Wildeblood's Empire

by Brian Stableford

  By noon, when we made our way to the rendezvous, Nathan had already been on top of the world and was looking round for something else to engage his appetite for doing great things.

  He did a lot of smiling.

  Zarnecki, accompanied by Cade and another man, whose name I didn’t know, met us at the appointed place—again, in the dunes, but in a kind, of hollow bowl between drifts, where there was space. I didn’t like the look of the soft sandy soil, but only the top had dried out following the previous night’s rain and it would be firm enough.

  The dueling sword was clean and polished, equipped with a much finer point. It even had the ornamental grip I’d predicted. Nathan made a few experimental passes while I exchanged a couple of pleasantries with Cade. He made sure that I knew the rules. There weren’t very many—the most important one being the bit about stopping when blood was drawn. Zarnecki, meanwhile, stood perfectly stiff, and kept his face stern and solemn right up to the off.

  As soon as the off was called, however, Zarnecki did allow an expression to seep into his features—a cruel and cheerful expression which might have made strong men quiver in its time. It didn’t do anything to Nathan, though. He was still smiling.

  I know nothing about the supposed art of swordplay, and find myself unable to give a technical and exact description of the performance. I suspect that by technical standards it was a bit of a farce and would have had Cyrano de Bergerac rolling in the aisles, but I wouldn’t know the difference.

  Zarnecki came forward like a dancer, on his toes, with the point of his blade making little spirals in the air as his arm moved and his wrist twisted. Nathan may have been the one with acting experience but it was Zarnecki who looked like a ham.

  Zarnecki opened his attack with a forward thrust anyone could have dodged. It was purely for show. Nathan moved round it and made a quick movement of his blade that looked more like a tennis shot than an attempt at murder. Zarnecki blocked it, and went back a pace, letting Nathan follow it up. Nathan did, pivoting on his front foot and wheeling the blade round to slash from the other direction. It looked like a comic move, but I saw the shadow of surprise cross Zarnecki’s face as he realized how fast Nathan had reacted. But Zarnecki blocked with ease, the blades clinking dully.

  Nathan came forward, looking a little like an over-anxious lion tamer. But there was real meaning in the prods he directed at his opponent. Zarnecki had to parry and retreat, and the expression on his face was now genuine uncertainty.

  I don’t think that Zarnecki had intended it to be a short fight. I think he had been prepared to indulge in a little bear-baiting, trying to get Nathan into something of a temper, frustrated and furious. But he was changing his mind now about the management of the scenario.

  The crowd, of course, stood silent, with all due dignity. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ruin the atmosphere by cheering, but I allowed myself a grin, which I showed off to Cade and his companion by half-turning and taking my eye off the combatants for an instant.

  Naturally, I missed the important play. When I looked back Zarnecki was coming forward, thrusting as though he meant it. He was putting Nathan’s unexpected ability to the test now, and I saw him talk himself back into confidence as Nathan’s parries were clumsy. I wanted to shout to Nathan to use his feet more and his fancy acting less, but I felt sure that he’d realize himself the way it had to be played.

  The blades stopped clinking as Zarnecki ceased his attack and rocked back on his heels, giving himself a moment’s rest. Nathan didn’t want that, and immediately dived in—somewhat recklessly, I thought. So did Zarnecki, for he reacted swiftly, turning Nathan’s blade and aiming to slip right through to strike his chest. Nathan twisted, and the point went whistling past. Without pause or any sign that it was unpremeditated, Nathan brought his arm round in a short, sharp arc so that his armored fist struck Zarnecki on the forearm. Zarnecki didn’t like it.

  I wished, briefly, that I really had managed to put a bet on.

  As they came apart again, making threatening gestures with the blades but not attempting to strike while they fought to regain balance and stance, the difference in speed looked obvious. Zarnecki looked far more as if he knew what he was doing, but compared to Nathan he was clumsy. There was no more than a taint of grace in the way Nathan plied his weapon—acting training or no—but it ended up where it needed to go each time, or drew a parry from Zarnecki.

