The Game Of Empire

by Poul Anderson

  For their part, Gerhart's commanders were not anxious to fight again soon. They had taken a bad beating. Repairs and replacements were necessary, not least where morale was concerned. The total strength on their side remained hugely superior, but only a fraction was available for reinforcements, if the rest of the Empire was to be kept safe—especially against a surprise flank attack. Collecting the data, making the decisions, issuing the calls, obtaining the means, reorganizing the fleets and support corps, all this would take time.

  So the conflict dwindled for the nonce into random skirmishes. Magnusson sent a message proposing negotiations. Rather to his surprise, an acceptance came back. Emperor Gerhart would dispatch several high-ranking officers and their aides to conduct exploratory talks. Almost on the heels of this word, Flandry followed.

  "Why are you here?" Magnusson asked.

  Flandry grinned. "Why, because his Majesty cherishes a statesmanlike wish for peace, reconciliation, and the return of his erring children to righteous ways and his forgiveness."

  Magnusson glared. "Are you trying to make fun of me?"

  They sat alone in what had been a room of the Imperial resident's house. It was small and plainly furnished, as befitted a person who had had little to do. A full-wall one-way transparency gave a view of surrounding native structures. They were like gigantic three-dimensional spiderwebs. Now that the orange sun was down, lights twinkled throughout them, changing color at every blink. Magnusson had dimmed interior illumination so his visitor might better see the spectacle. Unfiltered, the air was a bit cold, with a faint ferrous odor. Sometimes a deep hum penetrated the walls. And sometimes a cluster of sparks drifted across the sky, an atmospheric patrol or a space unit in high orbit, sign of power over foreignness.

  Flandry reached in his tunic for a cigarette case. "No, I am quoting news commentaries I heard as I was preparing for departure. Unless the government buried all reports of your offer, which would have been hard to do, it must needs explain its response, whether positive or negative. I daresay your flacks use similar language."

  Magnusson's big frame eased back into his chair. "Ah, yes. I was forgetting how sardonically superior you like to make yourself out to be. It's been years since we last met, and that was just in passing."

  Flandry drew a cigarette from the silver box, tapped it on his thumbnail, ignited it and trickled smoke across his lean features. "You ask why I am here. I might ask you the same."

  "Don't play your games with me," Magnusson snapped, "or I'll send you packing tomorrow. I invited you to talk privately because I had hopes the conversation would be meaningful."

  "You don't expect that of the official discussions between my group and whatever staff members you appoint?"

  "Certainly not. This was a charade from the beginning."

  Flandry raised the glass of neat whisky at his elbow and sipped. "You initiated it," he said mildly.

  "Yes. As a token of good will. You'd call it propaganda. But you must know I have to demonstrate the truth over and over—that I have no other aim than the safety and wellbeing of the Empire, which the corruption and incompetence of its rulers have been undermining for dangerously long." Magnusson, who had had no refreshment set out for himself, growled forth a laugh. "You're thinking I've started believing my own speeches. Well, I do. I always did. But I'll grant you, maybe I've been giving so many that I've gotten in the habit of orating."

  He leaned forward. "I did expect that, at this stage, my proposal would be rebuffed," he said. "Apparently Gerhart decided to try sounding me out. Or, rather, his chief councillors did; he hasn't that much wit. Now it's hardly a secret that he—or, at any rate, the Policy Board—listens closely to whatever Dominic Flandry has to say. I suspect this mission was your idea. And you are leading it in person." His forefinger stabbed toward the man opposite. "Therefore my question really was, 'Why are you here?' Answer it!"

  "That is," Flandry drawled, "on the basis of my presence you assume I have more in mind than a jejune debate?"

  "You wouldn't waste your time on any such thing, you fox."

  "Ah, you've found me out. Yes, I did urge that we accept your invitation, and believe me, I had to argue hard before I got agreement to such an exercise in futility. Not that the people with me unanimously know it is. Apart from a couple of leathery old combat commanders and one tough-minded old scholar, to keep the rest from going completely off into Cloud Cuckoo Land, they're career civil officials with excellent academic backgrounds. They believe in the power of sweet reason and moral suasion. I suggest that to meet with them you assign whatever officers of yours are in need of amusement."

