Poul Anderson - The Long Way Home

Very distantly, he made out the Centaurian’s rumble: “You might as well know, captain. It was I who took your friends. They couldn’t tell me anything, and against my wishes they... died. I’m sorry.”

Langley turned away from him. Marin began to weep.

Valti cleared his throat. “A nice maneuver, my lord. Very well executed. But there is the matter of several casualties among my own people. I’m afraid the Society can’t permit that sort of thing. There will have to be restitution.”

“Including Saris Hronna, no doubt?” Brannoch grinned without humor.

“Of course. And reparations according to the weregild schedule set by treaty. Otherwise the Society will have to apply sanctions to your system.”

“Withdrawal of trade?” snorted Brannoch. “We can do without your cargoes. And just try to use military force!”

“Oh, no, my lord,” said Valti mildly. “We are a humane people. But we do have a large share in the economic life of every planet where we have offices. Investments, local companies owned by us—if necessary, we could do deplorable things to your economy. It isn’t as rigid as Sol’s, you know. I doubt if your people would take kindly to...say... catastrophic inflation when we released several tons of the praseodymium which is your standard, followed by depression and unemployment when a number of key corporations retired from business.”

“I see,” said Brannoch, unmoved. “I didn’t intend to use more force on you than necessary, but you drive me to it. If your entire personnel here disappeared without trace—I’ll have to think about it. I’d miss our gambling games.”

“I’ve already filed a report to my chiefs, my lord; I was only waiting for their final orders. They know where I am.”

“But do they know who raided you? It could be fixed to throw the blame on Chanthavar. Yes. An excellent idea.”

Brannoch turned back to Langley. He had to grip the spaceman’s shoulder hard to attract his attention. “Look here,” he asked, “does this beast of yours speak any modern language?”

“No,” said Langley, “and if you think I’m going to be your interpreter, you’ve got another think coming.”

The heavy face looked pained. “I wish you’d stop considering me a fiend, captain. I have my duty. I don’t hold any grudge against you for trying to get away from me; if you cooperate, my offer still stands. If not, I’ll have to execute you, and nothing will be gained. We’ll teach Saris the language and make him work anyhow. All you could do is slow us up a little.” He paused. “I’d better warn you, though. If you try to sabotage the project once it’s under way, the punishment will be stiff.”

“Go ahead, then,” said Langley. He didn’t care, not any more. “What do you want to say to him?”

“We want to take him to Thor, where he’ll aid us in building a nullifier. If anything goes wrong through his doing, he’ll die, and robot ships will be sent to bombard his planet. They’ll take a thousand years to get there, but they’ll be sent. If, on the other hand he helps us, he’ll be returned home.” Brannoch shrugged. “Why should he care which party wins out? It’s not his species.”

Langley translated into English, almost word for word. Saris stood quiet for a minute, then:

“Iss grief in you, my friend.”

“Yeah,” said Langley. “Reckon so. What do you want to do?”

The Holatan looked thoughtful. “Iss hard to say. I hawe little choice at pressent. Yet from what I know of today’ss uniwerse, iss not best to aid Sol or Centauri.”

“Brannoch has a point,” said Langley. “We’re just another race. Except for the Society offering you a little better deal, it doesn’t affect your people.”

“But it doess. Wrongness in life, anywhere in all space, iss wrongness. Iss, for instance, chance that some day someone findss out a for traweling faster than light met’od. Then one race on the wrong pat” iss a general menace. Also to itself, since other outraged planetss might unite to exterminate it.”

“Well... is there anything we can do, now, except get ourselves killed in a fit of messy heroism?”

“No. I see no out-way. That doess not mean none exists. Best to follow the scent ass laid, while snuffing after a new track.”

Langley nodded indifferently. He was too sick of the whole slimy business to care much as yet. Let the Centaurians win. They were no worse than anybody else. “O. K., Brannoch,” he said. “We’ll string along.”

“Excellent!” The giant shivered, as if with a nearly uncontrollable exuberance.

“You realize, of course,” said Valti, “that this means war.”

“What else?” asked Brannoch, honestly surprised.

“A war which, with or without nullifiers, could wreck civilization in both systems. How would you like, say, the Procyonites to come take over the radioactive ruins of Thor?”

“All life is a gamble,” said Brannoch. “If you didn’t load your dice and mark your cards —I know blazing well you do, too!—you’d see that. So far the balance of power has been pretty even. Now we will have the nullifier; it may tip the scales very far indeed, if we use it right. It’s not a final weapon, but it’s potent.” He threw back his head and shook with silent laughter.

Recovering himself: “All right. I’ve got a little den of my own, in Africa. We’ll go there first to make preliminary arrangements—among other things, a nice convincing synthetic dummy, Saris” corpse, for Chanthavar to find. I can’t leave Earth right away, or he’d suspect too much. The thing to do is tip my hand just enough to get declared persona non grata, leave in disgrace—and come back with a fleet behind me!”

Langley found himself hustled outside, onto a slope where snow crackled underfoot and the sky was a dark vault of stars. His breath smoked white from his mouth, breathing was keen and cold, his body shuddered. Marin crept near him, as if for warmth, and he stepped aside from her. Tool!

No... no, he Wasn’t being fair to her, was he? She had been under a gas when she betrayed him, with less will of her own than if someone had held a gun at her back. But he couldn’t look at her now without feeling unclean.

A spaceship hovered just off the ground. Langley walked up the ladder, found himself a chair in the saloon, and tried not to think. Marin gave him a glance full of pain and then took a seat away from the others. A couple of armed guards, arrogant blond men who must be Thorians themselves, lounged at the doors. Saris had been taken elsewhere. He was not yet helpless, but his only possible action would be the suicidal one of crashing the ship, and Brannoch seemed willing to chance that.

The mountains fell away under their keel. There was a brief booming of sundered air, and then they were over the atmosphere, curving around the planet toward central Africa.

Langley wondered what he was going to do with himself, all the remaining days of his life. Quite possibly Brannoch would establish him on some Earth-type world as promised—but it would be inside the range of his own and Solar culture, marked for eventual conquest, it would not be what he had imagined. Well—

He wouldn’t see the war, but all his life there would be nightmares in which the sky tore open and a billion human creatures were burned, flayed, gutted, and baked into the ground. And yet what else could he have done? He had tried, and failed... wasn’t it enough?

No, said the New England ancestor.

But I didn’t ask for the burden.

No man asks to be born, and nevertheless he must bear his own life.

I tried, I tell you!

Did you try hard enough? You will always wonder.

What can I do?

You can refuse to surrender.