Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read online

  And then—

  Then came the letter, nineteen years into Herse’s reign, along with a flurry of confirming reports from other sources. Herse been assassinated. His nineteen-year-old nephew, son of Queen Gunli, had invaded the capital, taken the throne, and had, within the month, sent a letter to Audra Flandry.

  That was the first Audra had known she had a living half-brother. And the letter was a month old before she’d gotten it.

  Things had changed in the Scothan system, over twenty years, she had that information. Scothians under Herse had ringed the port with what they called “defensive” installations and set a battery of other “defensive” installations aloft.

  And the world, indeed, the whole sector of four other moderately inhabited planets, had steadily continued the slide back to barbarism, with Scothian warships to lead the way.

  So now in exchange for a familial relationship with the King of Wigan, the King of Wigan would swear alliance with Scotha’s new king.

  And the King of Scotha meant to use Wigan to keep the rest of the Arduite Confederacy at bay.

  So he thought.

  It was not the plan of the Arduite Confederacy.

  With all of the Empire’s intelligence behind the reports Fleance pulled out of files, Audra Flandry knew things the King of Scotha didn’t.

  And she knew that Empire politics were just as dangerous, but a shade more subtle, and that her half-sister had done a lot to get this mission launched. A Flandry mission, no question. But her mission. It had taken her twenty years to work her way through the maze of Quadrant politics, and she knew the politics of never doing anything to upset strategically important Scotha . . . for reasons which suited certain people who didn’t want the Scotha sector back in politics.

  The Flandrys thought otherwise. They were going to get the Scotha sector back one way or the other, as a Confederate state, or an Empire state.

  And a letter from Scotha and her tangled bloodline were what they had to work with.

  The ship came through the defensive net at dawn, with a blaze of flashes in the heavens and a wail of sirens in the port area. It came down, it sat pinging and fuming at rest in the heart of the “defensive” installations, and sat a while. Communications began buzzing with threats and indignant demands for authorizations, while technicians tried to figure why the port installation had quietly done nothing.

  Audra let them stew a bit, and then shot off a nicely composed and previously drafted communique to King Heralt, a polite:

  “Dear brother, Your Majesty of Scotha, we are in receipt of your last letter.

  “We look forward to the meeting of a brother as yet unseen, yet dear in our regard, as a child of our beloved mother, and hope for an early reunion.

  “Our purpose here is of course twofold, first to make acquaintance with our younger brother, whose successes are many, and to hear first hand our brother’s needs and desires, and secondly to renew the advantages of the Empire in your hearing.

  “We applaud your homage to the old customs insofar as they promote pride in the accomplishments of Scothians, and insofar as they inspire bravery in confronting difficulties. These traditions come from lean times, when survival was less certain than now, but are never to be forgotten as a place from which we Scothians have come.

  “We further applaud evidences of your forwardness in seeking to establish peace through diplomacy, and most of all through renewed contact with the Empire.

  “We are not surprised by your fearlessness in inviting me, your elder sister, to visit you. As you know, though entitled by blood, either of us would have been a child ruler. Twenty years have made a difference. Had you not risen to the challenge of tyranny and replaced our late uncle, I might have come back with all the force of the Empire.” Think about that, brother, and worry for your safety. But not too much.

  “We are glad to find the situation is settled, in your rise to power. We have preferred this solution, and look forward to an end of ackward-looking policies.

  “So, felicitations, brother, on your assumption of the throne of Scotha.

  “We extend the hospitality of our ship and extend an invitation to a state dinner aboard at sunset, local.”

  “That should get a reaction,” Fiona said, when it went.

  “I expect it,” Audra said, and settled down at the console to do a little sampling of communications. There was a little chaff from the observers, reports on what the ship wasn’t doing—that was, moving. She flicked on a searchlight, swept it about by high local noon, and listened, amused, as that activity brought down an alert and a scramble.

  A few shots followed.

  She turned on the running lights, and then the external speakers, pumping out a recording of Baradean sea-cats at extreme volume.

  The high notes could damage hearing, and exposure to the low notes, traveling as a ground wave, would produce profound unease, all the way to nausea. On visual, one could see the snipers running. One dropped his weapon and left it lying, then came back for it, staggering, and took several uncoordinated tries at retrieving it.

  She cut the sound, and the unfortunate sniper staggered off.

  “Poor fellow,” Fiona said, leaning over Audra’s shoulder.

  “They’ll spread word of that,” Audra said. “And I’m sure we’ll hear about it.”

  They did, in short order. A call came in from a red-faced man in uniform, the portmaster, who ranted about the tactic.

  “His Majesty requires you leave your ship!” figured in the list.

  “Requires? I am convinced this is not His Majesty’s direct and current response. We suggest you consult with him immediately and give us a more up to date answer directly from him, in what is surely a delicate matter, since he and we are in negotiation. There will be direct consequences of an error, sir, and your actions may adversely affect negotiations. On your head be it.”

  “I shall consult,” the answer came back. “And expect no change.”

  Audra broke the connection and sat back, casting a look at Fiona. “Shall we have lunch? I really don’t expect anything until afternoon.”

  Fiona asked, “Do you think the King ordered that probe?”

