Seven Conquests

by Poul Anderson

  It was with an effort that she pulled herself away, with two hours lost and a few hundred credits gained. Nothing but courtesy to the guest made her do it. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, and she went out with a stiff-legged gait that only slowly loosened.

  Wayland accepted his commission and laughed a trifle shakily. “I earn my living, sir!” he said. “It’s brutal on the nerves.”

  “How long will they play?” asked Ganch.

  “Till the trader is cleaned out or has won so much that no one can match him. In this case, I’d estimate about thirty hours.”

  “Continuous? How can the nervous system endure it, not to mention the feet?”

  “It’s hard,” admitted Christabel Hesty. Her eyes burned. “But exciting! There’s nothing in the galaxy quite like that suspense. You lose yourself in it.”

  “And, of course,” said Wayland mildly, “man adapts to any cultural pattern. We’d find it difficult to live as you do on Dromm.”

  No doubt, thought Ganch sardonically. But you are going to learn how.

  On an isolated planet like this, an outworlder was always a figure of romance. In spite of manners which must seem crude here, Ganch had only to suggest an evening out for Christabel Hesty to leap at the offer.

  He simply changed to another uniform, but she appeared in a topless gown of deep-blue silkite, her dark hair sprinkled with tiny points of light, and made his heart stumble. He reminded himself that women were breeders, nothing else. But Principle! How dull they were on Dromm!

  His object was to gain information, but he decided he might as well enjoy his work.

  They took an elevated way to the Stellar House, Arkinshaw’s single skyscraper, and had cocktails in a clear-domed roof garden with sunset rioting around them. A gentle music, some ancient waltz from Earth herself, lilted in the air, and the gaily clad diners talked in low voices and clinked glasses and laughed softly.

  Lieutenant Hesty raised her glass to his. “Your luck, sir,” she pledged him. Then, smiling: “Shall we lower guard?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My apologies. I forgot you are a stranger, sir. The proposal was to relax formality for this evening.”

  “By all means,” said Ganch. He tried to smile in turn. “Though I fear my class is always rather stiff.”

  Her long, soot-black eyelashes fluttered. “Then I hight Chris tonight,” she said. “And your first name…?”

  “My class does not use them. I am Ganch, with various identifying symbols attached.”

  “We meet some strange outworlders,” she said frankly, “but in truth, you Drommans seem the most exotic yet.”

  “And New Hermes gives us that impression,” he chuckled.

  “We know so little about you—a few explorers and traders, and now you. Is your mission official?”

  “Everything on Dromm is official,” said Ganch, veraciously enough. “I am an ethnographer making a detailed study of your folkways.” And that was a lie.

  “Excuse my saying so, I shouldn’t criticize another civilization, but isn’t it terribly drab having one’s entire life regulated by the State?”

  “It is…” Ganch hunted for words. “Secure,” he finished earnestly. “Ordered. One knows where one stands.”

  “A pity you had that war with Thanit. They seemed such nice people, those who visited here.”

  “We had no choice,” answered Ganch with the smoothness of rote. “An irresponsible, aggressive government attacked us.” She did not ask for details, and he supposed it was the usual thing: interest in other people’s fate obeys an inverse-square law, and fifty light-years is a gulf of distance no man can really imagine.

  In point of fact, he told himself with the bitter honesty of his race, Thanit had sought peace up to the last moment; Dromm s ultimatum had demanded impossible concessions, and Thanit had had no choice but to fight a hopeless battle. Her conquest had been well-planned, the armored legions of Dromm had romped over her and now she was being disgested by the State.

  Chris frowned, a shadow on the wide clear brow. “I find it hard to see why they would make war…why anyone would,” she murmured. “Isn’t there enough on any planet to content its people? And if by chance they should be unhappy, there are always new worlds.”

  “Well,” shrugged Ganch, “you should know why. You’re in the navy yourself, aren’t you, and New Hermes has fought a couple of times.”

  “Strictly in self-defense,” she said. “Naturally, we now mount guard on our defeated enemies, even seventy years later, to be sure they don’t try again. As for me, I have a peaceful desk job in the statistics branch, correlating data.”

