Ensign Flandry

1

Evening on Terra—

His Imperial Majesty, High Emperor Georgios Manuel Krishna Murasaki, of the Wang dynasty the fourth, Supreme Guardian of the Pax, Grand Director of the Stellar Council, Commander-in-Chief, Final Arbiter, acknowledged supreme on more worlds and honorary head of more organizations than any one man could remember, had a birthday. On planets so remote that the unaided eye could not see their suns among those twinkling to life above Oceania, men turned dark and leathery, or thick and weary, by strange weathers lifted glasses in salute. The light waves carrying their pledge would lap on his tomb.

Terra herself was less solemn. Except for the court, which still felt bound to follow daylight around the globe for one exhausting ceremony after another, Birthday had become simply an occasion to hold carnival. As his aircar hummed over great dusking waters, Lord Markus Hauksberg saw the east blaze with sky luminosity, multi-colored moving curtains where fireworks exploded meteoric. Tonight, while the planet turned, its dark side was so radiant as to drown the very metro-centers seen from Luna. Had he tuned his vid to almost any station, he could have watched crowds filling pleasure houses and coming near riot among festively decorated towers.

His lady broke the silence between them with a murmur that made him start. “I wish it were a hundred years ago.”

“Eh?” Sometimes she could still astonish him.

“Birthday meant something then.”

“Well … yes. S’pose so.” Hauksberg cast his mind back over history. She was right. Fathers had taken their sons outdoors when twilight ended parades and feasts; they had pointed to the early stars and said, Look yonder. Those are ours. We believe that as many as four million lie within the Imperial domain. Certainly a hundred thousand know us daily, obey us, pay tribute to us, and get peace and the wealth of peace in return. Our ancestors did that. Keep the faith.

Hauksberg shrugged. You can’t prevent later generations from outgrowing naïveté. In time they must realize, bone deep, that this one dustmote of a galaxy holds more than a hundred billion suns; that we have not even explored the whole of our one spiral arm, and it does not appear we ever will; that you need no telescope to see giants like Betelgeuse and Polaris which do not belong to us. From there, one proceeded easily to: Everybody knows the Empire was won and is maintained by naked power, the central government is corrupt and the frontier is brutal and the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism. So get yours, have fun, ease your conscience with a bit of discreet scoffing, and never, never make a fool of yourself by taking the Empire seriously.

Could be I’ll change that, Hauksberg thought.

Alicia interrupted him. “We might at least have gone to a decent party! But no, you have to drag us to the Crown Prince’s. Are you hoping he’ll share one of his prettyboys?”

Hauksberg tried to ease matters with a grin. “Come, come, m’love, you do me an injustice. You know I still hunt women. Preferably beautiful women, such as you.”

“Or Persis d’Io.” She sagged back. “Never mind,” she said tiredly. “I just don’t like orgies. Especially vulgar ones.”

“Nor I, much.” He patted her hand. “But you’ll manage. Among the many things I admire about you is your ability to carry off any situation with aplomb.”

True enough, he thought. For a moment, regarding those perfect features under the diademed hair, he felt regret. So his marriage had been political; why couldn’t they nonetheless have worked out a comradeship? Even love—No, he was confusing his love for ancient literature with flesh-and-blood reality. He was not Pelléas nor she Mélisande. She was clever, gracious, and reasonably honest with him; she had given him an heir; more had never been implied in the contract. For his part, he had given her position and nearly unlimited money. As for more of his time … how could he? Somebody had to be the repairman, when the universe was falling to pieces. Most women understood.

To entropy with it. Alicia’s looks came from an expensive biosculp job. He had seen too many slight variations on that fashionable face.

“I’ve explained to you often enough,” he said. ” Lot rather’ve gone to Mboto’s or Bhatnagar’s myself. But my ship leaves in three days. Last chance to conduct a bit of absolutely essential business.”

“So you say.”

He reached a decision. Tonight had not seemed to him to represent any large sacrifice on her part. During the months of his absence, she’d find ample consolation with her lovers. (How else can a high-born lady who has no special talents pass her time on Terra?) But if she did grow embittered she could destroy him. It is vital to keep closed that faceplate which is pretense. Never mind what lies behind. But in front of the faceplate waits open ridicule, as dangerous to a man in power as emptiness and radiation to a spacefarer.

