Agent of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

  What the agents did not see was Flandry and Chives hard at work disguising the Terran. Much can be done with plastic face masks, false fingertips and the rest. It wouldn’t pass a close examination, but Flandry was hoping there wouldn’t be one. When he got through, he was Lieutenant Roger Bargen of the ducal household guards. The boat landed near a village some fifty kilometers from town. Flandry caught the morning monorail back.

  He did not report to his colonel when he entered the castle. That would have been asking for a hypnoprobe. But it was pretty clear that Bargen’s job had been secret, none of his messmates would have known of it — so if they saw Bargen scurrying around the place, too busy for conversation, it would not occur to them that anything had gone wrong. Of course, the deception could only last a few hours, but Flandry was betting that he would only need that long.

  In fact, he reflected grimly, I’m betting my life.

  Ella the slave, who had been Ella Mclntyre and a free woman of Varrak’s hills, did not like the harem. There was something vile about its perfumed atmosphere, and she hoped the duke would not send for her that night. If he did — well, that was part of the price. But she was left alone. There was a dormitory for the lesser inmates, like a luxurious barracks, and a wide series of chambers for them to lounge in, and silent nonhuman slaves to bring them food. She prowled restlessly about as the day waned. The other women watched her but said little; such new arrivals must be fairly common.

  But she had to make friends, fast. The harem was the most logical place for the duke to hide his prisoner, secrecy and seclusion were the natural order of things here. But it would be a gossipy little world. She picked an alert-looking girl with wide bright eyes, and wandered up to her and smiled shyly. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Ella.”

  “Just come in, I suppose?”

  “Yes. I’m a present. Ummm — ah — how is it here?”

  “Oh, not such a bad life. Not much to do. Gets a little boring.” Ella shivered at the thought of a lifetime inside these walls, but nodded meekly. The other girl wanted to know what was going on outside, and Ella spent some hours telling her.

  The conversation finally drifted the way she hoped. Yes — something strange. The whole western suite had been sealed off, with household troopers on guard at the door to the hallway. Somebody new must be housed there, and speculation ran wild on the who and why.

  Ella held her tension masked with a shivering effort. “Have you any idea who it might be?” she asked brightly.

  “I don’t know. Maybe some alien. His Grace has funny tastes. But you’ll find that out, my dear.”

  Ella bit her lips.

  That night she could not sleep at all. It was utterly dark, a thick velvety black full of incense, it seemed to strangle her. She wanted to scream and run, run between the stars till she was back in the loved lost hills of Varrak. A lifetime without seeing the sun or feeling the hill-wind on her face! She turned wearily, wondering why she had ever agreed to help Flandry.

  But if he lived and came to her, she could tell him what he wanted to know. If he lived! And even if he did, they were in the middle of a fortress. He would be flayed alive, and she — God, let me sleep. Just let me sleep and forget.

  The fluorotubes came on again with morning, a cold dawn. She bathed in the swimming pool and ate her breakfast without tasting. She wondered if she looked as tired and haggard as she felt.

  A scaled hand touched her shoulder. She whirled about with a little shriek and looked into a beaked reptile face. It spoke hissingly: “You are the new concubine?”

  She tried to answer but her throat tightened up.

  “Come.” The guard turned and strode away. Numbly, she went after him. The chatter in the harem died as she went by, and the eyes that followed were frightened. A girl was not summoned by an armed guard for pleasure.

  They went down a long series of chambers. At the end there was a door. It opened at the guard’s gesture, and he waved her in. As he followed, the door closed behind him.

  The room was small and bare. It held a chair with straps and wires and a switchboard; she recognized the electronic torture machine which left no marks on the flesh. In another chair crouched a being who was not human. Its small hunched body was wrapped in gorgeous robes, and great lusterless eyes regarded her from the bulging hairless head.

  “Sit down.” A thin hand waved her to the electronic chair, and she took it helplessly. “I want to talk to you. You will do well to answer without lies.” The voice was high and squeaky, but there was nothing ridiculous about the goblin who spoke. “For your information, I am Sarlish of Jagranath, which lies beyond the Empire; I am his Grace’s chief intelligence officer, so you see this is no routine matter. You were brought here by a man of whom I have suspicions. Why?”

