Poul Anderson's Planet Stories

by Poul Anderson

  The colonel drew his revolver. "Stand where you are," he snapped. "You are both under arrest."

  Dyann's broad smooth shoulders sagged. "Oh," she said in a meek voice. "Let me yust carry him"—she pointed at the gambler who was totally unconscious—"for a doctor to see." Bending over, she picked him up.

  "March," the Jovian ordered her.

  "Yes, sir," she said, and tossed her burden at him. He went over on his backside. She kicked him in the belly and he too lost interest in further combat.

  "That vas fun," she chuckled. "Vat shall ve do next?"

  "You," said Urushkidan acidly, "are a typical human."

  Through the open door of a cabin which had been declared the ship's brig for his benefit, Ray gazed in appeal at his visitor, who had come by request. There was no guard; a chain around his ankle secured the Earthling quite well. "What else could I do?" he pleaded. "Try fighting the entire crew? As was, it took every bit of persuasion I had in me to get Dyann to surrender."

  "I mean tat you fought in te first place," Urushkidan scolded. "I hear it started ober a female. Why don't you lower species habe a regular rutting season as we do on Uttu? Ten you could perhaps act sensibly te rest of te year."

  "Well—Please, sir! You're the only hope I've got. They won't even tell me what's become of Dyann."

  "Oh, tey questioned her, found she cannot read, and dismissed te charges of mayhem and mutiny. Roshevsky-Feldkamp himself agreed she had acted 'in te heat of te moment,' alto' I beliebe I detected a sour note in his boice. She will be all right."

  "I'm glad of that much," Ray said, a trifle surprised to notice his own sincerity. "Of course, no doubt the Jovians figured punishing one of our first interstellar visitors would raise more stink on Earth than it could be worth to them. But what's her illiteracy got to do with it? And how do you know they inquired about that?"

  "She mentioned it to me afterward. I ten recalled how carefully I had been interrogated, like ebery witness, to make sure I could not habe seen what was in te colonel's papers from tat briefcase. Obbiously tey are top secret and I suspect tey are information about Eart's military situation, gatered by spies for him to take back in person. You are being held prisoner because you did see tem."

  "What? But damn it, I never stopped to read anything!'

  "You must habe unconscious memories which a hypnoquiz could bring out. If noting else, tat would alert te Union to te existence of a Jobian espionage network. Dyann lacks te word-gestalts, she could not retain any meaningful images, but you—Well, tat is your bad luck. I suppose ebentually te Terrestrial embassy can negotiate your release, after te Jobians habe had time to cober teir tracks on Eart."

  "No, not then," Ray groaned. "They'll never bother. There's a warrant out for me at home. Besides, old Vanbrugh will be only too pleased to see me get the rotary shaft."

  "Banbrugh—te Nort American member of te World Council?"

  "Uh-huh." Ray slumped where he stood, "And to think I was a plain underpaid engineer till Uncle Hosmer left me a million credits in his will. I hope he's frying in hell."

  Urushkidan's eyes bugged till they seemed about to push off his spectacles. "A man left you money and you resent it? Ten why habe you talked about being poor?"

  "Because I am. I spent the whole sum."

  "Shalmuannasar! On what?"

  "Oh, wine, women, song, the usual."

  Urushkidan winced as if in physical pain. "A million credits, and not a millo inbested."

  "Meanwhile I got into high society," Ray explained. "I made out as if I had more than I actually did, not to defraud anybody, only so as not to be scoffed at. Katrina Vanbrugh—that's the Councillor's daughter—got the idea I'd make a good fifth husband, or would it have been the sixth? I forget. Well, she's not bad-looking, and she has a headlong way about her, and the upshot was that we became engaged. Big social event. Except then a reporter grew nosy, and found out my fortune was practically gone, and Katrina decided I'd only been after her money and now she and her parents were a laughingstock. . . . Vanbrugh had me charged with criminal misrepresentation. Quite false—oh, maybe I had shaded the truth a little, but I honestly didn't think it'd make any difference to Katrina when I got around to admitting it, she being as rich as she is—the family just wanted revenge. How could I fight that kind of power? I panicked and skipped. Maybe that was foolish; certainly it's made my case worse. The upshot is that the Jovians can do anything to me they feel like."

