Ensign Flandry

9

The Dronning Margrete was not of a size to land safely on a planet. Her auxiliaries were small spaceships in their own right. Officially belonging to Ny Kalmar, in practice a yacht for whoever was the current viscount, she did sometimes travel in the Imperial service: a vast improvement with respect to comfort over any Navy vessel. Now she departed her orbit around Starkad and accelerated outward on gravities. Before long she was into clear enough space that she could switch over to hyperdrive and outpace light. Despite her mass, with her engine power and phase frequency, top pseudo-speed equalled that of a Planet class warcraft. The sun she left behind was soon dwindled to another star, and then to nothing. Had the viewscreens not compensated for aberration and Doppler effect, the universe would have looked distorted beyond recognition.

Yet the constellations changed but slowly. Days and nights passed while she fled through the marches. Only once was routine broken, when alarms sounded. They were followed immediately by the All Clear. Her force screens, warding off radiation and interstellar atoms, had for a microsecond brushed a larger piece of matter, a pebble estimated at five grams. Though contact with the hull would have been damaging, given the difference in kinetic velocities, and though such meteoroids occur in the galaxy to the total of perhaps 10⁵⁰, the likelihood of collision was too small to worry about. Once, also, another vessel passed within a light-year and thus its “wake” was detected. The pattern indicated it was Ymirite, crewed by hydrogen breathers whose civilization was nearly irrelevant to man or Merseian. They trafficked quite heavily in these parts. Nonetheless this sign of life was the subject of excited conversation. So big is the cosmos.

There came at last the time when Hauksberg and Abrams sat talking far into the middle watch. Hitherto their relationship had been distant and correct. But with journey’s end approaching they saw a mutual need to understand each other better. The viscount invited the commander to dinner à deux in his private suite. His chef transcended himself for the occasion and his butler spent considerable time choosing wines. Afterward, at the cognac stage of things, the butler saw he could get away with simply leaving the bottle on the table plus another in reserve, and went off to bed.

The ship whispered, powerplant, ventilators, a rare hail when two crewmen on duty passed in the corridor outside. Light glowed soft off pictures and drapes. A heathery scent in the air underlay curling smoke. After Starkad, the Terran weight maintained by the gravitors was good; Abrams still relished a sense of lightness and often in his sleep had flying dreams.

“Pioneer types, eh?” Hauksberg kindled a fresh cheroot. “Sounds int’restin’. Really must visit Dayan someday.”

“You wouldn’t find much there in your line,” Abrams grunted. “Ordinary people.”

“And what they’ve carved for themselves out of howlin’ wilderness. I know.” The blond head nodded. “Natural you should be a little chauvinistic, with such a background. But’s a dangerous attitude.”

“More dangerous to sit and wait for an enemy,” Abrams said around his own cigar. “I got a wife and kids and a million cousins. My duty to them is to keep the Merseians at a long arm’s length.”

“No. Your duty is to help make that unnecess’ry.”

“Great, if the Merseians’ll cooperate.”

“Why shouldn’t they? No, wait.” Hauksberg lifted a hand. “Let me finish. I’m not int’rested in who started the trouble. That’s childish. Fact is, there we were, the great power among oxygen breathers in the known galaxy. S’pose they’d been? Wouldn’t you’ve plumped for man acquirin’ a comparable empire? Otherwise we’d’ve been at their mercy. As was, they didn’t want to be at our mercy. So, by the time we took real notice, Merseia’d picked up sufficient real estate to alarm us.

We reacted, propaganda, alliances, diplomacy, economic maneuvers, subversion, outright armed clashes now and then. Which was bound to confirm their poor opinion of our intentions. They re-reacted, heightenin’ our fears. Positive feedback. Got to be stopped.”

“I’ve heard this before,” Abrams said. “I don’t believe a word of it. Maybe memories of Assyria, Rome, and Germany are built into my chromosomes, I dunno. Fact is, if Merseia wanted a real détente she could have one today. We’re no longer interested in expansion. Terra is old and fat. Merseia is young and full of beans. She hankers for the universe. We stand in the way. Therefore we have to be eaten. Everything else is dessert.”

“Come, come,” Hauksberg said. “They’re not stupid. A galactic government is impossible. It’d collapse under its own weight. We’ve everything we can do to control what we have, and we don’t control tightly. Local self-government is so strong, most places, that I see actual feudalism evolvin’ within the Imperial structure. Can’t the Merseians look ahead?”

