Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

  The giant saluted, wheeled, and stalked from the room. Flandry saw tears glimmer in Tessa's eyes. The Commander bowed ponderously at him. "Crave your pardon, sir. He's a stout heart . . . surely you'll find nay treason in his folk . . . but the news you bore was harsh."

  Flandry made some reply. The gathering became decorous, the Lightmasters and Coastwatchers offered him polite conversation. He felt reasonably sure that few of them knew about any plottings: revolutions didn't start that way.

  Eventually he found himself in a small but tastefully furnished bedroom. One wall was a planetary map. He studied it, looking for a place called Uhunhu. He found it near the Sheikhdom of Rossala, which lay north of here; if he read the symbols aright, it was a permanently submerged area.

  A memory snapped into his consciousness. He swore for two unrepeating minutes before starting a chain of cigarets. If that was the answer—

  V

  The inner moon, though smaller, raised the largest tides, up to nine times a Terrestrial high; but it moved so fast, five orbits in two of Nyanza's 30-hour days, that the ebb was spectacularly rapid. Flandry heard a roar through his wall, switched on the transparency, and saw water tumbling white from dark rough rock. It was close to sunset, he had sat in his thoughts for hours. A glance at the electric ephemeris over his bunk told him that Loa, the outer satellite, would not dunk the hall till midnight. And that was a much weaker flow, without the whirlpool effects which were dangerous for a lower-case lubber like himself.

  He stubbed out his cigaret and sighed. Might as well get the nasty part over with. Rising, he shucked all clothes but a pair of trunks and a 'lung; he put on the swimshoes given him and buckled his guns—they were safely waterproof—into their holsters. A directory-map of the immediate region showed him where Captain John Umbolu lived. He recorded a message that business called him out and his host should not wait dinner: he felt sure Inyanduma would be more relieved than offended. Then he stepped through the airlock. It closed automatically after him.

  Sunset blazed across violet waters. The white spume of the breakers was turned an incredible gold; tide pools on the naked black skerry were like molten copper. The sky was deep blue in the east, still pale overhead, shading to a clear cloudless green where the sun drowned. Through the surf's huge hollow crashing and grinding, Flandry heard bells from one of the many rose-red spires . . . or did a ship's bell ring among raking spars, or was it something he had heard in a dream once? Beneath all the noise, it was unutterably peaceful.

  No one bothered with boats for such short distances. Flandry entered the water at a sheltered spot, unfolded the web feet in his shoes, and struck out between the scattered dome-and-towered reefs. Other heads bobbed in the little warm waves, but none paid him attention. He was glad of that. Steering a course by marked buoys, he found old Umbolu's house after a few energetic minutes.

  It was on a long thin rock, surrounded by lesser stones on which a murderous fury exploded. The Terran paddled carefully around, in search of a safe approach. He found it, two natural breakwaters formed by gaunt rusty coraloid pinnacles, with a path that led upward through gardens now sodden heaps until it struck the little hemisphere. Twilight was closing in, slow and deeply blue; an evening planet came to white life in the west.

  Flandry stepped onto the beach under the crags. It was dark there. He did not know what reflex of deadly years saved him. A man glided from behind one of the high spires and fired a harpoon. Flandry dropped on his stomach before he had seen more than a metallic glitter. The killing missile hissed where he had been.

  "If you please!" He rolled over, yanking for his sleepy-needle gun. A night-black panther shape sprang toward him. His pistol was only half unlimbered when the hard body fell upon his. One chopping, wrist-numbing karate blow sent the weapon a-clatter from his grasp. He saw a bearded, hating face behind a knife.

  Flandry blocked the stab with his left arm. The assassin pulled his blade back. Before it could return, Flandry's thumb went after the nearest eye. His opponent should have ignored that distraction for the few necessary moments of slicing time—but, instead, grabbed the Terran's wrist with his own free hand. Flandry's right hand was still weak, but he delivered a rabbit punch of sorts with it and took his left out of hock by jerking past his enemy's thumb. Laying both hands and a knee against the man's knife arm, he set about breaking same.

  The fellow screeched, writhed, and wriggled free somehow. Both bounced to their feet. The dagger lay between them. The Nyanzan dove after it. Flandry put his foot on the blade. "Finders keepers," he said. He kicked the scrabbling man behind the ear and drew his blaster.

