Space Viking

by H. Beam Piper

  XXII

  He succeeded, the next morning, in convincing everybody that hewanted to be alone for a while, and was sitting in a garden,watching the rainbows in the midst of a big waterfall across thevalley. Elaine would have liked that, but she wasn't with him, now.

  Then he realized that somebody was speaking to him, in a small,bashful voice. He turned, and saw a little girl in shorts and asleeveless jacket, holding in her arms a long-haired blond puppywith big ears and appealing eyes.

  "Hello, both of you," he said.

  The puppy wriggled and tried to lick the girl's face.

  "Don't, Mopsy. We want to talk to this gentleman," she said."Are you really and truly the Space Viking?"

  "Really and truly. And who are you two?"

  "I'm Myrna. And this is Mopsy."

  "Hello, Myrna. Hello, Mopsy."

  Hearing his name, the puppy wriggled again and dropped from thechild's arms; after a brief hesitation, he came over and jumped ontoTrask's lap, licking his face. While he petted the dog, the girlcame over and sat on the bench beside him.

  "Mopsy likes you," she said. After a moment, she added: "I like you, too."

  "And I like you," he said. "Would you want to be my girl? You know,a Space Viking has to have a girl on every planet. How would youlike to be my girl on Marduk?"

  Myrna thought that over carefully. "I'd like to, but I couldn't.You see, I'm going to have to be Queen, some day."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. Grandpa is King now, and when he's through being King, Pappawill have to be King, and then when he's through being King, I can'tbe King because I'm a girl, so I'll have to be Queen. And I can't beanybody's girl, because I'm going to have to marry somebody I don'tknow, for reasons of state." She thought some more, and lowered hervoice. "I'll tell you a secret. I am a Queen now."

  "Oh, you are?"

  She nodded. "We are Queen, in our own right, of our Royal Bedroom,our Royal Playroom, and our Royal Bathroom. And Mopsy is ourfaithful subject."

  "Is Your Majesty absolute ruler of these domains?"

  "No," she said disgustedly. "We must at all times defer to our RoyalMinisters, just like Grandpa has to. That means, I have to do justwhat they tell me to. That's Lady Valerie, and Margot, and Dame Eunice,and Sir Thomas. But Grandpa says they are good and wise ministers.Are you really a Prince? I didn't know Space Vikings were Princes."

  "Well, my King says I am. And I am ruler of my planet, and I'll tellyou a secret. I don't have to do what anybody tells me."

  "Gee! Are you a tyrant? You're awfully big and strong. I'll betyou've slain just hundreds of cruel and wicked enemies."

  "Thousands, Your Majesty."

  He wished that weren't literally true; he didn't know how many ofthem had been little girls like Myrna and little dogs like Mopsy. Hefound that he was holding both of them tightly. The girl was saying:"But you feel bad about it." These children must be telepaths!

  "A Space Viking who is also a Prince must do many things he doesn'twant to do."

  "I know. So does a Queen. I hope Grandpa and Pappa don't get throughbeing King for just years and years." She looked over his shoulder."Oh! And now I suppose I've got to do something else I don't want to.Lessons, I bet."

  He followed her eyes. The girl who had been his dinner companion wasapproaching; she wore a wide sunshade hat, and a gown that trailedfilmy gauze like sunset-colored mist. There was another woman, inthe garb of an upper servant, with her.

  "Lady Valerie and who else?" he whispered.

  "Margot. She's my nurse. She's awful strict, but she's nice."

  "Prince Trask, has Her Highness been bothering you?" Lady Valerie asked.

  "Oh, far from it." He rose, still holding the funny little dog."But you should say, Her Majesty. She has informed me that sheis sovereign of three princely domains. And of one dear lovingsubject." He gave the subject back to the sovereign.

  "You should not have told Prince Trask that," Lady Valerie chided."When Your Majesty is outside her domains, Your Majesty must remainincognito. Now, Your Majesty must go with the Minister of theBedchamber; the Minister of Education awaits an audience."

  "Arithmetic, I bet. Well, good-by, Prince Trask. I hope I can seeyou again. Say good-by, Mopsy."

  She went away with her nurse, the little dog looking back over hershoulder.

  "I came out to enjoy the gardens alone," he said, "and now I findI'd rather enjoy them in company. If your Ministerial duties do notforbid, could you be the company?"

  "But gladly, Prince Trask. Her Majesty will be occupied with seriousaffairs of state. Square root. Have you seen the grottoes? They'redown this way."

  * * * * *

  That afternoon, one of the gentlemen-attendants caught up with him;Baron Cragdale would be gratified if Prince Trask could find time totalk with him privately. Before they had talked more than a fewminutes, however, Baron Cragdale abruptly became Crown Prince Edvard.

