"What?" Djana said, surprised.
"Why, sure. A thinking capability like that, with nothing but routine to handle, no new input decade after decade—" Flandry shivered, "Br-rr! You must know what sensory deprivation does to organic sophonts. Our computer rescued itself by creating something complicated and unpredictable to watch." He paused before adding slyly: "I refrain from suggesting analogies to the Creator you believe in."
And regretted it when she bridled and snapped, "I want a full report on how you influenced the situation."
"Oh, for the best, for the best," he said. "Not that that was hard. The moment I woke the White King up, the world he'd been dreaming of came to an end." His metaphor went over her head so he merely continued: "The computer's pathetically impatient to convert back to the original style of operations. Brother Ammon will find a fortune in metals waiting for his first ship.
"I do think you are morally obliged to recommend me for a substantial bonus, which he is morally obliged to pay."
"Morally!" The bitterness of a life which had never allowed her a chance to consider such questions whipped forth. But it seemed to him she exaggerated it as if to provide herself an excuse for attacking. "Who are you to blat about morals, Dominic Flandry, who took an oath to serve the Empire and a bribe to serve Leon Ammon?"
Stung, he threw back: "What else could I do?"
"Refuse." Her mood softened. She shook her amber-locked head, smiled a sad smile, and squeezed his hand. "No, never mind. That would be too much to expect of anyone nowadays, wouldn't it? Let's be corrupt together, Nicky darling, and kind to each other till we have to say goodbye."
He looked long at her, and at the stars, where his gaze remained, before he said quietly, "I suppose I can tell you what I've had in mind. I'll take the pay because I can use it; also the risk, for the rest of my life, of being found out and broken. It seems a reasonable price for holding a frontier."
Her lips parted. Her eyes widened. "I don't follow you."
"Irumclaw was due to be abandoned," he said. "Everybody knows—knew—it was. Which made the prophecy self-fulfilling: The garrison turned incompetent. The able civilians withdrew, taking their capital with them. Defensibility and economic value spiraled down toward the point where it really wouldn't be worth our rational while to stay. In the end, the Empire would let Irumclaw go. And without this anchor, it'd have to pull the whole frontier parsecs back; and Merseia and the Long Night would draw closer."
He sighed. "Leon Ammon is evil and contemptible," he went on. "Under different circumstances, I'd propose we gut him with a butterknife. But he does have energy, determination, actual courage and foresight of sorts.
"I went to his office to learn his intentions. When he told me, I agreed to go along because—well—
"If the Imperial bureaucrats were offered Wayland, they wouldn't know what to do with it. Probably they'd stamp its existence Secret, to avoid making any decisions or laying out any extra effort. If nothing else, a prize like that would make 'conciliation and consolidation' a wee bit difficult, eh?
"Ammon, though, he's got a personal profit to harvest. He'll go in to stay. His enterprise will be a human one. He'll make it pay off so well—he'll get so much economic and thereby political leverage from it—that he can force the government to protect his interests. Which means standing fast on Irumclaw. Which means holding this border, and even extending control a ways outward.
"In short," Flandry concluded, "as the proverb phrases it, he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."
He stubbed out the cigarette with a violent gesture and turned back to the girl, more in search of forgetfulness than anything else.
Strangely, in view of the fellow-feeling she had just shown him, she did not respond. Her hands fended him off. The blue glance was troubled upon his. "Please, Nicky. I want to think . . . about what you've told me."
He respected her wish and relaxed in his seat, crossing shank over knee. "I daresay I can contain myself for a bit." The sight of her mildened the harshness that had risen in him. He chuckled. "Be warned, it won't be a long bit. You're too delectable."
Her mouth twitched, but not in any smile. "I never realized such things mattered to you," she said uncertainly.
Having been raised to consider idealism gauche, he shrugged. "They'd better. I live in the Terran Empire."
"But if—" She leaned forward. "Do you seriously believe, Nicky, Wayland can make that big a difference?"
"I like to believe it. Why do you ask? I can't well imagine you giving a rusty horntoot about future generations."
