A. Smith: Royal Road

Long minutes later, he remembered, he had dragged himself from beneath the shattered car. Dragged out his squire’s body too, useless gesture though that act was. The crater which had wrecked them had also, oddly, spared his life. For the scout car had alighted squarely within it, bridging the narrow bottom of the cone. And into that small space he dropped, when shaking fingers and dazed intelligence at last found strength and wit to release his safety belt.

Then, leaning against crumpled metal, breathing shallowly as knife-edge pain stabbed through his chest, Duke Harald squinted along the barrel of his handgun and poured useless flame and futile hatred after the black ships, departing now as swiftly as they had come.

Three grimy, smoke-stained commoners found him there. They were wrestling a red handcart laden with chemical extinguishers to the site of the nearest blaze. Suddenly deferential at seeing the blood-smeared silver-gray of his tunic and the shining crested helmet, one of them left his comrades and led Duke Harald to the community first-aid post. There, a sullen but outwardly polite medico taped up his ribs—unnecessarily tight, Duke Harald thought. And that attitude pointed up another facet of the situation that his fellows of the Council preferred to ignore: the restlessness, the growing discontent among the commoners. A military aristocracy’s chief—and only—claim to leadership stemmed from the protection that its battle skills afforded. If that protection failed, what then? Another Altair?

Duke Harald stood up, resumed his wrinkled shirt and tunic, and touched a lighter to a cigarette. The white-garbed medico was cleaning up. There were no more patients; Duke Harald had waived treatment until the last of the villagers’ wounds had been attended.

At length he spoke, impatient of the other’s fussy, back-turned puttering with his instruments.

“What prisoners?” he asked. It did not occur to him—nor would it have to any other Arkadian—to doubt that the raiders had made off with some.

“Two, your grace.” The medico’s voice shook. “Old Jonas Borrow and his small grandson, sunning themselves on the bench before the Red Lion.”

Duke Harald grunted, outwardly impassive. He had heard these tales, seen these sights too often before. His hatred for the aliens was as marrow-deep as the other’s. Only it was colder—save perhaps in the immediate red flame of battle.

“This Jonas Borrow—who was he?” The local baron was, he knew, in King’s Town. The old man then, was probably—

“Our village clan leader,” said the other, confirming the thought. Always, always the telepathic aliens took people who were in a position to know something. How much had Jonas Borrow known of the projected troop levies? Well, that plan, too, would now have to be changed.

“Has he a successor, hereditary or appointed?” he went on.

“Not on Arkady, your grace. His son—the child’s father—is off-planet somewhere.”

“Very well.” Duke Harald decided swiftly. As ruler of the Outer Marches, his was the final authority in these forest villages. “You are clan leader, as of now. Your baron will confirm when he gets back.” The medico, he could see, was torn between an idea of declining, and the glamour of the proffered post. Duke Harald gave him no time to hesitate.

“Now, summon your clan. And find me a recordograph. Mine lies shattered in the wreck of my car, and I need the observations of the people before lime and idle chatter can distort them.”

A poor substitute this, interrogating one’s own people instead of enemy prisoners. But such observations, and the subsequent logical analysis, paid dividends in knowledge of the battle tactics of the enemy.

He had learned nothing new that time, he remembered; just confirmation of previous reports. But—this had been the time when his idea of seeking telepathic skill on Terra had hardened into decision. The reports from Godfrey’s agents had come later, and—

He blanked the thought. He dared not give the sensitive robot even a hint of that plan. Not when it involved what must be the galaxy’s best-kept secret!

All this passed through his consciousness as a single flash of thought, and was as swiftly replaced by innocuous surface images. Not swiftly enough, though. Something—perhaps he had caught his breath, perhaps a momentary tensing of a muscle—had caused a deviant flicker on a recording needle, had sent an impulse to a comparator circuit somewhere in the depths of the great computer bank.

“The sequence is unfinished.” said the robot, in smooth, unhuman tones.

“Possibly not,” Duke Harald admitted, bringing latent feelings of hunger to the fore—and the hour was getting late! “Yet it faded out.”

“Run it again,” said the robot, and backed the suggestion with the hypnagogic pattern. And the sequence was repeated; once and then again, and again until a dozen repetitions had been counted, and both the memory and Duke Harald were exhausted. Then and then only did the machine accept the hunger explanation, and dismiss him.

Dinner at the Arkadian embassy that night.

Duke Harald dressed carefully but informally in the small three-room bachelor apartment he had taken near the Institute, and, scorning mechanical transport, set out on foot. A soldier, somehow, had to keep in training—and he had little use for the gracefully formalized and ballet like patterns that were Terran calisthenics!

His three-mile march took him down broad, tree-shadowed University Avenue to where it intersected at an angle the glitter of the fabled Martian Way. Despite himself, he paused there; fascinated anew by the brilliant, glowing spectacle of the most famous street in all the galaxy. And as he stared—like any provincial!—a stranger stepped from the colorful throng and stood before him. An out-spacer apparently, by his garb; and apparently lost, by the bewildered way in which he extended a tiny map case. Duke Harald saw—and to outward seeming ignored—the recognition signal which the other flashed to him in the Arkadian hand-language.

“Your pardon, sir,” said the stranger with a flustered smile, “but my feet seem to have been leading me in circles. I look for Kinseth Boulevard. Could you direct me?”

“Well,” said Duke Harald, taking and opening the map case, “I have but lately come to Terra myself. But perhaps I can help.”

Frowning, he studied the controls of the map’s tiny electro indexer; then reached into his belt pouch and brought forth a map case of his own.

“Your indexer is of unfamiliar make,” he grunted, comparing the two intently. “Ah yes, here we have it.”

He returned his own case to his pouch, set the pointers of the stranger’s map upon the named location, and handed it back.

“Ten thousand thanks!” exclaimed the outspacer, to which Duke Harald only inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. They parted. Duke Harald, the perfect picture of the haughty nobleman, marched off in brisk, uncompromising silence; while the stranger, half-embarrassed, called effusive gratitude after him. Nevertheless, within Duke Harald’s pouch there now rested a tiny plastic spool, wound with turn upon silvery turn of hair-fine wire!

The meal was good but informal. Apart from Duke Harald and old Count Godfrey, the ambassador, only two others were present : Terrans both, minor co-ordinators in the loosely organized government of Terra.

“Window dressing,” Count Godfrey called them afterwards, when the two Arkadians were alone. Studying the amber fluid that swirled in the bottom of a balloon-shaped glass, his wrinkled face broke into a sly but gentle smile. “When you’re planning something the other side won’t like, do it under their noses if it’s possible.”