The Game of Empire

Chapter 20

A few times in the past, Diana had felt she was being well and thoroughly kissed. Now she found her estimates had been off by an order of magnitude. Kukulkan’s body pressed hard and supple. When she opened her eyes she saw his blurrily, but gold-brown, oblique, brilliant. The man-scent of him dizzied her. She felt his heartbeat against hers. She clung tight with her left arm and let her right fingers go ruffling through his hair.

His hand slid from her hip, upward, inside her half-opened blouse. It went under her brassiere. Sweetness exploded.

Wait! rang through. Dragoika’s voice purred across the years: “Give yourself to the wind, but first be sure ’tis the wind of your wish.” The loneliness of Maria Crowfeather—

Diana pulled back. She must exert force. “Hold on,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “I need to come up for air.”

“Oh, my beautiful!” His weight thrust her downward on the sofa where they sat.

She resisted. A gentle judo break, decisive since unawaited, freed her. She sprang from him and stood breathing hard, flushed and atremble but back in charge of herself.

“Easy, there,” she said, smiling, because warmth still pulsed. She found occupation in pushing back her tousled locks. “Let’s not get carried away.”

He rose, too, himself apparently unoffended, though ardency throbbed in his tone: “Why not? What harm? What except love and joy?”

He refrained from advancing, so she stayed where she was, and wondered if she could really resist the handsomeness that confronted her. “Well, I—Oh, Kukulkan, it’s been wonderful.” And it had been, culminating in this night’s flight above the Hellenes to a lake where they swam while the reflection of the sun-ring flashed everywhere around them, as if they swam in pure light; and ate pheasant and drank champagne ashore; and danced on a boat dock to music from the car’s player, music and a dance she had never known before, a waltz by somebody named Strauss; and finally came back to his place, where one thing led to another. “I thank you, I do, I do. But soon I’ll be gone.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll see to that. You’ll stay as long as you want. And I’ll take you all over this planet, and eventually beyond, to the stars.”

Did he mean it? Suppose he did!

She had no intention of remaining a virgin for life, or until any particular age. Pride, if nothing else, forbade becoming somebody’s plaything or, for that matter, making a toy of a man. But she liked Kukulkan Zachary—more than liked him—and she must be a little special to him, or why would he have squired her around as he did? What an ingrate she was, not to trust him.

If only she’d had a reversible shot. She wanted neither a baby in the near future nor an abortion ever; but living hand-to-mouth on Imhotep, as often as not among the Tigeries, she just hadn’t gotten around to the precaution. She thought this week was safe for her—

“I’d better go,” she forced herself to say. “Let me think things over. Please don’t rush me.”

“At least let me kiss you goodbye until later,” he replied in that melodious voice of his. “A few hours later, no more, I beg you.”

She couldn’t refuse him so small a favor, could she, in common courtesy?

He gathered her in. She responded. Resolution wobbled.

Whether or not it would have stood fast, she never knew. The front door, unlocked on the crimeless island, opened. Targovi came in. Behind him reared the dragon head of Axor.

Diana and Kukulkan recoiled apart. “What the flickerin’ hell!” ripped from her. He snarled and tensed.

Targovi leveled the blaster he carried. “Don’t,” he said.

“Have you two jumped your orbits?” Diana yelled, and knew freezingly that they had not.

Kukulkan straightened. His features stiffened. “Drop that thing,” he said as if giving a routine order to a servant. “Do you want the girl killed in a firefight?”

“Who is to start one?” Targovi retorted. He gestured at a window. Leafage turned young daylight to gold-spattered green. Like most local homes, this was tucked into its garden, well back from the street, screened by trees and hedges. It was obvious that the intruders had entered unseen.

Axor crowded in. He went to Diana, laid his enormous arms about her, drew her to his plated breast, as tenderly as her mother. “My dear, my dear, I am sorry,” he boomed low. “Horror is upon us. Would that you could be spared.”

For a minute she clung tight. It was as though strength and calm flowed out of him, into her. She stepped back. Her gaze winged around the scene and came to rest on Targovi. “Explain,” she said.

