Poul Anderson: The Game of Empire

She didn’t waste time on the interior stairs but, reckless, scrambled down the vines. Though the tower wasn’t very tall, on Imhotep a drop from its battlements could be fatal. She reached the pavement running.

“Ah, ho, small one,” bawled Hassan from the doorway of his inn, “if he be thirsty, steer him to the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle. A decicredit to you for every liter he drinks!”

She laughed, reached a dense mass of bodies, began weaving and wriggling through. Inhabitants smiled and let her by. A drunk took her closeness wrong and tried to grab her. She gave his wrist a karate chop in passing. He yelled, but retreated when he saw how a Tigery glowered and dropped hand to knife. Kuzan had been a childhood playmate of Diana’s. She was still her friend.

The stranger grew aware of the girl nearing him, halted, and watched in mild surprise. He was of the planet which humans had dubbed Woden, well within the Imperial sphere. It had long been a familiar of Technic civilization and was, indeed, incorporated in Greater Terra, its dwellers full citizens. Just the same, none had hitherto betrod Imhotep, and Diana knew of them only from books and database.

A centauroid himself, he stretched four and a half meters on his four cloven hoofs, including the mighty tail. The crown of his long-snouted, bony-eared head loomed two meters high. The brow ridges were massive, the mouth alarmingly fanged, but eyes were big, a soft brown. Two huge arms ended in four-fingered hands that seemed able to rip a steel plate in half. Dark-green scales armored his upper body from end to end, amber scutes his throat and belly. A serration of horny plates ran over his backward-bulging skull, down his spine to the tailtip. A pair of bags slung across his withers and a larger pair at his croup doubtless held traveling goods. Drawing close, Diana saw signs of a long life, scars, discolorations, wrinkles around the nostrils and rubbery lips, a pair of spectacles hung from his neck. They were for presbyopia, she guessed, and she had already noticed he was slightly lame in the off hind leg. Couldn’t he afford corrective treatments?

Why, she herself was going to start putting money aside, one of these years, to pay for anti-senescence. If she had to die at an age of less than a hundred, she wanted it to be violently.

Halting before him, she beamed, spread arms wide, and said, “Good day and welcome! Never before has our world been graced by any of your illustrious race. Yet even we, on our remote and lately embattled frontier, have heard the fame of Wodenites, from the days of Adzel the Wayfarer to this very hour. In what way may we serve you, great sir?”

His face was unreadable to her, but his body looked startled. “My, my,” he murmured. “How elaborately you speak, child. Is that local custom? Please enlighten me. I do not wish to be discourteous through ignorance.” He hesitated. “My intentions, I hope, shall always be of the best.”

His vocal organs made Anglic a thunderous rumble, weirdly accented, but it was fluent and she could follow it. She had had practice, especially with Tigeries, who didn’t sound like humans either.

For an instant, she bridled. “Sir, I’m no child. I’m nine—uh, that is, seventeen Terran years old. For the past three of those I’ve been on my own, highlands and lowlands both.” Relaxing: “So I know my way around and I’d be happy to guide you, advise you, help you. I can show testimonials from persons of several species.”

“Hraa … I fear I am in no position to, m-m, offer much compensation. I have been making my way—hand-to-mouth, is that your expression?—odd jobs, barter—at which I am not gifted—anything morally allowable, planet to planet, far longer than you have been in the universe, chi—young lady.”

Diana shrugged. “We can talk about that. You’re in luck. I’m not a professional tourist herder, chargin’ a week’s rent on the Emperor’s favorite palace to take you around to every place where the prices are quasar-lofty and expectin’ a fat tip at the end.” She cocked her head. “You could’ve gone to the reception center near the Pyramid. It’s got an office for xenosophonts. Why didn’t you?”

“Gruh, I, I—to be frank, I lost my way. The streets twist about so. If you could lead me to the proper functionaries—”

Diana reached up to take him by the rugged elbow. “Wait a bit! Look, you’re worn out, and you don’t have a pokeful of money, and I can do better by you than the agency. All they really know is where to find you the least unsuitable lodgings. Why don’t we go in where you can rest a while, and we’ll talk, and if I only can steer you downtown, so be it.” She paused before adding, slowly: “But you aren’t here for any ordinary purpose, that’s plain to see, and I do know most of what’s not ordinary on Imhotep.”

He boomed a chuckle. “You are a sprightly soul, no? Very well.” He turned serious. “It may even be that my patron saint has answered my prayers by causing me to blunder as I did. M-m-m … my name is Francis Xavier Axor.”

“Hm?” She was taken aback. “You’re a Christian?”

“Jerusalem Catholic. I chose the baptismal name became its first bearer was also an explorer in strange places, such as I hoped to become.”

And I. The heart jumped in Diana’s breast.

She had always sought out what visitors from the stars she could, because they were what they were—farers through the galaxy—O Tigery gods, grant that she too might someday range yonder! And, while she agilely survived in Old Town’s dog-eat-dog economy, she had never driven a harder bargain with a nonhuman than she felt that being could afford, nor defrauded or defaulted.

Orders of magnitude more than she wanted any money of his, she wanted Axor’s good will. He seemed like a darling anyway. And possibly, just barely possibly, he might open a path for her …

Business was business, and Hassan’s booze no worse than most in the quarter. “Follow me,” she said. “I’m Diana Crowfeather.”

He offered his hand, vast, hard, dry, warm. Wodenites were not theroids, but they weren’t herpetoids either; they were endothermic, two-sexed, and viviparous. She had, however, learned that they bred only in season. It made celibate careers easier for them than for her species. Thus far she’d avoided entanglements, because that was what they could too readily become—entanglements—but it was getting more and more difficult.

“An honor to meet you,” Axor said. “ Hraa, is it not unusual for such a youthful female to operate independently? Perhaps not on Terra or its older colony planets, but here—Not that I wish to pry. Heavens, no.”

“I’m kind of a special case,” Diana replied.

He regarded her with care. Neither of her parents having been born on Imhotep, and both being tall, she was likewise. The gravity had made robust a frame that remained basically gracile; muscles rounded the curves of slim hips and long legs. Weight had not yet caused the small, firm bosom to sag. Her head was round, the face broad, with high cheekbones, tapering down to the chin; a straight nose flared at the nostrils, and the lips were full. Her eyes were large, gold-flecked hazel, beneath arching brows. Black hair, confined by a beaded headband, fell straight to the shoulders. A thin blouse and exiguous shorts showed most of her tawny-brown skin to the sun. Belted at her right side was a little purse for oddments, at her left a murderous Tigery knife.

“Well, but let’s go,” she laughed. Her voice was husky. “Aren’t you thirsty? I am!”

The crowd yielded slowly before them, turbulent again, less interested in the newcomer now that he had been claimed than in its own checkered affairs.