Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga

by Poul Anderson

  “No, hear me out, I pray you. Those whom I carried from Imhotep are unusual. I think they have something to offer which your people will find worthwhile. At least, the Wodenite does.”

  That caught her attention. “The Wodenite who arrived yesterday? I have seen him wandering about, and considered inviting him to come for a talk. And dinner, perhaps,” Pele added in a flick of humor, “abundant though the servings must be.”

  “I can introduce him to you, milady. May I tell you the story?”

  He gave her an account of Axor’s quest, succinct because that should whet her appetite for details. “—In Olga’s Landing he acquired a guide, a vagabond by the name of Diana Crowfeather—”

  Pele raised her hand. “Wait. Is that the dark-haired ragamuffin girl who was strolling at his side?”

  “Who else?” Targovi observed her grow thoughtful, and at the same time seem a bit amused. He continued: “Diana and I are old acquaintances. I decided to do her a kindness and provide passage to Daedalus, where I thought it likelier they would find relics such as they sought than on Imhotep. If naught else, here they would have access to records of whatever may have been discovered but never really publicized. Furthermore, Diana should enjoy this planet, more congenial and almost new to her. And, to be sure, Axor would pay me.” Slipping fast by that bit of mendacity: “Unfortunately, as I said, the outbreak of hostilities left us stranded. In fact, we were arrested and interrogated.

  “Upon release, Axor and Diana spent a while in Aurea searching for information about Ancient relics. What they learned made them decide to fare downstream. They might as well. I stayed behind, striving to wheedle a clearance for return to Imhotep. Nothing availed. Finally I took a boat to Lulach myself. It was an express, therefore it arrived nearly as soon.” Considering the number of such craft and their short turnaround times, Targovi didn’t anticipate anyone would attempt verification of his narrative.

  “An intriguing story,” Pele said, “but what significance has it to me?”

  “Much, I trust, milady,” he replied. “May I ask a question? Are there mysterious remnants on Zacharia?”

  She gave him a close look. “No.”

  “Truly not?”

  “We have occupied the island for centuries and modified every square centimeter of it. We would know.”

  Targovi sighed. “Then the clues that my comrades came upon are false. Ah, I hate the prospect of disappointing them. Their hopes were so high.”

  “It was always inevitable that all sorts of unfounded rumors would go about, concerning us. Why should I lie to you?” Pele stroked her jaw. “I have, myself, heard of huge, inexplicable walls and the like—but afar in the mainland jungles or glaciers. It may be nothing more than travelers’ tales. Your associates should inquire further.”

  “That may be less than easy, donna; for their purses have grown lank too. What has occurred to me is this. You yourself know naught certain about Ancient relics, aside from their existence on some other planets. The subject has not interested you. However, during the centuries that Zacharians have dwelt on Daedalus, their explorers and factors must have ranged over the whole globe, as well as distant worlds. There must be ample records, and mayhap even individuals, to tell what is or is not real. It would save us—Axor—an effort that could prove hopelessly great.”

  “Do you wish me, then, to make a search of our database?” The woman pondered before continuing genially, “Well, I can. You have roused my curiosity.”

  “Ng-ng, milady is most generous,” Targovi said, “but that is not truly what I had in mind. Could we come to Zacharia in person and pursue our inquiries? You know that printed words and pictures, valuable though they be, are not everything. There is no substitute for discourse, for the interplay of brains.”

  Pele sat straight. Her gaze sharpened. “Are you in search of free food and lodging?”

  Targovi chuckled. “Plainly, yes, that is my chief motivation. Give me several standard days without pressure, perchance a week or two, and I can devise some means of keeping myself alive on Daedalus. I might even make trade arrangements with you Zacharians, or at any rate get your kind help in persuading the Navy to let me flit home. You have influence.”

  “I told you we are not a charitable organization.”

