The Game Of Empire

by Poul Anderson

  "Of course not. Preparations for the next phase of the war will go on. All my side has done is stop an attempt by your side that could have been disastrous if it had succeeded. Yes, I'm sure there are people back there whom you've confided your suspicions to; but what value have they without proof? After fighting recommences in earnest, who'll pay them any further attention?"

  Magnusson sighed. "In a way, I'm sorry, Flandry," he said. "You're a genius, in your perverse fashion. This failure is no fault of yours. What a man you would have been in the right cause! I bear you no ill will and have no wish to mistreat you. But I dare not let you continue. You and your entourage will get comfortable quarters. When the throne is mine, I will … decide whether it may eventually be safe to release you."

  He gave orders. Unresisting, Flandry rose to be led away. "My compliments, Sir Olaf," he murmured. "You are cleverer than I realized. Goodnight."

  "Goodnight, Sir Dominic," replied the other.

  Chapter 19

  The climax was violent.

  It began with delusive smoothness. "How I shall regret leaving this place," Axor mused at supper. "Though I will always thank God for the privilege of having encountered wonder here."

  Targovi pricked up his ears. "Leaving?"

  "Well, we cannot expect our hosts to maintain us forever—especially me, bearing in mind what my food must cost them. Working together with the lady Isis Zachary and her colleagues at the Apollonium in these past days, I have learned things of supreme value, and perhaps contributed some humble moiety in return, but now we seem to have exhausted our respective funds of information and the conclusions which discussion has led us to draw therefrom."

  "Apollonium?" Targovi's question was absent-minded, practically a reflex. His thoughts were racing away.

  Axor waved a tree-trunk arm around the room where he sprawled and the Tigery sat at table. He was really indicating the nighted campus beyond the hospice walls. "This center of learning, research, philosophy, arts. They do not call it a university because it has no teaching function. Being what they are, Zacharians require no schools except input to their homes, no teachers except their parents or, when they are mature, knowledgeable persons whom they can call when explanation is necessary."

  "Oh, yes, yes. You've finished, you say?"

  "Virtually. Dear friend," Axor trumpeted, "I cannot express my gratitude for your part in bringing me to this haven. While they have never undertaken serious investigation of the Foredwellers, the Zacharians are insatiably curious about the entire cosmos. Their database contains every item ever reported or collected by such of their people as have gone to space. I retrieved scores of descriptions, pictures, studies of sites unknown to me. Comparison with the facts I already possessed began to open portals. Isis, Vishnu, and Kwan Yin were those who especially took fire and produced brilliant ideas. I would not venture to claim that we are on the way to deciphering the symbols, but we have identified regularities, recurrences, that look highly significant. Who knows where that may lead future scholarship? To the very revelation of Christ's universality, that will in time bring all sentient beings into his church?" The crocodilian head lifted. "I should not lament my departure," the Wodenite finished. "Ahead of me, while this mortal frame lasts, lie pilgrimages to those planets about which I have learned, to the greater glory of God."

  "Well, good," mumbled Targovi. "Know you when we must leave?"

  "No, not yet. I daresay they will tell me at the next session. You might be thinking where we should ask them to deposit us on the mainland. They have promised to take us anyplace we like."

  "Diana will be sad, I suppose. She's had a fine time. Where is she this eventide?"

  Though Axor's visage was not particularly mobile, somehow trouble seemed to dim his brown eyes, and assuredly it registered in his basso profundo: "I cannot say. I have seldom seen her throughout our stay. She goes about in company with that man—what is his name?"

  "Kukulkan, if she hasn't swapped escorts."

  "Ah." Fingers that could have snapped steel bars twiddled with the spectacles hanging from the armored neck. "Targovi, I—this is most embarrassing, but I must speak—Well, I am not human, nor versed in human ways, but lately I … I have begun to fear for that maiden's virtue."

  The Tigery choked back a yowl of laughter.

  "You know her well," Axor continued. "Do you think, before it is too late—I pray it be not too late—you could advise her, as an, an elder brother?"

  Opportunity! Targovi pounced. "I can try," he said. "Truth to tell, I too have fretted about her. I know humans well enough to understand what Kukulkan's intentions are. If we are bound away soon—what one Zacharian knows, they all seem to know—he'll press his suit."

