"No, ha. If you consult your navigation tables, you'll find Beta Centauri is almost directly between Tricorn and Hopewell. And I was bound for Hopewell, instead of some closer post, because Hopewell is the nearest planet where I can be sure of getting the stuff we need. Zipping past Beta, I noticed a roughness in the engines." It was there yet, thanks to his using them for a radio. "To check the vector control, I changed course a few times, as you probably noticed. Then all at once, whoosh, here I detected a ship headed for me where no ship ought to be. Perhaps you were a harmless scientific expedition, anxious for a gabfest. But I wasn't about to chance it. Pirates do exist, you know. I skedaddled. My engines began spontaneously popping in and out of secondary. I got the Lauritzens fixed and tried a change of course, hoping you'd understand I didn't want company and leave me alone. No luck. So here we are."
Falkayn donned an indignant look and pounded the pilot board. "Seems like you're the one who has explaining to do," he barked. "What is this Neuheim comedy? Why are warships hanging around a blue giant? What's the idea, taking off after a harmless passerby? The Polesotechnic League is going to hear about this!"
"Perhaps," said Schmitt. "Shtand by to be boarded."
"Damnation, you have no right—"
"Ve haff several nuclear cannon zeroed on you. Gifs t'at a right?"
"It does," Falkayn sighed.
He cooperated in linking air locks by a gangtube. Schmitt entered with a squad, who pointed their rifles at him, and demanded to see his papers.
Presently: "Fery vell, Herr Tombs. Might be you are honest. I do not know. Ve haff our orders. It vill be necessary to intern you on Neuheim."
"What?" Falkayn bellowed. He held his breath till he turned scarlet and his eyes popped. "Do you realize who I am? I'm a certified member of the Polesotechnic League!"
"Too bad for you," Schmitt said. "Come along." He grabbed Falkayn's wrist.
Falkayn yanked it back, drew himself straight, and blessed his father for teaching him the proper mannerisms. "Sir," he said, and liquid helium dripped from every word, "if I am to be a prisoner, I protest the illegality but I must yield. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as the laws of war. Furthermore, I am heir apparent to the Barony of Dragonshaw, United Kingdom of New Asia and Radagach. You will treat me with the respect according to my station!"
Schmitt paled. He clicked his heels, bowed, and followed with a salute. "Jawohl, mein Herr," he gasped. "I beg for your most gracious pardon. If you had seen fit to tell me more earlier—Landholder von Lichtenberg vill be reqvesting t'e honor uff your pressence at tea."
VII
Schloss Graustein was not the worst place in the cosmos to be a prisoner. Though gaunt and drafty on its high ridge, it was surrounded by forests where the hunting was excellent. The food was heavy but edible, and the local beer superb. Landholder Graustein did his best to make the distinguished, if compulsory, guest feel at home. During long conversations and occasional guided tours of the planet, Falkayn spotted interesting commercial opportunities, once the region had been pacified.
Unless—He didn't want to contemplate the alternative. And after some weeks, time began to hang as leaden as the knackwurst.
Thus Falkayn was quite happy when a servant knocked at the door of his suite and announced a visitor. But then she stepped through. He had never thought she would be an unwelcome sight.
"Jutta," he whispered.
She closed the door behind her and regarded him for a still moment. Dark wood and granite panels framed her where she stood vivid under the fluorolight. She was in mufti, and if he had thought her beautiful when uniformed, he must now multiply by an astronomical factor. "So it is indeed you," she said.
"P-p-please sit down," he managed. She remained standing. Her features were stony, her voice flat.
"Those idiots took for granted you were what you claimed, a merchant who simply chanced to pass by and saw too much. They never interrogated you in depth, never notified the fleet command. I only heard of you yesterday, in conversation with Landholder von Lichtenberg, after I came home on leave. The description—" Words trailed off.
Falkayn rallied his courage. "A stratagem of war, my dear," he said gently. "Not a war that my side began, either."
"What have you done?"
He told his pulse to decelerate, took out his pipe, and made a production of loading and kindling it. "You can squirt me full of babble juice, so I might as well Tell All," he smiled. "I guessed the truth and went for a look to make certain."
"That funny little being who left about the same time as you did . . . he knew?"
Falkayn nodded. "He's reported to HQ long ago. If the League is half as realistic as I think, a battle fleet you can't hope to resist is on its way right now."
She clenched one hand over another. Tears stood in her eyes. "What follows?"
"They should head straight here. I expect them any day. You've nothing in the Beta System except a few patrollers; the rest of your navy is spread over a dozen stars, right? The League doesn't want to bombard planets, but in this case—" She uttered anguish. He went quickly to her, took both those hands, and said, "No, no. Realpolitik, Remember? The object of war is not to destroy the enemy but to impose your will on him. Why should we kill people that we might sell things to? We'll simply take the Beta System prisoner and then bargain about its release.