  The Nyanzan did not stay kicked. Huddled at Flandry's knees, he threw a sudden shoulder block. The Terran went over on his backside. He glimpsed the lean form as it rose and leaped; it was in the water before he had fired.

  After the thunder-crash had echoed to naught and no body had emerged, Flandry retrieved his needler. Slowly, his breathing and pulse eased. "That," he confessed aloud, "was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. Well . . . if you keep quiet about it, I will."

  He squinted through the dusk at the assassin's knife. It was an ordinary rustproof blade, but the bone hilt carried an unfamiliar inlaid design. And had he ever before seen a Nyanzan with a respectable growth of beard?

  He went on up the path and pressed the house bell. The airlock opened for him and he entered.

  The place had a ship's neatness, and it was full of models, scrimshaw, stuffed fish, all the sailor souvenirs. But emptiness housed in it. One old man sat alone with his dead; there was no one else.

  John Umbolu looked up through dim eyes and nodded. "Aye," he said, "I 'waited you, Captain. Be welcome and be seated."

  Flandry lowered himself to a couch covered with the softscaled hide of some giant swimming thing John Umbolu had once hunted down. The leather was worn shabby. The old man limped to him with a decanter of imported rum. When they had both been helped, he sat himself in a massive armchair and their goblets clinked together. "Your honor and good health, sir," said John Umbolu.

  Flandry looked into the wrinkled face and said quietly: "Your son Derek must have told you my news."

  "I've had the tidings," nodded Umbolu. He took a pipe from its rack and began to fill it with slow careful motions. "You saw him die, sir?"

  "He held my hand. His squad was ambushed on a combat mission on Brae. He . . . it was soon over."

  "Drowning is the single decent death," whispered the Nyanzan. "My other children, all but Derek, had that much luck." He lit his pipe and blew smoke for a while. "I'm sorry Tom had to go yon way. But it is kind of you to come tell me of it."

  "He'll be buried with full military honors," said Flandry awkwardly. If they don't have so many corpses they just bulldoze them under. "Or if you wish, instead of the battle-casualty bonus you can have his ashes returned here."

  "Nay," said Umbolu. His white head wove back and forth. "What use is that? Let me have the money, to build a reef beacon in his name." He thought for a while longer, then said timidly: "Perchance I could call further on your kindness. Would you know if . . . you're 'ware, sir, soldiers on leave and the girls they meet . . . it's possible Tom left a child somewhere . . ."

  "I'm sorry, I wouldn't know how to find out about that."

  "Well, well, I expected nay more. Derek must be wed soon then, if the name's to live."

  Flandry drew hard on a cigaret, taken from a waterproof case. He got out: "I have to tell you what your son said as he lay dying."

  "Aye. Say forth, and fear me nay. Shall the fish blame the hook if it hurts him a little?"

  Flandry related it. At the end, the old man's eyes closed, just as Derek's had done, and he let the empty glass slip from his fingers.

  Finally: "I know naught of this. Will you believe that, Captain?"

  "Yes, sir," Flandry answered.

  "You fear Derek may b
e caught in the same net?"

  "I hope not."

  "I too. I'd nay have any son of mine in a scheme that works by midnight murder—whatever they may think of your Empire. Tom . . . Tom was young and didn't understand what was involved. Will you believe that too?" asked John Umbolu anxiously. Flandry nodded. The Nyanzan dropped his head and cupped his hands about the pipe bowl, as if for warmth. "But Derek . . . why, Derek's in the Council. Derek would have open eyes—Let it nay be so!"

  Flandry left him with himself for a time, then: "Where might any young man . . . first have encountered the agents of such a conspiracy?"

  "Who knows, sir? 'Fore his growth is gained, an Umbolu boy has shipped to all ports of the planet. Or there are always sailors from every nation on Nyanza, right here in Jairnovaunt."

  Flandry held out the knife he had taken. "This belongs to a bearded man," he said. "Can you tell me anything about it?"

  The faded eyes peered close. "Rossala work." It was an instant recognition, spoken in a lifeless voice. "And the Rossala men flaunt whiskers."

