IX

{That was four years ago, in the planet-wide winter of eccentrically orbiting Talwin. Having landed simultaneously from the warships which brought them hither, Captain Sir Dominic Flandry and his opposite number, Qanryf Tachwyr the Dark, were received with painstaking correctness by the two commissioners of their respective races who administered the joint Merseian-Terran scientific base. After due ceremony, they expressed a wish to dine privately, that they might discuss the tasks ahead of them in frankness and at leisure.

The room for this was small, austerely outfitted as the entire outpost necessarily was. Talwin's system coursed through the Wilderness, that little-explored buffer zone of stars between Empire and Roidhunate; it had no attraction for traders; the enterprise got a meager budget. A table, some chairs and stools, a sideboard, a phone were the whole furniture, unless you counted the dumbwaiter with sensors and extensible arms for serving people who might not wish a live attendant while they talked.

Flandry entered cheerily, 0.88 gee lending bounce to his gait. The Merseian officer waited, half dinosaurian despite a close-fitting silver-trimmed black uniform, bold against snowfields, frozen river, and shrunken sun in crystalline sky which filled a wall transparency behind him.

"Well, you old rascal, how are you?" The man held forth his hand in Terran wise. Tachwyr clasped it between warm dry fingers and leathery palm. They had no further amicable gesture to exchange, since Flandry lacked a tail.

"Thirsty," Tachwyr rumbled. They sought the well-stocked sideboard. Tachwyr reached for Scotch and Flandry for telloch. They caught each other's glances and laughed, Merseian drumroll and human staccato. "Been a long while for us both, arrach?"

Flandry noted the inference, that of recent years Tachwyr's work had brought him into little or no contact with Terrans, for whatever it might be worth. Likely that wasn't much. The Empire's mulish attitude toward the aggrandizement of the Roidhunate was by no means the sole problem which the latter faced. Still, Tachwyr was by way of being an expert on Homo sapiens; so if a more urgent matter had called him—To be sure, he might have planned his remark precisely to make his opponent think along these lines.

"I trust your wives and children enjoy good fortune," Flandry said in polite Eriau.

"Yes, I thank the God." The formula being completed, Tachwyr went on: "Chydhwan's married, and Gelch has begun his cadetship. I presume you're still a bachelor?" He must ask that in Anglic, for his native equivalent would have been an insult. His jet eyes probed. "Aren't you the gaudy one, though?

What style is that?"

The man extended an arm to show off colors and embroideries of his mufti. The plumes bobbed which sprang from an emerald brooch holding his turban together. "Latest fashion in Dehiwala—on Ramanujan, you know. I was there a while back. Garb at home has gotten positively drab." He lifted his glass. "Well, tor ychwei."

"Here's to you," the Merseian responded in Anglic. They drank. The telloch was thick and bitter-fiery.

Flandry looked outdoors. "Brrr!" he said. "I'm glad this time I won't need to tramp through that."

"Khraich? I'd hoped we might go on a hunt."

"Don't let me stop you. But if nothing else, my time here is limited. I must get back. Wouldn't have come at all except for your special invitation."

Tachwyr studied Flandry. "I never doubted you are busy these days," he said.

"Yes, jumping around like a probability function in a high wind."

"You do not seem discouraged."

"N-no." Flandry sipped, abruptly brought his gaze around, and stated: "We're near the end of our troubles. What opposition is left has no real chance."

"And Hans Molitor will be undisputed Emperor." Tachwyr's relaxation evaporated. Flandry, who knew him from encounters both adversary and half friendly since they were fledglings in their services, had rather expected that. A big, faintly scaled hand clenched on the tumbler of whisky. "My reason why I wanted this meeting."

"Your reason?" Flandry arched his brows, though he knew Tachwyr felt it was a particularly grotesque expression.

"Yes. I persuaded my superiors to send your government—Molitor's—the proposal, and put me in charge of our side. However, if you had not come yourself, I imagine the conference would have proved as empty as my datholch claimed it would, when I broached the idea to him."

I can't blame the good datholch, Flandry thought. It does seem ludicrous on the face of it: discussions between Intelligence officers of rank below admiral or fodaich, who can't make important commitments— discussions about how to "resolve mutual difficulties" and assure the Imperium that the Roidhunate has never had any desire to interfere in domestic affairs of the Empire— when everybody knows how gleefully Merseian agents have swarmed through every one of our camps, trying their eternally damnedest to keep our family fight going.

Of course, Molitor's people couldn't refuse, because this is the first overt sign that Merseia will recognize him rather than some rival as our lord, and deal with his agents later on, about matters more real than this farce.

The intention is no surprise, when he's obviously winning. The surprise was the form the feeler took— and Tachwyr's note to me. Neither action felt quite Merseian.

Therefore I had to come.

"Let me guess," Flandry said. "You know I'm close to his Majesty and act as an odd-job man of his.

You and your team hope to sound out me and mine about him."

Tachwyr nodded. "If he's to be your new leader, stronger than the past several, we want to know what to expect."

"You must have collected more bits of information on him than there are stars in the galaxy. And he's not a complex man. And no individual can do more than throw a small extra vector or two in among the millions that whipsaw such a big and awkward thing as the Empire toward whatever destiny it's got."

