She found little to say. He talked for two, mostly appealing to her xenological interests with tales of sophonts he had met. All were fascinating. A few eventually made her laugh.
Books, musical pieces, shows were available by the thousands, in playback or printout. Kossara grew restless anyhow. Flandry had withdrawn immediately after the first breakfast of the voyage (following a nightwatch wherein she slept unexpectedly well) to concentrate on his briefing material. Interstellar space, seen in the optical-compensating screens, was utter splendor; but however fast the Hooligan drove, those immensities changed too slowly for perception. She exercised, prowled around, tried out different hobby kits, at last sought Chives. He was in the galley fixing lunch. "Can I help you?" she offered.
"I regret not, Donna," the Shalmuan answered. "While I have no wish to deprecate your culinary gifts, you can see that Sir Dominic does not willingly trust this excellent chef-machine to prepare his meals, let alone comparative strangers."
She stared at the open-faced sandwiches growing beneath his fingers. Anchovies and pimentos lay across slices of hard-boiled egg on fresh-made mayonnaise, caviar and lemon peel complemented paté de foie gras, cucumber and alfalfa sprouts revitalized cheddar cheese in the dignity of its age... "No, I couldn't do that," she admitted. "You must be a genius."
"Thank you, Donna. I endeavor to give satisfaction. Although, in candor, Sir Dominic provided my initial training and the impetus to develop further."
Kossara drew a long breath. A chance to learn about him? "You were his slave, you said. How did that happen, if I may ask?"
Chives spoke imperturbably, never breaking the rhythm of his work. "My planet of origin has no technologically advanced society, Donna. His late Majesty Josip appointed a sector governor who organized a slave trade in my people, chiefly selling to the barbarians beyond the limes. The charges against those captured for this purpose were, shall we say, arguable; but no one argued. When that governor met with misfortune, his successor attempted to right matters. However, this was impossible. Not even victims still within the Empire could be traced, across thousands of worlds. Sir Dominic merely chanced upon me in a provincial market.
"I was not prepossessing, Donna. My owner had put me up for sale because he doubted I could survive more labor in his mercury mine. Sir Dominic did not buy me. He instigated a game of poker which lasted several days and left him in possession of mine and workers alike."
Chives clicked his tongue. "My former master alleged cheating. Most discourteous of him, especially compared to Sir Dominic's urbanity in inviting him out. The funeral was well attended by the miners. Sir Dominic arranged for their repatriation, but kept me since this was far from Shalmu and, besides, I required a long course of chelating drugs to cleanse my system. Meanwhile he employed me in his service. I soon decided I had no wish to return to a society of... natives... and strove to make myself valuable to him."
Head cocked, chin in hand, tail switching, Chives studied the lunch layout. "Yes, I believe this will suffice. Akvavit and beer for beverages, needless to say. Since you wish occupation, Donna, you may assist me in setting the table."
She scarcely heard. "Moze, if he's a decent man," she blurted, "how can he work for an Empire that lets things like, like your case happen?"
"I have oftener heard Sir Dominic described in such terms as—ah—for example, a slightly overexcited gentleman once called him a cream-stealing tomcat with his conscience in his balls, if you will pardon the expression, Donna. The fact is, he did cheat in that poker game. But as for the Empire, like the proverbial centenarian I suggest you consider the alternative. You will find tableware in yonder cabinet."
Kossara bit her lip and took the hint.
"To the best of my admittedly circumscribed knowledge," Chives said after silver, china, and glass (not vitryl) stood agleam upon snowy linen, "your folk have, on the whole, benefited from the Empire. Perhaps I am misinformed. Would you care to summarize the history for me while the spiced meatballs are heating?"
