Prince Bentrik's ten-year-old son, Count Steven of Ravary, wore the
uniform of an ensign of the Royal Navy; he was accompanied by his
tutor, an elderly Navy captain. They both stopped in the doorway
of Trask's suite, and the boy saluted smartly.
"Permission to come aboard, sir?" he asked.
"Welcome aboard, count; captain. Belay the ceremony and find seats;
you're just in time for second breakfast."
As they sat down, he aimed his ultraviolet light-pencil at a serving
robot. Unlike Mardukan robots, which looked like surrealist
conceptions of Pre-Atomic armored knights, it was a smooth ovoid
floating a few inches from the floor on its own contragravity; as it
approached, its top opened like a bursting beetle shell and hinged
trays of food swung out. The boy looked at it in fascination.
"Is that a Sword-World robot, sir, or did you capture it somewhere?"
"It's one of our own." He was pardonably proud; it had been built on
Tanith a year before. "Has an ultrasonic dishwasher underneath, and
it does some cooking on top, at the back."
The elderly captain was, if anything, even more impressed than his
young charge. He knew what went into it, and he had some conception
of the society that would develop things like that.
"I take it you don't use many human servants, with robots like
that," he said.
"Not many. We're all low-population planets, and nobody wants to
be a servant."
"We have too many people on Marduk, and all of them want soft jobs
as nobles' servants," the captain said. "Those that want any kind
of jobs."
"You need all your people for fighting men, don't you?" the boy
count asked.
"Well, we need a good many. The smallest of our ships will carry
five hundred men; most of them around eight hundred."
The captain lifted an eyebrow. The complement of the _Victrix_ had
been three hundred, and she'd been a big ship. Then he nodded.
"Of course. Most of them are ground-fighters."
That started Count Steven off. Questions, about battles and raids
and booty and the planets Trask had seen.
"I wish I were a Space Viking!"
"Well, you can't be, Count Ravary. You're an officer of the Royal
Navy. You're supposed to fight Space Vikings."
"I won't fight you."
"You'd have to, if the King commanded," the old captain told him.
"No. Prince Trask is my friend. He saved my father's life."
"And I won't fight you, either, count. We'll make a lot of
fireworks, and then we'll each go home and claim victory. How would
that be?"
"I've heard of things like that," the captain said. "We had a war
with Odin, seventy years ago, that was mostly that sort of battles."
"Besides, the King is Prince Trask's friend, too," the boy insisted.
"Father and Mummy heard him say so, right on the Throne. Kings don't
lie when they're on the Throne, do they?"
"Good Kings don't," Trask told him.
"Ours is a good King," the young Count of Ravary declared proudly.
"I would do anything my King commanded. Except fight Prince Trask.
My house owes Prince Trask a debt."
Trask nodded approvingly. "That's the way a Sword-World noble would
talk, Count Steven," he said.
* * * * *
The Board of Inquiry, that afternoon, was more like a small and very
sedate cocktail party. An Admiral Shefter, who seemed to be very
high high-brass, presided while carefully avoiding the appearance
of doing so. Alvyn Karffard and Vann Larch and Paytrik Morland were
there from the _Nemesis_, and Bentrik and several of the officers
from the _Victrix_, and there were a couple of Naval Intelligence
officers, and somebody from Operational Planning, and from Ship
Construction and Research & Development. They chatted pleasantly
and in a deceptively random manner for a while. Then Shefter said:
"Well, there's no blame or censure of any sort for the way Commodore
Prince Bentrik was surprised. That couldn't have been avoided, at
the time." He looked at the Research & Development officer. "It
shouldn't be allowed to happen many more times, though."
"Not many more, sir. I'd say it'll take my people a month, and then
the time it'll take to get all the ships equipped as they come in."
Ship Construction didn't think that would take too long.
"We'll see to it that you get full information on the new submarine
detection system, Prince Trask," the admiral said.
"You gentlemen understand you'll have to keep it under your helmets,
though," one of the Intelligence men added. "If it got out that we
were informing Space Vikings about our technical secrets...." He
felt the back of his neck in a way that made Trask suspect that
beheadment was the customary form of execution on Marduk.
"We'll have to find out where the fellow has his base," Operational
Planning said. "I take it, Prince Trask, that you're not going to
assume that he was on his flagship when you blew it, and just put
paid to him and forget him?"
"Oh, no. I'm assuming that he wasn't. I don't believe he and Ormm
went anywhere on the same ship, after he came out here and
established a base. I think one of them would stay home all the
time."
"Well, we'll give you everything we have on them," Shefter promised.
"Most of that is classified and you'll have to keep quiet about it,
too. I just skimmed over the summary of what you gave us; I daresay
we'll both get a lot of new information. Have you any idea at all
where he might be based, Prince Trask?"
"Only that we think it's a non-Terra-type planet." He told them
about Dunnan's heavy purchases of air-and-water recycling equipment
and carniculture and hydroponic material. "That, of course, helps a
great deal."