"He can order actions which have a multiplier effect, for war or peace between our folk."

"Oh, come off it, chum! No Merseian has a talent for pious wormwords. He only sounds silly when he tries. As far as you are concerned vis-a-vis us, diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means."

Flandry tossed off his drink and poured a refill.

"Many Terrans disagree," Tachwyr said slowly.

"My species also has more talent than yours for wishful thinking," Flandry admitted. He waved at the cold landscape. "Take this base itself. For two decades, through every clash and crisis, a beacon example of cooperation. Right?" He leered. "You know better. Oh, doubtless most of the scientists who come here are sincere enough in just wanting to study a remarkable xenological development. Doubtless they're generally on good personal terms. But they're subsidized—they have their nice safe demilitarization—for no reason except that both sides find it convenient to keep a place for secret rendezvous. Neutral domains like Betelgeuse are so public, and their owners tend to be so nosy."

He patted the Merseian's back. "Now let's sit down to eat, and afterward serious drinking, like the cordial enemies we've always been," he urged. "I don't mind giving you anecdotes to pad out your report.

Some of them may even be true."

The heavy features flushed olive-green. "Do you imply our attempt—not at final disengagement, granted, but at practical measures of mutual benefit—do you imply it is either idiotic or else false?"

Flandry sighed. "You disappoint me, Tachwyr. I do believe you've grown stuffy in your middle age.

Instead of continuing the charade, why not ring up your Chereionite and invite him to join us? I'll bet he and I are acquainted too."}

{The sun went down and night leaped forth in stars almost space-bright, crowding the dark, making the winter world glow as if it had a moon. "May I turn off the interior lights?" Aycharaych asked. "The outside is too glorious for them."

Flandry agreed. The hawk profile across the table from him grew indistinct, save for great starlight-catching eyes. The voice sang and purred onward, soft as the cognac they shared, in Anglic whose accent sounded less foreign than archaic.

"I could wish your turban did not cover a mindscreen and powerpack, my friend. Not merely does the field make an ugliness through my nerves amidst this frozen serenity; I would fain be in true communion with you." Aycharaych's chuckle sounded wistful. "That can scarcely be, I realize, unless you join my cause."

"Or you mine," Flandry said.

"And each of your men who might know something I would like to learn is likewise screened against me. Does not that apparatus on their heads make sleep difficult? I warn you in any case, wear the things not overmany days at a stretch. Even for a race like yours, it is ill to keep the brain walled off from those energies which inspirit the universe, behind a screen of forces that themselves must roil your dreams."

"I see no reason for us to stay."

Aycharaych inhaled from his glass. He had not touched the liquor yet. "I would be happy for your company," he said. "But I understand. The consciousness that dreary death will in a few more decades fold this brightly checkered game board whereon you leap and capture—that keeps you ever in haste."

He leaned back, gazed out at a tree turned into a jewel by icicles, and was quiet awhile. Flandry reached for a cigarette, remembered the Chereionite disliked tobacco smoke, and soothed himself with a swallow.

"It may be the root of your greatness as a race," Aycharaych mused. "Could a St. Matthew Passion have welled from an immortal Bach? Could a Rembrandt who knew naught of sorrow and had no need for steadfastness in it have brought those things alive by a few daubs of paint? Could a Tu Fu free of loss have been the poet of dead leaves flying amidst snow, cranes departing, or an old parrot shabby in its cage? What depth does the foreknowledge of doom give to your loves?"

He turned his head to face the man. His tone lightened: "Well. Now that poor mortified Tachwyr is gone—most mightily had he looked forward to the sauce which gloating would put on his dinner!—we can talk freely. How did you deduce the truth?"

"Part hunch," Flandry confessed. "The more I thought about that message, the more suggestions of your style I found. Then logic took over. Plain to see, the Merseians had some ulterior motive in asking for a conference as nugatory per se as this. It could be just a signal to us, and an attempt at sounding out Molitor's prospective regime a bit. But for those purposes it was clumsy and inadequate. And why go to such trouble to bring me here?

"Well, I'm not privy to high strategic secrets, but I'm close enough to him that I must have a fair amount of critical information—the kind which'll be obsolete inside a year, but if used promptly could help Merseia keep our kettle longer on the boil, with that much more harm to us. And I have a freer hand than anybody else who's so well briefed; I could certainly come if I chose. And an invitation from Tachwyr could be counted on to pique my curiosity, if nothing else.

"The whole idea was yours, wasn't it?"

Aycharaych nodded, his crest a scimitar across the Milky Way. "Yes," he said. "I already had business in these parts— negotiant perambulantem in tenebris, if you like—and saw nothing to lose in this attempt. At least I have won the pleasure of a few hours with you."

"Thanks. Although—" Flandry sought words. "You know I put modesty in a class with virginity, both charming characteristics which should be gotten rid of as fast as puberty allows. However ... why me, Aycharaych? Do you relish the fact I'll kill you, regretfully but firmly, the instant a chance appears? In that respect, there are hundreds like me. True, I may be unusual in having come close, a time or two. And I can make more cultured noises than the average Navy man. But I'm no scholar, no esthete—a dilettante; you can do better than me."