  "Prince Trask, Admiral Shefter tells me that you and he are havinginformal discussions about co-operation against this mutual enemyof ours, Dunnan. This is fine; it has my approval, and the approvalof Prince Vandarvant, the Prime Minister, and, I might add, that ofGoodman Mikhyl. I think it ought to go further, though. A formal treatybetween Tanith and Marduk would be greatly to the advantage of both."

  "I'd be inclined to think so, Prince Edvard. But aren't youproposing marriage on rather short acquaintance? It's only beenfifty hours since the _Nemesis_ orbited in here."

  "Well, we know a bit about you and your planet beforehand. There'sa large Gilgamesher colony here. You have a few on Tanith, haven'tyou? Well, anything one Gilgamesher knows, they all find out, andours are co-operative with Naval intelligence."

  That would be why Andray Dunnan was having no dealings withGilgameshers. It would also be what Zaspar Makann meant whenhe ranted about the Gilgamesh Interstellar Conspiracy.

  "I can see where an arrangement like that would be mutuallyadvantageous. I'd be quite in favor of it. Co-operation againstDunnan, of course, and reciprocal trade-rights on each other'strade-planets, and direct trade between Marduk and Tanith. AndBeowulf and Amaterasu would come into it, too. Does this also havethe approval of the Prime Minister and the King?"

  "Goodman Mikhyl's in favor of it; there's a distinction between himand the King, as you'll have noticed. The King can't be in favor ofanything till the Assembly or the Chancellor express an opinion.Prince Vandarvant favors it personally; as Prime Minister, he isreserving his opinion. We'll have to get the support of the CrownLoyalist Party before he can take an unequivocal position."

  "Well, Baron Cragdale; speaking as Baron Trask of Traskon, supposewe just work out a rough outline of what this treaty ought to be,and then consult, unofficially, with a few people whom you cantrust, and see what can be done about presenting it to the propergovernment officials...."

  * * * * *

  The Prime Minister came to Cragdale that evening, heavily incognitoand accompanied by several leaders of the Crown Loyalist Party. Inprinciple, they all favored a treaty with Tanith. Politically, theyhad doubts. Not before the election; too controversial a subject."Controversial," it appeared, was the dirtiest dirty-name anythingcould be called on Marduk. It would alienate the labor vote; they'dthink increased imports would threaten employment in Mardukanindustries. Some of the interstellar trading companies would likea chance at the Tanith planets; others would resent Tanith shipsbeing given access to theirs. And Zaspar Makann's party were alreadyshrieking protests about the _Nemesis_ being repaired by theRoyal Navy.

  And a couple of professors who inclined toward Makann had introduceda resolution calling for the court-martial of Prince Bentrik and aninvestigation of the loyalty of Admiral Shefter. And somebody else,probably a stooge of Makann's, was claiming that Bentrik had soldthe _Victrix_ to the Space Vikings and that the films of the battle ofAudhumla were fakes, photographed in miniature at the Navy Moon Base.

  Admiral Shefter, when Tra
sk flew in to see him the next day, wascontemptuous about this last.

  "Ignore the whole bloody thing; we get something like that beforeevery general election. On this planet, you can always kick theGilgameshers and the Armed Forces with impunity, neither have votesand neither can kick back. The whole thing'll be forgotten the dayafter the election. It always is."

  "That's if Makann doesn't win the election," Trask qualified.

  "That's no matter who wins the election. They can't any of themget along without the Navy, and they bloody well know it."

  Trask wanted to know if Intelligence had been getting anything.

  "Not on how Dunnan found out the _Victrix_ had been ordered toAudhumla, no," Shefter said. "There wasn't any secrecy about it;at least a thousand people, from myself down to the shoeshine boys,could have known about it as soon as the order was taped.

  "As for the list of ships you gave me, yes. One of them puts into this planet regularly; she spaced out from here only yesterdaymorning. The _Honest Horris_."

  "Well, great Satan, haven't you done anything?"

  "I don't know if there's anything we can do. Oh, we're investigating,but.... You see, this ship first showed up here four years ago,commanded by some kind of a Neobarb, not a Gilgamesher, named HorrisSasstroff. He claimed to be from Skathi; the locals there have a fewships, the Space Vikings had a base on Skathi about a hundred or soyears ago. Naturally, the ship had no papers. Tramp trading amongthe Neobarbs, it might be years before you'd put in on a planet wherethey'd ever heard of ship's papers.

  "The ship seems to have been in bad shape, probably abandoned onSkathi as junk a century ago and tinkered up by the locals. She wasin here twice, according to the commercial shipping records, and thesecond time she was in too bad shape to be moved out, and Sasstroffcouldn't pay to have her rebuilt, so she was libeled for spaceportcharges and sold. Some one-lung trading company bought her and fixedher up a little; they went bankrupt in a year or so, and she wasbought by another small company, Startraders, Ltd., and they've beenusing her on a milk-run to and from Gimli. They seem to be alegitimate outfit, but we're looking into them. We're looking forSasstroff, too, but we haven't been able to find him."

