Agent of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

Flandry’s own blade was finding its mark; blood ran down Aycharaych’s gaunt cheeks and his tunic was slashed to red ribbons. The Terran’s plan was simple and the only one possible for him. Aycharaych would tire sooner, his reactions would slow — the thing to do was to stay alive that long!

  He let the Chereionite drive him backward down the length of the hall, leap by leap, whirling around with sword shrieking in hand. Thrust, parry, riposte, recovery — whirr, clang! The rattle of steel filled the hall and the Sartaz watched with hungry eyes.

  The end came as he was wondering if he would ever live to see Betelgeuse rise again. Aycharaych lunged and his blade pierced Flandry’s left shoulder. Before he could disengage it, the man had knocked the weapon spinning from his hand and had his own point against the throat of the Chereionite.

  The hall rang with the savage cheering of Betelgeuse’s masters. “Disarm them!” shouted the Sartaz.

  Flandry drew a sobbing breath. “Your Majesty,” he gasped, “let me guard this fellow while General Bronson goes on with our show.”

  The Sartaz nodded. It fitted his sense of things.

  Flandry thought with a hard glee: Aycharaych, if you open your mouth, so help me, I’ll run you through.

  The Chereionite shrugged, but his smile was bitter.

  “Dominic, Dominic!” cried Aline, between laughter and tears.

  General Bronson turned to her. He was shaken by the near ruin. “Can you talk to them?” he whispered. “I’m no good at it.”

  Aline nodded and stood boldly forth. “Your Majesty and nobles of the court,” she said, “we shall now prove the statements we made about the treachery of Merseia.

  “We of Terra found out that the Merseians were planning to seize Alfzar and hold it and yourselves until their own fleet could arrive to complete the occupation. To that end they are assembling this very night in Gunazar Valley of the Borthudian range. A flying squad will attack and capture the palace—”

  She waited until the uproar had subsided. “We could not tell your Majesty or any of the highest in the court,” she resumed coolly, “for the Merseian spies were everywhere and we had reason to believe that one of them could read your minds. If they had known anyone knew of their plans, they would have acted at once. Instead we contacted General Bronson, who was not high enough to merit their attention, but who did have enough power to act as the situation required.

  “We planted a trap for the enemy. For one thing, we mounted telescopic telecameras in the valley. With your permission, I will now show what is going on there this instant.”

  She turned a switch and the scene came to life — naked crags and cliffs reaching up toward the red moons, and a stir of activity in the shadows. Armored forms were moving about, setting up atomic guns, warming the engines of spaceships — and they were Merseians.

  The Sartaz snarled. Someone asked, “How do we know this is not a falsified transmission?”

  “You will be able to see their remains for yourself,” said Aline. “Our plan was very simple. We planted atomic land mines in the ground. They are radio controlled.” She held up a small switch-box wired to the televisor, and her smile was grim. “This is the control. Perhaps your Majesty would like to press the button?”

  “Give it to me,” said the Sartaz thickly. He thumbed the switch.

  A blue-white glare of hell-flame lit the screen. They had a vision of the ground fountaining upward, the cliffs toppling down, a cloud of radioactive dust boiling up toward the moons, and then the screen went dark.

  “The cameras have been destroyed,” said Aline quietly. “Now, your Majesty, I suggest that you send scouts there immediately. They will find enough remains to verify what the televisor has shown. I would further suggest that a power which maintains armed forces within your own territory is not a friendly one!”

  Korvash and Aycharaych were to be deported with whatever other Merseians were left in the system — once Betelgeuse had broken diplomatic relations with their state and begun negotiating an alliance with Terra. The evening before they left, Flandry gave a small party for them in his apartment. Only he and Aline were there to meet them when they entered.

  “Congratulations,” said Aycharaych wryly. “The Sartaz was so furious he wouldn’t even listen to our protestations. I can’t blame him — you certainly put us in a bad light.”

  “No worse than your own,” grunted Korvash angrily. “Hell take you for a lying hypocrite, Flandry. You know that Terra has her own forces and agents in the Betelgeusean System, hidden on wild moons and asteroids. It’s part of the game.”