  I glanced round again. The home team weren’t liking it. That made me feel even better.

  Zarnecki was stiff now, and something mechanical got into his movements. He was too self-conscious, thinking hard about what he was doing. He had lost his natural flow. There was no longer any question of cat and mouse. Zarnecki went in again intending to end it as soon as was humanly possible.

  But it wasn’t.

  Nathan had allowed the advantage of surprise to wear off, and that should have counted against him. But it didn’t. Zarnecki under pressure became a different man. He was all veneer and his veneer had cracked—not because of anything real that Nathan had achieved but simply because his own plans had gone awry.

  As we’d noted, dueling meant something on Wildeblood. Zarnecki stood to lose...not just the fight, but—or so it must have seemed to him—everything. He couldn’t stand that thought. Losing was something alien to him, and it was a subject on which he was very brittle.

  I’m sure he could have done better than he did. But there was desperation in the way he went at Nathan, and not too much style. There was a force in the cuts he directed at Nathan but no real guts. Nathan only had to catch a couple with his blade. The rest he moved away from with too much of comfortable margin. Curiously, though—or perhaps not so curiously—Zarnecki was still aiming to draw a superficial stripe in Nathan’s flesh. There was no sign of murder in the thrusts.

  It was exactly the situation in which Nathan’s unnatural superiority could show to good advantage, and if Nathan seemed horribly labored in capitalizing on his speed it was probably the unreasonable demands of my imagination which made him seem so. An awfully long time seemed to go by while Zarnecki forced him back and prompted him into an agitated dance.

  But all of a sudden it was over. Zarnecki reached too far, completely underestimating the distance that Nathan could cover in a couple of seconds. Left exposed while he groped, he could only try to bring up his left arm when Nathan moved round and in. The hand wasn’t enough. Nathan’s point slipped under it and whipped across. The strike was lower than Nathan had intended—beneath the lower rib—but he had judged the range of the slash accurately. There appeared a fifteen inch gash in Zarnecki’s shirt, and blood spilled from the cut. The abdominal wall was hardly pricked and there was no damage to the intestine. But it must have hurt like hell.

  For just an instant I thought that Zarnecki was so far gone in anger and anguish that he wouldn’t leave it. But conditioned response triumphed and his sword sagged. He didn’t cry out, but when Nathan stepped back Zarnecki reeled. He jabbed the sword point into the sand, but couldn’t or wouldn’t support himself as if it were a stick. He sank instead to one knee.

  I found, slightly to my surprise, that the fear which had suddenly arisen and was now draining away was the fear that Nathan might have had to kill him.

  There was a look on the defeated man’s face that can only be described as horror. He got up again from his half-kneeling position but sat down. He laid the sword at his side and tried to pull the cut edges of his shirt apart to inspect, the damage. Cade and the other man went to help him. I went too, but when I bent down, reaching out to the wound, they all turned on me. I could almost feel the shame and disgust that were welling up in Zarnecki despite his attempts to keep them down.

  I could tell that he wasn’t in the market for immediate treatment. I could also tell that there was no emergency. I left it, stepping back. Zarnecki’s eyes followed me. He was staring at me, and I realized that the venom in his stare was all for me. He needed someone to hate, just then...someo
ne to blame. He couldn’t turn his bitterness on Nathan, because that was forbidden in his way of thinking. But I was a candidate. Hadn’t I already exposed myself as less than a gentleman? He didn’t know that it was me that had given Nathan the ability to win the fight, and so he didn’t know that I was, in a way, to blame for his defeat. But that made no difference. I was there. I was available.

  In a way, it was almost justice, of a kind.

  It was Cade who found something to say.

  “It is settled,” he pronounced, ritually.

  I nodded, quelling a temptation to agree in less than formal fashion.

  “It will not be recalled and never spoken,” he added.

  “Naturally,” I said. I tried not to sound sarcastic.

