Poul Anderson: The Day of Their Return

Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia. Thus he was a natural choice for the special diplomatic team. In his quiet style, he backstopped the head of it, Lord Advisor Chardon, so well that afterward he received a raise in grade, and was appointed High Commissioner of the Virgilian System, at the opposite end of the Empire.

But this was due to an equally natural association of ideas. The mutiny in Sector Alpha Crucis had been possible because most of the Navy was tied up around Jihannath, where full-scale war looked far too likely. After Terra nevertheless, brilliantly, put the rebels down, Merseia announced that its wish all along had been to avoid a major clash and it was prepared to bargain.

When presently the Policy Board looked about for able people to reconstruct Sector Alpha Crucis, Lord Chardon recommended Desai with an enthusiasm that got him put in charge of Virgil, whose human-colonized planet Aeneas had been the spearhead of the revolt.

Perhaps that was why Desai often harked back to the Merseians, however remote from him they seemed these days. In a rare moment of idleness, while he waited in his Nova Roma office for the next visitor, he remembered his final conversation with Uldwyr.

They had played corresponding roles on behalf of their respective sovereigns, and in a wry way had become friends. When the protocol had, at weary last, been drawn, the two of them supplemented the dull official celebration with a dinner of their own.

Desai recalled their private room in a restaurant. The wall animations were poor; but a place which catered to a variety of sophonts couldn’t be expected to understand everybody’s art, and the meal was an inspired combination of human and Merseian dishes.

“Have a refill,” Uldwyr invited, and raised a crock of his people’s pungent ale.

“No, thank you,” Desai said. “I prefer tea. That dessert filled me to the scuppers.”

“The what?—Never mind, I seize the idea, if not the idiom.” Though each was fluent in the other’s principal language, and their vocal organs were not very different, it was easiest for Desai to speak Anglic and Uldwyr Eriau. “You’ve tucked in plenty of food, for certain.”

“My particular vice, I fear,” Desai smiled. “Besides, more alcohol would muddle me. I haven’t your mass to assimilate it.”

“What matter if you get drunk? I plan to. Our job is done.” And then Uldwyr added: “For now.”

Shocked, Desai stared across the table.

Uldwyr gave him back a quizzical glance. The Merseian’s face was almost human, if one overlooked thick bones and countless details of the flesh. But his finely scaled green skin had no hair whatsoever, he lacked earflaps, a low serration ran from the top of his skull, down his back to the end of the crocodilian tail which counterbalanced his big, forward-leaning body. Arms and hands were, again, nearly manlike; legs and clawed splay feet could have belonged to a biped dinosaur. He wore black, silver-trimmed military tunic and trousers, colorful emblems of rank and of the Vach Hallen into which he was born. A blaster hung on his hip.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Oh … nothing.” In Desai’s mind went: He didn’t mean it hostilely—hostilely to me as a person—his remark. He, his whole civilization, minces words less small than we do. Struggle against Terra is just a fact. The Roidhunate will compromise disputes when expediency dictates, but never the principle that eventually the Empire must be destroyed. Because we—old, sated, desirous only of maintaining a peace which lets us pursue our pleasures—we stand in the way of their ambitions for the Race. Lest the balance of power be upset, we block them, we thwart them, wherever we can; and they seek to undermine us, grind us down, wear us out. But this is nothing personal. I am Uldwyr’s honorable enemy, therefore his friend. By giving him opposition, I give meaning to his life.

The other divined his thoughts and uttered the harsh Merseian chuckle. “If you want to pretend tonight that matters have been settled for aye, do. I’d really rather we both got drunk and traded war songs.”

“I am not a man of war,” Desai said.

Beneath a shelf of brow ridge, Uldwyr’s eyelids expressed skepticism while his mouth grinned. “You mean you don’t like physical violence. It was quite an effective war you waged at the conference table.”

He swigged from his tankard. Desai saw that he was already a little tipsy. “I imagine the next phase will also be quiet,” he went on. “Ungloved force hasn’t worked too well lately. Starkad, Jihannath—no, I’d look for us to try something more crafty and long-range. Which ought to suit your Empire, khraich? You’ve made a good thing for your Naval Intelligence out of the joint commission on Talwin.” Desai, who knew that, kept silence. “Maybe our turn is coming.”

Hating his duty, Desai asked in his most casual voice, “Where?”

“Who knows?” Uldwyr gestured the equivalent of a shrug. “I have no doubt, and neither do you, we’ve a swarm of agents in Sector Alpha Crucis, for instance. Besides the recent insurrection, it’s close to the Domain of Ythri, which has enjoyed better relations with us than with you—” His hand chopped the air. “No, I’m distressing you, am I not? And with what can only be guesswork. Apologies. See here, if you don’t care for more ale, why not arthberry brandy? I guarantee a first-class drunk and—You may suppose you’re a peaceful fellow, Chunderban, but I know an atom or two about your people, your specific people, I mean. What’s that old, old book I’ve heard you mention and quote from? Rixway?”

“Rig-Veda,” Desai told him.

“You said it includes war chants. Do you know any well enough to put into Anglic? There’s a computer terminal.” He pointed to a corner. “You can patch right into our main translator, now that official business is over. I’d like to hear a bit of your special tradition, Chunderban. So many traditions, works, mysteries—so tiny a lifespan to taste them—”

It became a memorable evening.

Restless, Desai stirred in his chair.

He was a short man with a dark-brown moon face and a paunch. At fifty-five standard years of age, his hair remained black but had receded from the top of his head. The full lips were usually curved slightly upward, which joined the liquid eyes to give him a wistful look. As was his custom, today he wore plain, loosely fitted white shirt and trousers, on his feet slippers a size large for comfort.

Save for the communication and data-retrieval consoles that occupied one wall, his office was similarly unpretentious. It did have a spectacular holograph, a view of Mount Gandhi on his home planet, Ramanujan. But otherwise the pictures were of his wife, their seven children, the families of those four who were grown and settled on as many different globes. A bookshelf held codices as well as reels; some were much-used reference works, the rest for refreshment, poetry, history, essays, most of their authors centuries dust. His desk was less neat than his person.

I shouldn’t go taking vacations in the past , he thought. God knows the present needs more of me than I have to give.

Or does it? Spare me the ultimate madness of ever considering myself indispensable.

Well, but somebody must man this post. He happens to be me.

Must somebody? How much really occurs because of me, how much in spite of or regardless of? How much, and what, should occur? God! I dared accept the job of ruling, remaking an entire world—when I knew nothing more about it than its name, and that simply because it was the planet of Hugh McCormac, the man who would be Emperor. After two years, what else have I learned?