Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga

by Poul Anderson

  After a while Banner said, looking straight before her, “We didn’t talk about politics, or much of anything, yesterday.”

  “No, we’d better things to do, hm?”

  The earnestness that he remembered was back upon her. “What is the situation? Nothing worthwhile comes in the news, ever.”

  “Of course not. The Imperium isn’t about to publicize an affair like that. Embarrassing. And dangerous; it might generate ideas elsewhere. The fact of a conspiracy to rebel and usurp can’t be totally hidden away. But it can be underplayed in the extreme, it can be made downright boring to hear about, and more entertaining events can be manufactured to crowd it out of what passes for the public consciousness.”

  She clenched her fists. “You know the facts, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Obviously. I’m not supposed to mention them, and I wouldn’t to most people, but you can keep your mouth shut. Besides, you’ve earned the right to learn whatever you want to.”

  “Well, what has happened?”

  “Oh, let’s not drag through the details. The whole movement fell to pieces. Some crews surrendered voluntarily, gave help to the Imperialists—led them to the various installations, for example—and have been punished by no more than dishonorable discharges, fines, or perhaps a bit of nerve-lash. Others fled, whether disappearing into the Hermetian population or establishing new identities on different planets or leaving the Empire altogether.”

  “Cairncross?”

  “Unknown.” Flandry shrugged. “I apologize for lacking a tidy answer, but life is always festooned with loose ends. It’s been ascertained that his speedster was in the hunt for us when we blew his moon base out from under him. Presumably he skipped. However, interrogations of associates lead me to think the men aboard wouldn’t unanimously have felt like staying under the command of an outlaw, a failure. They could have mutinied, disposed of him and the vessel, and scattered.

  “No large matter, really. At worst, the Merseians or a barbarian state will gain an able, energetic officer—who’ll dwell for the rest of his years in a hell of frustration and loneliness. What counts is that he and his cause are overthrown, discredited, kaput. We’ve been spared a war.”

  She turned her head to regard him. “Your doing, Dominic,” she said.

  He kissed her briefly. “Yours, at least as much. You inherited your dad’s talents, my dear.” They went on, hand in hand.

  “What about Hermes and the rest?” she asked.

  Flandry sighed. “There’s the messy part. Hermes did have legitimate grievances, and they still obtain. I talked the Emperor into leniency for the people—no purges or mass confiscations or anything like that. He and the Policy Board do want changes whichtake away what extra power Hermes had. Its authority everywhere outside the Maian System has been revoked, for instance, and it’s under martial law itself, pending ‘reconstruction.’ But you can’t blame Gerhart too much; and, as said, ordinary people are being allowed to continue their ordinary lives. They’re good stock; they’ll become important again in the Empire . . . and afterward.”

  Her gaze held wonder. “The Emperor heeds you?”

  “Oh, my, yes. We maintain our mutual dislike, but he realizes how useful I can be. And for my part, well, my advice isn’t the worst he could get; and his son and heir isn’t such a bad young fellow. I’m afraid I’ll end my days as a kind of gray eminence.”He paused. “Though scarcely in holy orders.”

  “I’ll get you to explain that later,” she said. Her voice stumbled. “What about Ramnu?”

  “Why, you do know that the climate modification project has been approved, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Barely to be heard: “Yewwl’s memorial. Her name will be on it.”

  “Work can’t start till things have gotten satisfactorily organized in that sector. A couple of years hence, I’d guess. Thereafter, maybe a decade till completion, and three or four more decades till the glaciated territory has been reclaimed, right? But the Ramnuans will get assistance meanwhile, I promise.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed. Tiny brightnesses glinted on her lashes, around the big green eyes.

  “The interdict on travel ought to be lifted soon. Are you eager to return?”

  “I could be helpful.”

  Flandry stroked his mustache. “You haven’t exactly answered my question. Tell me, if you will—You didn’t need to hang around on Terra this entire while. You could have gone to your family on Dayan.”

