The Game of Empire

Chapter 15

He drew a long breath. “Come aside with me and let us talk,” he said.

Her jubilation died away as she sensed his uneasiness. “Of course.” She tucked an arm beneath his and led him off. “I’ve found a trail out of town, through the woods, where nobody’ll overhear us.” Her smile was a trifle forlorn. “I want to learn what you’ve been up to anyway, and how you figure to stay out of jail, and, oh, everything.”

“You shall, as much as is safe for you to know.”

She bridled. “Now wait a minute! Either you trust me or you don’t. I’ve let you rush me along this far, and conned Axor for you, because you didn’t have a chance to explain. Or so you claimed. Not any more, fellow.”

He raised his ears. “Ah, you are your father’s child—and your mother’s—eh, little friend? … Well, you leave me no choice. Not that I had much left me, after today. My thought was that you, being an honest young person, could best play the part I need played if you believed it was genuine.”

“Hmf! You don’t know me as well as you think.” Diana frowned. “We might have to shade the truth for Axor. I’ll hate that, but we might have to.”

“Did I indeed underestimate your potential, all these years?” Targovi purred.

They said no more until they were well into the forest east of town. The trail ran along the river, a short way in from the high bank, so that water could be seen agleam beyond tree boles and canebrakes. Underneath canopies of darkling leaves, sun-flecked shadow was somewhat cooler than air out in the open, though still subtropical. It was full of unfamiliar odors, sweet, rank, spicy, or indescribable in Anglic or Toborko. Tiny, pale wings fluttered about. No songs resounded, but now and then curious whistles and glissandos went among the boughs above. The sense of ruthless fecundity was overwhelming. You understood what a war it had been, and was yet, to keep terrestroid life going on this—unusually Terra-like—world.

Diana remarked as much. “Makes you wonder how firm a grip we’ve got on any place, doesn’t it?” she added. Her tone was hushed. “On our whole Empire, or civilization itself.”

“The Merseians have long been trying to pry us loose from existence,” Targovi snarled.

She gave him a troubled glance. “They can’t be that bad. Can they? It’s natural for a Tigery to think of them as purely evil. They’d’ve let your whole race, and the Seafolk’s, die with Starkad. That plan of theirs depended on it. Only, well, it wasn’t they not their tens of billions plottin’ together, it was their government—a few key people in it, nobody else havin’ any inklin’.”

“Granted. I overspoke myself. Humans are too many, too widespread for extermination. But they can be diminished, scattered, conquered, rendered powerless. That is the Mer-seian aim.”

“Why?” she wondered in hurt. “A whole galaxy, a whole universe, a technology that could make every last livin’ bein’ rich—why are we and they locked in this senseless feud?”

“Because both our sides have governments,” Targovi said, calming down.

Presently: “Yet Terra’s did rescue enough of my people that we have a chance to survive. I am not ungrateful, nor unaware of where Imhotep’s best interest lies. I actually dream of serving Terra in a wider field than any one planet. What a grand game of play!”

“I’d sure like to get out there too.” Diana shook herself. “S’pose we stop talkin’ like world-weary eighteen-year-olds—”

“Sound counsel, coming from a seventeen-year-old.”

She laughed before she went on: “All right, down to business. You’re a secret agent of the Navy, no matter how low in grade. You’re onto somethin’ havin’ to do with the fight for the throne. You need some kind of help from Axor and me. That’s about the whole of what I know.”

“I know not a great deal more myself,” Targovi confessed. “What I have is a ghosting of hints, clues, incongruities. They whisper to me that naught which has been happening is what it pretends to be—that we are the victims of a gigantic hoax, like an ice bull which a hunter stampedes toward a cliff edge. But I have no proof. Who would listen to me, an outlaw?”

Diana squeezed his hand. The fur was velvety under her fingers. “I will.”

“Thank you, small person who is no longer so small. Now, you too will find it hard to think ill of Admiral Sir Olaf Magnusson.”

“What?” For an instant she was startled, until she remembered the Tigery touching on this matter before. “Oh, maybe he has let his ambition, his ego run away with him. But we did get a rotten deal out in this sector. He alone kept the Merseians from overrunin’ us—”

“The crews of his ships had somewhat to do with it. Many died, many live crippled.”

