Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra

by Poul Anderson

  "Are you, then, a Terran loyalist?" she demanded.

  He shook his head. "A civilization loyalist. Which is a pretty thin, abstract thing to be; and I keep wondering whether we can preserve civilization or even should.

  "Well. Conflict of interest is normal. Compromise is too, especially with as valuable a tributary as Dennitza—provided it stays tributary. Now we'd received strong accusations that Dennitzans were engineering revolt on Diomedes, presumably in preparation for something similar at home. His Majesty's government wasn't about to bull right in. That'd be sure to bring on trouble we can ill afford, perhaps quite unnecessarily. But the matter had to be investigated.

  "And I, I learned a Dennitzan girl of ranking family had been caught at subversion on Diomedes. Her own statements out of partial recollections, her undisguised hatred of the Imperium, they seemed to confirm those accusations. Being asked to look into the questions, what would I do but bring you along?"

  He sighed. "A terrible mistake. We should've headed straight for Dennitza. Hindsight is always keen, isn't it, while foresight stays myopic, astigmatic, strabismic, and drunk. But I haven't even that excuse. I'd guessed at the truth from the first. Instead of going off to see if I could prove my hunch or not—" His fist smote the table. "I should never have risked you the way I did, Kossara!"

  She thought, amazed, He is in pain about that. He truly is.

  "A-a-ah," Flandry said. "I'm a ruthless bastard. Better hunter than prey, and have we any third choice in these years? Or so I thought. You... were only another life."

  He ground out his cigarette, sprang from the bench, strode back and forth along the cabin. Sometimes his hands were gripped together behind him, sometimes knotted at his sides. His voice turned quick and impersonal:

  "You looked like a significant pawn, though. Why such an incredibly bungled job on you? Including your enslavement on Terra. I'd have heard about you in time, but it was sheer luck I did before you'd been thrown into a whorehouse. And how would your uncle the Gospodar react to that news if it reached him?

  "Might it be intended to reach him?

  "Oh, our enemies couldn't be certain what'd happen; but you tilted the probabilities in their favor. They must've spent considerable time and effort locating you. Flandry's Law: ‘Given a sufficiently large population, at least one member will fit any desired set of specifications.' The trick is to find that member."

  "What?" Kossara exclaimed. "Do you mean—because I was who I was, in the position I was—that's why Dennitza—" She could speak no further.

  "Well, let's say you were an important factor," he replied. "I'm not sure just how you came into play, though I can guess. On the basis of my own vague ideas, I made a decoy of you in the manner you've already heard about. That involved first deliberately antagonizing you on the voyage; then deliberately gambling your life, health, sanity—"

  He halted in midstride. His shoulders slumped. She could barely hear him, though his look did not waver from hers: "Every minute makes what I did hurt worse."

  She wanted to tell him he was forgiven, yes, go take his hands and tell him; but no, he had lied too often. With an effort, she said, "I am surprised."

  His grin was wry. "Less than I am." Returning, he flopped back onto the bench, crossed ankle over thigh till he peered across his knee at her, swallowed a long draught from his glass, took out his cigarette case; and when the smoke was going he proceeded:

  "Let's next assume the enemy's viewpoint, i.e. what I learned and deduced.

  "They—a key one of them, anyhow—he realizes the Terran Empire is in an era when periods of civil war are as expectable as bouts of delirium in chronic umwi fever. I wasn't quite aware of the fact myself till lately. A conversation I had set me thinking and researching. But he knew right along, my opponent. At last I see what he's been basing his strategy on for the past couple of decades. Knowing him, if he believes the theory, I think I will. These days we're vulnerable to fratricide, Kossara. And what better for Merseia, especially if just the right conflict can be touched off at just the right moment?

  "We've been infiltrated. They've had sleepers among us for... maybe a lifetime... notably in my own branch of service, where they can cover up for each other... and notably during this past generation, when the chaos first of the Josip regime, then the succession struggle, made it easier to pass off their agents as legitimate colonial volunteers.