  “Yes, I should have.”

  “But you didn’t. Why?”

  She stopped, and he did, and they stood facing in the nave made by trail and trees. A yellow leaf blew down and settled in her hair. He took both her hands. They were cool.

  She spoke with a resolution she must have been long in gathering: “I had to think. To understand. Everything has changed, been shattered, could be rebuilt but never in the same shape. Half of me died when Yewwl did. I need new life, and came to see—it was slow, finding the truth, because the search hurt so much—I don’t want to begin again with another Ramnuan. Our sisterhood, Yewwl’s and mine, was wonderful, I’ll always warm my soul by it, but it came to be when we were young, and that is gone.”

  The forest soughed. Wind boomed through the canyon. “I stayed on Terra, Dominic, because of hoping you and I would meet again.”

  “I spent the whole time hoping I’d hear those words,” he replied.

  When the kiss had ended, he said to her: “Let’s be honest with each other, always. We’re not a boy and girl in love. We’re both a little old, more than a little sad, and friends. But we make one crackling hell of a team. A pity if we disbanded. Would you like to continue?”

  “I think I would,” she told him. “I certainly want to try. Thank you, dear friend.”

  They walked on into the autumn.

  THE

  GAME OF

  EMPIRE

  DEDICATION

  To James P. Baen

  Writers aren’t supposed to say anything pleasant

  about editors or publishers, but the fact is that in both

  capacities Jim has done very well by me,

  and been a good friend into the bargain.

  INTRODUCTION

  This book is a sort of coda to the biography of Dominic Flandry, Intelligence agent for the Terran Empire. His chronicles had occupied five novels and two collections of shorter stories, written over a span of thirty-odd years. They were meant to be first and foremost science fiction adventures, entertainment. Yet I tried, as well, to convey some feeling of how endlessly varied and wonderful the universe is in which we live, and to provoke a little thought about real history and politics. At last the time came for a new generation to take over the saga—but I do not expect to continue it further than here. There is too much else to write about.

  You may enjoy a bit of background. Under the pseudonym Daedalus, David E. H. Jones used to publish brilliant speculative essays in the magazine New Scientist. In one of them he pointed out that, were Earth slightly different in certain respects, we would see no horizon. I seized upon this fact to help me design an imaginary world, which it was only fair to name Daedalus. But why would its fictitious discoverers have done so? Well, suppose they called its sun Patricius, perhaps as a religious gesture. In the technical college where I studied, long and long ago, St. Patrick was alleged to be the patron of engineers, because when he expelled the snakes from Ireland he invented the worm drive. Logically, then, the planets of this star would receive the names of great engineers in legend and history. My wife and I had fun with that, although just two of them got into the story.

  The book also, in a very small way, does homage to Rudyard Kipling. I hope that the first and the final sentence, especially, will raise a few smiles.

  —Poul Anderson, 1994

  CHAPTER ONE

  She sat on the tower of St. Barbara, kicking her heels from the parapet, and looked across immensity. Overhead, heaven was clear, deep blue save where the sun Patricius
stood small and fierce at midmorning. Two moons were wanly aloft. The sky grew paler horizonward, until in the east it lost itself behind a white sea of cloud deck. A breeze blew cool. It would have been deadly cold before her people came to Imhotep; the peak of Mt. Horn lifts a full twelve kilometers above sea level.

  Westward Diana could see no horizon, for the city had grown tall at its center during the past few decades. There the Pyramid, which housed Imperial offices and machinery, gleamed above the campus of the Institute, most of whose buildings were new. Industries, stores, hotels, apartments sprawled raw around. She liked better the old quarter, where she now was. It too had grown, but more in population than size or modernity—a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space.

