Instead, we contacted General Bronson. It is no secret that he is sympathetic to us, though he remains a loyal subject of the Sartaz. We estimated that his position in your defense hierarchy was not high enough to merit much enemy attention; yet he has authority to order the actions we suggested.
"This included mounting telescopic pickups around the valley. Permit me to tune them in."
She turned a switch. An image sprang onto the screen, crags and cliffs beneath the sullen moons, stirrings and metallic gleams in the shadows beneath. The view swept around, became close, became panoramic, brightened under optical amplification. It was a view of spacecraft at rest on the ground, of armor and artillery that they had disgorged now deployed about them, of uniformed Merseians at work.
The Sartaz gave a tigerish snarl. A courtier demanded, "Can you prove this is not a counterfeit?"
"You can prove it for yourself, sir," Aline replied. "Plenty of scraps will remain. Our strategy has been simple. Before they landed, engineers in General Bronson's command planted nuclear mines. They are radio controlled." With a sense of drama that Flandry could not have bettered, she lifted, from the stage where it had lain, a red box with a switch. "The signal can be relayed from this. Perhaps your Majesty would care to start things?"
"Give me that," said the Sartaz thickly. Aline sprang down from the stage and handed it to him, curtsying low. He flipped the switch.
Blue-white hell-flame lit the screen. It gave a vision of soil fountaining upward, landslides, a black cloud, and darkness.
"The latest explosion destroyed the last camera we had," Aline told the assembly. "Let me urge that your Majesty dispatch airborne scouts at once. They will find the proof I bespoke.
"Let me suggest further that you no longer regard Merseia as a friendly power. A detachment of the Terran Navy has been contacted and is on its way. Needless to say, it will not cross your outermost orbital radius without express permission. However, it will stand by, ready to help a Betelgeusean navy that we assume will be put on alert status.
"I believe that after Lord Korvash awakens and is permitted to send a message or two, there will be no further immediate danger from Merseia. As for the longer-range danger, that is something your Majesty must decide in your wisdom."
For the time being, deportation orders stood for every Merseian in the Betelgeusean System. What units of theirs lingered clandestinely, in hidden places on barren planets and moons and asteroids, would be of scant use—far less than their Terran counterparts.
It did not follow that Betelgeuse would conclude an alliance with the Empire. Though the Merseian ambassador had not been able, under the circumstances, to make any very effective protestations of innocence: still, the Sartaz and his advisors knew better than to believe in the disinterested benevolence of Terra. Negotiations would continue. They might or might not lead to agreement.
That was outside Flandry
's concern. Let the diplomats worry about it. He—no, Aline, and he as a helper—had done the job of their own group, which was to keep the possibility open for their side and foreclose it for the opposition.
One does not dismiss an ambassador and his staff without a certain amount of courtesy. Korvash got time to close down his affairs here in orderly fashion. On the evening before he was due to leave, Flandry invited him and Aycharaych around for drinks. The hostess was Aline, and they had the common room for the Terran delegation for a site, with nobody else present. They could have had much more than that had they asked, but settled for the most expensive liquor available.
"Matters have been somewhat too hectic for me to offer the congratulations that are your due," said the Chereionite to the man after everybody had begun to relax.
"Thank you," Flandry replied. "I don't pretend to be sportsman enough that I wish you success next time around. However, it's an amusing game that the empires underwrite for us, no?"
Inwardly he thought, and knew that the other knew he thought: You've not lost hands down, Aycharaych. You've gotten a great deal of information from me that your side will find useful in future. But the half-life of that kind of advantage isn't usually very long, and I'll gather more when you aren't around, and I am forewarned.
He glanced at Aline. Her demeanor was more sober than it had been when he and she impulsively planned this occasion. Was she thinking of missiles that would not strike and sentient beings that would not die—not yet—and of the fact that Aycharaych followed her thought?
