“Your mission is to aid in the production of certain native crops,” Agzaral said. “There is already an expedition to Tran with this mission, sent there by a race called the Shalnuksis, who are merchants and traders. You should cooperate with that expedition as much as possible. You carry much of the knowledge of Earth, and you may impart any that you believe will aid to increase production. It is important that the Shalnuksis be satisfied with the crops produced. Beyond that you may be able to better the lot of the Tran humans. We would prefer that you do so, although that will not be pleasing to the Shalnuksis.” Agzaral looked significantly at Saxon, as if he expected Saxon to understand a hidden signal. “And unfortunately, I cannot give you much better advice.”
“We have the knowledge of Earth,” Saxon said. “Enough knowledge to transform that place. It’s an experiment, introducing that much knowledge into what amounts to a fifteenth-century civilization. A dangerous experiment.”
Agzaral nodded.
“Agreed.”
“But I can do so?”
“If you believe that sharing that knowledge with those actually charged with raising the crops in question will lead to increased crop production, by all means. That is the primary mission. But once that is accomplished you are not forbidden to be of general help to everyone on the planet.”
“So why us? I’m certainly not qualified.”
“I doubt anyone on Earth is qualified,” Agzaral said. “Not in the sense you meant. You meant ‘worthy.’”
“Yes—”
“And the fact that you ask it is one qualification,” Agzaral said. “We don’t have infinite choices here. We needed someone educated, willing to go, able to go without causing a lot of questions to be asked, intelligent, and not thoroughly arrogant—that does not generate a long list of candidates.”
“Now I’m astonished that you found me.”
“Accident,” Agzaral said.
“Not quite,” Dr. Lee said. “Your former student really did lead us to you. We’ve done business with him before. He believes we’re CIA.”
“And me?” Haskins asked.
“We wouldn’t have come looking for you, but once Mr. Saxon brought you in we found no disqualifications, and some of your past experience may very well prove useful. You were given ample opportunities to quit. You didn’t. Not disqualified and didn’t quit. End of matter.”
“And why am I qualified?” Sandori asked.
“Come now, Ms. Sandori, you yourself believe you are the best-qualified person in this expedition. One of the best qualified on your planet,” Lee said.
She looked at him sharply.
“It’s true, no?” Lee demanded.
“Do I have to answer?”
“You just did,” Agzaral said. “You met our requirements: no one will miss you. You volunteered. You are competent, and you have a strong desire to change things for what you think is the better—and some practical experience in what happens when you try that. Our opinion of your suitability may not be as high as your own, but we do think you suitable.”
“And you don’t have many choices,” Sandori said.
Agzaral stared at the picture of Earth for a long moment, then turned back to them.
“We’ve kept your expedition small. You have knowledge, you have enough weapons to defend yourselves, but you don’t represent enough force to make much difference in battle.
“As I say, there is already an expedition on Tran. It is composed of Earth mercenaries, and Captain Galloway, its commander, brought enough military power to change Tran’s history, although that was certainly not his mission. The Shalnuksis have commercial rights to Tran produce. They intend Galloway’s changes to be temporary, and their assessment may be correct. Galloway’s power is evaporating. He will never have the industrial base to produce modern ammunition, so he is being forced to build a new power base using locals and what technology he can introduce.
“He has had a surprising impact, not always for the better, but generally so. That will continue.”
“So why don’t we just go help Galloway?” Sandori asked.
“In fact, the Shalnuksis desire you to do precisely that,” Agzaral said. “We cannot, of course, control your actions after you arrive on Tran, but the entire reason they have agreed to sending you there is to assist Captain Galloway. Understand that. You may have a beneficial effect on the planet, but that is definitely secondary.”
He regarded them all for a moment, and Saxon nodded.
“All right, I guess that defines our priorities. Where on Tran are we going?”
“We have chosen your landing place,” Agzaral said. “It is a Republic, called the city-state of Nikeis.”
“Fourteenth-century republics were usually oligarchies,” Saxon said.
“And Nikeis is no exception,” Agzaral agreed, “but its oligarchy is surprisingly open to new talent. New talent with wealth. You will have wealth as well as knowledge. It shouldn’t be that difficult.”
“Will Galloway know we’re coming?”
“No.” Lee shook his head. “There isn’t any way to let him know.”
“No, there is not,” Agzaral agreed. “And there is one other point to keep in mind, Professor Saxon. Should Captain Galloway’s expedition fail, the Shalnuksis will expect you to produce the crops they desire. You will not have the military means he had, which means you will need local allies to produce them in return for what you can teach them.”
“That doesn’t sound like you have a huge amount of confidence in this Galloway,” Sandori observed.
“I have confidence that he will try very hard to complete his mission,” Agzaral told her. “Unfortunately, at last report he wasn’t doing so well.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE LANDING
One week before the Battle of the Ottarn River
Bart Saxon stared at the screen. A blue planet, largely water, showed in brilliant colors. He noted exaggerated icecaps at both poles. There were two large continents, one larger than the other, with outlying islands. Saxon focused on the larger continent, the one he’d been told they were going to land on. At this magnification he could see nothing of human works on the planet below, but he studied the geography. There ought to be a big city where those rivers ran together, another somewhere near that obvious mountain pass. The western high plains seemed barren of features and very dusty. Nothing there? It would be amusing to see if he could find cities by choosing what appeared to be good geographical locations for them, then zooming down to find out what was actually there. For now he was content to look at the planet as a whole.
