Anderson, Poul - Psychotechnic League 23 Read online

  The Pirate

  Poul Anderson

  Robbing: graveyards is an ancient practice indeed;

  the Pharaohs called down curses on such thieves.

  But never before on this scale . . . !

  Illustrated by Kelly Freas

  We guard the great Pact; but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand.

  They avail themselves of our ordinary work. (Ship Harpsong of Nerthus, out of Highsky for David's Landing, is long overdue . . . Please forecast the competition which a cybernation venture on Oasis would probably face after the older firms elsewhere learned that a market had been established . . . Bandits reported . . . How shall we deal with this wholly strange race of beings we have come upon? But then we step in their own paths and say, “Thou shalt not.” And suddenly we are the Cordys, the enemy.

  The case of the slain world named Good Luck is typical. Now that the Service is ready, after a generation, to let the truth be known, I can tell you about Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, Red Faustina, and the rest, that you may judge the rights or wrongs for yourself.

  In those days Trevelyan spent his furloughs on Earth. He said its quiet, its intellectuality, were downright refreshing, and he could get all the rowdiness he wanted elsewhere. But of course his custom put him at the nerve center of the Service, insofar as an organization operating across a fraction of the galaxy can have one. He got a larger picture than most of his colleagues of how it fared with the Pact. This made him more effective. He was a dedicated man.

  I suspect he also wanted to renew his humanity at the wellspring of humankind, he who spent most of his life amidst otherness. Thus he was strengthened in his wilJ to be a faithful guardian.

  Not that he was a prig. He was large and dark, with aquiline features and hard aquamarine eyes, But his smile was ready, his humor was dry, his tunic and culottes were always in the latest mode, he enjoyed every aspect of life.

  When the machine summoned him to the Good Luck affair, he had been living for a while at Laugerie Haute, which is in the middle of the steep, green, altogether beautiful Dordogne country. His girl of the moment had a stone house that was built in the Middle Ages against an overhanging cliff. Its interior renovation did not change its exterior ancientness, which made it seem a part of the hills or they a part of it. But in front grew bushes, covering a site excavated centuries ago, where flint-working reindeer hunters lived for millennia while the glacier covered North Europe. And daily overhead through the bright sky glided a spear that was the Greenland- Algeria carrier; and at night, across the stars where men now traveled, moved sparks that were spaceships lifting out of Earth’s shadow. In few other parts of the planet could you be more fully in the oneness of time.

  “You don’t have to go, not yet,’’ Braganza Diane said, a little desperately because she cared for him and our trumpeter blows too many “Farewells” each year.

  “ ’Fraid I do,” he said. “The computer didn’t ring me up for fun. In fact, it’s a notoriously sober-sided machine.” When she didn’t answer his grin, he explained; “The data banks show I’m the only person available who’s dealt with, uh, a certain individual before. He’s a slippery beast, with sharp teeth, and experience might make the critical quantum of difference.”

  “It better!” She curbed the tears that could have caused him to think her immature and bent her lips upward. “You will add . . . the rest of this leave ... to your next, and spend it with me. Won’t you?”

  “I’d love to,” he said, carefully making no promises. He kissed her, where they stood in the hay scent of summer. They went back to the house for a while.

  After he packed his kit and phoned good-bye to some neighbors —landholders, friendly folk whose ancestors had dwelt here for generations beyond counting—she flew him to Aerogare Bordeaux. Thence he took a carrier to Port Nevada. The computer had briefed him so well that he could go straight to work, and he wanted to catch Murdoch Juan at ease if possible.

  His timing was good. Sunset was slanting across western North America and turning the mountains purple when he arrived. The city walled him off from that serenity as he entered. It shouldered big square buildings above streets in which traffic clamored; the growl of machines perpetually underlay the shrill of voices; frantically flickering signs drowned out the stars; humans and nonhumans hustled, jostled, chiseled, brawled, clashed, stole, evangelized, grew rich, grew poor, came, went, and were forgotten; beneath a tawdry front was that heedless vigor which the cargo ships bring from their homes to enclaves like this. Trevelyan allowed himself a brief “Phew!” when the stinks rolled around him.

