"That's . . . in my personal report . . . sir."
Snelund arched his brows.
Sweat trickled down Pickens' cheeks. "Well, sir," he groped, "our total remaining power must be not greatly inferior to the, the enemy's. If we count what did not go to Satan. We can consolidate a small volume of space, hold it, let him have the rest. The Merseian confrontation can't go on forever. When we have heavy reinforcements, we can go out for a showdown battle."
"Your last showdown was rather disappointing, Admiral."
A tic vibrated one corner of Pickens' mouth. "The governor has my resignation."
"And has not accepted it. Nor will."
"Sir!" Pickens' mouth fell open.
"Be calm." Snelund shifted his tone from delicate sarcasm to kindliness, his manner from idle humor to vigilance. "You didn't disgrace yourself, Admiral. You just had the misfortune to clash with a better man. Were you less able, little would have been salvaged from your defeat. As matters went, you rescued half your force. You lack imagination, but you have competence: a jewel of high price in these degenerate times. No, I don't want your resignation. I want you to continue in charge."
Pickens trembled. Tears stood in his eyes. "Sit down," Snelund invited. Pickens caved into a chair. Snelund kindled another cigarette, tobacco, and let him recover some equilibrium before saying:
"Competence, professionalism, sound organization and direction—you can supply those. I will supply the imagination. In other words, from here on I dictate policies for you to execute. Is that clear?"
His question lashed. Pickens gulped and croaked, "Yes, sir." It had been a precision job for Snelund, these past days, making the officer malleable without destroying his usefulness—an exacting but enjoyable task.
"Good. Good. Oh, by the way, smoke if you wish," the governor said. "Let me make clear what I plan.
"Originally I counted on applying various pressures through Lady McCormac. Then that dolt Flandry disappeared with her." A rage that boiled like liquid helium: "Have you any inkling what became of them?"
"No, sir," Pickens said. "Our Intelligence section hasn't yet succeeded in infiltrating the enemy. That takes time . . . . Er, from what we can piece together, she doesn't seem to have rejoined her husband. But we've had no word about her arrival anywhere else, like maybe on Terra."
"Well," Snelund said, "I don't envy Citizen Flandry once I get back." He rolled smoke around in his lungs until coolness returned. "No matter, really. The picture has changed. I've been rethinking this whole affair.
"What you propose, letting McCormac take most of the sector without resistance while we wait for help, is apparently the conservative course. Therefore it's in fact the most deadly dangerous. He must be counting on precisely that. Let him be proclaimed Emperor on scores of worlds, let him marshal their resources and arrange their defenses with that damnable skill he owns—and quite probably, when the Terran task force comes, it won't be able to dislodge him. Consider his short interior lines of communication. Consider popular enthusiasm roused by his demagogues and xenagogues. Consider the likelihood of more and more defections to his side as long as his affairs run smoothly. Consider the virus spreading beyond this sector, out through the Empire, until it may indeed happen that one day he rides in triumph through Archopolis!"
Pickens stuttered, "I, I, I had thought of those things, Your Excellency."
Snelund laughed. "Furthermore, assuming the Imperium can put him down, what do you expect will become of you and, somewhat more significantly from this point of view, me? It will not earn us any medals that we allowed an insurrection and then could not quench it ourselves. Tongues will click. Heads will wag. Rivals will seize the opportunity to discredit. Whereas, if we can break Hugh McCormac unaided in space, clearing the way for my militia to clean out treason on the planets—well, kudos is the universal currency. It can buy us a great deal if we spend it wisely. Knighthood and promotion for you; return in glory to His Majesty's court for me. Am I right?"
Pickens moistened his lips. "Individuals like us shouldn't count. Not when millions and millions of lives—"
"But they belong to individuals too, correct? And if we serve ourselves, we serve the Imperium simultaneously, which we swore to do. Let us have no bleeding-heart unrealism. Let us get on with our business, the scotching of this rebellion."
"What does the governor propose?"
