Poul Anderson - Flandry 02 - Flandry Of Terra

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FLANDRY OF TERRA

Poul Anderson

[12 apr 2002-scanned for #bookz]

[18 apr 2002-proofed by Sun]

THE GAME OF GLORY

A murdered man on a winter planet gave Flandry his first clue. Until then, he had only

known that a monster fled Conjumar in a poisoned wreck of a spaceship, which might have gone

twenty light-years before killing its pilot but could surely never have crossed the Spican marches

to refuge.

And the trouble was, even for the Terran Empire, which contained an estimated four million

stars, a sphere twenty light-years across held a devil's number of suns.

Flandry went through the motions. He sent such few agents as could be spared from other

jobs, for they were desperately under-manned in the frontier provinces, to make inquiries on the

more likely planets within that range. Of course they drew blanks. Probability was stacked

against them. Even if they actually visited whatever world the fugitive had landed on, he would

be lying low for a while.

Flandry swore, recalled his men to more urgent tasks, and put the monster under filed-but-

not-forgotten. Two years went by. He was sent to Betelgeuse and discovered how to lie to a

telepath. He slipped into the Merseian Empire itself, wormed and blackmailed until he found a

suitable planet (uninhabited, terrestroid, set aside as a hunting preserve of the aristocrats) and got

home again: whereafter the Terran Navy quietly built an advanced base there and Flandry

wondered if the same thing had happened on his side of the fence. He went to Terra on leave, was

invited to the perpetual banquet of the Lyonid family, spent three epochal months, and was never

quite sure whether he seduced the wrong man's wife or she him. At any rate, he fought a reluctant

duel, gave up hope of early promotion to rear admiral, and accepted re-assignment to the Spican

province.

Thus it was he found himself on Brae.

This world had been more or less independent until a few months ago. Then military

considerations forced the establishment of a new base in the region. It did not have to be Brae,

but Brae was asked, by a provincial governor who thought its people would be delighted at the

extra trade and protection. The Braean High Temple, which had long watched its old culture and

religion sapped by Terran influence, declined. One does not decline an Imperial invitation. It was

repeated. And again it was refused. The provincial governor insisted. Brae said it would go over

his head and appeal to the Emperor himself. The governor, who did not want attention drawn to

his precise mode of government, called for local Navy help.

Wherefore Flandry walked through smashed ruins under a red dwarf sun, with a few

snowflakes falling like blood drops out of great clotted clouds. He was directing the usual project

in cases like this-search, inquiry, more search, more interrogation, until the irreconcilables had

been found and exiled, the safely collaboration-minded plugged into a governmental framework.

But when the blaster crashed, he whirled and ran toward the noise as if to some obscure

salvation.

"Sir!" cried the sergeant of his escort. "Sir, not there-snipers, terrorists-wait.'"

Flandry leaped the stump of a wall, zigzagged across a slushy street, and crouched behind a

wrecked flyer. His own handgun was out, weaving around; his eyes flickered in habitual caution.

On a small plaza ahead of him stood a squad of Imperial marines. They must have been on

routine patrol when someone had fired at them from one of the surrounding houses. They

responded with tiger precision. A tracer dart, flipped from a belt almost the moment the shot

came, followed the trail of ions to a certain facade. A rover bomb leaped from its shoulder-borne

rack, and the entire front wall of the house went up in shards. Before the explosion ended, the

squad attacked. Some of the debris struck their helmets as they charged.

Flandry drifted to the plaza. He saw now why the men's reaction was to obliterate: it was an

invariable rule when a marine was bushwacked dead.

He stooped over the victim. This was a young fellow, African-descended, with husky

shoulders; but his skin had gone gray. He gripped his magnetic rifle in drilled reflex (or was it

only a convulsive clutching at his mother's breast, as a dying man's mouth will try to suck again?)

and stared through frog-like goggles on a turtle-like helmet. He was not, after all, dead yet. His

blood bubbled from a stomach ripped open, losing itself in muddy snow. Under that dim sun, it

looked black.