  He knew this town, on a hundred different worlds. He knew how to make inquiries of chance-met drinking companions. Eventually he found one of Murdoch’s crew who could tell him where the boss was this evening. It turned out to be no dive, with the smoke of a dozen drugs stinging the eyes, but the discreet and expensive Altair House.

  There a headwaiter, live though extraterrestrial, would not conduct him to his man. Captain Murdoch had requested privacy for a conference. Captain Murdoch was entitled to— Trevelyan showed his identification. It gave him no legal prerogative; but a while ago the Service had forestalled a war on the headwaiter’s native planet.

  Upstairs, he chimed for admittance to the room. He had been told that Captain Murdoch’s dinner guest had left, seemingly well pleased, while Captain Murdoch and his female companion stayed behind with a fresh order of champagne, vigorator, and other aids to celebration. “‘Come in, come in!” boomed the remembered hearty voice. The door dilated and Trevelyan trod through.

  “Huh? I thought you were . . . Sunblaze! You again!” Murdoch surged to his feet. Briefly he stood motionless, among drapes and paintings, sparkling glassware, drift of music and incense. Then, tiger softly, he came around the table to a fist’s reach of Trevelyan.

  He was as tall, and broader in the shoulders. His features were rugged, deeply weathered, blond hair and a sweeping blond moustache. His clothes were too colorful to be stylish on Earth, but he wore them with such panache that you didn’t notice.

  The woman remained seated. She was as vivid in her way as he in his, superbly formed, the classicism of her face brought to life by the nearly Asian cheekbones; and she owned the rare combination of pure white skin and fox-red hair. Yet she was no toy. When she saw Murdoch thus taken aback, Trevelyan read shock upon her. It was followed by unflinching enmity.

  He bowed to her. “Forgive me if I intrude,” he said.

  Murdoch relaxed in a gust of laughter. “Oh, sure, sure, Mike, you’re forgiven. If you don’t stay too mugthundering long.” He clapped hands on the agent’s shoulders. “How’ve you been, anyway? How many years since last?”

  “Five or six.” Trevelyan tried to smile back. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I understand you’re shipping out day after tomorrow, which no doubt means you’ll be busy for the prior twenty-four hours.”

  “Right, buck,” Murdoch said. “This here tonight is our lift-off party. However, it began with business—lining up a financial backer for later on—so it may as well continue that way a few microseconds.” The tone stayed genial, but the gaze was pale and very steady. “Got to be business, don’t it? You didn’t track me down just to wish an old sparring partner a bony voyage.”

  “Not really,” Trevelyan admitted.

  Murdoch took his arm and led him to the table. “Well, sit yourself and have a glug with us. Faustina, meet Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service.”

  “Juan has spoken of you,” the woman said distantly.

  Trevelyan eased into a chair. His muscles
relaxed, one by one, that his brain might be undistracted in the coming duel. “I hope he used language suitable to a lady,” he said.

  “I’m from New Mars,” she snapped. “We don’t have time for sex distinctions in our manners.”

  I might have guessed, he thought. There aren’t as many unclaimed planets habitable by man as is popularly believed; so the marginal ones get settled too. He could imagine scarring poverty in her background, and Murdoch Juan as the great merry beloved knight who took her from it and would bear her on his saddlebow to the castle he meant to conquer for them.

  “I did my duty as I saw it, which happened to conflict with Captain Murdoch’s rights as he saw them,” Trevelyan said.

  “I was making a fortune off fur and lumber on Vanaheim,” the other man said.

  “And disrupting the ecology of a continent,” Trevelyan replied.

  “You didn’t have to come in and talk them into changing the laws on me,” Murdoch said without rancor. He rinsed a glass from the water carafe and filled it with champagne. “Hope you don’t mind this being used first by a financier.”

  “No. Thank you.” Trevelyan accepted.

