A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

by Poul Anderson

  “Can’t we?” Susette persisted. “The Empire’s big, but people get around in it.”

  Flandry pulled his attention back to the task on hand. He hugged her, smiled into her troubled gaze, and said, “Your idea flatters me beyond reason. I’d s’posed I was a mere escapade.”

  She flushed. “I supposed the same. But—well—” Defiantly: “I have others. I guess I always will, till I’m too old. Martin must suspect, and not care an awful lot. He’s nice to me in a kind of absent-minded way, but he’s overworked, and not young, and—you know what I mean. Diego, Diego Rostovsky, he’s been the best. Except I know him inside out by now, what there is to know. You come in like a fresh breeze—straight from Home!—and you can talk about things, and make me laugh and feel good, and—” She leaned hard on him. Her own spare hand wandered. “I’d never have thought … you knew right away what I’d like most. Are you a telepath?”

  No, just experienced and imaginative. Aycharaych is the telepath. “Thank you for your commendation,” Flandry said, and clinked his bottle on hers.

  “Then won’t you stay a while extra, Ahab, and return afterward?”

  “I must go whither the vagaries of war and politics require, amorita. And believe me, they can be confoundedly vague.” Flandry took a long drink to gain a minute for assembling his next words. “F’r instance, the secrecy Commander Maspes laid on you forces me to dash on to Sector HQ as soon’s I’ve given Diomedes a fairly clean bill of health—which I’ve about completed. My task demands certain data, you see. Poor communications again. Maspes tucked you under a blanket prohibition because he’d no way of knowing I’d come here, and I didn’t get a clearance to lift it because nobody back Home knew he’d been that ultracautious.” If I produced the Imperial writ I do have, that might give too much away.

  Susette’s palm stopped on his breast. “Why, your heart’s going like a hammer,” she said.

  “You do that to a chap,” he answered, put down his bottle and gathered her to him for an elaborate kiss.

  Breathlessly, she asked, “You mean if you had the information you wouldn’t be in such a hurry? You could stay longer?”

  “I should jolly well hope so,” he said, running fingers through her hair. “But what’s the use?” He grinned. “Never mind. In your presence, I am not prone to talk shop.”

  “No, wait.” She fended him off, a push which was a caress. “What do you need to know, Ahab?”

  “Why—” He measured out his hesitation. “Something you’re not allowed to tell me.”

  “But they’d tell you at HQ.”

  “Oh, yes. This is a miserable technicality.”

  “All right,” Susette said fast. “What is it?”

  “You might—” Flandry donned enthusiasm. “Darling! You wouldn’t get in trouble, I swear. No, you’d be expediting the business of the Empire.”

  She shook her head and giggled. “Uh-uh. Remember, you’ve got to spend the time you gain here. Promise?”

  “On my honor” as a double agent.

  She leaned back again, her beer set aside, hands clasped behind her neck, enjoying her submission. “Ask me anything.”

  Flandry faced her, arms wrapped around drawn-up knees. “Mainly, who was with Maspes? Nonhumans especi’lly. I’d better not spell out the reason. But consider. No mind can conceive, let alone remember, the planets and races we’ve discovered in this tiny offside corner of the solitary galaxy we’ve explored a little bit. Infiltration, espionage—such things have happened before.”

  She stared. “Wouldn’t they check a memory bank?”

  Memory banks can have lies put into them, whenever we get a government many of whose officials can be bought, and later during the confusion of disputed succession, civil war, and sweeping purges. Those lies can then wait, never called on and therefore never suspected, till somebody has need for one of them. “Let’s say no system is perfect, ’cept yours for lovemaking. Terra itself doesn’t have a complete, fully updated file. Regional bitkeepers don’t try; and checking back with Terra seldom seems worth the delay and trouble.”

  “Gollool” She was more titillated than alarmed. “You mean we might’ve had an enemy spy right here?”

  “That’s what I’m s’posed to find out, sweetling.”

  “Well, there was only a single xeno on the team.” She sighed. “I’d hate to believe he was enemy. So beautiful a person. You know, I daydreamed about going to bed with him, though of course I don’t imagine that’d have worked, even if he did look pretty much like a man.”

