Emile and the Dutchman

by Joel Rosenberg

  Laughing like a madman.

  Author's Afterword

  For those who, like me, are interested in such things, a few notes:

  Emile and the Dutchman takes place in the same universe as Ties of Blood and Silver, although the action of Emile finishes several centuries before that of Ties opens.

  Manuel Curdova is an ancestor of the Curdovas of Ties of Blood and Silver. The Emilita Curdova mentioned in this book is not the same one of Ties, however; by the time of Ties, Emile and Emilita have long been common given names among the Curdovas. The planet discovered in "Dutchman's Mirror" is indeed Oroga; the chiropterans Emile, the Dutchman, Bar-El, and N'Damo encountered are a limited-intelligence subspecies of t'Tant.

  Emile von du Mark is a distant ancestor of Celia von du Mark, who appears in some of my Metzada Mercenary Corps stories; Akiva Bar-El, on the other hand, is only a collateral ancestor of Shimon Bar-El and Tetsuo Hanavi of the MMC stories.

  Joel Rosenberg

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joel Rosenberg was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, in 1954, and raised in eastern North Dakota and northern Connecticut. He attended the University of Connecticut, where he met and married Felicia Herman.

  Joel's occupations, before settling down to writing full-time, have run the usual gamut, including driving a truck, caring for the institutionalized retarded, bookkeeping, gambling, motel desk-clerking, and a two-week stint of passing himself off as a head chef.

  Joel's first sale, an op-ed piece favoring nuclear power, was published in The New York Times. His stories have appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Perpetual Light, Amazing Science Fiction Stories, and TSR's The Dragon.

  Joel's hobbies include backgammon, poker, bridge, and several other sorts of gaming, as well as cooking; his broiled butterfly leg of lamb has to be tasted to be believed.

  He now lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife and the traditional two cats.

  The Sleeping Dragon, The Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown, the first three novels in Joel's Guardians of the Flame series, are also available in Signet editions, as is his critically acclaimed science fiction novel Ties of Blood and Silver.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Note to the Reader

  Prelude:

  Like the Gentle Rains

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  Interlude

  TRAINING GROUND

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  Interlude

  Communication

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  Interlude

  DUTCHMAN'S MIRROR

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  Interlude

  In the Shadow of Heaven

  I

  II

  III

  Interlude

  DUTCHMAN'S PRICE

  I

  II

  III

  Postlude

  Author's Afterword

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR