The Wing Alak Stories

by Poul Anderson

  The floor trembled. He heard a paperweight jump on his desk. Outside, not five meters off, a hole opened in the ground—slowly, hugely, with all the time in the universe to do its work. Fire spumed from it, and magma crawled forth toward the dome.

  * * *

  The Elgash family had come up the hard way, from the peasant stock of a conquered land; it had been ennobled only fifty years ago. For that, and for its owning the Munitions Trust, Hurulta despised it. But he did not underestimate the being who sat across from his desk. The present Elgash was fat and wheezy and dandified, but there was a hard drive and a cold brain in him.

  "I speak for several others, your excellency," he said. "I need not mention their names."

  "The money barons," replied Hurulta sullenly. "The industrialists and financiers. What of it?"

  "Shall I speak plainly?" asked Elgash.

  "Go ahead. We're alone."

  "The group I represent is not at all satisfied with the conduct of the war."

  "Oh? And you have constituted yourselves the new General Staff?"

  "Spare the sarcasm, your excellency. It was understood that Tukatan would be subjugated within six months. Now, after almost a year, we are still fighting there."

  "They could be bombarded from space," said Hurulta, "but as you well know, that would destroy the whole value of the planet. We have to go slowly. Then the Patrol appeared to complicate matters."

  "I realize all that." The insolence was more marked than ever. "And rather than concentrate on Tukatan and the Patrol, and get them safely out of the way, your ministry has tried to take on the whole star cluster. You have blundered disastrously into planets we hardly knew a thing about."

  "To keep the Patrol from using them against us." Hurulta checked his temper. "Al! right, I admit we've had our troubles. But we're making progress. The over-all timetable for the establishment of our hegemony has been accelerated enormously. In the long run, that will mean a saving."

  "Will it now? Even your successes are dubious. Take that forsaken little pill of sand, Yarnaz IV. There's been no trouble in occupying it. But the expense of maintaining bases under such alien conditions is fantastic. The commoners are being taxed to the limit, and your new tax on the leading groups of society is outrageous."

  "It has to be done. Or would you rather have the Patrol come in and run things?"

  "Of course," said Elgash coldly, "your most inexcusable blunder was the occupation of Umung."

  "What?" For a moment Hurulta could find no words. Slowly, then, he gulped down his rage, and when he spoke it was with thin precision. "That was the one operation which went off like clockwork. At a negligible cost in men and money, we have already doubled our war production. Inside another year, we can expect to quadruple it."

  "1 thought you were a realist, your excellency," said Elgash. "I thought you understood the economic foundation on which the empire rests. Or are you deliberately ruining my class?"

  "Are you mad? First you complain about taxes, then when I find a way to increase production, a way that costs us hardly one crown, you—"

  "Your excellency, we have only so many soldiers and there is a limit to the amount of war material they can use. When Umung is producing all of it, what will become of Ulugan's factories?"

  * * *

  Fear.

  Shamuvaz, soldier of the empire, looked around him. He moved his head very slowly, lest he see something behind his back. There was only the landscape distorted trees, murmuring reddish grass, a remote waterfall that echoed the furious clamor of his heart.

  He felt ill. He wanted to vomit. Looking at the faces of his companions, he thought that they were impossibly alien. They were evil. They were made evil by the same horror that rode on him, and in their panic they might turn and tear him.

  Shamuvaz whimpered, deep in his throat, and thought of his wife and children. They were so far away, so many centuries away, he would never see them again. He would rot on Gyreion, the wind would blow through his ribs and the small beasts of the field would nest in his empty, empty skull.

  They said it was harmless. They said it was only that the natives—so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Patrol that there was no dealing with them . . . or was it that, being telepaths, they knew Ulugan meant them for pawns?—the natives were afraid, and you yourself heard their fear. Nothing to it. Ignore it. You are a soldier of the empire, and fear of nothingness is unworthy of you.

  Only the generals didn't have to live with fear. They didn't have to torment themselves, night after night, to stay awake, for fear of the dreams; and when they finally did sleep, in spite of everything, they weren't brought up within minutes, screaming. They didn't see their comrades break, one by one, and be sent home muttering idiot words, and wonder when their turn would come.

  Fear, panic, terror, blind howling horror. Shamuvaz groaned to himself.

  When a hand touched his shoulder, he leaped up, cursing, and spun around. His pistol was out before he saw that it was only Armazan. Armazan had been his best friend once. But you couldn't trust anyone now. Shamuvaz held the gun leveled on Armazan's belly.

  "Don't do that," he choked. "Don't ever do that again."

  "Listen." Armazan spoke swiftly, a whisper that was blurred with his own trembling. "Listen, Sham, we're meeting after taps, down by the river. Sneak out of the barracks and join us."

  "'What, what, what? Go out after dark? You're crazy! This planet has driven you crazy."

  "No, not that, not that. Listen, a lot of us have decided we aren't going to take any more of this. The empire can't ask it of us. It's too much. Can't trust those officers. Get them out of the way—a shot in the back, it's easy if we just stick together, and then we can grab the base space-ship—"

  * * *

  Hurulta had been sleeping poorly in the last month, and drugs no longer seemed to whip up his vitality. He clasped a ringing head in his hands and leaned on the desk.

  "It's no use," he said aloud. "We'll have to pull out of Gyreion. Every regiment there has been ruined for service. It'll take months to restore them to usefulness."

  "But the Patrol, lord—" faltered Sevulan.

  " Patrol! We'll maintain a base on the neighboring planet, and a few orbital scouts around Gyreion itself. Should have done that in the first place."

  "But then a strong attack could come in, wipe out our forces, take over the whole system—"

  "I know. What of it? A chance we'll have to take. If only the busybodies would come out of hiding and fight! It's like shadow-boxing, this."

  "Lord, I understand the General Staff plans to overrule you and order the evacuation of Garvish and Shang. They say it's too costly to hold them, they're just consuming men badly needed elsewhere—"

  "Don't tell me that!" shouted Hurulta. "I know it, you idiot! I know all of it! The blind, bloody fools! Shortsighted —aaargh!" His fists clamped together. "But by all the hells, we're hanging on to Umung. Let the moneybags squawk. I'll lodge treason charges if they say much more."

  The telescreen buzzed. Hurulta flicked a switch, and the excited voice gabbled out.

  "Lord, a report just came in from space. Patrol activity around Ustuban VII. They seem to be rendezvousing—"

  "Ustuban VII! They can't! It's a giant planet. It's surrounded by a meteor belt. It . . . no!"

  "Lord, the report says—"

  "Shut up! Send me the full report at once." Hurulta whirled on the general. His eyes were feverish.

  "Action," he gasped. "I think we're going to see some action. The populace has been complaining about our retreats, have they? Their morale is bad, is it? All right, we'll give them something to talk about. We'll send the fleet and seize Ustuban VII, and just let the Patrol dare try to stop us!"

  "Lord, it's impossible," whispered Sevulan. "We're spread so thin already that we could never mount such an undertaking. It's just a trick of theirs to lure us out—"

  "We'll turn the trick on them!" Hurulta's bellow rattled between the walls. "I'm still
the supreme commander here!"

  Slowly, as he regarded his chief, Sevulan's eyes narrowed.

  * * *

  "We have, of course, been propagandizing Ulugan," said Wing Alak. "Radio, message-scattering robombs, and so on—the usual techniques. I think we've gotten it across to them that, while League membership means a loss of imperial glories, it means a definite gain in material comfort and security."

  "For the commoners," said Jorel Meinz. He was annoyed; three days aboard ship, with Alak engaged in directing some obscure maneuver and parrying every significant question when the two men did meet, had worn down his nerves. "But it's the aristocrats and the industrialists who run things."

  "To be sure. However, they aren't stupid. They just need a hard lesson to convince them that imperialism doesn't pay."

  "They were all set to make it pay."

  "Of course, till we interfered. But as long as there is a Patrol, conquest will mean a money loss. We'll see to that! Once they're convinced that it's to their advantage too to come to terms with us, they'll do it."

