Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga

by Poul Anderson

  I do not, myself, believe that history will necessarily repeat itself to this extent. Nor do I deny that it might. Nobody knows. Equally uncertain, at the present state of our knowledge, is the validity of some assumptions about human genetics and psychobiology which I made for narrative purposes. Here is just a story which I hope you will enjoy.

  —Poul Anderson, 1978

  THE NIGHT FACE

  I

  The Quetzal did not leave orbit and swing toward the planet until she got an all-clear from the boat which had gone ahead to make arrangements. Even then her approach was cautious, as was fitting in a region as little known as this. Miguel Tolteca expected he would have a couple of hours free to watch the scenery unfold.

  He was not exactly a sybarite, but he liked to do things in style. First he dialed PRIVACY on his stateroom door, lest some friendly soul barge in to pass the time of day. Then he put Castellani’s Symphony No. 2 in D Minor with Subsonics on the tapester, mixed himself a rum and conchoru, converted the bunk to a lounger, and sat back with his free hand on the controls of the exterior scanner. Its screen grew black and full of wintry unwinking stars. He searched in a clockwise direction until Gwydion swam into view, a tiny disc upon darkness, the clearest blue he had ever seen.

  The door chimed. “Oa,” called Tolteca through the comunit, irritated, “can you not read?”

  “My mistake,” said the voice of Raven. “I thought you were the chief of the expedition.”

  Tolteca swore, folded the lounger into a chair, and stepped across the little room. A slight, momentary change in weight informed him that the Quetzal had put on a spurt of extra acceleration. Doubtless to dodge some meteorite swarm, the engineer part of him thought. They’d be more common here than around Nuevamerica, this being a newer system. . . . Otherwise the pseudogee field held firm. The spaceship was a precision instrument.

  He opened the door. “Very well, Commandant.” He pronounced the hereditary title with a curtness that approached insult. “What is so urgent?”

  Raven stood still for an instant, observing him. Tolteca was a young man, middling tall, with wide, stiffly held shoulders. His face was thin and sharp, under brown hair drawn back into the short queue customary on his planet, and the eyes were levelly aimed. However much the United Republics of Nuevamerica made of their shiny new democracy, it meant something to stem from one of their old professional families. He wore the uniform of the Argo Astrographical Company, but that was only a simple, pleasing version of his people’s everyday garb: blue tunic, gray culottes, white stockings, and no insignia.

  Raven came in and closed the door. “By chance,” he said, his tone mild again, “one of my men overheard some of yours dicing to settle who should debark first after you and the ship’s captain.”

  “Well, that sounds harmless enough,” said Tolteca sarcastically. “Do you expect us to observe any official pecking order?”

  “No. What—um—puzzled me was, nobody mentioned my own detachment.”

  Tolteca raised his brows. “You wanted your men to sit in on the dice game?”

  “According to what my soldier reported to me, there seems to be no doctrine for planetfall and afterward.”

  “Well,” said Tolteca, “as a simple courtesy to our hosts, Captain Utiel and I—and you, if you wish—will go out first to greet them. There’s to be quite a welcoming committee, we’re told. But beyond that, good ylem, Commandant, what difference does it make who comes down the gangway in what order?”

  Raven fell motionless again. It was the common habit of Lochlanna aristocrats. They didn’t stiffen at critical instants. They rarely showed any physical rigidity; but their muscles seemed to go loose and their eyes glazed over with calculation. Tolteca sometimes thought that that alone made them so alien that the Namerican Revolution had always been inevitable.

  Finally—thirty seconds later, but it seemed longer—Raven said, “I can see how this misunderstanding occurred, Sir Engineer. Your people have developed several unique institutions in the fifty years since gaining independence, and have forgotten some of our customs. Certainly the concept of exploration, even treaty-making, as a strictly private, commercial enterprise, is not Lochlanna. We have been making unconscious assumptions about each other. The fact that our two groups have kept so much apart on this voyage has helped maintain those errors. I offer apology.”