"Let us say I appreciate your total personality." The smile, barely visible, resembled that upon the oldest stone gods of Greece. "I admire your exploits. And since we have interacted again and again, a bond has formed between us. Deny not that you sense it."

"I don't deny. You're the only Chereionite I've ever met—" Flandry stopped.

After a moment he proceeded: "Are you the only Chereionite anybody has ever met?"

"Occasional Merseians have visited my planet, even resided there for periods of study," Aycharaych pointed out.

Yes. Flandry remembered one such, who had endangered him here upon Talwin; how far in the past that seemed, and how immediately near! I realize why the coordinates of your home are perhaps the best-kept secret in the Roidhunate. I doubt if a thousand beings from offworld know; and in most of them, the numbers have been buried deep in their unconsciousness, to be called forth by a key stimulus which is also secret.

Secret, secret ... What do we know about you that is substance and not shadow?

The data fled by, just behind his eyes.

Chereion's sun was dim, as Flandry himself had discovered when he noticed Aycharaych was blind in the blue end of the spectrum though seeing farther into the red than a man can. The planet was small, cold, dry—deduced from Aycharaych's build, walk, capabilities, preferences—not unlike human-settled Aeneas, because he could roam freely there and almost start a holy war to split the Empire, nineteen years ago.

In those days he had claimed that the enigmatic ruins found upon many worlds of that sort were relics of his own people, who ranged and ruled among the stars in an era geologically remote. He claimed ...

He's as big a liar as I am, when either of us wants to be. If they did build and then withdraw, why?

Where to? What are they upon this night?

Dismiss the riddles. Imperial Intelligence knew for certain, with scars for reminders, he was a telepath of extraordinary power. Within a radius of x meters, he could read the thoughts of any being, no matter how alien, using any language, no matter how foreign to him. That had been theoretically impossible.

Hence the theory was crudely modified (there is scant creativity in a waning civilization) to include suggestions of a brain which with computerlike speed and capacity analyzed the impulses it detected into basic units (binary?), compared this pattern with the one which its own senses and knowledge presented, and by some incredible process of trial and error synthesized in seconds a code which closely corresponded to the original.

It did not seem he could peer far below the surface thoughts, if at all. That mattered little. He could be patient; or in a direct confrontation, he had skill to evoke the memories he wanted. No wonder that the highest Merseian command paid heed to him. The Empire had never had a more dangerous single enemy.

Single—

Flandry grew aware of the other's luminous regard. " 'Scuse me," he said. "I got thinking. Bad habit."

"I can guess what." Aycharaych's smile continued. "You speculate whether I am your sole Chereionite colleague."

"Yes. Not for the first time." Flandry drank again. "Well, are you? What few photographs or eyewitness accounts we've garnered, of a Chereionite among outsiders—never more than one. Were all of them you?"

"You don't expect me to tell you. I will agree to what's obvious, that partakers in ephemeral affairs, like myself, have been rare among my race. They laid such things aside before your kind were aught but apes."

"Why haven't you?"

"In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby we may seek to win an atom deeper into mystery."

Flandry considered Aycharaych for a silent span before he murmured: "I came on a poem once, in translation—it goes back a millennium or more—that's stayed with me. Tells how Pan—you know our Classical myths—Pan is at a riverside, splashing around, his goat hoofs breaking the lilies, till he plucks a reed and hollows it out, no matter the agony it feels; then the music he pipes forth enchants the whole forest. Is that what you think of yourself as doing?"

"Ah, yes," Aycharaych answered, "you have the last stanza in mind, I believe." Low: Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Damn! Flandry thought. I ought to stop letting him startle me.

"My friend," the other went on gently, "you too play a satanic role. How many lives have you twisted or chopped short? How many will you? Would you protest me if the accidents of history had flung Empire rather than Roidhunate around my sun? Or if you had been born into those humans who serve Merseia? Indeed, then you might have lived more whole of heart."

Anger flared. "I know," Flandry snapped. "How often have I heard? Terra is old, tired, corrupt, Merseia is young, vigorous, pure. Thank you, to the extent that's true, I prefer my anomie, cynicism, and existential despair to counting my days in cadence and shouting huzza—worse, sincerely meaning it—when Glorious Leader rides by. Besides ... the device every conqueror, yes, every altruistic liberator should be required to wear on his shield ... is a little girl and her kitten, at ground zero."

He knocked back his cognac and poured another. His temper cooled. "I suspect," he finished, "down inside, you'd like to say the same."

"Not in those terms," Aycharaych replied. "Sentimentality ill becomes either of us. Or compassion.

Forgive me, are you not drinking a trifle heavily?"

"Could be."

"Since you won't get so drunk I can surreptitiously turn off your mindscreen, I would be grateful if you stay clear-headed. The time is long since last I relished discourse of Terra's former splendors, or even of her modern pleasures. Come, let us talk the stars to rest."}

In the morning, Flandry told Susette he must scout around the globe a few days, using certain ultrasensitive instruments, but thereafter he would return.

He doubted that very much.