  "If I bother. You admit this has been an excuse to get you into play—which I'd already guessed. What do you intend?" "Exactly what is happening." Magnusson's heavy countenance stiffened. He clenched a fist on the arm of his chair. Behind him, the star-points in the spiderwebs blinked, changed, blinked, changed.

  Flandry sat back, crossed shank over knee, inhaled and sipped. "Relax ," he said. "You've nothing to fear from a solitary man, aging and unarmed, when a squad of guards must stand beyond that door. You spoke of us trying to sound you out. That means nothing around the conference table. What is anyone going to do—what can anyone do?—but bandy clichés? However, I've a notion that it may be possible for me to sound you out, as man to individual man." He made an appeasing gesture. "In return, I can tell you things, give you a sense of what the situation is on Terra and inside the Imperium, such as would be unwise to utter in the open."

  "Why should I believe you?" Magnusson demanded hoarsely.

  Again Flandry grinned. "Belief isn't compulsory. Still, my remarks are input, if you'll listen, and I think you'll find they accord with facts known to you. What is to keep you from lying to me? Nothing. Indeed, I take it for given that you will, or you'll refuse to respond, when words veer in inconvenient directions. Usually, though, you should have no .reason not to be frank." His gray gaze caught Magnusson's and held on. "It's lonely where you are, isn't it, Sir Olaf?" he murmured. "Wouldn't you like to slack off for this little while and talk ordinary human talk? You see, that's all I'm after: getting to know you as a man."

  "This is fantastic!"

  "No, it's perfectly logical, if one uses a dash of imagination. You realize I'm not equipped to draw a psychomathematical profile of you, which could help us predict what you'll do next, on the basis of an evening's gab. I am not Aycharaych."

  Magnusson started. "Him?"

  "Ah," said Flandry genially, "you've heard of the late Aycharaych, perhaps had to do with him, since you've spent most of your time on the Merseia-ward frontier. A remarkable being, wasn't he? Shall we trade recollections of him?"

  "Get to the point before I throw you out," Magnusson rasped.

  "Well, you see, Sir Olaf, to us on Terra you're a rather mysterious figure. The output of your puffery artists we discount. We've retrieved all the hard data available on you, of course, and run them through every evaluation program in the catalogue, but scarcely anything has come out except your service record and a few incidentals. Understandable. No matter how much you distinguished yourself, it was in a Navy whose officers alone number in the tens of millions, operating among whole worlds numbering in the tens of thousands. Whatever additional information has appeared about you, in journalistic stories and such over the years, that's banked on planets to which you deny us access. As for your personality, your inner self, we grope in the dark."

  Magnusson bridled. "And why should I bare my soul to you?"

  "I'm not asking you to," Flandry said. "Tell me as much or as little, as truthful or false, as you like. What I am requesting is simply talk between us—that you and I set hostility aside tonight, relax, be only a couple of careerists yarning together. Why? Because then we on Terra will have a slightly better idea of what to prepare ourselves for. Not militarily but psychologically. You won't be a faceless monster, you'll be a human individual, however imperfectly we still see you. Fear clouds judgment, and
worst when it's fear of the unknown.

  "Wouldn't you like to make yourself clear to us? Then maybe a second round of negotiations could mean something. Suppose you're being defeated, the Imperium might well settle for less than the extermination of you and your honchos. Suppose you're winning, you might find us more ready to give you what you want, without further struggle." Flandry dropped his voice. "After all, Sir Olaf, you may be our next Emperor. It would be nice to know beforehand that you'll be a good one."

  Magnusson raised his brows. "Do you seriously think an evening's natter can make that kind of difference?"

  "Oh, no," Flandry said. "Especially when it's off the record. If I reach any conclusions, they'll be my own, and I wouldn't look for many folk at home to take my naked word. But I am not without influence. And every so often, a small change does make a big difference. And, mainly, what harm to either of us?"

