adventures of a Highland tinker.
It made a good cover for the fact that he was not out for pleasure.
Beyond the compound walls, the homes of the wealthy loomed amidst
grandly downsweeping private parks. In a way, Flandry thought, they
epitomized man’s trajectory. Once the settlement had been sufficiently
large and prosperous, and sufficiently within the Imperial sphere, to
attract not only merchants but aristocrats. Old Town had bustled with
culture as well as commerce–provincial, no doubt, this far from Terra;
nevertheless, live and genuine, worthy of the respectful emulation of
the autochthons.
Tonight Irumclaw lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the
receding tide of empire. What mansions were not standing hollow had
become the property of oafs, and showed it. (The oafs were not to be
scoffed at. Several of them directed large organizations devoted to
preying on the spacemen who visited and the Navy men who guarded what
transshipment facilities remained in use.) Outside the treaty port
boundaries, barbarism rolled forward as the natives abandoned
civilization with a perhaps justifiable contempt.
Past the residential section, workshops and warehouses hulked black in
the night, and Flandry moved alert with a hand near the needle gun under
his tunic. Robberies and murders had happened here. Lacking the police
to clean out this area, assuming he wanted to, the commandant had
settled for advising men on liberty not to go through alone.
Flandry had been shocked to learn that when he first arrived. “We could
do it ourselves–establish regular patrols–if he’d order it. Doesn’t he
care? What kind of chief is he?”
His protest had been delivered in private to another scout, Lieutenant
Commander Eisenschmitt. The latter, having been around for a while,
shrugged. “The kind that any place like this gets,” he answered. “We
don’t rate attention at GHQ, so naturally we’re sent the hacks, boobs,
and petty crooks. Good senior officers are too badly needed elsewhere.
When Irumclaw does get one it’s an accident, and he doesn’t stay long.”
“Damn it, man, we’re on the border!” Flandry pointed out the window of
the room where they sat. It had been dark then, too. Betelgeuse glowed
bloody-brilliant among the hosts of stars where no writ ran. “Beyond
there–Merseia!”
“Yeh. And the gatortails expanding in all directions except when we bar
the way. I know. But this is the far edge of nowhere … in the eyes of
an Imperial government that can’t see past its perfume-sniffing nose.
You’re fresh from Terra, Dom. You ought to understand better than me. I
expect we’ll pull out of Irumclaw entirely inside another generation.”
“No! Can’t be! Why, that’d leave this whole flank exposed for six
parsecs inward. We’d have no way of protecting its commerce … of, of
staying around in any force–”
“Uh-huh.” Eisenschmitt nodded. “On the other hand, the local commerce
isn’t too profitable any more, less each year. And think of the saving
to the Imperial treasury if we end operations. The Emperor should be
able to build a dozen new palaces complete with harems.”
Flandry had not been able to agree at the time. He was too lately out of
a fighting unit and a subsequent school where competence was demanded.
Over the months, though, he saw things for himself and drew his own sad
conclusions.
There were times when he would have welcomed a set-to with a bandit. But
it had not befallen, nor did it on this errand into Old Town.
The district grew around him, crumbling buildings left over from pioneer
days, many of them simply the original beehive-shaped adobes of the
natives slightly remodeled for other life forms. Streets and alleys
twisted about under shimmering glowsigns. Traffic was mainly pedestrian,
but noise beat on the eardrums, clatter, shuffle, clop, clangor, raucous
attempts at music, a hundred different languages, once in a while a
muffled scream or a bellow of rage. The smells were equally strong, body
odors, garbage, smoke, incense, dope. Humans predominated, but many
autochthons were present and space travelers of numerous different
breeds circulated among them.
Outside a particular joyhouse, otherwise undistinguished from the rest,
an Irumclavian used a vocalizer to chant in Anglic: “Come one, come all,
come in, no cover, no minimum. Every type of amusement, pleasure, and