  We packed up and parted. They’d brought both swords but they didn’t bother to pick up either. Nathan’s was tainted and the other was a loser. Apparently, they were what passed for the spoils. I collected them, and offered them to Nathan hilt first.

  “Take your pick,” I said. “Souvenir. You could hang it on your cabin wall. Or maybe wear it.”

  He took one, and broke the blade across his knee. It was the one with blood on it—just the merest trace, at the point.

  I looked surprised.

  “We’ve done no good here,” he said. “There was no good to be done. It’s over now, let’s all try to forget it.”

  He seemed to be coming down faster than I’d anticipated. He wasn’t supposed to come over queer for another hour yet. But circumstances can alter cases

  “It was me who got the basilisk stare,” I said. “I don’t much mind being persona non grata. You can still do your job, I can still do mine.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he agreed. “We both did what we could. But we have an enemy there, and if his position is put in jeopardy by his failure he could be dangerous. No one gives up the kind of power he has gracefully, aristocratic upbringing or no.”

  We walked back to the ship, not too rapidly. I caught sight of one of our shadows dutifully tailing along.

  “I have to win Philip over,” he said. “No one else...though a friend at court might help. I have to show him that we aren’t a threat. Show him...instead of just telling him.”

  “Invite him to the Daedalus,” I suggested, wanly. “We’ll throw a party and get him maudlin drunk.”

  “I think we need the key to that code,” he said.

  “We’ve known that for days,” I pointed out. “Everybody needs the key to the code. But once we’ve cracked it we might not be able to give it to Philip as a token of our hypocritical esteem. It might be dynamite. Messages are put into code to stop people from finding out what’s in them, and there’s usually a reason. Of all the people we know, Philip’s the one who’s most likely not to like what’s in the message—because he’s the one who’d certainly know the answer if he was meant to be able to read it.”

  “Maybe he already knows it,” said Nathan. “Maybe he’s supposed to know it but doesn’t because of some historical accident.”

  “One of the great granddaddies was meant to pass it on, no doubt,” I commented, “and he didn’t quite have time for his famous last words. Said: ‘The secret is...,’ and clapped out. Hardly. As a theory, that’s bullshit.”

  “So are all the other theories I can think of,” he said. “When you have eliminated the bullshit, and nothing remains....”

  “Then you’re in a pretty shitty situation,” I answered for him.

  Silence fell, for a little while. We reached the ship and I took Nathan straight to the lab for a shot to counteract the one he’d already had.

  “It won’t subvert the reaction entirely,” I warned him, “but it’ll help.”

  I escorted him back to his cabin, and sat down on the bed to keep him company while he began to feel sick. I wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any complications from the speed-up stuff, and to reassure him that there weren’t even if there were.

  “You don’t like the setup here, do you?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a successful colony,” he said. “Established, expanding, developing. This feudal setup is just a phase, and in any case it’s half-hearted tyranny at worst. Economic development will destroy the Wildeblood dynasty—or force it to adapt. The drug doesn’t really figure as a secure power base in the long run.”

  I shrugged. “Am I making waves?” I asked. “I’ll sit tight while you nurse Philip’s anxieties. I don’t mind our being friends. I guess I’d rather things were this way than find another Dendra. But don’t ask me to like it. That’s too much.”

  “Deep down,” he said, “you’d really like to give your melodramatic friend the answers he wants, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t want to start a war.”

  “But you do want to kick the brick out from under Philip?”

  “I can’t have it both ways, can I?” I asked him, still speaking levelly. “I never can. That’s the way it goes. We all have to compromise. But the setup here worries me. And you worry me, because I think that deep down—maybe as deep as my feelings—you like this place. You like the way Wildeblood set it up. It appeals to you. Not in the sense that you’d like to stay here as the power behind the throne, or that you might like to set yourself up with one just like it...it’s something more subtle than that. The idea of manipulating people appeals to you. You admire Wildeblood, just as you admired the Planners on Floria and the UN back home. Basically, you don’t have any belief in what we’re out here trying to do. You’re just a professional, you say, doing your job. I worry about that professionalism, because I worry about what kind of job you think you’re doing and how you intend to work it. I believe, now, that you will work it, in the long run...but not for the right reasons. For personal satisfaction and reputation—maybe even a kind of glory. I don’t trust you, Nathan, any more than I could trust Philip or Zarnecki. I can’t.”

