Agent of the Terran Empire df-5

by Poul Anderson

  “I know whom you mean now,” she nodded. “If he’s as you say, and he’s here on Alfzar, it isn’t good news.”

  Flandry shrugged. “We’ll just have to take him into account, then. As if this mission weren’t tough enough!”

  He got up and walked to the balcony window. The two moons of Alfzar were up, pouring coppery light on the broad reach of the palace gardens. The warm wind blew in with scent of strange flowers that had never bloomed under Sol and they caught the faint sound of the weird, tuneless music which the monarch of Betelgeuse favored.

  For a moment, as he looked at the ruddy moonlight and the thronging stars, Flandry felt a wave of discouragement. The Galaxy was too big. Even the four million stars of the Terrestrial Empire were too many for one man ever to know in a lifetime. And there were the rival imperia out in the darkness of space, Gorrazan and Ythri and Merseia, like a hungry beast of prey — Too much, too much. The individual counted for too little in the enormous chaos which was modern civilization. He thought of Aline — it was her business to know who such beings as Aycharaych were, but one human skull couldn’t hold a universe; knowledge and power were lacking.

  Too many mutually alien races; too many forces clashing in space, and so desperately few who comprehended the situation and tried their feeble best to help — naked hands battering at an avalanche as it ground down on them.

  Aline came over and took his arm. Her face turned up to his, vague in the moonlight, with a look he knew too well. He’d have to avoid her, when or if they got back to Terra; he didn’t want to hurt her but neither could he be tied to any single human.

  “You’re discouraged with one failure?” she asked lightly. “Dominic Flandry, the single-handed conqueror of Scothania, worried by one skinny bird-being?”

  “I just don’t see how he knew I was going to search his place,” muttered Flandry. “I’ve never been caught that way before, not even when I was the worst cub in the Service. Some of our best men have gone down before Aycharaych. I’m convinced MacMurtrie’s disappearance at Polaris was his work. Maybe it’s our turn now.”

  “Oh, come off it,” she laughed. “You must have been drinking sorgan when they told you about him.”

  “Sorgan?” His brows lifted.

  “Ah, now I can tell you something you don’t know.” She was trying desperately hard to be gay. “Not that it’s very important; I only happened to hear of it while talking with one of the Alfzarian narcotics detail. It’s a drug produced on one of the planets here — Cingetor, I think — with the curious property of depressing certain brain centers such that the victim loses all critical sense. He has absolute faith in whatever he’s told.”

  “Hm. Could be useful in our line of work.”

  “Not very. Hypnoprobes are better for interrogation, and there are more reliable ways of producing fanatics. The drug has an antidote which also confers permanent immunity. So it’s not much use, really, and the Sartaz has suppressed its manufacture.”

  “I should think our Intelligence would like to keep a little on hand, just in case,” he said thoughtfully. “And of course certain nobles in all the empires, ours included, would find it handy for purposes of seduction.”

  “What are you thinking of?” she teased him.

  “Nothing; I don’t need it,” he said smugly.

  The digression had shaken him out of his dark mood. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go join the party.”

  She went along at his side. There was a speculative look about her.

  II

  Usually the giant stars have many planets, and Betelgeuse, with forty-seven, is no exception. Of these, six have intelligent native races, and the combined resources of the whole system are considerable, even in a civilization used to thinking in terms of thousands of stars.

  When the first Terrestrial explorers arrived, almost a thousand years previously, they found that the people of Alfzar had already mastered interplanetary travel and were in the process of conquering the other worlds — a process speeded up by their rapid adoption of the more advanced human technology. However, they had not attempted to establish an empire on the scale of Sol or Merseia, contenting themselves with maintaining hegemony over enough neighbor suns to protect their home. There had been clashes with the expanding powers around them, but generations of wily Sartazes had found it profitable to play their potential enemies off against each other; and the great states had, in turn, found it expedient to maintain Betelgeuse as a buffer against their rivals and against the peripheral barbarians.

