Poul Anderson: Flandry of Terra

Flandry stepped onto the beach under the crags. It was dark there. He did not know what reflex of deadly years saved him. A man glided from behind one of the high spires and fired a harpoon. Flandry dropped on his stomach before he had seen more than a metallic glitter. The killing missile hissed where he had been.

“If you please!” He rolled over, yanking for his sleepy-needle gun. A night-black panther shape sprang toward him. His pistol was only half unlimbered when the hard body fell upon his. One chopping, wrist-numbing karate blow sent the weapon a-clatter from his grasp. He saw a bearded, hating face behind a knife.

Flandry blocked the stab with his left arm. The assassin pulled his blade back. Before it could return, Flandry’s thumb went after the nearest eye. His opponent should have ignored that distraction for the few necessary moments of slicing time-but, instead, grabbed the Terran’s wrist with his own free hand. Flandry’s right hand was still weak, but he delivered a rabbit punch of sorts with it and took his left out of hock by jerking past his enemy’s thumb. Laying both hands and a knee against the man’s knife arm, he set about breaking same.

The fellow screeched, writhed, and wriggled free somehow. Both bounced to their feet. The dagger lay between them. The Nyanzan dove after it. Flandry put his foot on the blade. “Finders keepers,” he said. He kicked the scrabbling man behind the ear and drew his blaster.

The Nyanzan did not stay kicked. Huddled at Flandry’s knees, he threw a sudden shoulder block. The Terran went over on his backside. He glimpsed the lean form as it rose and leaped; it was in the water before he had fired.

After the thunder-crash had echoed to naught and no body had emerged, Flandry retrieved his needler. Slowly, his breathing and pulse eased. “That,” he confessed aloud, “was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. Well… if you keep quiet about it, I will.”

He squinted through the dusk at the assassin’s knife. It was an ordinary rustproof blade, but the bone hilt carried an unfamiliar inlaid design. And had he ever before seen a Nyanzan with a respectable growth of beard?

He went on up the path and pressed the house bell. The airlock opened for him and he entered.

The place had a ship’s neatness, and it was full of models, scrimshaw, stuffed fish, all the sailor souvenirs. But emptiness housed in it. One old man sat alone with his dead; there was no one else.

John Umbolu looked up through dim eyes and nodded. “Aye,” he said, “I ‘waited you, Captain. Be welcome and be seated.”

Flandry lowered himself to a couch covered with the softscaled hide of some giant swimming thing John Umbolu had once hunted down. The leather was worn shabby. The old man limped to him with a decanter of imported rum. When they had both been helped, he sat himself in a massive armchair and their goblets clinked together. “Your honor and good health, sir,” said John Umbolu.

Flandry looked into the wrinkled face and said quietly: “Your son Derek must have told you my news.”

“I’ve had the tidings,” nodded Umbolu. He took a pipe from its rack and began to fill it with slow careful motions. “You saw him die, sir?”

“He held my hand. His squad was ambushed on a combat mission on Brae. He… it was soon over.”

“Drowning is the single decent death,” whispered the Nyanzan. “My other children, all but Derek, had that much luck.” He lit his pipe and blew smoke for a while. “I’m sorry Tom had to go yon way. But it is kind of you to come tell me of it.”

“He’ll be buried with full military honors,” said Flandry awkwardly. If they don’t have so many corpses they just bulldoze them under. “Or if you wish, instead of the battle-casualty bonus you can have his ashes returned here.”

“Nay,” said Umbolu. His white head wove back and forth. “What use is that? Let me have the money, to build a reef beacon in his name.” He thought for a while longer, then said timidly: “Perchance I could call further on your kindness. Would you know if… you’re’ware, sir, soldiers on leave and the girls they meet… it’s possible Tom left a child somewhere… ”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know how to find out about that.”

“Well, well, I expected nay more. Derek must be wed soon then, if the name’s to live.”

Flandry drew hard on a cigarette, taken from a waterproof case. He got out: “I have to tell you what your son said as he lay dying.”

“Aye. Say forth, and fear me nay. Shall the fish blame the hook if it hurts him a little?”

Flandry related it. At the end, the old man’s eyes closed, just as Derek’s had done, and he let the empty glass slip from his fingers.

Finally: “I know naught of this. Will you believe that, Captain?”

“Yes, sir,” Flandry answered.

“You fear Derek may be caught in the same net?”

“I hope not.”

“I too. I’d nay have any son of mine in a scheme that works by midnight murder-whatever they may think of your Empire. Tom… Tom was young and didn’t understand what was involved. Will you believe that too?” asked John Umbolu anxiously. Flandry nodded. The Nyanzan dropped his head and cupped his hands about the pipe bowl, as if for warmth. “But Derek… why, Derek’s in the Council. Derek would have open eyes-Let it nay be so!”

Flandry left him with himself for a time, then: “Where might any young man .. , first have encountered the agents of such a conspiracy?”

“Who knows, sir? ‘Fore his growth is gained, an Umbolu boy has shipped to all ports of the planet. Or there are always sailors from every nation on Nyanza, right here in Jairnovaunt.”

Flandry held out the knife he had taken. “This belongs to a bearded man,” he said. “Can you tell me anything about it?”

The faded eyes peered close. “Rossala work.” It was an instant recognition, spoken in a lifeless voice. “And the Rossala men flaunt whiskers.”

“As I came ashore here,” said Flandry, “a bearded person with this knife tried to kill me. He got away, but—”

He stopped. The old sea captain had risen. Flandry looked up at an incandescent mask of fury, and suddenly he realized that John Umbolu was a very big man.

Gigantic fists clenched over the Terran’s head. The voice roared like thunder, one majestic oath after the next, until rage at last found meaningful words. “Sneak assassins on my very ground! ‘Gainst my guest! By the blazing bones of Almighty God, sir, you’ll let me question every Rossalan in Jairnovaunt and flay yon one “live!”

Flandry rose too. An upsurging eagerness tingled in him, a newborn plot. And at the same tune- Warily, child, warily.’ You’ll not get cooperation at this counter without some of the most weasel-like arguments and shameless emotional buttonpushing in hell’s three-volume thesaurus.

Well, he thought, that’s what I get paid for.

Hours had gone when he left the house. He had eaten there, but sheer weariness dragged at him. He swam quite slowly back to the Commander’s rock. When he stood on it, he rested for a while, looking over the sea.

Loa was up, Luna-sized, nearly full, but with several times the albedo of Earth’s moon. High in a clear blackness, it drowned most of the alien constellations. The marker lights about every rock, color-coded for depth so that all Jairnovaunt was one great jewelbox, grew pallid in the moon-dazzle off the ocean.

Flandry took out a cigarette. It was enough to be alone with that light: at least, it helped. Imperial agents ought to have some kind of conscience-ectomy performed… He drew smoke into his lungs.