  He flung out his arms. "Sir, can't you put in a good word for me?" he begged. "You're famous, admired, influential if you choose to be. Couldn't you please help?"

  The Martian inflated himself in the equivalent of simper, then deflated and said with mild regret, "No, I cannot entangle myself in te empirical. It is too distracting, and my work too important. My domain is te beauty and purity of matematics. I adbise you to accept your fate wit philosophy. If you wish, I can lend you a copy of Ekbannutil's Treatise on te Insignificance of Temporal Sorrows."

  Ray collapsed onto his bunk and buried face in hands. "No, thanks."

  Urushkidan waved affably and waddled off.

  Presently the spaceship entered orbit around Ganymede. A squad of soldiers arrived to bring Ray down to the moon. Roshevsky-Feldkamp took personal charge of that.

  "Where am I going?" the Earthling asked.

  "To Camp Muellenhoff, near Wotanopolis," the colonel told him with pleasure. "It is where we keep spies until we have completed their interrogation and are ready to shoot them."

  III

  Dyann Korlas needed a couple of Terrestrial days to decide that she didn't like Ganymede.

  The Jovians had been entirely courteous to her, offering a stiff apology for the unfortunate incident en route and assigning her a lieutenant in the Security Corps for a guide. Within limits, he indulged her curiosity about armaments, and she found her conducted tours of military facilities more impressive than anything corresponding that she had seen on Earth. However, granted that plasma-jet spacecraft, armored gun carriers, and nuclear missiles had capabilities beyond those of swords, bows, and cavalry, still, they took the fun out of combat and left nothing to plunder. She missed the brawling mirth of Kathantuman encampments among these endlessly and expressionlessly marching ranks, these drab uniforms and impersonal machines.

  The civilians were still more depressingly clad, and their orderliness, their instant obedience before any official, their voluminous praises to her of the wonders of Symmetrism, the tiny apartments in which they were housed, soon made her nerves crawl. The officer caste did possess a certain dash and glamour which she would have enjoyed, had it not been exclusively male. She had found the Terrestrial concept of sexual equality interesting, even perversely exciting; but the Jovians had not simply changed the natural order of things, they had turned it upside down, and she found herself regarding them as a race of perverts.

  The standard sights were often fascinating. Below ground, Wotanopolis was a many-leveled hive of industry; she admired especially the countless engineering accomplishments which made human life here so triumphantly safe and ordinary. The views above ground were often magnificent in their stark fashion: Jupiter like a huge moon, softly lambent, in a twilit heaven; an auroral shimmer in the phantom-thin air, where the force-fields created by enormous generators warded off radiation that would otherwise have been lethal; crags, craters, mountains, glaciers; a crystalline forest, a splendidly leaping animal, the marvel that life had arisen here too, here too.

  Yet the impression grew upon her that she was being hurried along, from sight to sight and conversation to conversation, without ever a chance really to talk to anyone, to glimpse whatever soul there dwelt beneath the busy flesh. True, she heard lectures about the superiority of Jovian society and its clear right to leadership of the Solar System, till she lost count. Nonetheless she wondered if the people she met would have been that monomaniacal had her guide not been present. Besides, if they felt they ought to rule, why didn't they just hop into their spa
ceships and have at the Earthlings?

  Everywhere she saw portraits of the Leader, a short and puffy-faced man named Martin Wilder. Once Lieutenant Hamand, the person conducting her, said in awe that, if the Leader was not too occupied with cares of state, she might actually be introduced to him. Hamand looked hurt when she yawned.

  Meanwhile, she fretted about Ray Tallantyre. Though she hadn't really seen much of her erstwhile roommate, she had found him uncommonly appealing. In part, she recognized, that was no doubt because, what with one thing and another, she hadn't gotten laid for some time when she boarded the liner, nor had she since. But in part, also, she liked his liveliness and wry humor. They contrasted vividly with the humble men of her homeland. She had confirmed for herself that male Earthlings often deserved the reputation they had won among female Varannians; she suspected that Ray exceeded the average. It was unlikely that he'd adjust well to harem life, but she had no such plans for him. It was impossible that he, belonging to a different species, could father a child of hers. Right now, that was no drawback at all.