  “Nor am I a beggar, donna. My humble goods may prove worthless to you, but at the moment my stock in trade includes Axor himself. Think. He is likely the first Wodenite ever to betread Daedalus. Certainly none else have come here in living memory. Not only can he tell your savants much about his world and his folk—the sort of facts that do not get into dry dispatches—but he has roamed throughout the Empire. Not only is he a leading authority on the fascinating Ancients, he has experience of many and many contemporary societies. Let us admit that this entire sector is provincial, marginally touched by the currents of civilization. Axor will come like a breath of fresh air. I assure you, as a person he is delightful.” Targovi interposed a few seconds of strategic silence. “And . . . the total situation in the galaxy has become totally fluid. Aught can happen, whether mortal danger or radiant opportunity. Axor is no political scientist or seeker of wealth and advantage. But he is widely traveled and he has thought deeply about the things he has witnessed—from his nonhuman, non-Cynthian, non-Merseian perspective. Who knows what clues toward action or precaution lie in what he has to tell? Dare you refuse yourselves the input he can give you?”

  The quietness that fell again grew lengthy. At last Pele asked, “What does the girl want of us?”

  “Why, simply the thrill of newness. Whatever you care to show her. She is young and adventurous . . . We three travel together, you understand.”

  Pele looked beyond him. “She is attractive,” she murmured.

  Targovi knew the reputation of Zacharian men. They practically never married outside their society; that meant exile. They did, though, spread their superior genes through the lesser breeds of humanity whenever they got the chance; and they had a way of creating frequent chances for themselves. Pele must be thinking she could put her brethren on the track of some fun.

  To a degree, Targovi had taken this into his calculations. He didn’t feel he was betraying Diana. She should be capable of reaching her own decisions and enforcing them. If not—well, she’d likely enjoy herself anyway, and bear no permanent scars.

  Zacharian women were different, he recalled. They took occasional outsider lovers, whose later accounts of what had happened were awestruck and wistful. But they never became pregnant by such men. At most, if they thought someone was worthy, they would donate an ovum for in vitro fertilization. Their womb time they kept for their own kind.

  Pele emerged from her reverie. “I’ll call home and inquire,” she said crisply. “I may well recommend a positive answer. You do make a plausible case for yourself. They’ll send someone to investigate closer before they decide. He will want to talk with each of you. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Inn of Tranquil Slumber. That is where my friends are, and I will take a room there too.”

  “You should find this house more hospitable when we summon you,” Pele said. Conviviality provides openings for the probing of character. “At present I have my work to do. Good day.”

  Diana sped to meet him, over the cobblestones of the hostel courtyard. “Oh, Targovi, old dear!” She hugged him till his firmly muscled ribs creaked. The fragrance of her hair and flesh filled his tendrils. “Welcome, welcome!”

  “How have you two fared?” he asked.

  She let him go and danced in the sunlight. “Wonderful,” she caroled. “Listen. We went parleyin’ around, and right away we heard about what’s got to be Ancient ruins, with inscriptions, in the jungle south of Ghundrung.”

  “The Donarrian settlement? But that’s far downstream, and then you’d have to outfit an expedition overland. Where’s the money coming from?”

  “Oh, we’ll earn it. Axor already has an offer from a lumberin’ company. He can snake a log throu
gh the woods cheaper’n any gravtrac can airlift it. And me, I’ve lived off odd jobs all my grown-up life. I won’t have any trouble gettin’ by. This is a live town.” Diana sobered. “I’m sure we can find somethin’ for you as well, if you want.”

  “But you’d take months, a year or more, to save what you will need!” Targovi exclaimed. “Meanwhile the war goes on.”

  She cocked her head and stared at him. “What’s that got to do with us? I mean, sure, it’s terrible, but we can’t do anything about it. Can we?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He drew a long breath. “Come aside with me and let us talk,” he said.

  Her jubilation died away as she sensed his uneasiness. “Of course.” She tucked an arm beneath his and led him off. “I’ve found a trail out of town, through the woods, where nobody’ll overhear us.” Her smile was a trifle forlorn. “I want to learn what you’ve been up to anyway, and how you figure to stay out of jail, and, oh, everything.”

  “You shall, as much as is safe for you to know.”

