Poul Anderson: Flandry of Terra

Flandry tumbled into the clothes. “How’d you get in here at all?” he demanded.

Kemul’s thick lips writhed upward. “That is another reason we must hurry, you. Two dead Guards outside.” He opened the door, stooped, and yanked the corpses in. Their necks were broken with one karate chop apiece. A firearm would have made too much noise, Flandry thought in a daze. Even a cyanide needier with a compressed air cartridge would have to be drawn and fired, which might give time for a warning to be yelled. But a seeming Biocontrol man could walk right past the sentries, deep in meditation, and kill them in one second as they saluted him. That ability of Kemul’s must have counted for enough that his cohorts (who?) sent him in rather than somebody of less noticeable appearance.

“But how’d you get this far, I mean?” Flandry persisted a trifle wildly.

“Landed outside the hangar, as they all do. Said to the attendant, Kemul was here from Pegunungan Gradjugang on urgent business and might have to depart again in minutes. Walked into the building, cornered a Guard alone in a hall, wrung from him where you were being kept, threw the body out a window into some bushes. Once or twice a white-robe hailed Kemul, but he said he was in great haste and went on.”

Flandry whistled. It would have been a totally impossible exploit on any other world he had ever seen. The decadence of Biocontrol and its Guard Corps was shown naked by this fact of an enemy walking into their ultimate stronghold without so much as being questioned. To be sure, no one in all the history of Unan Besar had ever dreamed of such a raid; but still-

But still it was a fantastic gamble, with the odds against it mounting for each second of delay.

“I sometimes think we overwork Pegunungan Gradjugang.” Flandry completed his ensemble. “Have a weapon for me?”

“Here.” Kemul drew out of his robe a revolver as antiquated as the one liberated from Pradjung (how many eons ago?). The same gesture showed his Terran blaster in an arm sheath. “Hide it. No needless fighting.”

“Absolutely! You wouldn’t believe how meek my intentions are. Let’s go.”

The hall was empty. Flandry and Kemul went down it, not too fast, mumbling at each other as if deep in discourse. At a cross-corridor they met a technician, who bowed his head to Kemul’s insignia but couldn’t entirely hide astonishment.

The technician continued the way they had come. If he passed Flandry’s closed door and happened to know that two Guards were supposed to be outside-

The hall debouched in a spacious common room. Between its pillars and gilded screens, a dozen or so off-duty Biocontrol people sat smoking, reading, playing games, watching a taped dance program. Flan dry and Kemul started across toward the main entrance. A middle-aged man with a Purity Control symbol on his robe intercepted them.

“I beg your pardon, Colleague,” he bowed. “I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before, though I thought I knew all full initiates.” His eyes were lively with interest. A tour of duty here must be a drab chore for most personnel, any novelty welcomed. “And I had no idea we were entertaining a civilian of such obvious importance.”

Flandry bent his own head above respectfully folded hands, hoping the plume would shadow his face enough. A couple of men, cross-legged above a chessboard, looked up in curiosity and kept on looking.

“Ameti Namang from beyond the Tindjil Ocean,” growled Kemul. “I just came with Proprietor Tasik here. Been on special duty for years.”

“Er… your accent… and I am sure I would remember your face from anywhere—”

Having sidled around to Kemul’s other side, so that the giant cut off view of him, Flandry exclaimed in a shocked stage whisper: “I beg you, desist! Can’t you tell when a man’s been in an accidental explosion?” He took his companion’s elbow. “Come, we mustn’t keep Tuan Bandang waiting.”

The stares which followed him Were like darts in his back.

Rain beat heavily on the roof of the verandah beyond. Lamplight glowed along garden paths, but even on this round-the-clock planet they weren’t frequented in such weather. Flandry glanced behind, at the slowly closing main doors. “In about thirty seconds,” he muttered, “our friend will either shrug off his puzzlement with a remark about the inscrutable ways of his superiors… or will start seriously adding two and two. Come on.”

They went down the staircase. “Damn!” said Flandry. “You forgot to bring rain capes. Think a pair of drowned rats can reclaim your aircar?”

“With a blaster, if need be,” snapped Kemul. “Stop complaining. You’ve at least been given a chance to die cleanly. It was bought for you at the hazard of two other lives.”

“Two?”

“It wasn’t Kemul’s idea, this, or his wish.”

Flandry fell silent. Rain struck his face and turned his clothes sodden. The path was like a treadmill, down which he walked endlessly between wet hedges, under goblin lamps. He heard thunder again, somewhere over the jungle.

Sudden as a blow, the garden ended. Concrete glimmered in front of a long hemicylindrical building. “Here’s where everybody lands,” grunted Kemul. He led the way to the office door. A kilted civilian emerged and bobbed the head to him. “Where’s my car?” said Kemul.

“So soon, tuan? You were only gone a short while—”

“I told you I would be. And you garaged my car anyhow? You officious dolt!” Kemul shoved with a brutal hand. The attendant picked himself up and hurried to the hangar doors.

Whistles skirled through the rain-rushing. Flandry looked back. Mountainous over all bowers and pools, the Central blinked windows to life like opening eyes. The attendant paused to gape. “Get moving!” roared Kemul.

“Yes, tuan. Yes, tuan.” A switch was pulled, the doors slid open. “But what is happening?”

I don’t know, Flandry thought. Maybe my absence was discovered. Or else somebody found a dead Guard. Or our friend in the common room got suspicious and called for a checkup. Or any of a dozen other possibilities. The end result is still the same.

He slipped a hand inside his blouse and rested it on the butt of his gun.

Lights went on in the hangar. It was crowded with aircars belonging to men serving their turns here. The attendant stared idiotically around, distracted by whistles and yells and sound of running feet. “Now, let’s see, tuan, which one is yours? I don’t rightly recall, I don’t—”

Four or five Guards emerged from the garden path into the lamplight of the field. “Get the car, Kemul,” rapped Flandry. He drew his revolver and slipped behind the shelter of a door. The attendant’s jaw dropped. He let out a squeak and tried to run. Kemul’s fist smote at the base of his skull. The attendant flew in an arc, hit, skidded across concrete, and lay without breathing.

“That was unnecessary,” said Flandry. It wrenched within him: Always the innocent get hurt worst.

The mugger was already among the cars. The squad of Guards broke into a run. Flandry stepped from behind his door long enough to fire several times. One man spun around on his heel, went over backward, and raised himself on all fours with blood smeared over his chest. The others scattered. And they bawled for help.

Flandry took another peek. The opposite side of the landing field was coming alive with Guards. Through their shouts and the breaking of branches under their feet, through the rain, boomed Warouw’s voice; “Surround the hangar. Squads Four, Five, Six, prepare to storm the entrance. Seven, Eight, Nine, prepare to fire on emerging vehicles.” He must be using a portable amplifier, but it was still like hearing an angered god.