The Game of Empire

Chapter 23

Imhotep spun toward northern autumn. Dwarfed Patricius burned mellower in skies gone pale. When full, the big moon Zoser rose early and set late; with its lesser companions Kanofer and Rahotep it made lambent the snowpeaks around Mt. Horn. Sometimes flakes dusted off them, aglitter, vanishing as they blew into the streets of Olga’s Landing. Dead leaves scrittled underfoot. In Old Town crowds milled, music twanged, savory odors rose out of foodstalls and Winged Smoke houses; for this was the season when Tigery caravans brought wares up from the lowlands.

Fleet Admiral Sir Dominic Flandry had time to prowl about. Things had changed a good deal since last he was here, but memories lingered. One hour he went to the Terran cemetery and stood quiet before a headstone. Otherwise, mostly, he enjoyed being at liberty, while hirelings flitted in search of the persons he wanted.

After the loyalists—the Navy of Emperor Gerhart—reoccupied Sphinx and released him, he had set about learning just what had been going on. His connections got him more information than would ever become public. On that basis, he decided to send Banner a reassuring message but himself, before returning home, visit Daedalus. There he spent an especially interesting while on Zacharia. However, those individuals he most desired to see had gone back to Imhotep. Flandry followed, to learn that Diana Crowfeather and Father F.X. Axor were at sea on an archaeological expedition, while Targovi was off in the asteroid belt chaffering for precious metals. Like everything else, the minerals industry was in a fluid state, and would remain thus until the aftermath of the recent unpleasantness had damped out. A smart operator could take advantage of that.

Having called on Dragoika in Toborkozan, Flandry engaged searchers. In Olga’s Landing he took lodgings at the Pyramid and roved around the city.

Almost together, his detectives fetched his guests. Flandry bade them a cordial welcome over the eidophone, described the credit to their accounts in the bank, and arranged a date for meeting. Thereafter he commandeered an official dining room and gave personal attention to the menu and wine list.

From this high level, a full-wall transparency looked far over splendor. Westward the city ended at woods turned scarlet, russet, amber. Beyond the warm zone were boulders and crags, hardy native bush, thinly frozen rivulets and ponds, to the dropoff of the summit. Beyond the depths, within which blue shadows were rising, neighbor mountains waited for the sun. Their snows had come aglow; glaciers gleamed nebula-green.

In air, weight, warmth, the room was Terra. Recorded violins frolicked, fragrances drifted. It made the more plain what an enclave this was, and how much the more dear for that.

Flandry leaned back, let cigarette smoke trail, regarded his daughter through it. A charming lass, he thought. Granted, the outfit she had bought herself was scarcely in the latest Imperial court fashion—crimson mini-gown, leather sandals, bracelet and headband of massive silver set with raw turquoises, spotted gillycat pelt from right shoulder to left hip, where her Tigery knife rested—but it might well have ignited a new style there, and in any event the Imperial court was blessedly distant.

As he hoped, cocktails were bringing ease between him and her. But Targovi, to whom the drinking of ethanol was not a social custom and who had not started to inhale what was set before him, persisted in hunting down what he wanted to know. The Tigery had vanity enough to wear a beaded breechcloth and necklace of land pearls; a colloidal spray had made his fur shine. Still—“And so you, sir, you caught the same suspicions as I?” he inquired.

In the background Axor rested serene along the floor, listening with one bony ear while contemplating the sunset. He was clad merely in his scales and scutes, unless you counted the purse, rosary, and spectacles hung from his neck.

“Why, yes,” Flandry said. “Magnusson’s being a sleeper, as we call it in the trade—that possibility occurred to me, although an undertaking such as his would be the most audacious ever chronicled outside of cloak-and-blaster fiction. I thought of comparing his account of his early life with what various Merseians recalled. They could not all have been vowed to secrecy; and as for those who had been, a percentage would be susceptible … Blatant inconsistencies would give me a strong clue. Unfortunately, Merseian counter-intelligence nailed our agents before they could accomplish anything worthwhile. Fortunately, you had the same intuition, and this trio here in front of me carried out a coup more dramatic and decisive than I had dared fantasize.”