Odd, reflected the detached part of him, for all our millennia of recorded history, for all our sociodynamic theory and data, how the basis of power remains essentially magical. If I am laughed at, I may as well retire to my estates. And Terra needs me.

“Darlin’,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you anything before. Too many ears, live and electronic, don’t y’ know. If the opposition got wind of what I’m about, they’d head me off. Not because they necessarily disagree, but because they don’t want me to bring home a jumpin’ success. That’d put me in line for the Policy Board, and everybody hopes to sit there. By arrangin’ a fait accompli, though—d’ you see?”

She rested a hard gaze on him. He was a tall, slender, blond man. His features were a little too sharp; but in green tunic and decorations, gauze cloak, gold breeches and beefleather halfboots, he was more handsome than was right. “Your career,” she gibed.

“Indeed,” he nodded. “But also peace. Would you like to see Terra under attack? Could happen.”

“Mark!” Abruptly she was changed. Her fingers, closing on his wrist beneath the lace, felt cold. “It can’t be that serious?”

“Nuclear,” he said. “This thing out on Starkad isn’t any common frontier squabble. Been touted as such, and quite a few people honestly believe it is. But they’ve only seen reports filtered through a hundred offices, each one bound to gloss over facts that don’t make its own job look so fiery important. I’ve collected raw data and had my own computations run. Conservative extrapolation gives a forty per cent chance of war with Merseia inside five years. And I mean war, the kind which could get total. You don’t bet those odds, do you, now?”

“No,” she whispered.

“I’m s’posed to go there on a fact-findin’ mission and report back to the Emperor. Then the bureaucracy may start grindin’ through the preliminaries to negotiation. Or it may not; some powerful interests’d like to see the conflict go on. But at best, things’ll escalate meanwhile. A settlement’ll get harder and harder to reach, maybe impossible.

“What I want to do is bypass the whole wretched process. I want plenipotentiary authority to go direct from Starkad to Merseia and try negotiatin’ the protocol of an agreement. I think it can be done. They’re rational bein’s too, y’ know. S’pose many of ’em’re lookin’ for some way out of the quicksand. I can offer one.” He straightened. “At least I can try.”

She sat quiet. “I understand,” she said at length. “Of course I’ll cooperate.”

“Good girl.”

She leaned a little toward him. “Mark—”

“What?” His goal stood silhouetted against a crimson sheet.

“Oh, never mind.” She sat back, smoothed her gown, and stared out at the ocean.

The Coral Palace was built on an atoll, which it engulfed even as its towers made their crooked leap skyward. Cars flittered about like fireflies. Hauksberg’s set down on a flange as per GCA, let him and Alicia out, and took off for a parking raft. They walked past bowing slaves and saluting guardsmen, into an antechamber of tall waterspout columns where guests made a shifting rainbow, and so to the ballroom entrance.

“Lord Markus Hauksberg, Viscount of Ny Kalmar, Second Minister of Extra-Imperial Affairs, and Lady Hauksberg!” cried the stentor.

The ballroom was open to the sky, beneath a clear dome. Its sole interior lighting was ultraviolet. Floor, furnishings, orchestral instruments, tableware, food shone with the deep pure colors of fluorescence. So did the clothing of the guests, their protective skinpaint and eyelenses. The spectacle was intense, rippling ruby, topaz, emerald, sapphire, surmounted by glowing masks and tresses, against night. Music lilted through the air with the scent of roses.

Crown Prince Josip was receiving. He had chosen to come in dead black. His hands and the sagging face floated green, weirdly disembodied; his lenses smoldered red. Hauksberg bowed and Alicia bent her knee. “Your Highness.”

“Ah. Pleased to see you. Don’t see you often.”

“Press of business, your Highness. The loss is ours.”

“Yes. Understand you’re going away.”

“The Starkad affair, your Highness.”

“What? … Oh, yes. That. How dreadfully serious and constructive. I do hope you can relax with us here.”