"Yes; there are only about five million planets in the former
Federation space-volume that are inhabitable in artificial
environment. Including a few completely covered by seas, where you
could put in underwater dome cities if you had the time and
material."
One of the Intelligence officers had been nursing a glass with a
tiny remnant of cocktail in it. He downed it suddenly, filled the
glass again, and glowered at it in silence for a while. Then he
drank it briskly and refilled it.
"What I should like to know," he said, "is how this double obscenity
of a Dunnan knew we'd have a ship on Audhumla just when we did," he
said. "Your talking about underwater dome-cities reminded me of it.
I don't think he just pulled that planet out of a hat and then went
there prepared to sit on the bottom of the ocean for a year and a
half waiting for something to turn up. I think he knew the
_Victrix_ was coming to Audhumla, and just about when."
"I don't like that, commodore," Shefter said.
"You think I do, sir?" the Intelligence officer countered. "There it
is, though. We all have to face it."
"We do," Shefter agreed. "Get on it, commodore, and I don't need to
caution you to screen everybody you put onto it very carefully." He
looked at his own glass; it had a bare thimbleful in the bottom. He
replenished it slowly and carefully. "It's been a long time since
the Navy's had anything like this to worry about." He turned to
Trask. "I suppose I can get in touch with you at the Palace whenever
I must?"
"Well, Prince Trask and I have been invited as house-guests at
Prince Edvard's, I mean Baron Cragdale's, hunting lodge," Bentrik
said. "We'll be going there directly from here."
"Ah." Admiral Shefter smiled slightly. Beside not having three horns
and a spiked tail, this Space Viking was definitely _persona grata_
with the Royal Family. "Well, we'll keep in contact, Prince Trask."
* * * * *
The hunting lodge where Crown Prince Edvard was simple Baron
Cragdale lay at the head of a sharply-sloping mountain valley down
which a river tumbled. Mountains rose on either side in high scarps,
some topped with perpetual snow, glaciers curling down from them.
The lower ranges were forested, as was the valley between, and there
was a red-mauve alpenglow on the great peak that rose from the head
of the valley. For the first time in over a year, Elaine was with
him, silently clinging to him to see the beauty of it through his
eyes. He had thought that she had gone from him forever.
The hunting lodge itself was not quite what a Sword-Worlder would
expect a hunting lodge to be. At first sight, from the air, it
looked like a sundial, a slender tower rising like a gnomen above a
circle of low buildings and formal gardens. The boat landed at the
foot of it, and he and Prince and Princess Bentrik and the young
Count of Ravary and his tutor descended. Immediately, they were
beset by a flurry of servants; the second boat, with the Bentrik
servants and their luggage, was circling in to land. Elaine, he
discovered, wasn't with him any more, and then he was separated from
the Bentriks and was being floated up an inside shaft in a
lifter-car. More servants installed him in his rooms, unpacked his
cases, drew his bath and even tried to help him take it, and fussed
over him while he dressed.
There were over a score for dinner. Bentrik had warned him that he'd
find some odd types; maybe he meant that they wouldn't all be
nobles. Among the commoners there were some professors, mostly
social sciences, a labor leader, a couple of Representatives and a
member of the Chamber of Delegates, and a couple of social workers,
whatever that meant.
His own table companion was a Lady Valerie Alvarath. She was
beautiful--black hair, and almost startlingly blue eyes, a
combination unusual in the Sword-Worlds--and she was intelligent,
or at least cleverly articulate. She was introduced as the
lady-companion of the Crown Prince's daughter. When he asked
where the daughter was, she laughed.
"She won't be helping entertain visiting Space Vikings for a long
time, Prince Trask. She is precisely eight years old; I saw her
getting ready for bed before I came down here. I'll look in on her
after dinner."
Then the Crown Princess Melanie, on his other hand, asked him some
question about Sword-World court etiquette. He stuck to
generalities, and what he could remember from a presentation at the
court of Excalibur during his student days. These people had a
monarchy since before Gram had been colonized; he wasn't going to
admit that Gram's had been established since he went off-planet.
The table was small enough for everybody to hear what he was saying
and to feed questions to him. It lasted all through the meal, and
continued when they adjourned for coffee in the library.
"But what about your form of government, your social structure,
that sort of thing?" somebody, impatient with the artificialities
of the court, wanted to know.
"Well, we don't use the word government very much," he replied. "We
talk a lot about authority and sovereignty, and I'm afraid we burn
entirely too much powder over it, but government always seems to us
like sovereignty interfering in matters that don't concern it. As
long as sovereignty maintains a reasonable semblance of good public
order and makes the more serious forms of crime fairly hazardous for
the criminals, we're satisfied."
"But that's just negative. Doesn't the government do anything
positive for the people?"
He tried to explain the Sword-World feudal system to them. It was
hard, he found, to explain something you have taken for granted all
your life to somebody who is quite unfamiliar with it.
* * * * *
"But the government--the sovereignty, since you don't like the other
word--doesn't do anything for the people!" one of the professors
objected. "It leaves all the social services to the whim of the
individual lord or baron."