  It was not relevant, but Tolteca was driven to snap, “Why should you apologize to me? I’m doubtless also to blame.”

  Raven smiled. “But I am a Commandant of the Oakenshaw Ethnos.”

  As if that bland purr had attracted him, a cat stuck his head out of the Lochlanna’s flowing surcoat sleeve. Zio was a Siamese tom, big, powerful, and possessed of a temper like mercury fulminate. His eyes were cold blue in the brown mask. “Mneowrr,” he said remindingly. Raven scratched him under the chin. Zio tilted back his head and raced his motor.

  Tolteca gulped down an angry retort. Let the fellow have his superiority complex. He struck a cigarette and smoked in short hard puffs. “Never mind that,” he said. “What’s the immediate problem?”

  “You must correct the wrong impression among your men. My troop goes out first.”

  “What? If you think—”

  “In combat order. The spacemen will stand by to lift ship if anything goes awry. When I signal, you and Captain Utiel may emerge and make your speeches. But not before.”

  For a space Tolteca could find no words. He could only stare.

  Raven waited, impassive. He had the Lochlanna build, the result of many generations on a planet with one-fourth again the standard surface gravity. Though tall for one of his own race, he was barely of average Namerican height. Thick-boned and thick-muscled, he moved like his cat, a gait which had always appeared slippery and sneaking to Tolteca’s folk. His head was typically long, with the expected disharmony of broad face, high cheekbones, hook nose, sallow skin which looked youthful because genetic drift had eliminated the beard. His hair, close cropped, was a cap of midnight, and his brows met above the narrow green eyes. His clothes were not precisely gaudy, but the republican simplicity of Nuevamerica found them barbaric—high-collared blouse, baggy blue trousers tucked into soft half boots, surcoat embroidered with twined snakes and flowers, a silver dragon brooch. Even aboard ship, Raven wore dagger and pistol.

  “By all creation,” whispered Tolteca at last. “Do you think we’re on one of your stinking campaigns of conquest?”

  “Routine precautions,” said Raven.

  “But, the first expedition here was welcomed like—like—Our own advance boat, the pilot, he was feted till he could hardly stagger back aboard!”

  Raven shrugged, earning an indignant look from Zio. “They’ve had almost one standard year to think over what the first expedition told them. We’re a long way from home in space, and even longer in time. It’s been twelve hundred years since the breakup of the Commonwealth isolated them. The whole Empire rose and fell while they were alone on that one planet. Genetic and cultural evolution have done strange work in shorter periods.”

  Tolteca dragged on his cigarette and said roughly, “Judging by the data, those people think more like Namericans than you do.”

  “Indeed?”

  “They have no armed forces. No police, even, in the usual sense; public service monitors is the best translation of their word. No—well, one thing we have to find out is the extent to which they do have a government. The first expedition had too much else to learn, to establish that clearly. But beyond doubt, they haven’t got much.”

  “Is this good?”

  “By my standards, yes. Read our Constitution.”

  “I have done so. A noble document for your planet.” Raven paused, scowling. “If this Gwydion were remotely like any other lost colony I’ve ever heard of, there would be small reason for worry. Common sense alone, the knowledge that overwhelming power exists to avenge any treachery toward us, would stay them. But don’t you see, when there is no evidence of in
ternecine strife, even of crime—and yet they are obviously not simple children of nature—I can’t guess what their common sense is like.”

  “I can,” clipped Tolteca, “and if your bully boys swagger down the gangway first, aiming guns at people with flowers in their hands, I know what that common sense will think of us.”

  Raven’s smile was oddly charming on that gash of a mouth. “Credit me with some tact. We will make a ceremony of it.”

  “Looking ridiculous at best—they don’t wear uniforms on Gwydion—and transparent at worst—for they’re no fools. Your suggestion is declined.”

  “But I assure you—”

  “No, I said. Your men will debark individually, and unarmed.”