  "Oh, dear. And she so young, innocent, helpless." Axor crossed himself.

  "I'll see if I can find them," Targovi proposed. "She may not thank me tonight, but afterward—" Despite an urgency which had become desperate, he must still hold down his merriment. Oh, aye, wouldn't Diana Crowfeather be overjoyed at having her business minded for her? His tail dithered. "Wish me luck."

  Axor bowed his head and silently invoked a saint or two. Targovi shoved the rest of his meal aside and left.

  The whole farce might have been unnecessary. He didn't know whether the hospice was bugged; lacking equipment hidden aboard Moonjumper, he had no way of finding out. Therefore he assumed it was, and furthermore that there was a stakeout—not a flesh-and-blood watcher, nothing that crude, but sensors in strategic locations. His going forth should, now, arouse no more misdoubts than his feckless wanderings about in the area appeared to have done.

  At most, whoever sat monitoring might flash Kukulkan word that Targovi meant to deboost any seduction, and Kukulkan might thus do best to take the girl for a romantic ride over the mountains … if he had not already done so … The Zacharians did indeed stick together. No, more than that. They were almost a communal organism, like those Terran insectoids they had introduced to the island ecology—ants—though ants with individual intelligence far too high for Targovi's liking upon this night.

  He went out the door. A breeze lulled cool, smelling of leaves and sea, ruffling his fur; he wore nothing but his breechcloth, belt, and knife. Lawns dreamed empty beneath a sky where clouds drifted, tinged argent by Icarus and bronze by the sun-ring. That band was blocked off in the south by the peaks, in places elsewhere by distant weather, but it and the moon gave ample light for humans to see by. He had been waiting for fog or rain to lend comparative darkness in which his vision would have the advantage.

  Well, he could wait no longer.

  Leaving the campus behind, he followed a street at a trot which should look reasonable under the circumstances, until it passed by a park. There he cut across. Trees roofed grass. He vanished into the gloom. At its farther edge he went on his belly and became a ripple of motion that could easily have been a trick of wind-blown cloud shadows.

  From there on he was a Tigery hunter a-stalk, using every scrap of cover and every trick in the open, senses tuned to each least flicker, shuffling, whiff, quivering, clues and hints for which human languages lacked words. Often he froze for minutes while a man or a woman walked by, sometimes close enough to touch. Had dogs been about, he would perforce have left a number of the abominable creatures dead, but fortunately the Zacharians had better taste than to keep any. As was, he took more than an hour to approach his goal.

  It stood high in the hills, on the fringe of settlement. A five-meter wall, thirty meters on a side, surrounded an area forbidden to visitors. When Heimdal was showing him about, Targovi had inquired what was within. "Defense," his guide answered. "You may not know it, but under the treaty we take responsibility for the defense of this island—not out into space, of course; that's the job of the Navy; but against whatever hostile force might break through or might come over the surface. We maintain our own installations. This one guards Janua."

  Guards, aye. Flattened on the ground, Targovi felt a faint shudde
r. Something had passed beneath. Well, he had already eye-gauged that the spaceport—from which outsiders were also banned—lay just opposite, on the far side of the range. A connecting tunnel was logical.

  His glance roved. Above the stony bulk of the wall, the Mencius ridge made a grayness beyond which glimmered the Hellene peaks. Sculptured slopes fell downward, multiply shadowed, frostily highlighted. The Averroes River was brokenly visible, agleam. It plunged into the sheening of the bay. Phosphorescence traced runes over the ocean. Beneath him were soil, pebbles, prickly weeds, dew.

  Attention went back to the fortress. No, he realized, it wasn't any such thing as St. Barbara's had been part of. It must be a command post for missiles, energy projectors, aircraft, and whatever else laired in the vicinity. He doubted there was much. Daedalus had long been under Imperial protection. Now it was under Magnusson's, but that should make no immediate difference. Likewise, Targovi conjectured, security was lax. The Zacharians would have had no cause to be strict, not for centuries, and if requirements had changed overnight, organization and training could hardly have done the same.

