Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra

by Poul Anderson

  The festival wore on. Toward morning, Flandry and Chunderban Desai found themselves alone.

  The officer would have left sooner, were it not for his acquired job. Now he seemed wisest if he savored sumptuousness, admired the centuried treasures of static and fluid art which the palace housed, drank noble wines, nibbled on delicate foods, conversed with witty men, danced with delicious girls, finally brought one of these to a pergola he knew (unlocked, screened by jasmine vines) and made love. He might never get the chance again. After she bade him a sleepy goodbye, he felt like having a nightcap. The crowd had grown thin. He recognized Desai, fell into talk, ended in a small garden.

  Its base was cantilevered from a wall, twenty meters above a courtyard where a fountain sprang. The waters, full of dissolved fluorescents, shone under ultraviolet illumination in colors more deep and pure than flame. Their tuned splashing resounded from catchbowls to make an eldritch music. Otherwise the two men on their bench had darkness and quiet. Flowers sweetened an air gone slightly cool. The moon was long down; Venus and a dwindling number of stars gleamed in a sky fading from black to purple, above an ocean coming all aglow.

  "No, I am not convinced the Emperor does right to depart," Desai said. The pudgy little old man's hair glimmered white as his tunic; chocolate-hued face and hands were nearly invisible among shadows. He puffed on a cigarette in a long ivory holder. "Contrariwise, the move invites catastrophe."

  "But to let the barbarians whoop around at will—" Flandry sipped his cognac and drew on his cigar, fragrances first rich, then pungent. He'd wanted to end on a relaxing topic. Desai, who had served the Imperium in many executive capacities on many different planets, owned a hoard of reminiscences which made him worth cultivating. He was on Terra for a year, teaching at the Diplomatic Academy, before he retired to Ramanujan, his birthworld.

  The military situation—specifically, Hans' decision to go—evidently bothered him too much for pleasantries. "Oh, yes, that entire frontier needs restructuring," he said. "Not simple reinforcement. New administrations, new laws, new economics: ideally, the foundations of an entire new society among the human inhabitants. However, his Majesty should leave that task to a competent viceroy and staff whom he grants extraordinary powers."

  "There's the problem," Flandry pointed out. "Who's both competent and trustworthy enough, aside from those who're already up to their armpits in alligators elsewhere?"

  "If he has no better choice," Desai said, "his Majesty should let the Spican sector be ravaged—should even let it be lost, in hopes of regaining the territory afterward—anything, rather than absent himself for months. What ultimate good can he accomplish yonder if meanwhile the Imperium is taken from him? The best service he can render the Empire is simply to keep a grip on its heart. Else the civil wars begin again."

  "I fear you exaggerate," Flandry said, though he recalled how Desai was always inclined to understate things. And Dennitzans on Diomedes... "We seem to've pacified ourselves fairly well. Besides, why refer to civil wars in the plural?"

  "Have you forgotten McCormac's rebellion, Sir Dominic?"

  Scarcely, seeing I was involved. Flandry winced at a memory. Lost Kathryn, as well as the irregular nature of his actions at the time, made him glad the details were still unpublic. "No. But that was, uh, twenty-two years ago. And amounted to what? An admiral who revolted against Josip's sector governor for personal reasons. True, this meant he had to try for the crown. The Imperium could never have pardoned him. But he was beaten, and Josip died in bed." Probably poisoned, to be sure.

  "You consider the affair an isolated incident?" Desai challenged in his temperate fashion. "Allow me to remind you, please—I know you know—shortly afterward I found myself the occupation commissioner of McCormac's home globe, Aeneas, which had spearheaded the uprising. We came within an angstrom there of getting a messianic religion that might have burst into space and torn the Empire in half."

  Flandry took a hard swallow from his snifter and a hard pull on his cigar. Well had he studied the records of that business, after he encountered Aycharaych who had engineered it.