  “Who holds St. Barbara’s holds the planet.” That saying was centuries obsolete, but the memory kept alive a certain respect. Though ice bull herds no longer threatened to stampede through the original exploration base; though the Troubles which left hostile bands marooned and desperate, turning marauder, had ended when the hand of the Terran Empire reached this far; though the early defensive works would be useless in such upheavals as threatened the present age, and had long since been demolished: still, one relic of them remained in Olga’s Landing, at the middle of what had become a market square. Its guns had been taken away for scrap, its chambers echoed hollow, sunseeker vine clambered over the crumbling yellow stone of it, but St. Barbara’s stood yet; and it was a little audacious for a hoyden to perch herself on top.

  Diana often did. The neighborhood had stopped minding—after all, she was everybody’s friend—and to strangers it meant nothing, except that human males were apt to shout and wave at the pretty girl. She grinned and waved back when she felt in the mood, but had learned to decline the invitations. Her aim was not always simply to enjoy the ever-shifting scenes. Sometimes she spied a chance to earn a credit or two, as when a newcomer seemed in want of a guide to the sights and amusements. Nonhumans were safe. Or an acquaintance—who in that case could be a man—might ask her to run some errand or ferret out some information. If he lacked money to pay her, he could provide a meal or a doss or whatever. At present she had no home of her own, unless you counted a ruinous temple where she kept hidden her meager possessions and, when nothing better was available, spread her sleeping bag.

  Life spilled from narrow streets and surged between the walls enclosing the plaza. Pioneer buildings had run to brick, and never gone higher than three or four stories, under Imhotepan gravity. Faded, nearly featureless, they were nonetheless gaudy, for their doors stood open on shops, while booths huddled everywhere else against them. The wares were as multifarious as the sellers, anything from hinterland fruits and grains to ironware out of the smithies that made the air clangorous, from velvyl fabric and miniature computers of the inner Empire to jewels and skins and carvings off a hundred different worlds. A sleazy Terran vidplay demonstrated itself on a screen next to an exquisite dance recorded beneath the Seas of Yang and Yin, where the vaz-Siravo had been settled. A gun dealer offered primitive home-produced chemical rifles, stunners of military type, and—illegally—several blasters, doubtless found in wrecked spacecraft after the Merseian onslaught was beaten back. Foodstalls wafted forth hot, savory odors. Music thuttered, laughter and dance resounded from a couple of taverns. Motor vehicles were rare and small, but pushcarts swarmed. Occasionally a wagon forced its way through the crowd, drawn by a tame clopperhoof.

  Folk were mainly human, but it was unlikely that many had seen Mother Terra. The planets where they were born and bred had marked them. Residents of Imhotep were necessarily muscular and never fat. Those whose families had lived here for generations, since Olga’s Landing was a scientific base, and had thus melded into a type, tended to be dark-skinned and aquiline-featured. Men usually wore loose tunic and trousers, short hair, beards; women favored blouses, skirts, and braids; in this district, clothes might be threadbare but were raffishly bright. Members of the armed services on leave—a few from the local garrison, the majority from Daedalus—mingled with them, uniforms a stiff contrast no matter how bent on pleasure the person was. They were in good enough physical condition to walk fairly easily under a gravity thirty percent greater than Terra’s, but crewpeople from civilian freighters frequently showed weariness and an exaggerated fear of falling.

  A Navy man and a marine passed close by the tower. They were too intent on their talk to notice Diana, which was extraordinary. The harshness reached her: “—yeh, sure, they’ve grown it back for me.” The spaceman waved his right arm. A short-sleeved undress shirt revealed it pallid and thin; regenerated tissue needs exercise to attain normal fitness. “But they said the budget doesn’t allow repairing DNA throughout my body, after the radiation I took. I’ll be dependent on biosupport the rest of my life, and I’ll never dare father any kids.”

  “Merseian bastards,” growled the marine. “I could damn near wish they had broken through and landed. My unit had a warm welcome ready for ’em, I can tell you.”