"And the people have no voice at all; why, that's tyranny,"
a professor Assemblyman added.
He tried to explain that the people had a very distinct and
commanding voice, and that barons and lords who wanted to stay
alive listened attentively to it. The Assemblyman changed his mind;
that wasn't tyranny, it was anarchy. And the professor was still
insistent about who performed the social services.
"If you mean schools and hospitals and keeping the city clean, the
people do that for themselves. The government, if you want to think
of it as that, just sees to it that nobody's shooting at them while
they're doing it."
"That isn't what Professor Pullwell means, Lucas. He means old-age
pensions," Prince Bentrik said. "Like this thing Zaspar Makann's
whooping for."
He'd heard about that, on the voyage from Audhumla. Every person on
Marduk would be retired on an adequate pension after thirty years
regular employment or at the age of sixty. When he had wanted to
know where the money would come from, he had been told that there
would be a sales tax, and that the pensions must all be spent within
thirty days, which would stimulate business, and the increased
business would provide tax money to pay the pensions.
"We have a joke about three Gilgameshers space-wrecked on an
uninhabited planet," he said. "Ten years later, when they were
rescued, all three were immensely wealthy, from trading hats with
each other. That's about the way this thing will work."
One of the lady social workers bristled; it wasn't right to make
derogatory jokes about racial groups. One of the professors
harrumphed; wasn't a parallel at all, the Self-Sustaining Rotary
Pension Plan was perfectly feasible. With a shock, Trask recalled
that he was a professor of economics.
Alvyn Karffard wouldn't need any twenty ships to loot Marduk. Just
infiltrate it with about a hundred smart confidence men and inside
a year they'd own everything on it.
That started them all off on Zaspar Makann, though. Some of them
thought he had a few good ideas, but was damaging his own case by
extremism. One of the wealthier nobles said that he was a reproach
to the ruling class; it was their fault that people like Makann
could gain a following. One old gentleman said that maybe the
Gilgameshers were to blame, themselves, for some of the animosity
toward them. He was immediately set upon by all the others and
verbally torn to pieces on the spot.
Trask didn't feel it proper to quote Goodman Mikhyl to this crowd.
He took the responsibility upon himself for saying:
"From what I've heard of him, I think he's the most serious threat
to civilized society on Marduk."
They didn't call him crazy, after all he was a guest, but they
didn't ask him what he meant, either. They merely told him that
Makann was a crackpot with a contemptible following of half-wits,
and just wait till the election and see what happened.
"I'm inclined to agree with Prince Trask," Bentrik said soberly.
"And I'm afraid the election results will be a shock to us, not to
Makann."
He hadn't talked that way on the ship. Maybe he'd been looking
around and doing some thinking, since he got back. He might have
been talking to Goodman Mikhyl, too. There was a screen in the room.
He nodded toward it.
"He's speaking at a rally of the People's Welfare Party at Drepplin,
now," he said. "May I put it on, to show you what I mean?"
When the Crown Prince assented, he snapped on the screen and
twiddled at the selector.
* * * * *
A face looked out of it. The features weren't Andray Dunnan's--the
mouth was wider, the cheekbones broader, the chin more rounded. But
his eyes were Dunnan's, as Trask had seen them on the terrace of
Karvall House. Mad eyes. His high-pitched voice screamed:
"Our beloved sovereign is a prisoner! He is surrounded by traitors!
The Ministries are full of them! They are all traitors! The
bloodthirsty reactionaries of the falsely so-called Crown Loyalist
Party! The grasping conspiracy of the interstellar bankers! The
dirty Gilgameshers! They are all leagued together in an unholy
conspiracy! And now this Space Viking, this bloody-handed monster
from the Sword-Worlds...."
"Shut the horrible man off," somebody was yelling, in competition
with the hypnotic scream of the speaker.
The trouble was, they couldn't. They could turn off the screen, but
Zaspar Makann would go on screaming, and millions all over the
planet would still hear him. Bentrik twiddled the selector. The
voice stuttered briefly, and then came echoing out of the speaker,
but this time the pickup was somewhere several hundred feet above
a great open park. It was densely packed with people, most of them
wearing clothes a farm tramp on Gram wouldn't be found dead in,
but here and there among them were blocks of men in what was
almost but not quite military uniform, each with a short and thick
swagger-stick with a knobbed head. Across the park, in the distance,
the head and shoulders of Zaspar Makann loomed a hundred feet high
in a huge screen. Whenever he stopped for breath, a shout would go
up, beginning with the blocks of uniformed men:
"_Makann! Makann! Makann the Leader! Makann to Power!_"
"You even let him have a private army?" he asked the Crown Prince.
"Oh, those silly buffoons and their musical-comedy uniforms,"
the Crown Prince shrugged. "They aren't armed."
"Not visibly," he granted. "Not yet."
"I don't know where they'd get arms."
"No, Your Highness," Prince Bentrik said. "Neither do I.
That's what I'm worried about."