"That's what I mean. Suppose . . . Nicky, suppose, oh, something happens so Leon doesn't get to exploit Wayland. So nobody does. How'd that affect us—you and me?"
"Depends on our lifespans, I'd guess, among other items. Maybe we'd see no change. Or maybe, twenty-thirty years hence, we'd see the Empire retreat the way I was talking about."
"But that wouldn't mean its end!"
"No, no. Not at once. We could doubtless finish our lives in the style to which we want to become accustomed." Flandry considered. "Or could we? Political repercussions at home . . . unrest leading to upheaval . . . well, I don't know."
"We could always find ourselves a safe place. A nice offside colony planet—not so offside it's primitive, but—"
"Yes, probably." Flandry scowled. "I don't understand what's gnawing you. We'll report to Ammon and that will finish our part. Remember, he's holding the rest of our pay."
She nodded. For a space they were both silent. The stars in the viewscreen made an aureole behind her gold head.
Then craftiness came upon her, and she smiled and murmured: "It wouldn't make any difference, would it, if somebody else on Irumclaw—somebody besides Leon—got Wayland. Would it?"
"I guess not, if you mean one of his brother entrepreneurs." Flandry's unease waxed. "What're you thinking of, wench? Trying to rake in more for yourself, by passing the secret on to a competitor? I wouldn't recommend that. Bloody dripping dangerous."
"You—"
"Emphatically not! I'll squirrel away my money, and for the rest of my Irumclaw tour, you won't believe what a good boy I'll be. No more Old Town junkets whatsoever; wholesome on-base recreation and study of naval manuals. Fortunately, my Irumclaw tour is nearly done."
Flandry captured her hands in his. "I won't even risk seeing you," he declared. "Nor should you take any avoidable chances. The universe would be too poor without you."
Her lips pinched together. "If that's how you feel—"
"It is." Flandry leered. "Fortunately, we've days and days before we arrive. Let's use them, hm-m-m?"
Her eyes dropped, and rose, and she was on his lap embracing him, warm, soft, smiling, pupils wide between the long lashes, and "Hm-m-m indeed," she crooned.
Thunder ended a dream. Nothingness.
He woke, and wished he hadn't. Someone had scooped out his skull to make room for the boat's nuclear generator.
No . . . He tried to roll over, and couldn't.
When he groaned, a hand lifted his head. Cool wetness touched his mouth. "Drink this," Djana's voice told him from far away.
He got down a couple of tablets with the water, and could look around him. She stood by the bunk, staring down. As the stimpills took hold and the pain receded, her image grew less blurred, until he could identify the hardness that sat on her face. Craning his neck, he made out that he lay on his back with wrists and ankles wired—securely—to the bunkframe.
"Feel better?" Her tone was flat.
"I assume you gave me a jolt from your stun gun after I feel asleep," he succeeded in croaking.
"I'm sorry, Nicky." Did her shell crack the tiniest bit, for that tiniest instant?
"What's the reason?"
She told him about Rax, ending: "We're already bound for the rendezvous. If I figured right, remembering what you taught me, it's about forty or fifty light-years; and I set the 'pilot for top cruising hyperspeed, the way you said I oug
ht to."
He was too groggy for the loss of his fortune to seem more than academic. But dismay struck through him like a blunt nail. "Four or five days! With me trussed up?"
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I don't dare give you a chance to grab me or—or anything—" She hesitated. "I'll take care of you as best I can. Nothing personal in this. You know? It's that million credits."
"What makes you think your unknown friends will honor their end of the deal?"
"If Wayland's what you say, a megacredit's going to be a microbe to them. And I can keep on being useful till I leave them." All at once, it was as if a sword spoke: "That payment will make me my own."
Flandry surrendered to his physical misery.
Which passed. But was followed by the miseries of confinement. He couldn't do most isometric exercises. The wires would have cut him. A few were possible; and he spent hours flexing what muscles he was able to; and Djana was fairly good about massaging him. Nonetheless he ached and tingled.