  "The thirteen following years—seeming peace inside the Empire, till Josip's death—they are no large piece of history, are they?" Desai pursued. "Especially if we bear in mind that conflicts have causes. A war, including a civil war, is the flower on a plant whose seed went into the ground long before... and whose roots reach widely, and will send up fresh growths.... No, Sir Dominic, as a person who has read and reflected for most of a lifetime on this subject, I tell you we are well into our anarchic phase. The best we can do is minimize the damage, and hold outside enemies off until we win back to a scarred kind of unity."

  "‘Our' anarchic phase?" Flandry questioned.

  Desai misheard his emphasis. "Or our interregnum, or whatever you wish to call it. Oh, we may not always fight over who shall be Emperor; we can find plenty of bones to contend about. And we may enjoy stretches of peace and relative prosperity. I hoped Hans would provide us such a respite."

  "No, wait, you speak as if this is something we have to go through, willy-nilly."

  "Yes. For about eighty more years, I think—though of course modern technology, nonhuman influences, the sheer scale of interstellar dominion may affect the time-span. Basically, however, yes, a universal state—and the Terran Empire is the universal state of Technic civilization—only gives a respite from the wars and horrors which multiply after the original breakdown. Its Pax is no more than a subservience enforced at swordpoint, or today at blaster point. Its competent people become untrustworthy from their very competence; anyone who can make a decision may make one the Imperium does not like. Incompetence grows with the growing suspiciousness and centralization. Defense and civil functions alike begin to disintegrate. What can that provoke except rebellion? So this universal state of ours has ground along for a brace of generations, from bad to worse, until now—"

  "The Long Night?" Flandry shivered a bit in the gentle air.

  "I think not quite yet. If we follow precedent, the Empire will rise again... if you can label as ‘rise' the centralized divine autocracy we have coming. To be sure, if the thought of such a government does not cheer you, then remember that that second peace of exhaustion will not last either. In due course will come the final collapse."

  "How do you know?" Flandry demanded.

  "The cycle fills the history, yes, the archeology of this whole planet we are sitting on. Old China and older Egypt each went thrice through the whole sorry mess. The Western civilization to which ours is affiliated rose originally from the same kind of thing, that Roman Empire some of our rulers have liked to hark back to for examples of glory. Oh, we too shall have our Diocletian; but scarcely a hundred years after his reconstruction, the barbarians were camping in Rome itself and making emperors to their pleasure. My own ancestral homeland—but there is no need for a catalogue of forgotten nations. For a good dozen cases we have chronicles detailed to the point of nausea; all in all, we can find over fifty examples just in the dust of this one world.

  "Growth, until wrong decisions bring breakdown; then ever more ferocious wars, until the Empire brings the Pax; then the dissolution of that Pax, its reconstitution, its disintegration forever, and a dark age until a new society begins in the ruins. Technic civilization started on that road when the Polesotechnic League changed from a mutual-aid organization of free entrepreneurs to a set of cartels. Tonight we are far along the way."

  "You've discovered this yourself?" Flandry asked, not as skeptically as he could have wished he were able to.

  "Oh, no, no," Desai said. "The basic analysis was made a thousand years ago. But it's not comfortable to live with. Prevention of breakdown, or recovery from it, calls for more thought, courage, sacrifice than humans have yet been capable of exercising for generation after generation. Much easier first to twist the doctrine around, use it for rationalization instead of rationality; then ignore it; finally suppress it. I found it in certain archives, bu
t you realize I am talking to you in confidence. The Imperium would not take kindly to such a description of itself."

  "Well—" Flandry drank again. "Well, you may be right. And total pessimism does have a certain bracing quality. If we're doomed to tread out the measure, we can try to do so gracefully."

  "There is no absolute inevitability." Desai puffed for a minute, his cigarette end a tiny red pulsar. "I suppose, even this late in the game, we could start afresh if we had the means—more importantly, the will. But in actuality, the development is often aborted by foreign conquest. An empire in the anarchic phase is especially tempting and especially prone to suffer invaders. Osmans, Afghans, Moguls, Manchus, Spaniards, British—they and those like them became overlords of cultures different from their own, in that same way.

