Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Corps, Imperial Terrestrial Navy, squatted beside him, under the fountain, while the marines blew down another house or two for good measure. A squadron of full-armored infantry did a belt-flit overhead, like jointed faceless dolls. A stringed instrument keened from a window across the square: Flandry did not know the Braean scale, the music might be dirge or defiance or ballad or coded signal.
He asked finally: "Anyone know where this chap was from?"
His escort looked blank. "A colonial, sir, judging from the accent," ventured one of the privates. "We sign on a lot, you know."
"Tell me more," snapped Flandry. He brooded a while longer. "There'll be records, of course."
His task had suddenly shifted. He would have to leave another man in charge here and check the dead boy's home himself, so great was the personnel shortage. Those delirious babblings could mean much or nothing. Most likely nothing, but civilization was spread hideously thin out here, where the stars faded toward barbarism, and the Empire of Merseia beyond, and the great unmapped Galactic night beyond that.
As yet he did not think of the monster, only that he was lonesome among his fellow conquerors and would be glad to get off on a one-man mission. At least a world bearing some Africans might be decently warm.
He shivered and got up and left the square. His escort trudged around him, their slung rifles pointed at a thin blue sky. Behind them the girl on the fountain smiled.
II
The planet was five parsecs from Brae. It was the third of an otherwise uninteresting F5 dwarf, its official name was Nyanza, it had been colonized some 500 years back during the breakup of the Commonwealth. It had been made an Imperial client about a century ago, a few abortive revolts were crushed, now there was only a resident—which meant a trouble-free but unimportant and little visited world. The population was estimated at 107. That was all the microfiles had to say about Nyanza.
Flandry had checked them after identifying the murdered man, who turned out to be Thomas Umbolu, 19, free-born commoner of Jairnovaunt on Nyanza, no dependents, no personal oaths or obligations of fealty, religion "Christian variant," height 1.82 meters, weight 84 kilos, blood type O plus. . . . His service record was clean, though only one year old. A routine pre-induction hypno had shown no serious disaffection; but of course that hadn't meant a damn thing since the techniques of deep conditioning became general knowledge; it was just another bureaucratic ritual.
Flandry took a high-speed flitter and ran from Brae. Even so, the enforced idleness of the trip was long enough to remind him acutely that he had been celibate for weeks. He spent a good deal of the time in calisthenics. It bored him rigid, but a trim body had saved his life more than once and made it easy to get bed partners on softened worlds like Terra.
When the robopilot said they were going into approach, he spent some while dressing himself. An Intelligence officer had wide latitude as regards uniforms, and Flandry took more advantage of it than most. After due consideration, he clad his tall form in peacock-blue tunic, with white cross-belts and as much gold braid as regulations would stand; red sash and matched guns, needler and blaster; iridescent white trousers; soft black boots of authentic Terran beefleather. He hung a scarlet cloak from his shoulders and cocked a winged naval cap on his long sleek head. Surveying himself in the mirror, he saw a lean sunlamp-browned face, gray eyes, seal-brown hair and mustache, straight nose, high cheekbones: yes, he knew his last plasmecosmetic job had made his face too handsome, but somehow never got around to changing it again. He put a cigarette between his lips, adjusted its jaunty angle with care, inhaled it to light, and went to his pilot's seat. Not that he had anything to do with the actual piloting.
Nyanza shone before him, the clearest and most beautiful blue of his life, streaked with white cloud-belts and shuddering with great auroral streamers. He spotted two moons, a smallish one close in and a large one further out. He scowled. Where were the land masses? His robot made radio contact and the screen offered him a caucasoid face above a short-sleeved shirt.
"Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Navy Intelligence, requesting permission to land." Sometimes he wondered what he would do if his polite formula ever met a rude no.
The visage gaped, "Oh . . . oh . . . already?"
"Hm?" said Flandry. He caught himself. "Ah, yes," he said wisely.
"But only today, sir!" babbled the face. "Why, we haven't even thought about sending a courier out yet—it's been such a nightmare—oh, thank God you're here, sir! You'll see for yourself, at once, there isn't a Technician in the City—on Altla—on all Nyanza, who doesn't set loyalty to his Majesty above life itself!"
