Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson (40 page)

Twenty heavily armed men quickly formed up and moved out at double-time as Flandry and Laren were already twenty yards ahead. When the squad caught up, Flandry said, “Captain, all units in the capital are now under full Imperial Control. My aide is sending a copy of my mandate to your headquarters. I’ll have your chief confirm it before we get inside.”

In less than two minutes, the captain said, “Your Imperial mandate received and acknowledged, sir.”

As they reached the entrance of the Governor’s Complex, two sentries, seeing an Imperial officer’s uniform, snapped to attention, and remained that way until after the Captain of the Guard and his detachment passed.

It took Flandry only five minutes to conduct his business. He moved to the office of the governor and marched past a startled secretary and pushed open the doors. The governor waited behind his desk for a report from his guard on the Imperial shuttle which had just landed. His companion was a stunning-looking young woman, which Flandry assumed meant that she was his very personal assistant. Before a word could be said, Flandry unholstered his sidearm and shot the governor between the eyes.

The young woman was too petrified by terror to scream, though the secretary outside more than made up for that in volume. To the trembling assistant, Flandry said, “You’re a very pretty girl. There are several not-too-tawdry strip bars down in the Pits that I’m sure would hire you. It’s far less demeaning work that what you’ve been doing here. Now go.”

The trembling girl needed no further urging and vanished down the hallway.

Flandry turned to Laren. “You have a problem with what just happened?”

The former marine said, “Either you had proof of his corruption or you’re trying to make a point. Either way, I doubt you need or want my approval.”

“Smart man,” said Flandry. Putting away his side arm he turned to the captain who had just arrived. “Inform the lieutenant governor that he’s now the governor. And this is Lieutenant Laren . . . ?”

“Ochinko.”

“He’s now the official representative of the Inspector General on Spiracos. Any questions?”

“Ah . . . no sir.”

“Good, now find him an office.”

Flandry turned, and it was clear that he was leaving. Laren said, “Lieutenant?”

“You just got bumped another two pay grades. Lieutenant is the lowest field grade in the IG’s office.”

Laren nodded, slightly amused. “Such rapid advancement should be a recruiting aid.” He lost his smile. “How do I reach you?”

“Don’t worry. The IG’s office will be keeping an eye on things. Spiracos is still too far outside the core systems for a full garrison, but it’s now again under Imperial control. Sector militia answer to you, but keep an eye on the new governor and local police. A slave ship doesn’t pull into orbit without a number of key people looking the other way.”

Flandry pointed at Laren for emphasis. “You will receive communications when we need to reach you, and you’re expected to file a report every six months. If you have a problem, deal with it; if it’s too big for you, I hired the wrong man.”

Five minutes later, Flandry was sitting next to the pilot of the shuttle as it lifted off.

“How did it go?” asked the young woman as she punched in coordinates.

“Better than expected. I think I may have found an honest man for the job.”

“That’s refreshing.”

“And, by the way, I didn’t appreciate that little bit of snideness about friends.”

“Sorry, Daddy.”

“Better get started,” he said. “It’s going to be a long flight home.”

“We didn’t even get to see the sights,” said Celia in mock-complaining tones.

“What? Uncovering a false intelligence source, then discovering a slaver ring and trying to get captured for three days wasn’t enough excitement for you?”

“
You
got the exciting part, Father. I got to sit up here and play with the toys.”

“Very expensive toys.”

She smiled, “Well, creating false energy signatures that withstand scrutiny is fun. And
three
of them . . . I’m very proud of that.”

“So you should be. Set a course for Terra.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, with an only slightly mocking smile.

The cleverly disguised ship moved rapidly away from the planet’s surface. To the port control scanners below, the ensign sent false signals making it appear as if they had rendezvoused with a much larger ship, then the three phantom ships left orbit. Celia put the disguised fast scout ship into an arch trajectory out of the atmosphere and then entered faster-than-light for the first of several jumps to Terra.