  “As — a gift — sir,” she whispered.

  “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” said Sarlish surprisingly. “I did not learn of it till this morning, or I would have investigated sooner. You are just a common slave?”

  “Yes — sir — he bought me on Varrak before coming here—”

  “Varrak, eh? I’d like to hypnoprobe you, but that would leave you in no fit state for his Grace tonight if you should be innocent. I think—” Sarlish stroked his meager chin contemplatively. “Yes. A bit of pain will disorganize your mind enough so that if you are lying, the proper questions will bring out inconsistencies. After that we can see about the probe. I am sorry. He gestured to the guard.

  Ella leaped up, yelling. The guard snatched for her and she ducked free, driving a kick at his belly. He grunted and stepped back. She threw herself at the door. As it opened, the reptile hands closed on her arm. Whirling, she brought the extended fingers of her free hand into his eyes. He screamed and backed away.

  “Ah, so,” murmured Sarlish. He took out a stunner and aimed it judicially at the struggling pair.

  “I wouldn’t try that, Dollie,” said a voice in the doorway.

  Sarlish spun about to face a blaster. “Bargen!” he cried, dropping his weapon. Then, slowly: “No, Captain Flandry, isn’t it?”

  “In person, and right in the traditional nick of time.” The blinded guard lurched toward him. Flandry shot him with a narrow beam. Sarlish sprang from his chair at fantastic speed and scuttled between his legs, bringing him down. Ella leaped over the Terran and caught the gnome with a flying tackle. Sarlish hissed and clawed. She twisted at his neck in sheer self-defense, and suddenly the thin spine snapped and Sarlish kicked once and was still.

  “Nice going!” Flandry scrambled to his feet. With a quick motion, he peeled off the face mask. “Too hot in this damned thing. All right, did you find our princess?”

  “This way.” A swift cold gladness was in the girl. She bent and picked up the dead guard’s blaster. “I’ll show you. But can we—?”

  “Not by ourselves. But I’ve signaled Chives. Got at a radio just before coming here. Though how he’s going to find exactly where we are, I don’t know. I’ve had to assume you’d succeeded—” Flandry zigzagged to avoid a flock of screaming girls. “Wow! No wonder the duke has nonhuman servants here!”

  “Behind that wall — we’ll have to go around, through the hall,” panted Ella.

  “And be shot as we come? No, thanks!” Flandry began assembling scattered chairs and divans into a rough barricade before the wall. “Cut our way through, will you?”

  Plastic bubbled and smoked as Ella’s flame attacked it. Flandry went on: “I bluffed my way in here by saying I had to fetch someone. A girl told me where you’d been taken. Imagine the only reason I got away with it is that no man would dare come in here unless he had orders from Alfred himself. But now there’s the devil to pay, and I only hope Chives can locate us in time and not get himself blown out of the sky.” He looked along the barrel of his blaster, down the arched length of the room to the rest of the suite. “Here they come!”

  A troop of guards burst
into sight. Flandry set his blaster to needle beam — that gave maximum range, but you had to be skillful to hit anything at such a distance. One of the men toppled. A curtain of fire raged before the others. The heat of it scorched his face. He picked off another man, and another. But the rest were circling around, getting within wide-beam range, and one shot could fry him. “Get that wall cut!”

  “Here goes!” Ella jumped back as the circle she had burned collapsed outward. A drop of molten plastic stung her skin. The barricade burst into flame as a beam caught it. She tumbled through the hole, heedless of its hot edges, and Flandry followed her.

  The girl inside crouched against the wall, mouth open with terror. She was dark, with a pretty, vacuous face that showed the Imperial blood.

  “Lady Megan?” snapped Flandry.

  “Yes,” she whimpered. “Who are you?”

  “At your service, your highness — I hope.” Flandry sent a wide beam out through the hole in the wall. A man screamed his agony. The agent reflected bitterly how many brave folk — probably including Ella and himself — were dead because a spoiled brat had wanted a new kind of thrill.