  "Beyond our borders, the Merseians are the true menace. Not a barbarian rabble merely filling a vacuum we have left by our own political machinations—not a realistic Ythri which sees us as its natural ally—not a pathetic Gorrazani remnant—but Merseia. We harass and thwart the Roidhunate everywhere, because we dare not let it grow too strong. Besides eliminating us as a hindrance to its dreams, think what a furtherance our conquest would be!

  "That's why I dread the consequences of the Emperor's departure. Staying home, working to buttress the government and armed force, ready to stamp fast on every attempt at insurrection, he might keep us united, uninvadable, for the rest of his life. Without his presence—I don't know."

  "The Merseians would have to be prepared to take quick advantage of any revolt," Flandry argued. "Assuming you're right about your historical pattern, are they aware of it? How common is it?"

  "True, we don't have the knowledge to say how far it may apply to nonhumans, if at all," Desai admitted. "We should. In fact, it was Merseia, not ourselves, that set me on this research—for the Merseians too must have their private demons, and think what a weapon it would be for our diplomacy to have a generalized mechanic for them as well as us!"

  "Hm?" said Flandry, surprised afresh. "Are you implying perhaps they already are decadent? That's not what one usually hears."

  "No, it isn't. But what is decadence to a nonhuman? I hope to do more than read sutras in my retirement; I hope to apply my experience and my studies to thought about just such problems." The old man sighed. "Of necessity, this assumes the Empire will not fall prey to its foes before I've made some progress. That may be an unduly optimistic assumption... considering what a head start they have in the Roidhunate where it comes to understanding us."

  "Are you implying they know this theory of human history which you've been outlining to me?"

  "Yes, I fear that at least a few minds among them are all too familiar with it. For example, after considering the episode for many years, I think that when Aycharaych tried to kindle a holy war of man against man, starting on Aeneas, he knew precisely what he was doing."

  Aycharaych. The chill struck full into Flandry. He raised his eyes to the fading stars. Sol would soon drive sight away from them, but they would remain where they were, waiting.

  "I have often wondered what makes him and his kind serve Merseia," Desai mused. "Genius can't really be conscripted. The Chereionites surely have something to win for themselves. But what—from an alien species, an alien culture?"

  "Aycharaych's the only one of them I've ever actually met," Flandry said. "I've sometimes thought he's an artist."

  "An artist of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings? Well, conceivably. If that's all, he is no more to be envied than you or I."

  "Why?"

  "I'm not sure I can make the reason clear to you, or even very clear to myself. We have not had the good fortune to be born in an era when our society offers us something transcendental to live and die for." Desai cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to read you a lecture."

  "No, I thank you," Flandry said. "Your ideas are quite interesting."

  IV

  The Hooligan sprang from Terra, pierced the sky, and lined out for deep space. A steady standard gravity maintained by her interior fields gave no hint of furious acceleration toward regions sufficiently distant that she could go into hyperdrive and outpace light. Nor did her engine energies speak above an almost subliminal whisper and quiver through the hull. But standing in the saloon before its big viewscreen, Kossara watched the planet shrink, ever faster, a cloudy vastness, a gibbous globe of intricate blue and white, an agate in a diamondful jewel box.

  At the back of her mind she wished she could appreciate this sight for which she had left the stateroom assigned her. Terra, Manhome, Maykasviyet; and sheer loveliness—But her heart knocked, her nails bit into wet palms though her tongue was dry and thick, she smelled her harsh sweat.

  Yet when her owner entered, calm crystallized in her. By nature and training she met crises coolly, and here was the worst since—As far as she knew, nobody else was aboard but him and his servant. If she could, somehow, kill them—or hogtie the funny, kindly Shalmuan—maybe before he took her—

  No. Not unless he grew altogether slack; and she sensed alertness beneath his relaxed manner. He was tall and well built and moved like a hunting vilya. Handsome too, she admitted to herself; then scorn added that anybody could be handsome who bought a biosculpture. A loose lace-trimmed blouse and flowing trousers gathered above sandals matched, in their sheen of expensive fabric, the knee-length gown she had chosen out of the wardrobe she found in her quarters.

  "Good day, Donna Vymezal," the man said, and bowed.

  What to do? She jerked a nod.