“What’s the latest news about the war?” Diana asked. “The truth, I mean, not that sugar puddin’ on the screens.”

Flandry’s grin was wary. “I wouldn’t dignify it with the name of war. Not as of weeks and weeks ago. Mainly, everything is in abeyance while Imperium and bureaucracy creak through the datawork. People who, in good faith, fought for Magnusson—they’re too many to kill or imprison. Punishments will have to range from reprimands, through fines and reductions in rank, to cashiering. The scale and the chaos of making it all orderly defies imagination; beside it, the accretion disc of a black hole is as neat as a transistor. But it’ll settle down eventually.”

“Magnusson. Any word about him?” Flandry frowned. “He died at the hands of his men. Do you really want to hear the details? I gather there are no plans to release them. Why risk rousing sympathy for him?”

“And I suppose,” Targovi put in slowly, “the tale of how the conspiracy came to light, that will also stay secret?”

Flandry sighed. “Well, it wouldn’t make the government look so terribly efficient, would it? Besides, my sources inform me that Merseia had indicated its release would make Merseia equally unhappy. It could jar the peace process … Not that you’re forbidden to talk. The Empire is big, and you have no particular access to the media.”

“What of the Zacharians?” came like surf from Axor. “Is mercy possible for those tormented souls?”

“Tormented, my foot!” cried Diana, and stamped hers. She checked herself, drank of her martini, and said, while a slight flush played across her cheekbones: “Not that I’m after genocide on them or any such thing. Javak, no! But what will happen? You got any notion, Dad?”

“Yes, I do,” Flandry replied, glad to steer conversation into softer channels. “Not that a final decree has been issued; but I’ve been studying the situation, and … my word is not without leverage.”

He likewise sipped, drew breath and smoke, before he continued: “They’re unique. No other population, at least no other human population, could have kept a secret the way theirs did. Virtually every adult was privy to it. Let’s eschew quibbles about what ‘human’ really means.

“Their children, of course, are innocent, had no idea of what was going on. Can we kill them? The Merseians might, to ‘purge the Race.’ Whatever its entropy level, the Empire has not yet sunk to that.

“Pardons, amnesties, and limited penalties are going to be the order of the day. They must, if we want to shore up this social structure of ours so it might last another century or two.

“I think the punishment of the Zacharians will be the loss of their country. They’ll be forced to vacate—scatter—find new homes wherever they can. I’d not be surprised but what Merseia offers them a haven, and many of them accept. The rest—will have to make their way among the rest of us.”

“And what will come of that?” Targovi mused.

Flandry spread his hands. “Who knows? We play the game move by move, and never see far ahead—the game of empire, of life, whatever you want to call it—and what the score will be when all the pieces at last go back into the box, who knows?”

He tossed off his drink, tossed away his cigarette, and stood up. “My friends,” he said, “dinner awaits. Let us go in together and rejoice in what we have.

“But first—” his glance swooped about—“I’d like to give you three some extra reason for rejoicing. Diana, Targovi … are you really heart-bent on faring out yonder? I’m prepared to arrange that for you, however you choose. Trader, explorer, scientist, artist, or, God help you, Intelligence operative—I can see to it that you get the schooling and the means you’ll need. I only ask that first you think hard about what you truly want.” The girl’s and the Tigery’s spirits fountained radiance.

“As for you, Father Axor,” Flandry went on, “if you wish, I’ll obtain adequate funding for your research. Shall I?”

“God bless you, whether you like it or not,” the Wodenite replied, ocean-deep. “What you endow goes beyond space or time.” He crossed his hands on his forelegs and smiled, as a being may who is winning salvation for himself and his beloved.