Marduk had three moons; a big one, fifteen hundred miles in
diameter, and two insignificant twenty-mile chunks of rock. The big
one was fortified, and a couple of ships were in orbit around it.
The _Nemesis_ was challenged as she emerged from her last hyperjump;
both ships broke orbit and came out to meet her, and several more
were detected lifting away from the planet.
Prince Bentrik took the communication screen, and immediately
encountered difficulties. The commandant, even after the situation
had been explained twice to him, couldn't understand. A Royal Navy
fleet unit knocked out in a battle with Space Vikings was bad
enough, but being rescued and brought to Marduk by another Space
Viking simply didn't make sense. He then screened the Royal Palace
at Malverton, on the planet; first he was icily polite to somebody
several echelons below him in the peerage, and then respectfully
polite to somebody he addressed as Prince Vandarvant. Finally, after
some minutes' wait, a frail, white-haired man in a little black
cap-of-maintenance appeared in the screen. Prince Bentrik instantly
sprang to his feet. So did all the other Mardukans in the command
room.
"Your Majesty! I am most deeply honored!"
"Are you all right, Simon?" the old gentleman asked solicitously.
"They haven't done anything to you, have they?"
"Saved my life, and my men's, and treated me like a friend and
a comrade, Your Majesty. Have I your permission to present,
informally, their commander, Prince Trask of Tanith?"
"Indeed you may, Simon. I owe the gentleman my deepest thanks."
"His Majesty, Mikhyl the Eighth, Planetary King of Marduk," Prince
Bentrik said. "His Highness, Lucas, Prince Trask, Planetary Viceroy
of Tanith for his Majesty Angus the First of Gram."
The elderly monarch bowed his head slightly; Trask bowed a little
more deeply, from the waist.
"I am very happy, Prince Trask, first, I confess, at the safe return
of my kinsman Prince Bentrik, and then at the honor of meeting one
in the confidence of my fellow sovereign King Angus of Gram. I will
never be ungrateful for what you did for my cousin and for his
officers and men. You must stay at the Palace while you are on this
planet; I am giving orders for your reception, and I wish you to be
formally presented to me this evening." He hesitated briefly. "Gram;
that is one of the Sword-Worlds, is it not?" Another brief
hesitation. "Are you really a Space Viking, Prince Trask?"
Maybe he'd expected Space Vikings to have three horns and a spiked
tail and stand twelve feet tall, himself.
It took several hours for the _Nemesis_ to get into orbit. Bentrik
spent most of them in a screen-booth, and emerged visibly relieved.
"Nobody's going to be sticky about what happened on Audhumla," he
told Trask. "There will be a Board of Inquiry. I'm afraid I had to
mix you up in that. It's not only about the action on Audhumla;
everybody from the Space Minister down wants to hear what you know
about this fellow Dunnan. Like yourself, we all hope he went to
Em-See-Square along with his flagship, but we can't take it for
granted. We have over a dozen trade-planets to protect, and he's
hit more than half of them already."
The process of getting into orbit took them around the planet
several times, and it was a more impressive spectacle at each
circuit. Of course, Marduk had a population of almost two billion,
and had been civilized, with no hiatus of Neobarbarism, since it
had first been colonized in the Fourth Century. Even so, the Space
Vikings were amazed--and stubbornly refusing to show it--at what
they saw in the telescopic screens.
"Look at that city!" Paytrik Morland whispered. "We talk about the
civilized planets, but I never realized they were anything like
this. Why, this makes Excalibur look like Tanith!"
* * * * *
The city was Malverton, the capital; like any city of a
contragravity-using people, it lay in a rough circle of buildings
towering out of green interspaces, surrounded by the smaller circles
of spaceports and industrial suburbs. The difference was that any of
these were as large as Camelot on Excalibur or four Wardshavens on
Gram, and Malverton itself was almost half the size of the whole
barony of Traskon.
"They aren't any more civilized that we are, Paytrik. There are just
more of them. If there were two billion people on Gram--which I hope
there never will be--Gram would have cities like this, too."