  She'd been looking forward to developing the acquaintance on Ganymede. Then he got into trouble, and she'd not been able to discover a thing about his present situation. Under pressure, Hamand had put her in touch with an officer of the political police, who said that the case was under consideration and advised her not to get involved. If nothing else, he said, her tour of the Jovian System would end before the matter had been disposed of. He concluded with assurances that Tallantyre would "receive justice," which she did not find very satisfactory.

  Her concern sprang from more than attraction. That had caused her to think of Ray as a friend—and in Kathantuma, one did not abandon a friend. They hadn't exchanged blood oaths or anything like that. Nevertheless, the fact that she had enjoyed his company led her warrior conscience toward the illogical conclusion that she owed him her help.

  This did not come about overnight, nor in any such clear terms. What she experienced was simply an anxiety which grew and grew. It fed upon her distaste for the civilization which currently surrounded her. If Ray had offended these creatures, well, they needed offending. Could she be less brave?

  Ganymede swung once about Jupiter, a period of a week, while Dyann Korlas wrestled ever more with her emotional and ethical dilemma. At last she did the proper thing according to her own beliefs: alone in her quarters, save for a bottle of whiskey, she brought the matter out before herself, considered it explicitly, realized that it was indeed important to her, and resolved that she would no longer stay idle. In the morning she would seek divine guidance.

  That decision made, she slept well.

  At 0600 hours, as always, lights flashed on throughout Wotanopolis to decree a new day. Dyann bounded out of bed, sang a cheerful song of clattering swords and cloven skulls while she washed and dressed—cuirass, helmet, sword, dagger above tunic and sandals—and sought the kitchenette of her apartment, where she prepared a breakfast that would have sufficed two Terrestrial laborers. Ordinary Jovians knew no such luxuries, but she rated diplomatic housing.

  When she entered the main room, she found Hamand present; crime was alleged to have been stamped out of Symmetrist society, and locks on civilian doors were thought to suggest that those within might be talking sedition. A powerfully built young man, immaculate in gray cloth and shiny boots, he bowed from the waist. "Good day," he greeted. "You will recollect that we are going topside to visit the Devil's Garden. At 1145 we will proceed to Heroville, where we will appreciate the Revolutionary Cenotaph and have lunch. At 1300 hours we have an appointment to fill out the necessary documents for your forthcoming visit to Callisto. Thereafter—"

  "Hold," Dyann interrupted. "First I have a reliyious rite."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Vy? You have done no wrong." Dyann gestured to the image of Ormun, standing ferocious on a table. "I must ask for the counsel of this god." She paused, struck by a thought. "You better—vat is the vord?—you better prostrate yourself too."

  "What?" cried the lieutenant.

  "She does not like atheists," Dyann explained.

  Hamand flushed and stiffened. "Madame," he said, "I have been educated in the scientific principles of Symmetrism. They do not include groveling before idols."

  Dyann took him by the back of his neck, bore him down to his knees, and rubbed his nose in the carpet. "You vill please to grovel," she said amiably. "It is good manners." She spread herself prone, while keeping a grip on him, and recited a magical formula. Thereafter she let him go, rose to a crouch, dredged three Kathantuman dice from the purse at her belt, and tossed them.

  "Haa," she murmured after study. "The omen says—vell, I am not a marya, a certified vitchvife, but I do think the omen says I should seek Urushkidan. See, here the Visdom sign lies right next to the Mystery sign, vith the Crossed Axes over here. . . . Yes, I am sure Ormun tells me I need to see Urushkidan." She bowed to the image. "Thank you, sveet lady. Laesti laeskul itorum." Rising: "Shall ve go?

  Hamand, who had finished swallowing his resentment for the sake of public relations, was taken aback all over again. "Do you mean the Martian scientist?" he yelped. "Impossible! He is doing critically important work—"

  Dyann strolled out into the corridor. She had been shown the Academy of Sciences earlier. No matter how alien this warren of passages was to her native forests, she retained a huntress' sense of direction and landmarks. Hamand trailed her, gabbling, barely able to keep her in sight. There were no slideways. Except in the tunnels where authorized vehicles moved, everybody walked. It was a result of the government's concern over preserving public physical fitness in Ganymede's low gravity. Dyann felt feather-light. She proceeded in three- and four-meter bounds. When a clump of people got in the way of that, she sprang over their heads.