Snelund shook a finger. "Not propose, Admiral. Decree. We will thresh out details later. But in general, your mission will be to keep the war fires burning. True, our critical systems must be heavily guarded. But that will leave you with considerable forces free to act. Avoid another large battle. Instead raid, harass, hit and run, never attack a rebel group unless it's unmistakably weaker, make a special point of preying on commerce and industry."
"Sir? Those are our people!"
"McCormac claims they're his. And, from what I know of him, the fact that he'll be the cause of their suffering distress at our hands will plague him, will hopefully make him less efficient. Mind you, I don't speak of indiscriminate destruction. On the contrary, we shall have to have justifiable reasons for hitting every civilian target we do. Leave these decisions to me. The idea is, essentially, to undermine the rebel strength."
Snelund sat erect. One fist clenched on a chair arm. His hair blazed like a conqueror's brand. "Supply and replacement," he said ringingly. "Those are going to be McCormac's nemesis. He may be able to whip us in a stand-up battle. But he can't whip attrition. Food, clothing, medical supplies, weapons, tools, spare parts, whole new ships, a navy must have them in steady flow or it's doomed. Your task will be to plug their sources and choke their channels."
"Can that be done, sir, well enough and fast enough?" Pickens asked. "He'll fix defenses, arrange convoys, make counterattacks."
"Yes, yes, I know. Yours is a single part of the effort, albeit a valuable one. The rest is to deny McCormac an effective civil service."
"I don't, uh, don't understand, sir."
"Not many do," Snelund said. "But think what an army of bureaucrats and functionaries compose the foundation of any government. It's no difference whether they are paid by the state or by some nominally private organization. They still do the day-to-day work. They operate the spaceports and traffic lanes, they deliver the mail, they keep the electronic communication channels unsnarled, they collect and supply essential data, they oversee public health, they hold crime in check, they arbitrate disputes, they allocate scarce resources . . . . Need I go on?"
He smiled wider. "Confidentially," he said, "the lesson was taught me by experience out here. As you know, I had various changes in policy and administrative procedure that I wished to put into effect. I was only successful to a degree, chiefly on backward planets with no real indigenous civil services. Otherwise, the bureaucrats dragged their feet too much. It's not like the Navy, Admiral. I would press an intercom button, issue a top priority order—and nothing would happen. Memos took weeks or months to go from desk to desk. Technical objections were argued comma by comma. Interminable requests for clarification made their slow ways back to me. Reports were filed and forgotten. It was like dueling a fog. And I couldn't dismiss the lot of them. Quite apart from legalities, I had to have them. There were no replacements for them.
"I intend to give Hugh McCormac a taste of that medicine."
Pickens shifted uneasily. "How, sir?"
"That's a matter I want to discuss this afternoon. We must get word to those planets. The little functionaries must be persuaded that it isn't in their own best interest to serve the rebellion with any zeal. Their natural timidity and stodginess work in our favor. If, in addition, we bribe some, threaten others, perhaps carry out an occasional assassination or bombing—Do you follow? We must plant our agents throughout McCormac's potential kingdom before he can take possession of it and post his guards. Then we must keep up the pressure—agents smuggled in, for example; propaganda; disruption of interstellar transportation by your raiders—Yes,
I do believe we can bring McCormac's civil service machinery to a crawling, creaking slowdown. And without it, his navy starves. Are you with me, Admiral?"
Pickens swallowed. "Yes, sir. Of course."
"Good." Snelund rose. "Come along to the conference room. My staff's waiting. We'll thresh out specific plans. Would you like a stimpill? The session will probably continue till all hours."
They had learned of him, first on Venus, then on Terra, then in Sector Alpha Crucis: voluptuary he was, but when he saw a chance or a threat that concerned himself, twenty demons could not outwork him.
Chapter Eleven
Kathryn estimated the distance from Thunderstone to Port Frederiksen as about 2000 kilometers. But that was map distance, the kind that an aircar traversed in a couple of hours, a spacecraft in minutes or seconds. Aground and afoot, it would take weeks.