  “Be glad they didn’t,” said his companion. “Did you really want nukes tearing up our planets? Wounds and all, I’ll thank Admiral Magnusson every day I’ve got left to me, for turning them back the way he did, with that skeleton force the pinchfists on Terra allowed us.” Bitterly: “He wouldn’t begrudge the cost of fixing up entire a man that fought under him.”

  They disappeared into the throng. Diana shivered a bit and looked around for something cheerier than such a reminder of last year’s events.

  Nonhumans were on hand in fair number. Most were Tigeries, come from the lowlands on various business, their orange-black-white pelts vivid around skimpy garments. Generally they wore air helmets, with pressure pumps strapped to their backs, but on some, oxygills rose out of the shoulders, behind the heads, like elegant ruffs. Diana cried greetings to those she recognized. Otherwise she spied a centauroid Donarrian; the shiny integuments of three Irumclagians; a couple of tailed, green-skinned Shalmuans; and—and—

  “What the flippin’ fury!” She got to her feet—they were bare, and the stone felt warm beneath them—and stood precariously balanced, peering.

  Around the corner of a Winged Smoke house had come a giant. The Pyramid lay in that direction, but so did the spaceport, and he must have arrived there today, or word of him would have buzzed throughout the low-life parts of town. Thence he seemed to have walked all the kilometers, for no public conveyance on Imhotep could have accommodated him, and his manner was not that of officialdom. Although the babel racket dwindled at sight of him and people drew aside, he moved diffidently, almost apologetically. Tiredly, too, poor thing; his strength must be enormous, but it had been a long way to trudge in this gee-field.

  “Well, well,” said Diana to herself; and loudly, in both Anglic and Toborko, to any possible competition: “I saw him first!”

  She didn’t waste time on the interior stairs but, reckless, scrambled down the vines. Though the tower wasn’t very tall, on Imhotep a drop from its battlements could be fatal. She reached the pavement running.

  “Ah, ho, small one,” bawled Hassan from the doorway of his inn, “if he be thirsty, steer him to the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle. A decicredit to you for every liter he drinks!”

  She laughed, reached a dense mass of bodies, began weaving and wriggling through. Inhabitants smiled and let her by. A drunk took her closeness wrong and tried to grab her. She gave his wrist a karate chop in passing. He yelled, but retreated when he saw how a Tigery glowered and dropped hand to knife. Kuzan had been a childhood playmate of Diana’s. She was still her friend.

  The stranger grew aware of the girl nearing him, halted, and watched in mild surprise. He was of the planet which humans had dubbed Woden, well within the Imperial sphere. It had long been a familiar of Technic civilization and was, indeed, incorporated in Greater Terra, its dwellers full citizens. Just the same, none had hitherto betrod Imhotep, and Diana knew of them only
from books and database.

  A centauroid himself, he stretched four and a half meters on his four cloven hoofs, including the mighty tail. The crown of his long-snouted, bony-eared head loomed two meters high. The brow ridges were massive, the mouth alarmingly fanged, but eyes were big, a soft brown. Two huge arms ended in four-fingered hands that seemed able to rip a steel plate in half. Dark-green scales armored his upper body from end to end, amber scutes his throat and belly. A serration of horny plates ran over his backward-bulging skull, down his spine to the tailtip. A pair of bags slung across his withers and a larger pair at his croup doubtless held traveling goods. Drawing close, Diana saw signs of a long life, scars, discolorations, wrinkles around the nostrils and rubbery lips, a pair of spectacles hung from his neck. They were for presbyopia, she guessed, and she had already noticed he was slightly lame in the off hind leg. Couldn’t he afford corrective treatments?

  Why, she herself was going to start putting money aside, one of these years, to pay for antisenescence. If she had to die at an age of less than a hundred, she wanted it to be violently.

  Halting before him, she beamed, spread arms wide, and said, “Good day and welcome! Never before has our world been graced by any of your illustrious race. Yet even we, on our remote and lately embattled frontier, have heard the fame of Wodenites, from the days of Adzel the Wayfarer to this very hour. In what way may we serve you, great sir?”