  Raven sighed. “As long as we are exchanging reading lists, Sir Engineer, may I recommend the articles of the expedition to you?”

  “What are you hinting at now?”

  “The Quetzal,” said Raven patiently, “is bound for Gwydion to investigate certain possibilities and, if they look hopeful, to open negotiations with the folk. Admittedly you are in charge of that. But for obvious reasons of safety, Captain Utiel has the last word while we are in space. What you seem to have forgotten is that once we have made planetfall, a similar power becomes mine.”

  “Oa! If you think you can sabotage—”

  “Not at all. Like Captain Utiel, I must answer for my actions at home, if you should make any complaint. However, no Lochlanna officer would assume my responsibility if he were not given corresponding authority.”

  Tolteca nodded, feeling sick. He remembered now. It hadn’t hitherto seemed important. The Company’s operations took men and valuable ships ever deeper into this galactic sector, places where humans had seldom or never been even at the height of the empire. The hazards were unpredictable, and an armed guard on every vessel was in itself a good idea. But then a few old women in culottes, on the Policy Board, decided that plain Namericans weren’t good enough. The guard had to be soldiers born and bred. In these days of spreading peace, more and more Lochlanna units found themselves at loose ends and hired out to foreigners. They kept pretty much aloof, on ship and in camp, and so far it hadn’t worked out badly. But the Quetzal . . .

  “If nothing else,” said Raven, “I have my own men to think of, and their families at home.”

  “But not the future of interstellar relations?”

  “If those can be jeopardized so easily, they don’t seem worth caring about. My orders stand. Please instruct your men accordingly.”

  Raven bowed. The cat slid from his nesting place, dug claws in the coat, and sprang up on the man’s shoulder. Tolteca could have sworn that the animal sneered. The door closed behind them.

  Tolteca stood immobile for a while. The music reached a crescendo, reminding him that he had wanted to enjoy approach. He glanced back at the screen. The ship’s curving path had brought the sun Ynis into scanner view. Its radiance stopped down by the compensator circuits, it spread corona and great wings of zodiacal light like nacre across the stars. The prominences must also be spectacular, for it was an F8 with a mass of about two Sols and a corresponding luminosity of almost fourteen. But at its distance, 3.7 Astronomical Units, only the disc of the photosphere could be seen, covering a bare ten minutes of arc. All in all, a most ordinary main sequence star. Tolteca twisted dials until he found Gwydion again.

  The planet had gained apparent size, though he still saw it as little more than a chipped turquoise coin. The cloud bands and aurora should soon become visible. No continents, however. While the first expedition had reported Gwydion to be terrestroid in astonishing detail, it was about ten percent smaller and denser than Old Earth—to be expected of a younger world, formed when there were more heavy atoms in the universe—and thus possessed less total land area. What there was was divided into islands and archipelagos. Broad shallow oceans made the climate mild from pole to pole. Here came its moon, 1600 kilometers in diameter, 96,300 kilometers in orbital radius, swinging from behind the disc like a tiny hurried firefly.

  Tolteca considered the backdrop of the scene with a sense of eeriness. This close, the Nebula’s immense cloud of dust and gas showed only as a region where stars were fewer and paler than elsewhere. Even nearby Rho Ophiuchi was blurred. Sol, of course, was hidden from telescopes as well as from eyes, an insignificant yellow dwarf two hundred parsecs beyond that veil, which its light would never pierce. I wonder what’s happening there, thought Tolteca. It’s long since we had any word from Old Earth.

  He recollected what Raven had ordered, and cursed.

  II

  The pasture where the Quetzal had been asked to settle her giant cylinder was about five kilometers south of the town called Instar.

  From the gangway Tolteca had looked widely across rolling fields. Hedges divided them into meadows of intense blossom-flecked green; plow-lands where the first delicate shoots of grain went like a breath across brown furrows; orchards and copses and scattered outbuildings made toylike by distance. The River Camlot gleamed between trees which might almost have been poplars. Instar bestrode it, red tile roofs above flower gardens around which the houses were built.