  “And then, when he was honorably engaged as a mercenary—” Faustina’s tone held venom.

  “Bringing modern weapons in against primitives who were no menace,” Trevelyan said. “That’s universally illegal. Almost as illegal as dispossessing autochthons or prior colonists.”

  “Docs your precious Union actually claim jurisdiction over the entire cosmos?”

  “Ease off, Faustina,” Murdoch said.

  “The Union is not a government, although many governments support it,” Trevelyan said to the woman. “This galaxy alone is too big tor any power to control. But we do claim the right to prevent matters from getting out of hand, as far as we’re able. That includes wrongdoing by our own citizens anywhere.”

  “The Cordys never jailed me,” Murdoch said. “They only scuppered my operation. I got away in time and left no usable evidence. No hard feelings.” He raised his glass. Unwillingly, Trevelyan clinked rims with him and drank. ‘‘In fact,” Murdoch added, ‘‘I’m grateful to you, friend. You showed me the error of my ways. Now I’ve organized a thing that’ll not only make me rich, but so respectable that nobody can belch in my presence without a permit.”

  Faustina ignited a cigarette and smoked in hard puffs.

  ‘‘I’ve been asked to verify that,” Trevelyan said.

  “Why, everything’s open and honest,” Murdoch said. “You know it already. I got me a ship, never mind how, and went exploring out Eridanus way. I found a planet, uninhabited but colonizable, and filed for a discoverer’s patent. The Service inspection team verified that Good Luck, as I’m calling it, is an awfully exploitable world. Here I am on Earth, collecting men and equipment for the preliminary work of making a defined area safe for humans. You remember”—his manner grew deliberately patronizing—“check for dangerous organisms and substances in the environment, establish the weather and seismic patterns, et cetera. When we’re finished, I’ll advertise my real estate and my ferry service to it. For the duration of my patent, I can set the terms of immigration, within limits. Most discoverers just charge a fee. But I aim to supply everything—transportation there, a functioning physical community built in advance, whatever people need to make a good start. That’s why I’ve been discussing financial backing.”

  “Your approach has been tried,” Trevelyan warned, “but never paid off. The cost per capita of a prefabricated settlement is more than the average would-be immigrant can afford. So he stays home, and puff goes the profit. Eventually, the entrepreneur is glad to sell out for a millo on the credit.”

  “Not this one,” Murdoch said. “I’ll be charging irresistibly little— about half what it’d cost ’em to buy unimproved land and make their own homes and highways and such out of local materials. They’ll come.” He tossed off the rest of his glass and refilled it. “But why arc you curious, you Cordys? I haven’t told you anything that isn’t on file. If you wanted to snoop, why didn’t you come see me earlier?”

  “Because we have too much else on file,” Trevelyan said bitterly. “Our computer didn’t get around to correlating certain facts until yesterday. We’re trying to keep the galaxy livable, but it’s too much for us, too diverse—”

  “Good!” Faustina said.

  He gave her a grave look. “Be careful, my lady,” he said, “or one day a piece of that diversity may kill you.”

  Murdoch scowled. “That’ll do.” he said. “I’ve been nice, but this is my evening out with my girl and you’re obviously on a fishing expedition. You haven’t got a thing against me, legally, have you? Get out.”

  Trevelyan tensed where he sat.

  “Or goodnight, if you prefer,” Murdoch said in friendlier wise.

  Trevelyan rose, bowed, murmured the polite formulas, and left. Inwardly he felt cold. There had been more than a gloat in his enemy’s manner; there had been the expectation of revenge.

  It looks as if I’d better take direct action, he thought.

  The Campesino cleared from orbit, ran out of the Solar System on gravs, and went into hyperdrive in the usual fashion. She was a long-range cruiser with boats and gear for a variety of conditions. Aboard were Murdoch, Faustina, half a dozen spacemen and a score of technicians.