  “Who was he? Where from?”

  “Uh—his name, Ay … Aycharaych.” She handled the diphthongs better than the open consonants. “From, uh, he said his planet’s called Chereion. Way off toward Betelgeuse.”

  Further, Flandry thought amidst a thrumming.

  This time he didn’t bother to conceal his right name or his very origin. And why should he? Nobody would check on a duly accredited member of an Imperial Intelligence force—not that the files in Thursday Landing would help anyway—and he could read in their minds that none had ever heard of an obscure world within the Roidhunate—and the secrecy command would cover his trail as long as he needed, after he’d done his damage and was gone.

  When at last, maybe, the truth came out: why, our people who do know a little something about Chereion would recognize that was where he glided from, as soon as they heard his description, regardless of whether he’d given a false origin or not. He might as well amuse himself by leaving his legal signature.

  Which I’d already begun to think I saw in this whole affair. Dreams and shadows and flitting ghosts—

  “He’s about as tall as you are,” Susette was saying, “skinny—no, I mean fine-boned and lean—except for wide shoulders and a kind of jutting chest. Six fingers to a hand, extra-jointed, ambery nails; but four claws to a foot and a spur behind, like a sort of bird. And he did say his race conies from a, uh, an analogue of flightless birds. I can’t say a lot more about his body, because he always wore a long robe, though usually going barefoot. His face … well, I’d make him sound ugly if I spoke about a dome of a brow, big hook nose, thin lips, pointed ears, and of course all the, the shapes, angles, proportions different from ours. Actually, he’s beautiful. I could’ve spent days looking into those huge red-brown whiteless eyes of his, if he’d let me. His skin is deep gold color. He has no hair anywhere I saw, but a kind of shark-fin crest on the crown of his head, made from dark-blue feathers, and tiny feathers for eyebrows. His voice is low and … pure music.”

  Flandry nodded. “M-hm. He stayed in your house?”

  “Yes. We and the servants were strictly forbidden to mention him anywhere outside. When he visited the building his team had taken over—or maybe left town altogether; I can’t say—he’d put on boots, a cowl, a face mask, like he came from someplace where men cover up everything in public; and walking slow, he could make his gait pass for human.”

  “Did you get any hints of what he did?”

  “No. They called him a … consultant.” Susette sat upright. “Was he really a spy?”

  “I can identify him,” Flandry said, “and the answer is no.” Why should he spy on his own companions—subordinates? And he didn’t bring them here to collect information, except incidentally. Fm pretty sure he came to kindle a war.

  “Oh, I’m glad,” Susette exclaimed. “He was such a lovely guest. Even though I often couldn’t follow his conversation. Martin did better, but he’d get lost too when Aycharaych started talking about art and history—of Terra! He made me ashamed I was that ignorant about my own planet. No, not ashamed; really interested, wanting to go right out and learn if only I knew how. And then he’d talk on my level, like mentioning little things I’d never much noticed or appreciated, and getting me to care about them, till this dull place seemed full of wonder and—”

  She subsided. “Have I told you enough?” she asked.


  “I may have a few more questions later,” Flandry said, “but for now, yes, I’m through.”

  She held out her arms. “Oh, no, you’re not, you man, you! You’ve just begun. C’mere.”

  Flandry did. But while he embraced her, he was mostly harking back to the last time he met Aycharaych.

  IX

  {That was four years ago, in the planet-wide winter of eccentrically orbiting Talwin. Having landed simultaneously from the warships which brought them hither, Captain Sir Dominic Flandry and his opposite number, Qanryf Tachwyr the Dark, were received with painstaking correctness by the two commissioners of their respective races who administered the joint Merseian-Terran scientific base. After due ceremony, they expressed a wish to dine privately, that they might discuss the tasks ahead of them in frankness and at leisure.

  The room for this was small, austerely outfitted as the entire outpost necessarily was. Talwin’s system coursed through the Wilderness, that little-explored buffer zone of stars between Empire and Roidhunate; it had no attraction for traders; the enterprise got a meager budget. A table, some chairs and stools, a sideboard, a phone were the whole furniture, unless you counted the dumbwaiter with sensors and extensible arms for serving people who might not wish a live attendant while they talked.