  “He may have. His advisors may have taken it on themselves. Now at least he knows he has a problem. If the person running this is a total fool, he’ll come storming back with beamfire and all sorts of bluster. But Heralt is my mother’s son. And by all reports he hasn’t been a puppet. He survived Uncle’s takeover and apparently was active in the coup that took Scotha back. So I expect some intelligence. And with intelligence—some flexibility. The question is—” The bridge had a synth unit, or at least, you punched in a request and the unit asked the big unit in the habitat to wake up and deliver coffee, which it would bring up the pneumatic system. “Two?”

  “Please,” Fiona said.

  It was actually after lunch—coffee and the synth’s best offering, cinnamon sticky rolls—when the next letter came back.

  “Heralt King of Scotha, Arden, and Luss to Audra his bastard sister. Council policy prevents the King from traveling on foreign soil or foreign decks. Please accept our invitation to a state dinner at the palace instead, where we are certain you will have great interest in a counter-proposal of ours.”

  “Interesting,” Audra said to Fiona. “No threats. No denial of my familial connection. And careful terms. Bastard I certainly am: there was no question of wedlock. And a king always speaks on record. Calling me a pretender would diminish my value as a marriage connection. He or his advisors are desperate to have that connection with the Wigan King—and the alliance that is the key to the Confederacy. I have to maintain my value in all that he says publicly, or he has no deal with them.”

  She settled to a keyboard and wrote: “Dear younger brother, I am in receipt of your letter, and renew my invitation, passing by the ill-advised attack on this ship as a clear instance of panic and confusion among subordinates.

  “As for your advisors’ objections, since
you are, and have always been, during your reign, the sovereign of a member state of the Empire, clearly the Scothian Council prohibition regarding your presence on a foreign deck cannot apply to your presence on this ship.

  “You have the word of an Empire official that you will not be prevented from return to your capital after dinner. Please so honor us.

  “To entice you further let me offer my absolute word that if my offer does not sufficiently excite you, I shall return with you to the palace and consider this offer of marriage with His Majesty of Wigan. I am that confident that I have a counteroffer you will not refuse.

  “Dinner will be at local sunset.”

  That went. Fleance tapped into the local communications network, just in case, and sifted the entire traffic of the capital city for keywords and certain addresses.

  And a letter came back: “Accepted.”

  Heralt was already ahead of his predecessor, in terms of common sense.

  And gambling—was the Scothian passion, a soft spot in the national ethic. Worked into legend, and engrained in the national psyche. Leave a bet on the table? Let a chance slip through his fingers?

  He was Scothian.

  She just hoped he lived to get as far as the ship, and that no double-agent advisor and no disgruntled Frithian made a move to give Scotha a new king.

  Doing it with a potential senior heir sitting in port with her finger on the fire button was not necessarily the best plan for deposing the family, however. She gambled, too. She gambled Heralt’s life on that.

  Maybe Heralt had the wits she credited him with. She hoped so.

  She dressed for dinner, a white gown with a little sparkle, nothing extravagant. Fiona was in gold. They made a pair, her white and yellow, Fiona’s tawny gold: Fiona set a table in the state quarters, Fleance had moved in a crystallac display, that would reflect everything going on in small prisms—went with any decor. And ship’s crew turned out in dress uniform—regulation when they turned up topside. The ship, the Bonaventure, was all in landing config, the chairs were loosed from stay-brackets—in fact, being what it was, the ship was a traveling embassy, and had no shortage of equipage for the job, right down to the stemware—which did look handsome, sparkling next the crystallac centerpiece. And the crew looked equally apt, turned out as embassy guards, ceremonial swords, brass buttons, the whole show . . . Fiona’s handiwork, top to bottom, including the security arrangements, which included the crew, and Fleance, who disguised himself as a rolling cart.

  Oh, it looked good—and in point of fact, there was more armament and armor packed into that little dining room than would ever seem likely.

  The remaining matter was to hope their guest made it to the ship alive, and Audra did not spend her time admiring the tableware: she spent it on the bridge, watching the route. The Bonaventure had sent out an array of little observers to station themselves along the way, and indeed, at the appropriate time, an official car exited the city limits, with a fair amount of escort, and quietly purred toward the port facility, and through the gates, and past the guards.

  The car stopped, the entourage got out, King Heralt got out, and the ship opened its boarding access.

  Audra headed for the dining room, and was there, attended by Fiona, Fleance, and very properly uniformed crew by the time King Heralt, with two more crew members and a parcel of his own guards, reached the doorway.

  He had their mother’s coloring, fair and fine. He was young. He was armed—so were his guards—

  And he was shocked. Many people were, when Audra looked at them for the first time. Yellow hair. Brilliant, flower-yellow eyes. Heralt stared a second in shock.

  Audra smiled and held out open hands. “Brother,” she said.

  “You can’t be my sister,” he said—hadn’t intended to say it, by the chagrined look on his face; but he had, and stood there in dismay.

  “Scothian and Terran,” she said, “can mix, as you see. People think it cosmetic. It’s the mixed heritage that does that.”

  “Valtam’s beard,” Heralt murmured.