  The Service speedster Genji followed, manned by Trevelyan and that being whose humanly unpronounceable name was believed to mean something like Smokesmith. To shadow another vessel is more art than science and more witchcraft than either. Campesino could easily be tracked while in the normal mode—by amplified sight, thermal radiation, radar, neutrinos from the power plant. But once she went over to the tachyon mode, only a weak emission of superlight particles was available. And Murdoch also had detectors, surely kept wide open.

  With skill and luck, Genji could stay at the effective edge of the field she was observing, while it masked her own. For this to be possible, however, she must be much smaller as well as much faster than the other craft. Therefore nothing more formidable could be used. She did have a blast cannon, a couple of heavy slugthrowers, and several one-meter dirigible missiles with low-yield nuclear warheads. But Trevelyan would have been surprised if Murdoch’s people didn’t build huskier weapons en route.

  He sat for hours at the conn, staring into the jeweled blackness of its star simulacrum, while the ship murmured around him and the subliminal beat of drive energies wove into his bones. At last he said, “I think we’ve done it.” He pointed to the instruments. A hunter’s exultation lifted within him. “They are definitely sheering off the Eridanus course.”

  “They may have become aware of us, or they may do so later, and attack,”’ replied the flat artificial voice Of Smokesmith.

  “We take that chance,” Trevelyan agreed. “I can’t quite believe it of Murdoch, though. He plays rough, but I don’t know about any cold-blooded murders he’s done.”

  “Our information concerning his world line is fragmentary, and zero about its future segment. Furthermore, available data indicate that his companions are quite unintegrate.”

  "Hm-m-m, yes, hard cases, none Earth-born, several nonhumans from raptor cultures among them. That was one fact which alerted us.”

  “What else? We departed too hurriedly for me to obtain entire background, I being ignorant of the biological and social nuances among your species.”

  Trevelyan considered his shipmate. Chief Rodionov had had to assign the first and presumably best agent he could, and there were never many nonhumans at Australia Center. Homo sapiens is a wolfish creature; two of him can end with ripping each other apart, on an indefinitely long voyage in as cramped a shell as this. But even when our agents have gentler instincts, we try to make up teams out of diverse breeds. The members must be compatible in their physical requirements but, preferably, different enough in psychologies and abilities that they form a whole which is more than its parts.

  The trouble was,
Trevelyan had never before encountered a being from the planet men called Reardon’s. He had heard of them, but space is too full of life for us to remember it all, let alone meet it.

  Smokesmith’s barrellike body stood about one hundred forty centimeters high on four stumpy, clawfooted legs. Four tentacles ringed the top of it, each ending in three boneless fingers whose grip was astonishing. The head was more like a clump of fleshy blue petals than anything else; patterns upon them were the outward signs of sense organs, though Trevelyan didn’t know how these worked. Withal, Smokesmith was handsome in his (?) fashion. Indeed, the mother-of-pearl iridescence on his rugose torso was lovely to watch.

  The man decided on a straightforward approach. “Well,” he said, “the fact that Murdoch is involved was in itself suspicious. He probably came to Earth to outfit, rather than some colonial world where he isn’t known, because he wouldn’t attract attention.”

  “I should extrapolate otherwise, when few commercial ventures originate on Earth.”

  “But the average Terrestrial hasn’t got the average colonist’s lively interest in such matters. The port cities are mostly ignored by the rest of the planet, a regrettable necessity to be kept within proper bounds. Then too, Murdoch would have a better chance of getting substantial but close-mouthed—uh, that means secretive—money help on Earth, which is still the primary banker of the human species. And finally, though it’s true that Service reports from everywhere go to the molecular file at Center . . . that fact makes the data flow so huge that Murdoch might well have completed his business and departed before the continuous search-and- correlation noticed him.”

  “What was smelled, then, to excite suspicion? I do not hypothesize that the initial stimulus was the composition of his crew.”

  ‘‘No. We checked that out later. Nor did the economics of his project look especially interesting. Doubtless his ready-built community will be a wretched clutter of hovels; but caveat emptor, he’ll be within the law, and word will soon get around not to buy from him.