This is not to say he was either an invert or a celibate, but just old-fashioned. Sleek, soft women did not stir him. He came of rugged border stock. His home-world, Bar- nassa, had been settled two centuries ago in the high days of Mardax and Ralric Second. His forebears had been hardy, pioneering folk, men and women both capable of handling a land-breakfer, or dozer-derrick combo, or a laser rifle when the Spring migration came and iophodons swarmed over farmland and field. Women with soft hands and softer heads interested him little: his ideal was a woman who could work, and fight, right alongside her man if need there was.
He despised the merely ornamental woman.
And he drifted on.
After a few months baking mahogany-brown in Narlion’s golden sun, he bought passage on a freight packet Rim- wards to Argain in the Web Stars. Here the great Galadrus Imperator University reared its white roofs under a blue-white A5 spectrum star, similar to Altair. Here he had once dreamed of an education, among the cool, cloistered walks and gardens, absorbing knowledge in the university the Emperor Galadrus—one of Raul’s favorite historical figures—had founded in the third year of his Empery.
Here, for one hundred sixty years or so, the statesmen, scientists, poets and legalists of the Imperium had come to leam … and had gone forth to do great things among the stars.
Raul had once hoped to be one of them.
But how could he settle, now, into the quiet grooves of a scholastic life, with blood and flame and thunder within him, marking him?
He drifted on.
For two years he occupied himself with drifting. And at last he came home.
The Hercules Cluster was, in these days, one of the borders of Imperial authority. Beyond it lay the Outworlds, lawless and troublesome, fomenting treason, stirring with war and constant rumors of war that occasionally boiled over into Imperial territory. It was wild and savage country in this year of 3470, uncomfortable to many, lacking in the luxuries and amenities of “civilization”—a virtual exile to government officials. To Raul, it was home.
The Cluster was considered a full Province, and a Provinical Viceroy, Lord Cheviot, ruled at the Provincial Capital, a planet called Omphale, or Arthenis II. Raul’s home-world, Bamassa, lay only five light-years Rimwards. So he stopped at Omphale. And here, for several months he stayed.
And for several months he was treated with a certain cool cordiality. Obviously something of his Naval reputation had preceded him, and doubtless exaggerated in the telling and re-telling. No doubt they thought of him as a malcontent, a rebel against authority, a potential troublemaker. But, still, there was some cordiality expressed. It may be that they expected him to apply for a government job. The Lintons had something of a hereditary tradition in Provincial Administration, stretching back two centuries to Colonial days, when an Admiral Marus Linton had been First Colonial Administrator of Bamassa during the great Empery of Mardax, and, after him, of Ralric Second. For something like six or seven generations a Linton had always been in the government, as Regional Coordinator, System Administrator, or Planetary Commissioner. The name was in good odor hereabouts, regardless of how it may or may not have smelled back on Trelion V.
However, he asked for nothing. He looked up old friends and investigated the management of his estate, or of what little was left of it. Family fortunes had been on the decline ever since the days of Arban Second; his father had died when Raul was little and Migal his older brother had inherited most of the property and holdings, and promptly mortgaged them, wasted the money, and died a pauper and a drunkard. There was little enough for Raul to investigate: a few score acres on Bamassa given over to silkweed, a few manufactories on the outskirts of the city. He passed the time aimlessly, unambitiously.
One of the old friends he looked up was Gundorm Varl, a huge, bluff, thunderous bull of a man who had served Raul’s father for twenty years in various canaoities, personal friend, servant, confidant, agent, general factotum and jack-of-all-trades. Gundorm had been “too old” to go to war when his young master answered the clarion call of Empire. But the two were lifelong friends from the day when young Raul, a boy of eight, had used his pitifully small belt-knife to cut Gundorm Varl free of a kraken-vine, patiently sawing through the lashing, thorn-edged and leather-tough tendrils, ignoring the fact that his tunic and a large portion of his back were being slashed to ribbons by the whipping fronds. He saved the older man’s life, at the expense of spending the next five months in a hospital bed. He had made a friend for life, though, and that was worth any expense.
They had an epic reunion. Scarcely a bar or winehouse in Omphale City that they did not wreck. Enough fiery green chark was consumed to float the Viceregal yacht. And then new whispers, slanders and suspicions got started.
Gundorm Varl had been against the war from the very beginning. Fine sort of war that would carry off his young master—scarce more than a boy—and leave him behind, unwanted, “too old.” He had never ceased to pooh-pooh Glorious Imperial Service, Heroic Naval Tradition, Our Brave Boys In Imperial Scarlet, and all the other worn-out rags and tags of verbal garbage dumped freely about in wartime. He was “a suspicious person of unwholesome political opinions. A consorter with known malcontents. A derider and mocker of Imperial Naval Policy… .”
Gundorm and Raul came under semi-official scrutiny. It became known that they were seen in all sorts of Unsuitable Company—border fanners, wandering bards, Cluster natives, and even members of various fringe religio-political reform groups only an inch or two away from revolutionary.
Official eyebrows were lifted. A Linton was expected to consort with his own kind, the Old Colonial Landed Aristocracy. Yes, even a Linton whose holdings had been wasted and sold by a drunkard elder brother. Officially, it was not understood why a Linton with a brilliant Naval history behind him should visit native places—discussing religion with a naked, filthy Shaman of the Iote Brotherhood, guesting with an Upland chieftain. This was ultra-conservatism, needlessly suspicious, even downright nosy, but the Galactic Empire had just spent twelve weary years of bloody, savage, unnecessary war, and government agents were super- sensitive about such matters, especially here on the touchy, troublesome borders of the Imperium.
Of course a Linton could not for one moment be suspected of revolutionary sentiments: but a dozen-year interstellar blood-bath can bring about even stranger things than an Old Family Herculian turned seditious rebel.
Raul Linton was aware of these whispers, and at first they amused him. Far from being a rebel, he was heartsick with all politics of every hue. He simply found hardy native company more pleasurable and less artificial and hypocritical than the Landed Gentry, their provincialism of thought and outlook, their mindless adherence to tradition, custom and third-hand ideas.
He still had that chill, mocking smile, and those hard, clear, measuring eyes. And now, impatient of Public Opinion and Official Eyebrows Being Lifted, he began almost to flaunt his unbelief in “accepted” modes of speech, behavior and thought. Officialdom held its hand, and continued scrutiny, pondering his strange, unwholesome actions.