Not only was the terrain difficult, most of it was unknown to the Didonians. Like the majority of primitives, they seldom ventured far beyond their home territory. Articles of trade normally went from communion to communion rather than cross-country in a single caravan. Hence the three who accompanied the humans must feel their own way. In the mountains especially, this was bound to be a slow process with many false choices.
Furthermore, the short rotation period made for inefficient travel. The autochthons refused to move after dark, and Flandry was forced to agree it would be unwise in strange areas. The days were lengthening as the season advanced; at midsummer they would fill better than seven hours out of the eight and three-quarters. But the Didonians could not take advantage of more than four or five hours. The reason was, again, practical. En route, away from the richer diet provided by their farms, a noga must eat—for three—whatever it could find. Vegetable food is less caloric than meat. The natives had to allow ample time for fueling their bodies.
"Twenty-four of us humans," Flandry counted. "And the sixteen we're leaving behind, plus the good doctor, also have appetites. I don't know if our rations will stretch."
"We can supplement some with native food," Kathryn reassured him. "There're levo compounds in certain plants and animals, same as terrestroid biochemistries involve occasional dextros. I can show you and the boys what they look like."
"Well, I suppose we may as well scratch around for them, since we'll be oysting so much in camp."
"Oystin'?"
"What oysters do. Mainly sit." Flandry ruffled his mustache. "Damn, but this is turning into a loathsome fungus! The two items I did not think to rescue would have to be scissors and a mirror."
Kathryn laughed. "Why didn't you speak before? They have scissors here. Clumsy, none too sharp, but you can cut hair with them. Let me be your barber."
Her hands across his head made him dizzy. He was glad that she let the men take care of themselves.
They were all quite under her spell. He didn't think it was merely because she was the sole woman around. They vied to do her favors and show her courtesies. He wished they would stop, but couldn't well order it. Relationships were strained already.
He was no longer the captain to them, but the commander: his brevet rank, as opposed to his lost status of shipmaster. They cooperated efficiently, but it was inevitable that discipline relaxed, even between enlisted men and other officers. He felt he must preserve its basic forms around himself. This led to a degree of—not hostility, but cool, correct aloofness as regarded him, in distinction to the camaraderie that developed among the rest.
One night, happening to wake without showing it, he overheard a muted conversation among several. Two were declaring their intention not just to accept internment, but to join McCormac's side if its chances looked reasonable when they got to the base. They were trying to convince their friends to do likewise. The friends declined, for the time being at any rate, but good-naturedly. That was what disturbed Flandry: that no one else was disturbed. He began regular eavesdropping. He didn't mean to report anyone, but he did want to know where every man stood. Not that he felt any great need for moralistic justification. The snooping was fun.
That started well after the party had left Thunderstone. The three Didonians were named by Kathryn as Cave Discoverer, Harvest Fetcher, and, to human amusement, Smith. It was more than dubious if the entities thought of themselves by name. The terms were convenient designations, based on personal qualities or events of past life. The unit animals had nothing but individual signals.
Often they swapped around, to form such combinations as Iron Miner, Guardian Of North Gate, or Lightning Struck The House. Kathryn explained that this was partly for a change, partly to keep fresh the habits and memories which constituted each entity, and partly a quasi-religious rite.
"Oneness is the ideal in this culture, I'm learnin', as 'tis in a lot of others," she told Flandry. "They consider the whole world to be potenti'ly a single entity. By ceremonies, mystic contemplation, hallucinogenic foods, or whatever, they try to merge with it. An everyday method is to make frequent new interconnections. The matin' season, 'round the autumnal equinox, is their high point of the year, mainly 'cause of the ecstatic, transcendental 'speriences that then become possible."
"Yes, I imagine a race like this has some interesting sexual variations," Flandry said. She flushed and looked away. He didn't know why she should react so, who had observed life as a scientist. Associations with her captivity? He thought not. She was too vital to let that cripple her long; the scars would always remain, but by now she had her merriment back. Why, then, this shyness with him?
