Poul Anderson - The Man Who Counts

It was a bold move, thought Wace in a distant part of his thuttering brain — to stake all he had on that one challenge. But of course, T’heonax was going to get away with it; no one in this caste-ridden society would deny his absolute power, not even Delp the bold. Reluctant they might be, but the captains would obey.

The silence grew shattering.

Nicholas van Rijn broke it with a long, juicy Bronx cheer.

The whole assembly started. T’heonax leaped backward and for a moment he was like a bat-winged tomcat.

“What was that?” he blazed.

“Are you deaf?” answered Van Rijn mildly. “I said—” He repeated with tremolo.

“What do you mean?”

“It is an Earth term,” said Van Rijn. “As near as I can render it, let me see… well, it means you are a—” The rest was the most imaginative obscenity Wace had heard in his life.

The captains gasped. Some drew their weapons. The Drak’ho guards on the upper decks gripped bows and spears. “Kill him!” screamed T’heonax.

“No!” Van Rijn’s bass exploded on their ears. The sheer volume of it paralyzed them. “I am an embassy, by damn! You hurt an embassy and the Lodestar will sink you in hell’s boiling seas!”

It checked them. T’heonax did not repeat his order; the guards jerked back toward stillness; the officers remained poised, outraged past words.

“I have somethings to say you,” Van Rijn continued, only twice as loud as a large foghorn. “I speak to all the Fleet, and ask you ask yourselves, why this little pip squeaker does so stupid. He makes you carry on a war where both sides lose — he makes you risk your lives, your wives and cubs, maybe the Fleet’s own surviving — why? Because he is afraid. He knows, a few years cheek by jowl next to the Lannach’honai, and even more so trading with my company at my fantastic low prices, things begin to change. You get more into thinking by your own selves. You taste freedom. Bit by bit, his power slides from him. And he is too much a coward to live on his own selfs. Nie, he has got to have guards and slaves and all of you to make bossing over, so he proves to himself he is not just a little jellypot but a real true Leader. Rather he will have the Fleet ruined, even die himself, than lose this prop up, him!”

T’heonax said, shaking: “Get off my raft before I forget there is an armistice.”

“Oh, I go, I go,” said Van Rijn. He advanced toward the admiral. His tread reverberated in the deck. “I go back and make war again if you insist. But only one small question I ask first.” He stopped before the royal presence and prodded the royal nose with a hairy forefinger. “Why you make so much fuss about Lannacha home lifes? Could be maybe down underneath you hanker to try it yourself?”

He turned his back, then, and bowed.

Wace did not see just what happened. There were guards and captains between. He heard a screech, a bellow from Van Rijn, and then there was a hurricane of wings before him.

Something — He threw himself into the press of bodies. A tail crashed against his ribs. He hardly felt it; his fist jolted, merely to get a warrior out of the way and see -

Nicholas van Rijn stood with both hands in the air as a score of spears menaced him. “The admiral bit me!” he wailed. “I am here like an embassy, and the pig bites me! What kind of relations between countries is that, when heads of state bite foreign ambassadors, ha? Does an Earth president bite diplomats? This is uncivilized!”

T’heonax backed off, spitting, scrubbing the blood from his jaws. “Get out,” he said in a strangled voice. “Go at once.”

Van Rijn nodded. “Come, friends,” he said. “We find us places with better manners.”

“Freeman… Freeman, where did he—” Wace crowded close.

“Never mind where,” said Van Rijn huffily.

Trolwen and Tolk joined them. The Lannacha escort fell into step behind. They walked at a measured pace across the deck, away from the confusion of Drak’honai under the castle wall.

“You might have known it,” said Wace. He felt exhausted, drained of everything except a weak anger at his chief’s unbelievable folly. “This race is carnivorous. Haven’t you seen them snap when they get angry? It’s… a reflex — You might have known!”

“Well,” said Van Rijn in a most virtuous tone, holding both hands to his injury, “he did not have to bite. I am not responsible for his lack of control or any consequences of it, me. All good lawyer saints witness I am not.”

“But the ruckus — we could all have been killed!”

Van Rijn didn’t bother to argue about that.

Delp met them at the rail. His crest drooped. “I am sorry it must end thus,” he said. “We could have been friends.”

“Perhaps it does not end just so soon,” said Van Rijn.

“What do you mean?” Tired eyes regarded him without hope.

“Maybe you see pretty quick. Delp” — Van Rijn laid a paternal hand on the Drak’ho’s shoulder — “you are a good young chap. I could use a one like you, as a part-time agent for some tradings in these parts. On fat commissions, natural. But for now, remember you are the one they all like and respect. If anything happens to the admiral, there will be panic and uncertainty… they will turn to you for advice. If you act fast at such a moment, you can be admiral yourself! Then maybe we do business, ha?”

He left Delp gaping and swung himself with apish speed down into the canoe. “Now, boys,” he said, “row like hell.”

They were almost back to their own fleet when Wace saw clotted wings whirl up from the royal raft. He gulped. “Has the attack… has it begun already?” He cursed himself that his voice should be an idiotic squeak.

“Well, I am glad we are not close to them.” Van Rijn, standing up as he had done the whole trip, nodded complacently. “But I think not this is the war. I think they are just disturbed. Soon Delp will take charge and calms them down.”

“But — Delp?”

Van Rijn shrugged. “If Diomedean proteins is deadly to us,” he said, “ours should not be so good for them, ha? And our late friend T’heonax took a big mouthful of me. It all goes to show, these foul tempers only lead to trouble. Best you follow my example. When I am attacked, I turn the other cheek.”

Thursday Landing had little in the way of hospital facilities: an autodiagnostician, a few surgical and therapeutical robots, the standard drugs, and the post xenobiologist to double as medical officer. But a six weeks’ fast did not have serious consequences, if you were strong to begin with and had been waited on hand, foot, wing, and tail by two anxious nations, on a planet none of whose diseases could affect you. Treatment progressed rapidly with the help of bioaccelerine, from intravenous glucose to thick rare steaks. By the sixth Diomedean day, Wace had put on a noticeable amount of flesh and was weakly but fumingly aprowl in his room.

“Smoke, sir?” asked young Senegal. He had been out on trading circuit when the rescue party arrived; only now was he getting the full account. He offered cigarettes with a most respectful air.

Wace halted, the bathrobe swirling about his knees. He reached, hesitated, then grinned and said: “In all that time without tobacco, I seem to’ve lost the addiction. Question is, should I go to the trouble and expense of building it up again?”

“Well, no, sir—”

“Hey! Gimme that!” Wace sat down on his bed and took a cautious puff. “I certainly am going to pick up all my vices where I left off, and doubtless add some new ones.”

“You, uh, you were going to tell me, sir… how the station here was informed—”

“Oh, yes. That. It was childishly simple. I figured it out in ten minutes, once we got a breathing spell. Send a fair-size Diomedean party with a written message, plus of course one of Tolk’s professional interpreters to help them inquire their way on this side of The Ocean. Devise a big life raft, just a framework of light poles which could be dovetailed together. Each Diomedean carried a single piece; they assembled it in the air and rested on it whenever necessary. Also fished from it: a number of Fleet experts went along to take charge of that angle. There was enough rain for them to catch in small buckets to drink — I knew there would be, since the Drak’honai stay at sea for indefinite periods, and also this is such a rainy planet anyhow.