  The door swung inward. Ella blasted as it did, and there was a roar of disintegrating flesh and bone and armor. Flandry heaved a sofa up against the sagging door. Poor protection — they could only hold out for minutes.

  He turned a sweating, smoke-blackened face to the princess. “I take it you know the duke kidnapped you, your Highness?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she whined. “But he wasn’t going to hurt me—”

  “So you think! I happen to know he intended to kill you.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it served its purpose. If they lived, Megan wouldn’t get him in trouble for endangering her life. She even began babbling something about a reward, and Flandry hoped she would remember it later. If there was a later.

  He had one advantage. The duke could not use heavy stuff to blow them all up without killing his prisoner. But — He passed out three gas masks.

  The outer wall glowed. A circle was being cut from it, big enough to let a dozen men through at a time. Flandry and Ella could blast the first wave, but the next would overpower them.

  Smoke swirled heavy and bitter in the room. It was hot, stinking of sweat and blood. Flandry grinned crookedly. “Well, darling,” he said, “it was a nice try.” Ella’s hand stroked his hair, briefly.

  Something bellowed outside. The walls trembled, and he heard the rumble and crash of falling masonry. Outside, the noise of blasters and bullets grew to a storm.

  “Chives!” whooped Flandry.

  “What?” asked Megan faintly.

  “Salade of Alfred au naturel with Chives,” burbled Flandry. “You must meet Chives, your Highness. One of nature’s noblemen. He — how the hell did he do it?”

  A volcano growled outside, the walls glowed red, and then there was silence.

  Flandry pulled the burning sofa away and risked a glance into the corridor. It was a ruin, scorched and tumbled by the full impact of a naval blaster canon. The attacking troopers had simply ceased to exist. A series of smashed walls showed open sky far beyond. Hovering in the wreckage was his own lean speedster.

  “Chives,” said Flandry in awe, “merely swooped up to the fortress at full drive, blew his way in with the guns and bombs, and opened up on the duke’s men.”

  The airlock swung wide, and a green head looked out. “I would recommend haste, sir,” said Chives. “The alarm is out, and they have fighting ships.”

  He extended a ladder. Flandry and the girls tumbled up it, the airlock clanged shut behind them, and the boat took off with a yell. Behind it, a small cruiser lifted from the military field.

  “How did you find us?” gasped Flandry. “I didn’t even know where the harem was myself when I called you.”

  “I assumed there would be fighting, sir,” said Chives modestly. “Blasters ionize the air. I used the radiation detectors to fix your direction as I approached.” He set the boat on autopilot and moved over to the tiny galley.

  Flandry studied the viewscreens as the planet fell beneath them. “That cruiser—” he muttered. “No — look at the radar — we’re distancing it. This can of ours has legs. We’ll make it to Varrak all right.”

  He glanced about the cabin. Ella was trying to soothe a hysterical Megan. She looked up at him for a moment and he saw glory in her eyes.

  “Our only worry,” he said, “is that dear Alfred might rise in open revolt now that he’s exposed. If that happens, Merseia would probably move in and we’d have a general war on our hands.”

  Chives looked up from the stove. “His Grace was directing the assault on your stronghold, sir,” he said. “When I fired on the soldiers, I fear I took the liberty of disintegrating the duke as well. Does her Highness take sugar or lemon in her tea?

  Honorable Enemies

  I

  The door swung open behind him and a voice murmured gently: “Good evening, Captain Flandry.”

  He spun around, grabbing for his stun pistol in a wild reflex, and found himself looking down the muzzle of a blaster. Slowly, then, he let his hands fall and stood taut, his eyes searching beyond the weapon, and the slender six-fingered hand that held it, to the tall gaunt body and the sardonically smiling face behind.

  The face was humanoid — lean, hawk-nosed, golden-skinned, with brilliant amber eyes under feathery blue brows, and a high crest of shining blue feathers rising from the narrow hairless skull. The being was dressed in the simple white tunic of his people, leaving his clawed avian feet bare, but insignia of rank hung bejeweled around his neck and a cloak like a gush of blood from his wide shoulders.