  But the gathering tension between Terra and Merseia had raised Betelgeuse to a position of critical importance. Lying squarely between the two great empires, she was in a position with her powerful fleet to command the most direct route between them and, if allied with either one, to strike at the heart of the other. If Merseia could get the alliance, it would very probably be the last preparation she considered necessary for war with Terra. If Terra could get it, Merseia would suddenly be in a deteriorated position and would almost have to make concessions.

  So both empires had missions on Alfzar trying to persuade the Sartaz of the rightness of their respective causes and the immense profits to be had by joining. Pressure was being applied wherever possible; officials were lavishly bribed; spies were swarming through the system getting whatever information they could and — of course — being immediately disowned by their governments if they were caught.

  It was normal diplomatic procedure, but its critical importance had made the Service send two of its best agents, Flandry and Aline, to Betelgeuse to do what they could in persuading the Sartaz, finding out his weaknesses, and throwing as many monkey wrenches as possible into the Merseian activities. Aline was especially useful in working on the many humans who had settled in the system long before and become citizens of the kingdom; quite a few of them held important positions in the government and the military. Flandry—

  And now, it seemed, Merseia had called in her top spy, and the subtle, polite, and utterly deadly battle was on.

  The Sartaz gave a hunting party for his distinguished guests. It pleased his sardonic temperament to bring enemies together under conditions where they had to be friendly to each other. Most of the Merseians must have been pleased, too; hunting was their favorite sport. The more citified Terrestrials were not at all happy about it, but they could hardly refuse.

  Flandry was especially disgruntled at the prospect. He had never cared for physical exertion, though he kept in trim as a matter of necessity. And he had too much else to do.

  Too many things were going disastrously wrong. The network of agents, both Imperial and bribed Betelgeusean — who ultimately were under his command — were finding the going suddenly rugged. One after another, they disappeared; they walked into Merseian or Betelgeusean traps; they found their best approaches blocked by unexpected watchfulness. Flandry couldn’t locate the source of the difficulty, but since it had begun with Aycharaych’s arrival, he could guess. The Chereionite was too damned smart to be true. Sunblaze, it just wasn’t possible that anyone could have known about those Jurovian projects, or that Yamatsu’s hiding place should have been discovered, or — And now this damned hunting party! Flandry groaned.

  His slave roused him in the dawn. Mist, tinged with blood by the red sun, drifted through the high windows of his suite. Someone was blowing a horn somewhere, a wild call in the vague mysterious light, and he heard the growl of engines warming up.

  “Sometimes,” he muttered sourly, “I feel like going to the Emperor and telling him where to put our beloved Empire.”

  Breakfast made the universe slightly more tolerable. Flandry dressed with his usual finicky care in an ornate suit of skintight green and a golden cloak with hood and goggles, hung a needle gun and dueling sword at his waist, and let the slave trim his reddish-brown mustache to the micrometric precision he demanded. Then he went down long flights of marble stairs, past royal guards in helmet and corselet, to the courtyard.

  T
he hunting party was gathering. The Sartaz himself was present, a typical Alfzarian humanoid — short, stocky, hairless, blue-skinned, with huge yellow eyes in the round, blunt-faced head. Other nobles of Alfzar and its fellow planets were present, more guardsmen, a riot of color in the brightening dawn. There were the members of the regular Terrestrial embassy and the special mission, a harried and unhappy looking crew. And there were the Merseians.

  Flandry gave them all formal geetings. After all, Terra and Merseia were nominally at peace, however many men were being shot and cities burning on the marches. His gray eyes looked sleepy and indifferent but they missed no detail of the enemy’s appearance.

  The Merseian nobles glanced at him with the thinly covered contempt they had for all humans. They were mammals, but with more traces of reptilian ancestry in them than Terrans showed. A huge-thewed two meters they stood, with a spiny ridge running from forehead to the end of the long, thick tail which they could use to such terrible effect in hand-to-hand battle. Their hairless skins were pale green, faintly scaled, but their massive faces were practically human. Arrogant black eyes under heavy brow ridges met Flandry’s gaze with a challenge.

