Poul Anderson: The Game of Empire

Inside, the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle amounted to a room broad and dim. Half a dozen men, outback miners to judge by their rough appearance, were drinking at a table with a couple of joygirls and a bemusedly watching Tigery. The latter sipped from a tube inserted through the chowlock of her air helmet. The whine of its pumps underlay voices. While oxygills were far better, not many could afford them or wanted the preliminary surgery, slight though that was. Diana didn’t recognize the individual, but it was clear from her outfit that she belonged to another society than the one around Toborkozan. The group gave Axor a lengthy stare, then went back to their talk, dice, and booze.

The Wodenite ordered beer in appropriate quantity. His biochemistry was compatible with the human, barring minor matters that ration supplements took care of. Diana gave a silent cheer; her commission was going to be noticeably higher, percentagewise, than on distilled liquor. She took a stein for herself and savored the catnip coolness.

“Aaah!” breathed Axor in honest pleasure. “That quenches. God bless you for your guidance. Now if you can aid my quest—”

“What is it?”

“The story is long, my dear.”

Diana leaned back in her chair; her companion must needs lie on the floor. She had learned, the hard way, how to rein in her inquisitiveness. “We’ve got all day, or as much more as you want.” Within her there hammered: Quest! What’s he after, roamin’ from star to star?

“Perhaps I should begin by introducing myself as a person, however insignificant,” Axor said. “Not that that part is interesting.”

“It is to me,” Diana assured him.

“Well—” The dragon countenance stared down into the outsize tankard. “To use Anglic names, I was born on the planet Woden, although my haizark —tribe? community? tuath?—my people are still comparatively primitive, nomads in the Morning Land, which is across the Sea of Truth from the Glimmering Realm to the west where the Terrans and the civilization that they brought are based. My country is mostly steppe, but in the Ascetic Hills erosion has laid bare certain Foredweller ruins. Those were long known to us, and often as a youngster did I regard them with awe. In the past generation, news of them has reached the cities. Watching and listening to the archaeologists who came, I grew utterly fascinated. A wish flowered in me to learn more, yes, to do such delving myself. I worked my way overseas to the Glimmering Realm in hopes of winning a merit scholarship. Such is common among the literate Wodenites. Mine happened to come from the university that the Galilean Order maintains in Port Campbell.”

“Galilean Order—hm—aren’t they, um, priests in the Jerusalem church? I’ve never met any.”

Axor nodded in human wise. “They are the most scientifically minded organization within it. Very fitting that they should conduct studies of Foredweller remains. While under their tutelage, I was converted to the Faith. Indeed, I am ordained a Galilean.” The slow voice quickened. “Father Jaspers introduced me to the great and holy thought that in those relics may lie an answer to the riddle of the Universal Incarnation.”

Diana raised a palm. “Hold on, please. Foredwellers? Who’re they?”

“They are variously known on the worlds as Ancients, Elders, Others—many names—The mysterious civilization that flourished in the galaxy—apparently through far more of it than this fraction of a single spiral arm which we have somewhat explored—vanishing millions of years ago, leaving scanty, glorious fragments of their works—” Dismay quavered in the deep tones. “You have not heard? Nothing like it exists anywhere in this planetary system? The indications seemed clear that here was a place to search.”

“Wait, wait.” Diana frowned into the shadows. “My education’s been catch-as-catch-can, you realize, but—M-m, yes. Remnant walls and such. Rumors that the Chereionites built them once, whoever the Chereionites are or were. But I thought—um, um—yes, a spaceman from Aeneas told me about a lot of such sites on his planet. Except Aeneas is small, dry, thin-aired. He figured the Old Shen—that was his name for them—they must have originated on a planet of that type, and favored the same kind for colonization.”

“Not necessarily. I venture to think that that is simply the kind where remnants are best preserved. The materials were as durable as the structures seem to have been beautiful. But everything in our cosmos is mortal. On airless globes, micrometeoroids would have worn them down. On planets with thick atmospheres, weather would do the same, while geological process wrought their own destructions. However, sometimes ruins have endured on terrestroid worlds, fossilized, so to speak. For example, a volcanic ashfall or a mudslide which later petrified has covered them. Something like this happened in the territory now covered by the Ascetic Hills of Woden. Since, the blanketing soil and rock have been gnawed away by the elements, revealing these wonders.”

Axor sagged out of his excitement. “But you know of nothing anywhere in the Patrician System?” he finished dully.

Diana thought fast. “I didn’t say that. Look, Imhotep is a superterrestrial planet, more than a third again the surface area of Daedalus—or Terra—not much less than that next to Woden, I’ll bet. And even after centuries, it’s not well mapped or anything. This was just a lonely scientific outpost till the Starkadian resettlement. Tigeries, explorin’ their new lands—yes, they tell stories about things they’ve seen and can’t account for—But I’d have to go and ask for details, and then we’d prob’ly have to engage a watership to ferry us, if some yarn sounded promisin’.”

Axor had recovered his spirits. “Moreover, this system contains other planets, plus their larger moons,” he said. “I came here first merely because Imhotep was the destination of the tramp freighter on which I could get passage. The colonized planet sunward, Daedalus?”

“Maybe. I haven’t been on Daedalus since my mother died, when I was a sprat.” Diana considered. Resolve thrilled along her nerves. She would not knowingly lead this sweet old seeker on a squiggle chase, but neither would she willingly let go of him—while hope remained that his search could carry her to the stars.

“As long as you are on Imhotep,” she said, “that’s the place to start, and I do know my way around Imhotep as well as anybody. Now for openers, can you explain what you’re after and why you think you might find a clue here?”

She drained her stein and signalled for more, Hassan brought a bucket to recharge Axor’s mug as well. Meanwhile the Wodenite, serene again, was telling her:

“As for the Foredwellers, their traces are more than an archaeological puzzle. Incredibly ancient as they are, those artifacts may give us knowledge of the Incarnation.

“For see you, young person, some three thousand standard years have passed since Our Lord Jesus Christ walked upon Terra and brought the offer of salvation to fallen man. Subsequently, upstart humankind has gone forth into the light-years; and with Technic civilization has traveled faith, to race after race after race.

“About such independently spacefaring beings as the Ymirites, one dares say nothing. They are too alien. It may be that they are not fallen and thus have no need of the Word. But painfully plain it is that every oxygen-breathing species ever encountered is in no state of grace, but prone to sin, error, and death.

“Now our Lord was born once upon Terra, and charged those who came after with carrying the gospel over the planet. But what of other planets? Were they to wait for human missionaries? Or have some of them, at least, been granted the glory of their own Incarnations? It is not a matter on which most churches have ventured to dogmatize. Not only are the lives, the souls, so different from world to world, but here and there one nevertheless does find religions which look strangely familiar. Coincidence? Parallel development? Or a deeper mystery?”