"I'm sure his Majesty will be very much relieved," said Flandry. "Now, if you please, how about a landing beam?" After a pause, a few clicks, and the beginning downward rush of his ship: "Oh, by the way, Bubbles. Where did you put your continents today?"
"Continents, sir?"
"You know. Large dirty places to stand on."
"Of course I know, sir!" The control man drew himself up. "We're no parochials in the City. I've been to Spica myself."
"Would it be despicable if you had not?" mused Flandry. Most of him was listening to the fellow's accent. The inexhaustible variations on Anglic were a hobby of his.
"But as for the continents, sir, why, I thought you would know. Nyanza has none. Altla is just a medium-sized island. Otherwise there are only rocks and reefs, submerged at double high tide, or even at Loa high."
"Oh, I knew," said Flandry reassuringly. "I just wanted to be sure you knew." He turned off the receiver and sat thinking. Damn those skimpy pilot's manuals! He'd have had to go to Spica for detailed information. If only there were a faster-than-light equivalent of radio. Instant communications unified planets; but the days and weeks and months between stars let their systems drift culturally apart—let hell brew for years, unnoticed till it boiled over—made a slow growth of feudalism, within the Imperial structure itself, inevitable. Of course, that would give civilization something to fall back on when the Long Night finally came.
The spaceport was like ten thousand minor harbors: little more than a grav-grid, a field, and some ancillary buildings, well out of town. Beyond the hangars, to west and south, Flandry saw a greenness of carefully tended forest. Eastward rose the spires of a small ancient city. Northward the ground sloped down in harsh grass and boulders until it met a smothering white surf and an impossibly blue ocean. The sky above was a little darker than Terra's—less dust to scatter light—and cloudless; the sun was blindingly fierce, bluish tinged. It was local summer: Altla lay at 35° N. latitude on a Terra-sized planet with a 21° axial tilt. The air held an illusion of being cooler than it was, for it blew briskly and smelled of salt and the ultraviolet-rich sun gave it a thunderous tinge of ozone.
Still, Flandry wished he had not been quite such a dude. The portmaster, another blond caucasoid, looked abominably comfortable in shorts, blouse, and kepi. Flandry took a morose satisfaction in noting that the comfort was merely physical.
"Portmaster Heinz von Sonderburg, sir, at your service. Naturally, we waive quarantine on your behalf; no Imperial knight would—Ah. Your luggage will be seen to, Captain . . . Flandry? Of course. Most honored. I have communicated with her Excellency and am happy to report she can offer you the usual official hospitality. Otherwise we would have had to do our poor best for you in the City—"
"Her Excellency?" asked Flandry when they were airborne.
"Is that not the proper usage?" Von Sonderburg made washing motions with his hands. "Oh, dear, I am so sorry. This is such an isolated planet—the occasion so seldom arises—Believe me, sir, we are uncouth only in manner. The City, at least, has an enlightened forward-looking spirit of absolute loyalty to the Imperium which—"
"It's just that I thought, in a case like this, where the only Terrans on the planet are the resident and family, they'd have appointed a man." Flandry looked down toward the city. It was old, haphazardly rai
sed out of native stone, with steep narrow streets, teeming pedestrians, very few cars or flyers.
But the docks were big, sleekly modern and aswarm with ships. He made out everything from plastic pirogues to giant submarines. There was a majority of sailing craft, which implied an unhurried esthetic-minded culture; but they were built along radical hydrodynamic lines, which meant that the culture also appreciated efficiency. A powered tug was leaving the bay with a long tail of loaded barges, and air transport was extensively in use.
Elsewhere Flandry recognized a set of large sea-water processing units and their attached factories, where a thousand dissolved substances were shaped into usefulness. A twin-hulled freighter was unloading bales of . . . sea weed? . . . at the dock of an obvious plastics plant. So, he thought, most of Nyanza fished, hunted, and ranched the planet-wide ocean; this one island took the raw materials and gave back metal, chemical fuel, synthetic timbers and resins and glassites and fibers, engines. He was familiar enough with pelagic technics—most overpopulated worlds turned back at last to Mother Ocean. But here they had begun as sailors, from the very first. It should make for an interesting society. . . .