  Ganch felt a thrumming within himself. He could hardly have asked for better luck. Precise information on the armament of New Hermes was just what Dromm lacked. If he could bring it back to old wan Halsker it would mean a directorship, at least!

  And afterward, when a new conquest was to be administered and made over…His ruby eyes studied Chris from beneath drooping lids. A territorial governor had certain perquisites of office.

  “I suppose there are many poor twisted people in the universe,” went on the girl. “Like those Oberkassel priests, with their weird doctrine they wanted to force on everybody. It’s hard to believe intolerance exists, but alien planets have done strange things to human minds.”

  A veiling was on her violet gaze as she looked at him. She must want to know his soul, what it was that drove the Great Cadre and why anyone should enjoy having power over other men. He could have told her a great deal—the cruel wintry planet, the generations-long war against the unhuman Ixlatt who made sport of torturing prisoners, then war between factions that split men, war against the red-eyed mutants, whipped-up xenophobia, pogroms, concentration camps…Ganch’s grandfather had died in one.

  But the mutation was more than an accidental mark; it was in the nervous system, answer to a pitiless environment. A man of the Great Cadre did not know fear on the conscious level. Danger lashed him to alertness, but there was no fright to cloud his thoughts. And, by genetics or merely as the result of persecution, he had a will to power which only death could stop. The Great Cadre had subdued a hundred times their numbers, and made them into brainchanneled tools of the State, simply by being braver and more able in war. And Dromm was not enough, not when each darkness brought unconquered stars out overhead.

  A philosopher from distant Archbishop, where they went in for imaginative speculation, had visited Dromm a decade ago. His remark still lay in Ganchs mind, and stung: “Unjust treatment is apt to produce paranoia in the victim. Your race has outlived its oppressors, but not the reflexes they built into your society. You’ll never rest till the whole universe is enslaved, for your canalized nervous systems make you incapable of regarding anyone else as anything but a dangerous enemy.”

  The philosopher had not gone home alive, but his words remained; Ganch had tried to forget them, and could not.

  Enough! His mind had completed its tack in the blink of an eye, and now he remembered that the girl expected an answer. He sipped his cocktail and spoke thoughtfully:

  “Yes, these special groups, isolated on their special planets, have developed in many peculiar ways. New Hermes, for instance, if you will pardon my saying so.”

  Chris raised her brows. “Of course, this is my home and I’m used to it, Ganch,” she replied, “but I fail to see anything which would surprise an outsider very much. We live quietly for the most part, with a loose parliamentary government to run planetary affairs. The necessities of life are produced free for all by the automatic factories; to avoid the annoyance of regulations, we leave everything else to private enterprise, subject only to the reasonable restrictions of the Conservation Authority and a fair-practices act. We don’t need more government than that, because the educational system instills respect for the rights and dignity of others and we have no ambitious public-works projects.

  “You might say our whole culture is founded on a principle of
live and let live.”

  She stroked her chin, man-fashion. “Of course, we have police and courts. And we discourage a concentration of power, political or economic, but that’s simply to preserve individual liberty. Our economic system helps; it’s hard to build up a gigantic business when one game may wipe it out.”

  “Now there,” said Ganch, “you strike the oddity. This passion for gambling. How does it arise?”

  “Oh…I wouldn’t call it a passion. It’s merely one way of pricing goods and services, just as haggling is on Kwan-Yin, and socialism on Arjay, and supply-demand on Alexander.”

  “But how did it originate?”

  Chris lifted smooth bare shoulders and smiled. “Ask the historians, not me. I suppose our ancestors, reacting from the Caledonian puritanism, were apt to glorify vices and practice them to excess. Gambling was the only one that didn’t taper off as a more balanced society evolved. It came to be a custom. Gradually it superseded the traditional methods of exchange.