  Still, all it took was a single alarm, or afterward a single bullet or ray or flying torpedo …

  Hence he never considered the gate from which a road wound off. Instead, he slithered to a point well away, where he could stand in shadow and examine the wall. It sloped upward, as was desirable for solidity. The material was unfinished stone, perhaps originally to keep anyone from climbing on vacsoles—or was that notion too ridiculous? Erosion had blurred the roughness of the blocks but also pitted the mortar. A human could never have gone up, but a Tigery might, given strength and claws and eyesight adaptable to dim light. He found no indications of built-in warning systems. Why should they exist? Who, or what, would be so crazy as to attempt entry?

  Being of the species he was, Targovi did not stop to wonder about his saneness. He had little more to go on than a hunter's hunch. What lay behind the wall, he could barely guess. What he could do after he found it was unknowable beforehand. He sorely missed the weapons and gear stowed in his ship. Yet he did not consider himself reckless. He went ahead with that which he had decided to do.

  After long and close study, he had a way picked out. He crawled backward until he judged the distance sufficient for a running start. Lifting eyes, ears, and tendrils above the shrubs, he searched for possible watchers. None showed. Then better be quick, before any did! He sprang to his feet and charged.

  Well-conditioned Tigeries under a single standard gravity can reach a sprint speed which outdoes their Terran namesake. Sheer momentum carried Targovi far up the barrier. Fingers and claws did the rest; he needed only an instant's purchase to thrust himself onward, too fast to lose his grip and fall. Over the top he went, fell, landed on pads that absorbed much of the shock, took the rest in rubbery muscles, and promptly dived for cover. That was behind a hedge. It would do him scant good if someone had noticed. After a minute, having heard and smelled nothing, he hazarded a look. The grounds were deserted. His readiness flowed from fight-or-flight back to stealth.

  A garden surrounded a fair-sized building. While not neglected, it showed signs of perfunctory care. That bore out Targovi's estimate, that this post had seen little use until quite recently, and was still weakly and slackly manned. Why not? What need had the Zacharians had for military skills since Daedalus came under the Pax Terrana? What reason had they, even now, to worry about intruders? Nonetheless Targovi continued cautious. His venture was wild at best.

  First establish lines of retreat. A couple of big oaks offered those. A human could not leap from their upper boughs to the top of the wall, but a Tigery could. Avoiding paths, he eeled from hedge to bush. The building loomed ahead, darkling in the half-light of heaven. It too was old, weather-worn; it had the same peaked roof as those downhill but lacked their gracefulness, being an unrelieved block, though with ample windows and doors. Toward the rear, two of those windows glowed.

  They were plain vitryl. Targovi slipped alongside and peered around an edge. Breath hissed between his fangs. The hair erected over his body. This was the total and stunning confirmation of his—fears?—expectations?—guesses?—The quarry he had been tracing stood terrible before him.

  The windows gave on a room bare-walled and sparsely furnished, with a bath cubicle adjoining. Most of its space went to a computer. While engineering imposes basic similarity on all such machines, Targovi could see that this one had not been manufactured in the Terran Empire. Black-uniformed, blaster at belt and rifle grounded, on guard through the night watch, was a Merseian.

  For a long spell, the Tigery stood moveless. Ring-gleam and cloud shadows, wind-sough in leaves, odors of green life, grittiness of masonry under his palms, seemed abruptly remote, things of dream, against the reality which confronted him. What to do?

  The sensible thing was to withdraw unobserved, keep silence, let the Zacharians return him to the mainland, contact Naval Intelligence …

  Which would be the absolute in lunacy, he thought. What had happened when he just hinted that certain matters might rate investigation? And that was before Magnusson openly rebelled. How far today would a nonhuman outlaw get on his raw word?

  The overwhelming majority of Daedalans and, yes, members of the armed forces desired the survival of the Empire. What else was there for them? But they'd need proof, evidence that nobody could hide or explain away.

  "When we hunted the gaarnokh on Home-world," Dragoika often said, "and he stood at bay, to spear him in the heart we must needs go in between his horns."

