He sprang to his feet, remembered the aircraft, and hit dirt again so fast that he bumped his bruised nose. The girl listened wide-eyed to his streaming, sputtering Anglic. When he had finished, she sketched a reverent sign. “I too pray the Spirit of the Mother that She guide us,” said Bourtai.
Flandry skinned his teeth in a grin. “I, uh, wasn’t precisely praying, my dear. No, I think I’ve a plan. Wild, but-now, listen—”
VII
Arghun Tiliksky thrust his face out of that shadow which blurred the ring of cross-legged men, into the scant sunlight trickling through a small window of the kibitka. “It was evil,” he declared sharply. “Nothing is more dreaded than a grass fire. And you set one! No luck can come from such a deed.”
Flandry studied him. The noyon of the Mangu Tuman was quite young, even for these times when few men of Tebtengri reached great age; and a dashing, gallant warrior, as everyone said and as he had proved in the rescue. But to some extent, Arghtin was the local equivalent of a prude.
“The fire was soon put out, wasn’t it?” asked the Terran mildly. “I heard from your scout, the Kha Khan’s aircraft swarmed there and tossed foam bombs down till the flames were smothered. Not many hectares were burned over.”
“In such tasks,” said Toghrul Vavilov, Gur-Khan of the tribe, “all Altaians are one.” He stroked his beard and traded bland smiles with Flandry: a kindred hypocrite. “Our scout needed but to carry a few foam bombs himself, and no enemy vessel would molest him. He observed them and returned here in peace.”
One of the visiting chieftains exclaimed: “Your noyon verges on blasphemy himself, Toghrul. Sir Dominic is from Terra! If a lord of Terra wishes to set a blaze, who dares deny him?”
Flandry felt he ought to blush, but decided not to. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I couldn’t think of any better plan. Not all the tribal leaders who have come to this-what do you call the meeting?-this kurultai, have heard just what happened. The girl Bourtai and myself were trapped with little power left in our varyaks, and the probability of freezing or starving in a few more days if we were not detected by infra-red that same night. So, soon after dark, I scurried about on foot, setting fires I which quickly coalesced into one. The wind swept the flames from us-but the radiation of our varyak heaters was still undetectable against such a background! Since we could not be extremely far as negagrav flight goes from some ordu of the Shamanate, it seemed likely that at least one aerial scout would come near to investigate the fire. Therefore, after a while, we broke radio silence to call for help. Then we ducked and dodged, hunted by the gathering vessels of Oleg, so what was screened by the heat and smoke… until a flying war party from the Mangu Tuman arrived, beat off the foe, and escaped with us before more of the enemy should arrive.”
“And so this council has been called,” added Toghrul Vavilov. “The chiefs of all our allied tribes must understand what we now face,”
“But the fire-” mumbled Arghun.
Eyes went through gloom to an old man seated under the window. Furs covered frail Juchi so thickly that his bald parchment-skinned he looked disembodied. The Shaman stroked a wisp of white beard, blinked eyes that were still sharp, and murmured with a dry little smile: “This is not the time to dispute whether the rights of a man from Holy Terra override the Yassa by which Altai lives. The question seems rather, how shall we all survive in order to raise such legal quibbles at another date?”
Arghun tossed his reddish-black hair and snorted: “Oleg’s father, and the whole Nuru Bator dynasty before him, tried to beat down the Tebtengri. But still we hold the northlands. I do not think this will change overnight.”
“Oh, but it will,” said Flandry in his softest voice. “Unless something is done, it will.”
He treated himself to one of the few remaining cigarettes and leaned forward so the light would pick out his features, exotic on this planet. He said: “Throughout your history, you have waged war, as you have driven your machines, with chemical power and stored solar energy. A few Ismail, stationary nuclear generators at Ulan, Baligh and the mines are all that your way of life demanded. Your economy would not have supported atomic war, even if feuds and boundary disputes were worth it. So you Tebtengri have remained strong enough to hold these subarctic pastures, though all other tribes were to ally against you. Am I right?” They nodded. He continued: “But now Oleg is getting help from outside. Some of his toys I have seen with my own eyes. Craft that can fly flourishes around yours, or go beyond the atmosphere to swoop down again; battlecars whose armor your strongest chemical explosives cannot pierce; missiles to devastate so wide an area that no dispersal can save you. As yet, he has not much modern equipment. But more will arrive during the next several months, until he has enough to crush you. And, still worse, he will have allies that are not human.”
They stirred uneasily, some of them making signs against witchcraft. Only Juchi the Shaman remained quiet, watching Flandry with impassive eyes. A clay pipe in his hand sent bitter incense toward the roof. “Who are these creatures?” he asked calmly.
“Merseians,” said Flandry. “Another imperial race than man-and man stands in the path of their ambitions. For long now we have been locked with them, nominally at peace, actually probing for weaknesses, subverting, assassinating, skirmishing. They have decided Altai would make a useful naval base. Outright invasion would be expensive, especially if Terra noticed and interfered: and we probably would notice, since we watch them so closely. But if the Merseians supply Oleg with just enough help so that he can conquer the whole planet for them-do you see? Once he has done that, the Merseian engineers will arrive; Altaians will dig and die to build fortresses; this entire world will be one impregnable net of strongholds… and then Terra is welcome to learn what has been going on!”
“Does Oleg himself know this?” snapped Toghrul.
Flandry shrugged. “Insufficiently well, I imagine. Like many another puppet ruler, he will live to see the strings his masters have tied on him. But that will be too late. I’ve watched this sort of thing happen elsewhere.
“In fact,” he added, “I’ve helped bring it about now and then-on Terra’s behalf!”
Toghrul entwined nervous fingers. “I believe you,” he said.
“We have all had glimpses, heard rumors… What is to be done? Can we summon the Terrans?”
“Aye-aye-call the Terrans, warn the Mother of Men-” Flandry felt how passion flared up in the scarred warriors around him. He had gathered that the Tebtengri had no use for Subotai the Prophet but built their own religion around a hard-boiled sort of humanistic pantheism. It grew on him how strong a symbol the ancestral planet was to them.
He didn’t want to tell them what Terra was actually like these days. (Or perhaps had always been. He suspected men are only saints and heroes in retrospect.) Indeed, he dare not speak of clottish Emperors, venal nobles, faithless wives, servile commons, to this armed and burning reverence. But luckily, there’s a practical problem at hand.
Terra is farther from here than Merseia,” he said. “Even our nearest base is more distant than theirs. I don’t believe any Merseians are on Altai lat this moment, but surely Oleg has at least one swift spaceship at his disposal, to inform his masters if anything should go wrong. Let us get word Terra, and let Oleg learn this has happened, at do you think he’ll do?” Flandry nodded, “Right, on the first guess! Oleg will send to that nearest Merseian base, where I know a heavy naval force is currently stationed. I doubt very much if the Merseians will write off their investment tamely. No, they will dispatch their ships at once, occupy various points, blast the Tebtengri lands with nuclear bombs, and dig in. It will not be as smooth and thorough a job as they now plan, but it will be effective. By the time a Terran fleet of reasonable size can get here, the Merseians will be fairly well entrenched. The most difficult task in space warfare is to get a strong enemy off a planet firmly held. It may prove impossible. But even if, thanks to our precipitating matters, the Terrans do blast the Merseians loose, Altai will have been made into a radioactive desert.”