said. “From what Mother told me, I expected fun, when I could get a
leave long enough to justify the trip to join you; but you’ve opened
whole universes to me that I never guessed existed.” He flushed. “If I
ever gave any thought to such things, I self-righteously labeled them
Vice.'”
“Which they are,” Flandry put in. “What you bucolic types don’t realize
is that worthwhile vice doesn’t mean lolling around on cushions eating
drugged custard. How dismal! I’d rather be virtuous. Decadence requires
application. But go on.”
“We’ll land now, and I’ll report back,” Hazeltine said. “I don’t know
where they’ll send me next, and doubtless won’t be free to tell you.
While the chance remains, I’ll be honest. I came here wanting to know
you as a man, but also wanting to, oh, alert you if nothing else,
because I think your brains will be sorely needed, and it’s damn hard to
communicate through channels.”
Indeed, Flandry admitted.
His gaze went to the stars in the viewscreeen. Without amplification,
few that he could see lay in the more or less 200-light-year radius of
that rough and blurry-edged spheroid named the Terran Empire. Those were
giants, visible by virtue of shining across distances we can traverse,
under hyperdrive, but will never truly comprehend; and they filled the
merest, tiniest fragment of the galaxy, far out in a spiral arm where
their numbers were beginning to thin toward cosmic hollowness. Yet this
insignificant Imperial bit of space held an estimated four million suns.
Maybe half of those had been visited at least once. About a hundred
thousand worlds of theirs might be considered to belong to the Empire,
though for most the connection was ghostly tenuous … It was too much.
There were too many environments, races, cultures, lives, messages. No
mind, no government could know the whole, let alone cope.
Nevertheless that sprawl of planets, peoples, provinces, and
protectorates must somehow cope, or see the Long Night fall. Barbarians,
who had gotten spaceships and nuclear weapons too early in their
history, prowled the borders; the civilized Roidhunate of Merseia
probed, withdrew a little–seldom the whole way–waited, probed again
… Rigel caught Flandry’s eye, a beacon amidst the great enemy’s
dominions. The Taurian Sector lay in that direction, fronting the
Wilderness beyond which dwelt the Merseians.
“You must know something I don’t, if you claim the Dennitzans are
brewing trouble,” he said. “However, are you sure what you know is
true?”
“What can you tell me about them?” Hazeltine gave back.
“Hm? Why–um, yes, that’s sensible, first making clear to you what
information and ideas I have.”
“Especially since they must reflect what the higher-ups believe, which
I’m not certain about.”
“Neither am I, really. My attention’s been directed elsewhere, Tauria
seeming as reliably under control as any division of the Empire.”
“After your experience there?”
“Precisely on account of it. Very well. We’ll save time if I run
barefoot through the obvious. Then you needn’t interrogate me, groping
around for what you may not have suspected hitherto.”
Hazeltine nodded. “Besides,” he said, “I’ve never been in those parts
myself.”
“Oh? You mentioned assignments which concerned the Merseia-ward frontier
and our large green playmates.”
“Tauria isn’t the only sector at that end of the Empire,” Hazeltine
pointed out.
Too big, this handful of stars we suppose we know … “Ahem.” Flandry
took the crystal decanter. A refill gurgled into his glass. “You’ve
heard how I happpened to be in the neighborhood when the governor, Duke
Alfred of Varrak, kidnapped Princess Megan while she was touring, as
part of a scheme to detach the Taurian systems from the Empire and bring
them under Merseian protection–which means possession. Chives and I
thwarted him, or is ‘foiled’ a more dramatic word?
“Well, then the question arose, what to do next? Let me remind you, Hans
had assumed, which means grabbed, the crown less than two years earlier.
Everything was still in upheaval. Three avowed rivals were out to
replace him by force of arms, and nobody could guess how many more would
take an opportunity that came along, whether to try for supreme power or
for piratical autonomy. Alfred wouldn’t have made his attempt without