  Most roads across that landscape were paved, but narrow and leisurely winding. Sometimes, Tolteca felt sure, a detour had been made to preserve an ancient tree or the lovely upswelling of a hill. Eastward the ground flattened, sloping down to a dike that cut off his view of the sea. Westward it climbed, until forested hills rose abruptly on the horizon. Beyond them could be seen mountain peaks, some of which looked volcanic. The sun hung just above their snows. You didn’t notice how small it was in the sky, for it radiated too brightly to look at and the total illumination was almost exactly one standard sol. Cumulus clouds loomed in the southwest, and a low cool wind ruffled the puddles left by a recent shower.

  Tolteca leaned back on the seat of the open car. “This is more beautiful than the finest places on my own world,” he said to Dawyd. “And yet Nuevamerica is considered extremely Earthlike.”

  “Thank you,” replied the Gwydiona. “Though we can take little credit. The planet was here, with its intrinsic conditions, its native biochemistry and ecology, all eminently suited to human life. I understand that God wears a different face in most of the known cosmos.”

  “Uh—” Tolteca hesitated. The local language, as recorded by the first expedition and learned by the second before starting out, was not altogether easy for him. Like Lochlanna, it derived from Anglic, whereas the Namericans had always spoken Ispanyo. Had he quite understood that business with “God”? Somehow, it didn’t sound conventionally religious. But then, the secular orientation of his own culture made him liable to misinterpret theological references.

  “Yes,” he said presently. “The variations in so-called terrestroid planets are not great from a percentage standpoint, but to human beings they make a tremendous difference. On one continent of my own world, for example, settlement was impossible until a certain common genus of plant had been eradicated. It was harmless most of the year, but the pollen it broadcast in spring happened to contain a substance akin to botulinus toxin.”

  Dawyd gave him a startled look. Tolteca wondered what he had said wrong. Had he misused some local word? Of course, he’d had to employ the Ispanyo name for the poison. . . . “Eradicate?” murmured Dawyd. “Do you mean destroyed? Entirely?” Catching himself, slipping back into his serene manner with what looked like practiced ease, he said, “Well, let us not discuss technicalities right away. It was doubtless one of the Night Faces.” He took his hand from the steering rod long enough to trace a sign in the air.

  Tolteca felt a trifle puzzled. The first expedition had emphasized in its reports that the Gwydiona were not superstitious, though they had a vast amount of ceremony and symbolism. To be sure, the first expedition had landed on a different island; but it had found the same culture everywhere that it visited. (And it had failed to understand why men occupied only the region between latitudes 25 and 70 degrees north, altho
ugh many other spots looked equally pleasant. There had been so much else to learn.) When the Quetzal’s advance boat arrived, Instar had been suggested as the best landing site merely because it was one of the larger towns and possessed a college with an excellent reference library.

  The ceremonies of welcome hadn’t been overwhelming, either. The whole of Instar had turned out—men, women, and children with garlands, pipes, and lyres. There had been no few visitors from other areas; still the crowd wasn’t as big as would have been the case on many planets. After the formal speeches, music was played in honor of the newcomers and a ballet was presented, a thing of masks and thin costumes whose meaning escaped Tolteca, but which made a stunning spectacle. And that was all. The assembly broke up in general cordiality—not the milling, backslapping, handshaking kind of reception that Namericans would have given, but neither the elaborate and guarded courtesy of Lochlann. Individuals had talked in a friendly way to individuals, given invitations to stay in private homes, asked eager questions about the outside universe. And at last most of them walked back to town. But each foreigner got a ride in a small, exquisite electric automobile.

  Only a nominal guard of crewmen, and a larger detachment of Lochlanna, remained with the ship. No offense had been taken at Raven’s wariness, but Tolteca still smoldered.

  “Do you indeed wish to abide at my house?” asked Dawyd.

  Tolteca inclined his head. “It would be an honor, Sir—” He stopped. “Forgive me, but I do not know what your title is.”