“Oh, Lord, yes. Can they ever. But I don’t imagine they want to copy us. The Roidhunate is not like the Empire.”

“Well, the electors of the landed clans do pick their supreme chief from the one landless one, but that’s a detail.”

“Yes, from the Vach Urdiolch. It’s not a detail. It reflects their whole concept of society. What they have in mind for their far future is a set of autonomous Merseian-ruled regions. The race, not the nation, counts with them. Which makes them a hell of a lot more dangerous than simple imperialists like us, who only want to be top dogs and admit other species have an equal right to exist. Anyway, so I think on the basis of what information is available. While on Merseia I hope to read a lot of their philosophers.”

Hauksberg smiled. “Be my guest. Be theirs. Long’s you don’t get zealous and upset things with any cloak-and-dagger stuff, you’re welcome aboard.” The smile faded. “Make trouble and I’ll break you.”

Abrams looked into the blue eyes. They were suddenly very cold and steady. It grew on him that Hauksberg was not at all the fop he pretended to be.

“Thanks for warning me,” the officer of Intelligence said. “But damnation!” His fist smote the table. “The Merseians didn’t come to Starkad because their hearts bled for the poor oppressed seafolk. Nor do I think they stumbled in by mistake and are looking for any face-saving excuse to pull out again. They figure on a real payoff there.”

“F’r instance?”

“How the devil should I know? I swear none of their own personnel on Starkad do. Doubtless just a hatful of higher-ups on Merseia itself have any idea what the grand strategy is. But those boys see it in clockwork detail.”

“Valuable minerals undersea, p’rhaps?”

“Now you must realize that’s ridiculous. Likewise any notion that the seafolk may possess a great secret like being universal telepaths. If Starkad per se has something useful, the Merseians could have gotten it more quietly. If it’s a base they’re after, say for the purpose of pressuring Betelgeuse, then there are plenty of better planets in that general volume. No, they for sure want a showdown.”

“I’ve speculated along those lines,” Hauksberg said thoughtfully. “S’pose some fanatical militarists among ’em plan on a decisive clash with Terra. That’d have to be built up to. If nothin’ else, lines of communication are so long that neither power could hope to mount a direct attack on the other. So if they escalate things on an intrinsically worthless Starkad—well, eventually there could be a confrontation. And out where no useful planet got damaged.”

“Could be,” Abrams said. “In fact, it’s sort of a working hypothesis for me. But it don’t smell right somehow.”

“I aim to warn them,” Hauksberg said. “Informally and privately, to keep pride and such from complicatin’ matters. If we can discover who the reasonable elements are in their government, we can cooperate with those—most discreetly—to freeze the warhawks out.”

“Trouble is,” Abrams said, “the whole bunch of them are reasonable. But they don’t reason on the same basis as us.”

“No, you’re the unreasonable one, old chap. You’ve gotten paranoid on the subject.” Hauksberg refilled their glasses, a clear gurgle through the stillness. “Have another drink while I explain to you the error of your ways.”

The officers’ lounge was deserted. Persis had commandeered from the bar a demi of port but had not turned on the fluoros. Here in the veranda, enough light came through the viewport which stretched from deck to overhead. It was soft and shadowy, caressed a cheek or a lock of hair and vanished into susurrant dark.

Stars were the source, uncountable throngs of them, white, blue, yellow, green, red, cold and unwinking against an absolute night. And the Milky Way was a shining smoke and the nebulae and the sister galaxies glimmered at vision’s edge. That was a terrible beauty.

Flandry was far too conscious of her eyes and of the shape enclosed by thin, slightly phosphorescent pajamas, where she faced him in her lounger. He sat stiff on his. “Yes,” he said, “yonder bright one, you’re right, Donna, a nova. What … uh … what Saxo’s slated to become before long.”

“Really?” Her attentiveness flattered him.

“Yes. F-type, you know. Evolves faster than the less massive suns like Sol, and goes off the main sequence more spectacularly. The red giant stage like Betelgeuse is short—then bang.”

“But those poor natives!”

Flandry made a forced-sounding chuckle. “Don’t worry, Donna. It won’t happen for almost a billion years, according to every spectroscopic indication. Plenty of time to evacuate the planet.”

“A billion years.” She shivered a little. “Too big a number. A billion years ago, we were still fish in the Terran seas, weren’t we? All the numbers are too big out here.”

“I, uh, guess I’m more used to them.” His nonchalance didn’t quite come off.