  "The humans on Diomedes, brewing revolution with the help of a clever Alatanist pitch—thereby diverting some of our attention to Ythri—they weren't Dennitzans. They were creatures of the Roidhunate, posing as Dennitzans. Oh, not blatantly; that'd've been a giveaway. And they were sincerely pushing for an insurrection, since any trouble of ours is a gain for them. But a major objective of the whole operation was to drive yet another wedge between your people and mine, Kossara."

  Frost walked along her spine. She stared at him and whispered: "Those men who caught me—murdered Trohdwyr—tortured and sentenced me—they were Merseians too?"

  "They were human," Flandry said flatly, while he unfolded himself into a more normal posture. "They were sworn-in members of the Imperial Terran Naval Intelligence Corps. But, yes, they were serving Merseia. They arrived to ‘investigate' and thus add credence to the clues about Dennitza which their earlier-landed fellows had already been spreading around.

  "Let the Imperium get extremely suspicious of the Gospodar—d'you see? The Imperium will have to act against him. It dare not stall any longer. But this action forces the Gospodar to respond—he already having reason to doubt the goodwill of the Terrans—"

  Flandry smashed his cigarette, drank, laid elbows on table and said most softly, his face near hers:

  "He'd hear rumors, and send somebody he could trust to look into them. Aycharaych—I'll describe him later—Aycharaych of the Roidhunate knew that person would likeliest be you. He made ready. Your incrimination, as far as Terra was concerned—your degradation, as far as Dennitza was concerned—d'you see? Inadequate by themselves to provoke war. Still, remind me and I'll tell you about Jenkins' Ear. Nations on the brink don't need a large push to send them toppling.

  "I've learned something about how you were lured, after you reached Diomedes. The rest you can tell me, if you will. Because when he isn't weaving mirages, Aycharaych works on minds. He directed the blotting out of your memories. He implanted the false half-memories and that hate of the Empire you carry around. Given his uncanny telepathic capabilities, to let him monitor what drugs, electronics, hypnotism are doing to a brain, he can accomplish what nobody else is able to.

  "But I don't think he totally wiped what was real. That'd have left you too unmistakably worked over. I think you keep most of the truth in you, disguised and buried."

  The air sucked between her teeth. Her fists clenched on the table. He laid a hand across them, big and gentle.

  "I hope I can bring back what you've lost, Kossara." The saying sounded difficult. "And, and free you from those conditioned-reflex emotions. It's mainly a matter of psychotherapy. I don't insist. Ask yourself: Can you trust me that much?"

  XII

  Sickbay was a single compartment, but astonishingly well equipped. Kossara entered with tightness in her gullet and dryness on her tongue. Flandry and Chives stood behind a surgical table. An electronic helmet, swiveled out above the pillow, crouched like an ugly arachnoid. The faint hum of driving energies, ventilation, service and life-support devices, seemed to her to have taken on a shrill note.

  Flandry had left flamboyancy outside. Tall in a plain green coverall, he spoke unsmiling: "Your decision isn't final yet. Before we go any further, let me explain. Chives and I have done this sort of thing before, and we aren't a bad team, but we're no professionals."

  This sort of thing—Muhammad Snell must lately have lain on that mattress, in the dream-bewildered helplessness of narco, while yonder man pumped him dry and injected the swift poison. Shouldn't I fear the Imperialist? Dare I risk becoming the ally of one who treate
d a sentient being as we do a meat animal?

  I ought to feel indignation. I don't, though. Nor do I feel guilty that I don't.

  Well, I'm not revengeful, either. At least, not very much. I do remember how Trohdwyr died because he was an inconvenience; I remember how Mihail Svetich died, in a war Flandry says our enemies want to kindle anew.

  Flandry says—She heard him from afar, fast and pedantic. Had he rehearsed his speech?