"I don't make policy, but I can predict what'll happen. The League will demand you disband your armed forces, down to a normal defense level. And, naturally, we'll want to keep our trade concessions. But that's all. Now that some Kraoka have starships, they can go ahead and unify, as long as they do it peacefully. We'd hoped to sell them a cargo and passenger fleet, at a huge markup, but that hope isn't worth fighting for—you do have bargaining power yourselves, in your own capabilities for making trouble, you know. Neuheim can keep any social order it wants. Why not? If you try to maintain this wretched autarchy, you'll be depriving yourselves of so much that inside of ten years your people will throw out the Landholders and yell for us."
He chucked her under the chin. "I understand," he said. "It's tough when a dream dies. But why should you, your whole life, carry your father's grudges?"
She surrendered to tears. He consoled her, and a private hope began to grow in him.
Not that he was in the market for a wife. Judas! At his age? However—
Afterward they found themselves on the balcony. Night had fallen, the auroral night where vast banners shook red and green across the sky, dimming the stars, and the mountain swooped down to a forest which breathed strange sweet odors back upward. Wineglasses were in their hands, and she stood close to him.
"You can report who I am," he said, "and cause me to have an unpleasant time, maybe even be shot." Pale in the shuddering light, her face lost its look of happiness and he heard the breath suck between her teeth. "Your duty, according to the articles of war," he continued. "And it won't make one bit of difference, it'll be too late—except that the League protects its own and will take a stiff price for me."
"What choice have I?" she pleaded.
He flashed a well-rehearsed grin. "Why, to keep your lovely mouth shut, tell everybody you were mistaken and Sebastian Tombs has nothing to do with that Falkayn character. When peace comes—well, you're quite influential on this planet. You could do a lot to help your people adjust."
"And become merchants?" she said, in a dying flare of scorn.
"I remarked once," he said, "that we aren't really so ignoble. We're after a profit, yes. But even a knight must eat, and our bread doesn't come from slaves or serfs or anyone who had to be killed. Look beyond those lights. They're fine, sure, but how about the stars on the other side?"
She caught his arm. He murmured, as best he could in Latin, "Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea . . ." and when she turned questioning to him he added, low in the dusk,
"Their topmasts gilt by sunset, though their sails be whipped to rags,
Who raced the wind around the
world go reeling home again,
With ivory, apes, and peacocks loaded, memories and brags,
To sell for this high profit: knowing fully they are Men!"
"Oh-h-h," he heard.
And to think he'd resented his schoolmasters, when he was a kid on Hermes, making him read Flecker and Sanders in the original.
"I will not tell anyone," she said.
And: "May I stay here for a while?"
Falkayn was downright regretful a week later, when the League fleet arrived to rescue him.
INTRODUCTION
The Season of Forgiveness
The following story was also written by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren for the periodical Morgana. She based it upon an incident whereof her father had told her, he having gotten the tale from one of the persons directly concerned when he was an entrepreneur in those parts. Hloch includes it, first, because it shows more than the usual biographies do of a planet on which Falkayn had, earlier, had a significant adventure. Second, it gives yet another glimpse into a major human faith, alive unto this year and surely of influence upon him and his contemporaries.
—Hloch of the Stormgate Choth
The Earth Book of Stormgate
THE SEASON OF FORGIVENESS
It was a strange and lonely place for a Christmas celebration—the chill planet of a red dwarf star, away off in the Pleiades region, where half a dozen humans laired in the ruins of a city which had been great five thousand years ago, and everywhere else reached wilderness.
"No!" said Master Trader Thomas Overbeck. "We've got too much work on our hands to go wasting man-hours on a piece of frivolity."
"It isn't, sir," answered his apprentice, Juan Hernandez. "On Earth it's important. You have spent your life on the frontier, so perhaps you don't realize this."
Overbeck, a large blond man, reddened. "Seven months here, straight out of school, and you're telling me how to run my shop? If you've learned all the practical technique I have to teach you, why, you may as well go back on the next ship."
Juan hung his head. "I'm sorry, sir. I meant no disrespect."
Standing there, in front of the battered desk, against a window which framed the stark, sullenly lit landscape and a snag of ancient wall, he seemed younger than his sixteen Terrestrial years, slight, dark-haired, big-eyed. The company-issue coverall didn't fit him especially well. But he was quick-witted, Overbeck realized; he had to be, to graduate from the Academy that soon. And he was hardworking, afire with eagerness. The merchants of the League operated over so vast and diverse a territory that promising recruits were always in short supply.
That practical consideration, as well as a touch of sympathy, made the chief growl in a milder tone: "Oh, of course I've no objection to any small religious observance you or the others may want to hold. But as for doing more—" He waved his cigar at the scene outside. "What does it mean, anyway? A date on a chronopiece. A chronopiece adjusted for Earth! Ivanhoe's year is only two-thirds as long; but the globe takes sixty hours to spin around once; and to top it off, this is local summer, even if you don't dare leave the dome unless you're bundled to the ears. You see, Juan, I've got the same right as you to repeat the obvious."