One thing; the government of a planet like Marduk would have to
be something more elaborate than the loose feudalism of the
Sword-Worlds. Maybe this Goldberg-ocracy of theirs had been forced
upon them by the sheer complexity of the population and its
problems.
Alvyn Karffard took a quick look around him to make sure none
of the Mardukans were in earshot.
"I don't care how many people they have," he said. "Marduk can be
had. A wolf never cares how many sheep there are in a flock. With
twenty ships, we could take this planet like we took Eglonsby.
There'd be losses coming in, sure, but after we were in and down,
we'd have it."
"Where would we get twenty ships?"
Tanith, at a pinch, could muster five or six, counting the free
Space Vikings who used the base facilities; they would have to leave
a couple to hold the planet. Beowulf had one, and another almost
completed, and now there was an Amaterasu ship. But to assemble a
Space Viking armada of twenty.... He shook his head. The real reason
why Space Vikings had never raided a civilized planet successfully
had always been their inability to combine under one command in
sufficient strength.
Besides, he didn't want to raid Marduk. A raid, if successful, would
yield immense treasures, but cause a hundred, even a thousand, times
as much destruction, and he didn't want to destroy anything
civilized.
The landing stages of the palace were crowded when he and Prince
Bentrik landed, and, at a discreet distance, swarms of air-vehicles
circled, creating a control problem for the police. Parting from
Bentrik, he was escorted to the suite prepared for him; it was
luxurious in the extreme but scarcely above Sword-World standards.
There were a surprising number of human servants, groveling and
fawning and getting underfoot and doing work robots could have been
doing better. What robots there were were inefficient, and much work
and ingenuity had been lavished on efforts to copy human form to the
detriment of function.
After getting rid of most of the superfluous servants, he put on a
screen and began sampling the newscasts. There were telescopic views
of the _Nemesis_ from some craft on orbit nearby, and he watched the
officers and men of the _Victrix_ being disembarked; there were
other views of their landing at some naval installation on the
ground, and he could see reporters being chevied away by Navy
ground-police. And there was a wide range of commentary opinion.
The Government had already denied that, (1) Prince Bentrik had
captured the _Nemesis_ and brought her in as a prize, and, (2) the
Space Vikings had captured Prince Bentrik and were holding him for
ransom. Beyond that, the Government was trying to sit on the whole
story, and the Opposition was hinting darkly at corrupt deals and
sinister plots. Prince Bentrik arrived in the midst of an
impassioned tirade against pusillanimous traitors surrounding his
Majesty who were betraying Marduk to the Space Vikings.
"Why doesn't your Government publish the facts and put a stop to
that nonsense?" Trask asked.
"Oh, let them rave," Bentrik replied. "The longer the Government
waits, the more they'll be ridiculed when the facts are published."
Or, the more people will be convinced that the Government had
something to hush up, and had to take time to construct a plausible
story. He kept the thought to himself. It was their government; how
they mismanaged it was their own business. He found that there was
no bartending robot; he had to have a human servant bring drinks. He
made up his mind to have a few of the _Nemesis_ robots sent down to him.
* * * * *
The formal presentation would be in the evening; there would be a
dinner first, and because Trask had not yet been formally presented,
he couldn't dine with the King, but because he was, or claimed to
be, Viceroy of Tanith, he ranked as a chief of state and would dine
with the Crown Prince, to whom there would be an informal
introduction first.
This took place in a small ante-chamber off the banquet hall; the
Crown Prince and Crown Princess and Princess Bentrik were there when
they arrived. The Crown Prince was a man of middle age, graying at
the temples, with the glassy stare that betrayed contact lenses. The
resemblance between him and his father was apparent; both had the
same studious and impractical expression, and might have been
professors on the same university faculty. He shook hands with
Trask, assuring him of the gratitude of the Court and Royal Family.
"You know, Simon is next in succession, after myself and my little
daughter," he said. "That's too close to take chances with him." He
turned to Bentrik. "I'm afraid this is your last space adventure,
Simon. You'll have to be a spaceport spaceman from now on."
"I shan't be sorry," Princess Bentrik said. "And if anybody owes
Prince Trask gratitude, I do." She pressed his hands warmly. "Prince
Trask, my son wants to meet you, very badly. He's ten years old, and
he thinks Space Vikings are romantic heroes."