“Sure, sure. That doesn’t change the fact that Sir Olaf provided the leadership that saved us. ’Twasn’t the first time he’d done that sort of thing, either. And still he wants peace. A strong and honest man on the throne, a man who’s dickered with the Merseians in the past and made them respect him—maybe he really can give us what nobody else can, a lastin’ peace. Maybe that really is worth all the blood and sorrow that Gerhart’s resistance is costin’.”

“And mayhap not.”

“Who can tell? I can’t. The Empire’s had succession crises before. It’ll prob’ly have them again in the future. What can we ordinary people do except try to ride them out?”

“This crises may be unique.” Targovi marshalled his words before he proceeded:

“Let me give you the broad outlines first, details afterward. Terran personnel are not the only ones whom last year’s clash left embittered. The Merseian captains were wholly inept. It wasn’t like them in the least. Nor were the issues worth fighting over, save as a pretext for launching a total war against Terra, and everybody who has studied the matter knows Merseia isn’t ready for that. Seemingly the eruption happened because their diplomats blundered, their lines of communication became tangled, and some hotheaded officers took more initiative than proper.

“But once conflict was rolling, the Merseians should have won. They did have superior strength in these parts. Altogether like them would have been to break our defense, take this sector over, then call for a cease-fire; and at the conference table, they would have held higher cards than Terra. They would have come out greatly advantaged.

“But they lost in space. Magnusson’s outnumbered fleet cast them back with heavy casualties. We hear this was due his brilliance. It was not. It was due stupidity in the Merseian command.

“Or was it?”

They walked on mute for a spell, in the shadowy, steamy, twittering jungle.

“Later will I explain how I collected this information from the Merseians themselves,” Targovi said at length. “Some was readily available, if anybody had directed that statements made by war prisoners should be recorded and collated. Nobody did. Strange, ng-ng? The gathering of more exact, higher-level data put me to a fair amount of trouble. You may find the story entertaining.

“Now I had also, in my rovings, picked up tales of things seen—spacecraft, especially, coming and going oftener than erstwhile—around Zacharia. This struck me as worthy of further investigation. No doubt the Zacharians have ever used their treaty-given privileges to carry on a bit of smuggling. Their industries need various raw materials and parts from elsewhere. In return, they have customers beyond the Patrician System. Why pay more taxes on the traffic than is unavoidable? The Zacharians never, m-m, overindulged in contraband. Rather, the slight measure of free trade benefited Daedalus in general. But of recent months, folk on the mainland or out at sea—on this horizonless planet—have marked added landings and takeoffs, offtimes of ships that belong to no class they recognized. They thought little of it. I, who put their accounts together, thought much.”

“You’re worried about the Zacharians? Those cloned people? Why, how many of them ever set foot off their island?”

“Not cloned, precisely,” he reminded. Having rarely been on this globe before, and then as a child, she had the ignorance which follows from lack of interaction. She had better get rid of it. “They reproduce in the common fashion. But they are genetically near-identical, apart from sex. A hermit society, theirs, despite its far-flung enterprises. Nobody really knows what goes on inside it, unless they be other Zacharians dwelling elsewhere in the Empire.”

“Well, but, Targovi,” Diana protested, “an individualist like you should be the last to think somebody’s up to no good, just because they’re different and value their privacy.”

“In times of danger—and the winds were foul with danger, already then—you cannot afford to assume that anyone is trustworthy. Certainly not ere you’ve investigated them. A shame, from the moral viewpoint; but secret agents cannot afford morals, either.”

“What’d you do?”

“What doctrine called for, my dear. Having found all this spoor, I reported to my superior. As it happens, he was at top of Intelligence operations on Daedalus, Captain Jerrold Ronan. That was logical, when the Patrician System had never hitherto required surveillance of the truly intensive kind. What was not logical was Ronan’s reaction. He forbade me to follow the trail any farther or bespeak it to anybody whatsoever, and ordered me straight back to Imhotep, despite the fact that this was an implausible move for a trader whose cargo was half unsold.”

“And you didn’t give up!” Diana cried. “You took it on yourself to keep on trackin’. Oh, you are a Tigery!”