His scarlet eyes smoldered back at her. “The spoor I followed proved true,” he answered. “I followed it into the lair of the beast. Axor, show her what I brought back.”

The Wodenite visibly shuddered. “Must I?”

“Yes. Didn’t diddle about. Every tailshake we wait, the odds mount against us.”

While Axor took a package from a carrier bag and untied it, Targovi’s words trotted remorseless: “The Zacharians are in collusion with the Merseians. This means they must be with Magnusson. The Merseians must be! You understand what this betokens.”

“No,” she protested, “please, no. Impossible. How could they keep the secret? Why would they do such a thing?”

Axor completed his task, and It stared sightlessly up at her.

“They are not like your folk,” Targovi reminded.

Struggling out of shock, she heard him dimly. “We must bring this evidence back.”

“How?” challenged Kukulkan. Diana regarded him, which hurt like vitriol to do. He stood shaken but undaunted. “Would you steal a car and fly off? You might succeed in that, even committing another murder or two in the process. But missiles will come after you, rays, warcraft if necessary, to shoot you down. Meanwhile, whatever transmissions you attempt will be jammed—not that they’d be believed. A waterboat is merely ludicrous. Surrender, and I’ll suggest clemency.”

“You’ll not be here.” Targovi aimed the blaster. He had set it to narrow beam. Kukulkan never flinched.

“No!” shouted Diana and bellowed Axor together. She pursued with a spate of words: “D’you mean to silence him? What for? The alarm’ll go out anyhow, when they find that poor headless body. Tie him up instead.”

“You do it, then,” the Tigery growled. “Be quick, but be thorough. Meanwhile, think whether you want to join us. Axor, stow the goods again.”

“Into the bedroom,” Diana directed. The irony smote her. “Oh, Kukulkan, this is awful! You didn’t know anything about it, did you?”

Under the threat of Targovi’s gun, he preceded her, turned, and said in steeliness: “I did. It would be idiotic of me to deny that. But I intended you no harm, lovely lass. On the contrary. You could have become a mother of kings.”

She wiped away tears, drew her knife, slashed a sheet into bonds. “What do you want, you people? Why’ve you turned traitor?”

“We owe the Terran Empire nothing. It dragooned our forebears into itself. It has spurned our leadership, the vision that animated the Founders. It will only allow us to remain ourselves on this single patch of land, afar in its marches. Here we dwell like Plato’s man in chains, seeing only shadows on the wall of our cave, shadows cast by the living universe. The Merseians have no cause to fear or shun us. Rather, they will welcome us as their intermediaries with the human commonality. They will grant us the same boundless freedom they desire for themselves.”

“Are you s-s-certain about that? Lie down on the b-b-bed, on your stomach.”

He obeyed. She began fastening his hands behind his back. Would he twist about, try to seize her for shield or hostage? She’d hate slashing him; but she stayed prepared. He lay passive, apart from speech: “What do you owe the Empire, Diana, this shellful of rotting flesh? Why should you die for it? You will, if you persist. You have nowhere to flee.”

Instantly, almost involuntarily, she defied him. “We’ve got a whole big island where we can live off the farms and wildlife, plenty of hills and woods for cover. We’ll survive.”

“For hours; days, at most. In fear and wretchedness. Think. I offer you protection, amnesty. My kin will not be vindictive. They are above that. I offer you glory.”

“He may intend it, or he may just want the use of you,” Targovi said from the doorway. “In either case, sisterling, belike it’s your safest trail. If we bind you, too, somebody will come erelong to see what’s happened, and none should blame you.”

“Naw.” Diana secured Kukulkan’s ankles. “I stay by my friends.”

“A forlorn hope, we.”

She hitched the strips to the bedframe, lest the prisoner roll himself off and out into the street. Straightening, she happened to spy and open closet. Hanging there were clothes for both man and woman.

Well, sure, she thought, Zacharians didn’t marry. No point in it, for them. He had admitted as much, and mentioned children raised in interchangeable households, and she had wondered how lonesome he was in his heart and whether that was what drew him to her, and then they had gone on with their excursion. But, sure, Zacharians would have sex for other reasons than procreation. Interchangeable people? The idea was like a winter wind.

