Poul Anderson: Flandry of Terra

He was about to thumb the radiocom switch and put the instrument to his lips. Flandry said with great clearness and expression-rather proud of rendering it so well in Pulaoic-“Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill: Halloo, halloo, loo loo!”

“What?” Warouw exclaimed.

“Take heed o’ the foul fiend,” cried Flandry: “obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man’s sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array. Tom’s acold.”

He twirled once around, laughing, and saw that he had all their eyes. A Guard made signs against evil. Another whispered, “He is going amok, tuan!”

The Terran flapped his arms. “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet,” he crowed: “he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.” He burst into song:

“Swithold footed thrice the old;

He met the nightmare and her nine-fold-“

“Be still!” Warouw stuck the radiocom back in his pocket, advanced, and thrust expertfmgers at Flandry’s solar plexus.

Flandry didn’t remain in the path of that blow.

He tumbled on his back, just in front of the chief. His feet came up, hard, into the groin. As Warouw lurched forward on top of him, driven by the kick as much as the pain, Flandry got the man’s gun wrist between two arms and broke the blaster loose. No chance to use it-the effort sent it across the floor, out of reach.

He clutched Warouw against him, shouted, and wondered icily if the Guards would incinerate their own boss to get him.

The four sprang toward the grappling pair.

A rifle cracked at the rear window. A Guard fell backward, brains splashed from his skull. Tembesi fired again. One of the other Guards managed to shoot. Flame engulfed Tembesi. The whole rear wall went up in smoke and thunder. But even as the ecologist died, the room was exposed to outside view. Guns barked from a dozen surrounding boughs.

Flandry saw the last Guard crash to the boards. Fire sheeted up in the flimsy roof. He relaxed his hold on Warouw, preparatory to hustling the man out of the burning hut.

Warouw yanked his left arm free. His fist struck the angle of Flandry’s jaw.

For a moment, the Terran sagged among whirling ringing darknesses. Warouw scrambled clear of him, snatched up his blaster, and bounded to the doorway.

As he emerged, a voice from the leaves cried, “Halt where you are!” Warouw showed his teeth and fired full power into that foliage. The Tree man screamed and fell dead off his branch.

Warouw yanked the radiocom from his pocket. A gun spoke. The instrument shattered in his hand. He looked at his bleeding palm, wiped it, fired a thunderbolt in return, and sped for the ladder. Bullets smote the planks near his feet. The hunters hoped for a disabling shot. But they dared not risk killing him. The whole object had been to lure him here and take him alive.

As he reeled from the cabin, Flandry saw Warouw go over the platform edge. The Terran hefted the blaster he himself had picked up, drew a long breath, and forced clarity back into his head. Someone has to get him, he thought in an odd unemotional fashion, and as I’m the only one on my side who knows much about the care and ceding of spitguns, I seem elected.

He swarmed down the ladder. “Back!” he called, as supple bodies slipped along the branches on either side of him. “Follow me at a distance. Kill him if he kills me, but hold your fire otherwise.”

He set his weapon to full-power needle beam, gaining extreme range at the cost of narrowing his radius of destruction to a centimeter or so. If Warouw wasn’t quite as handy with pencil shots, there, might be a chance to cripple him without suffering much harm from his own diffuse fire. Or there might not.

Down the holy Tree!

Flandry burst into view of the bough where Luang waited. Warouw confronted her and Kemul. Their hands were in the air; he had taken them by surprise. Warouw backed toward the next set of rungs. “Just keep your places and do not follow me,” he panted.

Flandry broke through the leaf cover overhead. Warouw saw him, whipped around and raised gun.

“ Get him, Kemul! ” shouted Luang.

The giant shoved her behind him and pounced. Warouw glimpsed the motion, turned back, saw the mugger’s gun not quite out of its holster, and fired. Red flame enveloped Kemul. He roared, once, and fell burning from the limb.

Having thus been given an extra few seconds, Flandry leaped off the bole rungs onto the bough. Warouw’s muzzle whirled back to meet him. Flandry’s blazed first. Warouw shrieked, lost his gun, and gaped at the hole drilled through his hand.

Flandry whistled. The riflemen of Ranau came and seized Nias Warouw.

Dusk once more. Flandry emerged from the house of Tembesi. Weariness lay heavy upon him.

Phosphor globes were kindling up and down the Tree Where the Ketjils Nest, and its sister Trees. Through the cool blue air, he could hear mothers call their children home. Men hailed each other, from branch to branch, until the voices of men and leaves and wind became one. The first stars quivered mistily in the east.

Flandry wanted silence for a while. He walked the length of the bough, and of lesser ones forking from it, until he stood on a narrow bifurcation. Leaves still closed his view on either hand, but he could look straight down to the ground, where night rose like a tide, and straight up to the stars.

He stood a time, not thinking of much. When a light footfall shivered the limb beneath him, it was something long expected.

“Hullo, Luang,” he said tonelessly.

She came to stand beside him, another slim shadow. “Well,” she said, “Kemul is buried now.”

“I wish I could have helped you,” said Flandry, “but—”

She sighed. “It was better this way. He always swore he would be content ‘to end in a Swamp Town canal. If he must lie under a blossoming bush, I do not think he would want anyone but me there to wish him good rest.”

“I wonder why he came to my help.”

“I told him to.”

“And why did you do that?”

“I don’t know. We all do things without thinking, now and then. The thinking comes afterward. I will not let it hurt me.” She took his arm. Her hands were tense and unsteady. “Never mind Kemul. Since you have stopped working on him, I take it you have succeeded with Warouw?”

“Yes,” said Flandry.

“How did you do it? Torture?” she asked casually.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I didn’t even withhold medical care for his injuries: which are minor, anyhow. I simply explained that we had a cage for him if he didn’t cooperate. It took a few hours’ argument to convince him we meant it. Then he yielded. After all, he’s an able man. He can leave this planet-he’d better!-and start again elsewhere, and do rather well, I should think.”

“Do you mean to let him go?” she protested.

Flandry shrugged. “I had to make the choice as clear-cut as possible-between dying of the sickness, and starting afresh with a substantial cash stake. Though I wonder if the adventurous aspect of it didn’t appeal to him most, once I’d dangled a few exotic worlds before his imagination.”

“What of that earful of men out in the forest?”

“Warouw’s just called them on the dispenser’s radiocom, to come and get me. They’re to land on the airstrip-change of plan, he said. Djuanda, Siak, and some others are waiting there, with blasters in their hands and revenge in their hearts. It won’t be any problem.”

“And then what is to happen?”

“Tomorrow Warouw will call Biocontrol. He’ll explain that he has me secure, and that some of my co-conspirators spilled enough of what I’d told them for him to understand the situation pretty well. He and some Guards will take me in my own flitter to Spica, accompanied by another ship. En route he’ll hypnoprobe me and get the full details. Tentatively, his idea will be to sabotage the flitter, transfer to the other craft, and let mine crash with me aboard. Somewhat later, he and the Guards will land. They’ll tell the Imperial officials a carefully doctored story of my visit, say they’re returning what they believe was a courtesy call, and be duly shocked to learn of my ‘accidental’ death. In the course of all this, they’ll drop enough false information to convince everyone that Unan Besar is a dreary place with no trade possibilities worth mentioning.”