Poul Anderson - The Game of Empire

“At the Inn of Tranquil Slumber. That is where my friends are, and I will take a room there too.”

“You should find this house more hospitable when we summon you,” Pele said. Conviviality provides openings for the probing of character. “At present I have my work to do. Good day.”

Diana sped to meet him, over the cobblestones of the hostel courtyard. “Oh, Targovi, old dear!” She hugged him till his firmly muscled ribs creaked. The fragrance of her hair and flesh filled his tendrils. “Welcome, welcome!”

“How have you two fared?” he asked.

She let him go and danced in the sunlight. “Wonderful,” she caroled. “Listen. We went parleyin’ around, and right away we heard about what’s got to be Ancient ruins, with inscriptions, in the jungle south of Ghundrung.”

“The Donarrian settlement? But that’s far downstream, and then you’d have to outfit an expedition overland. Where’s the money coming from?”

“Oh, we’ll earn it. Axor already has an offer from a lumberin’ company. He can snake a log through the woods cheaper’n any gravtrac can airlift it. And me, I’ve lived off odd jobs all my grown-up life. I won’t have any trouble gettin’ by. This is a live town.” Diana sobered. “I’m sure we can find somethin’ for you as well, if you want.”

“But you’d take months, a year or more, to save what you will need!” Targovi exclaimed. “Meanwhile the war goes on.”

She cocked her head and stared at him. “What’s that got to do with us? I mean, sure, it’s terrible, but we can’t do anything about it. Can we?”

He drew a long breath. “Come aside with me and let us talk,” he said.

Her jubilation died away as she sensed his uneasiness. “Of course.” She tucked an arm beneath his and led him off. “I’ve found a trail out of town, through the woods, where nobody’ll overhear us.” Her smile was a trifle forlorn. “I want to learn what you’ve been up to anyway, and how you figure to stay out of jail, and, oh, everything.”

“You shall, as much as is safe for you to know.”

She bridled. “Now wait a minute! Either you trust me or you don’t. I’ve let you rush me along this far, and conned Axor for you, because you didn’t have a chance to explain. Or so you claimed. Not any more, fellow.”

He raised his ears. “Ah, you are your father’s child—and your mother’s—eh, little friend? … Well, you leave me no choice. Not that I had much left me, after today. My thought was that you, being an honest young person, could best play the part I need played if you believed it was genuine.”

“Hmf! You don’t know me as well as you think.” Diana frowned. “We might have to shade the truth for Axor. I’ll hate that, but we might have to.”

“Did I indeed underestimate your potential, all these years?” Targovi purred.

They said no more until they were well into the forest east of town. The trail ran along the river, a short way in from the high bank, so that water could be seen agleam beyond tree boles and canebrakes. Underneath canopies of darkling leaves, sun-flecked shadow was somewhat cooler than air out in the open, though still subtropical. It was full of unfamiliar odors, sweet, rank, spicy, or indescribable in Anglic or Toborko. Tiny, pale wings fluttered about. No songs resounded, but now and then curious whistles and glissandos went among the boughs above. The sense of ruthless fecundity was overwhelming. You understood what a war it had been, and was yet, to keep terrestroid life going on this—unusually Terra-like—world.

Diana remarked as much. “Makes you wonder how firm a grip we’ve got on any place, doesn’t it?” she added. Her tone was hushed. “On our whole Empire, or civilization itself.”

“The Merseians have long been trying to pry us loose from existence,” Targovi snarled.

She gave him a troubled glance. “They can’t be that bad. Can they? It’s natural for a Tigery to think of them as purely evil. They’d’ve let your whole race, and the Seafolk’s, die with Starkad. That plan of theirs depended on it. Only, well, it wasn’t they not their tens of billions plottin’ together, it was their government—a few key people in it, nobody else havin’ any inklin’.”

“Granted. I overspoke myself. Humans are too many, too widespread for extermination. But they can be diminished, scattered, conquered, rendered powerless. That is the Mer-seian aim.”

“Why?” she wondered in hurt. “A whole galaxy, a whole universe, a technology that could make every last livin’ bein’ rich—why are we and they locked in this senseless feud?”

“Because both our sides have governments,” Targovi said, calming down.

Presently: “Yet Terra’s did rescue enough of my people that we have a chance to survive. I am not ungrateful, nor unaware of where Imhotep’s best interest lies. I actually dream of serving Terra in a wider field than any one planet. What a grand game of play!”

“I’d sure like to get out there too.” Diana shook herself. “S’pose we stop talkin’ like world-weary eighteen-year-olds—”

“Sound counsel, coming from a seventeen-year-old.”

She laughed before she went on: “All right, down to business. You’re a secret agent of the Navy, no matter how low in grade. You’re onto somethin’ havin’ to do with the fight for the throne. You need some kind of help from Axor and me. That’s about the whole of what I know.”

“I know not a great deal more myself,” Targovi confessed. “What I have is a ghosting of hints, clues, incongruities. They whisper to me that naught which has been happening is what it pretends to be—that we are the victims of a gigantic hoax, like an ice bull which a hunter stampedes toward a cliff edge. But I have no proof. Who would listen to me, an outlaw?”

Diana squeezed his hand. The fur was velvety under her fingers. “I will.”

“Thank you, small person who is no longer so small. Now, you too will find it hard to think ill of Admiral Sir Olaf Magnusson.”

“What?” For an instant she was startled, until she remembered the Tigery touching on this matter before. “Oh, maybe he has let his ambition, his ego run away with him. But we did get a rotten deal out in this sector. He alone kept the Merseians from overrunin’ us—”

“The crews of his ships had somewhat to do with it. Many died, many live crippled.”

“Sure, sure. That doesn’t change the fact that Sir Olaf provided the leadership that saved us. ’Twasn’t the first time he’d done that sort of thing, either. And still he wants peace. A strong and honest man on the throne, a man who’s dickered with the Merseians in the past and made them respect him—maybe he really can give us what nobody else can, a lastin’ peace. Maybe that really is worth all the blood and sorrow that Gerhart’s resistance is costin’.”

“And mayhap not.”

“Who can tell? I can’t. The Empire’s had succession crises before. It’ll prob’ly have them again in the future. What can we ordinary people do except try to ride them out?”

“This crises may be unique.” Targovi marshalled his words before he proceeded:

“Let me give you the broad outlines first, details afterward. Terran personnel are not the only ones whom last year’s clash left embittered. The Merseian captains were wholly inept. It wasn’t like them in the least. Nor were the issues worth fighting over, save as a pretext for launching a total war against Terra, and everybody who has studied the matter knows Merseia isn’t ready for that. Seemingly the eruption happened because their diplomats blundered, their lines of communication became tangled, and some hotheaded officers took more initiative than proper.