Poul Anderson - A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

“Ye-e-es. The Roidhunate wouldn’t keep watch over pure philosophers.” Decision slammed into Flandry like sword into sheath. “We can’t learn more where we are, and every second we linger gives them an extra chance to notice us and load a trap. We’re going straight down!”

He gave the boat a surge of power.

Nonetheless, his approach was cautious. If naught else, he needed a while to reduce interior air pressure to the value indicated for the surface ahead of them. (Sounds grew muffled; pulse quickened; breast muscles worked enough to feel. Presently he stopped noticing much, having always taken care to maintain a level of acclimation to thin air. But he was glad that gravity outside would be weak, about half a gee.) Curving around the night hemisphere, he studied light-bejeweled towers set in the middle of rock and sand wastes, wondered greatly at what he saw, and devised a plan of sorts.

“We’ll find us a daylit place and settle alongside,” he announced on the intercom. “If they won’t talk to us, we’ll maybe go in and talk to them.” For his communicator, searching all bands, had drawn no hint of—

No! A screen flickered into color. He looked at the first Chereionite face he could be certain was not Aycharaych’s. It had the same spare beauty, the same deep calm, but as many differences of sculpture as between one human countenance and the next. And from the start, even before speech began, he felt a … heaviness: nothing of sardonic humor or flashes of regret.

“Talk the conn, Chives,” he directed. A whistling had begun, and the badlands were no longer before but below him. Hooligan was an easier target now than she had been in space; she had better be ready to dodge and strike back.

“You are not cleared for entry,” said the screen in Eriau which was mellow-toned but did not sing like Aycharaych’s. “Your action is forbidden under strict penalties, by command of the Roidhun in person, renewed in each new reign. Can you offer a justification?”

Huh? jabbed through Flandry. Does he assume this is a Merseian boat and I a Merseian man? “ Em—emergency,” he tried, too astonished to invent a glib story. He had expected he would declare himself as more or less what he was, and hold his destination city hostage to his guns and missiles. Whether or not the attempt could succeed in any degree, he had no notion. At best he’d thought he might bear away a few hints about the beings who laired here.

“Have you control over your course?” inquired the voice.

“Yes. Let me speak to a ranking officer.”

“You will go approximately five hundred kilometers northwest of your immediate position. Prepare to record a map.” The visage vanished, a chart appeared, two triangles upon it. “The red apex shows where you are, the blue your mandatory landing site, a spacefield. You will stay inboard and await instructions. Is this understood?”

“We’ll try. We, uh, we have a lot of speed to kill. In our condition, fast braking is unsafe. Can you give us about half an hour?”

Aycharaych would not have spent several seconds reaching a decision. “Permitted. Be warned, deviations may cause you to be shot down. Proceed.” Nor would he have broken contact with not a single further inquiry.

Outside was no longer black, but purple. The spacecraft strewed thunder across desert. “What the hell, sir?” Chives exploded.

“Agreed,” said Flandry. His tongue shifted to an obscure language they both knew. “Use this lingo while that channel’s open.”

“What shall we do?”

“First, play back any pictures we got of the place we’re supposed to go.” Flandry’s fingers brushed a section of console. On an inset screen came a view taken from nearby space under magnification. His trained eyes studied it and a few additional. “A spacefield, aye, standard Merseian model, terminal and the usual outbuildings. Modest-sized, no vessels parked. And way off in wilderness.” He twisted his mustache. “You know, I’ll bet that’s where every visitor’s required to land. And then he’s brought in a closed car to a narrowly limited area which is all he ever sees.”

“Shall we obey, sir?”

“Um, ’twould be a pity, wouldn’t it, to pass by that lovely city we had in mind. Besides, they doubtless keep heavy weapons at the port; our pictures show signs of it. Once there, we’d be at their mercy. Whereas I suspect that threat to blast us elsewhere was a bluff. Imagine a stranger pushing into a prohibited zone on a normal planet—when the system’s being invaded! Why aren’t we at least swarmed by military aircraft?”

“Very good, sir. We can land in five minutes.” Chives gave his master a pleading regard. “Sir, must I truly stay behind while you debark?”

“Somebody has to cover us, ready to scramble if need be. We’re Intelligence collectors, not heroes. If I call you and say, ‘Escape,’ Chives, you will escape.”

“Yes, sir,” the Shalmuan forced out. “However, please grant me the liberty of protesting your decision not to wear armor like your men.”

“I want the full use of my senses.” Flandry cast him a crooked smile and patted the warm green shoulder. “I fear I’ve often strained your loyalty, old chap. But you haven’t failed me yet.”

“Thank you, sir.” Chives stared hard at his own busy hands. “I … endeavor … to give satisfaction.”

Time swooped past.

“Attention!” cried from the screen. “You are off course! You are in absolutely barred territory!”

“Say on,” Flandry jeered. He half hoped to provoke a real response. The voice only denounced his behavior.

A thump resounded and shivered. The tone of wind and engines ceased. They were down.

Flandry vaulted from his chair, snatched a combat helmet, buckled it on as he ran. Beneath it he already wore a mindscreen, as did everybody aboard. Otherwise he was’ attired in a gray coverall and stout leather boots. On his back and across his chest were the drive cones and controls of a grav unit. His pouchbelt held field rations, medical supplies, canteen of water, ammunition, blaster, slugthrower, and Merseian war knife.

At the head of his dozen Dennitzan marines, he bounded from the main personnel lock, along the extruded gangway, onto the soil of Chereion. There he crouched in what shelter the hull afforded and glared around, fingers on weapons.

After a minute or two he stepped forth. Awe welled in him.

A breeze whispered, blade-sharp with cold and dryness. It bore an iron tang off uncounted leagues of sand and dust. In cloudless violet, the sun stood at afternoon, bigger to see than Sol over Terra, duller and redder than the sun over Diomedes; squinting, he could look straight into it for seconds without being blinded, and through his lashes find monstrous dark spots and vortices. It would not set for many an hour, the old planet turned so wearily.

Shadows were long and purple across the dunes which rolled cinnabar and ocher to the near horizon. Here and there stood the gnawed stump of a pinnacle, livid with mineral hues, or a ravine clove a bluff which might once have been a mountain. The farther desert seemed utterly dead. Around the city, wide apart, grew low bushes whose leaves glittered in rainbows as if crystalline. The city itself rose from foundations that must go far down, must have been buried until the landscape eroded from around them and surely have needed renewal as the ages swept past.

The city—it was not a giant chaos such as besat Terra or Merseia; nothing on Chereion was. An ellipse defined it, some ten kilometers at the widest, proportioned in a right-ness Flandry had recognized from afar though not knowing how he did. The buildings of the perimeter were single-storied, slenderly colonnaded; behind them, others lifted ever higher, until they climaxed in a leap of slim towers. Few windows interrupted the harmonies of colors and iridescence, the interplay of geometries that called forth visions of many-vaulted infinity. The heart rode those lines and curves upward until the whole sight became a silent music.