III
The aircar was big, modern, and luxuriously outfitted. A custom job from Betelgeuse, no doubt. Flandry sat among deadpan Guard Corpsmen who said never a word, beside Warouw who was almost as quiet. Rain and wind were noisy as the car got under way, but when it slanted toward Kompong Timur, the weather had cleared. Flandry looked down upon a sprawling constellation of lights. He could see that the city borders faded into a broad lake, and that it was everywhere threaded with canals, which shimmered under mercury and neon glare. An experienced eye recognized certain other signs, such as the clustering of radiance near the central and tallest buildings, the surrounding zones of low roofs and infrequent lamps. That usually meant slums, which in turn suggested a concentration of wealth and power among the few.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To an interview. The governing board of Biocontrol is most anxious to meet you, Captain.” Warouw lifted one eyebrow. It gave his smooth oval face a flicker of sardonicism. “You are not weary, I trust? What with the short day and night here, our people have gotten into the habit of taking several naps throughout the rotation period, rather than one long rest. Perhaps you feel ready for bed?”
Flandry tapped a cigarette on one thumbnail. “Would it do me much good to say yes?”
Warouw smiled. The air car glided down to a landing terrace, high on one of the biggest buildings—a structure important enough to have been erected on a piece of solid land, rather than on the piles driven into mud which upheld most of the city.
As Flandry stepped out, the Guards closed in around him. “Call off the Happiness Boys, will you?” he snapped. “I want a quiet smoke.” Warouw jerked his head. The silent men withdrew, but not very far. Flandry walked across the terrace to its rail.
Clouds banked high on the eastern horizon. Lightning flickered in their depths. Overhead, the sky was clear, though a dim violet haze wavered among unearthly star-patterns—fluorescence in the upper atmosphere, due to the hidden but brilliant sun. Flandry identified the red spark of Betelgeuse, and yellow Spica, with a certain wistfulness. God knew if he’d ever drink beer again on any planet of either. He had stumbled into something unmerciful.
This building must be a hundred meters square. It rose in many tiers, pagoda fashion, the curved roofs ending in elephant heads whose tusks were lamps. The rail beneath Flandry’s hand was sculptured scaly. The dome which topped the whole enormous edifice was created with an arrogant image: the upraised foot of some bird of prey, talons grasping at heaven. The walls were gilt, dazzling even at night. From this terrace it was a fifty-meter drop to the oily waters of a major canal. On the other side rose a line of palaces. They were airy, colonnaded structures, their roofs leaping gaily upward, their walls painted with multi-armed figures at play. Lights glowed from several; Flandry heard twanging minor-key music.
Even here, in the city’s heart, he thought he could smell the surrounding jungle.
“If you please.” Warouw bowed at him.
Flandry took a final drag on his cigarette and followed the other man. They went through an archway shaped like the gaping mouth of a monster and down a long red hall beyond. Several doors stood open to offices, where kilted men sat tailorwise on cushions and worked at low desks. Flandry read a few legends: Interisland Water Traffic Bureau, Syncretic Arbitration Board, Seismic Energy Commission—yes, this was the seat of government. Then he was in an elevator, purring downward. The corridor into which he was finally guided stretched black between whitely fluorescing pillars.
At its end, a doorway opened on a great blue room. It was almost hemispherical, with an outsize window overlooking the night of Kompong Timur. To right and left stood banks of machinery: microfiles, recorders, computers, communicators. In the center was a table, black wood inlaid with native ivory. Behind it sat the overlords of Unan Besar.
Flandry stepped closer, studying them from the camouflage of a nonchalant grin. Cross-legged on a padded bench, all twenty had shaven heads and white robes like Warouw, the same tattooed mark on their brows. It was a gold circle with a cross beneath and an arrow slanting upward. The breast insignia varied—a cogwheel, a triode circuit diagram, an integral dx, conventionalized waves and grain sheafs and thunderbolts—the heraldry of a government which at least nominally emphasized technology.
Mostly, these men were older than Nias Warouw, and not in such good physical shape. The one who sat in the middle must be the grand panjandrum, Flandry thought: a petulant fat face, and the vulture-claw sign of mastery on his robe.
Warouw had been purringly urbane, but there was no mistaking the hostility of these others. Here and there a cheek gleamed with sweat, eyes narrowed, fingers drummed the tabletop. Flandry made the muscles around his shoulderblades relax. It was no easy job, since the knife-wielding Strength Through Joy squad stood immediately behind him.
The silence stretched.
Someone had to break it. “Boo,” said Flandry.
The man at the center stirred. “What?”
“A formula of greeting, your prominence,” bowed Flandry.
“Address me as Tuan Solu Bandang.” The fat man switched eyes toward Warouw. “Is this the, ah, the Terran agent?”
“No,” snorted Flandry, “I’m a cigar salesman.” But he didn’t snort it very loudly, or in Pulaoic.
“Yes, Tuan.” Warouw inclined his head briefly above folded hands.
