A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

by Anderson, Poul

  which contacted Chives had settled for a telecom inspection of his

  papers, without boarding, and had cleared him for a path through

  atmosphere which was a reasonable one in view of his kinetic vector. Yet

  orbital optics and electronics must be keeping close watch until

  ground-based equipment could take over.

  Hoar in moonlight, treetops rushed upward. The forest was not dense,

  though, and impact quickly thudded through soles. At once the humans

  removed their space-suits, stopping only for a kiss when heads emerged

  from helmets. Flandry used a trenching tool to bury the outfits while

  Kossara restowed their packs. In outdoor coveralls and hiking boots,

  they should pass for a couple who had spent a furlough on a trip afoot.

  Before they established camp for what remained of the night, they'd

  better get several kilometers clear of any evidence to the contrary.

  Flandry bowed. "Now we're down, I'm in your hands," he said. "I can

  scarcely imagine a nicer place to be."

  Kossara looked around, filled her lungs full of chill sweet-scented air,

  breathed out, "Domovina"--home--and began striding.

  The ground was soft and springy underfoot, mahovina turf and woodland

  duff. A gravity seven percent less than Terran eased the burden on

  backs. Trees stood three or four meters apart, low, gnarly, branches

  plumed blue-black, an equivalent of evergreens. Shrubs grew in between,

  but there was no real underbrush; moonlight and shadow dappled open sod.

  A full Mesyatz turned the sky nearly violet, leaving few stars and

  sheening off a great halo. Smaller but closer in than Luna, it looked

  much the same save for brilliance and haste. No matter countless

  differences, the entire scene had a familiarity eerie and wistful, as if

  the ghosts of mammoth hunters remembered an age when Terra too was

  innocent.

  "Austere but lovely," the man said into silence. His breath smoked,

  though the season, late summer, brought no deep cold. "Like you. Tell

  me, what do Dennitzans see in the markings on their moon? Terrans

  usually find a face in theirs."

  "Why ... our humans call the pattern an orlik. That's a winged theroid;

  this planet has no ornithoids." A sad smile flickered over Kossara's

  night-ivory lips. "But I've oftener thought of it as Ri. He's the hero

  of some funny ychan fairy tales, who went to live on Mesyatz. I used to

  beg Trohdwyr for stories about Ri when I was a child. Why do you ask?"

  "Hoping to learn more about you and yours. We talked a lot in space, but

  we've our lifetimes, and six hundred years before them, to explain if we

  can."

  "We'll have the rest of them for that." She crossed herself. "If God

  wills."

  They were laconic thereafter, until they had chosen a sleeping place and

  spread their bags. By then the crater wall showed dream-blue to south,

  and the short night of the planet was near an end. Rime glimmered.

  Flandry went behind a tree to change into pajamas. When he came back,

  Kossara was doing so. "I'm sorry!" he apologized, and wheeled about. "I

  forgot you'd say prayers."

  She was quiet an instant before she laughed, unsteadily but honestly. "I

  was forgetful too. Well, look if you wish, darling. What harm? You must

  have seen the holograms ... " She lifted her arms and made a slow turn

  before his eyes. "Do you like what you're getting?"

  "Sun and stars--"

  She stopped to regard him, as if unaware of chill. He barely heard her:

  "Would it be wrong? Here in these clean spaces, under heaven?"

  He took a step in her direction, halted, and grinned his most rueful.

  "It would not be very practical, I'm afraid. You deserve better."

  She sighed. "You are too kind to me, Dominic." She put on her

  bedclothes. They kissed more carefully than had been their way of late,

  and got into the bags that lay side by side in the heavy shadow of a

  furbark tree.

  "I'm not sleepy," she told him after a few minutes.

  "How could I be?" he answered.

  "Was I wanton just now? Or unfair? That would be much worse."

  "I was the Fabian this time, not you."

  "The what? ... Never mind." She lay watching the final stars and the

  first silvery flush before daybreak. Her voice stumbled. "Yes, I must

  explain. You could have had me if you'd touched me with a fingertip. You

  can whenever you ask, beloved. Chastity is harder than I thought."

  "But it does mean a great deal to you, doesn't it? You're young and

  eager. I can wait awhile."

  "Yes--I suppose that is part of what I feel, the wanting to know--to

  know you. You've had many women, haven't you? I'm afraid there's no

  mystery left for me to offer."

  "On the contrary," he said, "you have the greatest of all. What's it

  like to be really man and wife? I think you'll teach me more about that

  than I can teach you about anything else."

  She was mute until she could muster the shy words: "Why have you never

  married, Dominic?"

  "Nobody came along whom I couldn't be happy without--what passes for

  happy in an Imperial Terran."

  "Nobody? Out of hundreds to choose from?"

