Poul Anderson - A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

“In endless variations around the planet, the same dream is being played. But precisely because the Great Flock has changed more than other nations of its kind, it feels the hurt most keenly, is most divided against itself and embittered vat the outside universe.

“No wonder if revolutionary solutions are sought. Economic, social, spiritual secession, a return to the ways of the ancestors; shouts of protest against ‘discrimination,’ demands for ‘justice,’ help, subsidy, special consideration of every kind; political secession, no more taxes to the planetary peace authority or the Imperium; seizure of power over the whole sphere, establishment of a sovereign autarky—these are among the less unreasonable ideas afloat.

“There is also Alatanism. The Ythrians, not terribly far away as interstellar distances go, have wings. They should sympathize with their fellow flyers on Diomedes more than any biped ever can. They have their Domain, free alike of Empire and Roidhunate, equally foreign to both. Might it not, are its duty and destiny not to welcome Diomedes in?

“The fact that few Ythrian leaders have even heard of Diomedes, and none show the least interest in crusading, is ignored. Mystiques seldom respond to facts. They are instruments which can be played on … ”

Twice had the sun come from the mountains and returned behind them.

“Goodbye, then,” Kossara said.

Flandry could find no better words than “Goodbye. Good luck,” hoarse out of the grip upon his gullet.

She regarded him for a moment, in the entryroom where they stood. “I do believe you mean that,” she whispered.

Abruptly she kissed him, a brief brush of lips which exploded in his heart. She drew back before he could respond. During another instant she poised, upon her face a look of bewilderment at her own action.

Turning, she twisted the handle on the inner airlock valve. He took a following step. “No,” she said. “You can’t live out there, remember?” Her body prepared before she left Dennitza, she closed the portal on him. He stopped where he was. Pumps chugged until gauges told him the chamber beyond was now full of Diomedean air.

The outer valve opened. He bent over a viewscreen. Kossara’s tiny image stepped forth onto the mountainside. A car awaited her. She bounded into it and shut its door. A minute later, it rose.

Flandry sought the control cabin, where were the terminals of his most powerful and sensitive devices. The car had vanished above clouds. “Pip-ho, Chives,” he said tonelessly. A hatch swung wide. His Number Two atmospheric vehicle glided from the hold. It looked little different from the first, its engine, weapons, and special equipment being concealed in the teardrop fuselage. It disappeared more slowly, for the Shalmuan pilot wanted to stay unseen by the woman whom he stalked. But at last Flandry sat alone.

She promised she’d help me. What an inexperienced liar she is.

He felt no surprise when, after a few minutes, Chives’ voice jumped at him: “Sir! She is descending … She has landed in the forest beside a river. I am observing through a haze by means of an infrared ’scope. Do you wish a relay?”

“Not from that,” Flandry said. Too small, too blurry. “From her bracelet.”

A screen blossomed in leaves and hasty brown water. Her right hand entered. Off the left, which he could not see, she plucked the ring, which he glimpsed before she tossed it into the stream.

“She is running for cover beneath the trees, sir,” Chives reported.

Of course, replied the emptiness in Flandry. She thinks that, via the ring, I’ve seen what she’s just done, in the teeth of every pledge she gave me. She thinks that now, if she moves fast, she can vanish into the woods — make her own way afoot, find her people and not betray them, or else die striving.

Whereas in fact the ring was only intended to lull any fears of surveillance she might have after getting rid of it — only a circlet on her bridal finger — and Chives has a radio resonator along to activate her bracelet — the slave bracelet I told her would be blind and deaf outside of Terra.

“I do not recommend that I remain airborne, sir,” Chives said. “Allow me to suggest that, as soon as the young lady has passed beyond observing me, I land likewise and follow her on the ground. I will leave a low-powered beacon to mark this site. You can flit here by grav-belt and retrieve the vehicles, sir. Permit me to remind you to wear proper protection against the unsalubrious ambience.”

“Same to you, old egg, and put knobs on yours.” Flandry’s utterance shifted from dull to hard. “I’ll repeat your orders. Trail her, and call in to the recorder cum relay ’caster I’ll leave here, in whatever way and at whatever times seem discreet. But ‘discretion’ is your key word. If she appears to be in danger, getting her out of it—whether by bringing me in to help or by taking action yourself—that gets absolute priority. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Did the high, not quite human accent bear a hint of shared pain? “Despite regrettable tactical necessities, Donna Vymezal must never be considered a mere counter in a game.” That’s for personnel and planets, the anonymous billions — and, savingly, for you and me, eh, Chives? “ Will you proceed to the Technic settlement when your preparations are complete?”

“Yes,” Flandry said. “Soon. I may as well.”

Where the equator crossed the eastern shoreline of a continent men called Centralia, Thursday Landing was founded. Though fertile by Diomedean standards, the country had few permanent residents. Rather, migration brought tides of travelers, northward and southward alternately, to their ancestral breeding grounds. At first, once the sharpest edge was off their sexual appetites, they had been glad to hunt and harvest those things the newcomers wanted from the wilderness, in exchange for portable trade goods. Later this business grew more systematized and extensive, especially after a large contingent of Drak’ho moved to these parts. Descending, Flandry saw a fair-sized town.

Most was man-built, blocky interconnected ferrocrete structures to preserve a human-suitable environment from monstrous rains and slow but ponderous winds. He glimpsed a park, vivid green beneath a vitryl dome, brightened by lamps that imitated Sol. Farther out, widely spaced in cultivated fields, stood native houses: tall and narrow, multiply balconied, graceful of line and hue, meant less to resist weather then to accept it, yielding enough to remain whole. Watercraft, ranging from boats to floating communities, crowded the harbor as wings did the sky.

Yet Flandry felt bleakness, as if the cold outside had reached in to enfold him. Beyond the fluorescents, half the world he saw was land, hills, meadows, dwarfish woods, dim in purple and black twilight, and half was bloodily glimmering ocean. For the sun stood barely above the northern horizon, amidst sulfur-colored clouds. At this place and season there was never true day or honest night.

Are you getting terracentric in your dotage? he gibed at himself. Here’s a perfectly amiable place for beings who belong in it.

His mood would not go away. Nevertheless it does feel unreal somehow, a scene from a bad dream. The whole mission has been like that. Everything shadowy, tangled, unstable, nothing what it seems to be … nor anybody who doesn’t carry secrets within secrets …

Myself included. He straightened in the pilot chair. Well, that’s what I’m paid for. I suppose these blue devils of mine come mainly from guilt about Kossara, fear of what may happen to her. O God Who is also unreal, a mask we put on emptiness, be gentle to her. She has been hurt so much.