They were following a ridge. The country belonged to another communion which, being akin to Thunderstone, had freely allowed transit. Already they had climbed above the jungle zone. Here the air was tropical by Terran standards, but wonderfully less wet, with a breeze to lave the skin and caress the hair and carry scents not unlike ginger. The ground was decked with spongy brown carpet weed, iridescent blossoms, occasional stands of arrowbrush, grenade, and lantern tree. A mass of land coral rose to the left, its red and blue the more vivid against the sky's eternal silver-gray.
None of the Didonians were complete. One maintained heesh's noga-ruka linkage, the other two rukas were off gathering berries, the three krippos were aloft as scouts. Separated, the animals could carry out routine tasks and recognize a need for reunion when it arose.
Besides their own ruka-wielded equipment—including spears, bows, and battleaxes—the nogas easily carried the stuff from the spaceboat. Thus liberated, the men could outpace the ambling quadrupeds. With no danger and no way to get lost hereabouts, Flandry had told them to expedite matters by helping the rukas. They were scattered across the hill.
Leaving him alone with Kathryn.
He was acutely conscious of her: curve of breast and hip beneath her coverall, free-swinging stride, locks blowing free and bright next to the sun-darkened skin, strong face, great green-gold eyes, scent of warm flesh . . . . He changed the subject at once. "Isn't the, well, pantheistic concept natural to Didonians?"
"No more than monotheism's natural, inevitable, in man," Kathryn said with equal haste. "It depends on culture. Some exalt the communion itself, as an entity distinct from the rest of the world, includin' other communions. Their rites remind me of human mobs cheerin' an almighty State and its director. They tend to be warlike and predatory." She pointed ahead, where mountain peaks were vaguely visible. "I'm 'fraid we've got to get past a society of that kind. 'Tis one reason why they weren't keen on this trip in Thunderstone. Word travels, whether or not entities do. I had to remind Many Thoughts 'bout our guns."
"People who don't fear death make wicked opponents," Flandry said. "However, I wouldn't suppose a Didonian exactly enjoys losing a unit; and heesh must have the usual desire to avoid pain."
Kathryn smiled, at ease once more. "You learn fast. Ought to be a xenologist yourself."
He shrugged. "My business has put me in contact with various breeds. I remain convinced we humans are the weirdest of the lot; but your Didonians come close. Have you any
idea how they evolved?"
"Yes, some paleontology's been done. Nowhere near enough. Why is it we can always find money for a war and're always pinched for everything else? Does the first cause the second?"
"I doubt that. I think people naturally prefer war."
"Someday they'll learn."
"You have insufficient faith in man's magnificent ability to ignore what history keeps yelling at him," Flandry said. Immediately, lest her thoughts turn to Hugh McCormac who wanted to reform the Empire: "But fossils are a less depressing subject. What about evolution on Dido?"
"Well, near's can be told, a prolonged hot spell occurred—like millions of years long. The ancestors of the nogas fed on soft plants which drought made scarce. 'Tis thought they took to hangin' 'round what trees were left, to catch leaves that ancestral rukas tore loose in the course of gatherin' fruit. Belike they had a tickbird relationship with the proto-krippos. But trees were dyin' off too. The krippos could spy forage a far ways off and guide the nogas there. Taggin' 'long, the rukas got protection to boot, and repaid by strippin' the trees.
"At last some of the animals drifted to the far eastern end of the Barcan continent. 'Twas afflicted, as 'tis yet, with a nasty kind of giant bug that not only sucks blood, but injects a microbe whose action keeps the wound open for days or weeks. The ancestral nogas were smaller and thinner-skinned than today's. They suffered. Prob'ly rukas and krippos helped them, swattin' and eatin' the heaviest swarms. But then they must've started sippin' the blood themselves, to supplement their meager diet."
"I can take it from there," Flandry said. "Including hormone exchange, mutually beneficial and cementing the alliance. It's lucky that no single-organism species happened to develop intelligence. It'd have mopped the deck with those awkward early three-ways. But the symbiosis appears to be in business now. Fascinating possibilities for civilization."
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