  I can understand that they despise us, he thought. Their civilization is young and vigorous, its energies turned ruthlessly outward; Terra is old, satiated — decadent. Our whole policy is directed toward maintaining the galactic status quo, not because we love peace but because we’re comfortable the way things are. We stand in the way of Merseia’s dream of an all-embracing galactic empire. We’re the first ones they have to smash.

  I wonder — historically, they may be on the right side. But Terra has seen too much bloodshed in her history, has too wise and weary a view of life. We’ve given up seeking perfection and glory; we’ve learned that they’re chimerical — but that knowledge is a kind of death within us.

  Still — I certainly don’t want to see planets aflame and humans enslaved and an alien culture taking up the future. Terra is willing to compromise; but the only compromise Merseia will ever make is with overwhelming force. Which is why I’m here.

  A stir came in the streaming red mist, and Aycharaych’s tall form was beside him. The Chereionite smiled amiably. “Good morning, Captain Flandry,” he said.

  “Oh — good morning,” said Flandry, starting. The avian unnerved him. For the first time, he had met his professional superior, and he didn’t like it.

  But he couldn’t help liking Aycharaych personally. As they stood waiting, they fell to talking of Polaris and its strange worlds, from which the conversation drifted to the comparative xenology of intelligent primitives throughout the galaxy. Aycharaych had a vast fund of knowledge and a wry humor matching Flandry’s. When the horn blew for assembly, they exchanged the regretful glance of brave enemies. It’s too bad we have to be on opposite sides. If things had been different —

  But they weren’t.

  The hunters strapped themselves into their tiny one-man airjets. Each had a needle-beam projector in the nose, not too much armament when you hunted the Borthudian dragons. Flandry thought that the Sartaz would be more than pleased if the game disposed of some of his guests.

  The squadron lifted into the sky and streaked northward for the mountains. Fields and forests lay in dissolving fog below them, and the enormous red disc of Betelgeuse was rising into a purplish sky. Despite himself, Flandry enjoyed the reckless speed and the roar of cloven air around him. It was godlike, this rushing over the world to fight the monsters at its edge.

  In a couple of hours, they raised the Borthudian mountains, gaunt windy peaks rearing into the upper sky, the snow on their flanks like blood in the ominous light. Signals began coming over the radio; scouts had spotted dragons here and there, and jet after jet broke away to pursue them. Presently Flandry found himself alone with one other vessel.

  As they hummed over fanged crags and swooping canyons, he saw two shadows rise from the ground and his belly muscles tightened. Dragons!

  The monsters were a good ten meters of scaled, snake-like length, with jaws and talons to rend steel. Huge leathery wings bore them aloft, riding the wind with lordly arrogance as they hunted the great beasts that terrorized villagers but were their prey.

  Flandry kicked over his jet and swooped for one of them. It grew monstrously in his sights. He caught the red glare of its eyes as it banked to meet him. No running away here; the dragons had never learned to be afraid. It rose against him.

  He squeezed his trigger and a thin sword of energy leaped out to burn past the creature’s scales into its belly. The dragon held to its collision course. Flandry rolled out of its way. The mighty wings clashed meters from him.

  He had not allowed for the tail. It swung savagely and the blow shivered the teeth in his skull. The airjet reeled and went into a spin. The dragon stooped down on it and the terrible claws ripped through the thin hull.

  Wildly, Flandry slammed over his controls, tearing himself loose. He barrel-rolled, metal screaming as he swung about to meet the charge. His needle beam lashed into the open jaws and the dragon stumbled in midnight . Flandry pulled away and shot again, flaying one of the wings.

  He could hear the dragon’s scream. It rushed straight at him, swinging with fantastic speed and precision as he sought to dodge. The jaws snapped together and a section of hull skin was torn from the framework. Wind came in to sear the man with numbing cold.