  Magnusson pondered. After a time: "Yes, what harm?"

  Dinner was Spartan, as suited the master's taste. He took a single glass of wine with it, and afterward coffee. Flandry had two glasses, plus a liqueur from the resident's stock, sufficient to influence his palate and naught else. Nevertheless, that dining room witnessed speech more animated than ever before. In the main it was noncontroversial, reminiscent, verging on the friendly. Both men had had many odd experiences in their lives.

  Flandry was practiced at keeping vigilance behind a mask of bonhomie. Magnusson was not; when he felt such a need, he clamped down a poker face. It appeared toward the end of things, after the orderly had cleared the table of everything except a coffeepot and associated ware. The hour was late. A window showed the spiderweb constellations thinning out as their lights died. Warm air rustled from a grille, for the nights here were cold. It wafted the smoke of Flandry's cigarettes in blue pennons. His brand of tobacco had an odor suggesting leaves on fire in a northern Terran autumn.

  He finished his account of a contest on a neutral planet between him and a Merseian secret agent: "Before you object, I agree that poisoning him wasn't very nice. However, I trust I've made it clear that I could not let Gwanthyr go home alive if there was any way of preventing it. He was too able."

  Magnusson scowled, then blanked his visage and said flatly, "You have the wrong attitude. You regard the Merseians as soulless."

  "Well, yes. As I do everybody else, myself included."

  Magnusson showed irritation. "Belay that infernal japing of yours! You know what I mean. You look on them as inevitable foes, natural enemies of humans, like a—a strain of disease bacteria." He paused. "If it weren't for your prejudice, I might seriously consider inviting you to join me. We could make a pretext for your wife to come out before you declared yourself. You claim your purpose is to hold off the Long Night—"

  "As a prerequisite for continuing to enjoy life. Barbarism is dismal. The rule of self-righteous aliens is worse."

  "I'm not sure but what that's another of your gibes, or your lies. No matter. Why can't you see that I'd bring an end to the decadence, give the Empire back strength and hope? I think what's blinkering you is your sick hatred of Merseians."

  "You're wrong there," Flandry said low. "I don't hate them as a class. Far more humans have earned my malevolence, and the one being whose destruction became an end in itself for me didn't belong to either race." He could not totally suppress a wince, and hastened on: "In fact, I've been quite fond of a number of individual Merseians, mostly those I encountered in noncritical situations but sometimes those who crossed blades with me. They were honorable by their own standards, which in many respects are more admirable than those of most modern humans. I sincerely regretted having to do Gwanthyr in."

  "But you can't see, you're constitutionally unable to see or even imagine, that a real and lasting peace is possible between us and them."

  Flandry shook his head. "It isn't, unless and until the civilization that dominates them goes under or changes its character completely. The Roidhun could make a personal appearance singing 'Jesus Loves Me' and I'd still want us to keep our warheads armed. You haven't had the chance to study them, interact with them, get to know them from the inside out, that I've had."

  Magnusson lifted a fist. "I've fought them—done them in, as you so elegantly put it, by the tens of thousands to your measly dozen or two—since I enlisted in the Marines thirty years ago. And you have the gall to say I don't know them."

  "That's different, Sir Olaf," Flandry replied placatingly, "You've met them as brave enemies, or as fellow officers, colleagues, when truces were being negotiated and in the intervals of so-called peace that followed. It's like being a player on one of two meteor ball teams. I am acquainted with the owners of the clubs."

  "I don't deny hostility and aggressiveness on their part. Who does? I do say it's not been unprovoked—from the time of first contact, centuries ago, when the Terran rescue mission upset their whole order of things and found ways to get rich off their tragedy—and I do say they have their share of good will and common sense, also in high office—which are utterly lacking in today's Terran Imperium. It won't be quick or easy, no. But the two powers can hammer out an accommodation, a peace—an alliance, later on, for going out together through the galaxy."

  Flandry patted a hand over the beginnings of a yawn. "Excuse me. I've been many hours awake now, and I must confess to having heard that speech before. We play the recordings you send our way, you know."