  The Academy occupied 50 hectares on a high level of town, a pleasant break in an environment where the very parks were functional. Here, grass, trees, and flowerbeds made lanes of life between walls which, admittedly roofless, were at least covered with plastic ivy. Overhead, a teledome gave an awesome vision of Jupiter, stars, Milky Way, the shrunken sun. The air bore faint, flowery perfumes and recorded birdsong. Upon this campus, moving from building to building, were a number of persons, several obviously military personnel but most just as obviously scholars, little different from their colleagues on Earth.

  Dyann stopped one of the latter, loomed over him, and asked where Dr. Urushkidan might be. "In Archimedes Hall—over there," he gasped, and tottered off, perhaps in search of a reviving cup of tea.

  She might have known, Dyann thought. In front of that door, a soldier on guard clashed with the general atmosphere. She guessed his presence was due to the military significance of Urushkidan's work. Though her appearance startled him, too, rather badly, he slanted his rifle before him and cried, "Halt!"

  Dyann obeyed. "I must see the Martian," she told him. "Please to let me by."

  "Nobody sees him without a pass," he replied.

  Dyann shoved him aside and took hold of the door switch. He yelled and batted at her with his rifle butt. That was his great mistake.

  "You should show more respect for ladies," she chided, and removed the weapon from his grasp. Her free hand flung him across the greensward. He collided with Hamand, who had panted onto the scene, hard enough that neither was of much use for some time to come. Dyann admired the rifle—Earthlings on Varann were deplorably stingy about giving such things to her folk—before she slung it across her back by the strap. By now, too many passersby had halted to stare and chatter. Best she keep on the move. She opened the door and passed on through.

  For a minute she poised in the hallway beyond, cocking her ears this way and that. They were keen. A faint sound of altercation gave her the clue she hoped for, and she bounded up a flight of stairs. Before another door she stopped to listen. Yes, that was the voice of Urushkidan, bubbling like an infuriated teakettle.

  "I will not, sir, do you hear me? I will not. And
I demand immediate return passage from tis ridiculous satellite."

  "Come now, Dr. Urushkidan, do be reasonable." Was that Roshevsky-Feldkamp? "What is your complaint, actually? Do you not have generous financial compensation, Mars-conditioned lodgings, servants, every imaginable consideration? If you wish something further, inform us and we will try to provide it."

  "I came here to lecture and to complete my matematical research. Now I find you habe arranged no lectures and expect me to superbise an—an engineering project—as if I were a mere empiricist!"

  "But your contract plainly states—"

  "Did you tink I would waste my baluable time reading one of your pieces of printed gibberish? Sir, in human law itself, a proper contract requires tat tere habe been a meeting of minds. Te mind of your goberment neber met te mind of myself. It was not capable of it."

  The man attempted ingratiation: "You are a leading scientist. As such, you realize that science advances by checking theory against fact. If, with your help, we create a faster-than-light ship, it will be a total confirmation of your ideas."

  "My ideas need no confirmation. Tey are a debelopment of certain implications of general relatibity, true. Howeber, tat is incidental. In principle, what I habe produced is a piece of pure matematics, elegant and beautiful. If it agrees or disagrees wit te facts, tat is of no concern to any proper philosopher. And furtermore—" The squeaky tones approached ultrasonic frequencies. "—not only do you want experimental tests, you want to me lend my genius to bulgar military applications! No, no, and again no! Do you understand? I want a ticket on te next ship bound for Mars!"

  "I am afraid," said the man slowly, "that that will not be possible."

  Dyann opened the door and trod through. "Are they annoyin you?" she asked.

  Urushkidan goggled at her from the chair across which he was draped. The room was so thick with the fumes of his pipe that one of the two Jovians present, a bald man in the black tunic of the political police, was holding a handkerchief to his nose. The other was, indeed, Roshevsky-Feldkamp, who sprang to his feet and snatched for his revolver.