“We look forward to doin’ so, your Highness, though I’m ’fraid we’ll have to leave early.”

“Hmph.” Josip half turned.

He mustn’t be offended. “Goes without sayin’ we both regret it the worst,” Hauksberg purred. “Might I beg for another invitation on my return?”

“Well, really!”

“I’ll be even more bold. My nephew’s comin’ to Terra. Frontier lad, y’ know, but as far as I can tell from stereos and letters, quite a delightful boy. If he could actually meet the heir apparent of the Empire—why, better’n a private audience with God.”

“Well. Well, you don’t say. Of course. Of course.” Josip beamed as he greeted the next arrival.

“Isn’t that risky?” Alicia asked when they were out of earshot.

“Not for my nephew,” Hauksberg chuckled. “Haven’t got one. And dear Josip’s memory is rather notoriously short.”

He often wondered what would become of the Empire when that creature mounted the throne. But at least Josip was weak. If, by then, the Policy Board was headed by a man who understood the galactic situation … He bent and kissed his lady’s hand. “Got to drift off, m’dear. Enjoy yourself. With luck, things’ll still be fairly decorous when we dare scoot off.”

A new dance was called and Alicia was swept away by an admiral. He was not so old, and his decorations showed that he had seen outplanet service. Hauksberg wondered if she would return home tonight.

He maneuvered to the wall, where the crowd was thinner, and worked his way along. There was scant time to admire the view above the dome’s rim, though it was fantastic. The sea marched ashimmer beneath a low moon. Long waves broke intricately, virginally white on the outer ramparts; he thought he could hear them growl. The darkness enclosed by the Lunar crescent was pinpointed with city lights. The sky illumination had now formed a gigantic banner overhead, the Sunburst alive in a field of royal blue as if stratospheric winds bugled salute. Not many stars shone through so much radiance.

But Hauksberg identified Regulus, beyond which his mission lay, and Rigel, which burned in the heart of the Merseian dominions. He shivered. When he reached the champagne table, a glass was very welcome. “Good evening,” said a voice.

Hauksberg exchanged bows with a portly man wearing a particolored face. Lord Advisor Petroff was not exactly in his element at a festival like this. He jerked his head slightly. Hauksberg nodded. They gossipped a little and drifted apart. Hauksberg was detained by a couple of bores and so didn’t manage to slip out the rear and catch a gravshaft downward for some while.

The others sat in a small, sealed office. They were seven, the critical ones on the Policy Board: gray men who bore the consciousness of power like added flesh. Hauksberg made the humility salute. “My sincere apologies for keepin’ my lords waitin’,” he said.

“No matter,” Petroff said. “I’ve been explaining the situation.”

“We haven’t seen any data or computations, though,” da Fonseca said. “Did you bring them, Lord Hauksberg?”

“No, sir. How could I? Every microreader in the palace is probably bugged.” Hauksberg drew a breath. “My lords, you can examine the summation at leisure, once I’m gone. The question is, will you take my word and Lord Petroff’s for the moment? If matters are as potentially serious as I believe, then you must agree a secret negotiator should be dispatched. If, on t’other hand, Starkad has no special significance, what have we lost by settlin’ the dispute on reasonable terms?”

“Prestige,” Chardon said. “Morale. Credibility, the next time we have to counter a Merseian move. I might even be so archaic as to mention honor.”

“I don’t propose to compromise any vital interest,” Hauksberg pleaded, “and in all events, whatever concord I may reach’ll have to be ratified here. My lords, we can’t be gone long without someone noticin’. But if you’ll listen—”

He launched his speech. It had been carefully prepared. It had better be. These six men, with Petroff, controlled enough votes to swing a decision his way. Were they prevailed on to call a privy meeting tomorrow, with a loaded quorum, Hauksberg would depart with the authority he needed.

Otherwise … No, he mustn’t take himself too seriously. Not at the present stage of his career. But men were dying on Starkad.

In the end, he won. Shaking, sweat running down his ribs, he leaned on the table and scarcely heard Petroff say, “Congratulations. Also, good luck. You’ll need plenty of that.”