The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  * * * *

  WARRIOR

  GORDON R. DICKSON

  The spaceliner coming in from New Earth and Freiland, worlds under the Sirian sun, was delayed in its landing by traffic at the spaceport in Long Island Sound. The two police lieutenants, waiting on the bare concrete beyond the shelter of the Terminal buildings, turned up the collars of their cloaks against the hissing sleet, in this unweather-proofed area. The sleet was turning into tiny hailstones that bit and stung all exposed areas of skin. The gray November sky poured them down without pause or mercy, the vast, reaching surface of concrete seemed to dance with their white multitudes.

  “Here it comes now,” said Tyburn, the Manhattan Complex police lieutenant, risking a glance up into the hailstorm. “Let me do the talking when we take him in.”

  “Fine by me,” answered Breagan, the spaceport officer, “I’m only here to introduce you—and because it’s my bailiwick. You can have Kenebuck, with his hood connections, and his millions. If it were up to me, I’d let the soldier get him.”

  “It’s him,” said Tyburn, “who’s likely to get the soldier —and that’s why I’m here. You ought to know that.”

  The great mass of the interstellar ship settled like a cautious mountain to the concrete two hundred yards off. It protruded a landing stair near its base like a metal leg, and the passengers began to disembark. The two policemen spotted their man immediately in the crowd.

  “He’s big,” said Breagan, with the judicious appraisal of someone safely on the sidelines, as the two of them moved forward.

  “They’re all big, these professional military men off the Dorsai world,” answered Tyburn, a little irritably, shrugging his shoulders against the cold, under his cloak. “They breed themselves that way.”

  “I know they’re big,” said Breagan. “This one’s bigger.”

  The first wave of passengers was rolling toward them now, their quarry among the mass. Tyburn and Breagan moved forward to meet him. When they got close they could see, even through the hissing sleet, every line of his dark, unchanging face looming above the lesser heights of the people around him, his military erectness molding the civilian clothes he wore until they might as well have been a uniform. Tyburn found himself staring fixedly at the tall figure as it came toward him. He had met such professional soldiers from the Dorsai before, and the stamp of their breeding had always been plain on them. But this man was somehow more so, even than the others Tyburn had seen. In some way he seemed to be the spirit of the Dorsai, incarnate.

  He was one of twin brothers, Tyburn remembered now from the dossier back at his office. Ian and Kensie were their names, of the Graeme family at Foralie, on the Dorsai. And the report was that Kensie had two men’s likability, while his brother Ian, now approaching Tyburn, had a double portion of grim shadow and solitary darkness.

  Staring at the man coming toward him, Tyburn could believe the dossier now. For a moment, even, with the sleet and the cold taking possession of him, he found himself believing in the old saying that, if the born soldiers of the Dorsai ever cared to pull back to their own small, rocky world, and challenge the rest of humanity, not all the thirteen other inhabited planets could stand against them. Once, Tyburn had laughed at that idea. Now, watching Ian approach, he could not laugh. A man like this would live for different reasons from those of ordinary men— and die for different reasons.

  Tyburn shook off the wild notion. The figure coming toward him, he reminded himself sharply, was a professional military man—nothing more.

  Ian was almost to them now. The two policemen moved in through the crowd and intercepted him.

  “Commandant Ian Graeme?” said Breagan. “I’m Kaj Breagan of the spaceport police. This is Lieutenant Walter Tyburn of the Manhattan Complex Force. I wonder if you could give us a few minutes of your time?”

  Ian Graeme nodded, almost indifferently. He turned and paced along with them, his longer stride making more leisurely work of their brisk walking, as they led him away from the route of the disembarking passengers and in through a blank metal door at one end of the Terminal, marked Unauthorized Entry Prohibited. Inside, they took an elevator tube up to the offices on the Terminal’s top floor, and ended up in chairs around a desk in one of the offices.

  All the way in, Ian had said nothing. He sat in his chair now with the same indifferent patience, gazing at Tyburn, behind the desk, and at Breagan, seated back against the wall at the desk’s right side. Tyburn found himself staring back in fascination. Not at the granite face, but at the massive, powerful hands of the man, hanging idly between the chair arms that supported his forearms. Tyburn, with an effort, wrenched his gaze from those hands.

  “Well, Commandant,” he said, forcing himself at last to look up into the dark, unchanging features, “you’re here on Earth for a visit, we understand.”

  “To see the next-of-kin of an officer of mine.” Ian’s voice, when he spoke at last, was almost mild compared to the rest of his appearance. It was a deep, calm voice, but lightless—like a voice that had long forgotten the need to be angry or threatening. Only . . . there was something sad about it, Tyburn thought.

  “A James Kenebuck?” said Tyburn.

  “That’s right,” answered the deep voice of Ian. “His younger brother, Brian Kenebuck, was on my staff in the recent campaign on Freiland. He died three months back.”

  “Do you,” said Tyburn, “always visit your deceased officers’ next of kin?”

  “When possible. Usually, of course, they die in line of duty.”

  “I see,” said Tyburn. The office chair in which he sat seemed hard and uncomfortable underneath him. He shifted slightly. “You don’t happen to be armed, do you, Commandant?”