She stooped above the bonny face. He gave her a crooked smile. “Goodbye,” she said to the alien.

Seeking Targovi: “All right, let’s scramble out o’ here.”

“—state secrets. Almost as dangerous are their persons, for they are armed and desperate. While capture alive is desirable for purposes of interrogation, killing them on sight is preferable to any risk of allowing them to continue their rampage—”

Targovi heard the announcement out before he switched off the audio transceiver he had brought from the hospice. It was a natural thing to put in Axor’s carrier, along with food, after they had voiced their decision to go on a long tramp through the hills, for the benefit of any electronic eavesdroppers. While the Wodenite recorded a message apologizing for thus cancelling his next appointment with Isis, explaining that he wished to savor the landscape and this was his last chance, his comrade had surreptitiously added a hiking outfit for Diana to the baggage.

Being a Tigery, Targovi skipped banalities like, “Well, now they know.” He did murmur, “Interesting is how they phrase it, the scat about ‘state secrets’. I should think most Zacharians will realize at once what this means. The rest should cooperate without questions.”

“I s’pose the words’re for the benefit of whatever outsiders may catch the broadcast,” said Diana around a mouthful of sandwich. “F’r instance, on watercraft passin’ within range. Not that they’d investigate for themselves.”

The three rested in a hollow in the heights above Janua, well away from settlement. Its peacefulness was an ache in them. Birch stood around, leaves dancing to a breeze in the radiance of westbound Patricius. Prostrate juniper grew among the white trunks, itself dark blue-green and fragrant. A spring bubbled from a mossy bank. Somewhere a mockingbird trilled.

“The Zacharians will be out like a swarm of khrukai—swordwings,” Targovi said. “They’ll use aircraft and high-gain sensors. We’ll need all the woodcraft that is ours. And … we are not used to forest such as this.”

Diana smote fist on ground. “Be damned if we’ll die for naught, or skulk around useless till Magnusson’s slaughtered his way to the throne!” Her head and voice drooped. “Only what can we do?”

Axor cleared his throat. “I can do this much, beloved ones,” he said, almost matter-of-factly. “My size and lack of skill at concealment will betray us even before my bodily need has exhausted the rations. Let me angle off and divert pursuit while you two seek the mountains.” He lifted a hand against Diana’s anguished cry. “No, no, it is the sole sensible plan. I came along because, much though I abhor violence, as a Christian should, yet there seemed to be a chance to end the war before it devours lives by the millions. Also, while I cannot believe the Merseians are creatures of Satan, they would deprive many billions of whatever self-determination is left. It is a worthy cause. Afterward, if you live, pray that we be forgiven for the harm we have done our opponents, and for the repose of their souls, as I will pray.” His neck swayed upward from where he lay till light caught the crest of his head and made a crown of it. “Let me serve in the single way I am able. Lord, watch over my spirit, and the spirits of these my friends.”

This time the girl could not stem tears. “Oh, Axor—!”

“Quiet, you two blitherers,” Targovi grated. “What we want is less nobility and more thinking.”

He jumped and paced, not man-style but as a Tigery does, weaving in and out among the trees and around the bushes. His right hand stroked the blade of his great knife over the palm of the left, again and again. Teeth gleamed when he muttered on the track of his thought.

“I led us hither because I dared not suppose my deed at the command post would go undetected enough longer for us to rustle transportation and reach the mainland. In that I was right. My hope was that the Zacharians would show such confusion at the news, being inexperienced in affairs like this, that we could double back and find means of escape—mayhap forcing the owner of a vehicle to cover for us. After all, they had not been well organized at the post. The hope was thin just the same, and now is not a wisp. I think their … oneness … makes them able to react to the unforeseen as coolly as an individual, not with the babble and cross purposes of an ordinary human herd taken by surprise. You heard the broadcast. Every car and boat will stay in a group of three or more, under guard. Every movement from the island will be stopped for inspection. This will prevail until we are captured or slain.

“Shall we yield? They might be content to shoot me, and the imprisonment of you two might not be cruel.

“You signal a no.”