  “Of course I know it,” smiled the Terran. “But does the Sartaz? However, it’s as you say — the game. You don’t hate the one who beats you in chess. Why then hate us for winning this round?”

  “Oh, I don’t,” said Aycharaych. “There will be other rounds.”

  “You’ve lost much less than we would have,” said Flandry. “This alliance has strengthened Terra enough for her to halt your designs, at least temporarily. But we aren’t going to use that strength to launch a war against you, though I admit that we should. The Empire wants only to keep the peace.”

  “Because it doesn’t dare fight a war,” snapped Korvash.

  They didn’t answer. Perhaps they were thinking of the cities that would not be bombed and the young men that would not go out to be killed. Perhaps they were simply enjoying a victory.

  Flandry poured wine. “To our future amiable enmity,” he toasted.

  “I still don’t see how you did it,” said Korvash.

  “Aline did it,” said Flandry. “Tell them, Aline.”

  She shook her head. She had withdrawn into a quietness which was foreign to her. “Go ahead, Dominic,” she murmured. “It was really your show.”

  “Well,” said Flandry, not loath to expound, “when we realized that Aycharaych could read our minds, it looked pretty hopeless. How can you possibly lie to a telepath? Aline found the answer — by getting information which just isn’t true.

  “There’s a drug in this system called sorgan which has the property of making its user believe anything he’s told. Aline fed me some without my knowledge and then told me that fantastic lie about Terra coming in to occupy Alfzar. And, of course, I accepted it as absolute truth. Which you, Aycharaych, read in my mind.”

  “I was puzzled,” admitted the Chereionite. “It just didn’t look reasonable to me; but as you said, there didn’t seem to be any way to lie to a telepath.”

  “Aline’s main worry was then to keep out of mind-reading range,” said Flandry. “You helped us there by going off to prepare a warm reception for the Terrans. You gathered all your forces in the valley, ready to blast our ships out of the sky.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the Sartaz with what you knew — or thought you knew?” asked Korvash accusingly.

  Aycharaych shrugged. “I realized Captain Flandry would be doing his best to prevent me from doing that and to discredit any information I could get that high,” he said. “You yourself agreed that our best opportunity lay in repulsing the initial attack ourselves. That would gain us far more favor with the Sartaz; moreover, since there would have been overt acts on both sides, war between Betelgeuse. and Terra would then have been inevitable — whereas if the Sartaz had learned in time of the impending assault, he might have tried to negotiate.”

  “I suppose so,” said Korvash glumly.

  “Aline, of course, prevailed on Bronson to mine the valley,” said Flandry. “The rest you know. When you yourselves showed up—”

  “To tell the Sartaz, now that it was too late,” said Aycharaych.

  “ — we were afraid that the ensuing argument would damage our own show. So we used violence to shut you up until it had been played out.” Flandry spread his hands in a gesture of finality. “And that, gentlemen, is that.”

  “There will be other tomorrows,” said Aycharaych gently. “But I am glad we ca
n meet in peace tonight.”

  The party lasted well on toward dawn. When the aliens left, with many slightly tipsy expressions of good will and respect, Aycharaych took Aline’s hand in his own bony fingers. His strange golden eyes searched hers, even as she knew his mind was looking into the depths of her own.

  “Goodbye, my dear,” he said, too softly for the others to hear. “As long as there are women like you, I think Terra will endure.”

  She watched his tall form go down the corridor and her vision blurred a little. It was strange to think that her enemy knew what the man beside her did not.

  Hunters of the SkyCave

  I

  It pleased Ruethen of the Long Hand to give a feast and ball at the Crystal Moon for his enemies. He knew they must come. Pride of race had slipped from Terra, while the need to appear well-bred and sophisticated had waxed correspondingly. The fact that spaceships prowled and fought, fifty light-years beyond Antares, made it all the more impossible a gaucherie to refuse an invitation from the Merseian representative. Besides, one could feel delightfully wicked and ever so delicately in danger.

  Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, allowed himself a small complaint. “It’s not that I refuse any being’s liquor,” he said, “and Ruethen has a chef for his human-type meals who’d be worth a war to get. But I thought I was on furlough.”