They continued to stare. Flandry beamed and pirouetted for them. He was worth looking at, he assured himself smugly, being of athletic build (thanks to calisthenics, which he loathed but forced himself to keep up) and high-boned, straight-nosed, aristocratic features (thanks to one of Terra’s most fashionable biosculptors). His eyes were gray, his brown hair cut close about the ears in Imperial style but sleek on top.
Bandang pointed uneasily. “Take that, ah, gun from him,” he ordered.
“Please, Tuan,” said Flandry. “It was bequeathed me by my dear old grandmother. It still smells of lavender. If anyone demanded it from me, my heart would be so broken I’d blow his guts out.”
Someone else turned purple and said shrilly. “You foreigner, do you realize where you are?”
“Let him keep it if he insists, Tuan,” said Warouw indifferently. He met Flandry’s gaze with the faintest of smiles and added: “We should not disfigure this reunion moment with quarrels.”
A sigh went down the long table. Bandang pointed to a cushion on the floor. “Sit.”
“No, thank you.” Flandry studied them. Warouw seemed the most intelligent and formidable of the lot, but after their initial surprise, they had all settled back into a disquieting habitual scornfulness. Surely the only firearm in the whole room didn’t count for that little!
“As you wish.” Bandang leaned forward, assuming unctuousness. “See here, ah, Captain—you’ll understand, I trust, how . . . how . . . delicate? Yes, how delicate a matter this is. I’m, ah, sure your discretion—” His voice trailed off in a smirk.
“If I’m causing any trouble, Tuan, I apologize,” said Flandry. “I’ll be glad to depart at once.” And how!
“Ah . . . no. No, I fear that isn’t er, practicable. Not for the present. My implication is quite simple actually, and I, ah, have no doubt that a man of your obvious sophistication can, er, grasp?—yes, can grasp the situation.” Bandang drew a long breath. His colleagues looked resigned. “Consider this planet, Captain: its people, its culture, isolated and autonomous for more than four hundred years.” (That would be local years, Flandry reminded himself, but still, a long time.) “The, ah, distinctive civilization which has inevitably developed—the special values, beliefs, customs, ah, and . . . achievements—the socioeconomic balance—cannot lightly be upset. Not without, er, great suffering. And loss. Irreparable loss.”
Having an inside view of the Empire, and unprejudiced eyes, Flandry could understand the reluctance of some worlds to have anything to do with same. But there was more here than a simple desire to preserve independence and dignity. If these characters had any knowledge at all of what was going on elsewhere in the universe—and certainly they did—then they would know that Terra wasn’t a menace to them. The Empire was old and sated; except when driven by military necessity, it didn’t want any more real estate. Something big and ugly was being kept hidden on Unan Besar.
“What we, ah, wish to know,” continued Bandang, “is, er, do you come here with official standing? And if so, what message do you convey from your, um, respected superiors?”
Flandry weighed his answer, thinking of knives at his back and night beyond the windows. “I have no message, Tuan, other than friendly greetings,” he said. “What else can the Imperium offer until we are able to get to know your people better?”
“But you have come here under orders, Captain? Not by chance?”
“My credentials are in my spaceship, Tuan.” Flandry hoped his commission, his field agent’s open warrant, and similar flashy documents might impress them. For an unofficial visitor could end up in a canal with his throat cut, and no one in all the galactic vastness would care.
“Credentials for what?” It was a nervous croak from the end of the table.
Warouw scowled. Flandry could sympathize with the Guard chief’s annoyance. This was no way to conduct an interrogation. Biocontrol was falling all over its own flat feet: crude bluster and cruder insinuation. To be sure, they were amateurs at this job—Warouw was their tame professional—but the lowest-echelon politician in the Empire would have had more understanding of men, and made a better attempt at questioning such a quasi-prisoner.
“If the Tuan pleases,” Warouw interposed, “we seem to be giving Captain Flandry an unfortunate impression of ourselves. May my unworthy self be permitted to discuss the situation with him privately?”
“No!” Bandang stuck his head forward, like a flabby bull. “Let’s have none of your shilly-shally. I’m a man of few words, yes, few words and—Captain, I, ah, trust you’ll realize . . . will not take offense . . . we bear responsibility for an entire planet and—ah—well, as a man of sophistication, you will not object to narcosynthesis?”
Flandry stiffened. “What?”
“After all—” Bandang wet his lips. “You come unheralded . . . ah . . . without the expected, er, preliminary fanfare or—Conceivably you are a mere imposter. Please! Please do not resent my, um, necessary entertaining of the possibility. If you actually are an official, ah, delegate—or agent—naturally, we will wish to ascertain—”
“Sorry, Tuan,” said Flandry. “I’ve been immunized to truth drugs.”