“My mother passed on an ancient sayin’ to me,” Diana told them. “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

“Ah, the young do not truly understand they can die,” Axor sighed. “Yet if any possibility whatsoever is left us, what can we in conscience do other than try it?”

Still the Tigery prowled. “I am thinking, I am thinking—” Abruptly he halted. He drove the knife into a bole so that the metal sang. “Javak! Yes, it was on my horizon—a twisted path—But we must needs hurry, and not give the foe time to imagine we are crazy enough to take that way.”

The south side of the Mencius range dropped a short distance before the land resumed its climb. This was unpeopled country, heavily wooded save where the canyon of the Averroes River slashed toward the sea, and on the higher flanks of the mountains. Kukulkan had told Diana it was a game and recreational preserve. The location of the spaceport here dated from troubled early days, when it might have become a target, minor though it was. Perhaps its isolation had been a factor in the conceiving of the Merseian plot.

Despite everything, the girl caught her breath at the sight. Clear, apart from a slight golden fleece of clouds, the sky was pale below, deepening in indigo at the zenith; but still night cast a dusk over the reaches around her. Heights to north and south walled in the world. Only at the ends of the vale did the sun-ring shine, casting rays that made the bottom a lake of amber. Where trees allowed glimpses, the hills above were purple-black, the snow-caps in the distance moltenly aglow. Air was cool on her brow. Quietness towered.

Wonder ended as Targovi pointed ahead.

Beyond the last concealment the forest afforded was a hundred-meter stretch, kept open though overgrown with brush and weeds. A link fence, to hold off animals, enclosed a ferrocrete field. Her pulse athrob but her senses and judgment preternaturally sharp, she gauged its dimensions as five hundred by three hundred meters. Service buildings clustered and a radionic mast spired at the farther end. Of the several landing docks, two were occupied. One craft she identified as interplanetary, a new and shapely version of Moonjumper. The other was naval—rather small as interstellar ships went, darkly gleaming, gun turret and launcher tubes sleeked into her leanness—akin to the Comet class, but not identical, not designed or wrought by humans—What ghost in her head blew a bugle call?

Huge and vague in the shadows, Axor whispered hoarsely, “We take the Zacharian vessel, of course.”

“No, of course not,” Targovi hissed. His eyes caught what light there was and burned like coals. “I was right in guessing the islanders are as militarily slovenly here as at the centrum, and have armed no watch. The thought of us hijacking a spaceship is too warlike to have occurred to them. But the Merseians are bound to have a guard aboard theirs. I know not whether that’s a singleton or more, but belike whoever it is knows how to dispatch a seeker missile, or actually lift in chase.” Decision. “However, we may well dupe them into supposing we are after the easier prey, and thus catch them off balance. The dim light will help—”

When he burst from concealment, Axor carried Diana in the crook of an arm, she would otherwise have toiled far behind him and Targovi. The pounding of his gallop resounded through her. She leaned into his flexing hardness, cradled her rifle, peered after a mark.

It was an instant and it was a century across the clearing, until they reached the fence. Axor’s free arm curved around to keep torn strands off her while he crashed through. Nevertheless, several drew blood. She barely noticed.

Men ran from the terminal, insectoidal at their distance, then suddenly near. She saw pistols in the hands of some. She heard a buzz, a thud. Axor grunted, lurched, went on. Diana opened fire. A figure tumbled and lay sprattling.

Targovi bounded alongside. The cargo carrier was straight ahead. He raised his arm, veered, and went for the Merseians. Diana’s vision swooped as Axor came around too. She glanced past his clifflike shoulder and saw the Zacharians in bewilderment. They numbered perhaps a dozen.

Targovi mounted the entry ramp of the dock. An airlock stood shut against him. He shielded his eyes with an arm and began to cut his way in with the blaster. Flame spurted blue-white, heat roiled, air seethed, sparks scorched his fur. A light ship like this relied on her forcefields and interceptors for protection in space. Nobody expected attack on the ground.

The Zacharians rallied and pelted toward him. They had courage aplenty, Diana thought in a breath. Axor went roaring and trampling to meet them. She threw a barrage. The men scattered and fled, except for one wounded and two shapeless.