Storms raged across the southern hemisphere. Of course north and south would be arbitrary, but the locals had chosen “north” so that the suns would rise in the east, and most of them lived in the northern hemisphere of the larger continent. Saxon had read that there was also an island culture halfway around the world from the dominant settlement, but little was known about it. Apparently some forgotten Shalnuksi trader had imported a colony of Tonganese Islanders sometime during the First Millennium of the Christian era on Earth.
Whatever the traders had expected, according to the records he’d seen, the result was about what Saxon would have predicted: the islanders had developed a culture very close to what Captain Cook had found in the South Seas. Had this been an experiment in cultural anthropology? That seemed unlike the Shalnuksis, who seldom did anything except for profit, but it was still the most reasonable explanation. It had been much the same with the Steppe cultures brought in and settled on the high western plateaus of the northern continent. They’d been put in place, then abandoned, and if anything had ever been expected of them, it was forgotten.
So damned much I don’t know, Saxon thought. And what I don’t know can certainly hurt me. Maybe Galloway knows more, but Inspector Agzaral doesn’t believe it.
“It looks wet,” Haskins said. “And them ice caps are big. I mean, really big. Looks cold.”
“It is mostly cold. Wa
rming, though,” Saxon said. “And there’s land under much of that ice. If it melts, the seas rise. A lot.”
“So what did you decide about Galloway?” Haskins asked. “We’re supposed to help him.”
“I know,” Saxon said. “But the pilots can’t find him.”
“What?”
“They say they can locate him, but he’s not where they expected him to be, and nowhere they can land.”
“So what do we do?” Haskins said.
“We can look for Galloway, or we can go camp out in this Nikeis place,” Saxon said. “Go there and get settled and then try to hook up with Galloway.”
“I’m for that,” Sandori said. “If we took a vote that’s the way I’d vote it.”
“This ain’t no democracy,” Haskins said.
“Not if you always vote with Saxon, it’s not,” she agreed.
“Lady, I know who Doctor Lee and that Inspector Agzaral put in charge.”
“If we could just hook up with Galloway I’d do that,” Saxon said. “But they don’t seem to think they can do that. So it’s land near one of Galloway’s cities, or near Nikeis. Those are the choices, and they’re not giving us long to make a choice, either.”
“I think I am going to like this Nikeis,” Sandori said. “A republic, and we start off rich.”
“True. They also speak Italian,” Saxon said. “Which you already know.”
“We all got crash courses in both the Tran lingua franca and Italian, and you don’t know either one of them all that well. At least I know some Italian. Might come in handy.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that,” Saxon conceded. “But I got more hypno sessions in lingua franca than Italian. Okay, language doesn’t matter, we just have to learn. Upside, Nikeis is a republic. Spirit knows the language, and maybe something of the customs. Downside?”
“I don’t know dick about no boats,” Haskins said. “’Scuse me, Miss Spirit.”
She grimaced. Haskins seemed to enjoy treating her with exaggerated deference.
“We have a lot of material about boats and navigation,” she said. “Some of it may be useful.”
“Yeah, if you can learn about boats from books,” Haskins said. “And I don’t think you can. But what the hell.”
“That’s a lot of water . . . ” Sandori said, looking at the screen again.
“About ninety percent,” Saxon said. “Of course Earth is eighty or so. And if you look at the Pacific as one side, just about all the land is on the other. Here a lot of the land is at the poles covered with ice. Less land to live on. You’re right, that’s a lot of water, and they tell me it’s rising. Navies will be important. We’ll teach them maritime commerce. Buckminster Fuller always said the maritime interests were the real drivers of civilization.”
“If they started off as Venetians, they know more about maritime commerce than you do,” Sandori said. She grinned. “You or me.”
“You’re from Venice?” Haskins asked.
“Grandfather was. Another grandfather from Florence. Mother from Turin.”
“Real Italian lady,” Haskins said. “Good thing, I think.”
There was a buzz. Saxon lifted the communicator handset.
“Hello?”
“Awantshu.”
Saxon had no idea what that meant, but the unknown pilots of the ship always said it.
“Good day,” he responded.
“Your Colonel Galloway is a very long way from the communicator his employers left with him,” the alien voice said. “We have no way of making contact with him.”
“So?”
“If you are asking why this is significant—”
“I am.”
“Then I tell you that we will not risk this ship by exposing it to Galloway’s weapons, so we cannot set you down at his location, nor can we warn anyone that you are coming. You must land on this planet without prior negotiations with the local inhabitants. Choose where you wish us to place you.”
“Is this what you agreed with Inspector Agzaral?”
“His Importance employed us for a mission. He cannot require us to risk our ship. We agreed to transport you, and we will do so. Now choose where you wish to be landed. The landing will be recorded, and the record given to His Importance.”
