The Master Of Deceptions

(I might order Multiverse and NESFA Vol 2 soon but meanwhile have been enjoying the current extended time journey back through the Technic History.)

"The Plague of Masters" ends with another of Dominic Flandry's elaborate deceptions, so complicated that it is impossible to remember the details except by rereading the story.

(i) Nias Warouw, director of the Guard Corps, is enticed to fly to Ranau, accompanied by four armed Guards, to arrest Flandry in the house where the latter has been living high in one of the Trees. (It makes sense that the local Biocontrol dispenser, with direct access to Warouw, is loyal to his own people, not to the planetary oligarchs.)

(ii) Flandry must distract the five Corps men while his confederates climb from neighboring Trees to the back of the house instead of approaching it by the ladder at the front. At this stage, Flandry must speak gibberish and move his limbs and body to feign insanity and could certainly have been shot dead.

(iii) Unfortunately, there is a gun fight. Wiarouw, who must be taken alive, is not easily subdued and two good men die as a result.

(iv) However, once Warouw is secured, everything proceeds smoothly. He can die in a cage deprived of the antitoxin (appropriate, because this is what he has done to others) or start afresh on another planet with a cash stake.

(v) Now controlled by Flandry, Warouw radios his aircar crew of armed men hidden nearby to land on the airstrip where they are killed by vengeful Ranauns.

(vi) He will tell Biocontrol that he and some of his men will take Flandry in the latter's space flitter accompanied by another ship to Spica, will let Flandry's flitter crash with him in it, will tell the Imperial authorities that they are returning Flandry's courtesy call and are shocked to hear of his death.

(vii) However, the "Guards" traveling to Spica will be Ranau men in uniforms taken from the aircar crew and will guard Warouw, not Flandry. Biocontrol will be easily deceived because, as already established, they are so incompetent.

(viii) Imperial entrepreneurs will bring cheap synthesized antitoxin for all the dispensaries while the Biocontrol fanatics, deprived of their power, destroy their now redundant vats. Flandry had earlier speculated about a big commission for himself. The spirit of Polesotechnarch Van Rijn lives on.