  "If you have a ship out Gimli way, you might find out if anybodythere knows anything about her. You may discover that she hasn'tbeen going there at all."

  "We might, at that," Shefter agreed. "We'll just find out."

  * * * * *

  Everybody at Cragdale knew about the projected treaty with Tanithby the morning after Trask's first conversation with Prince Edvardon the subject. The Queen of the Royal Bedroom, the Royal Playroomand the Royal Bathroom was insisting that her domains should havea treaty with Tanith, too.

  It was beginning to look to Trask as though that would be the onlytreaty he'd sign on Marduk, and he was having his doubts about that.

  "Do you think it would be wise?" he asked Lady Valerie Alvarath.The Queen of three rooms and one four-footed subject had alreadydecreed that Lady Valerie should be the Space Viking Prince's girlon the planet of Marduk. "If it got out, these People's Welfarelunatics would pick it up and twist it into evidence of some kindof a sinister plot."

  "Oh, I believe Her Majesty could sign a treaty with Prince Trask,"Her Majesty's Prime Minister decided. "But it would have to be keptvery secret."

  "Gee!" Myrna's eyes widened. "A real secret treaty; just like thewicked rulers of the old dictatorship!" She hugged her subjectecstatically. "I'll bet Grandpa doesn't even have any secret treaties!"

  * * * * *

  In a few days, everybody on Marduk knew that a treaty with Tanithwas being discussed. If they didn't, it was no fault of ZasparMakann's party, who seemed to command a disconcertingly large numberof telecast stations, and who drenched the ether with horror storiesof Space Viking atrocities and denunciations of carefully unnamedtraitors surrounding the King and the Crown Prince who were about tobetray Marduk to rapine and plunder. The leak evidently did not comefrom Cragdale, for it was generally believed that Trask was still atthe Royal Palace in Malverton. At least, that was where theMakannists were demonstrating against him.

  He watched such a demonstration by screen; the pickup was evidentlyon one of the landing stages of the palace, overlooking the wideparks surrounding it. They were packed almost solid with people,surging forward toward the thin cordon of police. The front of themob looked like a checkerboard--a block in civilian dress, then ablock in the curiously effeminate-looking uniforms of ZasparMakann's People's Watchmen, then more in ordinary garb, and morePeople's Watchmen. Over the heads of the crowds, at intervals,floated small contragravity lifters on which were mounted theamplifiers that were bellowing:

  "SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME! SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME!"

  The police stood motionless, at parade rest; the mob surged closer.When they were fifty yards away, the blocks of People's Watchmen ranforward, then spread out until they formed a line six deep acrossthe entire front; other blocks, from the rear, pushed the ordinarydemonstrators aside and took their place. Hating them more everysecond, Trask grudged approval of a smart and disciplined maneuver.How long, he wondered, had they been drilling in that sort oftactics? Without stopping, they continued their advance on thepolice, who had now shifted their stance.

  "SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME! SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME!"

  "Fire!" he heard himself yelling. "Don't let them get any closer,fire now!"

  They had nothing to fire with; they had only truncheons, no betterweapons than the knobbed swagger-sticks of the People's Watchmen.They simply disappeared, after a brief flurry of blows, and theMakann storm-troopers continued their advance.

  And that was that. The gates of the Palace were shut; the mob,behind a front of Makann People's Watchmen, surged up to them andstopped. The loud-speakers bellowed on, reiterating their four-wordchant.

  "Those police were murdered," he said. "They were murdered by theman who ordered them out there unarmed."

  "That would be Count Naydnayr, the Minister of Security," somebody said.

  "Then he's the one you want to hang for it."

  "What else would you have done?" Crown Prince Edvard challenged.

  "Put up about fifty combat cars. Drawn a deadline, and openedmachine-gun fire as soon as the mob crossed it, and kept on firingtill the survivors turned tail and ran. Then sent out more cars, andshot everybody wearing a People's Watchmen uniform, all over town.Inside forty-eight hours, there'd be no People's Welfare party, andno Zaspar Makann either."

  The Crown Prince's face stiffened. "That may be the way you dothings in the Sword-Worlds, Prince Trask. It's not the way we dothings here on Marduk. Our government does not propose to be guiltyof shedding the blood of its people."

  He had it on the tip of his tongue to retort that if they didn't,the people would end by shedding theirs. Instead, he said softly:

  "I'm sorry, Prince Edvard. You had a wonderful civilization here onMarduk. You could have made almost anything of it. But it's too latenow. You've torn down the gates; the barbarians are in."