  “It doesn’t make any difference, you see; being honest gambling, it comes out even. Win one, lose one…that’s almost the motto of our folk. To be sure, in games of skill like poker, a good player will come out ahead in the long run; but any society gives an advantage to certain talents. On Alexander, most of the money and prestige flow to the successful entrepreneur. On Einstein, the scientists are the rich and honored leaders. On Hellas, it’s male prowess and female beauty. On Arjay, it’s the political spellbinder. On Dromm, I suppose, the soldier is on top. With us, it’s the shrewd gambler.

  “The important thing,” she finished gravely, “is not who gets the most, but whether everyone gets enough.”

  “But that is what makes me wonder,” said Ganch. “This trader we saw today, for instance. Suppose he loses everything?”

  “It would be a blow, of course. But he wouldn’t starve, because the necessities are free anyway; and he’ll have the sense—he’ll have learned in the primaries—to keep a reserve to start over with. We have few paupers.”

  “Your financial structure must be most complicated.”

  “It is,” she said wryly. “We’ve had to develop a tremendous theoretical science and a great number of highly trained men to handle it. That game today was childish compared with what goes on in, say, the securities exchanges. I don’t pretend to understand what happens there. I’m content to turn a wheel for my monthly pay, and if I win to go out and see if I can’t make a little more.”

  “And you enjoy this…insecurity?”

  “Why, yes. As I imagine you enjoy war, and an engineer enjoys building a spaceship, and—” Chris looked at the table. “It’s always hard and risky settling a new planet, even one as Earth-like as ours. Our ancestors got a taste for excitement. When no more was to be had in subduing nature, they transferred the desire to—Ah, here come the hors d’oeuvres.”

  Ganch ate a stately succession of courses with pleasure. He was not good at small talk, but Chris made such eager conversation that it was simple to lead her: the details of her life and work, insignificant items but they clicked together. By the coffee and liqueur, Ganch knew where the military microfiles of New Hermes were kept and was fairly sure he knew how to get at them.

  Afterward they danced. Ganch had never done it before, but his natural coordination soon fitted him into the rhythm. There was a curious bittersweet savor to holding the girl in his arms…dearest enemy. He wondered if he should try to make love to her. An infatuated female officer would be useful…

  No. In such matters, she was the sophisticate and he the bumbling yokel. Coldly, though not without regret, he dismissed the idea.

  They sat at a poker table for a while, where the management put up chips to the value of their bill. Ganch was completely outclassed; he learned the game readily, but his excellent analytical mind could not match the Hermesians. It was almost as if they knew what cards he held. He lost heavily, but Chris made up for it and when they quit they only had to pay half of what they owed.

  They hired an aircar, and for a while its gravity drive lifted them noiselessly into a night-blue sky, under a flooding moon and myriad stars and the great milky sprawl of the galaxy. Beneath them a broken bridge of moonlight shuddered across the darkened sea, and they heard the far, faint crying of birds.

  When he let Chris off at her apartment, Ganch wanted to slay. It was wrenching to say good night and turn back to his own hotel. He stamped out the wish and bent his mind elsewhere. There was work to do.

  Dromm was nothing if not thorough. Her agents had been on New Hermes for ten years now, mostly posing as natives of unsuspicious planets like Guise and Anubis. Enough had been learned to earmark this world for conquest after Thanit, and to lay out the basic military campaign.

  The Hermesians were not really naive. They had their own spies and counterspies. Customs inspection was careful. But each Dromman visitor had brought a few plausible objects with him—a personal teleset, a depilator, a sample of nuclear-powered tools for sale—nothing to cause remark; and those objects had stayed behind, in care of a supposed immigrant from Kwan-Yin who lived in Arkinshaw. This man had refashioned them into as efficient a set of machinery for breaking and entering as existed anywhere in the known galaxy.

  Ganch was quite sure Wayland had a tail on him. It was an elementary precaution. But a field intelligence officer of Dromm had ways to shake a tail off without its appearing more than accidental. Ganch went out the following afternoon, having notified Wayland that he did not need a guide: he just wanted to stroll around and look at things for himself. After wandering a bit, he went into a pleasure house. It was a holiday, Discovery Day, and Arkinshaw swarmed with a merry crowd; in the jam-packed building Ganch slipped quietly into a washroom cubicle.

