Poul Anderson: Flandry of Terra

The planet was five parsecs from Brae. It was the third of an otherwise uninteresting F5 dwarf, its official name was Nyanza, it had been colonized some 500 years back during the breakup of the Commonwealth. It had been made an Imperial client about a century ago, a few abortive revolts were crushed, now there was only a resident-which meant a trouble-free but unimportant and little visited world. The population was estimated at I0 7. That was all the microfiles had to say about Nyanza.

Flandry had checked them after identifying the murdered man, who turned out to be Thomas Umbolu, 19, free-born commoner of Jairnovaunt on Nyanza, no dependents, no personal oaths or obligations of fealty, religion “Christian variant,” height 1.82 meter, weight 84 kilos, blood type O plus… His service record was clean, though only one year old. A routine pre-induction hypno had shown no serious disaffection; but of course that hadn’t meant a damn thing since the techniques of deep conditioning became general knowledge; it was just another bureaucratic ritual.

Flandry took a high-speed flitter and ran from Brae. Even so, the enforced idleness of the trip was long enough to remind him acutely that he had been celibate for weeks. He spent a good deal of the time in calisthenics. It bored him rigid, but a trim body had saved his life more than once and made it easy to get bed partners on softened worlds like Terra.

When the robopilot said they were going into approach, he spent some while dressing himself. An Intelligence officer had wide latitude as regards uniforms, and Flandry took more advantage of it than most. After due consideration, he clad his tall form in peacock-blue tunic, with white cross-belts and as much gold braid as regulations would stand; red sash and matched guns, needler and blaster; iridescent white trousers; soft black boots of authentic Terran beefleather. He hung a scarlet cloak from his shoulders and cocked a winged naval cap on his long sleek head. Surveying himself in the mirror, he saw a lean sunlamp-browned face, gray eyes, seal-brown hair and mustache, straight nose, high cheekbones: yes, he knew his last plasmecosmetic job had made his face too handsome, but somehow never got around to changing it again. He put a cigarette between his lips, adjusted its jaunty angle with care, inhaled it to light, and went to his pilot’s seat. Not that he had anything to do with the actual piloting.

Nyanza shone before him, the clearest and most beautiful blue of his life, streaked with white cloud-belts and shuddering with great auroral streamers. He spotted two moons, a smallish one close in and a large one further out. He scowled. Where were the land masses? His robot made radio contact and the screen offered him a caucasoid face above a short-sleeved shirt.

“Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Navy Intelligence, requesting permission to land.”

Sometimes he wondered what he would do if his polite formula ever met a rude no.

The visage gaped. “Oh… oh… already?”

“Hm?” said Flandry. He caught himself. “Ah, yes,” he said wisely.

“But only today, sal” babbled the face. “Why, we haven’t even thought about sending a courier out yet-it’s been such a nightmare-oh, thank God you’re here, sir! You’ll see for yourself, at once, there isn’t a Technician in the City-on Altla-on all Nyanza, who doesn’t set loyalty to his Majesty above life itself!”

“I’m sure his Majesty will be very much relieved,” said Flandry. “Now, if you please, how about a landing beam?” After a pause, a few clicks, and the beginning downward rush of his ship: “Oh, by the way, Bubbles. Where did you put your continents today?”

“Continents, sir?”

“You know. Large dirty places to stand on.”

“Of course I know, sir!” The control man drew himself up. “We’re no parochials in the City. I’ve been to Spica myself.”

“Would it be despicable if you had not?” mused Flandry. Most of him was listening to the fellow’s accent. The inexhaustible variations on Anglic were a hobby of his.

“But as for the continents, sir, why, I thought you would know. Nyanza has none. Altla is just a medium-sized island. Otherwise there are only rocks and reefs, submerged at double high tide, or even at Loa high.”

“Oh, I knew,” said Flandry reassuringly. “I just wanted to be sure you knew.” He turned off the receiver and sat thinking. Damn those skimpy pilot’s manuals! He’d have had to go to Spica for detailed information. If only there were a faster-than-light equivalent of radio. Instant communications unified planets; but the days and weeks and months between stars let their systems drift culturally apart-let hell brew for years, unnoticed till it boiled over-made a slow growth of feudalism, within the Imperial structure itself, inevitable. Of course, that would give civilization something to fall back on when the Long Night finally came.

The spaceport was like ten thousand minor harbors: little more than a grav-grid, a field, and some ancillary buildings, well out of town. Beyond the hangars, to west and south, Flandry saw a greenness of carefully tended forest. Eastward rose the spires of a small ancient city. Northward the ground sloped down in harsh grass and boulders until it met a smothering white surf and an impossibly blue ocean. The sky above was a little darker than Terra’s-less dust to scatter light-and cloudless; the sun was blindingly fierce, bluish tinged. It was local summer: Altla lay at 35° N. latitude on a Terra-sized planet with a 21° axial tilt. The air held an illusion of being cooler than it was, for it blew briskly and smelled of salt and the ultraviolet-rich sun gave it a thunderous tinge of ozone.

Still, Flandry wished he had not been quite such a dude. The portmaster, another blond caucasoid, looked abominably comfortable in shorts, blouse, and kepi. Flandry took a morose satisfaction in noting that the comfort was merely physical.

“Portmaster Heinz von Sonderburg, sir, at your service. Naturally, we waive quarantine on your behalf; no Imperial knight would-Ah. Your luggage will be seen to, Captain… Flandry? Of course. Most honored. I have communicated with her Excellency and am happy to report she can offer you the usual official hospitality. Otherwise we would have had to do our poor best for you in the City—”

“Her Excellency?” asked Flandry when they were airborne.

“Is that not the proper usage?” Von Sonderburg made washing motions with his hands. “Oh, dear, I am so sorry. This is such an isolated planet-the occasion so seldom arises-Believe me, sir, we are uncouth only in manner. The City, at least, has an enlightened forward-looking spirit of absolute loyalty to the Imperium which—”

“It’s just that I thought, in a case like this, where the only Terrans on the planet are the resident and family, they’d have appointed a man.” Flandry looked down toward the city. It was old, haphazardly raised out of native stone, with steep narrow streets, teeming pedestrians, very few cars or flyers.

But the docks were big, sleekly modern and aswarm with ships. He made out everything from plastic pirogues to giant submarines. There was a majority of sailing craft, which implied an unhurried esthetic-minded culture; but they were built along radical hydrodynamic lines, which meant that the culture also appreciated efficiency. A powered tug was leaving the bay with a long tail of loaded barges, and air transport was extensively in use.

Elsewhere Flandry recognized a set of large sea-water processing units and their attached factories, where a thousand dissolved substances were shaped into usefulness. A twin-hulled freighter was unloading bales of… sea weed?… at the dock of an obvious plastics plant. So, he thought, most of Nyanza fished, hunted, and ranched the planet-wide ocean; this one island took the raw materials and gave back metal, chemical fuel, synthetic timbers and resins and glassites and fibers, engines. He was familiar enough with pelagic technics-most overpopulated worlds turned back at last to Mother Ocean. But here they had begun as sailors, from the very first. It should make for an interesting society…