Korvash stirred, where he squatted on a tripod of legs and tail in the manner of his people. "I've been overwhelmed with work myself," he growled. "Now will you tell me exactly what it was that you did, you Terrans?"
"Aline did it," Flandry said. "Want to tell them?"
She shook her head. "You tell them, if you wish," she murmured. "Please."
Flandry leaned back in his lounger, sipped from the snifter of brandy in his grasp, and was nothing loth to expound. "Well, then. When we realized you could read our minds, Aycharaych, things looked pretty hopeless. How can you possibly hide anything from that kind of telepath, let alone deceive him? Aline hit on the answer. First deceive yourself.
"There's an obscure drug in these parts called sorgan. It's forbidden to humans, but that needn't stop any competent Intelligence agent. It has the intriguing property of making its user believe whatever he's told. She fed me some without my knowledge and spun me that yarn about Terra's plan to occupy Alfzar. I accepted it as absolute truth; you read it out of me."
"I was puzzled," admitted the Chereionite. "It did not seem reasonable. However, it seemed plausible to you . . . and I am, after all, not human."
"Aline's main problem thereafter was to keep out of your range," Flandry said. "You helped there by haring off to get a warm reception prepared for the Terrans, as she'd guessed you would. If you could've stopped that invasion, then offered your act as earnest of your altruistic love for Betelgeuse—Well, tonight we'd've been the personae non gratae and you, perhaps, throwing a farewell party for us."
Korvash gusted a sigh, quite humanlike except for its volume. "Let me be honest," he said. "The decision to send for naval units, mobilize our Betelgeusean organization, act boldly, that was mine. Aycharaych counselled more caution, but I overruled him."
"Well, nobody's perfect," Flandry replied. "I have my own vices, though energy is not among them."
"This is no time for recriminations, of self or of others," Aycharaych said gently. "There will be more tomorrows. Tonight let us enjoy our truce."
The drinking lasted well on toward dawn. When finally the aliens left, Korvash offered many tipsy expressions of regard, and even of regret that the covert hostility must begin again.
Aycharaych showed no sign of changed mood. He took Aline's right hand in his bony fingers, and his eyes searched hers, even as—she remembered with an odd, half welcome sense of surrender—his mind was doing.
"Goodbye, my dear," he said, too softly for the rest to overhear. "As long as there are women like you, your race will endure."
She watched his tall form go down the corridor and her vision blurred a little. It was strange to think that her enemy knew what the man beside her did not. L
THE GAME OF GLORY
I
A murdered man on a winter planet gave Flandry his first clue. Until then, he had only known that a monster fled Conjumar in a poisoned wreck of a spaceship, which might have gone twenty light-years before killing its pilot but could surely never have crossed the Spican marches to refuge.
And the trouble was—even for the Terran Empire, which contained an estimated four million stars—a sphere twenty light-years across held a devil's number of suns.
Flandry went through motions. He sent such few agents as could be spared from other jobs, for they were desperately under-manned in the frontier provinces, to make inquiries on the more likely planets within that range. Of course they drew blanks. Probability was stacked against them. Even if they actually visited whatever world the fugitive had landed on, he would be lying low for a while.
Flandry swore, recalled his men to more urgent tasks, and put the monster under filed-but-not-forgotten. Two years went by. He was sent to Betelgeuse and discovered how to lie to a telepath. He slipped into the Merseian Empire itself, wormed and blackmailed until he found a suitable planet (uninhabited, terrestroid, set aside as a hunting preserve of the aristocrats) and got home again: whereafter the Terran Navy quietly built an advanced base there and Flandry wondered if the same thing had happened on his side of the fence. He went to Terra on leave, was invited to the perpetual banquet of the Lyonid family, spent three epochal months, and was never quite sure whether he seduced the wrong man's wife or she him. At any rate, he fought a reluctant duel, gave up hope of early promotion to rear admiral, and accepted re-assignment to the Spican province.
Thus it was he found himself on Brae.