  Recklessly, he dove to meet the plunging monster, his beam before him like a lance. The dragon recoiled. With a savage grin, Flandry pursued, slashing and tearing.

  The torn airjet handled clumsily. In midflight, it lurched and the dragon was out of his sights. Its wings buffeted him and he went spinning aside with the dragon after him.

  The damned thing was forcing him toward the cragged mountainside. Its peaks reached hungrily after him, and the wind seemed to be a demon harrying him closer to disaster. He swung desperately, aware with sudden grimness that it had become a struggle for life with the odds on the dragon’s side.

  If this was the end, to be shattered against a mountain and eaten by his own quarry — He fought for control.

  The dragon was almost on him, rushing down like a thunderbolt. It could survive a collision, but the jet would be knocked to earth. Flandry fired again, struggling to pull free. The dragon swerved and came on in the very teeth of his beam.

  Suddenly it reeled and fell aside. The other jet was on it from behind, raking it with deadly precision. Flandry thought briefly that the remaining dragon must be dead or escaped and now its hunter had come to his aid — all the gods bless him, whoever he was!

  Even as he watched, the dragon fell to earth, writhing and snapping as it did. It crashed onto a ledge and lay still.

  Flandry brought his jet to a landing nearby. He was shaking with reaction, but his chief emotion was a sudden overwhelming sadness. There went another brave creature down into darkness, wiped out by a senseless history that seemed only to have the objective of destroying. He raised a hand in salute as he grounded.

  The other jet had already landed a few meters off. As Flandry opened his cockpit canopy, its pilot stepped out.

  Aycharaych.

  The man’s reaction was almost instantaneous. Gratitude and honor had no part in the Service. Here was his greatest enemy, all unsuspecting, and it would be the simplest thing in the world to shoot him down. Aycharaych of Chereion, lost in a hunt for dangerous game, too bad — and remorse could come later, when there was time—

  His needle pistol was halfway from the holster when Aycharaych’s weapon was drawn. Through the booming wind, he heard the alien’s quiet voice: “No.”

  He raised his own hands, and his smile was bitter. “Go ahead,” he invited. “You’ve got the drop on me.”

  “Not at all,” said Aycharaych. “Believe me, Captain Flandry, I will never kill you except in self-defense. But since I will always be forewarned of your plans, you may as well abandon them.”

  The man nodded, too weary to feel the sh
ock of the revelation which was here. “Thanks,” he said. “For saving my life, that is.”

  “You’re too useful to die,” replied Aycharaych candidly, “but I’m glad of it.”

  They took the dragon’s head and flew slowly back toward the palace. Flandry’s mind whirled with a gathering dismay.

  There was only one way in which Aycharaych could have known of the murder plan, when it had sprung into instantaneous being. And that same fact explained how he knew of every activity and scheme the Terrestrials tried, and how he could frustrate every one of them while his own work went on unhampered.

  Aycharaych could read minds!

  III

  Aline’s face was white and tense in the red light that streamed into the room. “No,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” said Flandry grimly. “It’s the only answer.”

  “But telepathy — everyone knows its limitations—”

  Flandry nodded. “The mental patterns of different races are so alien that a telepath who can sense them has to learn a different ‘language’ for every species — in fact, for every individual among non-telepathic peoples, whose minds, lacking mutual contact, develop purely personal thought-types. Even then it’s irregular and unreliable. I’ve never let myself be studied by any telepath not on our side, so I’d always considered myself safe.

  “But Chereion is a very old planet. Its people have the reputation among the more superstitious Merseians of being sorcerers. Actually, of course, it’s simply that they’ve discovered certain things about the nervous system which nobody else suspects yet. Somehow, Aycharaych must be able to detect some underlying resonance-pattern common to all intelligent beings.

  “I’m sure he can only read surface thoughts, those in the immediate consciousness. Otherwise he’d have found out so much from all the Terrans with whom he must have had contact that Merseia would be ruling Sol by now. But that’s bad enough!”