“A moment.” Saxon told Haskins and Sandori what the alien had said. “And it doesn’t sound like we have a lot of time to decide,” he said.
“I like Nikeis, of course,” Sandori said, and Haskins shrugged.
“I’ll go where you decide,” he told Saxon. “I sure don’t know what’s best. But if we have to fight somebody I’d sure rather fight locals than Galloway’s mercs!”
“Why would we fight at all?” Saxon asked.
“Maybe I just got a nasty suspicious mind,” Haskins said. “Maybe I been on the streets too long. But—”
Sandori smiled thinly.
“Venice was the most civilized place on Earth in its day,” she said.
Saxon shook his head slowly. What the hell do I do? All I know about old Venice is from La Giaconda, and it wasn’t all that nice a place in that opera. But they treated Othello all right in Verdi’s opera. Othello was a mercenary general. So were Cassio and Roderigo. I think. Was that the opera or Shakespeare? I have all that information, but it’s in the containers and I can’t get at it. Damn all.
They’re going to set us down somewhere, and nobody knows we’re coming. Near one of the places Galloway commands, but not necessarily near him. Or near this Nikeis. I guess if those are the choices I don’t have much choice.
“We’re ready to land near Nikeis,” Saxon said into the handset. “We’ll need to hide the cargo except for what we can carry.”
“Yes. We have chosen a place. It will require that you walk seven of your English miles to a road,” the pilot said. “The terrain is level and only lightly forested. There is a major road to the north. Is this acceptable?”
“I suppose so.” He got nods from the others. Seven miles wasn’t far. They had good lightweight camping gear and boots, and they were all in good shape thanks to the ship’s gym. “Let’s do it, then.”
* * *
It was dark when the ship set them down in a meadow surrounded by woods. Lights flashed as automated systems unloaded the three large cargo containers onto the meadow.
“We sure going to need help moving this stuff very far,” Haskins observed. “What do we do, one stay here and watch the stuff? Who hikes, who stays?”
“We can decide in the morning,” Saxon said. He raised his voice to shout into the ship. “What do we do now?”
“Awantshu. The road is to your north. It is an east-west road. You cannot have difficulty finding it.”
Sandori fingered her compass. It seemed to work all right, north was more or less north.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said, and Saxon laughed.
“Lady, you have a bad feeling about everything.”
“I suppose. So what do we do now?”
“Wait for morning,” Haskins said. “We sure don’t want to be thrashing around in the dark in woods we don’t know. Come morning we can go look for people.”
“Who stays here?” Sandori asked.
“Why should anyone?” Haskins asked. He pounded the heel of his fist against the side of one of the containers. “Plenty solid, good locks. Take hours to get through this, even with a good hacksaw. With what they have it’ll take days.”
“Yeah, okay,” Saxon said. “I sure wish we knew more about what we’re doing.”
“We’ve got knowledge and trade goods,” Sandori said.
“Sure, if somebody don’t just take them,” Haskins said.
“Think they would?”
“Officer Sandori, I have no idea,” Haskins said. “But why wouldn’t they?”
“It’s a civilized city-state. They’re not barbarians. Besides, they can take stuff, but ideas are a bit harder to get. They won’t know how to use anything. We can show them. And it wouldn�
�t be smart to get us too pissed off,” Sandori said. She fingered her pistol.
“Yeah,” Haskins said. “Of course, they ain’t never seen a pistol.”
The two of them had argued this a dozen times. Saxon sometimes took one side, sometimes the other, but he didn’t know what would happen. If they’d gone to Captain Galloway they’d have a better idea of who they were dealing with. Too late for that, Saxon thought. We can try him later. If we can find him.
There were mechanical sounds behind them. The ship’s hatchways and doors closed.
“Good luck.” The voice came from the small communicator box that lay beside Saxon’s pack.
“Thank you,” Saxon said.
The ship lifted silently, straight up out of the clearing, and was gone in seconds. It was the first time Saxon had been outside it to see it fly.
“Impressive,” he muttered. “I wonder how the hell they do that?”
“Beats me,” Haskins said. “But you’re sure right, it was impressive.”
“Some kind of magnetic effect?” Sandori wondered.
“I can’t see how that would work, but I can’t think of anything else,” Saxon said.
“And now we’re alone,” Sandori said. “And I think I’m just a little scared.”
Haskins laughed. “Only a little?”
“Let’s get some sleep,” Saxon said. “We’ve got a good three-hour walk in the morning.”
“I’ll get out the tents,” Haskins said. “Two enough, or you want one all to yourself?”
“Two’s enough for me,” Saxon said. “Heck, one’s enough for me.”
“Two, please,” Sandori said. “And thank you, Cal.”
* * *
The meadow was small. Young trees grew at its edges, and behind them were older trees, nearly all conifers. Earth trees, Saxon realized. A few strange flowers dotted the meadow, but the grass underfoot seemed earthlike, and they could easily have been in California. There was almost no sense of an alien world until a large and strangely marked insect flew past.
“Young growth,” Haskins said. “This place was logged out, maybe fifty years ago.”
Mamelukes Page 21