He could barely see how her lips curved upward. “I’m sure you are,” she said. “Maybe you can help me learn to feel the same way.”

His tunic collar was open but felt tight anyhow. “Betelgeuse is an interesting case,” he said. “The star expanded slowly by mortal standards. The autochthons could develop an industrial culture and move out to Alfzar and the planets beyond. They didn’t hit on the hyperdrive by themselves, but they had a high-powered interplanetary society when Terrans arrived. If we hadn’t provided a better means, they’d have left the system altogether in sublight ships. No real rush. Betelgeuse won’t be so swollen that Alfzar becomes uninhabitable for another million years or better. But they had their plans in train. A fascinating species, the Betelgeuseans.”

“True.” Persis took a sip of wine, then leaned forward. One leg, glimmering silky in the starlight, brushed his. “However,” she said, “I didn’t lock onto you after dinner in hopes of a lecture.”

“Why, uh, what can I do for you, Donna? Glad to, if—” Flandry drained his own goblet with a gulp. His pulse racketed.

“Talk to me. About yourself. You’re too shy.”

“About me?” he squeaked. “Whatever for? I mean, I’m nobody.”

“You’re the first young hero I’ve met. The others, at home, they’re old and gray and crusted with decorations. You might as well try to make conversation with Mount Narpa. Frankly, I’m lonesome on this trip. You’re the single one I could relax and feel human with. And you’ve hardly shown your nose outside your office.”

“Uh, Donna, Commander Abrams has kept me busy. I didn’t want to be unsociable, but, well, this is the first time he’s told me I could go off duty except to sleep. Uh, Lord Hauksberg—”

Persis shrugged. “He doesn’t understand. All right, he’s been good to me and without him I’d probably be an underpaid dancer on Luna yet. But he does not understand.”

Flandry opened his mouth, decided to close it again, and recharged his goblet.

“Let’s get acquainted,” Persis said gently. “We exist for such a short time at best. Why were you on Starkad?”

“Orders, Donna.”

“That’s no answer. You could simply have done the minimum and guarded jour neck. Most ot them seem to. You must have some belief in what you’re doing.”

“Well—I don’t know, Donna. Never could keep out of a good scrap, I suppose.”

She sighed. “I thought better of you, Dominic.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Cynicism is boringly fashionable. I didn’t think you would be afraid to say mankind is worth fighting for.”

Flandry winced. She had touched a nerve. “Sort of thing’s been said too often, Donna. The words have gone all hollow. I … I do like some ancient words. ‘…the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people.’ From Machiavelli.”

“Who? Never mind. I don’t care what some dead Irishman said. I want to know what you care about. You are the future. What did Terra give you, for you to offer your life in return?”

“Well, uh, places to live. Protection. Education.”

“Stingy gifts,” she said. “You were poor?”

“Not really, Donna. Illegitimate son of a petty nobleman. He sent me to good schools and finally the Naval Academy.”

“But you were scarcely ever at home?”

“No. Couldn’t be. I mean, my mother was in opera then. She had her career to think of. My father’s a scholar, an encyclopedist, and, uh, everything else is sort of incidental to him. That’s the way he’s made. They did their duty by me. I can’t complain, Donna.”

“At least you won’t.” She touched his hand. “My name is Persis.”

Flandry swallowed.

“What a hard, harsh life you’ve had,” she mused. “And still you’ll fight for the Empire.”

“Really, it wasn’t bad … Persis.”

“Good. You progress.” This time her hand lingered.

“I mean, well, we had fun between classes and drills. I’m afraid I set some kind of record for demerits. And later, a couple of training cruises, the damnedest things happened.”

She leaned closer. “Tell me.”

He spun out the yarns as amusingly as he was able.

She cocked her head at him. “You were right fluent there,” she said. “Why are you backward with me?”

He retreated into his lounger. “I—I, you see, never had a chance to, uh, learn how to, well, behave in circumstances like—”

She was so near that beneath perfume he caught the odor of herself. Her eyes were half closed, lips parted. “Now’s your chance,” she whispered. “You weren’t afraid of anything else, were you?”

Later, in his cabin, she raised herself to one hand and regarded him for a long moment. Her hair spilled across his shoulder. “And I thought I was your first,” she said.

“Why, Persis!” he grinned.

“I felt so—And every minute this evening you knew exactly what you were doing.”

“I had to take action,” he said. “I’m in love with you. How could I help being?”

“Do you expect me to believe that? Oh, hell, just for this voyage I will. Come here again.”