  Ian did not even smile.

  “No,” he said.

  “Of course, of course,” said Tyburn, uncomfortable. “Not that it makes any difference.” He was looking again, in spite of himself, at the two massive, relaxed hands opposite him. “Your . . . extremities by themselves are lethal weapons. We register professional karate and boxing experts here, you know—or did you know?”

  Ian nodded.

  “Yes,” said Tyburn. He wet his lips, and then was furious with himself for doing so. Damn my orders, he thought suddenly and whitely, I don’t have to sit here making a fool of myself in front of this man, no matter how many connections and millions Kenebuck owns.

  “All right, look here, Commandant,” he said, harshly, leaning forward. “We’ve had a communication from the Freiland-North Police about you. They suggest that you hold Kenebuck—James Kenebuck—responsible for his brother Brian’s death.”

  Ian sat looking back at him without answering.

  “Well,” demanded Tyburn, raggedly after a long moment, “do you?”

  “Force-leader Brian Kenebuck,” said Ian calmly, “led his Force, consisting of thirty-six men at the time, against orders farther than was wise into enemy perimeter. His Force was surrounded and badly shot up. Only he and four men returned to the lines. He was brought to trial in the field under the Mercenaries Code for deliberate mishandling of his troops under combat conditions. The four men who had returned with him testified against him. He was found guilty and I ordered him shot.”

  Ian stopped speaking. His voice had been perfectly even, but there was so much finality about the way he spoke that after he finished there was a pause in the room while Tyburn and Breagan stared at him as if they had both been tranced. Then the silence, echoing in Tyburn’s ears, jolted him back to life.

  “I don’t see what all this has to do with James Kenebuck, then,” said Tyburn. “Brian committed some . . . military crime, and was executed for it. You say you gave the order. If anyone’s responsible for Brian Kenebuck’s death then, it seems to me it’d be you. Why connect it with someone who wasn’t even there at the time, someone who was here on Earth all the while, James Kenebuck?”

  “Brian,” said Ian, “was his brother.”

  The emotionless statement was calm
and coldly reasonable in the silent, brightly-lit office. Tyburn found his open hands had shrunk themselves into fists on the desk top. He took a deep breath and began to speak in a flat, official tone.

  “Commandant,” he said, “I don’t pretend to understand you. You’re a man of the Dorsai, a product of one of the splinter cultures out among the stars. I’m just an old-fashioned Earthborn—but I’m a policeman in the Manhattan Complex and James Kenebuck is . . . well, he’s a taxpayer in the Manhattan Complex.”

  He found he was talking without meeting Ian’s eyes. He forced himself to look at them—they were dark un-moving eyes.

  “It’s my duty to inform you,” Tyburn went on, “that we’ve had intimations to the effect that you’re to bring some retribution to James Kenebuck, because of Brian Kenebuck’s death. These are only intimations, and as long as you don’t break any laws here on Earth, you’re free to go where you want and see whom you like. But this is Earth, Commandant.”

  He paused, hoping that Ian would make some sound, some movement. But Ian only sat there, waiting.

  “We don’t have any Mercenaries Code here, Commandant,” Tyburn went on harshly. “We haven’t any feud-right, no droit-de-main. But we do have laws. Those laws say that, though a man may be the worst murderer alive, until he’s brought to book in our courts, under our process of laws, no one is allowed to harm a hair of his head. Now, I’m not here to argue whether this is the best way or not; just to tell you that that’s the way things are.” Tyburn stared fixedly into the dark eyes. “Now,” he said, bluntly, “I know that if you’re determined to try to kill Kenebuck without counting the cost, I can’t prevent it.”

  He paused and waited again. But Ian still said nothing.

  “I know,” said Tyburn, “that you can walk up to him like any other citizen, and once you’re within reach you can try to kill him with your bare hands before anyone can stop you. 1 can’t stop you in that case. But what I can do is catch you afterward, if you succeed, and see you convicted and executed for murder. And you will be caught and convicted, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t kill James Kenebuck the way someone like you would kill a man, and get away with it here on Earth —do you understand that, Commandant?”

  “Yes,” said Ian.

  “All right,” said Tyburn, letting out a deep breath. “Then you understand. You’re a sane man and a Dorsai professional. From what I’ve been able to learn about the Dorsai, it’s one of your military tenets that part of a man’s duty to himself is not to throw his life away in a hopeless cause. And this cause of yours, to bring Kenebuck to justice for his brother’s death, is hopeless.”

  He stopped. Ian straightened in the movement preliminary to getting up.

  “Wait a second,” said Tyburn.

  He had come to the hard part of the interview. He had prepared his speech for this moment and rehearsed it over and over again—but now he found himself without faith that it would convince Ian.