"He should be one, for a while."
He should just see a planet Space Vikings had raided.
Most of the people at the upper end of the table were
diplomats--ambassadors from Odin and Baldur and Isis and Ishtar and
Aton and the other civilized worlds. No doubt they hadn't actually
expected horns and a spiked tail, or even tattooing and a nose ring,
but after all, Space Vikings were just some sort of Neobarbarians,
weren't they? On the other hand, they had all seen views and gotten
descriptions of the _Nemesis_, and had heard about the ship-action
on Audhumla, and this Prince Trask--a Space Viking prince; that
sounded civilized enough--had saved a life with only three other
lives, one almost at an end, between it and the throne. And they had
heard about the screen conversation with King Mikhyl. So they were
courteous through the meal, and tried to get as close as possible to
him in the procession to the throne room.
King Mikhyl wore a golden crown topped by the planetary emblem,
which must have weighed twice as much as a combat helmet, and
fur-edged robes that would weigh more than a suit of space armor.
They weren't nearly as ornate, though, as the regalia of King Angus
I of Gram. He rose to clasp Prince Bentrik's hand, calling him "dear
cousin," and congratulating him on his gallant fight and fortunate
escape. That knocks any court-martial talk on the head, Trask
thought. He remained standing to shake hands with Trask, calling him
"valued friend to me and my house." First person singular; that must
be causing some lifted eyebrows.
Then the King sat down, and the rest of the roomful filed up onto
the dais to be received, and finally it was over and the king rose
and proceeded, followed by his immediate suite between the bowing
and curtsying court and out the wide doors. After a decent interval,
Crown Prince Edvard escorted him and Prince Bentrik down the same
route, the others falling in behind, and across the hall to the
ballroom, where there was soft music and refreshments. It wasn't too
unlike a court reception on Excalibur, except that the drinks and
canapes were being dispensed by human servants.
He was wondering what sort of court functions Angus the First of
Gram was holding by now.
After half an hour, a posse of court functionaries approached and
informed him that it had pleased his Majesty to command Prince Trask
to attend him in his private chambers. There was an audible gasp at
this; both Prince Bentrik and the Crown Prince were trying not to
grin too broadly. Evidently this didn't happen too often. He followed
the functionaries from the ballroom, and the eyes of everybody else
followed him.
* * * * *
Old King Mikhyl received him alone, in a small, comfortably shabby
room behind vast ones of incredible splendor. He wore fur-lined
slippers and a loose robe with a fur collar, and his little black
cap-of-maintenance. He was standing when Trask entered; when the
guards closed the door and left them alone, he beckoned Trask to
a couple of chairs, with a low table, on which were decanters and
glasses and cigars, between.
"It's a presumption on royal authority to summon you from the
ballroom," he began, after they had seated themselves and filled
glasses. "You are quite the cynosure, you know."
"I'm grateful to Your Majesty. It's both comfortable and quiet here,
and I can sit down. Your Majesty was the center of attention in the
throne room, yet I seemed to detect a look of relief as you left it."
"I try to hide it, as much as possible." The old King took off the
little gold-circled cap and hung it on the back of his chair.
"Majesty can be rather wearying, you know."
So he could come here and put it off. Trask felt that some gesture
should be made on his own part. He unfastened the dress-dagger from
his belt and laid it on the table. The King nodded.
"Now, we can be a couple of honest tradesmen, our shops closed for
the evening, relaxing over our wine and tobacco," he said. "Eh,
Goodman Lucas?"
It seemed like an initiation into a secret society whose ritual he
must guess at step by step.
"Right, Goodman Mikhyl."
They lifted their glasses to each other and drank; Goodman Mikhyl
offered cigars, and Goodman Lucas held a light for him.
"I hear a few hard things about your trade, Goodman Lucas."
"All true, and mostly understated. We're professional murderers and
robbers, as one of my fellow tradesmen says. The worst of it is that
robbery and murder become just that: a trade, like servicing robots
or selling groceries."
"Yet you fought two other Space Vikings to cover my cousin's
crippled _Victrix_. Why?"