With some irony, the deputy inspector general considered how amused Laren, the Marine LURPS, would have been if he had realized that he had been riding in a LURPS ship disguised as a shuttle craft. As much as Flandry would have loved to commandeer a capital ship and travel in relative comfort, there weren’t enough to go around.

Turning to his daughter, he asked, “Is there anything in the library I haven’t read?”

She reached under her flight chair and pulled out a reader tablet and said, “I’m busy; look for yourself, Daddy.”

“What?”

“Look for yourself, Daddy, sir.”

Ten days later, Flandry made his way across the sprawling lawns of his family’s estate. He saw the object of his visit sitting on a small canvas-and-wood folding stool, under a large shade tree. At the edge of the lake, his aide-de-camp stood holding a fishing pole as he played the line out a bit. A batsman waited nearby, ready to answer any need the man on the chair might have, while a cook was preparing a very large stove and work area for a late lunch.

Seeing Flandry approaching, the batsman smiled, nodded, and retired a discrete distance away to allow the two men some privacy. Reaching the old man’s side, Flandry said, “A full field kitchen?”

“I hate to send Raoul running back to the house because I forgot something.” He rubbed his withered hands together. “As soon as Wilson catches another fish, I’ll make us lunch.”

“You mean Raoul will, while you order him around.”

The old man cocked his head and looked disapprovingly at Flandry. “How did things on Spiracos turn out?”

“No Merseian agents, despite the reports you’ve been getting, just the usual social decline and corruption.”

The old man sighed. He stood up and motioned for Flandry to walk with him, away from other ears, even if the loyalty of his staff was undoubted.

As they walked, the old man said, “We can’t even discern the truth of the information we’re buying, Dom. It used to be that we’d have a dozen agents where we now have one. The people we pay now . . . ” His expression made it appear as if he wished to spit, “ . . . they’re little more than rumor mongers. Reliable intelligence is a thing of the past.”

Flandry looked at his grandfather and namesake. “But I did break up a band of Alcaz slavers and put a fairly reliable fellow—former Imperial Marine—in a position to do us some good.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“Had to shoot the governor.”

“Did he deserve it?”

“Most likely.”

“Well, good,” said Former Admiral of the Fleet Dominic Flandry. “Your mother would be proud.”

“I’ll visit her grave later.”

“Good. She was always a bit of a romantic at heart,” said the old man to his namesake. After a moment, Dominic Crowfeather Flandry asked his grandfather, “Do you think it will do us any good?”

They walked slowly along the edge of the water for a while, enjoying the silence and each other’s company. The younger Flandry regarded his legendary ancestor. What no enemy agent, battlefield hazard, or court intrigue could do, time had achieved: he looked frail. A grateful Empire had bestowed every medical miracle at its disposal to prolong the life of a man almost a myth within the halls of power. But the years were inexorable, and, as his grandfather had said more than once, “No one gets out of life alive.”

Then the old man smiled and the energy that was the core of his being shown through. As long as there was light behind those eyes, Sir Dominic Flandry, still holding rank as Admiral of the Fleet, was a man to be respected, and feared.

“Dom,” the elder Flandry said after a moment, “for most of my life I believed that my mission was to hold back a new Dark Age. At times, I felt like I was doing it alone. I rejected hope, for a renaissance seemed impossible. My only wish was to hold off a long black night in human history for as long as possible.

“But since Olaf Magnussun’s betrayal . . . ” He shrugged. “The Roidhun of Merseia suffered by that failure. His power was almost godlike before, but after . . . ”—again a shrug. “Now that we have this so-called peace with the Merseians, I hope that we can endure, become a place where knowledge and a dream for a better future can survive. This new emperor is young and idealistic, the complete opposite of Emperor Josip, and a lot of powerful bad people have been run out of the government already.”

The younger man couldn’t help but smile. “But Josip gave you the Inspector General’s office.”

“He had no idea what I was going to do with it,” said the old man. “He thought he was putting me out to pasture—letting me keep the rank of Fleet Admiral was honorary, or so he thought.”

“And key sycophants of Josip’s managed to get themselves arrested, or dead, since then.”

