Brim nodded understandingly. His experience getting I.F.S. Defiant ready for action had been an excellent lesson in the difficulties of new starships. And Defiant hadn't been even half as radical as what appeared to be on Valerian's mind.
"What happens if you aren't ready for next year?" a Lieutenant on the far side of the table asked.
"Onrad will simply have to wait," Valerian said with a shrug.
"Think he will?" another queried.
"If he wants to race this beauty, he will," Valerian stated, patting his coat pocket. "But then, he'll be pretty sure Sherrington can make it worth his while," he added, "especially now that these two have agreed to fly."
Brim grinned. "In that case, brother Valerian, keep in touch. I don't plan to be anywhere else for the next year or so."
"Nor do I," Moulding echoed.
"Oh, I shall assuredly keep in touch, my friends," Valerian warranted with a grin. "We've got a trophy to win."
True to Valerian's prediction, neither the radical Sherrington hull nor its new Krasni-Peych Drive was ready in time for the race at the League capital of Tarrott; therefore, no Imperial entry appeared in the Mitchell lineup of 52004. Onrad blustered, but in the end conceded that some things, like the creation of new starships, were beyond even his most heavy-handed cajoling. Eventually, he even decreed that certain of the Society's operational consultants should attend the contest as guest observers. And so it was that Wilf Brim and Toby Moulding found themselves disembarking from a passenger liner into a city whose citizens, only a few years before, would gladly have blasted either of them into subatomic particles on sight.
For Brim, whose most memorable face-to-face encounter with Leaguers had been punctuated by excruciating pain and brutal torture, the visit produced strange emotions, indeed. They were no stranger, of course, than the journey itself, his first as a paying customer on a starliner rigged out for peacetime service. S.S. Montcalm, a twin-Drive fast packet, launched the previous year by A. G. Vuklin in the domain of Peret'nium, was totally unlike the occasional converted transports on which he had normally traveled during the war. Unfortunately, his intimate knowledge of the menials who labored below decks to insure his comfort took the edge off what might have been an expansive feeling, even riding in the tourist section.
Now, standing in the pompous, oppressively columned terminus of a city whose very name embodied death and destruction, a sense of oppression enveloped him like a heavy, wet canvas. Little wonder Sodeskayans refused to attend the race, even though Leaguers were now forbidden by treaty from the Bearskin coats they fancied. Everywhere he looked, people strutted along the concourses wearing colorful military uniforms with holstered blasters and decorative daggers dangling from their belts. There were the League's "normal" military Legionnaires dressed in coarse gray uniforms; sinister Controllers in jet black finery; Labor Corps Associates outfitted in ochre; ONL (National Transport Workers) officers in vivid red; the Youth Corps in umber coveralls with wide yellow sashes; girls of the XLD (Alliance of Cloud League Maidens) in severe green jumpers; even six-year-old Gru'mphe, or Child Troopers of the Leaguer confederation, dressed in black like mini-Controllers. All moved with some terrible inner zeal, barking orders at one another as though they were still at war. And everywhere was the sick-sweet foulness of Time Weed, the mysterious narcotic all Controllers were known to smoke.
Brim became so absorbed in the arrogant spectacle that he was quite startled when a smiling, well-dressed little man in the dark gray livery of the Imperial Foreign Service tapped Moulding on the shoulder. He had a long, narrow face, a prominent nose, and laughing eyes whose humor even a permanent glower could ill suppress.
"I say," he drawled, peering discreetly at a microdisplay on his left wrist, "you two must be Moulding and Brim."
"That's us," Moulding answered with a frown. "And...?"
"'Arry Drummond from the Imperial Embassy," the little man explained. He deftly extended the tiny holobadge of an Imperial Attache in the palm of his hand. "'Is 'Ighness Prince Onrad sent me out to fetch th' two uv you to the embassy. 'E figured it'd be easier wiv' me drivin' since you'd both probably feel uncomfortable wiv'out a couple of disrupters between yourselves and the bloody Leaguers 'ere."
"He had that right," Brim chuckled. "I've never seen so many of their uniforms all in one place."
"Makes you wonder what it's like when they actually give a war," Drummond said, leading the way toward a huge, overburdened archway marked diplomatic only in Vertrucht, the League's language.
"I think I'd just as soon not find out," Brim quipped. He meant it. If this one terminal were any indication, every man, woman, and child in the whole League was ready to resume fighting at a moment's notice.
Outside under the massive portico, Brim and Moulding climbed into the rear compartment of an imperious Majestat-Baron limousine skimmer. Moments later, Drummond deftly set course into one of a wide band of cableways, the League's version of normal highways. Near these cables, automatic devices in Leaguer vehicles could take over and "follow the wire," as the expression went. The driver then had only to effect cable switches at the proper times to reach any destination, steering with rudder-pedals for short distances off the ends. "All hands to action stations," he joked as they meshed with the bustling, mostly military traffic. "This is going to be more like an invasion than a visit."
Tarrott was located near the center of a large, temperate continent in the boreal hemisphere of Dahlem, a small planet orbiting a bright trinary known collectively as Uadn'aps. The city was roughly triangular in shape and divided by both the meandering river Eer'pz and a brutally linear canal known as the Conquest Waterway. On the nightward side of the city, the river was dammed into a sizable body of water, Lake Tegeler, that served as a landing area for the vast intergalactic starship terminal and also as the site of the race.
The centerpiece of historic Tarrott, however, was its Avenue of the Conquerors, a wide band of cables and pavement that traditionally formed the city's lightward-nightward axis. From time immemorial, it had served as the main political artery of an entire domain, scene of countless military pageants and parade ground of League power, a most imposing and famous byway. At its nightward end rose the galaxy-famous Martial Gate, striking symbol of its government's philosophy. Located precisely five c'lenyts nightward from the great spaceport, it was a majestic series of arches resting on twelve splendid riotinic columns. Its perfect proportions were based on those of the Propylaea, an enigmatic artifact in the Twelfth Realm, apparently abandoned by a race of sentients that had disappeared without a trace from the Universe long before the contemporary system of domains achieved interstellar flight. At the top of the gate was a gigantic statue depicting the allegorical Goddess of Victory (or Peace, depending on which period of League history one chose), her chariot drawn by four leonine gryphons, whose great wings were caught forever in gleaming metallic flight.
Settled in the comfortable seat of Drummond's skimmer, Brim could only stare in awe as they pulled into the main stream of traffic and threaded their way through one of its central arches. The monument had been created centuries ago by one of the greatest of Leaguer Romantic artists, sculptor-architect Gotfried Bernard Buss, and even today, its flowing beauty seemed to embody all that was good about the League.
But its arrogant theme stood for all that was hateful as well. Brim looked out the window at twin rows of huge, amber trees lining the roadway, bracing himself in the seat as Drummond bounced back and forth among the cables, dodging other black Majestat-Baron limousines speeding importantly by with sirens blasting the afternoon air. There were few people to be seen on the sidewalks for such a large city. And those who were afoot appeared to be driven by some compulsion. Outdoors, Tarrott seemed to be more conducive to machines than to flesh and blood; it was not a comfortable, or comforting, place.