His slim emerald form squatted down on the deck. Kossara took a bench, stared at her fists resting knotted on her lap, and said dully:
"I don't suppose the details, six hundred years of man on Dennitza, would interest anybody else. That is how long since Yovan Matavuly led the pioneers there. They were like other emigrant groups at the time, hoping not alone for opportunity, room to breathe, but to save traditions, customs, language, race—ethnos, identity, their souls if you like—everything they saw being swallowed up. They weren't many, nor had the means to buy much equipment. And Dennitza... well, there are always problems in settling a new planet, physical environment, biochemistry, countless unknowns and surprises that can be lethal—but Dennitza was particularly hard. It's in an ice age. The habitable areas are limited. And in those days it was far from any trade routes, had nothing really to attract merchants of the League—"
Speaking of the ancestors heartened her. She raised head and voice. "They didn't fall back to barbarism, no, no. But they did, for generations, have to put aside sophisticated technology. They lacked the capital, you see. Clan systems developed; feuding, I must admit; a spirit of local independence. The barons looked after their own. That social structure persisted when industrialism began, and affected it." Quickly: "Don't think we were ever ignorant yokels. The Shkola—university and research centrum—is nearly as old as the colony. The toughest backwoodsman respects learning as much as he does marksmanship or battle bravery."
"Do you not have a Merseian element in the population?" Chives asked.
"Yes. Merseian-descended, that is, from about four hundred years ago. You probably know Merseia itself was starting to modernize and move into space then, under fearful handicaps because of that supernova nearby and because of the multi-cornered struggle for power between Vachs, Gethfennu, and separate nations. The young Dennitzan industries needed labor. They welcomed strong, able, well-behaved displaced persons."
"Do such constitute a large part of your citizenry, Donna?"
"About ten percent of our thirty million. And twice as many human Dennitzans live outsystem; since our industry and trade got well underway, we've been everywhere in that part of space. So what is this nonsense I hear about us being Merseian-infiltrated?"
Yet we might be happier in the Roidhunate, Kossara added.
Chives recalled her: "I have heard mention of the Gospodar. Does my lady care to define his functions? Is he like a king?"
"M-m-m, what do you mean by ‘king'? The Gospodar is elected out of the Miyatovich family by the plemichi, the clan heads and barons. He has supreme executive authority for life or good behavior, subject to the Grand Court ruling on the constitutionality of what he does. A Court verdict can be reversed by the Skuptshtina—Parliament, I suppose you would say, though it has three chambers, for plemichi, commons, and ychani... zmayi... our nonhumans. Domestic government is mainly left to the different okruzhi—baronies? prefectures?—which vary a lot. The head of one of those may inherit office, or may be chosen by the resident clans, or may be appointed by the Gospodar, depending on ancient usage. He—such a nachalnik, I mean—he generally lets townships and rural districts tend their own affairs through locally elected councillors."
"The, ah, ychani are organized otherwise, I take it."
Kossara gave Chives a look of heightened respect. "Yes. Strictly by clans—or better say Vachs—subject only to planetary law unless there's some special fealty arrangement. And while you can find them anywhere on Dennitza, they concentrate on the eastern seaboard of Rodna, the main continent, in the northern hemisphere. Because they can stand cold better than humans, they do most of the fishing, pelagiculture, et cetera."
"Nevertheless, I presume considerable cultural blending has taken place."
"Certainly—"
Recollection rushed in of Trohdwyr, who died on Diomedes whither she was bound; of her father on horseback, a-gallop against a windy autumn forest, and the bugle call he blew which was an immemorial M
erseian war-song; of her mother cuddling her while she sang an Eriau lullaby, "Dwynafor, dwynafor, odhal tiv," and then laughing low, "But you, little sleepyhead, you have no tail, do you?"; of herself and Mihail in an ychan boat on the Black Ocean, snowfall, ice floes, a shout as a sea beast magnificently broached to starboard; moonlit gravbelt flight over woods, summer air streaming past her cheeks, a campfire glimpsed, a landing among great green hunters, their gruff welcome; and, "I'm not hungry," Kossara said, and left the saloon before Chives or, worse, Flandry should see her weep.
V
Flandry's office, if that was the right name for it, seemed curiously spare amidst the sybaritic arrangements Kossara had observed elsewhere aboard. She wondered what his private quarters were like. But don't ask. He might take that as an invitation. Seated in front of the desk behind which he was, she made her gaze challenge his.