  "This is not a hypnoprobe here, of course. It puts a human straight into quasisleep and stimulates memory activity, after a drug has damped inhibitions and emotions. In effect, everything the organism has permanently recorded becomes accessible to a questioner—assuming no deep conditioning against it. The process takes more time and skill than an ordinary quiz, where all that's wanted is something the subject consciously knows but isn't willing to tell. Psychiatrists use it to dig out key, repressed experiences in severely disturbed patients. I've mainly used it to get total accounts, generally from cooperative witnesses—significant items they may have noticed but forgotten. In your case, we'd best go in several fairly brief sessions, spaced three or four watches apart. That way you can assimilate your regained knowledge and avoid a crisis. The sessions will give you no pain and leave no recollection of themselves."

  She brought her whole attention to him. "Do you play the tapes for me when I wake?" she asked.

  "I could," he replied, "but wouldn't you prefer I wiped them? You see, when our questions have brought out a coherent framework of what was buried, a simple command will fix it in your normal memory. By association, that will recover everything else. You'll come to with full recall of whatever episode we concentrated on."

  His eyes dwelt gravely upon her. "You must realize," he continued, "your whole life will be open to us. Well try hard to direct our questioning so we don't intrude. However, there's no avoiding all related and heavily charged items. You'll blurt many of them out. Besides, we'll have to feel our way. Is such-and-such a scrap of information from your recent, bad past—or is it earlier, irrelevant? Often we'll need to develop a line of investigation for some distance before we can be sure.

  "We're bound to learn things you'll wish we didn't. You'll simply have to take our word that we'll keep silence ever afterward... and, yes, pass no judgment, lest we be judged by ourselves.

  "Do you really want that, Kossara?"

  She nodded with a stiff neck. "I want the truth."

  "You can doubtless learn enough for practical purposes by talking to the Gospodar, if he's alive and available when we reach Dennitza. And I make no bones: one hope of mine is gaining insight into the modus operandi of Merseian Intelligence, a few clear identifications of their agents among us... for the benefit of the Empire.

  "I won't compel you," Flandry finished. "Please think again before you decide."

  She squared her shoulders. "I have thought." Holding out her hand: "Give me the medicine."

  The first eventide, her feet dragged her into the saloon. Flandry saw her disheveled, drably clad, signs of weeping upon her, against the stars. She had long been in her own room behind a closed door.

  "You needn't eat here, you know," he said in his gentlest tone.

  "Thank you, but I will," she answered.

  "I admire your courage more than I have words to tell, dear. Come, sit down, take a drink or three before dinner." Since he feared she might refuse, lest that seem to herself like running away from what was in her, he added, "Trohdwyr would like a toast to his manes, wouldn't he?"

  She followed the suggestion in a numb way. "Will the whole job be this bad?" she asked.

  "No." He joined her, pouring Merseian telloch for them both though he really wanted a Mars-dry martini. "I was afraid things might go as they went, the first time, but couldn't see any road around. You did witness Trohdwyr's murder, he suffered hideously, and he'd been your beloved mentor your whole life. The pain wasn't annulled just because your thalamus was temporarily anesthetized. Being your strongest lost memory, already half in consciousness, it came out ahead of any others. And it's still so isolated it feels like yesterday."

  She settled wearily back. "Yes," she said. "Before, everything was blurred, even that. Now... the faces, the whole betrayal—"

  {Nobody died in the cave except Trohdwyr. The rest stood by when a mere couple of marines arrived to arrest her. "You called them!" she screamed to the one who bore the name Steve Johnson, surely not his own. He grinned. Trohdwyr lunged, trying to get her free, win her a chance to scramble down the slope and vanish. The lieutenant blasted him. The life in his tough old body had not ebbed out, under the red moons, when they pulled her away from him.

  Afterward she overheard Johnson: "Why'd you kill the servant? Why not take him along?"

  And the lieutenant: "He'd only be a nuisance. As is, when the Diomedeans find him, they won't get suspicious at your disappearance. They'll suppose the Terrans caught you. Which should make them handier material. For instance, if we want any of those who met you here to go guerrilla, our contact men can warn them they've been identified through data pulled out of you prisoners."

  "Hm, what about us four?"

