“Granted,” Ydwyr said. “Dismissed.”
“Kh-h…the datholch understands I must report this to headquarters with what recommendations my duty demands I make?”
“Certainly. I shall be sending messages of my own. No censure will be in them.” Ydwyr’s hauteur vanished. Though his smile was not a man’s, but only pulled the upper lip back off the teeth, Flandry recognized friendliness. “Hunt well, Morioch Sun-in-eye.”
“I thank…and wish a good hunt…to you.” Morioch rose, saluted, and left.
Outside, the sky had gone altogether black. Lightning flamed, thunder bawled, wind yammered behind galloping sheets of rain, whose drops smoked back off the ground. Djana fell into Flandry’s arms; they upheld each other.
Releasing her, he turned to Ydwyr and made the best Merseian salute of honor which a human could. “The datholch is thanked with my whole spirit,” he said in Eriau.
Ydwyr smiled anew. The overhead fluoropanel, automatically brightening as the storm deepened, made the room into a warm little cave. (Or a cool one; that rain was not far below its boiling point.) The folds in his robe showed him relaxing. “Be seated if you desire,” he invited.
The humans were quick to accept, lowering themselves to the rubbery floor and leaning back against a cabinet. Their knees were grateful. To be sure, there was a psychological drawback; now Ydwyr loomed over them like a heathen god.
But I’m not going to be drugged, brainscrubbed, or shot. Not today. Maybe…maybe, eventually, an exchange deal…
Ydwyr had returned to dignified impassivity. I mustn’t keep him waiting. Strength seeped back into Flandry’s cells. He said, “May I ask the datholch to tell me his standing, in order that I can try to show him his due honor?’
“We set most ritual aside—of necessity—in my group here,” the Merseian answered. “But I am surprised that one who speaks Eriau fluently and has been on our home planet has not encountered the term before.”
“The uh, the datholch—may I inform the datholch, his language was crammed into me in tearing haste; my stay on his delightful world was brief; and what I was taught at the Academy dealt mainly with—uh—”
“I told you the simple forms of respect will do on most occasions.” Ydwyr’s smile turned downward this time, betokening a degree of grimness. “And I know how you decided not to end your sentence. Your education dealt with us primarily as military opponents.” He sighed. “Khraich, I don’t fear the tactless truth. We Merseians have plenty of equivalents of you, the God knows. It’s regrettable but inevitable, till your government changes its policies. I bear no personal animosity, Lieutenant Dominic Flandry. I far prefer friendship, and hope a measure of it may take root between us while we are together.
“As for your question, datholch is a civilian rather than a military rank.” He did not speak in exact equivalents, for Merseia separated “civilian” and “military” differently from Terra, and less clearly; but Flandry got the idea. “It designates an aristocrat who heads an enterprise concerned with expanding the Race’s frontier.” (Frontier of knowledge, trade, influence, territory, or what? He didn’t say, and quite likely it didn’t occur to him that there was any distinction.) “As for my standing, I belong to the Vach Urdiolch and”—he stood up and touched his brow while he finished—“it is my high honor that a brother of my late noble father is, in the glory of the God, Almighty Roidhun of Merseia, the Race, and all holdings, dominions, and subordinates of the Race.”
Flandry scrambled to his feet and yanked Djana to hers. “Salute!” he hissed in her ear, in Anglic. “Like me! This chap’s a nephew of their grand panjandrum!”
Who might or might not be a figurehead, depending on the circumstances of his reign—and surely, that he was always elected from among the Urdiolchs, by the Hands of the Vachs and the heads of Merseian states organized otherwise than the anciently dominant culture—from among the Urdiolchs, the only landless Vach—surely this was in part a check on his powers—but surely, too, the harshest, most dictatorial Protector regarded his Roidhun with something of the same awe and pride that inspired the lowliest “foot” or “tail”—for the Roidhun stood for the God, the unity, and the hope of the warrior people—Flandry’s mind swirled close to chaos before he brought it under control.
“Be at ease.” Ydwyr reseated himself and gestured the humans to do likewise. “I myself am nothing but a scientist.” He leaned forward. “Of course, I served my time in the Navy, and continue to hold a reserve commission; but my interests are xenological. This is essentially a research station. Talwin was discovered by accident about—uh-h-h-h—fifteen Terran years ago. Astronomers had noted an unusual type of pulsar in this vicinity: extremely old, close to extinction. A team of physicists went for a look. On the way back, taking routine observations as they traveled, they detected the unique orbital scramble around Siekh and investigated it too.”
Flandry thought sadly that humans might well have visited that pulsar in early days—it was undoubtedly noted in the pilot’s data for these parts, rare objects being navigationally useful—but that none of his folk in the present era would venture almost to the ramparts of a hostile realm just to satisfy their curiosity.
Ydwyr was proceeding: “When I learned about Talwin’s extraordinary natives, I decided they must be studied, however awkwardly near your borders this star lies.”
Flandry could imagine the disputes and wire-pullings that had gone on, and the compromise which finally was reached, that Talwin should also be an advanced base for keeping an eye on the Terrans. No large cost was involved, nor any large risk…nor any large chance of glory and promotion, which last fact helped explain Morioch’s eagerness to wring his prisoners dry.
The lieutenant wet his lips. “You, uh, you are most kind, sir,” he said; the honorific appeared implicitly in the pronoun. “What do you wish of us?”
“I would like to get to know you well,” Ydwyr said frankly. “I have studied your race in some detail; I have met individual members of it; I have assisted in diplomatic business; but you remain almost an abstraction, almost a complicated forcefield rather than a set of beings with minds and desires and souls. It is curious, and annoying, that I should be better acquainted with Domrath and Ruadrath than with Terrans, our one-time saviors and teachers, now our mighty rivals. I want to converse with you.
“Furthermore, since any intelligence agent must know considerable xenology, you may be able to help us in our research on the autochthons here. Of a different species and culture, you may gain insights that have escaped us.
“This is the more true, and you are the more intriguing in your own right, because of who you are. By virtue of my family connections, I obtained the story—or part of the story—behind the Starkad affair. You are either very capable, Dominic Flandry, or else very lucky, and I wonder if there may not be a destiny in you.”
The term he used was obscure, probably archaic, and the man had to guess its meaning from context and cognation. Fate? Mana? Odd phrasing for a scientist.
“In return,” Ydwyr finished, “I will do what I can to protect you.” With the bleak honesty of his class: “I do not promise to succeed.”
“Do you think, sir…I might ever be released?” Flandry asked.