  "As I came ashore here," said Flandry, "a bearded person with this knife tried to kill me. He got away, but—"

  He stopped. The old sea captain had risen. Flandry looked up at an incandescent mask of fury, and suddenly he realized that John Umbolu was a very big man.

  Gigantic fists clenched over the Terran's head. The voice roared like thunder, one majestic oath after the next, until rage at last found meaningful words. "Sneak assassins on my very ground! 'Gainst my guest! By the blazing bones of Almighty God, sir, you'll let me question every Rossalan in Jairnovaunt and flay yon one 'live!"

  Flandry rose too. An upsurging eagerness tingled in him, a newborn plot. And at the same time—Warily, child, warily! You'll not get cooperation at this counter without some of the most weasel-like arguments and shameless emotional buttonpushing in hell's three-volume thesaurus.

  Well, he thought, that's what I get paid for.

  VI

  Hours had gone when he left the house. He had eaten there, but sheer weariness dragged at him. He swam quite slowly back to the Commander's rock. When he stood on it, he rested for a while, looking over the sea.

  Loa was up, Luna-sized, nearly full, but with several times the albedo of Earth's moon. High in a clear blackness, it drowned most of the alien constellations. The marker lights about every rock, color-coded for depth so that all Jairnovaunt was one great jewelbox, grew pallid in the moon-dazzle off the ocean.

  Flandry took out a cigaret. It was enough to be alone with that light: at least, it helped. Imperial agents ought to have some kind of conscienceectomy performed. . . . He drew smoke into his lungs.

  "Can you nay rest, Captain?"

  The low woman-voice brought him bounding around. When he saw the moonlight gleam off Tessa Hoorn, he put back his gun, sheepishly.

  "You seem a wee bit wakeful yourself," he answered. "Unless you are sleep-walking, or sleep-diving or whatever people do here. But no, surely I am the one asleep. Don't rouse me."

  The moon turned her into darknesses and lithe witcheries, with great marching waters to swirl beneath her feet. She had been swimming—Loa glistened off a million cool drops, her only garment. He remembered how they had talked and laughed and traded songs and recollections and even hopes, under tall skies or moonlit sails. His heart stumbled, and glibness died.

  "Aye. My net would nay hold fast to sleep this night." She stood before him, eyes lowered. It was the first time she had not met his gaze. In the streaming unreal light, he saw how a pulse fluttered in her throat. "So I wended from my bunk and—" The tones faded.

  "Why did you come here again?" he asked.

  "Oh . . . it was a place to steer for. Or perchance . . . Nay!" Her lips tried to smile, but were not quite steady. "Where were you this evening, sith we are so curious?"

  "I spoke to Old John," he said, because so far truth would serve his purpose. "It wasn't easy."

  "Aye. I wouldn't give your work to an enemy, Dominic. Why do you do it?"

  He shrugged. "It's all I really know how to do."

  "Nay!" she protested. "To aid a brute of a governor or a null of a resident—you're too much a man. You could come . . . here, even—Nay, the sun wouldn't allow it for long. . . ."

  "It's not quite for nothing," he said. "The Empire is—" he grinned forlornly—"less perfect than myself. True. But what would replace it is a great deal worse."

  "Are you so sure, Dominic?"

  "No," he said in bitterness.

  "You could dwell on a frontier world and do work you are sure is worth yourself. I . . . even I have thought, there is more in this universe than Nyanza . . . if such a planet had oceans, I could—"

  Flandry said frantically: "Didn't you mention having a child, Tessa?"

  "Aye, a Commander-child, but sith I'm unwed as yet the boy was adopted out." He looked his puzzlement and she explained, as glad as he to be impersonal: "The Commander must not wed, but lies with whom he will. It's a high honor, and if she be husbandless the woman gets a great dowry from him. The offspring of these unions are raised by the mothers' kin; when they are all old enough, the councillors elect the best-seeming son heir apparent."

  Somewhere in his rocking brain, Flandry thought that the Terran Emperors could learn a good deal from Nyanza. He forced a chuckle and said: "Why, that makes you the perfect catch, Tessa—titled, rich, and the mother of a potential chieftain. How did you escape so far?"