  "I see your general strategy, of course," said Meinz. "You've led them into taking over one unprofitable planet after another. Except this Umung, now . . . I can't see where that could fail to pay off."

  "Oh, that was my proudest achievement," said Alak smugly. "I planned that years in advance. I had a cowardly little part-time agent who got to know Umung quite well. As far as he could tell, I meant to use it for the Patrol's benefit. Ulugan got hold of him, as I thought they would, and learned this. So naturally Ulugan had to grab it first.

  "But don't you see, I've studied their economy for years. It's an archaic form of capitalism, like Terra's during the First Industrial Revolution. It depends on buying cheap and selling dear—and it must sell manufactured goods. In short, a colony which can manufacture better and cheaper than the mother country is, in the long run, impossible; it must be abandoned or ruined, or else the homeland's economic system must be changed. After a while, Ulugan's financiers realized that. And they're a powerful element."

  He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. "If I might generalize a bit," he said, "history shows pretty conclusively that an empire must form a natural socioeconomic unit if it is to be stable. Most empires of the past grew slowly, by accretion; or if they were conquered fast, they had to be reorganized swiftly. We forced the Ulugani into taking on more real estate than they could handle, most of it worse than useless; and we kept them off balance so that they couldn't get a chance to organize it properly. Result—an unstable situation which is now rapidly deteriorating."

  "Do we want them within the League?" asked Meinz. "They look like a nest of troublemakers."

  "They are. But in the long run, they can be integrated. Contact with other cultures will break down their paranoid attitude. Interstellar empires are economically unjustifiable anyway, more of a drain than a gain. If you've mastered faster-than-light travel, you are also able to produce just about everything you need at home, and trade for the rest. They'll come to see that too, eventually."

  He glanced at the intercom. "I'm expecting a message hourly," he said. "My last scout ship brought some interesting political news from Ulugan."

  "Eh?"

  "Play me some chess, will you? I love dramatic revelations. You can allow me this one. It's been a rather dreary year."

  * * *

  It was only half an hour later that the ship's radioman announced a sub-space broadcast, Ulugan calling the Patrol command. Alak made a leisurely way to the communications room, letting Meinz jitter behind him.

  The blue face in the screen was trying hard to maintain its old arrogance, but not succeeding very well. "Hello, Sevulan," said Alak. "What's new?"

  "There has been a change of government in the empire," said the Ulugani stiffly.

  "Violent, I'm sure. Did you shoot Hurulta or just jail him?"

  "The Arkazhik is very ill. Frankly, we suspected he was a mental case. His rashness brought on many actions of which the new cabinet never did approve.'"

  "Well," said Alak genially, "if you want to negotiate, here are my terms."

  When he had finished, and sent a representative off to meet the Ulugani delegation, he yawned mightily. "I think that's that," he said. "There'll be a lot of dickering, of course, and cleaning up the military forces there will take time. But we've got what we were after."

  "You mean—" Meinz chuckled dryly. This success wasn't going to hurt his own career a bit. "You mean you let them give you what you wanted."

  "Oh, no," said Wing Alak. "I was the donor all along. I gave Hurulta all the rope he needed."

  The Live Coward

  The fugitive ship was pursued for ten light-years. Then, snapping in and out of subspace drive with a reckless disregard of nearby suns and tracer-blocking dust clouds, it shook the Patrol cruiser.

  The search that followed was not so frantic as the danger might seem to warrant. Haste would have done no good; there are a million planetary systems affiliated with the League, and their territory includes several million more too backward for membership. Even a small planet is such a wilderness of mountains, valleys, plains, forests, oceans, icefields, cities, and loneliness —much of it often quite unexplored—that it was hopeless to ransack them meter by meter for a single man. The Patrol knew that Varris' boat had a range of three hundred parsecs, and in the course of months and man-years of investigation it was pretty well established that he had not refueled at any registered depot. But a sphere two thousand fight-years across can hold a lot of stars.