  “So you are,” said Diana Vinogradoff, Right Noble Lady Guardian of the Mare Crisium. “Only I saw you first.”

  Flandry grinned and slid an arm about her shoulders. He felt pretty sure he was going to win his bet with Ivar del Bruno. They relaxed in the lounger and he switched off the lights.

  This borrowed yacht was ridiculously frail and ornate; but a saloon which was one bubble of clear plastic, ah! Now in the sudden darkness, space leaped forth, crystal black and a wintry blaze of stars. The banded shield of Jupiter swelled even as they watched, spilling soft amber radiance into the ship. Lady Diana became a figure out of myth, altogether beautiful; her jewels glittered like raindrops on long gown and heaped tresses. Flandry stroked his neat mustache. I don’t suppose I look too hideous myself, he thought smugly, and advanced to the attack.

  “No … please … not now.” Lady Diana fended him off, but in a promising way. Flandry reclined again. No hurry. The banquet and dance would take hours. Afterward, when the yacht made its leisured way home toward Terra, and champagne bubbles danced in both their heads … “Why did you say that about being on furlough?” she asked, smoothing her coiffure with slim fingers. Her luminous nail polish danced about in the twilight like flying candle flames.

  Flandry got a cigaret from his own shimmerite jacket and inhaled it to life. The glow picked out his face, long, narrow, with high cheekbones and gray eyes, seal-brown hair and straight nose. He sometimes thought his last biosculp had made it too handsome, and he ought to change it again. But what the devil, he wasn’t on Terra often enough for the girls to get bored with his looks. Besides, his wardrobe, which he did take pains to keep fashionable, was expensive enough to rule out many other vanities.

  “The Nyanza business was a trifle wearing, y’know,” he said, to remind her of yet another exploit of his on yet another exotic planet. “I came Home for a rest. And the Merseians are such damnably strenuous creatures. It makes me tired just to look at one, let alone spar with him.”

  “You don’t have to tonight, Sir Dominic,” she smiled. “Can’t you lay all this feuding aside, just for a little while, and be friends with them? I mean, we’re all beings, in spite of these silly rivalries.”

  “I’d love to relax with them, my lady. But you see, they never do.”

  “Oh, come now! I’ve talked to them, often, and—”

  “They can radiate all the virile charm they need,” said Flandry. For an instant his light tone was edged with acid. “But destroying the Terrestrial Empire is a full-time job.”

  Then, quickly, he remembered what he was about, and picked up his usual line of banter. He wasn’t required to be an Intelligence agent all the time. Was he? When a thousand-credit bet with his friend was involved? Ivar del Bruno had insisted that Lady Diana Vinogradoff would never bestow her favors on anyone under the rank of earl. The challenge was hard to refuse, when the target was so intrinsically tempting, and when Flandry had good reason to be complacent about his own abilities. It had been a hard campaign, though, and yielding to her whim to attend the Merseian party was only a small fraction of the lengths to which he had gone.

  But now, Flandry decided, if he played his cards right for a few hours more, the end would be achieved. And afterward, a thousand credits would buy a really good orgy for two at the Everest House.

  Chives, valet cum pilot cum private gunman, slipped the yacht smoothly into berth at the Crystal Moon. There was no flutter of weight change, though deceleration had been swift and the internal force-field hard put to compensate. Flandry stood up, cocked his beret at a carefully rakish angle, swirled his scarlet cloak, and offered an arm to Lady Diana. They stepped through the airlock and along a transparent tube to the palace.

  The woman caught a delighted gasp. “I’ve never seen it so close up,” she whispered. “Who ever made it?”

  The artificial satellite had Jupiter for background, and the Milky Way and the huge cold constellations. Glass-clear walls faced infinity, curving and tumbling like water. Planar gravity fields held faceted synthetic jewels, ruby, emerald, diamond, topaz, massing several tons each, in orbit around the central minaret. One outward thrust of bubble was left at zero gee, a conservatory where mutant ferns and orchids rippled on rhythmic breezes.