This world had been more or less independent until a few months ago. Then military considerations forced the establishment of a new base in the region. It did not have to be Brae, but Brae was asked, by a provincial governor who thought its people would be delighted at the extra trade and protection. The Braean High Temple, which had long watched its old culture and religion sapped by Terran influence, declined. One does not decline an Imperial invitation. It was repeated. And again it was refused. The provincial governor insisted. Brae said it would go over his head and appeal to the Emperor himself. The governor, who did not want attention drawn to his precise mode of government, called for local Navy help.
Wherefore Flandry walked through smashed ruins under a red dwarf sun, with a few snowflakes falling like blood drops out of great clotted clouds. He was directing the usual project in cases like this—search, inquiry, more search, more interrogation, until the irreconcilables had been found and exiled, the safely collaboration-minded plugged into a governmental framework. But when the blaster crashed, he whirled and ran toward the noise as if to some obscure salvation.
"Sir!" cried the sergeant of his escort. "Sir, not there—snipers, terrorists—wait!"
Flandry leaped the stump of a wall, zigzagged across a slushy street, and crouched behind a wrecked flyer. His own handgun was out, weaving around; his eyes flickered in habitual caution. On a small plaza ahead of him stood a squad of Imperial marines. They must have been on routine patrol when someone had fired at them from one of the surrounding houses. They responded with tiger precision. A tracer dart, flipped from a belt almost the moment the shot came, followed the trail of ions to a certain facade. A rover bomb leaped from its shoulder-borne rack, and the entire front wall of the house went up in shards. Before the explosion ended, the squad attacked. Some of the debris struck their helmets as they charged.
Flandry drifted to the plaza. He saw now why the men's reaction was to obliterate: it was an invariable rule when a marine was bushwhacked dead.
He stooped over the victim. This w
as a young fellow, African-descended, with husky shoulders; but his skin had gone gray. He gripped his magnetic rifle in drilled reflex (or was it only a convulsive clutching at his mother's breast, as a dying man's mouth will try to suck again?) and stared through frog-like goggles on a turtle-like helmet. He was not, after all, dead yet. His blood bubbled from a stomach ripped open, losing itself in muddy snow. Under that dim sun, it looked black.
Flandry glanced up. His escort had surrounded him, though their faces turned wistfully toward the crump-crump of blasters and bomb guns. They were marines too.
"Get him to a hospital," said Flandry.
"No use, sir," answered the sergeant. "He'd be dead before we arrived. We've no revival equipment here yet, either, or stuff to keep him functional till they can grow another belly on him."
Flandry nodded and hunkered down by the boy. "Can I help you son?" he asked, as gently as might be.
The wide lips shinned back from shining teeth. "Ah, ah, ah," he gasped. "It's him in Uhunhu that knows." The eyes wallowed in their sockets. "Ai! 'List nay, they said. Nay let recruiters 'list you . . . damned Empire . . . even to gain warskill, don't 'list . . . shall freedom come from slave-masters, asked he in Uhunhu. He and his 'ull teach what we must know, see you?" The boy's free hand closed wildly on Flandry's. "D'you understand?"
"Yes," said Flandry. "It's all right. Go to sleep."
"Ai, ai, look at her up there, grinning—" Despite himself, Flandry stared skyward. He was crouched by a fountain, which now held merely icicles. A slender column rose from the center, and on top of it the nude statue of a girl. She was not really human, she had legs too long, and a tail and pouch and sleek fur, but Flandry had not often seen such dancing loveliness trapped in metal; she was springtime and a first trembling kiss under windy poplars. The waning marine screamed.
"Leave me 'lone, leave me 'lone, you up there, leave me 'lone! Stop grinning! I 'listed for to learn how to make Nyanza free, you hear up there, don't lap my blood so fast. It's nay my fault I made more slaves. I wanted to be free too! Get your teeth out of me, girl . . . mother, mother, don't eat me, mother—" Presently the boy died.
Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Page 37