Flandry glanced up. His escort had surrounded him, though their faces turned wistfully

toward the crump-crump of blasters and bomb guns. They were marines too.

"Get him to a hospital," said Flandry.

"No use, sir," answered the sergeant. "He'd be dead before we arrived. We've no revival

equipment here yet, either, or stuff to keep him functional till they can grow another belly on

him."

Flandry nodded and hunkered down by the boy. "Can I help you son?" he asked, as gently as

might be.

The wide lips shinned back from shining teeth. "Ah, ah, ah," he gasped. "It's him in Uhunhu

that knows." The eyes wallowed in their sockets. "Ai!" 'List nay, they said. Nay let recruiters 'list

you ... damned Empire ... even to gain warskill, don't 'list ... shall freedom come from slave-

masters, asked he in Uhunhu. He and his 'ull teach what we must know, see you?" The boy's free

hand closed wildly on Flandry's. "D'you understand?"

"Yes," said Flandry. "It's all right. Go to sleep."

"Ai, ai, look at her up there, grinning-" Despite himself, Flandry stared skyward. He was

crouched by a fountain, which now held merely icicles. A slender column rose from the center,

and on top of it the nude statue of a girl. She was not really human, she had legs too long, and a

tail and pouch and sleek fur, but Flandry had not often seen such dancing loveliness trapped in

metal; she was springtime and a first trembling kiss under windy poplars. The waning marine

screamed.

"Leave me 'lone, leave me 'lone, you up there, leave me "lone! Stop grinning! I 'listed for to

learn how to make Nyanza free, you hear up there, don't lap my blood so fast. It's nay my fault I

made more slaves. I wanted to be free too! Get your teeth out of me, girl ... mother, mother, don't

eat me, mother-" Presently the boy died.

Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Corps, Imperial Terrestrial Navy, squatted beside

him, under the fountain, while the marines blew down another house or two for good measure. A

squadron of full-armored infantry did a belt-flit overhead, like jointed faceless dolls. A stringed

instrument keened from a window across the square: Flandry did not know the Braean scale, the

music might be dirge or defiance or ballad or coded signal.

He asked finally: "Anyone know where this chap was from?"

His escort looked blank. "A colonial, sir, judging from the accent," ventured one of the

privates. "We sign on a lot, you know."

"Tell me more," snapped Flandry. He brooded a while longer. "There'll be records, of

course."

His task had suddenly shifted. He would have to leave another man in charge here and check

the dead boy's home himself, so great was the personnel shortage. Those delirious babblings

could mean much or nothing. Most likely nothing, but civilization was spread hideously thin out

here, where the stars faded toward barbarism, and the Empire of Merseia beyond, and the great

unmapped Galactic night beyond that.

As yet he did not think of the monster, only that he was lonesome among his fellow

conquerors and would be glad to get off on a one-man mission. At least a world bearing some

Africans might be decently warm.

He shivered and got up and left the square. His escort trudged around him, their slung rifles

pointed at a thin blue sky. Behind them the girl on the fountain smiled.

The planet was five parsecs from Brae. It was the third of an otherwise uninteresting F5

dwarf, its official name was Nyanza, it had been colonized some 500 years back during the

breakup of the Commonwealth. It had been made an Imperial client about a century ago, a few

abortive revolts were crushed, now there was only a resident-which meant a trouble-free but

unimportant and little visited world. The population was estimated at I07. That was all the

microfiles had to say about Nyanza.

Flandry had checked them after identifying the murdered man, who turned out to be Thomas

Umbolu, 19, free-born commoner of Jairnovaunt on Nyanza, no dependents, no personal oaths or

obligations of fealty, religion "Christian variant," height 1.82 meter, weight 84 kilos, blood type

O plus ... His service record was clean, though only one year old. A routine pre-induction hypno

had shown no serious disaffection; but of course that hadn't meant a damn thing since the

techniques of deep conditioning became general knowledge; it was just another bureaucratic

ritual.

