Emperor of Gondwanaland Read Free Page B

incompetent orders.
    “This is your first command, I take it,” said I.
    Bristling, he turned to impale me with his dark eyes. “Why do you say so? Am I so obviously and contemptibly inept?”
    I recalled the stern pride of the Aristarchs, which had caused them to consider themselves superior to those others on their long-ago home-world, and which no doubt operated to this day. I tried to placate the unstable man.
    “No, no, it is just that you are young. In the Union, a man is often close to my age before he attains his first command.”
    Merino relaxed somewhat. “Perhaps I am too young. I had sailed much before this voyage, but only for pleasure, up and down our coast. My uncle, a high Aristarch, chose me for this mission. It is a government voyage I was on.”
    Merino seemed like the weather, shifting and unpredictable, a man of many extravagant moods. Now he grew the most excited I had yet seen him.
    “If you could help me complete my mission, the Aristarchy will reward you generously. You will have my undying gratitude as well.”
    I was about to ask the central question that I had been withholding all this time: How did the Fanzoii figure in this bizarre affair? But I wished to ask it out of earshot of Merino’s pet Fanzoy, which tagged along still, sharp-eared and alert.
    Merino must have intercepted my intent study of his familiar. His quick elation subsided to dourness. He said, “You may say whatever you wish in front of Tess. I call her by the closest approximation I can make to her true name. She understands our speech, but cannot reproduce it, and so nothing will be repeated.”
    I observed then the queerest look pass between the man and the alien. It was a gaze compounded equally of desire, hatred, repugnance, and fatal attraction. I hope never to see its like again.
    “All right,” I said. “I will be blunt. Why do the Fanzoii roam the ship, armed and dangerous? Why are they aboard at all? Was it some mad attempt by the Aristarchy to turn them into sailors? I have heard they are intractable.”
    “You speak to the point,” Merino said, squeezing his chin, “and I can do no less. The Fanzoii were my cargo. Now they are my crew. I asked you before to help me complete my original mission. I doubt that such a thing could be done now.”
    Perplexed and not a little frustrated, I said, “How were they your cargo?”
    Merino sighed. “You do not have the Fanzoii to contend with on Ordesto, and can perhaps afford to be moralistic about what I shall tell you. Please restrain yourself. We of the Aristarchy are not so lucky, due to the twist of fate that inclined us to settle on Carambriole, and our plight could easily be yours. In any case, the Fanzoii occupy much choice land that our growing country needs. They are reluctant to be assimilated. Coexistence is proving impossible, as we expand. I was taking the first load of Fanzoii to the Nameless Continent, to plant a colony there.”
    Paean has but three continents. The Nameless Continent stretches from the South Pole north for some forty degrees. Only its extreme northern edge is livable.
    “But could they survive there?” I said. “Is it what they are used to?”
    Shrugging, Merino replied, “Such questions were not thought to be germane. Our plan was simply to remove all the Fanzoii there and forget about them, so Carambriole could be free. However, with my crew lost, I was forced by practical considerations to free the Fanzoii from belowdecks, for their aid. Tess here has been a remarkable go-between, almost my second-in-command. The rest of the Fanzoii have proved themselves”—he shuddered briefly— “eminently capable at whatever they turn their hands to.”
    The man’s mission seemed both mad and bad, not something that I wished to aid him with. “It is impossible for you to cling to this hulk any longer. Come aboard the Melville with me, you and the Sanctus. We will find room for the Fanzoii somewhere in the hold. With good winds,