Diana’s trigger clicked on an empty magazine. Above her, Targovi’s blaster sputtered out, its capacitors exhausted.

Axor thundered up the ramp. “Diana, get down!” he bawled. “Both of you, behind me!”

They scrambled to obey. He hammered his mass against the weakened lock. At the third impact it sagged aside.

Four Merseians waited. Their uniforms revealed them to be soldiers, unqualified to fly the craft they defended. Rather than shut the inner valve and risk it being wrecked too, they had prepared to give battle. Merseians would.

Axor charged. Beams and bullets converged on him. That could not check such momentum. Two died under his hoofs before he collapsed, shaking the hull. Targovi and Diana came right after. The Tigery threw his knife. A handgun rattled off a bulkhead. He and the Merseian went down together, embraced. His fangs found the green throat. Diana eluded a shot, got in close, and wielded her own blade.

Targovi picked himself up. “They’ll’ve sent for help,” he rasped out of dripping jaws. “Lubberly warriors though Zacharians be, I give us less than ten minutes. While I discover how to raise this thing, you close the portal.” He whisked from sight.

The lock gave her no difficulty; the layout resembled that of Moonjumper. With the ship sealed, she made her way across a slippery deck to Axor. He lay breathing hard. Scorch marks were black over his scales. Redness oozed from wounds, not quite the same hue as hers, which was not quite the same as the Merseians’, but it was all blood—water, iron, life—“Oh, you’re so hurt,” she keened. “What can I do for you?”

He lifted his head. “Are you well, child?”

“Yes, nothin’ hit me, but you, darlin’, you—”

Lips drew back in a smile that others might have found frightening. “Not to fear. A little discomfort, yes, I might go so far as to say pain, but no serious injury. This carcass has many a pilgrimage ahead of it yet. Praises be to God and thanks to the more militant saints.” The head sank. Wearily, soberly, he finished, “Now let me pray for the souls of the fallen.”

A shiver went through Diana’s feet. Targovi had awakened the engines.

Atmospheric warcraft zoomed over hills and mountains. He did not try keying in an order to shoot. Instead, he outclimbed them. Missiles whistled aloft. By then he had learned how to switch on the deflector field.

And after that he was in space. The planet rolled beneath him, enormous and lovely, burnished with oceans, emblazoned with continents, white-swirled with clouds. Once more he saw stars.

He could only take a moment to savor. Single-handing, he hadn’t a meteorite’s chance against attack by any Naval unit. “Diana,” he said over the intercom, “come to the bridge, will you?” and devoted himself to piloting. He couldn’t instruct the autosystem the unfamiliar manual controls responded clumsily to him, and the navigational instruments were incomprehensible; he must eyeball and stagger his way. At least he’d managed to set a steady interior field of about a gee. Otherwise his comrades would be getting thrown around like chips in a casino.

Well, if he and they could walk from the landing, that was amply good—if they walked free.

The girl entered and took the copilot’s seat. “I hope to bring us down at Aurea port,” he told her. “No doubt the Zacharians will call frantically in, demanding the Navy blow us menaces out of the sky, and no doubt there are officers who will be happy to oblige. I lack skill to take us away on hyperdrive. You are the human aboard. What do you counsel?”

She considered, hand to smoke-smudged cheek—tangle-haired, sweaty, ragged, begrimed. Glancing at her, scenting her, knowing her, he wished he could be, for some hours, a male of her species.

“Can you set up a strong audiovisual transmission, that’ll punch through interference on the standard band?” she asked.

He studied the console before him. “I think I can.”

“Do.” She closed her eyes and sagged in her harness.

But when he was ready, she came back to strength. To the computer-generated face in the screen she said: “I have a message for Commandant General Cesare Gatto. It’s not crank, and it is top priority. If it don’t get straight to him, courts martial are goin’ to blossom till you can’t see the clover for ’em. The fact I’m in a spacecraft you’ll soon identify as Merseian should get you off your duffs. He’ll want a recognition code, of course. Tell him Diana Crowfeather is bound home.”