  She bridled. “Now wait a minute! Either you trust me or you don’t. I’ve let you rush me along this far, and conned Axor for you, because you didn’t have a chance to explain. Or so you claimed. Not any more, fellow.”

  He raised his ears. “Ah, you are your father’s child—and your mother’s—eh, little friend? . . . Well, you leave me no choice. Not that I had much left me, after today. My thought was that you, being an honest young person, could best play the part I need played if you believed it was genuine.”

  “Hmf! You don’t know me as well as you think.” Diana frowned. “We might have to shade the truth for Axor. I’ll hate that, but we might have to.”

  “Did I indeed underestimate your potential, all these years?” Targovi purred.

  They said no more until they were well into the forest east of town. The trail ran along the river, a short way in from the high bank, so that water could be seen agleam beyond tree boles and canebrakes. Underneath canopies of darkling leaves, sun-flecked shadow was somewhat cooler than air out in the open, though still subtropical. It was full of unfamiliar odors, sweet, rank, spicy, or indescribable in Anglic or Toborko. Tiny, pale wings fluttered about. No songs resounded, but now and then curious whistles and glissandos went among the boughs above. The sense of ruthless fecundity was overwhelming. You understood what a war it had been, and was yet, to keep terrestroid life going on this—unusually Terra-like—world.

  Diana remarked as much. “Makes you wonder how firm a grip we’ve got on any place, doesn’t it?” she added. Her tone was hushed. “On our whole Empire, or civilization itself.”

  “The Merseians have long been trying to pry us loose from existence,” Targovi snarled.

  She gave him a troubled glance. “They can’t be that bad. Can they? It’s natural for a Tigery to think of them as purely evil. They’d’ve let your whole race, and the Seafolk’s, die with Starkad. That plan of theirs depended on it. Only, well, it wasn’t ‘they,’ not their tens of billions plottin’ together, it was their government—a few key people in it, nobody else havin’ any inklin’.”

  “Granted. I overspoke myself. Humans are too many, too widespread for extermination. But they can be diminished, scattered, conquered, rendered powerless. That is the Merseian aim.”

  “Why?” she wondered in hurt. “A whole galaxy, a whole universe, a technology that could make every last livin’ bein’ rich—why are we and they locked in this senseless feud?”

  “Because both our sides have governments,” Targovi said, calming down.

  Presently: “Yet Terra’s did rescue enough of my people that we have a chance to survive. I am not ungrateful, nor unaware of where Imhotep’s best interest lies. I actually dream of serving Terra in a wider field than any one planet. What a grand game of play!”

  “I’d sure like to get out there too.” Diana shook herself. “S’pose we stop talkin’ like world-weary eighteen-year-olds—”

  “Sound counsel, coming from a seventeen-year-old.”

  She laughed before she went on: “All right, down to business. You’re a secret agent of the Navy, no matter how low in grade. You’re onto somethin’ havin’ to do with the fight for the throne. You need some kind of help from Axor and me. That’s about the whole of what I know.”

  “I know not a great deal more myself,” Targovi confessed. “What I have is a ghosting of hints, clues, incongruities. They whisper to me that naught which has been happening is what it pretends to be—that we are the victims of a gigantic hoax, like an ice bull which a hunter stampedes toward a cliff edge. But I have no proof. Who would listen to me, an outlaw?”

  Diana squeezed his hand. The fur was velvety under her fingers. “I will.”

  “Thank you, small person who is no longer so small. Now, you too will find it hard to think ill of Admiral Sir Olaf Magnusson.”

  “What?” For an instant she was startled, until she remembered the Tigery touching on this matter before. “Oh, maybe he has let his ambition, his ego run away with him. But we did get a rotten deal out in this sector. He alone kept the Merseians from overrunin’ us—”

  “The crews of his ships had somewhat to do with it. Many died, many live crippled.”