His laughter boomed loud. While the team kept their living quarters heated, they found it easiest to maintain ambient air pressure, a fourth again as high as Terrestrial standard. Sound carried strongly. "Believe it or not," he finished, "I do know something about Christmas traditions, including the very old ones. You want to decorate the place and sing 'Jingle Bells'? That's how to make 'em ridiculous!"
"Please, no, sir," Juan said. "Also on Earth, in the southern hemisphere the feast comes at summer. And nobody is sure what time of year the Nativity really happened." He knotted his fists before he plunged on. "I thought not of myself so much, though I do remember how it is in my home. But that ship will come soon. I'm told small children are aboard. Here will be a new environment for them, perhaps frightening at first. Would we not help them feel easy if we welcomed them with a party like this?"
"Hm." Overbeck sat still a minute, puffing smoke and tugging his chin. His apprentice had a point, he admitted.
Not that he expected the little ones to be anything but a nuisance as far as he himself was concerned. He'd be delighted to leave them behind in a few more months, when his group had ended its task. But part of that task was to set up conditions which would fit the needs of their successors. The sooner those kids adjusted to life here, the sooner the parents could concentrate on their proper business.
And that was vital. Until lately, Ivanhoe had had no more than a supply depot for possible distressed spacecraft. Then a scientific investigator found the adir herb in the deserts of another continent. It wouldn't grow outside its own ecology; and it secreted materials which would be valuable starting points for several new organic syntheses. In short, there was money to be gotten. Overbeck's team was assigned to establish a base, make friends with the natives, learn their ways and the ways of their country, and persuade them to harvest the plant in exchange for trade goods.
That seemed fairly well in order now, as nearly as a man could judge amidst foreignness and mystery. The time looked ripe for putting the trade on a regular basis. Humans would not sign a contract to remain for a long stretch unless they could bring their families. Nor would they stay if the families grew unhappy.
And Tom Overbeck wouldn't collect his big, fat bonus until the post had operated successfully for five standard years.
Wherefore the Master Trader shrugged and said, "Well, okay. If it doesn't interfere too much with work, go ahead."
He was surprised at how enthusiastically Ram Gupta, Nikolai Sarychev, Mamoru Noguchi, and Philip Feinberg joined Juan's project. They were likewise young, but not boys; and they had no common faith. Yet together they laughed a lot as they made ready. The rooms and passageways of the dome filled with ornaments cut from foil or sheet metal, twisted together from color-coded wire, assembled from painted paper. Smells of baking cookies filled the air. Men went about whistling immemorial tunes.
Overbeck didn't mind that they were cheerful. That was a boost to efficiency, in these grim surroundings. He argued a while when they wanted to decorate outdoors as well, but presently gave in.
After all, he had a great deal else to think about.
A couple of Ivanhoan days after their talk, he was standing in the open when Juan approached him. The apprentice stopped, waited, and listened, for his chief was in conversation with Raffak.
The dome and sheds of the human base looked oddly bright, totally out of place. Behind them, the gray walls of Dahia lifted sheer, ten meters to the parapets, overtopped by bulbous-battlemented watchtowers. They were less crumbled than the buildings within. Today's dwindled population huddled in what parts of the old stone mansions and temples had not collapsed into rubble. A few lords maintained small castles for themselves, a few priests carried on rites behind porticos whose columns were idols, along twisting dusty streets. Near the middle of town rose the former Imperial palace. Quarried for centuries, its remnants were a colossal shapelessness.
The city dwellers were more quiet than humans. Not even vendors in their flimsy booths cried their wares. Most males were clad in leather kilts and weapons, females in zigzag-patterned robes. The wealthy and the military officers rode on beasts which resembled narrow-snouted, feathery-furred horses. The emblems of provinces long lost fluttered from the lances they carried. Wind, shrill in the lanes, bore sounds of feet, hoofs, groaning cartwheels, an occasional call or the whine of a bone flute.
A human found it cold. His breath smoked into the dry air. Smells were harsh in his nostrils. The sky above was deep purple, the sun a dull ruddy disc. Shadows lay thick; and nothing, in that wan light, had the same color as it did on Earth.
The deep tones of his language rolled from Raffak's mouth. "We have made you welcome, we have given you a place, we have aided you by our labor and counsel," declared the speaker of the City Elders.
"You have . . . for a generous payment," Overbeck answered.
"You shall not, in return, exclude Dahia from a full share in the wealth the adir will bring." A four-fingered hand, thumb set oppositely to a man's, gestured outward. Through a cyclopean gateway showed a reach of dusky-green bush, part of the agricultural hinterland. "It is more than a wish to better our lot. You have promised us that. But Dahia was the crown of an empire reaching from sea to sea. Though it lies in wreck, we who live here preserve the memories of our mighty ancestors, and faithfully serve their gods. Shall desert-prowling savages wax rich and strong, while we descendants of their overlords remain weak—until they become able to stamp out this final spark of glory? Never!"
"The nomads claim the wild country," Overbeck said. "No one has disputed that for many centuries."
"Dahia disputes it at last. I came to tell you that we have sent forth emissaries to the Black Tents. They bore our demand that Dahia must share in the adir harvest."
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