  "They'll decide at headquarters. I daresay they'll reassign you to a different region. Come on, now, let's haul mass." The lieutenant's boot nudged Kossara, where she slumped wrist-bound against the cold cave wall. "On your feet, bitch!"}

  "His death happened many weeks ago," Flandry said. "Once you get more memories back, you'll see it, feel it in perspective—including time perspective. You'll have done your grieving... which you did, down underneath; and you're too healthy to mourn forever."

  "I will always miss him," she whispered.

  Flandry regarded ghosts of his own. "Yes, I know."

  She straightened. He saw her features harden, as if bones lent strength to flesh. The blue-green eyes turned arctic. "Sir Dominic, you were right in what you did to Snell. Nobody in that gang was—is—fit to live."

  "Well, we're in a war, we and they, the nastier for being undeclared," he said carefully. "What you and I must do, if we can, is keep the sickness from infecting your planet. Or to the extent it has, if I may continue the metaphor, we've got to supply an antibiotic before the high fever takes hold and the eruptions begin."

  His brutal practicality worked as he had hoped, to divert her from both sorrow and rage. "What do you plan?" The question held some of the crispness which ordinarily was hers.

  "Before leaving Diomedes," he said, "I contacted Lagard's field office on Lannach, transmitted a coded message for him to record, and showed him my authority to command immediate courier service. The message is directly to the Emperor. The code will bypass channels. In summary, it says, ‘Hold off at Dennitza, no matter what you hear, till I've collected full information'—followed by a synopsis of all I've learned thus far."

  She began faintly to glow in her exhaustion. "Why, wonderful."

  "M-m-m, not altogether, I'm afraid." Flandry let the telloch savage his throat. "Remember, by now his Majesty's barbarian-quelling on the Spican frontier. He'll move around a lot. The courier may not track him down for a while. Meantime—the Admiralty on Terra may get word which provokes it to emergency action, without consulting Emperor or Policy Board. It has that right, subject to a later court of inquiry. And I've no direct line there. Probably make no difference if I did. Maybe not even any difference what I counsel Hans. I'm a lone agent. They could easily decide I must be wrong."

  He forced a level look at her. "Or Dennitza could in fact have exploded, giving Emperor and Admiralty no choice," he declared. "The Merseians are surely working that side of the street too."

  "You hope I—we can get my uncle and the Skupshtina to stay their hands?" she asked.

  "Yes," Flandry said. "This is a fast boat. However... we'll be a month in transit, and Aycharaych & Co. have a long jump on us."

  {The resident and his lady made her welcome at Thursday Landing. They advised her against taking her research to the Sea of Achan cou
ntries. Unrest was particularly bad there. Indeed, she and her Merseian—pardon, her xenosophont companion—would do best to avoid migratory societies in general. Could they not gather sufficient data among the sedentary and maritime Diomedeans? Those were more intimate with modern civilization, more accustomed to dealing with offworlders, therefore doubtless more relevant to the problem which had caused her planetary government to send her here.

  Striving to mask her nervousness, she met Commander Maspes and a few junior officers of the Imperial Naval Intelligence team that was investigating the disturbances. He was polite but curt. His attitude evidently influenced the younger men, who must settle for stock words and sidelong stares. Yes, Maspes said, it was common knowledge that humans were partly responsible for the revolutionary agitation and organization on this planet. Most Diomedeans believed they were Avalonians, working for Ythri. Some native rebels, caught and interrogated, said they had actually been told so by the agents themselves. And indeed the Alatanist mystique was a potent recruiter.... Yet how could a naïve native distinguish one kind of human from another? Maybe Ythri was being maligned.... He should say no more at the present stage. Had Donna Vymezal had a pleasant journey? What was the news at her home?

  Lagard apologized that he must bar her from a wing of the Residency. "A team member, his work's confidential and—well, you are a civilian, you will be in the outback, and he's a xeno, distinctive appearance—"

  Kossara smiled. "I can dog my hatch," she said; "but since you wish, I'll leash my curiosity." She gave the matter scant thought, amidst everything else.}