  “Sure, sure. That doesn’t change the fact that Sir Olaf provided the leadership that saved us. ’Twasn’t the first time he’d done that sort of thing, either. And still he wants peace. A strong and honest man on the throne, a man who’s dickered with the Merseians in the past and made them respect him—maybe he really can give us what nobody else can, a lastin’ peace. Maybe that really is worth all the blood and sorrow that Gerhart’s resistance is costin’.”

  “And mayhap not.”

  “Who can tell? I can’t. The Empire’s had succession crises before. It’ll prob’ly have them again in the future. What can we ordinary people do except try to ride them out?”

  “This crisis may be unique.” Targovi marshalled his words before he proceeded:

  “Let me give you the broad outlines first, details afterward. Terran personnel are not the only ones whom last year’s clash left embittered. The Merseian captains were wholly inept. It wasn’t like them in the least. Nor were the issues worth fighting over, save as a pretext for launching a total war against Terra, and everybody who has studied the matter knows Merseia isn’t ready for that. Seemingly the eruption happened because their diplomats blundered, their lines of communication became tangled, and some hotheaded officers took more initiative than proper.

  “But once conflict was rolling, the Merseians should have won. They did have superior strength in these parts. Altogether like them would have been to break our defense, take this sector over, then call for a cease-fire; and at the conference table, they would have held higher cards than Terra. They would have come out greatly advantaged.

  “But they lost in space. Magnusson’s outnumbered fleet cast them back with heavy casualties. We hear this was due to his brilliance. It was not. It was due to stupidity in the Merseian command.

  “Or was it?”

  They walked on mute for a spell, in the shadowy, steamy, twittering jungle.

  “Later will I explain how I collected this information from the Merseians themselves,” Targovi said at length. “Some was readily available, if anybody had directed that statements made by war prisoners should be recorded and collated. Nobody did. Strange, ng-ng? The gathering of more exact, higher-level data put me to a fair amount of trouble. You may find the story entertaining.

  “Now I had also, in my rovings, picked up tales of things seen—spacecraft, especially, coming and going oftener than erstwhile—around Zacharia. This struck me as worthy of further investigation. No doubt the Zacharians have ever used their treaty-given privileges to carry on a bit of smuggling. Their industries need various raw materials and parts from elsewhere. In return, they have customers beyond the Patrician System. Why pay more taxes on the traffic than is unavoidable? The Zacharians never, m-m, overindulged in contraband.
Rather, the slight measure of free trade benefited Daedalus in general. But of recent months, folk on the mainland or out at sea—on this horizonless planet—have marked added landings and takeoffs, ofttimes of ships that belong to no class they recognized. They thought little of it. I, who put their accounts together, thought much.”

  “You’re worried about the Zacharians? Those cloned people? Why, how many of them ever set foot off their island?”

  “Not cloned, precisely,” he reminded. Having rarely been on this globe before, and then as a child, she had the ignorance which follows from lack of interaction. She had better get rid of it. “They reproduce in the common fashion. But they are genetically near-identical, apart from sex. A hermit society, theirs, despite its far-flung enterprises. Nobody really knows what goes on inside it, unless they be other Zacharians dwelling elsewhere in the Empire.”

  “Well, but, Targovi,” Diana protested, “an individualist like you should be the last to think somebody’s up to no good, just because they’re different and value their privacy.”

  “In times of danger—and the winds were foul with danger, already then—you cannot afford to assume that anyone is trustworthy. Certainly not ere you’ve investigated them. A shame, from the moral viewpoint; but secret agents cannot afford morals, either.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “What doctrine called for, my dear. Having found all this spoor, I reported to my superior. As it happens, he was at the top of Intelligence operations on Daedalus, Captain Jerrold Ronan. That was logical, when the Patrician System had never hitherto required surveillance of the truly intensive kind. What was not logical was Ronan’s reaction. He forbade me to follow the trail any farther or bespeak it to anybody whatsoever, and ordered me straight back to Imhotep, despite the fact that this was an implausible move for a trader whose cargo was half unsold.”

  “And you didn’t give up!” Diana cried. “You took it on yourself to keep on trackin’. Oh, you are a Tigery!”