  Magnusson smiled grimly. "Sorry. I did get carried away, but that's because of the supreme importance of this." He squared his blocky shoulders. "Don't think I'm naive. I do know Merseia from the inside. I've been there."

  Flandry lounged back. "As a youngster? The data we have on you suggested you might have paid a couple of visits in the past."

  Magnusson nodded. "Nothing treasonable about that. No conflicts were going on at the time. My birthworld, Kraken, has always traded freely, beyond the Terran sphere as well as within it."

  "Yes, your people are an independent lot, aren't they? Do go on, please. This is precisely the sort of personal insight I've been trying for."

  Magnusson went expressionless. "My father was a space captain who often took cargoes to and from the Roidhunate, sometimes to Merseia itself. That was before the Starkad incident caused relations to deteriorate entirely. Even afterward, he made a few trips, and took me along on a couple of them. I was in my early teens then—impressionable, you're thinking, and you're right, but I was also open to everything observation might show me. I got chummy with several young Merseians. No, this didn't convince me they're a race of angels. I enlisted, didn't I? And you know I did my duty. But when that duty involved getting together with Merseians in person, my senses and mind stayed open."

  "It seems a pretty fragile foundation for a consequential political judgment."

  "I studied too, investigated, collected opinions, thought and thought about everything."

  "The Roidhunate is as complex as the Empire, as full of contradictions and paradoxes, if not more so," Flandry said in a level tone. "The Merseians aren't the sole species in it, and members of some others have been influential from time to time."

  "True. Same as with us. What of it?"

  "Why, we know still less about their xenos than we do about our own. That's caused us rude surprises in the past. For example, my long-time antagonist Aycharaych. I got the impression you also encountered him."

  Magnusson shook his head. "No. Never."

  "Really? You seem to recognize the name."

  "Oh, yes, rumors get around. I'd be interested to hear whatever you can tell."

  Flandry bit his lip. "The subject's painful to me." He dropped his cigarette down an ash-taker and straightened in his chair. "Sir Olaf, this has been a fascinating conversation and I thank you for it, but I am genuinely tired. Could I bid you goodnight? We can take matters up again at your convenience."

  "A moment. Stay," Magnusson reflected. Decision came. He touched the call unit on his belt. A door slid aside and four m
arines trod through. They were Irumclagians, tall, slim, hard-skinned, their insectlike faces impassive. "You are under arrest," Magnusson said crisply.

  "I beg your pardon?" Flandry scarcely stirred, and his words came very soft. "This is a parley under truce."

  "It was supposed to be," Magnusson said. "You've violated the terms by attempting espionage. I'm afraid you and your party must be interned."

  "Would you care to explain?"

  Magnusson snapped an order to the nonhumans. It was clear that they knew only the rudiments of Anglic. Three took positions beside and behind Flandry's chair. The fourth stayed at the door, blaster unholstered.

  Magnusson rose to stand above the prisoner, legs widespread, fists on hips. He glowered downward. Wrath roughened his voice: "You know full well. I was more than half expecting it, but let you go ahead in hopes you'd prove to be honest. You didn't.

  "For your information, I learned three days ago that the Terran spies specially sent to Merseia were detected and captured. I suspect they went at your instigation, but never mind; you certainly know what they were up to. The leading questions you fed me were part and parcel of the same operation. No wonder you came yourself. Nobody else would've had your devil's skill. If I hadn't been warned, I'd never have known—till the spies and you had returned home and compared notes. As it is, I now have one more proof that the God looks after His warriors."

  Flandry met the fire-blue stare coolly and asked, "Won't our captivity be a giveaway?"

  "No, I think not," Magnusson said, calming. "Nobody will expect those agents of yours to report back soon. Besides, the Merseians will start slipping the Terrans disinformation that seems to come from them. You can imagine the details better than I can. As for your mini-diplomatic corps here, won't the Imperium be happy when it does not return at once? When, instead, courier torps bring word that things look surprisingly hopeful?"

  "The Navy isn't going to sit idle because of that," Flandry cautioned.