  “On the other hand, the mix with our cousins of Wigan would hardly be a good one. So they tell me. The mixed heritages don’t always turn out so well. Do be seated, Majesty of Scotha. You are a very welcome guest.”

  Heralt sank toward the endmost chair. One of his bodyguard pulled it out and shoved it under him.

  “I am not in favor of this marriage with Wigan,” Audra said, sinking into hers, as Fiona poured wine for their guest. “My paternal heritage is far more valuable than that.”

  “That foreigner—”

  “Oh, a man at home in many places, well-regarded by high powers that may be of more advantage than you yet know. I cannot simply call you Majesty, brother. Shall I use your name? Mine is Audra. Simply Audra. Or you can call me sister.”

  “Sister,” Heralt said faintly, as Fiona poured white wine into Audra’s glass, and he stared at her, blinking from time to time as if trying to clear his eyes. Gone was everything he had brought into the meeting. Rapid thinking was going on in the flicker of that stare. Desperate thinking. “You always were veiled. They say you always were veiled. That you showed the Terran blood: you were dark-haired as a Farlander.”

  “As you see, they were wrong.”

  “But why did you come, if you are not in favor of the marriage?”

  “I came for you, brother. For my kin. For my house and my mother’s heritage.”

  “To take Scotha? You shall not!”

  “No such thing. My ambitions are within the Empire, not here. Only my heart is here. With my brother.” She lifted her glass. “To you, Heralt. To your survival. To your accomplishment—of our mother’s dream.”

  He sat still as stone, as she took the most minute of sips. “Our mother.”

  “I was fortunate. I knew her.”

  Heralt sat still a moment, emotions tumbling through his blue eyes—jealousy, it might be; anger at his own fate.

  “She could not save herself,” Audra said. “But she guarded herself. She stayed here and she stayed alive to give birth to you, brother.”

  “An heir for Scotha. A son,” Heralt said in bitterness, “that ruined all Herse’s plans. You could be bargained off: you were half-foreigner, kept in veils. A son—that was different. I had to die. Therefore our mother had to die, because she would never forgive Herse. As it was, she died, and I lived.”

  “And came back,” she said, “to Herse’s misfortune. You are our mother’s son. And I am so glad to meet you. So very glad to have a brother.”

  Cautiously, Heralt nodded.

  “Shall we not let dinner go cold?” Audra asked. “A modest dinner. A little talk. Fiona, I think we shall begin now.”

  “Ambassador,” Fiona said with a bow. It was a little exaggeration. A slight exaggeration. But there was a somewhat routine document among the other documents that gave an agent in the field, light years from Quadrant Central, certain powers to give and to take, bind and unbind.

  There was dinner, there was brandy in a little side chamber while the dishes went away, and in the warmth of that social function—perhaps a little less outright anxiety, but no less worry.

  “This proposal of yours,” Heralt said.

  “This proposal of mine, brother, is delivered with some concern. You are my mother’s son; and I want you to live. And I do not, above all, want to get you assassinated. How firm is your hold?”

  “As firm as needs to be.”

  “Firmer than Cerdic’s?”

  “You’re suggesting his policies?”

  “Far more than that.” She drew a deep breath. “I see Scotha as a major force in the Quadrant, not a tail on the tail of the Confederacy. Ally with Wigan? Deliver Wigan an ultimatim: join you or join the Confederacy, and no lost sleep if he chooses the Confederacy. He’s a barbarian content to collect his taxes and hope his allies don’t ask too much from him. Oh, he’ll fight. He’ll always fight. But they’ll just move the taxes higher every year, adding the hot w
ater to his bath until he boils. And when he rebels, they’ll own him. You—they’ll assassinate, and go on assassinating Scothian kings until they get a stupid one, as stupid as the King of Wigan. Tell Wigan to join you, and you’ll attract their attention fast.”

  Heralt listened. His bodyguard, off near the door, had every opportunity to listen.

  “You’re proposing I be Cerdic?”

  “No. Be Heralt. Be yourself. Be stronger than Herse, stronger than Cerdic, stronger than Penda. Be a monarch allied to the Empire, and the defenses I just plowed this ship through will no longer be those defenses. The defenses will be modern, and the alliance will be with the greatest force in the galaxy. The marriage with Wigan’s king? Nothing. You wanted a relationship with a powerful ally? Marriages can be broken. Blood is another matter, and blood connects you and me. Blood connects me with a man high in the councils of the Empire, a man whose name opens doors, gets attention, and moves ships. I have a document, which, if you sign it, will ally you to the Empire, with me signatory with the Flandry name, backed by three of my half-sibs. You swear to bring this world to the defense of the Empire if the Empire is attacked on this frontier—and the Empire will therefore consider any attack on Scotha, any hostile entry into Scotha System, as an invasion of the Empire. The little border situation with the Confederacy has simmered along untouched precisely because the Empire has no stake in anything going on, since Herse severed ties. Re-establish them! Sign. Join. And immediately, as head of state not of a border system, but of a star system within the Empire—state that you are threatened with invasion. I’d wager that’s exactly the situation laid before you by the whole Wigan agreement, am I right? A marriage link, or look out for your own survival?”