So he must tell his tale, so worn and smooth, again. King Mikhyl's
cigar went out while he listened.
"And you have been hunting him ever since? And now, you can't be
sure whether you killed him or not?"
"I'm afraid I didn't. The man in the screen is the only man Dunnan
can really trust. One or the other would stay wherever he has his
base all the time."
"And when you do kill him; what then?"
"I'll go on trying to make a civilized planet of Tanith. Sooner or
later, I'll have one quarrel too many with King Angus, and then we
will be our Majesty Lucas the First of Tanith, and we will sit on a
throne and receive our subjects. And I'll be glad when I can get my
crown off and talk to a few men who call me 'shipmate,' instead of
'Your Majesty.'"
* * * * *
[Illustration]
"Well, it would violate professional ethics for me to advise a
subject to renounce his sovereign, of course, but that might be an
excellent thing. You met the ambassador from Ithavoll at dinner, did
you not? Three centuries ago, Ithavoll was a colony of Marduk--it
seems we can't afford colonies, any more--and it seceded from us.
Ithavoll was then a planet like your Tanith seems to be. Today, it
is a civilized world, and one of Marduk's best friends. You know,
sometimes I think a few lights are coming on again, here and there
in the Old Federation. If so, you Space Vikings are helping to light
them."
"You mean the planets we use as bases, and the things we teach the
locals?"
"That, too, of course. Civilization needs civilized technologies.
But they have to be used for civilized ends. Do you know anything
about a Space Viking raid on Aton, over a century ago?"
"Six ships from Haulteclere; four destroyed, the other two returned
damaged and without booty."
The King of Marduk nodded.
"That raid saved civilization on Aton. There were four great
nations; the two greatest were at the brink of war, and the others
were waiting to pounce on the exhausted victor and then fight each
other for the spoils. The Space Vikings forced them to unite. Out of
that temporary alliance came the League for Common Defense, and from
that the Planetary Republic. The Republic's a dictatorship, now, and
just between Goodman Mikhyl and Goodman Lucas it's a nasty one and
our Majesty's Government doesn't like it at all. It will be smashed
sooner or later, but they'll never go back to divided sovereignty
and nationalism again. The Space Vikings frightened them out of that
when the dangers inherent in it couldn't. Maybe this man Dunnan will
do the same for us on Marduk."
"You have troubles?"
"You've seen decivilized planets. How does it happen?"
"I know how it's happened on a good many: War. Destruction of cities
and industries. Survivors among ruins, too busy keeping their own
bodies alive to try to keep civilization alive. Then they lose all
knowledge of how to be civilized."
"That's catastrophic decivilization. There is also decivilization by
erosion, and while it's going on, nobody notices it. Everybody is
proud of their civilization, their wealth and culture. But trade is
falling off; fewer ships come in each year. So there is boastful
talk about planetary self-sufficiency; who needs off-planet trade
anyhow? Everybody seems to have money, but the government is always
broke. Deficit spending--and always the vital social services for
which the government has to spend money. The most vital one, of
course, is buying votes to keep the government in power. And it gets
harder for the government to get anything done.
"The soldiers are sloppier at drill, and their uniforms and weapons
aren't taken care of. The noncoms are insolent. And more and more
parts of the city are dangerous at night, and then even in the
daytime. And it's been years since a new building went up, and the
old ones aren't being repaired any more."
Trask closed his eyes. Again, he could feel the mellow sun of Gram
on his back, and hear the laughing voices on the lower terrace, and
he was talking to Lothar Ffayle and Rovard Grauffis and Alex Gorram
and Cousin Nikkolay and Otto Harkaman. He said:
"And finally, nobody bothers fixing anything up. And the
power-reactors stop, and nobody seems to be able to get them started
again. It hasn't quite gotten that far on the Sword-Worlds yet."
"It hasn't here, either. Yet." Goodman Mikhyl slipped away; King
Mikhyl VIII looked across the low table at his guest. "Prince Trask,
have you heard of a man named Zaspar Makann?"
"Occasionally. Nothing good about him."
"He is the most dangerous man on this planet," the King said. "And I
can make nobody believe it. Not even my son."