Flandry took a high-speed flitter and ran from Brae. Even so, the enforced idleness of the trip

was long enough to remind him acutely that he had been celibate for weeks. He spent a good deal

of the time in calisthenics. It bored him rigid, but a trim body had saved his life more than once

and made it easy to get bed partners on softened worlds like Terra.

When the robopilot said they were going into approach, he spent some while dressing

himself. An Intelligence officer had wide latitude as regards uniforms, and Flandry took more

advantage of it than most. After due consideration, he clad his tall form in peacock-blue tunic,

with white cross-belts and as much gold braid as regulations would stand; red sash and matched

guns, needler and blaster; iridescent white trousers; soft black boots of authentic Terran

beefleather. He hung a scarlet cloak from his shoulders and cocked a winged naval cap on his

long sleek head. Surveying himself in the mirror, he saw a lean sunlamp-browned face, gray eyes,

seal-brown hair and mustache, straight nose, high cheekbones: yes, he knew his last

plasmecosmetic job had made his face too handsome, but somehow never got around to changing

it again. He put a cigarette between his lips, adjusted its jaunty angle with care, inhaled it to light,

and went to his pilot's seat. Not that he had anything to do with the actual piloting.

Nyanza shone before him, the clearest and most beautiful blue of his life, streaked with white

cloud-belts and shuddering with great auroral streamers. He spotted two moons, a smallish one

close in and a large one further out. He scowled. Where were the land masses? His robot made

radio contact and the screen offered him a caucasoid face above a short-sleeved shirt.

"Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Navy Intelligence, requesting permission to land."

Sometimes he wondered what he would do if his polite formula ever met a rude no.

The visage gaped. "Oh ... oh ... already?"

"Hm?" said Flandry. He caught himself. "Ah, yes," he said wisely.

"But only today, sal" babbled the face. "Why, we haven't even thought about sending a

courier out yet-it's been such a nightmare-oh, thank God you're here, sir! You'll see for yourself,

at once, there isn't a Technician in the City-on Altla-on all Nyanza, who doesn't set loyalty to his

Majesty above life itself!"

"I'm sure his Majesty will be very much relieved," said Flandry. "Now, if you please, how

about a landing beam?" After a pause, a few clicks, and the beginning downward rush of his ship:

"Oh, by the way, Bubbles. Where did you put your continents today?"

"Continents, sir?"

"You know. Large dirty places to stand on."

"Of course I know, sir!" The control man drew himself up. "We're no parochials in the City.

I've been to Spica myself."

"Would it be despicable if you had not?" mused Flandry. Most of him was listening to the

fellow's accent. The inexhaustible variations on Anglic were a hobby of his.

"But as for the continents, sir, why, I thought you would know. Nyanza has none. Altla is

just a medium-sized island. Otherwise there are only rocks and reefs, submerged at double high

tide, or even at Loa high."

"Oh, I knew," said Flandry reassuringly. "I just wanted to be sure you knew." He turned off

the receiver and sat thinking. Damn those skimpy pilot's manuals! He'd have had to go to Spica

for detailed information. If only there were a faster-than-light equivalent of radio. Instant

communications unified planets; but the days and weeks and months between stars let their

systems drift culturally apart-let hell brew for years, unnoticed till it boiled over-made a slow

growth of feudalism, within the Imperial structure itself, inevitable. Of course, that would give

civilization something to fall back on when the Long Night finally came.

The spaceport was like ten thousand minor harbors: little more than a grav-grid, a field, and

some ancillary buildings, well out of town. Beyond the hangars, to west and south, Flandry saw a

greenness of carefully tended forest. Eastward rose the spires of a small ancient city. Northward

the ground sloped down in harsh grass and boulders until it met a smothering white surf and an

impossibly blue ocean. The sky above was a little darker than Terra's-less dust to scatter light-and

cloudless; the sun was blindingly fierce, bluish tinged. It was local summer: Altla lay at 35° N.

latitude on a Terra-sized planet with a 21° axial tilt. The air held an illusion of being cooler than

it was, for it blew briskly and smelled of salt and the ultraviolet-rich sun gave it a thunderous

tinge of ozone.