“Oh? Oh. Oh, yes. Well, then . . . we do have a hypnoprobe—yes, Colleague Warouw’s department is not altogether behind the times. He obtains goods on order from the Betelgeuseans. . . . Ah, I realize that a hypnoprobing is, er, an uncomfortable experience—”
To put it mildly, thought the Terran. His spine crawled. I see. They really are amateurs. Nobody who understood politics and war would be so reckless. Mind-probing an Imperial officer! As if the Empire could let anyone live who heard me spill half of what I know. Yes, amateurs.
He stared into the eyes of Warouw, the only man who might realize what this meant. And he met no pity, only a hunter’s wariness. He could guess Warouw’s calculations:
If Flandry has chanced by unofficially, on his own, it’s simple. We kill him. If he’s here as an advance scout, it becomes more complicated. His “accidental” death must be very carefully faked. But at least we’ll know that Terra is interested in us, and can start taking measures to protect our great secret.
The worst of it was, they would learn that this visit had indeed been Flandry’s own idea, and that if he died on Unan Besar a preoccupied Service wouldn’t make any serious investigation.
Flandry thought of wines and women and adventures yet to be undertaken. Death was the ultimate dullness.
He dropped a hand to his blaster. “I wouldn’t try that, sonny boy,” he said.
From the corner of an eye, he saw one of the Guards glide forward with a raised truncheon. He sidestepped, hooked a foot before the man’s ankles, shoved, and clipped behind the ear with his free hand as the body fell. The Guard hit the floor and stayed there.
His comrades growled. Knives flashed clear. “Stop!” yelled an appalled Bandang. “Stop this instant!” But it was Warouw’s sharp whistle, like a man calling a dog to heel, which brought the Guards crouching in their tracks.
“Enough,” said Warouw. “Put that toy away, Flandry.”
“But it’s a useful toy.” The Terran skinned teeth in a grin. “I can kill things with it.”
“What good would that do you? You would never get off this planet. And in thirty days—two Terrestrial weeks, more or less—Watch.”
Ignoring stunned governors and angry Guards, Warouw crossed the floor to a telecom screen. He twirled the dials. Breath wheezed from the Biocontrol table; otherwise the room grew very quiet.
“It so happens that a condemned criminal is on public exhibition in the Square of the Four Gods.” Warouw flicked a switch. “Understand, we are not inhuman. Ordinary crime is punished less drastically. But this man is guilty of assault on a Biocontrol technicial. He reached the state of readiness for display a few hours ago.”
The screen lit up. Flandry saw an image of a plaza surrounded by canal water. A statue loomed in each corner, male figures dancing with many arms radiating from their shoulders. In the middle stood a cage. A placard on it described the offense. A naked man lay within.
His back arched, he clawed the air and screamed. It was as if his ribs must break with the violence of breath and heartbeat. Blood trickled out of his nose. His jaw had dislocated itself. His eyes were blind balls starting from the sockets.
“It will progress,” said Warouw dispassionately. “Death in a few more hours.”
From the middle of nightmare, Flandry said, “You took his pills away.”
Warouw turned down the dreadful shrieking and corrected: “No, we merely condemned him not to receive any more. Of course, an occasional criminal under the ban prefers to commit suicide. This man gave himself up, hoping to be sentenced to enslavement. But his offense was too great. Human life on Unan Besar depends on Biocontrol, which must therefore be inviolable.”
Flandry took his eyes from the screen. He had thought he was tough, but this was impossible to watch. “What’s the cause of death?” he asked without tone.
“Well, fundamentally the life which evolved on Unan Besar is terrestroid, and nourishing to man. But there is one phylum of airborne bacteria that occurs everywhere on the planet. The germs enter the human bloodstream, where they react with certain enzymes normal and necessary to us and start excreting acetylcholine. You know what an overly high concentration of acetylcholine does to the nervous system.”
“Yes.”
“Unan Besar could not be colonized until scientists from the mother planet, New Djawa, had developed an antitoxin. The manufacture and distribution of this antitoxin is the responsibility of Biocontrol.”
Flandry looked at the faces behind the table. “What happens to me in thirty days,” he said, “would not give you gentlemen much satisfaction.”
Warouw switched off the telecom. “You might kill a few of us before the Guards overcame you,” he said. “But no member of Biocontrol fears death.”
Bandang’s sweating countenance belied him. But others looked grim, and a fanatic’s voice whispered from age-withered lips: “No, not as long as the holy mission exists.”
Warouw extended his hand. “So give me that gun,” he finished, almost lightly.
Flandry fired.
Bandang squealed and dove under the table. But the blaster bolt had gone by him anyway. It smote the window. Thunder crackled behind it.
“You fool!” shouted Warouw.
Flandry plunged across the floor. A Guard ran to intercept him. Flandry stiff-armed the man and sprang to the tabletop. An overlord grabbed at him. Teeth crunched under Flandry’s boot. He leapfrogged a bald head and hit the floor beyond.
A thrown dagger went past his cheek. The broken window gaped before him. He sprang through the hole and hit the roof underneath. It slanted steeply downward. He rolled all the way, tumbled from the edge, and straightened out as he fell toward the canal.