Poul Anderson: A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Kossara fell asleep imagining that Mihail was beside her.

It was official: the Emperor Hans would shortly leave Terra, put himself at the head of an armada, and personally see to quelling the barbarians—war lords, buccaneers, crusaders for God knew what strange causes—who still harassed a Sector Spica left weak by the late struggle for the Imperial succession. He threw a bon voyage party at the Coral Palace. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry was among those invited. Under such circumstances, one comes.

Besides, Flandry reflected, I can’t help liking the old bastard. He may not be the best imaginable thing that could happen to us, but he’s probably the best available.

The hour was well after sunset in this part of Oceania. A crescent moon stood high to westward; metrocenter star-points glinted across its dark side. The constellations threw light of their own onto gently rolling waves, argent shimmer on sable. Quietness broke where surf growled white against ramparts. There walls, domes, towers soared aloft in a brilliance which masked off most of heaven.

When Flandry landed his car and stepped forth, no clouds of perfume (or psychogenic vapors, as had been common in Josip’s reign) drifted from the palace to soften salt odors. Music wove among mild breezes, but formal, stately, neither hypersubtle nor raucous. Flandry wasn’t sure whether it was composed on a colony planet—if so, doubtless Germania—or on Terra once, to be preserved through centuries while the mother world forgot. He did know that a decade ago, the court would have snickered at sounds this fusty-archaic.

Few servants bowed as he passed among fellow guests, into the main building. More guardsmen than formerly saluted. Their dress uniforms were less ornate than of yore and they and their weapons had seen action. The antechamber of fountains hadn’t changed, and the people who swirled between them before streaming toward the ballroom wore clothes as gorgeous as always, a rainbow spectacle. However, fantastic collars, capes, sleeves, cuffs, footgear were passe. Garb was continuous from neck or midbreast to soles, and, while many men wore robes rather than trousers, every woman was in a skirt.

A reform I approve of, he thought. I suspect most ladies agree. The suggestive rustle of skillfully draped fabric is much more stimulating, really, and easier to arrange, than cosmetics and diadems on otherwise bare areas of interest. For that matter, though it does take more effort, a seduction is better recreation than an orgy.

There our good Hans goes too far. Every bedroom in the palace locked!

Ah, well. Conceivably he wants his entourage to cultivate ingenuity.

Crown Prince Dietrich received, a plain-faced middle-aged man whose stoutness was turning into corpulence. Though he and Flandry had worked together now and then in the fighting, his welcome was mechanical. Poor devil, he must say a personal hello to each of three or four hundred arrivals important enough to rate it, with no drug except stim to help him. Another case of austere principles overdone, Flandry thought. The younger brother, Gerhart, was luckier tonight, already imperially drunk at a wallside table with several cronies. However, he looked as sullen as usual.

Flandry drifted around the circumference of the ballroom. There was nothing fancy about the lighting, save that it was cast to leave unobscured the stars in the vitryl dome overhead. The floor sheened with diffracted reflections from several score couples who swung through the decorous measures of a quicksilver. He hailed acquaintances when he glimpsed them, but didn’t stop till he had reached an indoor arbor where champagne was available. A goblet of tickle in his hand, roses around him, a cheerful melody, a view of pretty women in motion—life could be worse.

It soon was. “Greetin’, Sir Dominic.”

Flandry turned, and bowed in dismay to the newcomer beneath the leaves. “Aloha, your Grace.”

Tetsuo Niccolini, Duke of Mars, accepted a glass from the attendant behind the table. It was obviously not his first. “Haven’t seen you for some while,” he remarked. “Missed you. You’ve a way o’ puttin’ a little spark into a scene, dull as the court is these days.” Shrewdly: “Reason you don’t come often, what?”

“Well,” Flandry admitted, “his Majesty’s associates do tend to be a bit earnest and firm-jawed.” He sipped. “Still, my impression is, your Grace spends a fair amount of time here regardless.”

Niccolini sighed. He had never been more than a well-meaning fop; but in these last years, when antisenescence and biosculp could no longer hold wrinkles, baldness, feebleness at bay, he had developed a certain wry perspective. Unfortunately, he remained a bore.

Shadows of petals stirred across a peacock robe as he lifted his drink. “D’you think I should go to my ancestral estates and all that rubbish, set up my own small court along lines I like, eh? No, m’boy, not feasible. I’d get nothin’ but sycophants, who’d pluck me while they smiled. My real friends, who put their hearts into enjoyin’ life, well, they’re dead or fled or sleepin’ in an oldster’s bed.” He paused. “ ’Sides, might’s well tell you, H.M. gave me t’understand—he makes himself very clear, ha?—gave me t’understand, he’d prefer no Duke o’ Mars henceforth visit the planet ’cept for a decent minimum o’ speeches an’ dedications.”

Flandry nodded. That makes sense, flickered through him. The Martians [nonhumans; colonists by treaty arrangement in the time of the Commonwealth; glad to belong to it, but feeling betrayed when it broke down and the Troubles came; dragooned into the Empire] are still restless. Terra can best control them by removing the signs of Terran control. I suspect, after poor tottery Tetty is gone, Hans will buy out his heirs with a gimcrack title elsewhere and a lot of money and make a Martian the next Duke — who may not even know he’s a puppet.

At least, that’s what I’d consider doing.

“But we’re in grave danger o’ seriousness,” Niccolini interrupted himself. “Where’ve you been? Busy at what? Come, come, somethin’ amusin’ must’ve happened.”

“Oh, just knocking around with a friend.” Flandry didn’t care to get specific. One reason why he had thus far declined promotion to admiral was that then he’d be too conspicuous, too eagerly watched and sought after, while he remained near the Emperor. He liked his privacy. As a hanger-on who showed no further ambitions—and could therefore in time be expected to lose his energetic patron’s goodwill—he drew scant attention.

“Or knockin’ up a friend? Heh, heh, heh.” The Duke nudged him. “I know your sort o’ friends. How was she?”

“In the first place, she was a he,” Flandry said. Until he could escape, he might as well reconcile himself to humoring a man who had discovered the secret of perpetual adolescence. “Of course, we explored. Found a new place on Ganymede which might interest your Grace, the Empress Wu in Celestial City.”

“No, no.” Niccolini waggled his head and free hand. “Didn’t y’know? I never go anywhere near Jupiter. Never. Not since the La Reine Louise disaster.”

Flandry cast his mind back. He couldn’t identify—Oh, yes. It had happened five years ago, while he was out of the Solar System. Undeterred by civil war, a luxury liner was approaching Callisto when her screen field generators failed. The trapped radiation which seethes around the giant planet, engulfing its inner moons, killed everybody aboard; no treatment could restore a body burned by so much unfelt fire.

Nothing of the kind had happened for centuries of exploration and colonization thereabouts. Magnetohydrodynamic shields and their backups were supposed to be invulnerable to anything that wouldn’t destroy a vehicle or a settlement anyway. Therefore, sabotage? The passenger list had included several powerful people. A court of inquiry had handed down the vaguest finding of “cumulative negligence.”