  But they’d all been occupied elsewhere — Flandry had seen to that. What had slipped up—?

  With an effort, Flandry relaxed and let a wry smile cross his face. Never mind who was to blame; he was trapped in the Merseian chambers and had to think of a way to escape with a whole skin. His mind whirred with thought. Memory came — this was Aycharaych of Chereion, who had come to join the Merseian embassy only a few days before, presumably on some mission corresponding to Flandry’s.

  “Pardon the intrusion,” he said; “it was purely professional. No offense meant.”

  “And none taken,” said Aycharaych politely. He spoke faultless Anglic, only the faintest hint of his race’s harsh accent in the syllables. But courtesy between spies was meaningless. It would be too easy to blast down the intruder and later express his immense regret that he had shot down the ace intelligence officer of the Terrestrial Empire under the mistaken impression that it was a burglar.

  Somehow, though, Flandry didn’t think that the Chereionite would be guilty of such crudeness. His mysterious people were too old, too coldly civilized, and Aycharaych himself had too great a reputation for subtlety. Flandry had heard of him before; he would be planning something worse.

  “That is quite correct,” nodded Aycharaych. Flandry started — could the being guess his exact thoughts? “But if you will pardon my saying so, you yourself have committed a bit of clumsiness in trying to search our quarters. There are better ways of getting information.”

  Flandry gauged distances and angles. A vase on a table stood close to hand. If he could grab it up and throw it at Aycharaych’s gun hand—

  The blaster waved negligently. “I would advise against the attempt,” said the Chereionite.

  He stood aside. “Good evening, Captain Flandry,” he said.

  The Terran moved toward the door. He couldn’t let himself be thrown out this way, not when his whole mission depended on finding out what the Merseians were up to. If he could make a sudden lunge as he passed close—

  He threw himself sideways with a twisting motion that brought him under the blaster muzzle. Hampered by a greater gravity than the folk of his small planet were used to, Aycharaych couldn’t dodge quickly enough. But he swung the blaster with a vicious precision across Fland
ry’s jaw. The Terran stumbled, clasping the Chereionite’s narrow waist. Aycharaych slugged him at the base of the skull and he fell to the floor.

  He lay there a moment, gasping, blood running from his face. Aycharaych’s voice jeered at him from a roaring darkness: “Really, Captain Flandry, I had thought better of you. Now please leave.”

  Sickly, the Terran crawled to his feet and went out the door.

  Aycharaych stood in the entrance watching him go, a faint smile on his hard, gaunt visage.

  Flandry went down endless corridors of polished stone to the suite given the Terrestrial mission. Most of them were at the feast, the ornate rooms stood almost empty. He threw himself into a chair and signaled his personal slave for a drink. A stiff one.

  There was a light step and the suggestive whisper of a long silkite skirt behind him. He looked around and saw Aline Chang-Lei, the Lady Marr of Syrtis, his partner on the mission and one of Sol’s top field agents for intelligence.

  She was tall and slender, dark of hair and eye, with the high cheekbones and ivory skin of a mixed heritage such as most Terrans showed these days; her sea-blue gown did little more than emphasize the appropriate features. Flandry liked to look at her, though he was pretty well immune to beautiful women by now.

  “What was the trouble?” she asked at once.

  “What brings you here?” he responded. “I thought you’d be at the party, helping distract everyone.”

  “I just wanted to rest for a while,” she said. “Official functions at Sol get awfully dull and stuffy, but they go to the other extreme at Betelgeuse. I wanted to hear silence for a while.” And then, with grave concern: “But you ran into trouble.”

  “How the hell it happened, I can’t imagine,” said Flandry “Look — we prevailed on the Sartaz to throw a brawl with everybody invited. We made double sure that every Merseian on the planet would be there. They’d trust to their robolocks to keep their quarters safe — they have absolutely no way of knowing that I’ve found a way to nullify a robolock. So what happens? I no sooner get inside than Aycharaych of Chereion walks in with a blaster in his hot little hand. He anticipates everything I try and finally shows me the door. Finis.”