Space Viking by H. Beam Piper (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

in Southmain Continent that’s been going on for over two centuries.”

“That’s probably where Dunnan’s going to take that army of his,” a robot-manufacturing baron said. “I hope it gets wiped out, and Dunnan with it.”

“You don’t have to go to Southmain; just go to Glaspyth,” somebody else said.

“Well, if we don’t get a planetary monarchy to keep order, this planet will decivilize like anything in the Old Federation.”

“Oh, come, Lucas!” Alex Gorram protested. “That’s pulling it out too far.”

“Yes, for one thing, we don’t have the Neobarbarians,” somebody said. “And if they ever came out here, we’d blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves.”

Harkaman looked at him in surprise. “Just who do you think the Neobarbarians are, anyhow?” he asked. “Some race of invading nomads; Attila’s Huns in spaceships?”

“Well, isn’t that who they are?” Gorram asked.

“Nifflheim, no! There aren’t a dozen and a half planets in the Old Federation that still have hyperdrive, and they’re all civilized. That’s if ‘civilized’ is what Gilgamesh is,” he added. “These are homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth and then found they’d smashed the means of production and killed off all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leaders on local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed prophets.”

“You think we don’t have plenty of Neobarbarian material here on Gram?” Trask demanded. “If you do, take a look around.”

“Glaspyth,” somebody said.

“That collection of overripe gallows-fruit Andray Dunnan’s recruited,” Rathmore mentioned.

Alex Gorram was grumbling that his shipyard was full of them; agitators stirring up trouble, trying to organize a strike to get rid of the robots.

“Yes,” Harkaman pounced on that last. “I know of at least forty instances, on a dozen and a half planets, in the last eight centuries, of anti-technological movements. They had them on Terra, back as far as the Second Century Pre-Atomic. And after Venus seceded from the First Federation, before the Second Federation was organized.”

“You’re interested in history?” Rathmore asked.

“A hobby. All spacemen have hobbies. There’s very little work aboard ship in hyperspace; boredom is the worst enemy. My guns-and-missiles officer, Vann Larch, is a painter. Most of his work was lost with the Corisande on Durendal, but he kept us from starving a few times on Flamberge by painting pictures and selling them. My hyperspatial astrogator, Guatt Kirbey, composes music; he tries to express the mathematics of hyperspatial theory in musical terms. I don’t care much for it, myself,” he admitted. “I study history. You know, it’s odd; practically everything that’s happened on any of the inhabited planets happened on Terra before the first spaceship.”

The garden immediately around them was quiet, now; everybody was over by the landing-stage escalators. Harkaman would have said more, but at that moment he saw half a dozen of Sesar Karvall’s uniformed guardsmen run past. They were helmeted and in bulletproofs; one of them had an auto-rifle, and the rest carried knobbed plastic truncheons. The Space Viking set down his drink.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Our host is calling up his troops; I think the guests ought to find battle-stations, too.”

III

The gaily-dressed crowd formed a semicircle facing the landing-stage escalators; everybody was staring in embarrassed curiosity, those behind craning over the shoulders of those in front. The ladies had drawn up their shawls in frigid formality; many had even covered their heads. There were four news-service cars hovering above; whatever was going on was getting a planetwide screen showing. The Karvall guardsmen were trying to get through; their sergeant was saying, over and over, “Please, ladies and gentlemen; your pardon, noble sir,” and getting nowhere.

Otto Harkaman swore disgustedly and shoved the sergeant aside. “Make way, here!” he bellowed. “Let these guards pass.” With that, he almost hurled a gaily-dressed gentleman aside on either hand; they both turned to glare angrily, then got hastily out of his way. Meditating briefly on the uses of bad manners in an emergency, Trask followed, with the others; the big Space Viking plowed to the front, where Sesar Karvall and Rovard Grauffis and several others were standing.

Facing them, four men in black cloaks stood with their backs to the escalators. Two were commonfolk retainers; hired gunmen, to be precise. They were at pains to keep their hands plainly in sight, and seemed to be wishing themselves elsewhere. The man in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined with pale blue silk. His thin, pointed face was deeply lined about the mouth and penciled with a thin black mustache. His eyes showed white all around the irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace. Andray Dunnan; Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at him from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly taller man who stood at his shoulder was paper-white, expressionless, with a black beard. His name was Nevil Ormm, nobody was quite sure whence he had come, and he was Dunnan’s henchman and constant companion.

“You lie!” Dunnan was shouting. “You lie damnably, in your stinking teeth, all of you! You’ve intercepted every message she’s tried to send me.”

“My daughter has sent you no messages, Lord Dunnan,” Sesar Karvall said, with forced patience. “None but the one I just gave you, that she wants nothing whatever to do with you.”

“You think I believe that? You’re holding her a prisoner; Satan only knows how you’ve been torturing her to force her into this abominable marriage⁠—”

There was a stir among the bystanders; that was more than well-mannered restraint could stand. Out of the murmur of incredulous voices, one woman’s was quite audible:

“Well, really! He actually is crazy!”

Dunnan, like everybody else, heard