Djana also kept her promise to give him a nurse's attentions. Hers weren't the best, for lack of training and equipment, but they served. And she read to him by the hour, over the intercom, from the bookreels he had along. She even offered to make love to him. On the third day he accepted.
Otherwise little passed between them: the constraints were too many for conversation. They spent most of their time separately, toughing it out. Once he was over the initial shock and had disciplined himself, Flandry didn't do badly at first. While no academician, he had many experiences, ideas, and stray pieces of information to play with. Toward the end, though, environmental impoverishment got to him and each hour became a desert century. When at last the detectors buzzed, he had to struggle out of semi-delirium to recognize what the noise was. When the outercom boomed with words, he blubbered for joy.
But when hypervelocities were matched and phasing in was completed and airlocks were joined and the other crew came aboard, Djana screamed.
Chapter Fourteen
More and more, as the weeks of Flandry's absence passed, her existence took on for Djana an unreality. Or was it that she began slowly to enter a higher truth, which muted the winds outside and made the walls around her shadowy?
Not that she thought about it in that way, save perhaps when the magician wove her into a spell. Otherwise she lived in everydayness. She woke in the chamber that the man had shared with her. She exercised and groomed herself out of habit, because her living had hitherto depended on her body. At mess she stood respectfully aside while the Merseians went through brief rituals religious, familial, and patriotic—oddly impressive and stirring, those big forms and deep voices, drawn steel and talking drums—and afterward joined in coarse bread, raw vegetables, gwydh-milk cheese, and the Terran-descended tea which they raised throughout the Roidhunate. There followed study, talk, sometimes a special interview, sometimes recreation for a while; a simple lunch; a nap in deference to her human circadian rhythm; more study, until evening's meat and ale. (Since Merseia rotated at about half the rate of Talwin, a night had already gone over the land.) Later she might have further conversation, or attend a concert or recorded show or amateur performance of something traditional; or she might retire alone with a tape. In any event, she was early abed.
Talk, like perusal of a textreel or watching of a projection, was via the linguistic computer. It had plenty of spare channels, and could throw out a visual translation as easily as a sonic one. However, she was methodically being given a working knowledge of Eriau, along with an introduction to Merseian history and culture.
She cooperated willingly. Final disposition of her case lay with superiors who had not yet been heard from. At worst, though, she wasn't likely to suffer harm—given a prince of the blood on her side—and at best . . . well, who dared predict? Anyway, her education gave her something to do. And as it advanced, it started interesting, at last entrancing her.
Merseia, rival, aggressor, troublemaker, menace lairing out beyond Betelgeuse: she'd accepted the slogans like everybody else, never stopping to think about them. Oh, yes, the Merseians were terrible, but they lived far off and the Navy was supposed to keep them there while the diplomatic corps maintained an uneasy peace, and she had troubles of her own.
Here she dwelt among beings who treated her with gruff kindness. Once you got to know them, she thought, they were . . . they had homes and kin the same as people, that they missed the same as people; they had arts, melodies, sports, games, jokes, minor vices, though of course you had to learn their conventions, their whole style of thinking, before you could appreciate it . . . . They didn't want war with Terra, they only saw the Empire as a bloated sick monstrosity which had long outlived its usefulness but with senile cunning contrived to hinder and threaten them . . . . No, they did not dream of conquering the galaxy, that was absurd on the face of it, they simply wanted freedom to range and rule without bound, and "rule" did not mean tyranny over others, it meant just that others should not stand in the way of the full outfolding of that spirit which lay in the Race . . . .
A spirit often hard and harsh, perhaps, but bone-honest with itself; possessed of an astringency that was like a sea breeze after the psychic stench of what Djana had known; not jaded or rootless, but reaching for infinity and for a God beyond infinity, while planted deep in the consciousness of kinship, heroic ancestral memories, symbols of courage, pride, sacrifice . . . . Djana felt it betokened much that the chief of a Vach—not quite a clan—was called not its Head but its Hand.
Were those humans who served Merseia really traitors . . . to anything worth their loyalty?