  “I understand it was built for Lord Tsung-Tse about a century back,” said Flandry. “His son sold it for gambling debts, and the then Merseian ambassador acquired it and had it put in orbit around Jupiter. Symbolic, eh?”

  She arched questioning brows, but he thought better of explaining. His own mind ran on: Eh, for sure. I suppose it’s inevitable and so forth. Terra has been too rich for too long: we’ve grown old and content, no more high hazards for us. Whereas the Merseian Empire is fresh, vigorous, disciplined, dedicated, et tedious cetera. Personally, I enjoy decadence; but somebody has to hold off the Long Night for my own lifetime, and it looks as if I’m elected.

  Then they neared the portal, where a silver spiderweb gate stood open. Ruethen himself greeted them at the head of an iridescent slideramp. Such was Merseian custom. But he bowed in Terran style and touched horny lips to Lady Diana’s hand. “A rare pleasure, I am certain.” The bass voice gave to fluent Anglic an indescribable nonhuman accent.

  She considered him. The Merseian was a true mammal, but with more traces of reptile ancestry than humankind: pale green skin, hairless and finely scaled; a low spiny ridge from the head down along the backbone to the end of a long thick tail. He was broader than a man, and would have stood a sheer two meters did he not walk with a forward-stooping gait. Except for its baldness and lack of external ears, the face was quite humanoid, even good-looking in a heavy rough way. But the eyes beneath the overhanging brow ridges were two small pits of jet. Ruethen wore the austere uniform of his class, form-fitting black with silver trim. A blaster was belted at his hip.

  Lady Diana’s perfectly sculped mouth curved in a smile. “Do you actually know me, my lord?” she murmured.

  “Frankly, no.” A barbaric bluntness. Any nobleman of Terra would have been agile to disguise his ignorance. “But while this log does burn upon the altar stone, peace-holy be it among us. As my tribe would say in the Cold Valleys .”

  “Of course you are an old friend of my escort,” she teased.

  Ruethen cocked an eye at Flandry. And suddenly the man sensed tautness in that massive frame. Just for a moment, then Ruethen’s whole body became a mask. “We have met now and then,” said the Merseian dryly. “Welcome, Sir Dominic. The cloakroom slave will furnish you with a mind-screen.”

  “What?” Despite h
imself, Flandry started.

  “If you want one.” Ruethen bared powerful teeth at Lady Diana. “Will my unknown friend grant me a dance later?”

  She lost her own coolness for a second, then nodded graciously. “That would be a … unique experience, my lord,” she said.

  It would, at that. Flandry led her on into the ballroom. His mind worried Ruethen’s curious offer, like a dog with a bone. Why—?

  He saw the gaunt black shape among the rainbow Terrans, and he knew. It went cold along his spine.

  II

  He wasted no time on excuses but almost ran to the cloakroom. His feet whispered along the crystalline floor, where Orion glittered hundreds of light-years beneath. “Mind-screen,” he snapped.

  The slave was a pretty girl. Merseians took pleasure in buying humans for menial jobs. “I’ve only a few, sir,” she said. “His lordship told me to keep them for—”

  “Me!” Flandry snatched the cap of wires, transistors, and power cells from her hesitant fingers. Only when it was on his head did he relax. Then he took out a fresh cigaret and steered through lilting music toward the bar. He needed a drink, badly.

  Aycharaych of Chereion stood beneath high glass pillars. No one spoke to him. Mostly the humans were dancing while non-humans of various races listened to the music. A performer from Lulluan spread heaven-blue feathers on a small stage, but few watched that rare sight. Flandry elbowed past a Merseian who had just drained a two-liter tankard. “Scotch,” he said. “Straight, tall, and quick.”

  Lady Diana approached. She seemed uncertain whether to be indignant or intrigued. “Now I know what they mean by cavalier treatment.” She pointed upward. “What is that thing?”

  Flandry tossed off his drink. The whisky smoked down his throat, and he felt his nerves ease. “I’m told it’s my face,” he said.

  “No, no! Stop fooling! I mean that horrible wire thing.”

  “Mind-screen.” He held out his glass for a refill. “It heterodynes the energy radiation of the cerebral cortex in a random pattern. Makes it impossible to read what I’m thinking.”