  The Patrol offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of Samel Varris, human, from the planet Caldon (No. so-and-so in the Pilots' Manual), wanted for the crime of inciting to war. It circulated its appeal as widely as possible. It warned all agents to keep an eye or a feeler or a telepathic organ out for a man potentially still capable of exploding a billion living entities into radioactive gas. Then it waited.

  * * *

  A year went by.

  Captain Jakor Thymal of the trading ship Ganash, operating out of Sireen in the primitive Spiral Cluster area, brought the news. He had seen Varris, even spoken to the fellow. There was no doubt of it. Only one hitch: Varris had taken refuge with the king of Thunsba, a barbarous state in the southern hemisphere of a world known to the Galactics—such few as had ever heard of it—as Ryfin's Planet. He had gotten citizenship and taken the oath of service as a royal guardsman. Loyalty between master and man was a powerful element in Thunsban morality. The king would not give up Varris without a fight.

  Of course, axes and arrows were of small use against flamers. Perhaps Varris could not be taken alive, but the Patrol could kill him without whiffing very many Thunsbans. Captain Thymal settled complacently back to wait for official confirmation of his report and the blood money. Nothing ever occurred to him but that the elimination of Varris would be the simplest of routine operations.

  Like hell!

  Wing Alak eased his flitter close to the planet. It hung in cloudy splendor against a curtain of hard, needle-sharp spatial stars, the Cluster sky. He sat gloomily listening to the click and mutter of instruments as Drogs checked surface conditions.

  "Quite terrestroid," said the Galmathian. His antennae lifted in puzzlement above the round, snouted face and the small black eyes. "Why did you bother testing? It's listed in the Manual."

  "I have a nasty suspicious mind," said Alak. "Also an unhappy one." He was a thin, medium-tall human with the very white skin that often goes with flaming red hair. His Patrol uniform was as dandified as regulations allowed.

  Drogs hitched three meters of green, eight-legged body across the cabin. His burly arms reached out to pick up the maps in three-fingered hands. "Yes . . . here's the Thunsba. kingdom and the capital city . . . what's it called? . . . Waina-bog. I suppose our quarry is still there; Thymal swore he didn't alarm him." He sighed. "Now I have to spend an hour at the telescope and identify which place is what. And you can sit lik
e my wife on an egg thinking beautiful thoughts!"

  "The only beautiful concept I have right now is that all of a sudden the Prime Directive was repealed."

  "No chance of that, I'm afraid . . . not till a less bloodthirsty race than yours gets the leadership of the League."

  "Less? You mean more, don't you? 'Under no circumstances whatsoever may the Patrol or any unit thereof kill any intelligent being.' If you do—" Alak made a rather horrible gesture. "Is that blood-thirsty?"

  "Quite. Only a race with as gory a past as the Terrans would go to such extremes of reaction. And only as naturally ferocious a species could think of making such a commandment the Patrol's great top secret . . . and bluffing with threats of planetwide slaughter, or using any kind of chicanery to achieve its ends. Now a Galmathian will run down a farstak in his native woods and jump on its back and make a nice lunch while it's still running . . . but he wouldn't be able to imagine cold-bloodedly sterilizing an entire world, so he doesn't have to ban himself from honest killing even in self-defense." Drogs' caterpillar body hunched itself over the telescope.

  "Get thee behind me, Satan . . . and don't push!" Alak returned murkily to his thoughts. His brain was hypnotically stuffed with all the information three generations of traders had gathered about Thunsba. None of it looked hopeful.

  The king was—well, if not an absolute monarch, pretty close to being one, simply because the law had set him over the commons. Like many warlike barbarians, the Thunsbans had a quasi-religious reverence for the letter of the law, if not always for its spirit. The Patrol had run head-on into two items of the code: (a) the king would not yield up a loyal guardsman to an enemy, but would fight to the death instead; (b) if the king fought, so would the whole male population, unmoved by threats to themselves or their mates and cubs. Death before dishonor! Their religion, which they seemed quite fervent about, promised a roisterous heaven to all who fell in a good cause, and suitably gruesome hell for oath-breakers.