"I know this will be painful to you," he said. "You've had a few days to rest, though, and we must go through with it. You see, the team that 'probed you appears to have made every imaginable blunder and maybe created a few new ones." She must have registered her startlement, for he continued, "Do you know how a hypnoprobe works?"
Bitterness rose in her. "Not really," she said. "We have no such vile thing on Dennitza."
"I don't approve either. But sometimes desperation dictates."
Flandry leaned back in his chair, ignited a cigarette, regarded her out of eyes whose changeable gray became the hue of a winter overcast. His tone remained soft: "Let me explain from the ground up. Interrogation is an unavoidable part of police and military work. You can do it on several levels of intensity. First, simple questioning; if possible, questioning different subjects separately and comparing their stories. Next, browbeating of assorted kinds. Then torture, which can be the crude inflicting of pain or something like prolonged sleep deprivation. The trouble with these methods is, they aren't too dependable. The subject may hold out. He may lie. If he's had psychosomatic training, he can fool a lie detector; or, if he's clever, he can tell only a misleading part of the truth. At best, procedures are slow, especially when you have to crosscheck whatever you get against whatever other information you can find.
"So we move on to narcoquiz, drugs that damp the will to resist. Problem here is, first, you often get idiosyncratic reactions or nonreactions. People vary a lot in their body chemistry, especially these days when most of humanity has lived for generations or centuries on worlds that aren't Terra. And, of course, each nonhuman species is a whole separate bowl of spaghetti. Then, second, your subject may have been immunized against everything you have in your medicine chest. Or he may have been deep-conditioned, in which case no drug we know of will unlock his mind."
Between the shoulderblades, Kossara's back hurt from tension. "What about telepathy?" she snapped.
"Often useful but always limited," Flandry said. "Neural radiations have a low rate of information conveyance. And the receiver has to know the code the sender is using. For instance, if I were a telepath, and you concentrated on thinking in Serbic, I'd be as baffled as if you spoke aloud. Or worse, because individual thought patterns vary tremendously, especially in species like ours which don't normally employ telepathy. I might learn to read your mind—slowly, awkwardly, incompletely at best—but find that everybody else's was transmitting gibberish as far as I was concerned. Interspecies telepathy involves still bigger difficulties. And we know tricks for combatting any sort of brain listener. A screen worn on the head will heterodyne the outgoing radiation in a random fashion, make it absolutely undecipherable. Or, again, training, or deep conditioning, can be quite effective."
He paused. Wariness crossed his mobile countenance. "There are exceptions to everything," he murmured, "including what I've said. Does the name Aycharaych mean anything to you?"
"No," she answered honestly. "Why?"
"No matter now. Perhaps later."
"I am a xenologist," Kossara reminded him. "You've told me nothing new."
"Eh? Sorry. Unpredictable what somebody else does or does not know about the most elementary things, in a universe where facts swarm like gnats. Why, I was thirty years old before I learned what the Empress Theodora used to complain about."
She stared past his smile. "You were going to describe the hypnoprobe."
He sobered. "Yes. The final recourse. Direct electronic attack on the brain. On a molecular level, bypassing drugs, conditionings, anything. Except—the subject can have been preconditioned, in his whole organism, to die when this happens. Shock reaction. If the interrogation team is prepared, it can hook him into machines that keep the vital processes going, and so have a fair chance of forcing a response. But his mind won't survive the damage."
He ground his cigarette hard against the lip of an ash-taker before letting the stub be removed. "You weren't in that state, obviously." His voice roughened. "In fact, you had no drug immunization. Why weren't you narcoed instead of 'probed? Or were you, to start with?"
"I don't remember—" Astounded, Kossara exclaimed, "How do you know? About me and drugs, I mean? I didn't myself!"
"The slave dealer's catalogue. His medic ran complete cytological analyses. I put the data through a computer. It found you've had assorted treatments to resist exotic conditions, but none of the traces a psychimmune would show."