  “That’s straight talking,” he said. “Anyone would think you’d just been watching a sword-fight. Is that what let it all out?”

  “Maybe,” I conceded.

  “Shall I tell you what you’re really afraid of?” he asked, suavely. Then, without waiting for an answer, he went on: “What you’re really afraid of isn’t the conclusion I might reach as a result of studying this colony and the others we’ve visited—it’s the fact that you might be driven to a similar conclusion. You’re scared that your experiences out here might point your deadly analytical mind to a series of answers that conflict with your precious and deep-seated beliefs. You’re beginning to bury those beliefs and the holier-than-thou attitude you once had with them, but you’re nowhere near relinquishing them. You’re still a neo-Christian in your gut no matter how far your head guides your actions away from it. What frightens you...deep down...is the possibility that you might not find any excuse to disagree with me in regard to the report I make to Pietrasante. Right?”

  “I suppose,” I commented. “That you expect me to say: ‘touché’.”

  “Not really,” he replied. “But think about it.”

  He was beginning to look a little gray about the face, and his voice sounded tired.

  I couldn’t help feeling that it served him right.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  While Nathan was recovering, I called Conrad. I told him the result of the fight, and brought him up to date on the situation in general. He was suitably unimpressed.

  “We’re still on schedule,” he reported. “They’re used to our being around now, and showing signs of curiosity. We’ve got some good film of one or two sign conversations—which is difficult, because it means getting cameras lined up two different ways and then reintegrating the film to catch both sides. One big advantage of talking is that you don’t have to keep your eyes on the other guy’s fingers...makes the whole business of communication less absorbing and less distracting. Mariel still says she’s making progress, although she’s not specific about what and how. I think she just feels that she
’s in with a chance. I’ll back her.”

  “I hate to say this,” I told him, “but there’s a possibility we’ll have to move out. The atmosphere is tense. I’m certain Zarnecki wants to be rid of us, one way or another. If he can persuade Philip, and he’s a good deal closer to Philip’s ear than we are....”

  “If we have to pull out, Alex,” he said, soberly, “it will be a catastrophe.”

  “I know that,” I told him.

  “It’s been well over a hundred years,” he said. “Of all the intelligent alien races we’ve contacted, this is the first we’ve ever had a real chance to get to know. This is important, Alex—incomparably more important than colony politics or Earth politics or what the hell.”

  “I know,” I repeated. “But these are the circumstances under which we live. The UN didn’t vote funds for chatting to alien primitives about their philosophies of life. They voted funds for very ordinary, very mundane concerns like investigating colonies to see whether it might be worth trying to reinstitute a space program. Without that space program, it’s dubious that we’ll ever get a chance to chat with aliens again. The mission comes first.”

  “Couldn’t you just leave the island? If you and Nathan were to come here too....”

  “We couldn’t bring the ship. That would be wasting resources. And in any case, it won’t work. We need the good will of the colony to keep working here. They’re suspicious now—how would they be if we all retired to some desolate spot to start trying to communicate with the indigenes? They wouldn’t understand that—they probably wouldn’t even believe it. They don’t have anything to do with the aliens—it’s strictly live and let live. They can’t understand our interest in them—they don’t have your priorities.”

  “Why not?” Conrad returned.

  It wasn’t an answer I’d expected. It wasn’t something I’d thought about. What he meant was: why didn’t the colony have his priorities. It was something I’d just taken for granted before, as something which simply was. But why? All of a sudden, it did seem odd.