  "You exaggerate ... Well, once, many years ago. But she was another

  man's, and left with him when he had to flee the Empire. I can only hope

  they found a good home at some star too far away for us to see from

  here."

  "And you have longed for her ever since?"

  "No, I can't say that I have in any romantic sense, though you are a lot

  like her." Flandry hesitated. "Earlier, I'd gotten a different woman

  angry at me. She had a peculiar psionic power, not telepathy but--beings

  tended to do what she desired. She wished on me that I never get the one

  I wanted in my heart. I'm not superstitious, I take no more stock in

  curses or spooks than I do in the beneficence of governments. Still, an

  unconscious compulsion--Bah! If there was any such thing, which I

  positively do not think, then you've lifted it off me, Kossara, and I

  refuse to pursue this morbid subject when I could be chattering about

  how beautiful you are."

  At glaciation's midwinter, a colter of ice opened a gap in the Kazan

  ringwall. Melt-begotten, the Lyubisha River later enlarged this to a

  canyon. Weathering of mostly soft crater material lowered and blurred

  the heights. But Flandry found his third campsite enchanting.

  He squatted on a narrow beach. Before him flowed the broad brown stream,

  quiet except where it chuckled around a boulder or a sandbar near its

  banks. Beyond, and at his back, the gorge rose in braes, bluffs, coombs

  where brooks flashed and sang, to ocherous palisades maned with forest.

  The same deep bluish-green and plum-colored leaves covered the lower

  slopes, borne on trees which grew taller than the taiga granted. Here

  and there, stone outcrops thrust them aside to make room for

  wild-flower-studded glades. A mild breeze, full of growth and soil

  odors, rustled through the woods till light and shadow danced. That

  light slanted from a sun a third again as bright as Sol is to Terra,

  ardent rather than harsh, an evoker of infinite hues.

  Gus
lars trilled on boughs, other wings flew over in their hundreds, a

  herd of yelen led by a marvelously horned bull passed along the opposite

  shore, a riba hooked from the water sputtered in Flandry's frying pan

  while a heap of cloud apples waited to be dessert--no dismally

  predictable field rations in this meal. He gestured. "How well a planet

  does if left to its own devices," he remarked.

  "Nature could take a few billion years for R & D," Kossara pointed out.

  "We mortals are always in a hurry."

  He gave her a sharp look. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

  "N-no. You echoed an idea I've heard before--coincidence, surely." He

  relaxed, threw a couple of sticks on the fire, turned the fillets over.

  "I am surprised your people haven't long since trampled this area dead.

  Such restraint seems downright inhuman."

  "Well, the Dolyina has belonged to the Vymezals from olden time, and

  without forbidding visitors, we've never encouraged them. You've seen

  there are no amenities, and we ban vehicles. Besides, it's less

  reachable than many wild lands elsewhere--though most of those are more

  closely controlled."

  Kossara hugged knees to chin. Her tone grew slow and thoughtful. "We

  Dennitzans are ... are conservationists by tradition. For generations

  after the Founding, our ancestors had to take great care. They could not

  live entirely off native life, but what they brought in could too easily

  ruin the whole little-understood ecology. The ... zemly-oradnik ... the

  landsman learned reverence for the land, because otherwise he might not

  survive. Today we could, uh, get away with more; and in some parts of

  the planet we do, where the new industries are. Even there, law and

  public opinion enforce carefulness--yes, even Dennitzans who live in

  neighboring systems, the majority by now, even they generally frown on

  bad practices. And as for the Kazan, the cradle of mankind out here,

  haven't heartlands often in history kept old ways that the outer

  dominions forgot?"

  Flandry nodded. "I daresay it helps that wealth flows in from outside,

  to support your barons and yeomen in the style to which they are

  accustomed." He patted her hand. "No offense, darling. They're obviously

  progressive as well as conservative, and less apt than most people to

  confuse the two. I don't believe in Arcadian Utopias, if only because

  any that might appear would shortly be gobbled up by somebody else. But

  I do think you here have kept a balance, a kind of inner sanity--or

  found it anew--long after Terra lost it."

  She smiled. "I suspect you're prejudiced."

  "Of course. Common sense dictates acquiring a good strong prejudice in

  favor of the people you're going to live among."

  Her eyes widened. She unfolded herself, leaned on her knuckles toward

  him, and cried, "Do you mean you'll stay?"

  "Wouldn't you prefer that?"

  "Yes, yes. But I'd taken for granted--you're a Terran--where you go, I

  go."

  Flandry said straight to her flushed countenance: "At the very least,

  I'd expect us to spend considerable time on Dennitza. Then why not all,

  or most? I can wangle a permanent posting if events work out well.

  Otherwise I'll resign my commission."

  "Can you really settle down to a squire's life, a storm-bird like you?"