  Flandry entered cheerily, 0.88 gee lending bounce to his gait. The Merseian officer waited, half dinosaurian despite a close-fitting silver-trimmed black uniform, bold against snowfields, frozen river, and shrunken sun in crystalline sky which filled a wall transparency behind him.

  “Well, you old rascal, how are you?” The man held forth his hand in Terran wise. Tachwyr clasped it between warm dry fingers and leathery palm. They had no further amicable gesture to exchange, since Flandry lacked a tail.

  “Thirsty,” Tachwyr rumbled. They sought the well-stocked sideboard. Tachwyr reached for Scotch and Flandry for telloch. They caught each other’s glances and laughed, Merseian drumroll and human staccato. “Been a long while for us both, arrach?”

  Flandry noted the inference, that of recent years Tachwyr’s work had brought him into little or no contact with Terrans, for whatever it might be worth. Likely that wasn’t much. The Empire’s mulish attitude toward the aggrandizement of the Roidhunate was by no means the sole problem which the latter faced. Still, Tachwyr was by way of being an expert on Homo sapiens; so if a more urgent matter had called him—To be sure, he might have planned his remark precisely to make his opponent think along these lines.

  “I trust your wives and children enjoy good fortune,” Flandry said in polite Eriau.

  “Yes, I thank the God.” The formula being completed, Tachwyr went on: “Chydhwan’s married, and Gelch has begun his cadetship. I presume you’re still a bachelor?” He must ask that in Anglic, for his native equivalent would have been an insult. His jet eyes probed. “Aren’t you the gaudy one, though? What style is that?”

  The man extended an arm to show off colors and embroideries of his mufti. The plumes bobbed which sprang from an emerald brooch holding his turban together. “Latest fashion in Dehiwala—on Ramanujan, you know. I was there a while back. Garb at home has gotten positively drab.” He lifted his glass. “Well, tor ychwei.”

  “Here’s to you,” the Merseian responded in Anglic. They drank. The telloch was thick and bitter-fiery.

  Flandry looked outdoors. “Brrr!” he said. “I’m glad this time I won’t need to tramp through that.”

  “Khraich? I’d hoped we might go on a hunt.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. But if nothing else, my time here is limited. I must get back. Wouldn’t have come at all except for your special invitation.”

  Tachwyr studied Flandry. “I never doubted you are busy these days,” he said.

  “Yes, jumping around like a probability function in a high wind.”

  “You do not seem discouraged.”

  “N-no.” Flandry sipped, abruptly brought his gaze around, and stated: “We’re near the end of our troubles. What opposition is left has no real chance.”

  “And Hans Molitor will be undisputed Emperor.” Tachwyr’s relaxation evaporated. Flandry, who knew him from encounters both adversary and half friendly since they were fledglings in their services, had rather expected that. A big, faintly scaled hand clenched on the tumbler of whisky. “My reason why I wanted this meeting.”

  “Your reason?” Flandry arched his brows, though he knew Tachwyr felt it was a particularly grotesque expression.

  “Yes. I persuaded my superiors to send your government—Molitor’s—the proposal, and put me in charge of our side. However, if you had not come yourself, I imagine the conference would have proved as empty as my datholch claimed it would, when I broached the idea to him.”

  I can’t blame the good datholch, Flandry thought. It does seem ludicrous on the face of it: discussions between Intelligence officers of rank below admiral or fodaich, who can’t make important commitments—discussions about how to “resolve mutual difficulties” and assure the Imperium that the Roidhunate has never had any desire to interfere in domestic affairs of the Empire—when everybody knows how gleefully Merseian agents have swarmed through every one of our camps, trying their eternally damnedest to keep our family fight going.

  Of course, Molitor’s people couldn’t refuse, because this is the first overt sign that Merseia will recognize him rather than some rival as our lord, and deal with his agents later on, about matters more real than this farce.

  The intention is no surprise, when he’s obviously winning. The surprise was the form the feeler took—and Tachwyr’s note to me. Neither action felt quite Merseian.