But it was not this slow wondering that made the solid world recede from her. It was Ydwyr the Seeker and his spells; and belike they had first roused the questions in her.
To start with, he too had merely talked. His interest in her background, experiences, habits, and attitudes appeared strictly scientific. As a rule they met à deux in his office. "Thus I need not be a nephew of the Roidhun," he explained wryly. Fear stabbed her for a second. He gave her a shrewd regard and added, "No one is monitoring our translator channel."
She gathered nerve to say, "The qanryf—"
"We have had our differences," Ydwyr replied, "but Morioch is a male of honor."
She thought: How many Imperial officers in this kind of setup would dare skip precautions against snooping and blackmail?
He had a human-type chair built for her, and poured her a glass of arthberry wine at each colloquy. Before long she was looking forward to the sessions and wishing he were less busy elsewhere, coordinating his workers in the field and the data they brought back. He didn't press her for answers, he relaxed and let conversation ramble and opened for her the hoard of his reminiscences about adventures on distant planets.
She gathered that xenology had always fascinated him and that he was seldom home. Almost absent-mindedly, in obligation to his Vach, he had married and begotten; but he took his sons with him from the time they were old enough to leave the gynaeceum until they were ready for their Navy hitches. Yet he did not lack warmth. His subordinates adored him. When he chanced to speak of the estate where he was born and raised, his parents and siblings, the staff whose fathers had served his fathers for generations, she came to recognize tenderness.
Then finally—it was dark outside, the hot still dark of summer's end, heat lightning aflicker beyond stockade and skeletal trees—he summoned her; but when she entered the office, he rose and said: "Let us go to my private quarters."
For a space she was again frightened. He bulked so big, so gaunt and impassive in his gray robe, and they were so alone together. A fluoro glowed cold, and the air that slid and whispered across her skin had likewise gone chill.
He smiled his Merseian smile, which she had learned to read as amicable. Crinkles radiated through the tiny scales of his skin, from eyes and mouth. "I want to show you something I keep from most of my fellows," he said. "You might understand where they cannot."
The l
ittle voicebox hung around his neck, like the one around hers, spoke with the computer's flat Anglic. She filled that out with his Eriau. No longer did the language sound rough and guttural; it was, in truth, rather soft, and rich in tones. She could pick out individual words by now. She heard nothing in his invitation except—
—the father I never knew.
Abruptly she despised herself for what she had feared. How must she look to him? Face: hag-thin, wax-white, save for the bizarrely thick and red lips; behind it, two twisted flaps of cartilage. Body: dwarfish, scrawny, bulge-breasted, pinch-waisted, fat-bottomed, tailless, feet outright deformed. Skin: no intricate pattern of delicate flexible overlap; a rubberiness relieved only by lines and coarse pores; and hair, everywhere hair in ridiculous bunches and tufts, like fungus on a corpse. Odor: what? Sour? Whatever it was, no lure for a natural taste.
Men! she thought. God, I don't mean to condemn Your work, but You also made the dogs men keep, and don't You agree they're alike, those two breeds? Dirty, smelly, noisy, lazy, thievish, quick to attack when you aren't watching, quick to run or cringe when you are; they're useless, they create nothing, you have to wait on them, listen to their boastful bayings, prop up their silly little egos till they're ready to slobber over you again . . . .
I'm sorry. Jesus wore the shape of a man, didn't he?
But he wore it—in pity—because we needed him—and what've we done with his gift?
Before her flashed the image of a Merseian Christ, armed and shining, neither compassionate nor cruel but the Messiah of a new day . . . . She hadn't heard of any such belief among them. Maybe they had no need of redemption; maybe they were God's chosen . . . .
Ydwyr caught her hands between his, which were cool and dry. "Djana, are you well?"
She shook the dizziness from her head. Too much being shut in. Too much soaking myself in a world that can't be mine. Nicky's been gone too long. (I saw a greyhound once, well-trained, proud, clean and swift. Nicky's a greyhound.) I can't get away from my humanness. And I shouldn't want to, should I? "N-nothing, sir. I felt a little faint. I'll be all right."
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