Von Sonderburg's voice jerked back his attention. "But of course, poor Freeman Bannerji was a man. I am merely referring to his, ah, his relict, poor Lady Varvara. She is an Ayres by birth, you know, the Ayres of Antarctica. She has borne her loss with the true fortitude of Imperial aristocratic blood, yes, we can be very proud to have been directed by the late husband of Lady Varvara Ayres Bannerji."
Flandry constructed his sentence to preserve the illusion: "Do you know the precise time he died?"
"Alas, no, sir. You can speak to the City constabulary, but I fear even they would have no exact information. Sometime last night, after he retired. You understand, sir, we have not your advanced police methods here. A harpoon gun—oh, what a way to meet one's final rest!" Von Sonderburg shuddered delicately.
"The weapon has not been found?" asked Flandry impassively.
"No, I do not believe so, sir. The killer took it with him, portable, you know. He must have crept up the wall with vacsoles, or used a flung grapnel to catch the windowsill and—His Excellency was a sound sleeper and his lady, ah, preferred separate quarters. Ah . . . you can take it for granted, sir, I am certain, that the murderer did not go through the house to reach Freeman Bannerji's retiring chamber. The servants are all of Technician birth, and no Technician would dream of—"
The resident's mansion hove into view. It was probably 75 years old, but its metal and tinted plastic remained a blatant, arrogant leap in formal gardens, amidst a shrill huddle of tenements. As the aircar set down, Flandry noticed that the City population was mostly caucasoid, not even very dark-skinned. They were crowded together in child-pullulating streets, blowsy women waved excited arms and shouted their hagglings, such of the men as did not work in industry kept grimy little shops. A pair of native constables in helmet and breastplate stood guard at the mansion gates. Those were tall Africans, who used stepped-down shockbeams with a sort of casual contempt to prevent loitering.
Lady Varvara was caucasoid herself, though the Chinese strain in the Ayres pedigree showed in dark hair and small-boned body. She posed, exquisite in a simple white mourning gown, beside a full-length stereo of her late husband. Hurri Chundra Bannerji had been a little brown middle-aged Terran with wistful eyes: doubtless the typical fussy, rule-bound, conscientious civil servant whose dreams of a knighthood die slowly over the decades. And now he was murdered.
Flandry bowed over Lady Varvara's frail hand. "Your Ladyship," he said, "accept my most heartfelt sympathy, and grant me forgiveness that I must intrude at a moment of such loss."
"I am glad you came," she whispered. "So very glad."
It had a shaken sincerity that almost upset Flandry's court manners. He backed off with another ritual bow. "You must not trouble yourself further, your Ladyship. Let me deal with the authorities."
"Authorities!" The word was a bitter explosion among her few thin pieces of Terran crystal. Otherwise the room was dominated by the conch-whorls of an art that had not seen Earth in centuries. "What authorities? Did you bring a regiment with you?"
"No." Flandry glanced around the long low-ceilinged room. A noiseless City-bred butler had just placed decanter and glasses by the trellis-wall which opened on the garden. When he left, there did not seem to be anyone else in earshot. Flandry took out his cigarets and raised his brows inquiringly at the woman. He saw she was younger than himself.
Her colorless lips bent into a smile. "Thank you," she said, so low he could almost not hear it.
"Eh? For what, your Ladyship? I'm afraid it's a frosty comfort to have me here."
"Oh, no," she said. She moved closer. Her reactions were not wholly natural: too calm and frank for a new-made widow, then suddenly and briefly too wild. A heavy dose of mysticine, he guessed. It was quite the thing for upper-class Imperials to erect chemical walls against grief or fear or—What do you do when the walls come down? he thought.
"Oh, no," repeated Lady Varvara. Her words flowed quick and high-pitched. "Perhaps you do not understand, Captain. You are the first Terran I have seen, besides my husband, for . . . how long? Something like three Nyanzan years, and that's about four Terran. And then it was just a red-faced military legate making a routine check. Otherwise, who did we see? The City Warden and his officers paid a few courtesy calls every year. The sea chiefs had to visit us too when they happened to be on Altla . . . not for our sake, you understand, not to curry favor, only because it was beneath their dignity not to observe the formalities. Their dignity!" Her cheeks flamed. She stood close to him now, glaring upward; her fists drew the skin tight over bird-like knuckles. "As you would feel obliged to notice the existence of an unwelcome guest!"
"So the Empire is not popular here?" murmured Flandry.