Waving away the comment, the elder Flandry said, “Ask any gardener. You have to prune away diseased limbs and dead branches for the plant to thrive.”

He looked at his grandson and slowly shook his head. “We got lucky. I merely took advantage.

“And,” he said with a smile and what could only be called a merry glint in his eye, “the Merseians are just as hamstrung by internal chaos as we are since the Magnussun fiasco. Their race pride got the best of them and their clients are pulling away.” He smiled, and nodded. “Got word while you were gone that the Chereionites have as much as declared independence, though they’re too smart a bunch to be that blatant about it.”

The young Flandry nodded. “They are the intellectual power within the Merseian Empire. If they pull away . . . ?” He sighed. Looking out over the calm waters of the lake, he considered the simple, almost ageless, beauty of his family’s estate.

Unlike his mother, whom his grandfather hadn’t met until she was half-grown, he had been raised by his namesake since early childhood. The death of his mother was a vague memory and that of his father even fainter; only his grandfather had been there every step of the way.

It had been Fleet Admiral Dominic Flandry who had engineered a revival within the deepest halls of power within the Empire; he had hand-picked every teacher for the young Emperor Gustaff II, and he had insured that his grandson had been given no choices but to serve. The younger Flandry suspected that his wife had been chosen for him too, as his daughter was certainly following in the family trade.

Looking into the old man’s face, he saw pride reflected in his eyes. “It goes on for ever, doesn’t it?

The old man paused before answering. “There is a very old saying about darkness, going back to ancient times, even before space travel. In the ancient Empire of China, they would say,
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
” He looked up at the brilliant blue sky of ancient Earth and said, “You may not have banished the long dark night, Dom, but I think you lit another candle.”

AFTERWORD:

I don’t exactly
remember when I met Poul for the first time, but it had to be at Greg Bear’s. I’d met Greg some years earlier when he was a one-novel newcomer and I hadn’t even gotten serious about my first novel. Somewhere along the way Greg ended up married to Poul and Karen’s daughter, so it became something of a package deal.

So over the years I’d just keep bumping into Poul and Karen, usually at Greg and Astrid’s house when they lived nearby or at science fiction/fantasy conventions when I started doing some of those.

Here’s the thing: there was always this weird disconnect in my head between Greg’s father-in-law and this guy I used to read all the time in college. Poul Anderson, the writer, was a guy who made me laugh, get angry, stay up way past my bedtime reading just a few more pages, and all those other things that writers you adore do to you. Greg’s father-in-law was this guy I’d share jokes with, argue politics with, and feel as at home with as I did with one of my uncles.

When asked to contribute to this collection, the two Pouls suddenly collided in my mind, because while I spent a fair amount of time in Poul’s company over the years, I don’t think I ever played the role of fan. I’m pretty sure I’d mentioned somewhere along the way that I had read pretty much everything he’d written as I was growing up, but I doubted it was much more than a “hi, I’m a fan,” sort of stuff. I think in part because Poul wasn’t the kind of guy to care hearing a lot of praise but rather who wanted to talk about other stuff, the state of public education, how we’re going to convince politicians about seriously getting back into space, how to get rid of crabgrass, you now, stuff that was important to him.

So I said I’d write a Flandry story, because among so much of his body of work I loved—the entire future history he wrote, his really fun stuff like Operation Chaos, and some brilliant short fiction—Flandry was
the guy.
He was too cool for school, and always kept his head about him, and was a total bastard in a noble cause, in short, the sort of hero I wish I had thought up. He was such a great character; Bertie Chandler asked to borrow him for one of his Commodore Grimes stories. So if Flandry was cool enough for A. Bertram Chandler to borrow, I would too.

I’m older now and Poul is gone and age is a concept that doesn’t often concern younger writers. But after a while you dwell on it from time to time. See, what I never told Poul was that I didn’t think that Flandry was fighting a useless fight. He wasn’t just slowing the coming darkness; he was holding it at bay until something else, something good, could happen. So, I got to write a story to show what I thought would happen next. And, it’s a way to say thank you to Poul, for letting me borrow one of the best characters ever.