  "Permit self-introduction," he went on. "Hardly to your surprise, I am Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Corps of his Majesty's Navy." He gestured at a bench curved around two sides of a table. "Won't you be seated?"

  She stood her ground.

  Flandry smiled, placed hands on hips, and drawled: "Please listen. I have no intention of compelling you. None. Not that you don't inspire certain daydreams, Donna. And not that I couldn't make you like it. Drugs, you know. But vanity forbids. I've never needed force or pharmacopoeia, even on those few young ladies I had occasion to buy in the past. Have you noticed your cabin door locks on the inside?"

  Strength went from Kossara. She stumbled backward, fell to the bench, rested head in hands while whirling and darkness passed through her.

  Presently she grew aware that Flandry stood above. His fingers kneaded her neck and shoulders. As she looked up, he stroked her hair. She gasped and drew aside.

  He stepped back. "No offense, Donna." Sternly: "See here, we've a bundle to discuss, none of it very amusing. Do you want a stim pill—or what, to make you operational?"

  She shook her head. After two tries, she husked forth, "Nothing, thank you. I am all right now."

  "Drink? The liquor cabinet is reasonably well stocked. I'm for Scotch."

  "Nothing," she whispered, dreading in spite of his words what might be in a glass he gave her.

  He seemed to guess that, for he said, "You'll have to take from my galley in due course if not sooner. We've a long trip ahead of us."

  "What?... Well, a little wine, please."

  He got busy, while she worked to loosen muscles and nerves. When he sat down, not too close, she could meet his eyes. She declined the cigarette he offered, but the claret was marvelous. He streamed smoke from his nostrils before saying, deliberately:

  "You might recollect who else was bidding on you." She felt her face blaze. "And I didn't spend quite a lot of beer money out of chivalry. Your virtue is safe as long as you want it to be—while I'm your owner. But I need your cooperation in some rather larger matters. Understood?"

  She gulped. "If I can... help you, sir—"

  "In exchange for manumission and a ticket to Dennitza? Maybe. I haven't the legal right to free you, seeing what you were convicted of. I'd have to petition for a decree. Or I could simply order you to go back where you came from and enjoy yourself." He saw her glance fall to the slave bracelet. "Yes, n
ow we're clear of Terra, I'm permitted to take that off you. But I haven't a key for it, and my tools would damage it, which'd put us through a certain amount of bureaucratic rain dance if we return there. Never mind. Beyond range of the comnet, it's inert." Flandry grinned. "If I were indeed a monster of lust, rather than a staid and hardworking monster, I'd still have taken you into space before commencing. The idea of an audience at any arbitrary time doesn't appeal. Let them invent their own techniques."

  Loathing tightened Kossara's throat. "The Terran way of life."

  Flandry regarded her quizzically. "You don't have a high opinion of the Empire, do you?"

  "I hate it. I would die—be tortured—yes, go into a brothel, if I could pull the rotten thing down around me." Kossara tossed off her wine.

  Flandry refilled the glass. "Better be less outspoken," he advised. "I don't mind, but various of my fellow Imperialists might."

  She stared. The real horror of her situation shocked home. "Where are we bound?"

  "Diomedes, for openers at any rate." He nodded. "Yes, I'm investigating what went on, what is going on, whether it threatens the Empire, and how to prevent same."

  Kossara rallied. "You have the records of my... arrest and interrogation, then," she said fast. "I have no further information. Less, actually, because the hypnoprobe blanked out related memories, including those from Dennitza. What's left is bits, blurry and jumbled together, like barely remembered dreams. So how can I help you—supposing I wanted to?"

  "Oh, background and such." Flandry's tone was casual. "Give me the rest of your biography. Explain what your people have against the Imperium. I'll listen. Who knows, you may convert me. I won't hurry you. There's an unsanctified amount of information pumped into the data banks aboard, which I need to study en route. And we've time. Seventeen standard days to destination."

  "No more?" In spite of everything, astonishment touched her.

  "This boat has legs, albeit not as well turned as yours. Do ease off, Donna. Your culture has a soldierly orientation, right? Consider me your honorable enemy, if nothing else, and the pair of us conducting a parley."