"I don't know," she said pallidly, relaxing. "I don't know. All I know is—the only people we ever saw, with any regularity—our only friends, God help us, friends!—were the Lubbers."
"The what, my lady?"
"City people. Technicians. Pinkskins. Whatever you want to call them. Like that fat little von Sonderburg." She was shrill again. "Do you know what it's like, Captain, to associate with no one but an inferior class? It rubs off on you. Your soul gets greasy. Von Sonderburg now . . . always toadying up to Hurri Chundra . . . he would never light a cigar in my presence without asking me, in the most heavy way—exactly the same words, I have heard them a million times, till I could scream—'Does my lady object if I have a little smoke?' "
Varvara whirled from him. Her bare shoulders shuddered. "Does my lady object? Does my lady object? And then you come, Captain—your lungs still full of Earth air, I swear—you come and take out a cigaret case and raise your eyebrows. Like that. No more. A gesture we all used at Home, a ritual, an assumption that I have eyes to see what you're doing and intelligence to know what you want—Oh, be welcome, Captain Flandry, be welcome!" She gripped the trellis with both hands and stared out into the garden. "You're from Terra," she whispered. "I'll come to you tonight, any time, right now if you want, just to repay you for being a Terran."
Flandry tapped a cigaret on his thumbnail, put it to his lips at half mast, and drew deeply. He glanced at the sad brown eyes of Hurri Chundra Bannerji and said without words: Sorry, old chap. I'm not a ghoul, and I'll do what I can to avoid this, but my job demands I be tactful. For the Empire and the Race!
"I'm sorry to intrude when you're overwrought, your Ladyship," he said. "Of course, I'll arrange for your passage to provincial headquarters, and if you want to return Home from there—"
"After all these years," she mumbled, "who would I know?"
"Uh . . . may I suggest my lady, that you rest for a while—?"
An intercom chime saved both of them. Varvara said a shaky "Accept" and the connection closed. The butler's voice came: "Beg pardon, madame, but I have just received word of a distinguished native person who has arri
ved. Shall I ask postponement of the formal visit?"
"Oh . . . I don't know." Varvara's tone was dead. She did not look at Flandry. "Who is it?"
"Lady Tessa Hoorn, madame, Lightmistress of Little Skua in Jairnovaunt."
III
When they reached the Zurian Current, the water, which had been a Homeric blue, turned deep purple, streaked with foam that flashed like crystallized snow. "This bends to north beyond Iron Shoals and carries on past the Reefs of Sorrow," remarked Tessa Hoorn. "Gains us a few knots speed. Though we've naught to hurry for, have we?"
Flandry blinked through dark contact lenses at the incredible horizon. Sunlight flimmered off the multitudinous laughter of small waves. "I suppose the color is due to plankton," he said.
"Plankton-like organisms," corrected Tessa. "We're nay on Earth, Captain. But aye, off this feed the oilfish, and off them the decapus, both of use to us." She pointed. "Yonder flags bear Dilolo stripes, quartered on Saleth green: the fishing boats of the Prince of Aquant."
Flandry's dazzled eyes could hardly even see the vessels, in that merciless illumination. Since the wind dropped, the Hoorn ship had been running on its auxiliary engine and now there was no shade from the great sails. An awning was spread amidships and some superbly muscled deckhands sprawled under it, clapping time to an eerie chant-pipe, like young gods carved in oiled ebony. The Terran would have given much for some of that shadow. But since Tessa Hoorn stood here in the bows, he must submit. It was an endurance contest, he recognized, with all the advantages on her side.
"Does your nation fish this current too?" he asked.
"A little," she nodded. "But mostly we in Jairnovaunt sail west and north, with harpoons for the kraken—ha, it's a pale life never to have speared fast to a beast with more of bulk than your own ship!—and smaller game. Then T'chaka Kruger farms a great patch of beanweed in the Lesser Sargasso. And in sooth I confess, not alone the commons but some captains born will scrape the low-tide reefs for shells or dive after sporyx. Then there are carpenters, weavers, engineers, medics, machinists, all trades that must be plied: and mummers and mimes, though most such sport is given by wandering boats of actors, masterless madcap folk who come by as fancy strikes 'em." She shrugged broad shoulders. "The Commander can list you all professions in his realm if you wish it, Imperial."
Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Page 38