  “One more word,” said Tyburn. “You’re a man of camps and battlefields, a man of the military; and you must be used to thinking of yourself as a pretty effective individual. But here, on Earth, those special skills of yours are mostly illegal. And without them you’re ineffective and helpless. Kenebuck, on the other hand, is just the opposite. He’s got money—millions. And he’s got connections, some of them nasty. And he was born and raised here in Manhattan Complex.” Tyburn stared emphatically at the tall, dark man, willing him to understand. “Do you follow me? If you, for example, should suddenly turn up dead here, we just might not be able to bring Kenebuck to book for it. Where we absolutely could, and would, bring you to book if the situation were reversed. Think about it.”

  He sat, still staring at Ian. But Ian’s face showed no change, or sign that the message had gotten through to him.

  “Thank you,” Ian said. “If there’s nothing more, I’ll be going.”

  “There’s nothing more,” said Tyburn, defeated. He watched Ian leave. It was only when Ian was gone, and he turned back to Breagan, that he recovered a little of his self-respect. For Breagan’s face had paled.

  Ian went down through the Terminal and took a cab into Manhattan Complex, to the John Adams Hotel. He registered for a room on the fourteenth floor of the transient section of that hotel and inquired about the location of James Kenebuck’s suite in the resident section; then sent his card up to Kenebuck with a request to come by to see the millionaire. After that, he went on up to his own room, unpacked his luggage, which had already been delivered from the spaceport, and took out a small, sealed package. Just at that moment there was a soft chiming sound and his card was returned to him from a delivery slot in the room wall. It fell into the salver below the slot and he picked it up, to read what was written on the face of it. The penciled note read: Come on up—K.

  He tucked the card and the package into a pocket and left his transient room. And Tyburn, who had followed him to the hotel, and who had been observing all of Ian’s actions from the second of his arrival through sensors placed in the walls and ceilings, half rose from his chair in the room of the empty suite directly above Kenebuck’s, which had been quietly taken over as a police observation post. Then, helplessly, Tyburn swore and sat down again, to follow Ian’s movements in the screen fed by the sensors. So far there was nothing the policeman could do legally—nothing but watch.

  So he watched as Ian strode down the softly carpeted hallway to the elevator tube, rose in it to the eightieth floor and stepped out to face the heavy, transparent door sealing off the resident section of the hotel. He held up Kenebuck’s card with its message to a concierge screen beside the door, and with a soft sigh of air the door slid back to let him through. He passed on in, found a second elevator tube, and took it up thirteen more stories. Black doors opened before him—and he stepped one step forward into a small foyer to find himself surrounded by three men.

  They were big men—one, a lantern-jawed giant, was even bigger than Ian—and they were vicious. Tyburn, watching through the sensor in the foyer ceiling that had been secretly placed there by the police the day before, recognized all of them from his files. They were underworld muscle hired by Kenebuck at word of Ian’s coming; all armed, and brutal and hairtrigger—mad dogs of the lower city. After that first step into their midst, Ian stood still. And there followed a strange, unnatural cessation of movement in the room.

  The three stood checked. They had been about to put their hands on Ian to search him for something, Tyburn saw, and probably to rough him up in the process. But something had stopped them, some abrupt change in the air around them. Tyburn, watching, felt the change as they did; but for a moment he felt it without understanding. Then understanding came to him.

  The difference was in Ian, in the way he stood there. He was, saw Tyburn, simply . . . waiting. That same patient indifference Tyburn had seen upon him in the Terminal office was there again. In the split second of his single step into the room he had discovered the men, had measured them, and stopped. Now, he waited, in his turn, for one of them to make a move.

  A sort of black lightning had entered the small foyer. It was abruptly obvious to the watching Tyburn, as to the three below, that the first of them to lay hands on Ian would be the first to find the hands of the Dorsai soldier upon him—and those hands were death.

  For the first time in his life, Tyburn saw the personal power of the Dorsai fighting man, made plain without words. Ian needed no badge upon him, standing as he stood now, to warn that he was dangerous. The men about him were mad dogs; but, patently, Ian was a wolf. There was a difference with the three, which Tyburn now recognized for the first time. Dogs—even mad dogs—fight, and the losing dog, if he can, runs away. But no wolf runs. For a wolf wins every fight but one, and in that one he dies.

  After a moment, when it was clear that none of the three would move, Ian stepped forward. He passed through them without even brushing against one of them, to the inner door opposite, and opened it and went on through.

/>   He stepped into a three-level living room stretching to a large, wide window, its glass rolled up, and black with the sleet-filled night. The living room was as large as a small suite in itself, and filled with people, men and women, richly dressed. They held cocktail glasses in their hands as they stood or sat, and talked. The atmosphere was heavy with the scents of alcohol, and women’s perfumes and cigarette smoke. It seemed that they paid no attention to his entrance, but their eyes followed him covertly once he had passed.

  He walked forward through the crowd, picking his way to a figure before the dark window, the figure of a man almost as tall as himself, erect, athletic-looking with a handsome, sharp-cut face under whitish-blond hair that stared at Ian with a sort of incredulity as Ian approached.

  “Graeme . . . ?” said this man, as Ian stopped before him. His voice in this moment of off-guardedness betrayed its two levels, the semi-hoodlum whine and harshness underneath, the polite accents above. “My boys . . . you didn’t—” he stumbled, “leave anything with them when you were coming in?”