Flandry shook his head, slowly back and forth. "An overzealous interrogator might order an immediate 'probe, instead of as a last resort," he said. "But why carry it out in a way that wiped your associated memories? True, such things do happen occasionally. For instance, a particular subject might have a low threshold of tolerance; the power level might then be too high, and disrupt the RNA molecules as they come into play under questioning. As a rule, though, permanent psychological effects—beyond those which bad experiences generally leave—are rare. A competent team will test the subject beforehand and establish the parameters."
He sighed. "Well, the civil war and aftermath lopped a lot off the top, in my Corps too. Coprolite-brained characters who'd ordinarily have been left in safe routineering assignments were promoted to fill vacancies. Maybe you had the bad luck to encounter a bunch of them."
"I am not altogether sorry to have forgotten," Kossara mumbled.
Flandry stroked his mustache. "Ah... you don't think you've suffered harm otherwise?"
"I don't believe so. I can reason as well as ever. I remember my life in detail till shortly before I left for Diomedes, and I'm quite clear about everything since they put me aboard ship for Terra."
"Good." Flandry's warmth seemed genuine. "There are enough unnecessary horrors around, without a young and beautiful woman getting annulled."
He rescued me from the slime pit, she thought. He has shown me every kindness and courtesy.
Thus far. He admits—his purpose is to preserve the Empire.
"What pieces do you recall, Kossara?" Flandry had not used her first name before.
She strained fingers against each other. Her pulse beat like a trapped bird. No. Don't bring them back. The fear, the hate, the beloved dead.
"You see," he went on, "I'm puzzled as to why Dennitza should turn against us. Your Gospodar supported Hans, and was rewarded with authority over his entire sector. Granted, that's laid a terrible work load on him if he's conscientious. But it gives him—his people—a major say in the future of their region. A dispute about the defense mechanisms for your home system and its near neighbors... well, that's only a dispute, isn't it, which he may still have some hope of winning. Can't you give me a better reason for him to make trouble? Isn't a compromise possible?"
"Not with the Imperium!" Kossara said out of upward-leaping rage.
"Between you and me, at least? Intellectually? Won't you give me your side of the story?"
Kossara's blood ebbed. "I... well, speaking for myself, the fighting cost me the man I was going to marry. What use an Empire that can't keep the Pax?"
"I'm sorry. But did any mortal institution ever work perfectly? Hans is
trying to make repairs. Besides, think. Why would the Gospodar—if he did plan rebellion—why would he send you, a girl, his niece, to Diomedes?"
She summoned what will and strength she had left, closed her eyes, searched back through time.
{Bodin Miyatovich was a big man, trim and erect in middle age. He bore the broad, snub-nosed, good-looking family face, framed in graying dark-blond hair and close-cropped beard, tanned and creased by a lifetime of weather. He eyes were beryl. Today he wore a red cloak over brown tunic and breeks, gromatz leather boots, customary knife and sidearm sheathed on a silver-studded belt
Dyavo-like, he paced the sun deck which jutted from the Zamok. In gray stone softened by blossoming creepers, that ancestral castle reared walls, gates, turrets, battlements, wind-blown banners (though the ultimate fortress lay beneath, carved out of living rock) above steep tile roofs and pastel-tinted half-timbered stucco of Old Town houses. Thence Zorkagrad sloped downward; streets changed from twisty lanes to broad boulevards; traffic flitted around geometrical buildings raised in modern materials by later generations. Waterborne shipping crowded docks and bay. Lake Stoyan stretched westward over the horizon, deep blue dusted with glitter cast from a cloudless heaven. Elsewhere beyond the small city, Kossara could from this height see cultivated lands along the shores: green trees, hedges, grass, and yellowing grain of Terran stock; blue or purple where native foliage and pasture remained; homes, barns, sheds, sunpower towers, widely spaced; a glimpse of the Lyubisha River rolling from the north as if to bring greeting from her father's manse. Closer by, the Elena flowed eastward, oceanward; barges plodded and boats danced upon it. Here in the middle of the Kazan, she could not see the crater walls which those streams clove. But she had a sense of them, ramparts against glacier and desert, a chalice of warmth and fertility.
Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra Page 33
