Poul Anderson: A Circus of Hells

Their chance came in a couple of hours, when they managed to dodge out of their respective groups and seek the refreshment table. Flandry gestured. “May I pour for you?” he asked. “I fear that except for the telloch, we’ve run out of things native to your planet.”

“I regret to say you have been had,” Tachwyr answered. “It is a dreadful brand. But I like your—what is it called?—skoksh?”

“That makes two of us.” Flandry filled glasses for them. He had already had several whiskies and would have preferred this one over ice. However, he wasn’t about to look sissified in front of a Merseian.

“Ah…cheers,” Tachwyr said, lifting his tumbler. His throat and palate gave the Anglic word an accent for which there were no Anglic words.

Flandry could form Merseian speech better if not perfectly. “Tor ychwei.” With both hands he extended his glass so that the other might take the first sip.

Tachwyr followed it with half of his own in a single gulp. “Arrach!” Relaxed a little, he cocked his head and smiled; but under the shelf of brow ridge, his glance held very steady on the human. “Well,” he said, “what brings you here?”

“I was assigned. For a Terran year, worse luck. And you?”

“The same, to my present ship. I see you are now in the Intelligence Corps.”

“Like yourself.”

Tachwyr the Dark—his skin was a slightly deeper green than is usual around the Wilwidh Ocean—could not altogether suppress a scowl. “I started in that branch,” he said. “You were a flyer when you came to Merseia.” He paused. “Were you not?”

“Oh, yes,” Flandry said. “I transferred later.”

“At Commander Abrams’ instigation?”

Flandry nodded. “Mostly. He’s a captain now, by the way.”

“So I have heard. We…take an interest in him.”

After the Starkad affair, Flandry thought, you would. Between us, Max Abrams and I wrecked a scheme concocted by none less than Brechdan Ironrede, Protector of the Roidhun’s Grand Council.

How much do you know about that, Tachwyr? You were only put to showing me around and trying to pump me, when Abrams and I were on your world as part of the Hauksberg mission. And the truth about Starkad was never made public; no one concerned could afford to let it come out.

You do remember us, though, Tachwyr. If nothing else, you must have gathered that we were instrumental in causing Merseia quite a bit of trouble. It bothers you to have found me here.

Better get off the subject. “You remain through tomorrow? I admit Irumclaw has less to offer than Merseia, but I’d like to return part of the courtesy you gave me.”

Again Tachwyr was slow to speak. “Thank you, negative. I have already arranged to tour the area with shipmates.” The Eriau phrasing implied a commitment which no honorable male would break.

Flandry reflected that a male would not ordinarily bind himself so strongly to something so minor.

What the devil? the human thought. Maybe they aim to sample our well-known Terran decadence and he doesn’t want me to realize their well-known Merseian virtue can slack off that much. “Stay in a party,” he warned. “Some of those bars are almost as dangerous as the stuff they serve.”

Tachwyr uttered the throaty laugh of his species, settled down on the tripod of feet and tail, and started yarning. Flandry matched him. They enjoyed themselves until the man was called away to interpret a tedious conversation between two engineer officers.

Such was the prologue. He had practically forgotten it when the adventure began. That was on a certain night about eight months later.

Soon after the red-orange sun had set, he left the naval compound and walked downhill. No one paid him any heed. A former commandant had tried to discourage his young men from seeking the occasionally lethal corruptions of Old Town. He had declared a large part of it off limits. Meeting considerable of the expense out of his own pocket, he had started an on-base recreation center which was to include facilities for sports, arts, and crafts as well as honest gambling and medically certified girls! But the bosses below knew how to use money and influence. The commandant was transferred to a still more bleak and insignificant outpost. His successor dismantled what had been built, informed the men jovially that what they did off duty was their business, and was said to be drawing a nice extra income.

Flandry sauntered in elegance. The comet gleaming on either shoulder was so new that you might have looked for diffidence from him. But his bonnet was tilted more rakishly on his seal-brown hair than a strict interpretation of rules would have allowed; his frame was draped in a fantastic glittergold version of dress tunic and snowy trousers tucked into handmade beefleather half-boots; the cloak that fluttered behind him glowed with phosphorescent patterns through the chill dusk; and while he strolled, he sang a folk ballad concerning the improbable adventures of a Highland tinker.

It made a good cover for the fact that he was not out for pleasure.

Beyond the compound walls, the homes of the wealthy loomed amidst grandly downsweeping private parks. In a way, Flandry thought, they epitomized man’s trajectory. Once the settlement had been sufficiently large and prosperous, and sufficiently within the Imperial sphere, to attract not only merchants but aristocrats. Old Town had bustled with culture as well as commerce—provincial, no doubt, this far from Terra; nevertheless, live and genuine, worthy of the respectful emulation of the autochthons.

Tonight Irumclaw lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire. What mansions were not standing hollow had become the property of oafs, and showed it. (The oafs were not to be scoffed at. Several of them directed large organizations devoted to preying on the spacemen who visited and the Navy men who guarded what transshipment facilities remained in use.) Outside the treaty port boundaries, barbarism rolled forward as the natives abandoned civilization with a perhaps justifiable contempt.

Past the residential section, workshops and warehouses hulked black in the night, and Flandry moved alert with a hand near the needle gun under his tunic. Robberies and murders had happened here. Lacking the police to clean out this area, assuming he wanted to, the commandant had settled for advising men on liberty not to go through alone.

Flandry had been shocked to learn that when he first arrived. “We could do it ourselves—establish regular patrols—if he’d order it. Doesn’t he care? What kind of chief is he?”

His protest had been delivered in private to another scout, Lieutenant Commander Eisenschmitt. The latter, having been around for a while, shrugged. “The kind that any place like this gets,” he answered. “We don’t rate attention at GHQ, so naturally we’re sent the hacks, boobs, and petty crooks. Good senior officers are too badly needed elsewhere. When Irumclaw does get one it’s an accident, and he doesn’t stay long.”

“Damn it, man, we’re on the border!” Flandry pointed out the window of the room where they sat. It had been dark then, too. Betelgeuse glowed bloody-brilliant among the hosts of stars where no writ ran. “Beyond there—Merseia!”

“Yeh. And the gatortails expanding in all directions except when we bar the way. I know. But this is the far edge of nowhere…in the eyes of an Imperial government that can’t see past its perfume-sniffing nose. You’re fresh from Terra, Dom. You ought to understand better than me. I expect we’ll pull out of Irumclaw entirely inside another generation.”