  He laughed and chucked her under the chin. "Never fear. I don't imagine

  you're ambitious either to rise every dawn, hog the slops, corn the

  shuck, and for excitement discuss with your neighbors the scandalous

  behavior of 'Uncle Vanya when he lurched through the village, red-eyed

  and reeling from liter after liter of buttermilk. No, well make a

  topnotch team for xenology, and for Intelligence when need arises."

  Soberly: "Need will keep arising."

  Graveness took her too. "Imagine the worst, Dominic. Civil war again,

  Dennitza against Terra."

  "I think then the two of us could best be messengers between Emperor and

  Gospodar. And if Dennitza does tear loose ... it still won't be the

  enemy. It'll still deserve whatever we can do to help it survive. I'm

  not that fond of Terra anyway. Here is much more hope."

  Flandry broke off. "Enough," he said. "We've had our minimum adult daily

  requirement of apocalypse, and dinner grows impatient."

  The Vymezal estate lay sufficiently far inside the crater that the

  ringwall cut off little sky--but on high ground just the same, to

  overlook the river and great reaches of farm and forest. Conducted from

  an outer gate, on a driveway which curved through gardens and parkscape,

  Flandry saw first the tile roof of the manor above shading trees, then

  its half-timbered brick bulk, at last its outbuildings. Situated around

  a rear court, they made a complete hamlet: servants' cottages, garages,

  sheds, stables, kennels, mews, workshops, bakery, brewery, armory,

  recreation hall, school, chapel. For centuries the demesne must have

  brawled with life.

  On this day it felt more silent and deserted than it was. While many of

  the younger adults were gone to their militia units, many folk of every

  other age remained. Most of them, though, went about their tasks

  curt-spoken; chatter, japes, laughter, song or whistling were so rare as

  to resound ghostly between walls; energy turned inward on itself and

  became tension. Dogs snuffed the air and walked stiff-legged, ready to

  growl.

  At a portico, the gamekeeper who accompanied Flandry explained to a

  sentry: "We met this fellow on the riverside lumber road. He won't talk

  except to insist he has to see the voivode alone. How he got here

  unbeknownst I couldn't well guess. He claims he's friendly."

  The soldier used an intercom. Flandry offered cigarettes around. Both

  men looked tempted but refused. "Why not?" he asked. 'They aren't

  drugged. Nothing awful has happened since mobilization, right?" Radio

  news received on his minicom had been meager during the seven planetary

  days of march; entering inhabited country, he and Kossara had shunned

  its dwellers.

  "We haven't been told," the ranger grated. "Nobody tells us a thing.

  They must be waiting--for what?"

  "I'm lately back from an errand in the city," the guardsman added. "I

  heard, over and over--Well, can we trust those Impies the Gospodar

  called in along with our own ships? Why did he? If we've got to fight

  Terra, what keeps them from turning on us, right here in the Zorian

  System? They sure throw their weight around in town. What're you up to,

  Impie?"

  A voice from the loudspeaker ended the exchange. Danilo Vymezal would

  see the stranger as requested. Let him be brought under armed escort to

  the Gray Chamber.

  Darkly wainscoted and heavily furnished like most of the interior,

  smaller than average, that room must draw its name from rugs and drapes.

  An open window let in cool air, a glimpse of sunlight golden through the

  wings of a hovering chiropteroid. Kossara's father stood beside, arms

  folded, big in the embroidered, high-collared shirt and baggy trousers

  of his home territory. She resembled her uncle more, doubtless through

  her
mother, but Flandry found traces of her in those weather-darkened

  craggy features. Her gaze could be as stern.

  "Zdravo, stranac," Vymezal said, formal greeting, tone barely polite. "I

  am he you seek, voivode and nachalnik." Local aristocrat by inheritance,

  provincial governor by choice of Gospodar and popular assembly. "Who are

  you and what is your business?"

  "Are we safe from eavesdroppers, sir?" Flandry responded.

  "None here would betray." Scorn: "This isn't Zorka-grad, let alone

  Archopolis."

  "Nevertheless, you don't want some well-intentioned retainer shouting

  forth what I'll say. Believe me, you don't."

  Vymezal studied Flandry for seconds. A little wariness left him, a

  little eagerness came in. "Yes, we are safe. Three floors aloft,

  double-thick door, for hearing confidences." A haunted smile touched his

  lips. "A cook who wants me to get the father of her child to marry her

  has as much right to privacy as an admiral discussing plans for regional

  defense. Speak."

  The Terran gave his name and rank. "My first news--your daughter Kossara

  is unharmed. I've brought her back."

  Vymezal croaked a word that might be oath or prayer, and caught a table

  to brace himself.

  He rallied fast. The next half-hour was furiously paced talk, while

  neither man sat down.

  Flandry's immediate declaration was simple. He and the girl lacked

  accurate knowledge of how matters stood, of what might happen if her

  return was announced. She waited in the woods for him to fetch her, or