Still, Flandry wished he had not been quite such a dude. The portmaster, another blond

caucasoid, looked abominably comfortable in shorts, blouse, and kepi. Flandry took a morose

satisfaction in noting that the comfort was merely physical.

"Portmaster Heinz von Sonderburg, sir, at your service. Naturally, we waive quarantine on

your behalf; no Imperial knight would-Ah. Your luggage will be seen to, Captain ... Flandry? Of

course. Most honored. I have communicated with her Excellency and am happy to report she can

offer you the usual official hospitality. Otherwise we would have had to do our poor best for you

in the City-"

"Her Excellency?" asked Flandry when they were airborne.

"Is that not the proper usage?" Von Sonderburg made washing motions with his hands. "Oh,

dear, I am so sorry. This is such an isolated planet-the occasion so seldom arises-Believe me, sir,

we are uncouth only in manner. The City, at least, has an enlightened forward-looking spirit of

absolute loyalty to the Imperium which-"

"It's just that I thought, in a case like this, where the only Terrans on the planet are the

resident and family, they'd have appointed a man." Flandry looked down toward the city. It was

old, haphazardly raised out of native stone, with steep narrow streets, teeming pedestrians, very

few cars or flyers.

But the docks were big, sleekly modern and aswarm with ships. He made out everything

from plastic pirogues to giant submarines. There was a majority of sailing craft, which implied an

unhurried esthetic-minded culture; but they were built along radical hydrodynamic lines, which

meant that the culture also appreciated efficiency. A powered tug was leaving the bay with a long

tail of loaded barges, and air transport was extensively in use.

Elsewhere Flandry recognized a set of large sea-water processing units and their attached

factories, where a thousand dissolved substances were shaped into usefulness. A twin-hulled

freighter was unloading bales of ... sea weed? ... at the dock of an obvious plastics plant. So, he

thought, most of Nyanza fished, hunted, and ranched the planet-wide ocean; this one island took

the raw materials and gave back metal, chemical fuel, synthetic timbers and resins and glassites

and fibers, engines. He was familiar enough with pelagic technics-most overpopulated worlds

turned back at last to Mother Ocean. But here they had begun as sailors, from the very first. It

should make for an interesting society ...

Von Sonderburg's voice jerked back his attention. "But of course, poor Freeman Bannerji

was a man. I am merely referring to his, ah, his relict, poor Lady Varvara. She is an Ayres by

birth, you know, the Ayres of Antarctica. She has borne her loss with the true fortitude of

Imperial aristocratic blood, yes, we can be very proud to have been directed by the late husband

of Lady Varvara Ayres Bannerji."

Flandry constructed his sentence to preserve the illusion: "Do you know the precise time he

died?"

"Alas, no, sir. You can speak to the City constabulary, but I fear even they would have no

exact information. Sometime last night, after he retired. You understand, sir, we have not your

advanced police methods here. A harpoon gun-oh, what a way to meet one's final rest!" Von

Sonderburg shuddered delicately.

"The weapon has not been found?" asked Flandry impassively.

"No, I do not believe so, sir. The killer took it with him, portable, you know. He must have

crept up the wall with vacsoles, or used a flung grapnel to catch the windowsill and-His

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FLANDRYOFTERRAPoulAnderson[12apr2002-scannedfor#bookz][18apr2002-proofedbySun]THEGAMEOFGLORYAmurderedmanonawinterplanetgaveFlandryhisfirstclue.Untilthen,hehadonlyknownthatamonsterfledConjumarinapoisonedwreckofaspaceship,whichmighthavegonetwentylight-yearsbeforekillingitspilotbutcouldsurelyneverhavec...

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Poul Anderson - Flandry 02 - Flandry Of Terra

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