  Targovi slipped along the wall to the next-nearest door. It was unlocked. Nobody came through the gate or up from the spaceport tunnel unless the leaders had complete confidence in him. Targovi entered a short hall which led to a corridor running the length of the building. Unlighted at this hour of rest, it reached dusky along rows of closed chambers—offices mainly, he assumed, long disused. Some must lately have been seeing activity, as must the weapon emplacements, wherever they were: but not much, because the Zacharians did not await any emergency. They knew Merseia wasn't going to attack the Patrician System.

  Chiefly, Targovi decided, this strongpoint housed a few officers and their aides from the Roidhunate, observers, liaison agents, conveyors of whatever orders their superiors issued. Ships traveled to and fro, bringing replacements for those who went back to report. That traffic wouldn't be hard to keep secret. It was infrequent; its captains knew the right recognition codes; Planetary Defense Command would assign sentry vessels to orbits that never gave them a good look at such arrivals; and private landing facilities waited on the island.

  The gatortails must have quarters under this roof. A smell of them reached Targovi as he neared. It was warm, like their blood, but neither Tigery-sweet nor human-sour—bitter. He bristled.

  Partly by scent, partly by keeping track of direction and distance, he identified the door to his goal. It was closed. Unfortunate, that. He'd have to proceed without plan. But if he stood here hesitating his chances would rapidly worsen. Dawn drew nigh. Though most people's sleeptime might last later, many would soon be astir throughout Janua—must already be—and full sunlight upon wayfarers.

  He thumbed the "open" plate and stepped aside. As the door slid back, the Merseian would look this way and wonder why nobody trod through. He'd likely come closer to see—Now Targovi heard click of boots on the floor, now the sound stopped but he caught a noise of breathing—not quickened, the guard didn't imagine an enemy at hand, he was probably puzzled, maybe thinking a collywobble had developed in these ancient circuits—

  Targovi came around the jamb and sprang.

  As he appeared, he saw what was needful, pivoted on his claws, and launched himself, in a single storm-swift movement. Driven by the muscles of his race, he struck faster than the Merseian could lift weapon. They tumbled down together. The rifle clattered aside. Targovi jammed his right forearm into a mouth that had barely started to gape in the green-skinned face. On
ly a stifled gurgle got around it.

  He could have killed a human with a karate chop, but had not studied Merseian anatomy and dared not suppose it was that similar. His left hand darted to catch the opponent's right arm before the bolstered blaster could be drawn. Strength strained against strength.

  Meanwhile he hooked claws into the thick tail, which would else be a club smashing upon him or thumping a distress signal. The boots, which might have done likewise, he pinned between his calves.

  The Merseian was powerful, less so than him but surging against his pressure, sure to break free somewhere. Targovi released the gun wrist. His own arm whipped around behind the neck of the foe. Low and blunt, unlike Axor's, the spinal ridge nevertheless bruised him—as his right arm shoved the head back over that fulcrum.

  The Merseian clutched his blaster. Targovi heard a crack. The head flopped. The body shuddered, once, and lay still.

  Whatever their variations, Merseian, Tigery, and human are vertebrates.

  Targovi jumped off the corpse, snatched the rifle, crouched to cover the doorway. If the noise had roused someone, he'd have to try shooting his way free.

  Minutes crawled by. Silence deepened. Light grew stronger in the windowpanes.

  Targovi lowered the weapon. Nobody had heard. Or, if anybody did, it had been so briefly that the being sank back into sleep. After all, he had taken just seconds to kill the guard.

  How much time remained before reveille, or whatever would reveal him? It was surely meager. Targovi got to work.

  Having closed the door, he examined the computer. Aye, Merseian made, and he was ignorant of the Eriau language. Not entirely, though. Like most mentally alive persons in this frontier space, he had picked up assorted words and catchphrases. His daydream of operating among the stars had also led him to learn the alphabet. Moreover, Merseia had originally acquired modern technology from Terra; and logic and natural law are the same everywhere.

  When they first arrived here, the gatortails must have brought this as their own mainframe computer. Not only would they be most familiar with it, they need not fear its being tampered with, whether directly or from afar. Besides making active use of it, they'd keep their database within … Yes. Targovi believed he had figured out the elementary instruction he wanted.