“Well, it was irresistible,” he said. “I had not flatly been barred from Daedalus, simply warned that I might be marooned—which was, itself, queer, for why should the sector command await any new emergency? In you and Axor, I found what seemed the perfect—stalking horses, is that your human phrase? Gently nudged this way or that on your innocent quest, you would draw attention off me. Never meant I to endanger you—”

“Though you didn’t hesitate to take a chance with us.” Diana caught his hand again. “Don’t you mind. I don’t. And who’d want to shoot at gentle old Axor? Killin’ him would be a contract job anyway.”

Fangs flashed as Targovi grinned. “What a waste, him a pacifist!” Soberly: “Well, the rebellion began—not a complete surprise to us—as we were approaching Daedalus. Needs must I pounce on my decision. We could return to Imhotep and abide there, safe and impotent, while events played themselves out. Or we could plunge forward and land. Did we do so, then belike a computer program had my meddlesome self listed for indefinite detention. I chose to risk that. If I decamped, you and Axor should not suffer worse than inconvenience.

“The rest of the story you know, until this day.”

They walked on. The trail bent out of the woods, toward the verge of the riverbank. Long green blades rustled under a slow breeze. They resembled grass, but were not. A few boats traversed the water. The absence of aircraft overhead had begun to seem eerie. Patricius was declining toward mists that it turned sulfurous, that veiled the distant sea. Although this was summer, and Daedalus has an axis more tilted then Terra’s, daylight is always brief; or else, if you reckon the sun-ring, it is never absent.

“Tell me about today,” Diana said softly.

Targovi did. She clapped hands together in glee. “Hey, what a stunt, what a stunt!”

“Let us hope nobody looks too closely at the mise-en-scène.” Targovi had acquired a good many-tag-ends of human languages other than Anglic. “I think your main part in the act will be to divert thoughts away from it.”

She squinted westward. “You aim to get us to Zacharia, then?”

“Yes, and snoop about.”

“What do you think you might find?”

Targovi shrugged with his tendrils. “It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the data. I have my suspicions, naturally. Clear does it seem, the Zacharians have close connection to Magnusson. For example, the lady Pele casually mentioned bringing in another person soon—which means by air, at a time when air traffic is restricted. Mayhap they’ve decided Magnusson will be the best Emperor, from their viewpoint. In any case, what support have they been giving him? Unmistakably, it’s of importance. What hope they to gain? I doubt they nourish any mystique of the Terran Empire as an end in itself.”

“Who does, any more?” Diana mumbled.

“Some of us deem its survival the lesser evil. But no matter that.” Targovi paused. “Here is where I fall silent. Did I tell you my guess, you could well become tense, nervous, wary—and the Zacharians would see. They are not stupid. Ai, they are not stupid! For that matter, I seldom voice my thoughts to myself. They could be mistaken. I hope to arrive open-minded, no blinkers upon my senses.”

“How about me?” Diana asked slowly.

“Relax and enjoy,” he answered. “That will be your best service.”

“And keep ready.” She touched the haft of her Tigery knife.

“And, aye, prevent Axor from blurting out awkward information,” Targovi said. “Can you?”

She deliberated. “M-m-m … well, he scarcely knows any more than you want him to. The main inconsistency, I think, is that you say you sold him passage to Daedalus—you bein’ a huckster with an eye for any credits you could make—while he thinks you carried us out of benevolence. I’ll slip him a hint that I paid you, from a bigger money stash than I’d admitted havin’, for the sake of the trip. Not that anybody’s likely to quiz him, but if they do, that should satisfy them. Otherwise … m-m-m … he did see you run from arrest in Aurea—Yes. Got it. You panicked because Tigeries can’t stand long imprisonment. You were embarrassed to tell Pele Zachary that, because in fact the patrol soon caught you. Havin’ been cleared anyhow and released, you followed us on an express boat the way you said.” Laughter. “Yay, that should make you out to be the kind of half-civilized bumbler you want to seem!”

His gaze drew downright respectful. “You have it, I believe.” Just the same, he felt compelled to add: “Remember, do not let yourself get caught up in this. Play calm, play safe. The last thing we want is an uproar.”

“I understand,” she said, “though I’ll bet we get one regardless.”