Poul Anderson: The Rebel Worlds

“I can’t very well convey that message,” Flandry replied, “seeing that Snelund’s dead.” McCormac half rose. “What Kathryn and I came to let you know is that if you accept battle, you and your followers will be equally dead.”

McCormac leaned over and seized Flandry by the upper arms, bruisingly hard. “What is this?” he yelled.

Flandry snapped that grip with a judo break. “Don’t paw me, McCormac,” he said.

They got back on their feet, two big men, and stood toe to toe. McCormac’s fists were doubled. The breath whistled in and out of him. Flandry kept hands open, knees tense and a trifle bent, ready to move out of the way and chop downward. The impasse lasted thirty mortal seconds.

McCormac mastered himself, turned, stalked a few paces off, and faced around again. “All right,” he said as if being strangled. “I let you in so I could listen to you. Carry on.”

“That’s better.” Flandry resumed his chair arid took out a cigaret. Inwardly he shook and felt now frozen, now on fire. “The thing is,” he said, “Pickens has your code.”

McCormac rocked where he stood.

“Given that,” Flandry said redundantly, “if you fight, he’ll take you apart; if you retreat, he’ll chivvy you to pieces; if you disperse, he’ll snatch you and your bases in detail before you can rally. You haven’t time to recode and you’ll never be allowed the chance. Your cause is done, McCormac.”

He waved the cigaret. “Kathryn will confirm it,” he added, “She witnessed the whole show. Alone with her, you’ll soon be able to satisfy yourself that she’s telling the truth, under no chemical compulsions. You won’t need any psych tests for that, I hope. Not if you two are the loving couple she claims.

“Besides, after talking to her, you’re welcome to send a team over who’ll remove my central computer. They’ll find your code in its tapes. That’ll disable my hyperdrive, of course, but I don’t mind waiting for Pickens.”

McCormac stared at the deck. “Why didn’t she come aboard with you?” he asked.

“She’s my insurance,” Flandry said. “She won’t be harmed unless your side does something ridiculous like shooting at my vessel. But if I don’t leave this one freely, my crew will take the appropriate measures.”

Which I trust, dear Hugh, you will interpret as meaning that I have trained spacehands along, who’ll speed away if you demonstrate bad faith. It’s the natural assumption, which I’ve been careful to do nothing to prevent you from making. The datum that my crew is Woe, who couldn’t navigate a flatboat across a swimming pool, and that heesh’s orders are to do nothing no matter what happens … you’re better off not receiving that datum right at once. Among other things, first I want to tell you some home truths.

McCormac lifted his head and peered closely. With the shock ridden out, his spirit and intelligence were reviving fast. “Your hostage?” he said from the bottom of his throat.

Flandry nodded while kindling his cigaret. The smoke soothed him the least bit. “Uh-huh. A long story. Kathryn will tell you most of it. But the upshot is, though I serve the Imperium, I’m here in an irregular capacity and without its knowledge.”

“Why?”

Flandry spoke with the same chill steadiness as he regarded the other: “For a number of reasons, including that I’m Kathryn’s friend. I’m the one who got her away from Snelund. I took her with me when I went to see what the chance was of talking you out of your lunacy. You’d left the Virgilian System, but one of your lovely barbarian auxiliaries attacked and wrecked us. We made it down to Dido and marched overland to Port Frederiksen. There I seized the warship from which the code was gotten, the same I now command. When I brought it to Llynathawr, my men and I kept Kathryn’s presence secret. They think the cosmos of her too, you see. I lured Governor Snelund on board, and held him over a drain while she cut his throat. I’d have done worse, so’d you, but she has more decency in a single DNA strand than you or I will ever have in our whole organisms. She helped me get rid of the evidence because I want to return home. We tossed it on a meteorite trajectory into the atmosphere of an outer planet. Then we headed for Satan.”

McCormac shuddered. “Do you mean she’s gone over to your side — to you? Did you two—”

Flandry’s cigaret dropped from lips yanked into a gorgon’s lines. He surged up and across the desk, laid hold of McCormac’s tunic, batted defending hands aside with the edge of his other palm and numbing force, shook the admiral and grated:

“Curb your tongue! You sanctimonious son of a bitch! If I had my wish, your pig-bled body would’ve been the one to burn through that sky. But there’s Kathryn. There’s the people who’ve followed you. There’s the Empire. Down on your knees, McCormac, and thank whatever smug God you’ve taken on as your junior partner, that I have to find some way of saving your life because otherwise the harm you’ve done would be ten times what it is!”

He hurled the man from him. McCormac staggered against a bulkhead, which thudded. Half stunned, he looked upon the rage which stood before him, and his answering anger faded.

After a while, Flandry turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said in a dull voice. “Not apologetic, understand. Only sorry I lost my temper. Unprofessional of me, especially when our time is scant.”

McCormac shook himself. “I said I’d listen. Shall we sit down and begin over?” Flandry had to admire him a trifle for that.

They descended stiffly to the edges of their chairs. Flandry got out a new cigaret. “Nothing untoward ever happened between Kathryn and me,” he said, keeping his eyes on the tiny cylinder. “I won’t deny I’d have liked for it to, but it didn’t. Her entire loyalty was, is, and forever will be to you. I think I’ve persuaded her that your present course is mistaken, but not altogether. And in no case does she want to go anyplace but where you go, help in anything but what you do. Isn’t that an awesome lot to try to deserve?”

McCormac swallowed. After a moment: “You’re a remarkable fellow, Commander. How old are you?”

“Half your age. And yet I have to tell you the facts of life.”

“Why should I heed you,” McCormac asked, but subduedly, “when you serve that abominable government? When you claim to have ruined my cause?”

“It was ruined anyway. I know how well your opposition’s Fabian strategy was working. What we hope to do — Kathryn and I — we hope to prevent you from dragging more lives, more treasure, more Imperial strength down with you.”

“Our prospects weren’t that bad. I was evolving a plan—”

“The worst outcome would have been your victory.”

“What? Flandry, I … I’m human, I’m fallible, but anyone would be better on the throne than that Josip who appointed that Snelund.”

With the specter of a smile, because his own fury was dying out and a measure of pity was filling the vacuum, Flandry replied: “Kathryn still accords with you there. She still feels you’re the best imaginable man for the job. I can’t persuade her otherwise, and haven’t tried very hard. You see, it doesn’t matter whether she’s right or wrong. The point is, you might have given us the most brilliant administration in history, and nevertheless your accession would have been catastrophic.”

“Why?”

“You’d have destroyed the principle of legitimacy. The Empire will outlive Josip. Its powerful vested interests, its cautious bureaucrats, its size and inertia, will keep him from doing enormous harm. But if you took the throne by force, why shouldn’t another discontented admiral do the same in another generation? And another and another, till civil wars rip the Empire to shreds. Till the Merseians come in, and the barbarians. You yourself hired barbarians to fight Terrans, McCormac. No odds whether or not you took precautions, the truth remains that you brought them in, and sooner or later we’ll get a rebel who doesn’t mind conceding them territory. And the Long Night falls.”