  Therefore I had to come.

  “Let me guess,” Flandry said. “You know I’m close to his Majesty and act as an odd-job man of his. You and your team hope to sound out me and mine about him.”

  Tachwyr nodded. “If he’s to be your new leader, stronger than the past several, we want to know what to expect.”

  “You must have collected more bits of information on him than there are stars in the galaxy. And he’s not a complex man. And no individual can do more than throw a small extra vector or two in among the millions that whipsaw such a big and awkward thing as the Empire toward whatever destiny it’s got.”

  “He can order actions which have a multiplier effect, for war or peace between our folk.”

  “Oh, come off it, chum! No Merseian has a talent for pious wormwords. He only sounds silly when he tries. As far as you are concerned vis-a-vis us, diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.” Flandry tossed off his drink and poured a refill.

  “Many Terrans disagree,” Tachwyr said slowly.

  “My species also has more talent than yours for wishful thinking,” Flandry admitted. He waved at the cold landscape. “Take this base itself. For two decades, through every clash and crisis, a beacon example of cooperation. Right?” He leered. “You know better. Oh, doubtless most of the scientists who come here are sincere enough in just wanting to study a remarkable xenological development. Doubtless they’re generally on good personal terms. But they’re subsidized—they have their nice safe demilitarization—for no reason except that both sides find it convenient to keep a place for secret rendezvous. Neutral domains like Betelgeuse are so public, and their owners tend to be so nosy.”

  He patted the Merseian’s back. “Now let’s sit down to eat, and afterward serious drinking, like the cordial enemies we’ve always been,” he urged. “I don’t mind giving you anecdotes to pad out your report. Some of them may even be true.”

  The heavy features flushed olive-green. “Do you imply our attempt—not at final disengagement, granted, but at practical measures of mutual benefit—do you imply it is either idiotic or else false?”

  Flandry sighed. “You disappoint me, Tachwyr. I do believe you’ve grown stuffy in your middle age. Instead of continuing the charade, why not ring up your Chereionite and invite him to jo
in us? I’ll bet he and I are acquainted too.”}

  {The sun went down and night leaped forth in stars almost space-bright, crowding the dark, making the winter world glow as if it had a moon. “May I turn off the interior lights?” Aycharaych asked. “The outside is too glorious for them.”

  Flandry agreed. The hawk profile across the table from him grew indistinct, save for great starlight-catching eyes. The voice sang and purred onward, soft as the cognac they shared, in Anglic whose accent sounded less foreign than archaic.

  “I could wish your turban did not cover a mindscreen and powerpack, my friend. Not merely does the field make an ugliness through my nerves amidst this frozen serenity; I would fain be in true communion with you.” Aycharaych’s chuckle sounded wistful. “That can scarcely be, I realize, unless you join my cause.”

  “Or you mine,” Flandry said.

  “And each of your men who might know something I would like to learn is likewise screened against me. Does not that apparatus on their heads make sleep difficult? I warn you in any case, wear the things not overmany days at a stretch. Even for a race like yours, it is ill to keep the brain walled off from those energies which inspirit the universe, behind a screen of forces that themselves must roil your dreams.”

  “I see no reason for us to stay.”

  Aycharaych inhaled from his glass. He had not touched the liquor yet. “I would be happy for your company,” he said. “But I understand. The consciousness that dreary death will in a few more decades fold this brightly checkered game board whereon you leap and capture—that keeps you ever in haste.”

  He leaned back, gazed out at a tree turned into a jewel by icicles, and was quiet awhile. Flandry reached for a cigarette, remembered the Chereionite disliked tobacco smoke, and soothed himself with a swallow.

  “It may be the root of your greatness as a race,” Aycharaych mused. “Could a St. Matthew Passion have welled from an immortal Bach? Could a Rembrandt who knew naught of sorrow and had no need for steadfastness in it have brought those things alive by a few daubs of paint? Could a Tu Fu free of loss have been the poet of dead leaves flying amidst snow, cranes departing, or an old parrot shabby in its cage? What depth does the foreknowledge of doom give to your loves?”