  His shadows would most likely watch all exits; and they wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed inside for many hours. The hetaerae of New Hermes were famous.

  Alone, Ganch slipped out of his uniform and stuffed it down the rubbish disintegrator. Beneath it he wore the loose blue coat and trousers of a Kwan-Yin colonist. A life-mask over his head, a complete alteration of posture and gait…it was another man who stepped into the hall and sauntered out the main door as if his amusements were completed. He went quite openly to Fraybiner’s house; what was more natural than that some home-planet relative of Tao Chung should pay a call?

  When they were alone, Fraybiner let out a long breath. “By the Principle, it’s good to be with a man again!” he said. “If you knew how sick I am of these chattering decadents—”

  “Enough!” snapped Ganch. “I am here on business. Operation Lift.”

  Fraybiner’s surgically slanted and darkened eyes widened. “So it’s finally coming off?” he murmured. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “If I get away with it,” said Ganch grimly. “If I don’t, it doesn’t matter. Exact knowledge of the enemy’s strength will be valuable, but we have sufficient information already to launch the war.”

  Fraybiner began operating concealed studs. A false, wall slid aside to reveal a safe, on which he got to work. “How will you take it home?” he asked. “When they find their files looted, they won’t let anyone leave the planet without a thorough search.”

  Ganch didn’t reply; Fraybiner had no business knowing. Actually, the files were going to be destroyed, once read, and their contents go home in Ganch’s eidetic memory. But that versatile ethnographer did not plan to leave for some weeks yet: no use causing unnecessary suspicion. When he finally did…a surprise attack on the Hermesian bases would immobilize them at one swoop.

  He smiled to himself. Even knowing they were to be attacked, their whole planet fully alerted, the Hermesians were finished. It was well established that their fleet had less than half the strength of Dromm’s, and not a single supernova-class dread-naught. Ganch’s information would be helpful, but was by no means Vital.

  Except, of course, to Ganch Z-17837-JX-39. But death was a threat he treated with the contempt it deserved.

&
nbsp; Fraybiner had gotten the safe open, and a metal gleam of instruments and weapons lay before their gaze. Ganch inspected each item carefully while the other jittered with impatience. Finally he donned the flying combat armor and hung the implements at its belt. By that time the sun was down and the stars out.

  Chris had said the Naval HQ building was deserted at night except for its guards. Previous spies had learned where these were posted. “Very well,” said Ganch. “I’m on my way. I won’t see you again, and advise you to move elsewhere soon. If the natives turn out to be stubborn, we’ll have to destroy this city.”

  Fraybiner nodded, and activated the ceiling door. Ganch went up on his gravity beams and out into the sky. The town was a jeweled spiderweb beneath him, and fireworks burst with great soft explosions of color. His outfit was a nonreflecting black, and there was only a whisper of air to betray his flight.

  The HQ building, broad and low, rested on a greensward several kilometers from Arkinshaw. Ganch approached its slumbering dark mass carefully, taking his time. A bare meter’s advance, an instrument reading…yes, they had a radio-alarm field set up. He neutralized it with his heterodyning unit, flew another cautious meter, stopped to readjust the neutralization. The moon was down, but he wished the stars weren’t so bright.

  It was past midnight when he lay in the shrubbery surrounding a rear entrance. A pair of sentries, armed and helmeted, tramped almost by his nose, crossing paths in front of the door. He waited, learning the pattern of their march.

  When his tactics were fully planned, he rose as one marine came by and let the fellow have a sonic stun beam. Too low-powered to trip an alarm, it was close range and to the base of the neck. Ganch caught the body as it fell, let it down, and picked up the same measured tread.

  He felt no conscious tension as he neared the other man, though a sharp glance through darkness would end the ruse, but his muscles gathered themselves. He was almost abreast of the Hermesian when he saw the figure recoil in alarm. His stunner went off again. It was a bad shot; the sentry lurched but retained a wavering consciousness. Ganch sprang on him, one tigerish bound, a squeezed trigger, and he lowered the marine as gently as a woman might her lover.