Poul Anderson: The Game of Empire

Diana and Kukulkan recoiled apart. “What the flickerin’ hell!” ripped from her. He snarled and tensed.

Targovi leveled the blaster he carried. “Don’t,” he said.

“Have you two jumped your orbits?” Diana yelled, and knew freezingly that they had not.

Kukulkan straightened. His features stiffened. “Drop that thing,” he said as if giving a routine order to a servant. “Do you want the girl killed in a firefight?”

“Who is to start one?” Targovi retorted. He gestured at a window. Leafage turned young daylight to gold-spattered green. Like most local homes, this was tucked into its garden, well back from the street, screened by trees and hedges. It was obvious that the intruders had entered unseen.

Axor crowded in. He went to Diana, laid his enormous arms about her, drew her to his plated breast, as tenderly as her mother. “My dear, my dear, I am sorry,” he boomed low. “Horror is upon us. Would that you could be spared.”

For a minute she clung tight. It was as though strength and calm flowed out of him, into her. She stepped back. Her gaze winged around the scene and came to rest on Targovi. “Explain,” she said.

His scarlet eyes smoldered back at her. “The spoor I followed proved true,” he answered. “I followed it into the lair of the beast. Axor, show her what I brought back.”

The Wodenite visibly shuddered. “Must I?”

“Yes. Didn’t diddle about. Every tailshake we wait, the odds mount against us.”

While Axor took a package from a carrier bag and untied it, Targovi’s words trotted remorseless: “The Zacharians are in collusion with the Merseians. This means they must be with Magnusson. The Merseians must be! You understand what this betokens.”

“No,” she protested, “please, no. Impossible. How could they keep the secret? Why would they do such a thing?”

Axor completed his task, and It stared sightlessly up at her.

“They are not like your folk,” Targovi reminded.

Struggling out of shock, she heard him dimly. “We must bring this evidence back.”

“How?” challenged Kukulkan. Diana regarded him, which hurt like vitriol to do. He stood shaken but undaunted. “Would you steal a car and fly off? You might succeed in that, even committing another murder or two in the process. But missiles will come after you, rays, warcraft if necessary, to shoot you down. Meanwhile, whatever transmissions you attempt will be jammed—not that they’d be believed. A waterboat is merely ludicrous. Surrender, and I’ll suggest clemency.”

“You’ll not be here.” Targovi aimed the blaster. He had set it to narrow beam. Kukulkan never flinched.

“No!” shouted Diana and bellowed Axor together. She pursued with a spate of words: “D’you mean to silence him? What for? The alarm’ll go out anyhow, when they find that poor headless body. Tie him up instead.”

“You do it, then,” the Tigery growled. “Be quick, but be thorough. Meanwhile, think whether you want to join us. Axor, stow the goods again.”

“Into the bedroom,” Diana directed. The irony smote her. “Oh, Kukulkan, this is awful! You didn’t know anything about it, did you?”

Under the threat of Targovi’s gun, he preceded her, turned, and said in steeliness: “I did. It would be idiotic of me to deny that. But I intended you no harm, lovely lass. On the contrary. You could have become a mother of kings.”

She wiped away tears, drew her knife, slashed a sheet into bonds. “What do you want, you people? Why’ve you turned traitor?”

“We owe the Terran Empire nothing. It dragooned our forebears into itself. It has spurned our leadership, the vision that animated the Founders. It will only allow us to remain ourselves on this single patch of land, afar in its marches. Here we dwell like Plato’s man in chains, seeing only shadows on the wall of our cave, shadows cast by the living universe. The Merseians have no cause to fear or shun us. Rather, they will welcome us as their intermediaries with the human commonality. They will grant us the same boundless freedom they desire for themselves.”

“Are you s-s-certain about that? Lie down on the b-b-bed, on your stomach.”

He obeyed. She began fastening his hands behind his back. Would he twist about, try to seize her for shield or hostage? She’d hate slashing him; but she stayed prepared. He lay passive, apart from speech: “What do you owe the Empire, Diana, this shellful of rotting flesh? Why should you die for it? You will, if you persist. You have nowhere to flee.”

Instantly, almost involuntarily, she defied him. “We’ve got a whole big island where we can live off the farms and wildlife, plenty of hills and woods for cover. We’ll survive.”

“For hours; days, at most. In fear and wretchedness. Think. I offer you protection, amnesty. My kin will not be vindictive. They are above that. I offer you glory.”

“He may intend it, or he may just want the use of you,” Targovi said from the doorway. “In either case, sisterling, belike it’s your safest trail. If we bind you, too, somebody will come erelong to see what’s happened, and none should blame you.”

“Naw.” Diana secured Kukulkan’s ankles. “I stay by my friends.”

“A forlorn hope, we.”

She hitched the strips to the bedframe, lest the prisoner roll himself off and out into the street. Straightening, she happened to spy and open closet. Hanging there were clothes for both man and woman.

Well, sure, she thought, Zacharians didn’t marry. No point in it, for them. He had admitted as much, and mentioned children raised in interchangeable households, and she had wondered how lonesome he was in his heart and whether that was what drew him to her, and then they had gone on with their excursion. But, sure, Zacharians would have sex for other reasons than procreation. Interchangeable people? The idea was like a winter wind.

She stooped above the bonny face. He gave her a crooked smile. “Goodbye,” she said to the alien.

Seeking Targovi: “All right, let’s scramble out o’ here.”

“— state secrets. Almost as dangerous are their persons, for they are armed and desperate. While capture alive is desirable for purposes of interrogation, killing them on sight is preferable to any risk of allowing them to continue their rampage—”

Targovi heard the announcement out before he switched off the audio transceiver he had brought from the hospice. It was a natural thing to put in Axor’s carrier, along with food, after they had voiced their decision to go on a long tramp through the hills, for the benefit of any electronic eavesdroppers. While the Wodenite recorded a message apologizing for thus cancelling his next appointment with Isis, explaining that he wished to savor the landscape and this was his last chance, his comrade had surreptitiously added a hiking outfit for Diana to the baggage.

Being a Tigery, Targovi skipped banalities like, “Well, now they know.” He did murmur, “Interesting is how they phrase it, the scat about ‘state secrets’. I should think most Zacharians will realize at once what this means. The rest should cooperate without questions.”

“I s’pose the words’re for the benefit of whatever outsiders may catch the broadcast,” said Diana around a mouthful of sandwich. “F’r instance, on watercraft passin’ within range. Not that they’d investigate for themselves.”

The three rested in a hollow in the heights above Janua, well away from settlement. Its peacefulness was an ache in them. Birch stood around, leaves dancing to a breeze in the radiance of westbound Patricius. Prostrate juniper grew among the white trunks, itself dark blue-green and fragrant. A spring bubbled from a mossy bank. Somewhere a mockingbird trilled.