  "There was nay the right man," she whispered. "Inyanduma himself is so much a man, see you, for all his years. Only Derek Umbolu—how you unlock me, Terran!—and him too proud to wed 'bove his station." She caught her breath and blurted desperately: "But I'm nay more a maid, and I will nay wait until Full Entropy to be again a woman."

  Flandry could have mumbled something and gotten the devil out of there. But he remembered through a brawling in his blood that he was an Imperial agent and that something had been done by this girl in southern waters which they kept secret from him.

  He kissed her.

  She responded shyly at first, and then with a hunger that tore at him. They sat for a long while under the moon, needing no words, until Flandry felt with dim surprise that the tide was licking his feet.

  Tessa rose. "Come to my house," she said.

  It was the moment when he must be a reptile-blooded scoundrel . . . or perhaps a parfait gentil knight, he was desolately uncertain which. He remained seated, looking up at her, where she stood crowned with stars, and said:

  "I'm sorry. It wouldn't do."

  "Fear me naught," she said with a small catch of laughter, very close to a sob. "You can leave when you will. I'd nay have a man who wouldn't stay freely. But I'll do my best to keep you, Dominic, dearest."

  He fumbled after another cigaret. "Do you think I'd like anything better?" he said. "But there's a monster loose on this planet, I'm all but sure of it. I will not give you just a few hours with half my mind on my work. Afterward—" He left it unfinished.

  She stood quiet for a time that stretched.

  "It's for Nyanza too," he pleaded. "If this goes on unreined, it could be the end of your people."

  "Aye," she said in a flat tone.

  "You could help me. When this mission is finished—"

  "Well . . . what would you know?" She twisted her face away from his eyes.

  He got the cigaret lighted and squinted through the smoke. "What were you doing in The Kraal?"

  "I'm nay so sure now that I do love you, Dominic."

  "Will you tell me, so I'll know what I have to face?"

  She sighed. "Rossala is arming. They are making warcraft, guns, torpedoes—none nuclear, sith we have nay facilities for it, but more than the Terran law allows us. I don't know why, though rumor speaks of sunken Uhunhu. The Sheikh guards his secrets. But there are whispers of freedom. It may or may not be sooth. We'll nay make trouble with the Imperium for fellow Nyanzans, but . . . we arm ourselves, too, in case Rossala should start again the o
ld wars. I arranged an alliance with The Kraal."

  "And if Rossala should not attack you, but revolt against Terra?" asked Flandry. "What would your own re-armed alliance do?"

  "I know naught 'bout that. I am but one Nyanzan. Have you nay gained enough?"

  She slammed down her 'lung helmet and dove off the edge. He did not see her come up again.

  VII

  With a whole planetful of exotic sea foods to choose from, the Commander hospitably breakfasted his guest on imported beefsteak. Flandry walked out among morning tide pools, through a gusty salt wind, and waited in grimness and disgruntlement for events to start moving.

  He was a conspicuous figure in his iridescent white garments, standing alone on a jut of rock with the surf leaping at his feet. A harpoon gunner could have fired upward from the water and disappeared. Flandry did not take his eyes off the blue and green whitecaps beyond the breakers. His mind dwelt glumly on Tessa Hoorn . . . God damn it, he would go home by way of Morvan and spend a week in its pleasure city and put it all on the expense account. What was the use of this struggle to keep a decaying civilization from being eaten alive, if you never got a chance at any of the decadence yourself?

  A black shape crossed his field of vision. He poised, warily. The man swam like a seal, but straight into the surf. There were sharp rocks in that cauldron—hold it!—Derek Umbolu beat his way through, grasped the wet stone edge Flandry stood on, and chinned himself up. He pushed back his helmet with a crash audible over the sea-thunder and loomed above Flandry like a basalt cliff. His eyes went downward 30 centimeters to lock with the Terran's, and he snarled:

  "What have you done to her?"

  "My lady Hoorn?" Flandry asked. "Unfortunately, nothing."

  A fist cocked. "You lie, Lubber! I know the lass. I saw her this dawn and she had been weeping."

  Flandry smiled lop-sided. "And I am necessarily to blame? Don't you flatter me a bit? She spoke rather well of you, Captain."